The Story of Us

by Deb Caletti

  No one talked about this. Did anyone else feel this? Of course they must have, I realize now. Because that’s what all the college drinking is about, right? The drinking and the eating disorders and the super-achievement or its opposite, the purposeful failure. It’s all about the panic of time passing, the strings of a balloon being cut, the height.

  But I didn’t know that then. I could only feel panic. What would happen to me at a distance? Would my safety net, you, my family, even be my safety net? Would I want a net at all?

  And then came those acceptance letters. One here, one away. A choice. The crazy indecision. And then, that night. The night of graduation.

  This is hard for me to write. But I need you to understand.

  Most of my class had loaded onto the buses for the party, but I didn’t want to go, as you know. You know me and parties. We went out to dinner instead, a big family dinner, with Gram and Grandpa and Aunt Bailey, the whole gang, and then they all got into their cars and said good night, and you and I drove to Marcy Lake. My cap and gown were still in the backseat of your car. You brought a blanket, and we walked out to the dock, the same dock my mother and Ben and I sat on when midnight struck that one New Year’s Eve.

  The night was warm. The stars were a billion brilliant speckles. The water smelled mossy and deep. Black, beautiful warm summer night. You spread out the blanket, and we sat. We looked out at the warm yellow lights of the houses all around the lake.

  You kissed me. It was familiar, so familiar, but the big thing that just happened made it feel a little new. I felt the familiar stirring too. Want.

  You did too. “Skinny-dip?” you said.

  But I ruined the moment. Instead of being drawn further in to the summer night and the liquidy dark, my head was spinning with images of purple gowns and good-byes. Surprisingly meaningful ones, the sense of a bond to people I hadn’t even felt that close to, honestly, in the four years of high school. My heart was still thrumming with the excitement and the energy of the night. All those families and photographs. My father standing there with roses. The sad-happy, the thrill and high, the good-bye to teachers I cared about, more now that they’d be gone, and those stupid, boring hallways and lockers, and that cafeteria that all at once felt permanently memorable and somehow important.

  “I only wish I knew what I was going to do,” I said.

  “Cricket.” You groaned. “Not now …” We’d been through this a million times.

  “No one else is this stuck,” I said.

  “Lots of people are.”

  “Did you see that program? Every single person had a plan. Where they were going, what they were doing.”

  “Your name said ‘USC’ beside it. You looked decided too.”

  “I don’t want to go to USC,” I said. “I just don’t want to. I don’t want to do something stupid, though. Where will home be if I go there, Janssen, where?”

  “Cricket!” you moaned. “Look!” You set your palms up toward that incredible sky. “Be here now.”

  You were right, of course. I’d built up all that angst like a wall between me and you and my family. It was handy—a PROBLEM I could focus on so I didn’t have to feel all of these feelings. I knew I should give it a rest, at least then, that night, or else, even those last times together would pass too fast. I stared into your eyes, those same eyes I’d been looking into for years. I just wanted an answer so bad.

  You took a big breath. You stepped into my question and need and you filled it.

  “Cricket,” you said. “You know, maybe we should just get married.”

  I sucked in my breath—shocked. What I saw was, you meant it. We’d joked and talked aboutit countless times. Named our six kids, pretended we were old people who’d been together for years. But this time you meant it. You set it out there on that dock, under those stars, as a real possibility. An option. A choice we could make.

  And I panicked.

  I thought, Wait. Oh, shit. Is this some moment, here? Were you going to take out a ring from your pocket? But that didn’t happen. It was just you and me, talking about what could happen if we wanted it to.

  And, here’s where … I know I’ve apologized a million times. But have I really explained? Have you really heard?

  I laughed.

  I laughed and then the words jumped out: “No way,” I said.

  God. God, Janssen. Words. Words, and their power and their permanence.

  I understood how bad it was right away. How cruel. Your eyes—they were hurt. So openly hurt. I’d never seen you look like that. You got up, strode off. I called out, “Wait!” I followed a moment later, after I stared out to the little houses with their golden lights and said shit, shit, shit out loud to all the night creatures who might be listening. All the crickets and owls who’d cringed when a thoughtless girl broke a wonderful guy’s heart. I’ve said it to you a hundred times before, and I know all the things those two words were saying to you, but I was just surprised, Janssen. You’d set it out there like it was a possible, practical thing. But no one does that anymore, you know, gets married so young? That’s where my reaction came from. No one talks like that, makes a decision like that at our age anymore. Grandma did it, but we don’t. We don’t, because forever is hard enough without it beginning now.

  I’m so sorry I hurt you like that. Janssen. I am.

  When I got to the car, you were already sitting inside silently. You drove me home silently, dropped me off silently. We didn’t know there could be all this silent, dangerous territory of unspoken between us, did we? We didn’t know that words could do that kind of damage.

