Phantom Limbs (27 page)

“Oh, it’s awesome,” Jeff told her. “This place is really great. Thanks so much for including me.”

What a suck-up.

My mom slipped her sandals on. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she told me. “I need to borrow a pitcher from next door.” She paused to squeeze my shoulders for the briefest second before she went out the screened sliding door.
Yeah, Mom, I get it. Poor, sad, pathetic Otis.

“You excited to get your license, Otis?” Jeff asked. He picked tomato slices off his sandwich, which annoyed me. They were nice tomatoes. Ripe.

I shrugged. Of course I was excited, but I wasn’t about to share that with that patronizing jackass.

“Maybe I’ll get mine before you,” Meg said to me with a teasing smile.

“You on the road,” Jeff said to Meg, shaking his head. He turned to me. “She drove halfway here. Lucky we made it alive.”

“Ha-ha,” she said. “At least I have the navigation lady:
In four hundred feet, turn right.
” Damn, she did that voice dead-on.

As we ate our sandwiches, I spotted a bag of Meow Mix on the counter. “Did you bring Jasper?”

Meg nodded, popping a potato chip in her mouth. “Your mom said it was okay. I hope to God he doesn’t pee on anything.”

“Yeah, well, fingers crossed,” I said, finishing my sandwich and standing up.

“Where are you going?” Meg asked. Was it just wishful thinking, or did she look a little disappointed?

“I got some things in town. I want to make a folding mirror box for Dara.” I reached for a bit of crust Meg had left on her plate and popped it into my mouth. Jeff noticed, looking less than thrilled, so I took the other piece of crust she’d left, too, just to irritate him. Which was pathetic, because basically it was me taking exactly what was left to me: crumbs.

“But do you have to do it now?” Meg wiped her mouth and set her napkin down. “Come on, Ot — we just got here.”

And yet I’d already had plenty.

“Sorry,” I said, heading for the hallway past the laundry room, which led to the garage. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

IT WAS HARDER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD be, the mirror box. I sweated and toiled in the garage well into the afternoon, my ass going numb from hours on the rough wooden bench. I’d long since pulled my shirt off, and I used it from time to time to wipe my dripping forehead. It must have been a hundred degrees in there.

I thought about some of the things I’d read online recently, searching for good news for Dara. One thing that stood out was that phantom limb pains in many cases become fewer and further between over time. Optimism wasn’t exactly Dara’s specialty, with the single notable exception of her blind optimism where my swimming career was concerned. I wanted to give her reason for hope.

The finished box was not exactly fine craftsmanship, but it did what it needed to do. It folded up into a reasonable-size package. Smaller would have been better, but I had to base it on the size of the mirror I’d found. Unfolded, it was pretty solid, I thought. I hoped Dara liked it. I hoped it would get her through when I wasn’t there.

“Hey, you.”

Meg stood in the doorway in her bikini, eating blueberries out of her hand. She’d gotten a lot of sun — she glowed.

“I hope you wore sunscreen this time,” I said, stretching. My back ached.

“I did. How’s the mirror box coming?”

“Finished,” I said, nodding at it.

“Can I see?” Meg walked over and held out a handful of blueberries to me.

“My hands are dirty,” I said, holding them up.

“Open your mouth.” I did, and she tried to put the blueberries in, but most of them tumbled to the floor, making us laugh.

She slid in next to me on the bench and put her hand in the box, tipping her head to see the mirror better. She moved her hand around, watching. She turned to me. “You’re amazing.”

I waved her off.

“How does it work?”

I shrugged. “It’s an artificial visual feedback system, basically.”

“So it fools the brain into thinking the missing limb is there?”

“I guess.”

She nodded slowly, her eyebrows furrowed. “Like dreams?”

I squinted at her in confusion. “Dreams?”

She shook her head, embarrassed. “I guess it’s dumb. It’s just . . . sometimes I would dream about you, and it was like I was trying to bring you back because I missed you so much.”

That resonated instantly. It was what dreaming of Mason felt like.

“God, it’s hot in here,” she said suddenly. “How can you stand it?”

“Yeah, I’m dying to get in the lake.”

Her eyes flicked to my torso. “You’re giving Jeff a complex, you know. After seeing you with your shirt off, he said he was taking up swimming.”

I kept my smile on the inside.

“Hey,” she said, tipping her head. “I never got to hug you hello.”

“I’m all sweaty,” I warned, but she was already reaching for me.

And instantly things felt distinctly un-platonic. I was shirtless and she was only in a bikini. The apple scent of her damp hair mixed with the smell of the lake was intoxicating, like past and present and what I wanted for the future, jumbled confusingly together. I was too aware of the feel of her hands on my back, and the feel of her back under my hands.

I pulled away and started cleaning up the leftover bits of burlap and cardboard. She helped me gather the scraps.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked, scooping a pile of burlap strands over to join the pile I was gathering. Her sun-warmed arm touched mine.

“Sure.”

“It’s about something in my journal.” She stared at the worktable. “Freshman year, my English class went to a peach orchard for a unit on writing description. So we were supposed to soak up the details, taking notes and thinking about the colors of a peach or the sound of the equipment or whatever.” She played with a scrap of burlap, plucking out the threads one by one. “And all of a sudden I was crying.”

I craned my head to try to see her face, but she didn’t look up.

“Because there were these bushels of ripe peaches — ones that are too ripe to take to market, so they make jam out of them and sell it in the shop at the roadside. And, oh my God, the smell of them . . .” She shook her head. “It was the most intense, almost-perfumey peach smell — like, peach to the tenth power. I mean, it almost made me weak.” She finally looked up, and her gaze sent a jolt through me. “You know what I mean?”

I swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”

She looked away. “I wanted you to smell it.”

