The Story of Us (12 page)

“Typhoon?” Grandpa Shine said. “Oh, we were working hard. Wanted to see every inch of that course.”

“Your hat!” Mom said.

Grandpa Shine punched it back out again from the inside, where it had been dented in. “Right!” he said. “Look at that! Tossed the clubs right on it. Got carried away.”

“Hot day,” George said. He took a pinch of his shirt and waved it in and out.

“Golf is a rougher game than I thought,” Dan said.

“Oh, it’s a physical game, done right,” Grandpa Shine said. “The old farts with heart conditions need to respect that.” George smoothed down the back of his hair.

“Well, you be careful out there,” Mom said.

I had a Grandparent Moment at her words. You know the ones. Where you realize they won’t live forever, and you suddenly want them to know how much they mean to you. It’s a rush of guilt and goodwill. A collision of love and realization. “You know what I was just thinking about?” I said to Grandpa Shine. “The time you came and saved us when we got Jupiter.”

“Oh, don’t remind me,” Mom said.

“That damn car. Remember Christmas Eve?” he said.

“Don’t remind me of that, either,” Mom said.

I groaned. “My cello,” I said.

“Cello?” Dan said. “Any story with a cello ends badly.”

“Christmas Eve,” my mother said. “Bad time in my life. Divorce.” She looked at George to explain, and he nodded an
ahh
, as if he understood. George looked too innocent to understand the ugly corners of love. Valentine boxes in second grade, maybe, a crush on some little golfer girl.

“We were headed to Dad’s house for Christmas Eve. The car was packed with presents, some food we were bringing. During a Seattle
monsoon
! Driving on the freeway at night,” Mom said.

“The Bermuda Honda?” Dan said. He knew what that meant. “Oh no.”

“It stopped. I swear to God, the thing just
died. Again!
There was enough forward motion to pull over, and that was it. Christmas Eve, and no star of Bethlehem. BUT, an orange glow in the sky … The one way God looks out for me—,” Mom said.

“A 76 station,” Dan and I said together.

“I drove out to pick them up, and I get out there, and everyone’s drenched, and we’re moving all this stuff to my truck,” Grandpa said. “And I open the trunk, and on top of everything else, there’s a damn cello in there.”

“Cricket had just started playing, and she was going to perform for us after dinner. I swear, I’m about to lose it—that damn car
again
—but then it suddenly seemed like the most huge and ludicrous thing. A cello! I started laughing,” Mom
said. She was laughing now, too. “Cracking up. We laughed so hard. Jesus, I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.”

“I almost wet my pants. That car had a curse,” Grandpa Shine said.

“The cursed Bermuda Triangle, Automobile Edition, where odd and mysterious things happen,” Ben said. He was suddenly there, leaning in the doorway.

“And we went home and had Christmas Eve,” Grandpa said, and George smiled.

“And Cricket played that cello like an angel,” Mom said.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Ben said.

“Okay, maybe not an angel,” Mom said.

We were all laughing and smiling, and it was stupid, but I was worried. Jon Jakes and Vic Dennis and even my father were ditched the same as a professional hit man takes care of a body—with utter certainty and without hesitation. Clean. She put up with a lot of shit, but once she’d decided she’d had enough, it was over. But there’d been warnings. The final act seemed sudden, but the inner working of her mind left fingerprints and blood droplets. You’d hear music by angry chick singers playing with greater frequency in her car. She’d buy a
fuck-you
outfit, something she’d look great in and wear without him beside her. She’d sit alone and think too long. She’d spin a wineglass by the stem, and speak in double meanings.

We had dinner in the big dining room again. Gram’s cheeks got red with spicy food and cabernet, and Aunt Bailey was a
little tipsy too, laughing too much and flirting with George, who told us about his childhood in Chiba, Japan, and his trip here with his family. George was sweet. He made sure to hold the salad bowl for Aunt Bailey while she scooped, since it was heavy. He told her and Gram that two lovely ladies like themselves should have husbands, which was sort of an insult, but he meant well. He kept saying how beautiful everything was.

I lost all the ground that I’d gained that afternoon with Hailey and Amy, or else I was just too tired to give them the kind of attention that made our relationship work so well. They sat together near the end of the long table, twirling pasta on their forks, looking down on us like two ravens on a telephone line. Amy picked the mushrooms from her sauce and piled them up on her plate, and Hailey would whisper to her and she’d whisper back until Rebecca or Mom or Aunt Bailey would ask them a question and their heads would pop up, wearing tight, polite smiles. They were the kind of smiles that said,
I wish you’d curl up and die but I’d never, ever say so.

Sometimes you wanted more from people. I wished Jupiter would get
them
in line.

After dinner I headed to my room. I wanted to write to Janssen and tell him everything that had happened that day, but halfway there I changed my mind. I wanted to see the beach at night, I told myself, and myself told me what a liar I was. From the dining room I had seen the small bonfire, the orange glow that looked so inviting. I saw the figure there too.
Of course, I could tell who it was even from there. The short hair, the wide shoulders. That stupid-girl hot-guy reaction wasn’t me, though right then my body didn’t seem to know that. It was new, that want. But it felt safe to play with. Desire could feel like a demand, but I knew it wasn’t one.

It was cool outside. I should have brought a jacket. What I was doing felt wrong, but I kept stepping toward wrongness, kept picking at it, the way you pull a loose bit of yarn even though you see the sweater starting to unravel. That hot guy—well, I was stuck, and maybe he seemed like a way to shove myself in one direction or the other. You pull the bit of yarn and it unravels, and you either stop because you remember how much you love that sweater, or else you keep pulling, because it’s already ruined. But at least you
do
something. I could smell burning wood, and the ashy heat lifted up into the air and sent a swarm of firefly sparks dancing down the beach. I could hear the snap and pop of the fire as I got closer. He turned when he heard me.

