Authors: Emma McLaughlin
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Coming of Age, #Contemporary Women
“Wow, he’s got the place rockin’.” Sam pulls over and silences the engine, the buzz of cicadas rising and falling over the sounds of splashing and laughter. I unfold from the car, the long grass scratching at my ankles as I pull my ponytail holder out and attempt a toss. I catch up and walk behind them in the chalky dirt, towel around my neck, stomach in my sneakers. Sam, picking up the faint tune drifting over the trees and humming it, takes Laura’s hand and we all shift our path to the shady side of the road.
Where the line of oaks end we round the last parked car and see a small cabin sitting atop a yard that slopes to the water. Head tucked, I dart my eyes over my sunglasses to the faces surrounding a keg being kept cool in the shade of a willow, its branches trailing into the water. No Jake. I scan the clusters dotting the grass, the porch, the dock. No Jake. From the tanning station in the center of it all Kristi lowers her aluminum reflector tray to nod her Sun-In’ed head in my direction. Her crew raises themselves to their elbows on their towels to get a better look through their mirrored lenses. Oh God. This is bad. This is bucket-of-blood-on-my-head bad. I can’t—this was—I shouldn’t have—
“Just about to take the boat out.” Suddenly hands slide under my arms and cross my stomach from behind. Jake pulls me into him, his damp skin cool against me. “Where you guys been? You want to ski?”
“Sure.” I shrug, smiling sheepishly at Laura.
Darkness at our backs, I sit against Jake’s chest, feeling the vibrations move through both of us as he sings, our hands resting loosely around the bottle of beer nestled in the folds of the wool blanket. The bonfire tepee crackles, casting an amber glow over the sunburned faces ringing its edges and sending sparks up past the black tree line and into the clear night sky. I watch Benjy drum his fingers against his Coors can, eyes closed, as he pulses his head to the beat. Next to him Todd straddles a log, hunching over his bass, his hair in his eyes as he cradles the frame to play. Laura smiles contentedly as she reclines against Sam, nestled beneath his guitar. She reaches her hand over to me and I stretch mine to her, our fingers brushing before we slide them back to our respective cocoons. Kristi, Jeanine, all of them, everyone, watches from the edges of the roaring flames as Jake hums the beginning of another song and I let my eyes drift closed, confusion as distant as the specks of stars.
Jake is glowing. As he stands on the first step of the grand stairway leading to the second floor—and his bedroom—he seems to be lit from within. I look over my shoulder to see this illusion being created by the afternoon sun eking in through the stained-glass window above the Sharpe front door, the colors bouncing off the burnished wall paneling and diffusing into a refracted halo. Unaware of his incandescence, his head lists so that his hair flops into his face adorably.
“Not fair.” I cross my arms, trying to hold the ground we’d sworn to when I agreed to study for finals together. “I mapped out the assignments. We have a
schedule.”
I slap the back of my right fingers into my left palm. He raises his arms in an exaggerated shrug and the tails of his white oxford lift, having already been untucked by my roving fingers the second his heavy front door clicked shut. “You’re looking at me like I’m crazy.”
“But you are,” he says with a sweetness that suddenly gives me pride in the description. He takes a seat on the second step, reaching out to pull me closer as he slides his hands up the backs of my bare legs.
I reluctantly grab them through my skirt. “Jake, we’re never going to get any homework done if I go up those stairs, and we both know it.”
“You’re right.” He slumps. I release his hands, unwillingly extricating myself from his touch and walk back the length of the entrance hall to grab my backpack from where it fell with his in a heap by the door.
“Come on.” I crook my finger for him to follow me to the kitchen. “Let’s just open a book. One book—feel like we’re making an effort. Somewhere on the
ground
floor.”
“Come on, Katie, I hate it down here. Let’s go up to my room or to the basement—I promise I’ll be good.”
“Okay, basement.”
“Great—I’m gonna grab us some snacks.” He smacks my butt as I turn away and give my hips a little wiggle before retreating to the back hall. I’m about to skip down to the basement when I spot the adjacent door ajar. Curious, I peek in, finding a formal library ringed by four walls of matching blue Moroccan bindings. As I’m reading the titles Jake sticks his head in, proffering two cans of Pringles. “Sour cream or regular?”
“Regular. What are those?” I squint at small slivers of color displayed in among the volumes.
