Stay (18 page)

I turned, there “it” was. The realization changed something.

But, see, the problem was, other things had changed, too.

I had started to wonder if maybe Christian was right about me.

I wondered if maybe I
was
that someone he always accused me

of being. Maybe I’d been her all along.

The lying got worse. More and more, he thought I was trying to

hide things from him because I
was
hiding things from him. I

wanted
to hide things from him. I wanted space to breathe. I went

with Shakti and Nick to Red Robin and told him I went with Dad.

I did that all the time. I had a roast beef sandwich once and told

him I had a salad. I really did. I think I just wanted pieces of me

he couldn’t see or find or judge somehow.

I started to think a lot about going away to school. We had

both planned to go to the University of Washington so we could

be together, but instead I dreamed about foreign cities that were

farther away and full of strangers. I went with my father to check

out a university in Vancouver, Canada, and Christian called so

many times that my father got pissed and took my phone and

stuck it in the pocket of his jacket. I wasn’t sure I minded. I

avoided looking at that pocket.

Christian could always feel my lies and sense my secret retreat.

We went to visit Mr. Hooper. I read to him, a Chekhov book of sto-

ries Christian had gotten from the library.
The proposal embarrassed

her with its suddenness, by the fact that the word
wife
had been spoken,

and by the necessity of refusing it. She could not even remember what

she had said to Laptev, but she continued to feel traces of the violent,

disagreeable emotion with which she had rejected him . . .
Mr. Hooper

* 138 *

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had fallen asleep. His wispy white hair stood up straight against the

back of the chair where his head lay and made me feel sad.

“I love you,” Christian said. He took the book from me.

Kissed me softly.

“I love you too,” I said. I meant it.

“You won’t ever leave me, will you?” he said.

If
you go to school in Vancouver, it’s over
, he said.

Why? It’s not that far away
, I said.

You’d take up with someone else.

No.

You were the one,
he said,
who came on to me. You came right

up to me. You threw yourself at me.

You wish
, I’d said. The anger—it was my favorite tool now.

He’d used up my patience.

That other guy had his hands all over you that day.

Who?

You know who. Nick. I saw him.

He’s my
friend.

And are you always so forward with guys?
You
kissed
me.
You

were the one who pushed for sex.
Angelie would never have done that.

She had morals. She respected herself.

Angelie was the girl at the basketball game. The one he’d

been seeing before me. For, maybe, a month. He’d brought her

up often. She’d become the Virgin Mary, I swear.
Go ahead and

be with Angelie, then
, I said.
Go for it.

You wouldn’t even care, would you?

I sighed.
Of course I’d care, Christian.

* 139 *

Deb Caletti

You’d just go with some other guy.

Well
,
probably I would, eventually.
The phrase, “some other

guy”—I was getting tired of it. Those words grated on me. He

said those three words as often than any. More often than “I love

you.”

You’d tell everyone what an asshole I’d been.
He was afraid of

this. Really afraid. Of people knowing the kinds of things he said

when we were alone.

No. I wouldn’t do that.

All you’d have to do is call up Jake Ritchee. I’m sure he’d have

sex with you, too.

We were in his room. Sandy and Elliot were gone. Shopping.

Costco, or something. It was a regular weekend day. The tree

outside his room was empty of all leaves. Stark. The street was

messy and windblown. We’d probably had a small storm the

night before. One of their garbage cans was knocked over. I’d

been staring out his window, because I didn’t want to see his face

when he got like this. His words pissed me off, but confused me,

too. I turned away from the window. I looked at him.

Who is Jake Ritchee? I don’t even know a Jake Ritchee.

Right,
he said. He looked disgusted. He started pacing in his

room. The space felt too small. I wanted out of there.

I’ve never heard of Jake Ritchee. I don’t know what you’re even

talking about.

He gave you his card. His fucking phone number.

I had no idea what he meant. None. He searched around on

his desk. Shoving books and papers.
Calculus Concepts
landed on

the floor with a smack.
You never heard of him?
His voice dripped

* 140 *

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sarcasm. He handed me a business card. I looked down. I saw my

own writing there on the back. My name and phone number. My

e-mail address. I turned the card over.
Jake Ritchee
, it read.
Smith

and Gray Auto.

I remembered. I remembered bringing my father’s car in to

be repaired. I remembered Jake Ritchee, too, in his blue cover-

alls, a guy about twenty-something, who explained our diseased

transmission to me so that I could explain it to my father. I had

plucked one of his cards from the plastic tray on the counter,

next to some shiny pamphlets advertising radial tires. My father

always had questions.

I opened my mouth to explain, because explaining was what I

always did with Christian, another tool in that box. But I stopped.

I had another realization then as I held that card, a way too late

realization: I was tired of explaining. I had jumped right into this

game and played it along with him, and that had been my fault.

But I had reached the sudden point where I didn’t want to do it

anymore. No explanation would be good enough, ever. If he had

kept this card since that night, if he chose that meaning over the

one the card really had—his truths would never, could never, be

what the truth really was.

I tossed the card at him. It spun like a little paper boomerang

and fell, hitting the top of Christian’s shoe. I walked to the door.

You’re not going to leave
, he said.

Yep
, I said.

So you dated this guy.

Jake Ritchee fixed my father’s car.

I know how you like dark-haired guys,
he said.

