At the Water's Edge (18 page)

Kay settles back on my shoulder. “Christopher was such a stunner back then. I know pretty much everyone in this town, but I have absolutely no idea what happened to him.”

“Nina was so crazy about him, but, you know, in my parents’ eyes he wasn’t exactly a worthy suitor. Sort of a wrong side of the tracks situation. It didn’t help that she carved his name into Dad’s favorite deck chair, just to spite him.” I push myself up a bit, trying to reconstruct the chain of events in my mind. “Ever since she was sixteen—after my dad’s big revelation—Nina started hanging out with Hardy and his crew. They may have gotten in some trouble, but really, they were just teenagers like the rest of us. With a bit of a bigger mouth, maybe. And a slight attitude problem. I’m fairly certain they smoked weed and all of that, but, as far as I know, it was all quite harmless. But my parents just wouldn’t have it. They couldn’t stomach their oldest running around with the likes of Christopher Hardy.

“Mom went as far as to search Nina’s room when she was in school, searching for anything that could serve as evidence in her quest against Christopher. One day, she found two bus tickets to San Francisco, and that’s when the shit hit the fan.

“During the huge argument that followed—you can imagine how furious Nina was when she found out that Mom had been going through her private stuff—it came out that Nina was planning to run away with Christopher. Harsh words were spoken. She was grounded, of course. The atmosphere in the house dipped to an all-time low, which is saying something considering the regular arctic temperature of everyone’s mood in the Goodman family.

“But Dad couldn’t leave it at that. You have to remember that he’d been struggling to regain Nina’s respect for a few years by then—and Nina was never one to mince her words. She tried to diminish him every chance she got. She was at that age where, by default, parents couldn’t do anything right, on top of the mistakes Dad had admitted to.

“In a rage—which should really be my family’s middle name—Dad stormed off to the Hardys’ house, told Christopher’s parents all about Christopher and Nina’s scheme to flee to San Francisco, and basically destroyed their relationship. Or, in Nina’s words: her life.”
 

Below me, Kay shakes her head. “She’s been angry at your parents her whole life for that?”

“Well, among other things, but yes. I do understand to a certain degree. It was the final straw for her. When love is involved at that age, it always hurts a million times more. And I suppose, if our family had been just a tad less dysfunctional, she would have taken it like any other girl her age. Admitted defeat, sulked for a few months, and moved on. But things being what they were, she couldn’t. After she left home not even six months later, which was, ironically, what Mom and Dad wanted to stop her from doing in the first place, she sent me a letter. It spoke of festering wounds, hurtful lies, lack of respect, an unacceptable, distant sort of parenting not fit for the age we lived in anymore, all those sorts of things.” I blow some air through my nostrils. “It’s just like my dad said the other day. Nina is just as stubborn and unforgiving as Mom.” I rake my fingers through Kay’s hair. “And, in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? As much as we can’t stand it, once we grow up, we see so much of ourselves in our parents. If you’re lucky, what you see entails mostly good things, with a few annoyances thrown in for good measure because that’s just the way it is, but in our case, Nina and I, all we see is failure to communicate, expressing love through judging and incessant meddling instead of just letting things play out.

“I should really only speak for myself, but, even when my mother says something completely reasonable, something with which, on a purely objective level, I can find no fault, it still irritates the hell out of me sometimes. Just because
she
’s the one saying it. And what right does she have to be that person now? This woman saying the right things, acting all reasonable, when all throughout my youth—when I could only see things through that narrow lens of intolerableness and insecurity—all I ever felt she did was put me, and everyone else, down.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Ella.” For once, Kay’s response seems completely inadequate. Possibly because this line of conversation—or, rather, my monologue—is getting me quite worked up.

“I know. Least of all me. One of the main sources of guilt is that I’ve always failed to feel thankful for what I did have. A roof over my head. Clean clothes to wear. A home-cooked dinner every night. According to the calculations I did in my head, at least fifty percent of all the children in the world were much worse off than me. Then why do I have the right to feel so screwed up? To feel so emotionally damaged?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Kay sits up to look at me intently. “You’re perfectly entitled to any emotion you’ve ever had.”