“Hotel soaps. Every time my dad travels he brings one home for me. Apparently I really liked unwrapping them when I was little and then he just got in the habit, I guess.” I follow his gaze to the shelf over the door where the slim packages are brightly wrapped in Japanese paper and stacked in a pyramid.
“He works for Sanderson, right?” I pick up an acorn paperweight from the collection of ornamental glass on the side table.
“They still give every employee one at Christmas. He has, like, twenty of them. How much paper does one person need to weigh down?” He waves the tubes of chips like landing batons. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
I lift the acorn up and turn it to the light, making a rainbow. “What does he do?”
“Fiber-optic cable—some sort of regional oversight.” He rests the cans down on the desktop. “Well, it used to be regional—now it’s international.”
“So he travels a lot?” I ask, wondering who could build this perfect sanctuary and leave it behind.
“All the time. I mean, can you blame him?”
I have no idea how to answer that question.
Thankfully his hand slides behind my neck and questions, interest in anything but this, escape me. As always, the preplanned speech breaks apart in my brain, the words softening and disappearing, only desire coming into relief as I watch him slide down, unbutton my shirt, his embrace becoming more insistent upon the discovery of the see-through cream lace camisole I found last night in an old dress of Mom’s. My mouth pressed against his I run my tongue under the sharp edge of his upper teeth. “How’d you break your tooth?” I ask without moving my lips away from his.
“Hit the dashboard when I was seven.”
I pull my head back—“You weren’t buckled in?”
Dropping my oxford at our feet, he grabs my wrists and pins them. I bite his lip. He laughs deeply, walking me backward until I’m against a large fish tank set into the wall. I twist to get a closer look.
“No fish,” he sighs, kneeling before me, resting his cheek against my thigh. “They were always dying and my mom couldn’t deal with it and I got sick of dealing with it, so now it’s just a water display.”
“That’s too bad,” I say, still staring into the tank as if a lone survivor might swim out of the plaster reef at any moment. “I feel for anyone whose ambition to have pets is thwarted.”
“Yeah, well, you gotta live where they are. But he’s cool with it. He learned in Hong Kong that having water in your thinking space is supposed to be good for creative energy—” He’s interrupted by something over the burbling water—a high-pitched tremor, an animal cry, coming from the front of the house. I look down at Jake, but he’s gone completely inert, his face slack.
“Jake?” I whisper.
The waves of sound Doppler their way to us, rising in pitch as they seek their target. Phrases emerge,
make me sick, fucking sonofabitch father.
I touch his shoulder and he flinches to standing.
“Where the fuck are you?! Are you downstairs?!”
She flies in, sweaty, the blood vessels constricting her face a bright red.
“How many times have I told you not to leave your fucking backpack in the front hall for me to trip over, you worthless…worthless—”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” his voice small. “What happened to your match?”
Eyes locking with me she pulls herself up short and, panting, her tone drops an octave. “It’s started to rain.” With a shaking hand she smoothes her ponytail. “Barbara dropped me off.” She takes a step in the door in her pleated tennis dress, her sneakers pristine bone white against the dark Persian carpet. “Is your guest staying for dinner?”
“I’d love to, um, stay for dinner, thank you,” Crazy Lady. “Sorry. I’m Katie.” I wave across the six-foot distance between my body and the top that should be covering it. “It’s really nice to meet you.” And, these would be my nipples. Nipples, Crazy Lady.
“We’re eating at seven. Hope salmon’s all right. I’m sure it is,” she answers for me, her breath still coming in ragged spurts. “I’m going to make some martinis and change out of my dress. Jake, will you keep an ear out for the door? The Humbolts should be over soon—let them in?”
“Sure.”
With a tight smile in my direction, she leaves.
I scramble for my blouse, buttoning it all the way to my throat. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
“Come on.” He walks toward the basement and I follow down the stairs, unsure what to say. “Hey, shut the door?” he asks casually. At the bottom of the stairs he flicks on the light, the stereo, the amps, and commences tuning his guitar, the sound filling the space with a warm human rumble. Helping with the pretense that this didn’t just happen, I pull out my history textbook and open it, but I only stare at the pattern of ink on the page as if it were Cyrillic.
“Hey, pass me the phone,” he says after a few minutes, and I lean behind me to grab him the head of the plastic mallard duck.
Benjy looks at his watch. “My Calc final’s tomorrow, dude. We shouldn’t even be here.”
Thankful someone else has broached it, I stand to zip my backpack. “Jake, I’ve really gotta study.”
