Stay (20 page)

Aurora said.

See? “He’s red as that crab,” I said.

“I am not blushing,” he said. Annabelle and I looked at each

other and laughed. “It’s hot in here is all.”

“A sudden rise in temperature,” Annabelle said. She wore her

jeans and a loose red shirt and a gorgeous orange scarf. Her blue

eyes glittered.

“And only his face seems to feel it,” I said.

He shut his eyes for a moment, shook his head, as if sum-

moning the great patience putting up with us required. I brought

him the pot, and he lifted the lid. The dish had cooled, but even

so, all kinds of smells danced out—onions and wine and cheese

and twirling bunches of herbs.

“Stunning.” Annabelle said.

“Look at this. You’ll have to stay for dinner,” my father said

to Annabelle.

“No, Bobby, I can’t. I have to get back to my scribbling. The

impatient muse . . .”

“Reminds me. Did you read that article by Charles Whitney?”

my father said. “The muse, the spark of inspiration . . .
New York

Times
?”

“Dad,” I interrupted. This could go on all day. One line from

him and off they’d go on another conversation. I knew this from

that one night at dinner. But I didn’t have time for that. My father

must have heard something in my voice. He finally stopped and

looked at me.

“What happened?” he said.

* 154 *

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“He called.”

Annabelle sighed. My father slammed his palm on the table.

“God damn it. All right. Clara Pea, we’ll get the number changed

this afternoon. Did he leave a message?”

“I didn’t want to listen.”

“Give the phone to me.”

I took it out of my pocket. I wished I could have put a Kleenex

around it to handle it, like some crime scene knife. My father

punched the buttons to retrieve the message—his eyes were

black, a lock of hair fell over his face. He was pissed. I heard

Christian’s voice. Not the actual words, but the murmuring

rhythms, his own self alive and speaking just a while before.

My father saved the message. “Same old bullshit,” he said.

I put my head in my hands. Arms came around me.

The soft, thin arms of Annabelle. It was like being held by a

mother. It was something I remembered. It made me want to

weep. I put my face into her shoulder. She was thin, but solid.

Firmly planted.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

My father set the phone down and sighed. “Clara,
I’m
sorry.”

He had misunderstood me. He thought my apology was because

of his anger. But my apology was a thousand apologies.

I felt another set of arms around both Annabelle and me.

Dad’s more familiar ones. It was funny, but as we stood there in

that house on the endless beach of Possession Point, the wind

whispering around us, the waves chopping and churning, the

smells of Sylvie Genovese’s amazing concoction lingering in our

midst, we felt like a small family.

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Deb Caletti

“Three out of the four of us in this room need to seriously

embrace self-forgiveness,” Annabelle said.

I separated from her, showed her the question with my eyes.

Four?

But my father was ahead of me. “The crab,” he said, and smiled.

* 156 *

By the time I got home that day after the Jake Ritchie

fight, Christian had called sixteen times.

People can attach themselves to something—an idea, another

person, a desire—with an impossibly strong grip, and in the case

of restless ghosts, a grip stronger than death.
Will
is a powerful

thing.
Will
—it’s supposed to be a good trait, a more determined

and persistent version of determination and persistence
.
But
will

and
obsession
—they sit right next to each other. They pretend to

be strangers and all the while meet secretly at midnight.

This is what happens. You don’t even know it. You can be

choosing Milk Duds versus Junior Mints at the movies, you can be

ordering the chicken sandwich versus the veggie, you can be joking

and laughing on a long car ride or talking for hours on the phone

and it can already be in motion. In their mind, you are theirs and

Deb Caletti

will always be theirs and your own choice about that matters very

little. I can’t tell you how to avoid this. I’ve been there, and still I

can’t. A person shows signs—of clutching on too fast, of being

needy, of not hearing the word “no,” of jealousy, of guarding you

and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter right

past you. Sometimes they
dance
past, looking satiny, something

you should applaud. Someone’s jealousy can make you feel good.

Special. But it’s not even about you. It’s about a hand that is already

gripping. It’s about their need, circling around your throat.

The signs, anyway—they aren’t enough to make you under-

stand what is really going to happen.

We made up. We made up, but I knew I had already decided

something. I didn’t know when I would break things off, just

that I would. A small piece clicks into place, and it’s done in your

mind. You can put up with a lot of shit and then just be finished

all at once. A decision can seem to make itself, quiet but firm. But

the thing was, he knew it somehow. Like he always knew. I swear,

he could read my mind. As soon as I had decided it, he started

asking me if I was planning to break up. Maybe his paranoia gave

him a sixth sense to emotional danger, same as a hurt animal

knows when the coyote is near, or when the eagle is flying above

him with his talons out.

We were in my bedroom doing homework. It was stupid.

Another stupid thing, but they were all that way, little things

that wouldn’t even cross another person’s mind. My blinds were

open. I walked past the window and handed Christian a glass full

of ice and sparkling water. He was sitting on my bed with his legs

crossed, back against the wall.

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“Do you ever shut those?” he said.

“These?” I thought he meant my eyes. I blinked them at him.

I was being silly. I had stayed up late studying for a midterm

the night before, and I thought that’s what he was talking about.

Maybe I looked tired, or something.

“Your
blinds
.”