  Humans, with our comments thrown like spears, or even just our fumbling, offhand talk, our careless laughter—maybe we should have been the ones sentenced to wordless communications and tail wags. We should have been the ones.

  You said in your letter that you loved me as much as ever. That you missed me so much it hurt. That I wasn’t at the Sea-Tac Airport, and neither were you, yet.

  Yet.

  That dog, the one who understands three hundred words—I think even he can hear the one that matters most.

  Love always,

  Cricket

  chapter

  twenty-three

  “Oscar! My God. What did you do that for?” I yelled.

  “You didn’t … want that?” Oscar’s face went from triumphant to confused. He stuck his hands into his pockets, rattled around some loose change like we were two strangers having an awkward moment in an elevator.

  Grandpa and George were hurrying inside; Rebecca was rushing around, using words like “tetanus shot” and “antiseptic.” “George and I … We have something to tell you. I’ll explain later!” Grandpa said over his shoulder.

  The doors shut behind them. “Are you gay?” Gram shrieked toward Grandpa’s disappearing back. Subtlety wasn’t her strong suit. “All these years?”

  “Mom!” my mother said. “Mom, stop that right now!” She was getting a little hysterical.

  “Perhaps he’s one of those bisexuals,” I heard Mrs. Jax say somewhere behind me. “My friend Marguerite’s boy was one. She told me when she was on those pain pills.”

  “I thought we had a moment,” Oscar said. “That night of the party. You put your head on my shoulder. I thought you cared.”

  “Of course I care! I’ve always cared! You’re one of my best friends.” I was getting a little hysterical too.

  Next to us Gavin and Hailey were going at it again. I flinched at the glimpse of dueling tongues doing a scene from Robin Hood with pink swords.

  Oscar looked their way too. “I guess I was just hoping for … something big. Something to change.”

  “I’m not the one, Oscar. I’m not.”

  “Okay.” He accepted this without drama. Jesus. I got the feeling he’d be more upset if he lost his wallet.

  “But maybe Natalie is.”

  “Natalie?”

  “She’s cared about you that way for years.”

  “Sh
e has?” His eyes got wide. So wide, I might have just told him that Bill Gates himself wanted to be his personal pen pal. E-mail pal. Whatever. “I would’ve thought she was out of my league.”

  Oh, and I wouldn’t have been? But there was no time for that. Hits to the self-esteem would have to wait. “So, something big, right? Bigger than you thought, even,” I said. “But, God, now she thinks …”

  “Hey, Crick, not to be rude, but I gotta—”

  “Go. Go! For God’s sake,” I said.

  He dashed inside. That stupid music was still playing, but Dan now sat in a deck chair, his head in his hands, and Aunt Hannah had her arms around Mom’s shoulders, saying, For all we know, George could be his long-lost son, and Aunt Bailey was fanning herself with her hand. The wind was picking up out there—Rebecca’s wind chimes started going wild, and the lanterns strung above began to swing. Ben came over to me, eating a chicken leg. How anyone could eat at a time like this was beyond me.

  “I told you,” he said.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

  I needed to find Ash. I needed to fix something I could fix. What he’d said—it was a misunderstanding with the clearest explanation. What he saw—well, Oscar was only the fourth boy to kiss me ever. If it even counted. Will Maxwell, sixth grade. Out by the 7-Eleven after that thrilling field trip to the Woodland Park Zoo, when our parent helpers were still inside, fitting caps onto spilling-over Slurpee cups. Josh Gardens, after a homecoming dance. Janssen, of course. And then Ash.

  I went inside, tried to avoid seeing anyone. I headed straight for the stairs. I only wanted to talk to Ash. Right then every relationship in my life felt weighted with complexities and communications gone wrong. Stories were where meaning ended up, stories could heal, but stories too had different viewpoints. Layered motivations. Subplots you didn’t know existed.

  So of course I ran into Grandpa on the stairs. Maybe I didn’t know him anymore, or maybe I never had.

  “Cricket!” he said. “I think George will be okay. The scratches aren’t deep. It’s a miracle.” It was Grandpa’s voice coming out of Grandpa, but it was a man standing there. Not just a funny golfing caricature in a cowboy hat, but a man with a life led over the years. He had pouches under his eyes, and his gray hair was thin where that bold hat usually sat. His eyes were blue, like Mom’s. Maybe I never even could have told you what color they were before. I probably never really looked at them. I could see his old pink skin in the open collar of his polo shirt. He’d been in the marines years ago. He’d been a young father, who held my mother in a baby blanket.

  “I guess you’re relieved.” I didn’t know what to say.

  “Relieved, hell, yes. I could just see it. Him getting some disease. Tetanus, turning to sepsis, hospital, deathbed. Him kicking off … Goddamn. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but I got my whole future wrapped up in this thing.”

  I was listening, trying to listen. I felt so embarrassed. Grandpa and George, really? But something felt off. It wasn’t exactly how you talked about a relationship. “This thing?” I said.