* 141 *

Deb Caletti

I brushed past him. I walked down the stairs. Christian’s

mother had just gotten a cat, and it slipped out the front door

when I opened it. I went down the driveway and remembered

that Christian had driven me over. I didn’t have Dad’s car. And

it was raining now, hard. It didn’t matter. I walked to the bus

stop nearby. I knew the route from coming here so many times.

I waited about twenty minutes for the 259. I sat behind an old

woman in a red crocheted hat. It had a green fringy ball on top.

Very Christmas-y.

The rain dripped down the large windows of the bus. The

huge wipers were going fast. My pant legs were wet, and I was

cold. And then his words sank in. They sank in, and I sat there in

some sort of shock. Christian had gone to Smith and Gray Auto

to check out Jake Ritchee. It would be the only way he’d know that

Jake Ritchee had black hair.

The seat had a rip in it, and foam was coming out. The brakes

screeched when the bus stopped. I got up to get out. The floor was

slick with water from people’s shoes. I brushed past the seated

passengers in their bulky coats. I knew something I didn’t know

before. Knew, but didn’t want to know.

It was possible that Christian was crazy.

* 142 *

So, Dad was an idiot for riding that bike to Sylvie’s

with his bad ankle. A love idiot. He spent the next few days

wincing and holding on to furniture when he walked. I thought

he needed to see a doctor, but he refused.25* Each night he’d

drink more of our mystery host’s scotch, which seemed to numb

the pain enough for him to hobble around and do the dishes and

other jobs I insist he not do but he did anyway.

At work, I asked Sylvie Genovese about doctors on the island,

and that night there was a knock at the door and Sylvie Genovese

was there with this older guy with a long gray ponytail and a black

doctor’s bag, just like the kind you see doctors carrying in old mov-

25 I don’t know why we insist on pain when pain is so often easy to eliminate. It’s funny

the ways we try to punish ourselves when we feel we’ve committed some crime.

Deb Caletti

ies. He didn’t look like a real doctor.
Watch him be Roger’s vet or

something,
I said to myself, but I was wrong. Lately I’d been wrong

a lot. The one thing I was figuring out good and well was that you

needed information about people, more information, to really know

for sure. First impressions were tricky. They could be so sharply

on target that they were an instant bulls-eye, or they could be that

humorous dart that hits a tree, or worse, the dangerous dart that

injures. There was only one way to know and that was time. With

the doctor, it took very little time at all—Sylvie Genovese introduced

him as Dr. Leroy Vicci, who had a practice there in Bishop Rock. It

turned out that Sylvie and Dr. Vicci were cousins, and he and his

family were part of the reason she came to the island.

Dr. Vicci sat my father down and moved his ankle in care-

ful circles. It took him seconds to determine it wasn’t broken. It

needed more ice and less activity and a strong anti-inflammatory.

Sometimes that’s all you need
, Dr. Vicci said.
To know it’s not

broken. To know you’re still whole and that you’ll heal.

It sounded like a metaphor. I looked at my father, thinking

he’d catch my eye then, but he’d missed it. He was watching

Sylvie Genovese’s long fingers on the back of that kitchen chair.

I wondered if Sylvie and I would become friends now, but that didn’t

happen. She was less snappish with me, though, and didn’t listen in

anymore when I gave tours of the lighthouse. I would catch her look-

ing at me, in some way that meant she was taking in the details and

trying to understand the whole picture. I guessed she was someone

who felt the need for slow gathering of information, too.

For one day we lost the bright warmth of summer—clouds

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lay low on the beach and then moved fast as they pelted us with

rain, the kind of summer rain that brings up all of the smells of

the earth. Gloominess that means a day inside. Fog was every-

where – circling the lighthouse, hanging low in the trees. I won-

dered what Finn and Jack did on days like this.

Not a single soul came into the lighthouse. Even the tourists

were staying dry in their B and B’s. The rain came down hard,

the white-wet sort that looks like snow. Sylvie did something

unusual. She brought me a cup of tea, mint, like I like. She set

it down on the counter where I sat. She had one, too. Roger fol-

lowed behind like a little butler.

“Too cold not to have tea,” she said. She warmed her hands

on the cup. Stuck her nose toward the steam and breathed in.

“Thank you,” I said.

The wind picked up. Her garden wind chimes were going

crazy, and you could hear the flapping of the plastic that covered

her dirt pile, a corner slipping loose and taking advantage of the

wild ride.

“Miserable beach weather,” she said.

“I bet it makes you wish you were home,” I said. Dad had told

me she’d lived in Italy as a child, then in Southern California,

then back to Italy. By “home” I meant either of those places.

Sunny and warm ones.

“I am home,” she said.

She didn’t say anything more. It was quiet between us. You

could hear the wind whistling a bit. The sea was getting rough out

there. “Do you ever see the ghost that’s supposed to be here?” I

asked. “The captain’s wife or whatever she is?”

* 145 *

Deb Caletti

Sylvie surprised me. She laughed. Roger liked this and hopped

up on his back legs, jumping on Sylvie’s knees. He was always game

for going along with whatever feeling was in the room. She gave him

a small push down and then set her hand on his butt so he sat nicely.

“I do not believe in ghosts, so they do not believe in me.”

“So, you don’t see her, walking up the lighthouse stairwell?

She isn’t in your kitchen making Kraft macaroni and cheese?”