I exhaled, my shoulders going slack. “Meg. That’s happened to me, like, ten thousand times. Not being able to share things with you . . . We went to Paris for spring break freshman year. And we were walking to see the Eiffel Tower. It was night, and we had just left this perfect, warm little bistro where the lighting was all amber and the food was incredible — you would have loved it. And it was cold for spring — it was snowing a little, and the way the snowflakes looked in the light of the streetlamps . . .” I shook my head, remembering. “It was fucking magic. It should’ve made me happy, but all I could think about was how much I wanted to share it with you.”

Was that doubt on her face? Hope? “Really? Did you really feel that way?”

“Jesus, Meg,” I said, staring into her eyes. “All the time. Whenever something happened, my first thought was of you. The first time I won a medal at a swim meet, I was so happy — at first. And then I thought of you, and how I wished you could have been there to see it. . . . It’s like it didn’t mean as much without you.” I leaned against her a little, pressing my arm into her shoulder. “So, yeah. I do understand.”

“I wish I’d known,” she said softly.

“Would it have made a difference?” I asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. In fact, it felt kind of crucial.

She paused so long, I didn’t think she was going to answer. “I wish there were an easy answer to that question,” she finally said. She shifted, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Ugh, I can’t with this heat anymore,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her brow. “Wanna go for a swim?”

“In a minute,” I said, wanting to postpone the inevitable third-wheel-ness as long as possible.

“I think your dad’s grilling brats for dinner,” Meg said, getting up. “Your mom said she’s making potato salad. Do you think she’ll make the one with the blue cheese and capers?”

“Probably,” I said, standing up, too. “I doubt my mom would mess with your potato salad.”

She clapped happily. “We always have the best food here!”

I smiled at her — I couldn’t not. It made me happy when she was happy.

“That reminds me,” I said, tugging gently on a strand of her damp hair. “I brought you something from the Sugar Bear last night. It’s in the freezer.”

“What flavor?”

“Triple Caramel Vortex.”

Her eyes grew wide. She took my face in her hands and kissed me on the cheek, then pulled away, looking into my eyes. “You’re the best.” Then she turned and ran into the house.

Great — I was the best. For all the good that did me.

I headed inside and put the mirror box in my bedroom, then texted Dara:
I have a surprise for you when I get back.

She texted back right away:
Blueberries?

We always brought tons of blueberries back from Michigan — everyone got some.

I texted back:
Okay, two surprises.

She wrote back:
I like you.
And then she wrote:
My gf likes you, too.

Dara, with a girlfriend. Wonder of wonders.

I wrote:
So is this classified, you and Abby? Or can I tell Meg?

She wrote back:
Knock yourself out.

A rustling sound emitted from nearby. I crouched down and looked under the bed.

“Hey, Jasper,” I said.

He came out and rubbed against me.

When I eventually emerged from hiding, Meg was standing at the kitchen counter eating her ice cream from the carton while my mom made the potato salad. Meg had changed into a white sundress that showed off her deepening tan. Jeff was still outside, playing water Frisbee on the lake with Tommy and Stephanie. I sat at the table, petting Jasper, who had found his way to my lap.

“You put yogurt in it?” Meg said to my mom, scraping ice cream from the container and putting the spoon in her mouth upside down.

“Mm-hm, Greek yogurt. I used to use sour cream,” my mom said, scooping yogurt into the bowl, “but I discovered I prefer it with yogurt. Gives it a better tang.”

“And you’ll put in garlic, too, right?” Meg asked, peeking into the bowl over my mom’s shoulder.

My mom’s mouth curved into a little smile. “Yes, sweetie.” She gave Meg a one-armed hug. “Lots of garlic.” She kissed Meg on the cheek, then reached for the celery.

And I might have been okay. I might have been fine if Meg hadn’t turned to glance at me. But she did, and the fragile expression on her face made my heart split open. I realized how desperately she needed just that little bit of warmth from my mom. I wanted to hug both of them — my mom, who had been working harder than I would probably ever know to accept that what had happened hadn’t been anyone’s fault, and Meg, who had never done anything wrong but who had gotten such a raw deal. We all had.

When I looked over at my mom, her hands were resting on the counter and her head was lowered. She lifted a hand and wiped her cheek on the back of her wrist. She turned back toward Meg, then spoke in a strangled voice. “Forgive me, Meg.”

Meg’s face crumpled, and my mom reached for her, wrapping her in a hug.

I willed my eyes not to spill over. But the awful sound of my mom’s crying was more than I could take, more than I ever could take, and I turned my head to wipe my eyes on my T-shirt sleeve. When I looked up, Meg’s eyes were on me, bright and teary like the day she drove out of Willow Grove and out of my life. She and my mom clung to each other, the late afternoon sun pouring in on us through the sliding-glass doors.

Eventually, Meg and I left my mom to finish with dinner preparations. We wandered outside and down to the pier, barefoot. I dangled my feet in the water, but Meg held back. “Could you check for ducks?” she asked.

I sighed.

“Those things are vicious,” she insisted.

I rolled my eyes. We had been feeding some ducks, right here on this pier, feet hanging over the water, and an impatient duck had reached up and nibbled Meg’s toe. She had sprinted off, shrieking, as if she had narrowly escaped death.

She was just my total fucking undoing. I leaned over to check under the pier. “You’re safe.”

“Thanks.” She settled in next to me, her knees tan against the white of her dress. “Otis?”

“Yeah?”

“I miss Mason.”

I couldn’t respond. I was overwhelmed with the unexpectedness of it, how much it made me feel.

“I can still see him here, everywhere. In his booster seat at the table inside. In his little arm-floaty things right here.” She nodded at the water in front of us. “Eating s’mores and getting them all over his face.”

The ache in my throat grew.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Talking about him is so hard. But I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten him.”