Inland (12 page)

“It just sounds lonely,” I blurt, and then wince, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. But Nessa doesn’t look offended; she only peers at me over her coffee cup.

“No lonelier than being trapped with the wrong person, married to someone who can never truly understand you, knowing it’ll have to end one way or another,” she says evenly.

“But if you were really in love—”

“There’s more to life than love.” She shakes her head, then hesitates before saying, “Did your mother ever tell you about our aunt? She was like me, no husband, no kids. She had a little house on a barrier island, out on the coast of North Carolina.”

“Auntie Lee,” I blurt, and Nessa looks startled.

“You’ve heard of her.”

I close my eyes and see her, motionless in the photo I’ve carried with me all these years. The tall woman with her face turned away toward the ocean, her hands reaching out to the two little girls at her side. “I have a picture of her. And you, and my mom; you’re really little in it, maybe two. I never knew who she was.”

Her tone grows wistful. “I know that picture. Our mother, your grandmother, was gone, and we stayed with Lee that summer while Dad sorted out the divorce. She wasn’t actually our aunt, really—I think she was Dad’s cousin—but I was too young to really understand that part of it. Now that I think of it, she would have been just a little older then than I am now. God, she seemed so glamorous, back then. She was beautiful, smart, gifted. She could have done anything. But then, there was a man. And she got it into her head that a man was all she needed, and that was that.”

“Where is she now?”

Nessa hesitates, and then her expression changes in an instant, from nostalgic to angry. She shakes her head.

“She turned her back on us,” she says flatly. “Not just us, on her life. She rejected what she was meant for. It was a mistake. And instead of learning from it and facing what came next, she just turned and ran away. I haven’t spoken to her since I was young, but seeing what happened to her, I promised I would never lose sight of myself like that.”

Curiosity gets the better of me. “But what did she do?”

“Oh, the details aren’t interesting. It was nothing sordid,” she says lightly, but in a way that declares the subject closed and makes me feel embarrassed for asking. A moment of awkward silence follows, until Nessa sighs.

“Just don’t pity me, baby. I’m not sorry for choosing this life.” She grins. “Especially not now, when it’s one of the reasons I was able to run out the door to come here and be with you, without even stopping to pack my toothbrush or a change of underpants.”

I can’t help it; I smile back.

“And you couldn’t ignore the call of destiny long enough to even pack a bag?” I joke.

“That wasn’t destiny,” she laughs. “I just wanted to be with you. I wish I could have done it sooner. But no, I can’t ignore it. If I did . . .” She trails off, looking down at her hands.

“What?”

She hesitates again, then says, slowly, “I think some people truly have a purpose. And I think fate gives them chances to take the right path. It tries to guide them home. It shows them the way. But if they don’t take it, if they don’t listen, I think . . . I think that it makes for so much useless unhappiness.”

I think about that for a second.

“Does that make sense?” she asks.

And though it does, sort of, though I have the barest sense inside my head of something untangling itself and beginning to take shape, I can’t find the words to say so. It all seems too silly, too deep, too spiritually fraught to be talking about over creamy-sweet coffee with a fakey fire burning.

And so instead, I say, “I’m sure it would make sense if I smoked as much pot as you do,” and Nessa blinks in openmouthed surprise before throwing her head back and laughing, loud and long.

—

Later, when there’s only a half inch of murky liquid left to slosh in the bottom of the coffeepot, I sit with my head on her shoulder and yawn out another question, watching the twisting violet tips of the fire through heavy, half-lidded eyes.

“So how do you even live, if you think everything happens that’s meant to happen?” I yawn. “It’ll happen no matter what. What’s the point of doing anything? Why bother, if you only end up the same place?”

Nessa smiles at me from the corner of her eye. “Are you telling me that the journey doesn’t matter, just the destination? That’s not very Zen of you.”

My thinking has gone slow and stupid, my body trying to nudge me in the direction of sleep. I’m not even sure what Zen means, really, but I’m too tired to ask.

“Your face isn’t very Zen,” I say, and she giggles.

“Listen,” she says, stroking my hair. “We all die at the end. Nobody knows how much time they get. All you can do is use it well.”

“Because you can’t control the ending.”

