The Darkest Joy (4 page)

My chin kicks up. “Yeah . . . well, the pay’s good.” And the location—the distance. Not to mention that absolute divergence from classical music and everything that defined my life before, I mentally add.

Tucker nods, saying nothing more.

“How am I going to get beat up?” I can’t help but ask.

He’s almost in his car. “If it isn’t the sea, then Chance Taylor will do a stand-up job.”

Tucker slams his car door as my stomach knots.

Translation: my new boss is a dick.

He backs up, turning around in the large part of the driveway. I watch his Bronco jostle over the uneven driveway as his hand pops out the window in a one-wave salute.

I lift my hand in return then slowly let it drop.

I have one week before halibut season begins. One week to get this cabin in order and get the tools of the trade and—I look around the dingy space—cleaning supplies.

And three months to forget
, my mind whispers.

I’m still dragging after the long journey to Alaska. My stomach grumbles, and I’m not surprised to discover that there are barely two crumbs within the four dim corners of the cabin. After Tucker leaves I decide it’s time to make a supply run. I unpack my first suitcase and take out the Garmin, a girl’s best friend. The GPS navigational system will tell me where I’m going.

I take stock of the cabin. The TP is moldy and lank; a dry sliver of soap sits crumbled inside a cagelike chrome holder screwed above the old sink. My eyes move to the “shower.” I move the curtain aside. A huge showerhead, the chrome worn through to the brass casing, drips about every thirty seconds.
Great
. Somehow, I’ll have to experiment with how to get wet in there.

I sigh, adding plumber’s tape to the list.

I sling my backpacklike purse across my shoulder, head outside, and start up the bus. It zings to life beautifully.

It’s colder than a witch’s tit on the shady side of an iceberg
, I think, stuffing my hands between my knees.

I let off the clutch and the bus lurches forward. I put it in first gear and crank down the hill.

I make the solitary trek to town, which, as I live at the very end of East End Road, requires nearly fifteen minutes of winding driving. And though I’m from drippy Seattle where everywhere you look is a tapestry of greenery, I can’t help but notice the majesty this rugged place possesses. I carefully avoid handling the memories of Aunt Milli too intimately but her voice breaks through without my permission.

The mountains are like jewels made of ice
, Milli whispers inside my brain.

My eyes move to the Kenai Fjords and their glacial peaks rise to my left, the long finger of Homer Spit, the world’s largest natural sand spit, holds its rows of small shops . . . and fishing boats moor to those mountains like an anchor at its feet.

I tear my eyes away from the same view that’s just outside that dirty cabin I’m now living in and move into the parking area of Safeway.

I get out of the bus and slam the door. It shrieks as I do, protesting.

Pulling out my list, I write:
W-D 40. Awesome invention
, I think.

I walk toward the glass door and pass some girls who are my age, their long dresses brightly colored with metallic thread picking up the low light of the morning and glittering as they move. Their skirts sweep the ground as they pass by me. One of them turns and looks at me, her deep eyes framed by a vaguely Amish-style cap with thin cotton ties. The girl stares.

Sees something she knows, maybe.

She says something in a language I don’t recognize.

I look away. Sometimes strangers will recognize my sadness intuitively, though I try to hide it.

I ignore my feelings of uneasy grief, as per usual, going through the automatic glass doors of the grocery store.

I’ll just grab what I need, then rush back to my lonely little cabin where I can breathe, like an asthmatic without an inhaler. Solitude gives me oxygen.

Just keep breathing
.

I don’t dwell on the precept that existing is not the same as living.

I died that night five months ago, along with my family.

I
collapse backward on the couch and watch a plume of dust explode into the air, colliding with the dust motes that already float.

Yuk
.

I fold my arm underneath my head, crossing my feet at the ankles, and scroll through my phone until my finger lands on Lacey’s image. I tap her face and wait as the dialing continues. I’m about ready to tap
end call
when she picks up, out of breath.

“Brookie,” Lacey answers in a voice tinged with relief.

“Yeah,” I say, a small smile on my face at just hearing her voice.

“I told you to call right away, lame-ass,” she chastises, her voice at once distant with a touch of desperation and that “I need a Brooke fix.”

I sigh, recrossing my legs as I watch the dust settle again.

“Uh-huh . . . I was totally wiped.”

Lacey gives a grunt of disapproval. “Well? How is . . . it?”

I look around at the countertops littered with products from my supply run, the filth in every corner, the showerhead in the bathroom doing a slow, sporadic drip.

“It’s . . . a dump.” I give a small laugh and it comes out sad.

The open phone line’s ongoing buzz sounds during the pause of our conversation. “Oh, Brooke . . . come home,” Lacey says in an insistent voice and I clench my eyes, the heat of my sadness burning like acid behind my eyelids.

“No,” I reply quietly. The relocation hasn’t muted my sadness, my guilt . . . but at least I no longer have to contend with the torment of familiar surroundings that inspire too many memories, that turn my sadness into unbearable grief.

