Stay (35 page)

briefly before they got married. I was at the wedding.”

“She was some depressed person?” My voice sounded small.

It started to waver. I felt small.

“Sometimes. You felt how delicate she was. These tiny

wrists . . .” She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger.

“He liked that, I think. It made him feel . . .
large
. Not just his

physical size, yes? But his
being
. ”

50 Everyone in this story, in my life, makes tea.

* 276 *

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Maybe I knew how that felt. I had once felt large and powerful

with Christian. “What happened, then? If he liked it so much?”

She thought. She spoke gently. “Maybe he stopped feeling

large. Maybe he just felt, I don’t know. Perhaps burdened.”

“I never saw her that way in my mind.” I saw her the way

she was in photographs—that black-and-white one of her and

my father standing on a bridge somewhere. It is raining and

her eyes are closed, but her chin is lifted up to him as if she is

feeling the rain and feeling his presence at the same time. It

looked like joy.

“And she wasn’t always that way. A person is never always

one way. She laughed—a beautiful laugh. She looked deeply. She

had an eye for photography.”

“I knew that.”

“An excellent cook. One time I visited she made a cheese

soufflé, though, and it failed miserably and it looked like she

was about to cry. The table was set with these colorful mats and

homemade breads . . . She was so mad at herself, and he pulled

down cereal boxes and set them on the table. Instant oatmeal, too.

Bowls, a carton of milk. He wanted her to laugh. He told her only

the company mattered. He seemed to really love her, Clara. You

ought to know that.”

“What he did was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“What she did was wrong.”

“Very.”

“Why did she do it, Annabelle?”

“There are just no answers for some things,” Annabelle said.

* 277 *

Deb Caletti

Grief rose from somewhere deep down, filled my throat, my

eyes, rose like some old, old wave that had been waiting until now

to break. It hurt so much.

“Oh, Clara,” Annabelle Aurora said. She put her arms

around me. I cried into her shoulder because it was the shoul-

der of a woman, a mother’s shoulder. I sobbed there. “Clara,”

she said.

“Didn’t she love . . .” I couldn’t say it. I needed to know. “Me?

Didn’t she love me?”

“Honey.”

I couldn’t get my breath. The grief came and came. “It wasn’t

enough?” I didn’t say the word.
I.

“Nothing can be enough sometimes, for some people.

Nothing.” She held my arms and looked me straight in the eye.

“You know this. You’ve seen it.”

She held my hands. Old Annabelle Aurora, with her odd

and unknown relationship to me, my father, my family. Still, I

strangely felt her presence there for me. Her solidity. Her love,

even. Maybe this is what she gave my father.

“Why didn’t he tell me?” I needed to know this. She would

know why.

“Maybe he didn’t think he could stand to see what I’m seeing

right now,” she said.

“Finn’s been trying to call you,” Cleo said. She chewed on the end

of a straw that was stuck in a paper Coke cup. “He was worried

when you didn’t come by this afternoon. They’re not going out

tonight. Too windy. He went over to the pizza place to get some

* 278 *

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dinner. Then he was going to head home. Shit, man, you look

awful, no offense.”

“One of those . . .” I didn’t know what to say. “Days. Maybe

I’ll try to catch him.”

“Good idea,” she said. “Vince’s? Pizza place around the corner?”

I felt frozen, though. I stood there and looked at Gulliver,

who stared off into the distance as if pondering the meaning of

his life.

“My stalker,” Cleo said. Then, “Oh, shit, I’m such a fucking

idiot. I’m sorry.”

“You heard, I guess,” I said. I didn’t know how I felt about

this. I felt a flash of something. Anger, maybe. It was my private

life. My business.

“Sweetie, I think he’s told everyone on this street to make

sure they keep an eye out for this asshole. Finn looks out for the

people he loves.”

The anger left as quick as it came. You could care enough to

keep a secret, but you could care enough to tell one, too.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

I wanted to see Finn so badly right then. The dock was a clang-

ing racket of noise—metal sail rings banging against masts, the

sloshing of boat bumpers against dock, a high whistle of wind. I

wanted to hurry, too. The wind made me want to hurry. There were

only a handful of people out, and no one was in Vince’s except the

people who worked there and Finn, who sat in a booth. This is

what you did in a storm, I guess. You stayed home. The waitress

at Vince’s sat at a counter stool, watching the television above the

bar. Some news story about the weather. A reporter stood behind a

* 279 *

Deb Caletti

microphone, her hair blowing. Finn held his phone, tapped a mes-

sage. I surprised him—he looked up at me and smiled big.

“I was just sending you a text.”

“I’m so glad,” I said.

“Clara? Are you okay?”

“Too much is happening.”

“Okay. Wait.” He slid out of the booth, walked up to the wait-

ress, and spoke to her. She got up, went in back. Finn returned.

“We’ll get it to go, all right?”

“All right.” He put his arms around me. We stood there

in Vince’s with its red plastic tablecloths. I set my head on his

chest.

We stayed there a while, until Finn said, “Ready.” I followed

him to the counter where he paid and was handed the box. We

walked out together, my arm linked in his. The wind picked up.

My hair blew in my mouth.

“Too cold out here,” Finn said. “Want to go to my house?”

I wanted to be alone with him. I didn’t feel like being polite

to mothers or brothers or neighbors we might meet. “My car?”

I said.

“Alone,” Finn said. He got this.

I nodded. I led us to where I had parked. I unlocked the

doors, and after we got in, I locked them again.

