Remember Me Like This (38 page)

“It’s cool,” Justin said.

“You can drive us back home.”

They were on the long stretch of causeway between Portland and Corpus, driving to his appointment with Letty. On either side of the bridge, the water looked like mica. Had they been on solid ground, or if the causeway had sufficient shoulders, she would have pulled over and had Justin get behind the wheel. Letting him drive hadn’t entered her mind until late, and she thought the oversight explained why he hadn’t said much in the last twenty minutes. She felt dim, but also relieved to find such a handy explanation for how clammed up he was.

Gulls canted over the water. A few boats floated out near the ship pass. Laura could still feel the tremble under her skin, but with her hands on the steering wheel, she couldn’t tell if they were actually shaking. The causeway bobbed with the traffic, a subtle lunge and sway that she felt in her stomach, as if each seam were a wave passing underneath. The road nauseated her a little, or it worsened a nausea she’d been feeling all along. Ahead, the steel arc of the Harbor Bridge came into view, along with the shipyards and the USS
Lexington.
Seeing them exhausted her, made her want to weep. She had no idea why.

“Are you still feeling okay about the Shrimporee?” Laura asked. “I had coffee with that Tracy Robichaud. I think she’s putting together something really nice, but if you’d rather—”

“I’m not worried about it,” he said. He was watching the water stream by outside his window.

They passed pelicans and herons, and the pilings from the old bridge that had come down in a storm whose name Laura couldn’t remember. Her mind was sapped. She wanted to rally for Justin, for both of them, but she also wanted him to open up. She believed she deserved it. Believed she’d earned it. Soon she’d have to relinquish him to Letty for an hour, and just then, with the seams waving under them on the causeway, Laura didn’t want to hand him over. Under normal circumstances, she thought she did a decent job of keeping such possessiveness in check. She knew she shouldn’t feel this envy and resentment, knew she should be thankful that Justin had a professional he felt comfortable confiding in, but today, with all that was behind her and all that lay ahead, she couldn’t fight it. Talk to me, she thought. Tell your mother something real. After his session, he’d be distracted by whatever they’d discussed, by whatever he’d told her that Laura couldn’t know, and then he’d concentrate on driving, on crossing the Harbor Bridge the way his father had taught him.

“Is it Marcy?” Laura asked.

“Is what Marcy?”

“When you take Dad’s truck at night, are you going to see Marcy?”

Justin cracked his neck. He kept his eyes on the water. Laura glanced between him and the road, but he never turned. Wind pushed small waves away from the causeway. The motion put Laura in the mind of a mason smoothing cement with a trowel.

She said, “If it’s her, I can live with that. I won’t say anything. If you’re going to see someone else, I need to know.”

“I’m not visiting Dwight, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, good. Very good. That’s very good to hear.”

“Griff told you?”

“No,” she said. “No, he hasn’t said anything.”

“Then how’d you know?”

The truth was she had no idea how she’d known, or for how long. She just did. She must have known when she’d forbidden Eric from stashing the pistol in the truck, and now she realized she’d been afraid Justin would take the truck out tonight while Cecil and Eric were at the marina, but her knowledge ended there. And yet if she didn’t explain herself, he’d blame Griff. She said, “I touched the hood of the truck one night when I came home from Marine Lab. It was still hot.”

“Clever,” he said, as if proud.

“So, Marcy?”

“I want to, but haven’t yet. I’m worried it’ll be weird. Now that, you know, she knows.”

“Is that why you wanted Dad to teach you how to drive on the bridge?”

“You should start a detective agency.”

“Lots of practice,” she said.

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m supposed to tell you not to see her. I’m supposed to say she’s part of a life that’s gone now and you’ll find someone better, but here’s what I’m going to say: Don’t take Dad’s truck.”

“Why not?”

“It stalls.”

Justin kept watching the water. It was grayer the closer they got to the city.

“You can take my car,” Laura said.

“I can?”

“Just promise to wear your seat belt and not to speed,” Laura said.

“That’s really cool of you, Mom. I promise.”