“Oh god,“ I groan. “Family is just so complicated. But when I see the confidence kids have these days, I can’t help but wonder where they get it. For some, it’s their personality, but for most of them, it’s how they’ve been brought up.” I squeeze Kay’s neck. “You’re hardly a child, but look at you, Kay. Would you be this beautiful, strong, confident, always-holding-it-together kind of person if it hadn’t been for your family and how they were with you? I’m not using the term ‘raised’ on purpose, because I strongly believe that when you have children, the most important thing to do is to lead by example.”

“Every family’s different, but none of them are free of burden.”

“That may very well be true, but some will always be more toxic than others.” My fingers stroke her neck. “Over the years, I’ve gotten somewhat of an eye for it. It only takes me a few practicums to figure out which of my students might have an overbearing mother or an absent father. And every so often, I see myself. A shy, retiring first-year biology student trying to adjust to life on campus. As much as college set me free, it was hardly an easy time for me either. To be thrown into this new world with zero confidence. Actually, no, I’m putting it wrong. To meet all these new people and discover that most of them had no problem displaying their personality and attracting other people just by being themselves. My freshman year was hell.”

A rush of air floats over my skin as Kay expels a sigh.

“What?” I push myself up a bit more.

“It could just have been your personality. You’re shy. So are a billion other people on this planet.”

I don’t immediately reply. I try to picture Kay in college. What would she have been like in a place like that? I try to fit her into the categories of people I’ve made up in my mind. The ones I came up with in my early twenties, when I had nothing better to do than study my fellow students and come up with the theory that some personality traits seemed to be universal and always seemed to fit a certain type of person.

“I think, socially, you would have done well in college.”

“Socially?” Abruptly, Kay’s posture goes rigid. “As opposed to what? Intellectually?”

“What? No, I don’t mean it like that, Kay. I’m not referring to that at all.”

“Do you think I didn’t get into college because of my intellectual capacities?”

“God no, absolutely not.”

“Well then, you should work on the disparaging tone you use sometimes.” Kay glowers at me. “Are you even interested in the real reason why I didn’t go to college? Or are you too busy navel gazing and complaining about your privileged, but oh-so difficult life?”

“What the—” I barely recognize the kind, patient person I fell so hard for. Instinctively, I pull the sheet up to cover my naked flesh. Kay must have had the same idea, because we tug at the sheet at the same time and there’s not enough of it to cover the sudden distance between us and our bodies. “I think I’d better go.”

“Why?” Kay drops the sheet and gets out of bed. She stands there, illuminated by the midday sun slanting through the window, her skin bare, but holding no appeal to me. “Because running is what the Goodman girls do?”

Anger rises in me, the unstoppable fury I recognize from my youth, a ball of rage crashing through my flesh, obliterating everything. “I confided in you. I told you everything because I never, not for one second, believed you would hold it against me like this. I trusted you.”

“Ella, listen to me.” She sits back on the bed. “I’m not throwing anything in your face. The only point I’m trying to make is that a difference of opinion does not have to lead to an all-effacing argument.”

“Difference of opinion?” I’m almost foaming at the mouth with rage. It’s difficult to pull a sentence from the storm that brews in my racing mind. “I thought you understood.” It’s all I can say.

“Your sister, who didn’t come back for anything else, came back for you. Both your parents are alive and, despite not being able to express it the way you want them to, they love you.” She taps her chest. “
I
am here for you.”

Trapped inside the red mist in my head, I can’t possibly find a way to understand why Kay seems to have turned on me. “Fuck you,” I scream, before trying to locate the few clothes I was wearing when I came here.

“Don’t run.” Kay’s voice is firm enough to stop me in my tracks for a split second, but her hold on me seems to have disappeared already. A sense of utter betrayal rips through me. “Ella.” She walks from behind the bed and positions herself in front of the bedroom door. “Stay.”

“Why should I stay?”