“Did I tell you this was my favorite restaurant?” Finn said. We

put our seats back. He balanced the box between us. “You want

some dinner?”

“You go ahead.”

He put a slice on a napkin. I remembered Christian then, in

* 280 *

Stay

front of the fireplace at my house.
Let’s try to think of every time we

ever ate pizza.

Every time?

Every
.

Christian had been smiling. And then,
Pagliacchi Pizza. In

the car, with . . . Wait. It’s not my turn.

I remembered the way his face had changed. The way it

went from beautiful to something I wanted to run from.
I just

can’t stand the thought of your mouth on someone else’s. Let alone

anything
else
.

“Not hungry?” Finn said.

“Tired,” I said. “Too much.”

He folded the rest of his slice into his mouth, put the box into

the backseat. He pulled me close. “I think I’ll keep it for later.

Come here.”

I maneuvered. “It’s tricky.”

“Ow—you okay? Look, we fit.”

He set his hand against my face, pulled me softly to his chest

so that I could rest there. He rubbed my head, the way you might

to get a baby to sleep. I didn’t want to talk to him and tell him

what I had learned about my mother. I didn’t want to talk at all.

I thought my father was right, then, that sometimes there were

too many words and too many feelings spilled. I just wanted to

be there with Finn. His Finn-ness was better than a mountain of

spoken feelings.

I watched the trees shaking off the wind. A few fat splatters of

rain dropped on the windshield and the hood of the car.

I thought of another car, another night.

* 281 *

Deb Caletti

I don’t want to lose you.

Why would you lose me?

“Clara?” Finn whispered. “I know we’re just getting to know

each other, and you’re not supposed to say big things, and there

are all these rules around that, the no-freaking-someone-out

rules, you can’t love someone so soon rules . . . I’m not making

any sense probably.”

I didn’t say anything. I just kept my head still, felt his chest

moving up and down. “But you know what? Shit happens, too,

and I keep walking around lately knowing how fragile everything

is since my dad died, how fast it goes, how quickly things can

change, and so I’m not into bullshit games and rules anymore,

okay? I want to let you know that whatever the word is that’s more

appropriate than love right now… I whatever-that-word-is you.”

I smiled into his chest. “I whatever- that- word- is you, too,”

I said.

He kissed me then, and I kissed back, and it was some

strange mix of heartbreak and joy and past and present and life

rushing in without words to explain it. Just, big. We shifted and

I faced him and he held me and we just kissed for a long time,

and he pushed the collar of my shirt down so that one shoulder

was bare and he kissed it too, like it was a precious thing. I unbut-

toned his shirt and put my face against his chest, and that’s all

that we did. If anyone was watching right then, they would have

seen my bare shoulder, his mouth against my skin, but there was

nothing else. It could have looked like there was, but there wasn’t.

After a while, we separated. It seemed better to keep wanting

more than to have too much.

* 282 *

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“Can I come over later tonight?” Finn asked. “Maybe after

you guys eat?”

“That would be great,” I said. It would. I couldn’t stand the

thought of Dad and I alone together all night with our history

between us.

“You should stay tucked in. It’s supposed to be real y bad tonight.”

“Maybe you should stay tucked in.”

“Sailors are used to weather,” he said.

“Look how dark it’s getting,” I said.

We untangled. I drove Finn home. When we left, the marina

parking lot was empty. I didn’t see any other car there. I thought

it had been empty all along. But love can wrap you up tight inside

love. It can be hard, then, to see a long distance off.

* 283 *

As soon as Finn closed the car door, I felt it—the

worming finger of unease. I looked all around, but there was

only Finn’s regular street, a row of mailboxes standing like duti-

ful soldiers, his neighbor’s wisteria snowing white flower petals

in a sudden gust of wind. A flash of something? No, just a dog

running home as the rain started to fall and splat hard on the car

roof and the asphalt and the lids of garbage cans.

The sky had gotten so dark with thick clouds that Dad’s

automatic headlights came on. The drops of rain were the fat,

insistent kind. Then, a deluge, and I had to drive slowly out

of town and back to our house. The pummeling rain stopped,

and for a moment the clouds cleared and you could see a crack

of sunlight and then it was gone again. The black clouds kept

rolling in; you could see the next ones approaching, filling the

Stay

sky once more, an endless stampede, like a pounding, resolute

cloud-migration over flat land.

I was driving through the dunes now. Cloud shadows

skimmed over the grass. Something heavy sat inside me, some-

thing next to the boulder of sorrow. Dread, and maybe knowing.

You don’t usually feel fate until you see evidence of it afterward,

but then I felt fate moving and it moved like those clouds did,

definite as they were. It was full like those clouds, as well of some-

thing needing release. I wondered—did Jennifer Riley feel this,

too, when she stood on the muddy banks of Greenlake? Did my

father, the night he and my mother were at that beach house? Did

he feel it as he sat there holding his drink; did he see fate there in

the way she stood, in her eyes, the way her hip leaned against the

doorframe? Or did he only recognize it afterward?

I saw our house sitting at the edge of Possession Point, all

the lights off. I parked in the gravel driveway, turned the engine

off. The house looked still, empty. I walked quickly to the door

and found it locked. My hand shook with the key in it, and

once inside I shut the door and bolted it again behind me. I felt

stupid, because my heart was beating. I wondered, too, if my

mother did not see fate but felt it moving inside of her, held in

her grasp, ready to do her bidding. If she felt it rising up within

her like some welcome rage, a release of jealousy and too much

pain as he sat there with his scotch. The thought of it, even