She was nauseated again, feeling like things were moving too fast and she was making one crucial mistake after another, ruining everything. The exit for Marine Lab came up, and she had to stop herself from taking it. How nice it would have been to introduce Justin to Alice. But Laura didn’t know who was volunteering, and the thought of seeing Rudy or Paul was too much. And it suddenly felt important to deliver Justin to his appointment with Letty, important for Laura to prove, if only to herself, that she could still pass as a responsible mother.

“And Justin?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t go tonight,” she said. “Just stay in your room and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Please, honey. I’m serious. Please?”

W
ITH THE WEEK OF RAIN AND THE NIGHT COMING ON
,
THE
mosquitoes were too bad for them to eat outside. They hadn’t specifically planned to have supper at the picnic table in the backyard, but each had come to suspect that’s what they’d do, so moving into the kitchen was a letdown. Laura took in the glass dish of pork chops, and then the bowls of rice and peas, and the little tub of nondairy butter. Justin carried their plates and silverware, and Griff grabbed the salt and pepper shakers and the stack of paper napkins and the loaf of bread. Eric brought in their glasses, the pitcher of sweet tea. Everyone moved efficiently, in a swift and fluid unison, holding the door open for one another, making sure Rainbow stayed out of the way, then going out to retrieve what had been left behind: the saucer of sliced and salted tomatoes, the jars of mustard and pickle spears, the container of potato salad. The sky was clear, a variegated dark frosted with stars. A breeze laced through the tallow limbs like a ribbon. All of the weather had moved up into the Hill Country by now, but seated at the table, everyone felt as though they were still trying to outrun a fast-approaching storm.

Supper was a solemn affair. The kitchen was hot from the stove and oven. The round wood table was tacky to the touch. There was the scraping of utensils on plates, the clinking of glasses being lifted and lowered, and the quiet sounds of chewing and swallowing, but
not much talk. Justin cut his meat with the edge of his fork instead of a knife, the way he always had, and dipped each bite in a dollop of mustard dusted with black pepper. Griff refused to eat any peas. As usual, he spent most of the meal waiting for his parents to force the vegetables on him. Neither of them did, though Eric had been considering it. He thought it was the right thing to do, the responsible thing, and he didn’t want the obligation to fall to Laura, but more than that, he didn’t want to introduce any additional tension to the table. The clock on the wall read a quarter to seven. It ticked loudly. In just a few hours, his father would be parked outside the house.

Laura pushed food around her plate, made it into a mound, covered it with buttered potato bread. She couldn’t eat. The light hanging over the table burned too bright, too hot, too close. Her hands had stopped shaking, but her mind and memory were churning. If she’d had her Moleskine, she would have written:
My head feels like a dryer running with bricks in it.
She wanted to flee, wanted to pile everyone and anything they could fit into the car and truck and caravan out of Texas. Eric asked Justin to pass the pork chops. He stabbed one with his fork and dropped it onto his plate. He wanted Laura to see how much the meal meant to him. She looked piqued and scared and he wanted her to feel some peace before he left with his father.

Griff just wanted supper to end. He’d already finished his food, but was trying not to leave the table first. He hadn’t thought the meal would feel this momentous, and yet the whole time his parents had been so withdrawn, so conspicuous when they glanced around the table, that he’d been bracing for them to say they were divorcing or Papaw was dying or the case against Dwight Buford was being tossed out. He was still trying to convince himself that they would return to themselves after the Shrimporee, but they weren’t making it easy: His mother was hiding her food and his father wouldn’t stop eating. Griff started sweating. He’d gotten sunburned helping Fiona
and her mother, so at the table his skin felt hot and a size too small. He needed to shower—what did it matter if he left the table first? They’d all done it plenty of times—and so he was about to push back his chair when his brother wiped his mouth with his napkin and cleared his throat.

“Letty thinks I’m making progress,” Justin said. “She thinks we’re all doing a good job.”

