Stay (29 page)

made these for me when I was sick and couldn’t sleep.41* I could

feel the warm liquid relax me.

“If that fucker comes near you, I’m having him arrested,” my

father said. “Just so you know.”

He left the hall light on when we went to bed, like he used

to when I was little. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. They had let

Christian go. I didn’t know where he was. I imagined him sit-

ting out by my curb, right outside. I imagined him with that rope

around his neck. I imagined him creeping up our stairs. I sat

41 PTA mothers would disapprove.

* 227 *

Deb Caletti

up in bed and held my pillow and watched every set of car lights

drive down my street, their shine passing across the blinds on

my window.

I heard a voice outside. I shot up out of bed. My heart thud-

ded like crazy. Someone was shouting something. I crept to my

window as if Christian could hear my footsteps. I cracked the

blinds, peered through. When I looked out, I saw our neigh-

bor, Mr. Willows, out on his lawn in his bathrobe, looking for

Misty, his cat. The street, our regular street, where Mrs. Porter

delivered our mail. Where I swept leaves and learned to drive

and walked home from school—it seemed still and dangerous

in the night. I tried to breathe. I didn’t know where I could go

to feel safe.

Even in the day that regular street would not look the same

to me, no street would. Everything had changed, and everything

would stay changed because that’s what happens when the fear

gets in.

* 228 *

I told the rest to Finn, too. Al of it. How my father

talked to Christian’s mother. How Christian had walked fifteen

miles home from the hospital after he’d been released. He was

scratching his skin with his nails. They found that rope. They

worried he was suicidal. His mother watched him all the time.

They were trying to get him in to “see someone.”42*

I heard that he had quit his job with Mr. Hooper. I pictured

the old man left with only the tired books from his shelf, noth-

ing wonderful and new from the Seattle Library, just waiting. He

would be there in his jogging suit and his scuffers. The thought

of that jogging suit made me so, so sad.

42 Funny that the only two times we use the phrase “seeing someone” are when we are

referring to being in a relationship or getting psychological help.

Deb Caletti

I didn’t hear from Christian for weeks. My phone was silent;

there were no e-mails or texts. Two weeks later the messages

started up again. My father called Captain Branson, and we fol-

lowed his advice. I did not answer, except for one e-mail that told

him not to contact me anymore. And then, later, that “someone”

they were trying to get Christian to see called me. A Dr. Harrelson.

He told me that Christian was suffering from an obsession and

I was the object of it and that it was best to stay away. I didn’t

understand what that call meant or why I was even talking to the

old, deep-voiced doctor, until Wayne Branson explained it to my

father. A mental health professional has a “duty to warn” if they

feel a person is in possible danger from their patient.

For the next few months I dragged myself through classes,

my senior year. Everyone was talking about prom and graduation

and what schools they’d been accepted to, and I was thinking

about that rope. I was wondering when the next e-mail would

come, or that call from his parents saying that they had found

him hanging from the rafters of their back deck. Señora Kingslet

asked me to stay after class, tried to talk to me about what was

wrong. My grades in her class were slipping. I was so tired.

Acceptance letters were coming in the mail, colleges at home and

away, but I missed the deadlines for mailing anything back. The

future was impossible to think about while trying, trying to swim

in the present and the past.

I graduated with my class. My father was there in the audience

with our friends Gigi and Lee, who had known me since I was a

baby. We didn’t see them often. I sat in the sea of purple gowns

and mortarboards and camera flashes, and I could only look out in

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Stay

the crowd and wonder if he was there somewhere, watching me. I

kept thinking about those old black-and-white movies of President

Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, riding in that car. How they

didn’t know a sniper would fire from an open window.

And then one day after that Christian appeared on our

doorstep when my father was arriving home. He saw Christian

there as he pulled up. My father said he was so angry he didn’t

trust himself. He got out and strode up to Christian and yelled

at him to get away and stay away. After Christian drove off, he

called Christian’s stepfather. No more contact, he said. No more

updates on Christian’s “mental health.” No more anything. Right

away, right then, he found us the house on Bishop Rock. He

wanted us to get out of there. You see something in a person’s

eyes, he said. You see the way nothing matters.

“Jesus, Clara,” Finn said. He was holding my hands on that

soft couch in his house.

It was hard to say this, but I needed to. I got it out, a whisper.

“I can understand if you don’t want to see me anymore.”

“Clara, what do you mean? Why would you say this?” He was

looking at me hard. He really didn’t seem to know what I was

talking about.

“How could you want to, after what I did?” The words were

stone and thorns, struggling from my throat. “I know people say

it wasn’t my fault, but it was. I thought you’d be able to under-

stand this.”

“I’m sorry, I just don’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was. I know what people really think. What
I
think.
Why

didn’t you
this,
Why didn’t you
that. Why didn’t you
stop
it. ”

* 231 *

Deb Caletti

Finn stood. “Let’s go for a walk. The beach? What coat did

you bring?”

“No coat.”

“No worries. We’ll borrow one of Cleo’s.”

He was busy suddenly, rummaging in the closet, pulling out

his own jacket and yanking down a blanket from the top shelf

and tossing me this black denim coat of Cleo’s with
Manny’s

Tavern
written on the back. Below the letters, there was a skull

and crossbones.