  “With George. I’m afraid to even tell everyone. They’ll think I’m an old fool. But we’ve got a secret. I guess everyone will know sometime or other. George and I—we’re building a golf course.”

  “A golf course? A golf course!”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I know it’s crazy. But George has got a lot of money in this, and I do too. We bought some property out in Carnation. We’re looking for other investors. The family, they’re all going to lose their minds when they hear it. They will. I know how risky it is. Me, this close to retiring! But hell, do you know something?”

  “What?” I said.

  “I hated the insurance business. Every damn day I hated it. But I was scared.”

  “You were? You were scared?” It didn’t seem possible.

  “On the ranch, growing up? We were poor. My father? Always poor. Making ends meet. Insurance business, see? I had this paycheck, and I wasn’t going to give that up. I kept imagining me without a job, all of us on the street, no food, sick, who knew. Some disaster out there … But look at me, I’m old. If I don’t take a risk now, when the hell am I going to? I’ve always dreamed of something like this.”

  A golf course. That stupid ass Ben was wrong all along. “That day, when you and George went golfing. You came back all …” I spun my hand around. “A mess.”

  “Don’t ever get in a golf cart with that guy, I’m telling you. Crazy! We wanted to talk to a few people, see the grounds. But he can’t steer worth shit. Talking, looking over his shoulder—Jesus, we had to bail at the sand trap on the ninth hole. Drop and roll—I thought he was going to get us killed.”

  “I’m glad you were all right.”

  “Believe me, I don’t want anything to happen now. Have some heart attack, whatever. I wake up every morning and feel purpose. I feel meaning. Well, Munchkin, I guess I better break the news and face the music. You know how this family is. Knowing them, they probably think George is my long-lost son or some damn thing.”

  I kept my mouth shut again. But inside I felt like singing. Grandpa Shine, he was cutting those balloon strings, and he was going to fly. I never even knew he had balloon strings of his own. I hugged him. I hugged him so hard. He was the same old Grandpa, the golf shirt under my hands, his cologne smell. The man with the big laugh who always gave the biggest toys under the tree. Who sang country music at the top of his lungs (painfully, too), who roped cattle when he was a kid—we saw him do it in those pictures. But he was new, too. Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.

  I climbed the stairs. I needed to see Ash. On the third floor I saw Ash’s closed door, but I had no idea if he was in there or not. I thought I was alone in that hall. The commotion downstairs sounded far away. The stillness up there made me step quietly, the way quiet asks for more quiet, the way you whisper sometimes in a forest. I crept down the hall, listening for guitar strings or rustling in Ash’s room, but I heard nothing.

  But I was wrong about being alone. All at once, and loudly wrong.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ted. Ted and Rebecca’s bedroom door was open. He was shouting.

  “Nothing.” Rebecca.

  “Are you hiding?”

  “It’s crazy down there. Please.”

  “You’re smoking again.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “You think I won’t know? Jesus! How much of that stuff do you have? Where’d you get all that? You stockpiling in case of a war?”

  I was frozen there, in that hallway. I tried to move, but the floor creaked under my feet.

  “Johnny B gave me some.” The baker? “And Butch. Butch’s giving it up. Everybody gives it to me when they quit.”

  “Goddamn it!” Something slammed down hard. No F-I-T-I-N-G, I thought. “You know, Rebecca? This isn’t working. This just isn’t. I’m in some fucking contest with that stuff. A triangle. A love triangle! And I’m done. You’ve got to choose, because I’m done.”

  He was coming. I heard his shoes on the wood floor. I ducked into the open bathroom door next to me, the second duck-hide-flee maneuver I’d done in one day. The taffy shop, this bathroom—I was a character in my own video game, those shooting ones that Gavin and Oscar sometimes played, where chicks in combat uniforms darted around ominous empty rooms.

  Shit. He’d see me shut the door. I didn’t want him to know I’d heard anything. Too embarrassing for both of us. I stepped into the tub, pulled the shower curtain across. I heard him storm past. But then the footsteps came back my way again. Another round with Rebecca, probably. An apology? A zinger that he couldn’t pass up?

  But, wait, no.

  He was coming my way, directly my way. Oh, God, he was there in the bathroom, and he was shutting the door, and it was worse than a video game because it was real, and I was stupidly h
iding in the bathtub trying not to breathe and trying to keep my feet still so my shoes wouldn’t squeak against the porcelain. What were my options here? Come on! Speak up, stay quiet, do neither and be found out? Could he see my shadow from there? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  There was the loud sound of his peeing, a zip, a flush. The water running. Please be done, I begged him. Pleasepleaseplease. The water shut off. I was sure he would hear my heart beating, my breathing. He would feel my presence, he had to. But no. I heard a towel thrown softly to the tile and then a quiet sound.

  “Ah,” he said softly. It was the sound of defeat, but also a cry of awareness, when you realize your life might be changing, going a direction against your will.