Stay (30 page)

I could still hear it. I was awake, and I could. I opened my

window. I swear that music was coming from the dunes some-

where far off, but it drifted and spun with the wind and I couldn’t

tell what were night sounds and what weren’t.

I realized then that I hadn’t played Christian’s message. I

felt the sudden need to. I picked up my purse on the floor and

found the phone. The voice of the message lady sounded awake

and efficient as a fluorescent light in that dark room.
You have
,

pause,
one message
.

My heart started to thump. I felt a twist of sick fear. There

was his voice. That voice, the accent both rich and icy, now.
I can’t

believe you would think you had to run from me,
he said.
You had to

leave town? You know I would never hurt you. You know that’s the

last thing I would want.

Christian knew where I was.

I slammed the phone closed. It was stupid, but I put it in the

closet, behind the boxes marked
Winter Clothes
. I shoved one of

our mystery host’s corduroy jackets on top of it and closed the

door. I could still feel it there, like it was someone breathing.

I couldn’t hear the music anymore. It could have been

Christian somewhere near, listening to it in his car. The song

would bring us back together in his mind, our eyes locked, his

skin against my skin. He was probably parked on that beach road,

the windows rolled down. But I would never know for sure.

* 236 *

“I’m sorry I startled you,” Sylvie said.

“
I’m
sorry,” I said. Sylvie had called my name and I had

jumped, sending two pens rolling down the counter. I was on

edge. I felt Christian nearby, like people say they feel the souls of

their loved ones hovering just after they’ve died.

“You are tired,” she said.

“I didn’t sleep much last night.” Neither did she, but I didn’t

mention that little fact. “I have a lot on my mind.”

That morning I had tried to call Shakti. No answer and no

answer again. It wasn’t possible, was it, that she told Christian

where I was? I was sure she wouldn’t.
Sure.
But she was the

only one who knew where I was, right? Captain Branson wasn’t

exactly going to slip this fact to Christian. But maybe, too, I was

making myself crazy. He could know I left town but not know

Deb Caletti

which town. Someone else could have been playing that song.

My own head could have been.

I didn’t know what was real or not, what happened or hadn’t,

what might still happen or never happen.

I once went with my father to a reading Stephen King was giv-

ing. Afterward there was a small, private party. He was probably

the most famous writer I’d ever met with my dad. A few people

were standing with him. A woman holding a drink asked,
What

do you think would be the scariest thing?
He’d probably been asked

it a million times. Someone else in the group answered:
Your

child being murdered
. But he shook his head.

No
.
Going into your child’s room to find him gone.

Sylvie walked to the windows, folded her arms, and looked

out. She reminded me of my father. He stood like that, too. I

could see why they liked each other, actually. They were both

a deep tumble of thoughts and feelings.
Passionate
, though I

cringed at the word. “I know you do not like me all that much,”

she said.

I looked down. Her words shocked me. Too often we play

these little hidden games, motivations not quite buried under

our tones and gestures, the truth spoken only behind someone’s

back. But there Sylvie was, holding the truth right out before me.

“Maybe it’s all just a little much right now. It feels sudden,

you and him.”

“It is sudden only for you,” she said. She turned to look at me

again. Her words weren’t angry, only the flat statement of fact.

“He has been grieving for a long time. I have been grieving. We

are both perhaps ready to stop.”

* 238 *

Stay

“Did you lose someone, too?” I asked. I thought of the man in

the picture. The basket of lemons and the orange house.

“A baby,” she said.

Her words startled me. So much so that Sylvie looked like a

different person to me all at once. “I’m sorry, Sylvie,” I said.

“I was with a man, and I was going to have his child, and

he did not want that. I don’t tell people this story. I don’t tell

the whole of it. I went away. To have the child myself. I wanted

to save it, and so I ran very far, to a small, small town, San

Gemini. He would not find me. I would save it from him, from

his not wanting, you see? I would do it on my own. But I was

too far away. The baby started to come, too early. A neighbor

came. There was no hospital near. I never could see it in my

mind, you understand? I could not see things going wrong

like that.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.

“We try to hold a storm in our own fist but we are not that

strong.”

I nodded. I knew about that.

“I am beginning to think there are two kinds of people,”

she said.

I waited.

“Those who forgive themselves too easily but will not for-

give others.”

“And?” I asked.

“Those that forgive others too easily but will not forgive

themselves.”

* * *

Deb Caletti

We had a lot of visitors that day. An entire bus of senior citizens.

I toured them around the grounds and afterward got my picture

taken out front with all of them. Then a Winnebago arrived, a big

old leaning camper with a license plate that read captain ed. A

bearded man got out, a camera around his neck, and he toured

the museum just as a family with two small children arrived. The

kids chased each other on the front lawn and yelled and touched

things in the gift shop as Roger ran upstairs to get away. The

mother kept shouting
Inside voices! Inside Voices!
as I pictured

Roger hiding under the bed with his paws over his ears.

It was finally time to leave, and I wanted to say good-bye

to Sylvie. She had reached out to me and I would have reached

back, but I couldn’t find her. She had taken the boat out, I real-

ized, though I could not see her anywhere on the water. I thought

about leaving a note, but all options seemed stupid.
Thanks for

telling me about your dead baby
. . . I locked up, headed out.

