The Edge of Juniper (23 page)

My last dinner in Juniper felt stiff.  I think my aunt and uncle were afraid I was going to tell my mom what happened.  My mom was probably afraid I’d make a scene about the divorce.  Celia and Abe were subdued, and I wondered again what things were like for them without me around.  After Celia helped me pack, and Mom helped Donna with the dishes, we carried my things outside.  Uncle Todd didn’t follow us, but instead retreated to the back yard by himself.  My mom noticed and looked at me with a question in her eyes, but I just shrugged.

“Bye now, Fay.  I hope we see you again next summer.”  Donna patted my arm and walked around the car to hug my mom.  I turned to Abe; the tears already queued up and ready to fall.

“I wish you were staying.”  He threw his arms around my middle.  I wasn’t worried about Abe.  He was the strongest of all of us.  His ability to go with the flow was what would save him, his whole life long.  He had a way of understanding the complexity of other people, and forgiving them for their weakness.  After he squeezed the breath out of me, I turned to my other cousin, who was leaning on the porch, some distance from the rest of us.

“Later, loser,” she said, a lopsided grin on her face as I walked toward her.

I pulled her to me in a tight hug, then reached up and patted her cheek.  “I’ll miss your face.”

She studied the ground.  It took her a minute to speak, but when she did I was glad I had the patience to wait for it.  “This summer was different because you were here.  It was like you came and washed all the windows and I could suddenly see the world more clearly.  I hated that.  I also needed that.  So, thanks, I guess.”

“Now you’re stuck with clean windows.”

“Yeah.”  She sighed heavily.  “I can see clearer, but I can also see farther.  That’s a good thing.  I can see what’s out there past my own house and my own life.”

“I got a hefty dose of that, myself.”  I sucked in my cheeks so I wouldn’t cry.  I was sick of crying.  She nodded.

“Tell Esta and Heidi and Dan good-bye again for me.”  She nodded again.

I climbed into the car with my mom, weighed down by both what I was leaving, and what I was heading toward.  Here I was in the front seat, where my dad belonged.  I wasn’t ready to have two families of two.

Mom started the car and drove away from their house.  She patted my knee.  “It appears you had quite a summer.”

She launched into a story about a summer she spent away at camp when she was fourteen, and the boy she loved while she was there, but I didn’t want to hear her dreamy chatter about first love.  Didn’t she remember what it felt like when she had to leave that boy at the end of the summer?  I was jolted from my thoughts when we stopped at the Colfax stop sign and there, leaning against it, was Malcolm.  His weed whacker was on the ground beside him. He cupped his hands to his mouth and I rolled down the window in time to hear him say, “I’ll call you tomorrow night!”

Mom didn’t hit the gas like I expected her to do, so I waved him over.  He kissed me through the open window—a chaste, in-front-of-your-mother kiss, then stepped back so we could drive on.  As the car rolled away, I leaned my head against the seat and closed my eyes.

“He’s waving at you, Fay,” Mom said.

“I know.  I can feel it.”

19

U
ncle Nate’s house
was too quiet.  He and Aunt Noreen lived there alone, their two boys both grown and gone.  They had guest rooms to spare, and I used one last night, while Dad used another.  I was trying to split my time exactly evenly between both my parents.  Two nights at one place, two nights at another.  I didn’t want either one to feel left out.  It probably wouldn’t work once school started, but it was what I wanted for now.

Dad puttered around the kitchen, making pancakes.  “What shall we do today?  I thought about heading in to the school to get my office organized, but then I decided I should make the most of this time off.  We could go hiking.”

“Don’t bother on my account.  You can go to work if you want.”  I didn’t mean for it to happen, but ever since our family discussion the first night back, everything I said came out bitter.  I even coached myself to be nicer, softer, but I couldn’t find peace inside myself.  The bizarre thing was that I wasn’t even mad at them; neither of them.  I just couldn’t stop being angry.

They’d answered all my grisly questions.  There hadn’t been any cheating, no lying, no money trouble…nothing of the sort.  They said they simply fell out of love.  To be honest, that was scarier than any of the other things.  I didn’t want that to be a thing that could happen.  Maybe I was mad about that.

Dad cleared his throat.  “I’d like to spend the time with
you
, not at work.  We missed a whole summer.  Maybe you could go hiking with me, on
my
account?”

Guilt flooded me.  That seemed to be the cycle these days—anger, guilt, anger, guilt.  “Of course we can go hiking.”

I went upstairs to change shoes, and my new cell phone rang.  That was one thing that was different.  Both parents wanted to be able to reach me at all times, so they handed over a shiny new phone, all expenses paid.

In the week since I’d been home, Malcolm and I had talked on the phone no fewer than twenty times, and we texted near constantly.  I didn’t know what to think.  It felt like both too much, and not enough.