“Because we’re both only human.” She crosses her arms across her still bare chest. “I may seem like this flawless creature to you, someone with infinite wisdom and patience who always says the right thing, but, just like you—just like your parents—despite doing my best with what I have, I fail sometimes.” A lone tear dangles from her eye. “And today is the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death, so excuse me if I can’t listen as attentively while you go on about how your parents screwed you up.”

“Oh shit.” My clothes drop from my hands. “I’m so sorry.” I walk over to Kay and, without thinking—or asking for permission—throw my arms around her. “I’m so so sorry.”

“You didn’t know,” Kay sniffles into my ear. “I didn’t mean—” Her words stall as she rests her head on my shoulder.

“Let’s sit for a minute.” I try to coax her toward the bed again, but Kay holds me in such a tight grip, I can’t move.

“Will you come to the cemetery with me?” The fragile tone with which she delivers the words cuts right through me.

“Of course.”

Kay eases her grip on me, starts to pull back. “I’m sorry. I’m usually not such a wreck about it.”

“It’s fine.” I let my hands slide down her sides in search of her hands. “No apologies required. Remember?”

She nods, a pained grin on her lips.

I feel strangely privileged to see her this way, with her soul on display.

“Tell me what you need?” I’d do anything to have the light turn back on in her eyes.

“Go be with your family.” A sterner note has crept back into her voice. “That’s what I need, for you to be with them. To try.”

“Okay.” It feels as though some unknown sense of perspective has been unlocked, like the clouds have parted and a sudden, unexpected ray of sunshine is lighting up a spot that hasn’t been illuminated for years. “When do you want to meet?”

“Whenever you’re ready. Just come by the lodge. I’ll be around.”

“I can stay a while longer if you want.”

“No. I’m fine being alone, Ella. I cherish it.”

“Okay,” I say again, but, although my replies may seem automatic, the fire in my heart is back at full throttle. I curl my arms around her waist again and look her in the eyes, before planting the most gentle of kisses on her nose.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A mixture of nerves, relief, and a strange sense of nostalgia wars inside of me as I pull up to my parents’ driveway, Nina in the passenger seat. We were both silent on the way over here, sunk deeply into our own thoughts and predictions of how this afternoon might play out.

As soon as I slam the car door shut, a familiar head pops up in the kitchen’s side window—as though someone in there is perpetually doomed to wait for a sign of another person’s arrival.

“Fuck, Ellie,” Nina says, leaning her elbow on the roof of my rental car for a moment, “I’m bloody nervous. Can you believe it?”

“Come on.” I walk to the hood and extend my arm. Hand in hand—something we’ve never done since Nina turned twelve—we walk toward the back door of our parents’ house. It opens before we have a chance to knock. My mother, her face as pale as the sheets she seems to always have drying on a line in the backyard, steadies herself against the wall while she stands there speechless. Of all the tears I’ve shed myself, the tears that brimmed in Kay’s eyes this morning, and the ones that dangle from my dad’s overly sentimental eyes at the most inopportune times, my mother’s tears in this moment get to me the most. They seem to slice a piece of resistance right out of my heart.

“My girls,” my mother mumbles, almost inaudibly. “Come here.” She opens her arms wide.

As if drawn by a magnetic force, Nina and I inch closer, still holding hands, and fall into Mom’s arms. As twisted as the thought sounds in my head, this moment would never have happened if I hadn’t tried to take my own life. The embrace turns awkward quickly—not everything can be instantly resolved just by showing up—and our arms drop to our sides; the three of us shuffling our weight around, not yet knowing what to say.

“I’d better call your dad.” Mom breaks the silence. “Guess where he is?”

We know this question doesn’t require an answer and Nina and I exchange an eye roll before following Mom inside. As though unburdened of something already, we crash down on kitchen chairs while we hear Mom shout out Nina’s return into the phone in the living room.

“He’ll be here soon.” Mom’s voice has returned to normal. “Coffee?”

“Why don’t I take care of that?” I rise, wondering if everything is still kept in the same spot. “Sit down, Mom.” I sound like the caring, helpful daughter I always failed to be. I never even realized my own mother suffered from the same demons that brought me down—that I was, essentially, repeating her mistakes because, beneath it all, we are so similar.