The silence stretches. Finally, I fill it. “It’ll be really quaint when I put in some elbow grease . . .”

“Quaint?” Lacey asks in a disbelieving tone and as usual she doesn’t think anything’s good enough for me.

“Charming?” I add hopefully, though my tone belies my words.

“Those are terms that people use when something could be cute if it was torn down and rebuilt.”

Exactly. Out loud I answer, “It’s not so bad. There’s heat . . . kinda. And there’s running water.”

More silence.

“Like, was no running water really a possibility?” Lacey asks.

I see the roof of the outhouse from my perch on the couch. “Yes,” I say with real feeling.

“Okay,” Lacey says, and I can see her shoring up, the mental image of her folding her slim arms across her chest, blowing an errant strand of light hair out of her face as she tries to resolve
my chaos for me. Typical Lacey mode; she’s always been there for me that way.

I don’t want my broken fixed. If I’d wanted resolution I’d have stayed in Seattle and faced whatever music was there.

Instead, I fled.

“Send me a pic of your car,” she demands.

I groan. This just keeps getting worse. Sometimes I want to lie. But I don’t; my honesty is as brutal as my circumstances.

“God, what now?” Lacey asks.

“Well . . . the guy I bought it from thought he’d do me a favor and give it a quickie paint job.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s his idea of hippie chic.”

“Oh for shit’s sake, it can’t be that bad.”

I look through the haze of grime on the windows and can make out the bus from fifty feet away; the bright colors are beacons of tackiness.

Pretty bad.

“Hang on,” I say, then slipping off the couch I shove my feet into my Crocs and step out onto the porch. Like some scene from a movie a ray of light pierces the cloud cover, dousing the bus with its strobe of light.

I hold up my phone, click, then hit
send
.

I wait for the inevitable.

“Oh. My. God!” Lacey shrieks in my ear and I take the cell away from my ear.

“Right?” I agree, wincing at her pants of hyperventilation.

“It’s like someone puked paint on your car . . .”

“Yeah,” I agree.

“Sorry,” she finally says in resignation.

“Thanks,” I reply, but I’m smiling, thinking about how happy Tucker had been, thinking he’s doing me a good turn.

A pause then, “So what do you think? Really?”

I look around at the cabin . . . the open pasture that rolls to the woods as they stand watch over the cold sea. I can vaguely hear waves crashing on the rocks below.

“I think Alaska can get in your blood.”

“Huh? Really? Don’t you miss . . . everything?” Lacey asks.

My family.

“Not really,” I lie.

“Huh,” she replies, not believing anything. “Turnouts for Juilliard happened,” Lacey says casually.

I knew that. Late April—for entrance in the fall.

I swallow past the painful lump that forms like a soft rock in my throat. The sea breeze tears through the open posts as I stand on the porch. The freshness of the air is indescribable. It’s full of sea and green, and it’s just . . . clean. I suck in a lungful, my cheeks wet.

I say nothing and the conversation stalls.

“Brooke . . . are you, have you . . .”

“No,” I answer in a short, chopped-off syllable. “I told you, I’m not playing again.”

More silence.

“Don’t stop calling me, Brookie. Don’t let what’s happened stop . . . us.”

My hand grips my cell, that thread of our friendship pulling taut between us. It’s from before and it hurts. A million memory fragments swirl in my head like dandelion seeds caught in
the wind. I see the Barbies, then the boys, the late-night talks, the tears . . . each one shared, every milestone of our adolescence shared. It hurts so much because when I think of Lacey, my past knocks on the door of my memories. When things were normal. We went from playing dress-up in our mothers’ clothes to actually dressing up to growing up, separate but together. Lacey is feeling the sting of my defenses. The barricades I’ve put up are impenetrable. I don’t want anything breaking past them. Even her right now.

I breathe.

“Brookie . . . I love you,” Lacey says in a low voice, needy.

Breathe.

“I love you too,” I say and mean it. Then suddenly it hits me deep in the gut that she’s the only person left in the world I can say those words to; say them and mean it. “Gotta go.”

My finger hovers over
end call
, swiping it smoothly.

I take a deep, gulping breath as the wind swoops in, biting at the tears that run down my face. It doesn’t care about my sadness—nature moves forward, the world spins. Tragedy doesn’t stop the world.

Just my world.

You wouldn’t think it’s bright in Alaska. You’d imagine igloos everywhere and polar bears running free underneath a pewter sky that’s pregnant with snow.

It’s just not like that.

I’ve been here for three days and still find myself trying
to acclimate to the cold and fiercely fresh bite in the air, the brightness of a sun that sits low on the horizon but stays lit like an eternal flame. I throw my sunglasses on the instant I slide into the bus, the newly oiled door closing almost soundlessly as I get in. I take the mainly dirt road to town.

East End Road is known for its seclusion and beauty.