“Hey, Cricket,” he said. He knew my name.

“Hey, Somebody with a Guitar,” I said.

“Ash,” he said. “Pull up a log.” He sat on a blanket, his back against a large piece of driftwood. His guitar was propped beside him like a shy friend. He moved it so I’d have a spot. I sat down. It felt close. Very close, closer than I’d been to anyone except Janssen. A male, non-related anyone. Oscar and Gavin, maybe, but they didn’t count.

The fire made my face burn hot. The waves slid across the sand, their foamy edges bright white in the moonlight. I felt
far away from Marcy Lake, where Janssen and I would sit sometimes at night, listening to crickets and watching strange insects dip down for drinks of murky water. I might as well have been in a different country, or in a different life altogether.

“You live here,” I said.

“I do.” He threw a stick at the fire and missed.

I responded with several highly intelligent statements. “Oh,” I said. “Wow.”

“Your mother getting married, or your father?”

“Mom.”

“When my father got married, they made us all go barefoot and throw pieces of paper with wishes for them into the sea.” He twirled a finger by his head.

“What was your wish?”

“I was, like, five. I think I wrote, ‘
No fighting
.’
F
-
I
-
T
-
I
-
N
-
G
.”

“That’s a good wish. Rebecca’s not your mom?” Well, obviously, if he was at the wedding. Oh, I can be an idiot when I’m nervous. Total lack of cool under pressure. It’s one of the things I like least about myself. Of course, I didn’t have much practice at this. You have a steady boyfriend, and whole rooms are closed off, red velvet cords across the doorway like in museums, so you can only peer in.

“Nah. See?” he said. He pointed to his skin, his chest, where it was bare under his gray sweatshirt. He was looking right in my eyes—and my heart, that traitor, pretended it was a fish flopping on land. “Brown.” He crooked his thumb to the house. “White. My other family is Puerto Rican.”

“Oh,” I said.

“San Juan. Not the San Juan with the pools and hotels, right? The
other
one. The one tourists don’t see. My mother is still there.”

“Do you get to see her much?”

“I’m going down there next month. See all the crazy relatives,” he said, but smiled.

“That must be hard. To be away. You must miss her.”

“Yep. I do. But she’s happy I’m going to school here. And Rebecca’s cool. Smokes way too much. I’ve been high on secondhand smoke since I was six, I swear. Still, she’s all right. And my dad does the usual ‘You got to think about your future, son,’ but he’s calmed down now that I’m going to college. I took a year off, you know. All that ‘What do I want to do with my life’ bullshit.”

“I know.” I did. You could be so sure about what you wanted. All senior year, it was all about getting
out
. But then, out … Out was a huge place. “Where you going?” I managed to make it sound casual. But I noticed the quick skip of worry I felt. I was thinking,
Far away.

“Seattle U. But don’t ask what I’m studying, because I have no idea. You’re supposed to plan your whole life right now? I don’t know what I want for breakfast tomorrow.”

“Same. Up until now I wanted to be an astronaut, a cowgirl, or an explorer.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Up until now you thought those things were
possible
.”

“Exactly.”

“Reality’s a bitch. Wait, now you. I hate people like, ‘Tell me more about myself.’ You in school?”

“Just graduated. Trying to decide. I’m holding a spot at two places. USC. U-Dub,” I said.

“Whoa. LA.”

“Yeah. Not sure, though.” I didn’t want to tell him or anyone else that LA, in my secret heart of hearts, sounded a million miles from home. You weren’t supposed to admit that. You were supposed to want the best school, no matter what. You were supposed to be
ready
. And you were supposed to
want
to leave. “And don’t ask me what I’m studying, because I don’t even know what I had for breakfast
today
.”

Ash laughed. “Pancakes.”

“Riiiiight,” I said.

“See? I can help you.”

I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

“You cold?”

“No, I’m great,” I said. I didn’t feel cold. I didn’t feel anything close to it.

“You shivered.” He unzipped his sweatshirt. Holy crap, the sudden view—just a tank top stretched across that chest, and the round, hard muscles of his arms. I mean, wow.

“Oh no, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.” But he’d already tossed it around my shoulders. It was warm from his body heat, and it smelled like he must smell—good, some musky soap. Really good.

We watched a solitary seagull taking a long walk down the beach. He looked like he had things on his mind. I stared at that leaping fire, looked into the deep, enchanting red, way down by the coals. I hated to admit it, but maybe Hailey was right about a guy’s sweatshirt, the way it could make you feel.

Behind us, from far up on the hill, you could hear a door slam. An angry shudder, maybe, or just the force of the wind.

“Ouch,” Ash said at the sound.

I looked at the house behind me, white in the moonlight, with the yellow glowing windows. I saw a light shut off. Nearly all my people were in one place.

“Hey, I’d better go,” I said.

“Yeah? Too bad.”

I tossed his sweatshirt across his lap. He stood when I did. He looked at me with those dark, intense eyes. “Hey, you can share my log anytime,” he said.

“Great,” I said. I don’t know. The way he looked—he seemed as dangerous to me as that ocean then, with its tides and undercurrents. With its wide possibilities, stretching to other unknown continents.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” I said back.

I turned to head home. But Ash called out.

“Hey, Cricket Girl,” he said.

“Hey, Ash Boy.”

“You seeing anyone?”

I didn’t know what to say. Janssen and I
were
and
weren’t.
We were in some relationship waiting room, with bad magazines and a clock ticking too loudly.