“Guys!” Jake pleads. Sam shoots us a look behind his back, where a
V
of sweat marks his T-shirt.
“Okay.” Benjy raises his drumsticks in defeat as I sit back down. “One more time—but that’s it. I gotta pass Calc.”
“Sam?”
“What if I try it like this?” He riffs on the tune of Jake’s they’ve been trying out for the last half hour, upping the tempo and infusing it with some minor chords.
“Yeah, I like it,” Jake says, listening with a displaced intensity. “Good, great, yes.”
“Jake?” Todd actually raises his hand to near face-level before he realizes he looks like a tool.
“Todd, you gonna punk out on me, too?”
“Nah. Well, I mean, at some point.” He turns pink as he hedges. “What should I do?”
“What?” Jake asks, distracted by Sam’s new melody.
“Should I be doing anything differently?” Todd repeats in the unctuous tone that sets my teeth on edge.
“No, you’re good. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Purpose restored, Todd smiles down at his bass before planting his tongue between his lips in his pose of concentration.
“Okay, great, guys. Let’s take it from the top. We have our Lady of Inspiration here today, so let’s really wow her.” Because I can’t leave, because after seeing her like that, seeing him like that—I could never. I give a supportive wave from behind my Physics book. And they play, his friends’ fingers and feet all jamming in unison to keep that bubble of sound in place around Jake.
December 23, 2005
Pulling Dad’s thickest Fair Isle sweater over my head I round the corner to the kitchen. Mom is at the sink, head bent, arm furiously moving back and forth as the faucet runs, a trickle of steam rising from the water. Braced, I beeline to the coffee maker. “Hey,” I call to her.
She turns, pushing up her sweater sleeve with her cheek, a hunk of steel wool foaming blue in her yellow glove. “So.”
“Mom, first let me just say I’m sorry about last night.” I take a speckled tin cup from the drain board. “I did not invite him here. That was definitely not part of my plan—”
“I’ve booked you a ticket on the plane leaving an hour after ours out of Burlington this afternoon. We’re going through Atlanta and you’re going through O’Hare, but it was the best I could do, and we’re lucky to have that.”
“What? No.” I snap the glass carafe out of its holster. “I thought you were leaving tomorrow morning.”
“We were. But I was able to buy a set of tickets for today.”
“I see.” Not wanting to clip the wrong wire I nod to myself as I focus on pouring the coffee and walk to the table, my eyes landing on the
Croton Sentinel
tented atop the lone place setting left for me. Resisting the bait I wordlessly lift Jake’s headline and drop it on the chair next to me, inwardly scoffing at the picture of the Main Street welcome banner snapping in the wind.
“Read it.” She clatters the scoured manicotti pan onto the counter.
“Mom,” I sigh.
“Read it.”
I tuck my knees up into her nightgown, shifting on the hard wood seat as I scan the article, which differs only from the usual pabulum in its mention of his scout badges. “Yup.” I start to fold it.
“Keep reading.” Standing where the counter corners, she grips the perpendicular ledges with her gloved hands.
“Why don’t you just tell me what—” My eyes land on my name. Lifting the page closer, a sweat breaks out beneath the lace bib of my borrowed Lans as I read that Jake’s new single, far from being changed to “Tallulah,” has dropped this morning. “Shit,” I murmur through a rapidly drying mouth.
“Let me make you some eggs. And then you can pack.”
“I don’t have anything to pack,” I say dumbly, buying myself a second to think.
Whipping off her gloves she opens the fridge, withdrawing the cardboard carton and porcelain cow butter dish. “Whatever you have to do then. We’re leaving at noon.”
“I don’t—I’m not ready to—” I push my fingertips along my scalp as she cracks an egg into an earthenware bowl, her hands furiously whisking the yolks into a froth. “I’m not leaving today.”
“Let me be explicitly clear. I do not want him on that lawn, on my porch, or in my house.”
“Okay, neither do I.”
“I don’t believe you.” She bangs the whisk against the side of the bowl, the yellow viscous mixture dripping off the metal springs. “You know you’re just giving him more material.” My palms slide down my face. “He’s a narcissist, Kate.” She pours the mixture atop the spitting butter. “He’s a taker. There is no getting through to someone who would subject us to this.”
“Okay,
this
is not happening to you.” Eye sockets constricting, I dare her to go there.
“You
are on the sidelines for this.”