“Cleo loves pirates,” he said. “She’d be one, if she had the

right bird.”

It was great timing, because right then he opened the door

and that stupid seagull was standing there on the front lawn. I

wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

“He could work,” I said.

“Any old pirate can have a parrot,” Finn said. He took my

hand. We walked the few blocks toward the ocean. I was glad

for Cleo’s jacket. It was cold out by the beach, and the night

was quiet except for the slow rhythm of the waves. We stepped

our way carefully over the rocks and driftwood. We walked

along the hard part of the sand, looked out onto the sea. Only

the occasional red bobbing of a boat light interrupted its end-

less blackness.

“You know,” Finn said. “I blamed myself when my dad was

sick.”

“He had
cancer
. You didn’t cause that.”

“I know. But I still felt all this guilt. Maybe not for
causing
it,

but for all the ways I could have made his life better but didn’t. I

* 232 *

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was an ass to him sometimes, you know? The
impact
you have on

someone you care about.”

“But I
did
cause it.” I knew that. “I could have left him alone.

If he’d have stayed with this other girl . . .”

“It might not have been any different.”

“
I
caused the want and the need. I
liked
it, okay?
I
made it all

that important. That
big
. I was
too much
.”

Finn stopped walking. He held my arms. He looked at me.

“Clara,” he said. “Listen.”

You read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies

about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is

a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense,

too. It is Heathcliff with Catherine. It is a vampire with a pas-

sionate love stronger than death. We crave that kind of focus

from someone else. We’d give anything to be that “loved.” But

that focus is not some soul-deep pinnacle of perfect devotion—

it’s only darkness and the tormented ghosts of darkness. It’s

strange, isn’t it, to see a person’s gaping emotional wounds,

their gnawing needs, as our romance? We long for it, I don’t

know why, but when we have it, it is a knife at our throat

on the banks of Greenlake. It is an unwanted power you’d

do anything to be rid of. A power that becomes the ultimate

powerlessness. Right then, on the beach with Finn Bishop, I

learned that the most true-love words are not ones that grasp

and hold and bind you, twisting you both up together in some

black dance. No, they are ones that leave you free to stand

alone on your own solid ground, leave him to do the same, a

tender space between you.

* 233 *

Deb Caletti

“Listen,” Finn said. “You’re going to believe what you’re

going to believe. But I could want you and need you and it

wouldn’t look like that. It could
never
look like that, no matter

what you did. What you’re saying? It’s about his emptiness, not

your fullness. You see?”

He wrapped me in his arms. My nose was pressed against his

chest, the nylon of his jacket. I breathed in his smell.

“It’s not dangerous to be fully yourself,” Finn said. “Not

with me.”

Sylvie’s Jeep was parked at our house when I got back. The

lights were low. My father had lit candles, and they were sitting

on the couch together in flickering yellow light. He seemed fine

right then, that was for sure. They both just looked up as if I

came home every day while they were on that couch sitting close

enough for secrets. Two wineglasses were on the table with only

tiny red pools left in the bottoms.

“Clara. You’re back.”

“I was at Finn’s.” I tossed my keys on the table. I didn’t mean

to do it so hard—they slid across the hard surface and dropped

off the other side.

“You remember Sylvie.” It was a stupid thing to say and he

realized it. “That was idiotic,” he said.

“Hello, Clara,” Sylvie said.

“Roger’s home alone?” I said. It came out like an accusation.

I’m sure Roger didn’t need a babysitter.

“I always thought they should do a remake of that movie with

dogs,” my father said. “
Home Alone
? The dogs getting the better

* 234 *

Stay

of the bad guys? Slipping on kibble sprinkled out on the floor?

Wearing the dog bowls on both feet? It’d make more money than

all my books combined.”

“And, of course, that hilarious scene where the robbers both

step in—” I added.

“
Fall
in it,” my father interrupted.

“Better,” I said.

Sylvie smiled down at her hands. I felt sort of triumphant,

displaying our usual banter. Still, there was something phony

about it. Showing off. Especially since we hadn’t exactly been

close over the last while, his mood always among us, some big

fat unspoken thing, some big fat guest sitting between us in his

shorts and undershirt, ugly and distracting.

“I’m going to bed,” I said.

I brushed my teeth and got into the cool sheets. I was so

tired. My confession had exhausted me the way the longest swim

does, but now I couldn’t swim anymore. I was too tired to think

about my father, my mother in a hospital or not in a hospital, or

even about Dad and Sylvie sitting out on that couch right then

doing who knew what. I was being pulled into the watery depths

of sleep.

I was drifting, and so it could have been one of those half-

dream moments where you are part here in this world and part

in the unconscious one, but I don’t think so. I swear to God, I

heard that song.
That
song. Our song.
The Way She Moves
, by

Slow Change.
Your eyes are on her, on her, on her . . .

I got out of bed. Was I losing my mind? He’d found my new

number so fast . . . Where was the sound coming from? I opened

* 235 *

Deb Caletti

my door to listen for the television, the one tucked in an armoire

in the living room. It had only rarely been turned on since we

arrived. But in the hallway I could only hear the murmur of

voices, Dad’s and Sylvie’s, her soft laughter. I shut the door again.