“Of course you can’t.” She laughs. “You know, you really are your mother’s daughter. Maera . . . she didn’t just want a choice in life, she wanted
all
the choices. All at once. She was always looking for a way to have everything she wanted, always bargaining for more, even when it was too much. Even when it was impossible.” Her voice has gone soft and small; when she speaks again, it’s more to herself than to me. The smile slips a little on her face as she murmurs, “Impossible. But God, for a while there, it really seemed like she’d found a way. She had everything, down to the very last moment.”

“Until she just let it go,” I murmur automatically, and my aunt springs back and turns to stare at me with eyes as sad and surprised as my own. It was a stowaway truth, one I didn’t even know I knew until I felt it on my tongue.

She begins shaking her head, “Baby, that’s not—”

“Yes,” I interrupt, suddenly wide-awake, and the words begin tumbling out. One on top of the other, as though the first sentence was the loose pebble that triggered an avalanche of hidden pain. These are the thoughts I’ve pushed aside all my life, telling myself that I just didn’t understand, telling myself that when I got older my mother’s death would make more sense. But it doesn’t, and the realization that it never will is acid in my mouth.

“She might as well have chosen her ending,” I spit. “We were miles from land, in the middle of the ocean, and she just slipped into the water and then let go. How could she do that? How could she be that reckless?”

I stop, out of breath, and feel two spots of color rising high and hot in my cheeks as Nessa stares at me with her mouth open in a helpless
O
shape, with nothing to say, because I’m right. She finally presses her lips together, shaking her head in silence. A long moment passes, my heart pounding and my breath coming in quick gasps, until I realize that this is just the kind of stress that Dr. Sharp warned might trigger another attack. I struggle to slow it down, swallowing hard, inhaling deeply and evenly, exhaling in a slow stream through my mouth until my pulse no longer beats furiously in my temples.

“I’ll never understand,” I say as I let out another long breath. “I’ll never understand how she could leave me like that.”

Nessa leans forward, puts a hand on my shoulder and another on my knee, until she’s so close that I can see the individual pores in her forehead, the exact contours of the worry line that cuts between her brows.

She says, “Listen to me, Callie, and listen carefully:
my
mother left. She left us, and moved back to Ontario, and married the guy who’d been her high school sweetheart. She started over with him, had another baby, and we never heard from her again. She said she was lonely, and that none of us needed her anyway, and the worst part is, she was right. She was so right that we barely even noticed she was gone, that we couldn’t even blame her. But I still know what it’s like—to have her walk out the door, with a suitcase in her hand, and leave you behind.”

She takes a deep breath. “And if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that your mother did not leave you. She loved you. Everything she did, she did because she loved you and wanted to be with you. Your father, too. She loved you both, more than you can possibly imagine. She wouldn’t let go. If anything, that was her weakness. It was the one thing she couldn’t do.”

I shake my head, and she grabs my face with both hands.

“Callie,” she says. “Oh, Callie. You know I’d stay with you if I could, don’t you? You know I love you, don’t you?”

And somehow, the tenderness in her voice hurts even more than the barbed words I’ve been using to torment myself. I nod, and swallow again, but it’s no good. The sadness is swelling and breaking apart and rising inside me, unstoppable as the tide, and then she’s putting her arms around me while I cry against her chest.

THOUGH HE HASN’T SAID SO,
it’s obvious that my father expects the worst: depression, desolation, the kind of weeks-long relapse and brutal, strangling attacks that a change like this would have brought in the past. He’s scheduled an appointment with Dr. Sharp for later this week, telling me that it’s “for safety’s sake.” As though the air itself might turn toxic, now that Nessa is gone.

I can feel his worried eyes, looking me over, as I say good-bye to my friends and exit the school gate to where his car is waiting. I force myself to smile breezily and wave.

I wish I could explain to him—tell him that it’s my heart, not my lungs, where it hurts—but he wouldn’t understand.

—

The good-bye was hard. For what it had been worth, in the months that Nessa was here, we’d become a family, if a flawed one. At the airport, even my father had leaned in, so stiffly and reluctantly that I half expected his joints to make a creaking sound, and given her a real, actual hug.

“Thank you for all your help, Nessa,” he’d said, then grudgingly added, “I actually don’t know how we would have managed if you hadn’t shown up.”