“There
are
no sidelines with Jake Sharpe!” My cell peals Beth’s ringtone from my purse, the electronic squeal of UVA’s “Good Old Song” vibrating through the leather on the stool by the side door. She flings the spatula at the uncooked mess curdling in the pan and balls her apron, hurling it onto the counter as she stalks out.
Through the twist of pain behind my brow bone, I fumble for the phone and my eye drops, craving the distant sanity of my friends in Charleston.
“Holy shit!” Beth screams, “Where are you?”
“I’ll hold the phone out the window so you can hear the cows lowing.”
“I’ll
hold the phone to the dashboard so you can hear your serenade.”
“Motherfucker.” I tip my head back, the saline hitting my retinas.
“Yeah, I almost ran off the road.
When
did he write this—and are you gonna marry him?”
“What? God, no.” Blinking through the saline, the flung apron comes into focus. “Eleventh grade, when I wasn’t even talking to him, which should tell you something, and God, no.”
“And he comes out with it now? Have you seen him?”
I hold the strawberry-leaf-patterned cotton against me, smoothing the wrinkles before rehanging it by the stove. “Yes.”
“And?”
“Believe me, I’d like to report otherwise.” I pull the flung spatula out and clasp the insulated handle, tremoring the blue pan over the flame. “But I get around him and it’s like we’ve only been apart a few hours.”
“That’s just the chemistry—hold on. Toasted biscuit with butter and a black coffee, please.”
“Fuck chemistry.” At the mention of biscuits I reach over to slide up the wood door on the bread bin and rip out a slice. Glancing back at the drying yellow curds with revulsion I spin the black knob off. “Where are you?”
“Drive-through. On the way to my dad’s.”
“Is Robert with you?” I ask through a mouthful of buttery challah.
“He had to work, so he’s driving up tomorrow with the dog. Besides, he likes having separate cars so he knows he can make a midnight getaway if necessary.” A blitz of static fills the line.
“What? Beth?”
Her voice comes back into range, “—soooo two days ago, but how was your date?”
Tearing another slice from the loaf, I try to conjure my real life. “Actually pretty great—he picked a cool little restaurant. He was smart, much better-read than I’d have guessed—very funny.
And,
I gotta say, great kisser.”
“Mmmm.”
“He did the hands-on-face thing.” I flush.
“I love hands-on-face.” She sighs.
“And there was some hands-in-hair,” I say, fully there.
“Hands-in-hair.” She sighs again. “Good times.”
“But I am the Queen of the Great First Date. He’s probably either going to reconnect with the girl-next-door or die in a hideous freak Christmas turkey carving accident.”
“Or come back from the holiday dying to see you again,” she says with her usual optimism.
I pull a jar of plum jam from the cupboard. “That’ll be my New Year’s wish.”
“Mine, too. How you holding up?”
I rub my eyes. “Yesterday was the longest day of my life, no kidding, bar none.” I dump the pan full of congealed eggs straight in the sink and crisscross squirt it with Joy, sizzling on contact.
“I’m so proud of you, K. You’re
taking it on.”
“Or something.” I look around the half-dismantled kitchen, the bare shelves where all the cookbooks once were. “On top of everything I’ve somehow kicked off week-with-parents two days early.”
“Fun.”
“All the judgment, half the calories.” I fetch my coffee from the table. “We have our whole thing down in Florida. Mom and I market. Dad and I grill the fish. It’s great. Or when they visit me in Charleston. But here…we…”
“Reenact your highlight reel?”
“Exactly.” I take a lukewarm swig. “Speaking of which, we’re mid-screening, so…”
“Keep me posted?”
“Of course.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, my eyes landing on that stupid fucking banner.
“Just don’t go postal. He’s
so
not worth a CNN mug shot.”
“He’s not worth a CNN mug.”
“Really? Ceramic? Two handles? No?”
I laugh. “I love you. Safe driving.”
“You, too, man. You, too.”
I flip the phone shut and down the rest of my coffee. Dropping the cup in the sink with a clang I see she left our e-tickets on the counter. I swipe up the paper, taking the steps two at a time to the landing where the attic stairs have been lowered into the hall. I grip the railing extension, hoisting the end of the nightgown to climb up, calling, “Listen, Mom, if you guys want to go early that’s fine, but I’m going to change my ticket—”
“Did she get another set?” Dad rises from where he’s kneeling under the eaves at the far side of the attic. My eyes adjusting to the dim light I step through the maze of opened cartons to where he stands, stretching his back. “I told her not to do that.”