At one point during every phone conversation, we debated about him coming to visit.  He wanted to fly out to Perry on a Friday afternoon, and fly back to Juniper on Sunday.  I’d tell him he shouldn’t use hundreds of dollars of his hard earned cash on a weekend visit, especially one so soon.  Then he’d say he would drive.  I’d argue that fifteen hours in the car each way wouldn’t give us any time to visit, and it wouldn’t be safe for him to drive alone on so little sleep, and that wasn’t even considering the cost of gas.

“Hi,” I said, smiling into the phone.  I’d talked to him only an hour earlier, our usual good morning chat.  I shut the guest room door, and settled onto the bed.

“Hi.  Bad news.  Mom says I can’t fly out to see you this weekend, because we’re going to Tempest to visit my godfather.”

“Malcolm, there’s no way I would have let you come this weekend, anyway.  I checked, and a last minute flight was over eight hundred dollars.  That’s ridiculous.  But wait, you have a godfather?  That’s the coolest.”

“It’s my dad’s college buddy. Wolf and I grew up with his kids.  You know those people your parents are always visiting and talking to late into the night while the gang of kids just goes off and plays, running all over the place until after midnight, when they finally load you in the car.  Then you don’t see them again for a year, and when you do, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember you people,’ and you go off and play with them again?”

I laughed, because I knew exactly what he meant.  “So now you’re all teenagers together.  I bet you’ll have fun.”

“Yeah.  He has a son and two daughters.”

“You’re staying the weekend with two teenage girls?”  I didn’t want to be feeling the anxiety coursing through my veins, but I couldn’t stop it.  I knew how he felt about me.  I took a deep breath and reminded myself that jealousy was just a type of fear, and I was so tired of being afraid.

“They’re like family, Fay, and it’s just one night.  They saw me at my most awkward stages.  Zits, braces, Emo.”

I had to smile at that.  “You were never Emo.”

“Okay, I made that part up.  But seriously, we had our diapers changed together.”

“I get it.”

“I wish I was coming to see you.”

“Malcolm, are you sure you don’t just want to be free of me?  This is hardly fair.  Being so far apart just sucks.  We’re going to spend all our time living on wishes.  Maybe you’d rather be with someone you can actually
be with
.”  I’d been saying variations of this to him for days.  I was terrified we’d drift apart, and fall out of love like my parents had.  Maybe a quick, clean break would be better for him.  He talked me out of it every time.  I knew that’s what would happen again now, and I needed it.  I was lucky he never seemed to run out of reassurances.

“Fay, I want
you
.  It doesn’t matter how far away you are.  That isn’t going to change.”

“I’ll ask you again when a year has passed, and we’ve only seen each other once.”

“I’m asking you to trust me.  Trust us.”

“That’s asking a lot.”

“It is.  It’s opening yourself up in such a raw way.”  His breathing sped up, and his voice grew thick with emotion.  “That’s how I feel about you though, like I’ve ripped open my skin and shown you all my guts, and I’m just standing here with my heart beating right out in the open.  I know you could break it.  That could happen.  But I’m trying to trust in us.  I’m just going to focus on the other part of this.  The way being so exposed to you lets me feel things I’ve never felt before.”

“Like what?” I whispered, touched by his candor.

“Like love.  Being known in a way I never have before.  Being
seen.
”  He was whispering now too, and I pressed the phone into my ear to make sure I didn’t miss a word.

“That does sound pretty good.”

“You’re a happy, strong person, Fay.  Crappy stuff is always going to happen, but no matter what happens, you’re still going to be yourself.  Give it some time.  I know you think it’s ridiculous, because we’re teenagers, but when I think of us I don’t think of an ending.”

“I don’t want to either, but I can’t stop imagining it, and all the horrible ways it could happen.  The odds are not in our favor.”

“Screw the odds.”

I lay back on the bed and smiled at the ceiling.  “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”

“Can you promise me tomorrow?”

“I can do that, yes.”

“So every day we’ll promise each other tomorrow, and that’s how we’ll get to forever.”

After another week living on phone calls, I was elated and terrified that Malcolm was coming to visit for the weekend.  He’d found a fairly cheap standby deal, and wouldn’t let me talk him out of spending the money.  Nor would he let me pay half.  He wanted me to keep my savings for my car.  I thought we should wait until more time had gone by before he came, but his parents told him he couldn’t do this once school started.  The next time I’d see him would probably be Christmas break.

I tried to pin down why I was nervous.  I hated to admit I was worried he wouldn’t feel the same after two weeks without me.  I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to stop searching for the end of us, trying to spot it before it could sneak up on me.  As if having a warning would spare me some of the pain.

Another concern was that I still felt all over the place.  I hadn’t settled into the idea of my parents being apart.  My life didn’t feel like mine.  I didn’t know how to fold Malcolm into it, when I couldn’t even figure out how to fold
myself
into it.