“You’re more than welcome, Alan,” she’d replied, and then met my eyes over his shoulder and discreetly mouthed the words,
Holy fucking shit.
When she wrapped her arms around me a moment later, I couldn’t stop laughing even as my eyes swam with tears.

I thought of the last time we’d said good-bye, the way that I’d buried my face in her skirt and the way that she’d somehow predicted the miserable future ahead of me.
God knows how your daughter will suffer,
she’d said. But this time was different, both of us older, more stoic, bolstered by the promise of future visits on the horizon. When we hugged, the tawny curve of her shoulder came to rest just under my chin.

“I’m really going to miss you.” I gulped.

She squeezed me tighter, bringing a hand up to stroke my hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father cast an uncomfortable look at us—clutching, crying, the kind of sloppy emotional mess he could never quite understand—and feign a sudden interest in an advertisement for tanning lotion on the wall ten feet away. The sight of him, the knowledge that this would be the sum total of my family with Nessa gone, made me start laughing again, made me cry even harder.

“Shh,”
she whispered, combing her fingers through a tangle just over my ear. Her voice broke. “Oh, Callie, don’t cry! If you cry, I’m going to cry, and then your father is going to think we’re hysterical and call the police.”

“Just take me with you,” I joked, still sniffling. “Put me in your suitcase. Your purse. Your pocket. Anything.”

She shook her head, pulling me close with all her strength, and said, “You know I would if I could.”

“Now.” She smiled, stepping back to hold me at arms’ length. “Let me take a good look at you. I know you won’t believe me, but you’ve become a really striking young woman, you know that?”

I shook my own head in return, wiping my nose on my sleeve and doing my best to smile. “Yeah, I’m sure I’m painfully sexy right now.”

We stood like that, eyes and hands locked together, until a speaker crackled overhead and a disembodied voice announced that the flight to Los Angeles was now boarding. She picked up her bag. She hugged me for the last time.

“I’m so proud of you, baby,” she said. “Take good care of yourself, okay? And that boy—”

“I know,” I replied, squeezing her back. “I’ll be careful.”

“Good,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “But have fun, okay? After all, you already have a perfect prom dress. You wouldn’t want to waste the chance to wear it.”

And then she stepped backward, a space opening between us. I fought back a fresh surge of tears as I realized it would only get bigger.

“When will I see you?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, sweetheart,” she answered, and took my hand. Her face was strong, serious. “But don’t worry. I love you, Callie. I’ll send you a letter.”

“I’ll send you one first.”

—

My father drives home in thoughtful silence, both of us sinking into the expensive leather luxury of his SUV as I stare out at the bursts of lush, green growth that seems to have exploded on the roadside overnight. The trees are heavy with foliage, puffed up and thrusting against one another in search of space and sunlight. When the car rolls to a stop, I step out and bypass the porch stairs to cross the lawn, to slip between the trees, down the dock to the water. The sun has dipped away, leaving a pinkish glow in the west and the water shrouded in deep green shadow. In the early evening stillness, the faint, sweet note of honeysuckle appears like a breath on the air and then vanishes before I can inhale again. It’s so pretty, a perfect spring evening, and Nessa is missing it.

Bee is perched out on the farthest point, wearing a bright orange-yellow bathing suit with a frilly skirt. She bounces toward me, a tiny golden ball of butter-colored energy, and I smile at her in spite of the sadness blooming in my chest.

“Did your auntie go home?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, dropping down to sit beside her.

“That’s too bad,” says Bee, climbing into my lap with matter-of-fact affection. I cinch my arms tightly around her, grateful, not even minding the way her weight makes the sharp wooden edge of the dock bite deeply against my thighs.

“It is too bad,” I agree.

Bee leans against my shoulder.

“I liked her. She was pretty.”

I laugh. “She still is. What are you doing down here, anyway? Playing with Barbie again?”

One chubby hand lifts up, index finger extended. She points down to the glassy surface of the water, to the place where the river curves away.

“I was watching. They left,” she says. “They all went down away there, to the ocean.”

“Who did?” I ask. And when she tells me, I find myself fighting back tears that sting even more brightly and taste even more bitter than the ones I’d shed at the airport.

“The manatees. They’ve gone home.”