I could feel things start to get weird, the usual wave of panic,

the searching to make sense of what was happening. I couldn’t

figure out where he was headed about the blinds. My mind

tumbled in an attempt to figure it out—what could be bothering

him, how I could explain so that he would be okay. And then I

remembered something else—I didn’t really care anymore. The

panic flattened out. Anger and impatience stepped in its place. I

really used to care whether I lost him. That long ago night when

I thought he might leave me had stayed and done its work. But

now I wished he
would
leave. It changed everything.

“What about the blinds?” I turned the lever so that they went

one way and then the other. I swear, my patience had gotten on a

bus and left town and I doubted I would ever see it again.

“You’re so flip. Every time I come in here, they’re open. Do

you ever
close
them? Or do you just keep them like that so who-

ever walks past can see you undress?”

“That’s exactly what I do,” I said. “You should see the crowds

gather around ten o’clock. I charge them ticket prices. No, actu-

ally. I pay
them
for the chance to watch me undress.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said. He was spinning the glass in his

palm. His eyes got hard.

“You know me,” I said. “Any chance I get to attract other

* 159 *

Deb Caletti

guys, I just go for it. Lots of times I don’t even wait for night. I

just do it right here in the daylight.” I unbuttoned the first button

of my shirt, then the second. I looked out onto the street. It was

still and silent. Rain dripped from a neighbor’s roof. A spider had

built a web from the gutter to my window ledge, and it glittered

with white raindrops.

The glass hit the wall by my desk. It didn’t shatter, but broke

apart into three neat pieces. Water dripped down the wall. Water

was soaking the sheets from last year’s paper on
Tess of the

d’Urbervilles.
It was dripping down my chemistry textbook, and

down my cup of pens and pencils and the legs of the desk. I gave

a little scream. It felt so sudden. We were in one place, and then

all at once there was water dripping and things getting wrecked

and broken glass, and Christian was on his feet and I was scared.

He was walking to me. His arms were out. His face was

twisted up like he might cry.

“Get out of here,” I said.

He did start to cry then. Big, noisy, gushing tears. I felt embar-

rassed and horrified and frightened all at once. My hand was out, I

saw. Out in front of me like a stop sign. “Don’t. Get out.”

“You’re going to leave me, aren’t you? You’re going to leave

me.” He sunk down to the floor. He folded and fell, as if whatever

kept a body standing was gone.

“Christian,” I said. His head was in his hands. He was sob-

bing. I didn’t know what to do. He had gone from menacing to

falling apart in seconds, and it was too fast and confusing for me

to catch up. I was scared. Now the sobbing was scaring me as

much as the throwing of the glass. The emotions seemed to be

* 160 *

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spinning and gathering into some great ball that was somehow

in my hands.

“I knew you would,” he cried.

I had to manage this, and now Christian seemed so small and

vulnerable that I knelt beside him and put my arms around him.

He clung to me. He cried and said he was sorry over and over. My

heart ached—I felt bad for him, but I was also repulsed. I hated

how his arms felt on me. I felt like I was being buried under a

fallen building.

We sat there for a long time. He stopped crying, and there

was only that heavy, heavy silence of things gone wrong. That

terrible place you sit in when he’s done something awful and

so have you, and you now are looking at the mess of regret all

around. One thing different and you wouldn’t be where you are,

but it’s too late. There’s nothing to be done except sit there until

the pain lessens and you can move again, though the pain of that

regret will stay with you for days. You carry it on you like an open

wound.

“I think maybe you should go,” I said. Very carefully. It still

seemed like there was a bomb in the building that might go off.

“Don’t tell anyone about this, please? Please don’t tell.”

“I won’t.”

“Stay with me. Promise me you won’t leave,” he said. He

gripped my arms. He locked my eyes. I didn’t want to look in

those eyes. They were not a safe place to be.

“Okay,” I said.

“Look at me. Promise.”

I looked. I hated doing it. “I promise,” I lied. I pictured it to

* 161 *

Deb Caletti

soothe myself: The minute he was gone, I would bolt the door,

except we didn’t have a bolt. I would shove some heavy piece of

furniture in front of it, like they did in the movies.

He kissed me. I hated those lips. I didn’t want them on mine.

I hated the feel of them. But even more, I didn’t want the bomb

to go off. So I kissed an awful kiss.

He got up. I was so glad he was out of my room and then

so glad he was down the stairs, and then he hugged me at the

door. I had drawn so far into myself I could barely breathe. I

felt squeezed by my own self fleeing him inside. He was out the

door finally. I was smiling at him, saying soft words. I waved. He

was far enough away that I could shut the door. I waited a long,

impossible moment, and then I turned the lock ever so slowly so

he wouldn’t hear it.

It still felt like the bomb was in the house. I hid myself away

from the window and stood still until his car drove off. I walked

slowly up the stairs and shut my door and sat with my back

against it and my phone in my hand. This was someone I had

loved. We had lain together, skin on skin, been as close as two

people could, and he was a stranger. He was that someone who

you are afraid of as a child,
stranger
. They never told you that

stranger
might be someone you knew. Light came in the window,

and you could see the dark blotches on the wall where the water

hadn’t dried yet. The ink on the papers had smeared. It was good

that the ink was black and blotchy. I could look down and see it,

that glass, too. It seemed possible that none of it actually hap-

pened—that’s how surreal it was. The ink made it true.

* 162 *