As I suspected, Mom said he could sleep on the couch.  It was only for one night, as his flight arrived at nine in the morning on Saturday and left on Sunday morning at ten.  The cheap cost of the flight had its drawbacks—we only got twenty-five hours.

The morning of his arrival, Finn and Freya sat in my room as I fiddled with my hair, trying to get the hang of the curling iron that mostly collected dust in the closet.  “I’ve never seen you care so much about your hair,” Freya said.

I sighed and sat down on the bed beside her.  “What’s weirder is that I hardly gave it a second thought when we were in Juniper together.”

“I don’t think having an extra curl in your hair is going to change anything,” Finn said.  He was lying in a sunbeam on my floor.

“Finn, she can control her hair.  She can’t control Malcolm’s feelings, or the way today will go.  Cut her some slack.”

“Thank you for that analysis, Dr. Freya.  And for your information, I can’t control my hair either.”

She stood and grabbed the curling iron, stretching the cord to where I sat on the bed.  “Let me see what I can do.”

“What if I don’t like the guy, Fay?” Finn asked.

“Now that’s the one thing I’m not worried about.”

Finn drove us to the airport, and when Malcolm walked into the baggage claim area, I ran to meet him.  I was on him before he could set down his carry-on, and it was like traveling back in time to our first kiss.  He smelled the same, and it felt the same, and I had been silly to worry.

“I guess this is one benefit of a long-distance relationship.  This feels amazing.”  That was all I could say before he kissed me again, and we didn’t stop until my friends tapped me on the shoulder and pretended to gag and tell us to get a room.

We got some burgers from a drive-thru, and took Malcolm to our bridge for a picnic.  Finn talked him into mooning the cars once, but Freya and I declined.  I think that was a moment of bonding between those two boys in my life, and it both made me laugh and filled my heart to the brim.  Best of all, they didn’t quiz him or act stiff.  It was like they accepted him without question.  I had the best friends.

Freya and Finn left after we got back home, joking that they had full custody of me now, and since this was Malcolm’s weekend visitation, they should give us some space.

We went up to my room, and sat on the bed like we had the first time in his room.  “Give me a tour?”

I smiled.  “Let’s see.  My room’s more boring than yours.  There’s my clean laundry pile. I believe we have that in common.  On my dresser, you’ll notice my curling iron, which I used to make a disaster of my hair before you came.”

“Not a disaster.  I like these curls.”  He reached out and pulled one straight and watched it spring back when he let go.  “But I like your regular hair, too.”

“I felt like I had to get fancy for you,” I confessed.

“Why on earth?”  He pulled me close to him.

“I just don’t know how this is going to work.  Are we going to change any between visits?”

Before he could answer, my mom called to me from downstairs.  I told her we were in my room, and she came up and stood in my doorway.  She had a funny look on her face as she took in the sight before her—Malcolm and I holding each other close on my bed, leaning against the wall.  “Hello, Malcolm.”

He must have noticed her discomfort, because he hopped off the bed and held out his hand to shake hers.  “Hi, Ms. Whitaker.  It’s nice to see you again.”  I noticed he used Ms.  At school, she always used to go by Mrs. Whitaker.  I guess she’d probably change that now.  Maybe she’d go back to her maiden name.

“Oh, please call me Olive.  How would you two like to go out to dinner with Fay’s dad and me?  We want to get to know you.”

I looked at Malcolm, seeing my own thoughts reflected back to me.  We wanted to spend our limited time alone together, but we didn’t exactly have much choice.  “We’d love that, Olive.  Thank you.”

Dinner was awkward, but not because it was meet-the-parents night.  Both Mom and Dad kept directing all their questions and conversation to Malcolm and me, and hardly said two words to each other.  It was a bizarre three-pronged conversation.

“So you’ll be on the football team again this fall?”  Mom asked Malcolm.

“Yeah.  Summer training started a few weeks back.”

“You played football in high school too, didn’t you, Dad?”

Dad looked up from his soup, which he had been studying like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.  “Yes, but only my freshman year.  It turned out not to be the thing for me.”  He went back to his soup.

I glanced at Malcolm and shrugged.

“What was your thing?” Malcolm asked him.

Dad’s head popped back up, and when it did, Mom’s went down.  She focused really hard on winding noodles around her fork.  Dad talked for a while about the tennis team, and one triumphant match he’d had, and then when he went to the restroom, Mom took a turn, asking Malcolm a million questions about carpentry.

I hadn’t seen them together since the first night back.  I knew they had met with their lawyers since then.  Maybe that was the source of the discomfort.  I hoped they’d get comfortable with each other again soon, or at least become better actors.  They were both charmed by Malcolm, however, so that was some consolation.

Back at home, Mom left us in the living room together while she went up to bed early.  It felt like the first real moment alone we’d had all day.  We sank back onto the couch and Malcolm reached for my hand.  “I like your parents.”