I called Shakti again from the car. No answer. Why wasn’t

she answering? There could have been a million reasons that had

nothing to do with Christian and me. You can have a crisis in

your life, something huge on your mind, and you can forget it’s

not the first thing on everyone else’s. People are out shopping.

They are buying shoes and getting manicures and going to Taco

Time while your life is falling apart.

I drove down to the docks and parked. I knew Finn would still

be out on the afternoon sail that day, so I decided to grab a sand-

wich at the Portside Café. I was almost to the restaurant when I

noticed my father’s bike chained up to the lamppost just outside.

I was surprised to see it there—he didn’t usually go anywhere

* 240 *

Stay

during writing hours. Still, it was a good surprise. He’d be glad

to see me, I thought. I’d go in and he’d be sitting at a table, read-

ing, maybe. He’d give me half of his French dip, or we’d order

another one. I needed to tell him about Christian. We could talk

about what Sylvie had told me, too. Or maybe we could finally talk

about what had come between us over the last weeks.

I pushed open the door. Past the newspaper racks and pot-

ted plants I saw the open floor of the café, which was a sensory

jumble of tables and booths, loud talking, and the clanking of

silverware against plates, the smell of beef and frying onions. I

looked around. I saw Jack’s girlfriend sitting at a table with two

other girls, laughing, and a guy I recognized who kept his boat

at the dock—Jim, John, something. And, then, yes, there he was,

my father. Annabelle Aurora sat across from him. A stack of

books were on the table, as if he’d just been to the library.

I started toward them and then stopped. It looked like they

were arguing. Annabelle was leaning forward, her flat hand on

the table as if she were making a point. He was leaning back in

the booth the way he did when he was pissed. Their voices sepa-

rated out from the crowd.
You don’t know . . . his
.
You can’t keep

. . . hers
. Someone else laughed loud, and the voices were gone

and then back.
It’s her story, too, Bobby.
Annabelle’s voice was

firm. She would have had command of her class when she’d

been a professor.

I backed up toward the plants and the newspaper stands. The

hostess asked if I needed a table, and all I could do was shake my

head and keep moving backward, out of there. Because I could

see that my father had stopped looking angry and now looked

* 241 *

Deb Caletti

destroyed. His face fell, and he looked years older, sitting there.

All of that ego swagger that was weirdly one of his best quali-

ties seemed drained from him. His face was pale and defeated.

It was that word,
story
, I guessed. He seemed done in by it, and

Annabelle’s hand went up to his cheek kindly, and something in

the gesture bothered me enough that I got out of there. 43*

I felt shaky. I wanted to be far away from them. I had heard

Annabelle’s words through the clatter of dishes and voices, and I

didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t know what was happening

for my father and me. But I wished we could go back three weeks

or three months or two years and start again.44*

The shift—I could almost feel it like a real thing under my

feet. We’d crossed over into some territory where hidden things

had grown too large to stay hidden. So, all right, it was true. There

was some big thing about my father and about my mother.
It’s

her story, too
—Annabelle was talking about me. There was some-

thing she didn’t understand, though. I didn’t
want
to know what

he had kept from me. See, I wasn’t, never have been, still am not,

the type of person who’d want to be told they had three months

to live. I didn’t like the evening news. Those PBS programs about

global warming. Stories about a girl getting her throat slit by her

boyfriend on the banks of Greenlake.

43 I didn’t know what their relationship was, or had been, and I’d never know. Some

secrets stay secrets.

44 Only, I wouldn’t have met Finn then, would I? It’s the tricky thing about the starting-

over fantasy. You’d want to keep some things, but this somehow seems like breaking

the rules of that particular little head game.

* 242 *

Stay

I crossed the street, away from that restaurant. I called Shakti

again. No answer.

I was hungry, and so I ordered a cheeseburger and some

fries from Cleo and sat at one of the picnic tables, keeping

Gulliver company. That creepy feeling that Christian was

nearby—I couldn’t shake it. I knew how stupid it was—he

could know I left town and not know the thousands,
thousands
,

of places I might be. Still, I kept looking behind me. Checking

out the periphery of where I was. I’m sure all of the stuff with

Dad wasn’t helping any, the ghost of my mother floating around

nearby, whatever. But I felt uneasy. It was that nervous energy,

that awareness that feels like a shiver about to happen. Still, I’d

had that sense a hundred times before, and Christian had not

been there. I’d be driving and looking in my rearview mirror;

I’d be in the hallway at school, but his car was not behind mine

after all, and he was not waiting at my locker.

Finn and Jack and all of their passengers finally arrived.

A little while later Finn strolled down the dock, his hands

shoved down into his cargo shorts, his grin wide, his cap over

his crazy hair. Happiness rushed in where the nerves had

been. Something good, a good person, love, can be a great big

bulldozer to bad things. It can shove aside a bad moment, or

bad years.

I liked it so much, the way he always smelled like outside. His

hair was warm from sun.

“Mmm,” I said. “You.”

“You,” he said.

“Oh, God, don’t kiss me; I just ate a cheeseburger.”

* 243 *

Deb Caletti

“I love cheeseburgers,” he said.

He sat down next to me on the bench. I passed him my bas-