Immediately, Eric saw Laura’s eyes welling. He saw that she would weep not only because Letty thought they were on the right path, but because Justin had said it in front of everyone. Because he’d acknowledged that there was something to acknowledge and they could no longer pretend otherwise. Because they couldn’t snuff out this new life with silence, and they couldn’t call back who they’d been by avoiding who they were now. Laura cocked her head like a small bird and she was smiling, trying not to cry, but tears were already on her lashes. He expected her to wipe them away. She didn’t. Then she was reaching for Justin’s hand, and then, on her other side, for Griff’s. For a long and devastating moment, Eric was left out, utterly disconnected from his wife and sons. His stomach dropped and nothing in the world felt right and he saw that this was his future. Then Griff extended his hand, and then Justin did, and Eric took them, and they were all touching and moored together. It was almost too much, too good. Eric closed his eyes first, then Griff, then Justin, and finally Laura. They listened to their own breathing, and to each other’s, and they felt the warmth of their clasped hands, the same blood coursing through their veins.

Then, one by one, they surrendered to circumstance and began to pray, to give thanks for the beautiful luck of their lives and to beg desperately for forgiveness.

L
AURA DIDN
’
T NEED HELP CLEARING THE TABLE
,
BUT WHILE
Griff and Eric watched television in the living room, Justin lingered in the kitchen. He could have situated himself on the couch, could have retired to his room and closed the door, could have lifted Sasha from her tank and worn her around his neck like an amulet to ward off everyone. But he’d chosen to stay with his mother. He returned the mustard and pickles to the refrigerator. He stacked dishes on the counter and toweled them off once she’d washed them. In the window above the sink, Laura watched his reflection. He looked content, concerned only with the task of drying the dishes. She washed the plates and glasses and flatware as thoroughly—as slowly—as she could.

She scrubbed the glass dish that had held the pork chops, rinsed it and handed it to Justin. He wiped it down until it squeaked. Laura was still reveling in what he’d said at the table. She wanted to know the social worker’s exact words and what had triggered them, but she also thought it possible that Letty hadn’t said anything of the sort. She might have even said the exact opposite.

Justin said, “Thanks for letting me drive home this afternoon.”

“It was a test,” she said.

“A test?”

“The good news is you passed. The bad news is you’re now my personal chauffeur. It’s a lifetime appointment that doesn’t pay worth a damn.”

Did she see a little smile in his reflection in the window? She thought so. She wished they’d dirtied more dishes. Behind her, the sounds of channels being flipped.

“And,” he said, “thanks for what you said, you know, about the other thing.”

“Just be careful,” she said.

“I was thinking I could tell you when I might go over there, and that way you wouldn’t worry.”

“When did you get so sweet?”

Justin shrugged. And then he moved in a way that despite the soapy scent of the suds and the dishwater, Laura smelled him like she hadn’t in years. It was staggering, profoundly and purely him, a scent without a trace of his father or her, the one she’d sought out so many times in the clothes hanging in his closet. With it, a kaleidoscope of memory: how they’d both laughed after she’d poured salt in his drink, how it had, for years, seemed she’d done something unassailably right; how, as a child, he used to sing along to the radio in the car, though he knew none of the lyrics; how the old weather girl from Channel 3 held weekly contests for weather drawings and he’d once won with a picture of an elephant sailing a boat toward a beach and how he had, for months after, wanted to marry the woman and how that tickled Laura and filled her with benevolent jealousy.

“Do you remember wanting to marry the weather girl?” Laura asked.

“Annette Maldonado,” he said. “She broke my heart when she took the other job.”

And then Laura was remembering that as well. Two years ago, two years into Justin being gone, Annette had announced she was
moving to the bigger market in San Antonio. She cried during her final seven-day forecast and the morning anchors hugged her while confetti fell from above. Laura had cried, too.

Justin said, “I used to watch it after we came home from throwing the paper route.”

“We were probably watching at the same time.”

“That’s why I put it on Channel 3. I knew it was the one y’all watched. Well, and because of Annette.”

“I used to go into your room and smell your clothes,” Laura said. “Daddy did, too. When we got your postcard, I held every speck of it up to my nose hoping to find your smell on it.”

“What postcard?”

She looked at his reflection in the window again, thinking he might be smiling at the joke, thinking they’d crossed into a new phase of their relationship where they would playfully rib each other, but his face was expressionless, his eyes focused intently on the glass he was drying. In the living room, Griff and Eric were still surfing channels. Laura was suddenly afraid they were listening. Doubt quickened and pulsed through her veins. Her temples swelled. She said, “The one from California. With the arrowheads. The one that said
Don’t Stop Looking.
”