The Story of Us (33 page)

We had anniversaries. That’s when we’d have our “fancy dates.” Like a married couple. Okay, maybe I liked those more than you did. And, sometimes, let’s be honest, we fought like a married couple too, didn’t we? Having the same arguments over and over again. About me not asking for what I want, about you not listening sometimes. We’d have those days where we just got irritated with each other. You’d pick around in the popcorn bowl, or I’d refuse to cross the street until the walk sign came on. I’d confess that I hated that T-shirt of yours with the guitar on fire. You’d wonder why I always waited until the last minute to get working on something. My mother told me that maybe we needed to spend more time apart, and we both got mad about that. This was what happened after you’d been together with someone a long time. You loved that it was old and worn and comfy, but sometimes it was old and worn and comfy.

Still. No matter what, I could always, always count on you to be there. I loved you. Love you.

Change—sometimes it’s some great big event, right? One major episode that means nothing will ever be the same. Birth, death, meeting you on your horse, a wedding, a hand striking, an announcement. But more often, I think, change is slow and quiet, it sneaks in like the seasons, where you don’t even notice the shift until the trees are all orange or snow is falling, or it’s so hot that you are desperate for a swim.

My senior year, though—I felt every shift of every season. How can I explain this to you? I noticed the first leaf that turned orange. I smelled snow in the air before it fell. I felt spring approaching under my skin, in my body somehow. I felt it all. You go, go, go, but sometimes you stop and it all catches up. You start thinking. You feel what it means to be alive and what it means for time to pass. That’s what happened.

We got rid of the Bermuda Honda. My mother had bought her beloved Jeep long before that, but the old Bermuda Honda was kept around for Ben and me, until one day every piece of it broke down, as if it had cancer or something, an illness that crept around and ravaged it. The cancer had spread to the brakes, then the carburetor, and then to the
back windows, which wouldn’t roll down, and the tires were balding and there were those bangs and bashes along its body where people hadn’t been careful with it.

That stupid car, that evil Bermuda Honda—it was still trying to get us, all the way until the end. It started emitting noxious fumes that probably would have killed us. The last ride was spent with the only working windows down, and it was probably a miracle that the car didn’t have the last word somehow, veering off into some telephone pole, or blowing up with us in it.

We took the car to the wrecking yard, the car cemetery, my mother called it, all that over-and-done-with glory and all those stories, buried in unmarked heaps. Every one of those cars once had the thrilling new upholstery smell.

And then we had it put to sleep.

I feel choked up to see it go,
my mother said.

I didn’t say what I thought—being sad to see the Bermuda Honda go was like being sad when Jon Jakes and his nasty kids left, but she had been sad
then, too. You’d think saying good-bye to crappy cars and bad relationships would be easy. Still, it’s a time in your life that you’re leaving. And you know what? Leaving that blue metal piece of shit gave me a lump in my throat too. I’d learned to drive in that car. That car played the starring role in so many of our stories, even though we hated the thing.

So, the Bermuda Honda was gone, and Jon Jakes and all of them were long gone, and Ben had moved out to go to college. One day Mom decided to paint our bathroom.
I realized it was still decorated for little kids,
she said. It was true. It had been decked out for years with our framed art: a crayon lizard Ben had drawn, clay masks I had made. Various objects were hanging from the ceiling—a papier-mâché globe I’d done in the fourth grade, and a mobile Ben had done in the sixth. Folded stars and origami dangled from strings.
I realized you guys were grown up,
she said.

I guess I realized it too.

It hit me, filling out those college applications. The year before, the idea of the future, of moving out—it was hurry, hurry, hurry! Get here! You
had shown me how it was done. Ben, too. It was natural, easy, except for what you both left behind. I saw Mom staring out the window of Ben’s room sometimes, and Mom and I would eat dinner standing at the counter every so often, like a couple of bachelors. Jupiter slept on Ben’s bed. I couldn’t just walk up the hill to see you whenever I wanted, but I could drive into the city and be in your dorm room within an hour, a private place, the two of us out in the world together.

You were a shield for me, even then. Even about change. I watched, and you made moving on look possible; it made me think it could be merely practical, a series of steps, forward motion that was only ever a welcome thing. You taught me that the inner shifts could be ignored. Or didn’t matter. Or didn’t exist. I didn’t see your inner shifts. Did you even have them? Was this a guy thing or a you thing? Both you and Ben moved on to the next stage of life without a tear or a hesitation. That you showed, anyway.

I thought that’s what would happen. I didn’t expect the interior noise, the clanging and banging that looming change brought. Or my bravado just wasn’t loud enough to cover it all up, like yours.