“Sorry, I thought you were Mom,” I cough in the dust he’s unsettled with what looks to be a frenzy of unpacking everything boxed away. “What’s going on up here?”
“She went out. What in the bloody hell did you say to her?” He wipes his blackened hands off on his gardening trousers. “She was in a state.”
“Nothing.”
“I hate it when she gets like that,” he says, erasing the smudges from his glasses with the hem of his sweater.
I nod, “So what’s with all this?”
“Just wanted to see what was up here and sort it out.” I look down to his feet, surrounded by his emerald-bound rare set of Thoreau. The ones he took with him.
“These never made it back on the shelves?” I ask, quietly.
“No. When I came back, we just…” His head swivels, his gaze arcing over the knee-high piles. “Put everything up here.” My heart pounds at this acknowledgment, but he quickly moves us along, pointing me through the gutted garment racks to a cluster of boxes. “Here, lend a hand.”
I step over, unfurling the cardboard flaps of the top one to reveal a tight cube of squashed animals. “Oh, this can all go.”
“Even Mr. Lephant?” Standing over my shoulder he reaches past me to greet the folded fur, extending its crushed trunk. His elbow as fulcrum he swings it into my face, touching its nose to mine. I pull away, coughing again. “You couldn’t say
elephant.
” He gazes at its accordion face. “Some kid will love him.”
“I think these’re too dusty for Goodwill, Dad, not with the kind of asthma kids have now.”
“Oh, right, of course.” He shoves it back in the box and presses the flaps shut.
I look past him, from the colorful jumble of my childhood bits and bobs to the boxes of belongings he had to assemble for what was almost a second life for all of us. “It can go.”
“The lot of it? Yes, right, right.”
“Dad?” I touch his arm and he startles, facing me in the slatted sunshine slanting over the chairs stacked by the window, his eyes wet. My ribs knit together. “Dad,” I say again.
“Katie, I’m fine, it’s just the dust. Run down and fetch me a tissue?”
I nod and weave around the stacks to the lit hole in the floor.
“Katie?”
“Yes?” I turn back.
“Keep this.” He lifts his old university blazer from the last box of his things, the thread holding the pocket crest in place unraveling. “You could dry clean it, fix the patch, get a whole ’nother life out of it.”
“Sure. Just put it aside for me?” I ask gently, hoping he’ll forget, knowing I couldn’t bring myself to jettison it en route and I don’t want it in my home.
He holds it out to me. “Carry it downstairs with you then.”
“Be right back.” I push myself across the creaking boards to take it, before hastily retreating down the ladder.
A Sierra Club travel mug of hot chocolate in each hand I carefully push backward through the storm door. Clomping down the drift-covered deck steps, I steady my hands as wisps of steam emanate from the small plastic openings. The late afternoon sun ricochets off the Langdons’ satellite dish to the ice cloaking the snow-filled backyard.
“Keith, watch your brother’s eye!” Laura, snowman foreman, monitors construction from her perch on the dry corner of the picnic table. “Thank you.”
She takes a mug as I hop up beside her, my ear still cocked to the street. “Hear anything?”
“Like…” she prompts.
“Sound of a car, bike on the snow. A rabbit with a note tied to its neck.” For a minute we both slant our heads like sibling retrievers. “Enraged woman driving a Honda.”
“Katie!” We startle and I jerk my head up to where Dad peers from the tilted attic window.
“Yeah?” I shield my eyes with my mittened hand.
“What about your toboggan? It has your name on it.”
“Well, as of today that’s officially a collectible!” I turn to Laura. “Want a Katie toboggan that weighs a hundred pounds?”
“Well, there are two of them to drag it up the hill,” she considers. “So, sure.”
“Lor’ll take it, Dad!” I shout over my shoulder. He nods, letting the dormer slap shut.
“Shouldn’t we be helping him?” she whispers over the top of her mug.
“No—and he can’t hear you. I offered for a while after noon came and went.”
“And her cell’s still off?”
“Yup. So he’s in the zone.” I take a swig. “But better packing than making birdhouses.”
“Oh, I liked the birdhouses,” she says nostalgically. “As therapeutic distractions go, they were pretty cute—I still have mine. The squirrels love it.”
“Really? ’Cause we made a campfire with ours when the Prozac finally kicked in.” I drop my head.
“Oh, Katie, it’s going to be okay.” She rubs the top of my back where my shoulder blades pinch together. “He’s bound to have ups and downs as he comes off—what was it?”