The college applications made it real, though. I filled them out, and it felt like I was going through the motions, faking this thing that was supposed to happen—going away to school, being a college student, moving out. Applying to out-of-state schools, places I didn’t know. Cities where there were no coyotes crying out in the night or the Taco Time right there on the corner where I knew it was, or where there was no little kiddie bathroom that had just been painted but still had the tack marks in the ceiling where the globe and the stars had hung. Where there was no you, a car ride away. Where my mother wasn’t in the kitchen, eating cookie dough from the bowl, talking to the dog so it wouldn’t look like she was talking to herself. Where would
us
go, all of us, where would home be, if we all weren’t here anymore?

The awareness slapped me, Janssen. I was faking it, but I knew it was real, too, a big huge real, sitting out there in a future that was tearing toward me, heels smoking from speed. Too-much-ness was hurtling my way, and the brave thrill of the year before seemed childish and naïve. I was putting stamps on envelopes and not wanting to put stamps on envelopes. I mailed those things with both a sick and excited feeling in my gut.

You … You had always made the future feel safe. As long as you were in it too, beside me, I could be okay. From first days of school, to awkward school dances, to scary, dark nights, to car trips when we were lost …

The future, this big step out of life as I knew it, the whole piece of childhood, I tried to keep it all at this shiny, golden distance. But the symbols of time passing were piling up. The last homecoming, the last holiday concert, the last, last, last. The bittersweet arrival of summer, the air smelling like warm cotton sheets. Prom, and there you were, looking so crazy handsome in your tux. We were there at home just before meeting Natalie and everyone. Mom was taking pictures and her voice was wobbly, like she might cry. I suddenly wanted to get rid of the dress and the hair and sit on the couch and watch movies.

These shoes are too high,
I said.

Those shoes are perfect,
you said.
You look like a princess.

Beautiful,
Mom said with her wobbly voice.
A grown woman.

I can’t walk,
I said.

Look,
you said. You held your arm out for me to take.
No problem.

And of course Mom had met Dan by then, and she was so happy and so in love, and they started talking about moving, getting married…. She was in her own world.
Everything
felt like an ending. I wished we could fight more, Mom and me. Don’t you think that would have helped? She was too happy to fight, and I was too scared. I want to say that everything was fading into the past, but it was actually fading into the future. I didn’t know whether to hold on tight or to let go. There were too many opposites at once, scenery speeding past, flying past, as if I were in a high-speed train. The desire to go, the desire to stay. My old blankie, my birth control pills. I noticed that my father was going gray.

No one talked about this. Did anyone else feel this? Of course they must have, I realize now. Because that’s what all the college drinking is about, right? The drinking and the eating disorders and the super-achievement or its opposite, the purposeful failure. It’s all about the
panic of time passing, the strings of a balloon being cut, the height.

But I didn’t know that then. I could only feel panic. What would happen to me at a distance? Would my safety net, you, my family, even be my safety net? Would I want a net at all?

And then came those acceptance letters. One here, one away. A choice. The crazy indecision. And then, that night. The night of graduation.

This is hard for me to write. But I need you to
understand
.

Most of my class had loaded onto the buses for the party, but I didn’t want to go, as you know. You know me and parties. We went out to dinner instead, a big family dinner, with Gram and Grandpa and Aunt Bailey, the whole gang, and then they all got into their cars and said good night, and you and I drove to Marcy Lake. My cap and gown were still in the backseat of your car. You brought a blanket, and we walked out to the dock, the same dock my mother and Ben and I sat on when midnight struck that one New Year’s Eve.

The night was warm. The stars were a billion brilliant speckles. The water smelled mossy and deep. Black, beautiful warm summer night. You spread out the blanket, and we sat. We looked out at the warm yellow lights of the houses all around the lake.

You kissed me. It was familiar, so familiar, but the big thing that just happened made it feel a little new. I felt the familiar stirring too. Want.

You did too. “Skinny-dip?” you said.

But I ruined the moment. Instead of being drawn further in to the summer night and the liquidy dark, my head was spinning with images of purple gowns and good-byes. Surprisingly meaningful ones, the sense of a bond to people I hadn’t even felt that close to, honestly, in the four years of high school. My heart was still thrumming with the excitement and the energy of the night. All those families and photographs. My father standing there with roses. The sad-happy, the thrill and high, the good-bye to teachers I cared about, more now that they’d be gone, and those stupid, boring hallways and lockers, and that cafeteria that all at once felt permanently memorable and somehow important.

“I only wish I knew what I was going to do,” I said.

“Cricket.” You groaned. “Not now …” We’d been through this a million times.

“No one else is this stuck,” I said.

“Lots of people are.”

“Did you see that program? Every single person had a plan. Where they were going, what they were doing.”

“Your name said ‘USC’ beside it. You looked decided too.”

“I don’t want to go to USC,” I said. “I just don’t want to. I don’t want to do something stupid, though. Where will home be if I go there, Janssen,
where
?”