The Story of Us (36 page)

You do them wrong, they move on. They do you wrong, you move on. In the grand scheme of things, what do chewed underwear really matter?

You say this is not about forgiveness. Your last letter: “It’s not about you being sorry enough. It’s about you being ready enough.”

But maybe, Janssen, this is what I’m most sorry for?

Love always,

Cricket

“It sounds like the air force descending,” Dan said. He opened the living room doors. The rain was falling furiously. The full thunderous clatter of
THWUP! THWUP! THWUP!
rushed in.

“All those years in the military for our man, Randy. I think it brings back the good old days,” Ted said.

The noise brought everyone downstairs. Gram and Aunt Bailey in their matching robes, and Grandpa and George and Amy and Hailey and Gavin. I didn’t know where Oscar and Natalie were—probably making out in Natalie’s room. Who cared about a military takeover when you were in love? Jane and John appeared, with a sleepy Baby Boo on Jane’s hip. Jupiter began to bay and howl at the noise. Her warning cry. The cry meant for coyotes and mountain lions. Dangerous invaders. I picked her up, tucked her under my arm. She yelped
when I picked her up. A cry of pain that surprised me. I must have gotten that tender place under her arm.

“Sorry, sweetie.” I kissed her head.

“Are we being attacked?” Gram said. With the door open she almost had to shout. The wind and rain were blowing in. Dan stood on the deck watching now. The wind blew a paper napkin off the table. Cruiser trotted out to the deck and was watching the helicopter too, his chin up toward the sky, eyes fixed. It was the same thing Jupiter did when she tried to catch flies.

“Fool to take a chopper out in this weather,” Grandpa said.

“Some idiot didn’t think it could wait until tomorrow,” Ted said.

“Well, I’m glad that’s all it is,” Jane said.

Rebecca was there now too. Ted folded his arms when she came in. She stood away from him, looking out those windows. “Good thing there are so many more sane ways to get to Bishop Rock and that Randy’s business is generally bad. We don’t have to live with this often.”

Ben had gone outside to watch, and he stood beside Dan Jax, and Mom did too, and so did I, with Jupiter still tucked safely under my arm. Randy’s place was next to Bluff House, and we could see straight across to that flat roof. The helicopter looked like a sci-fi creature with its large glass nose and beaming headlight, its spindly legs wobbling and then alighting on the roof. The blades spun awhile before stopping.

“Cool,” Ben said. “Never seen something like that so close before.”

“It’s freezing out here,” Amy said behind me. “We’re getting drenched.” I didn’t know she was there. I didn’t know
everyone
was there. We really weren’t getting all that wet—the rain had turned to a drizzle—but the wind kept on. The door of the helicopter lifted up when the blades had stilled.

“It is an action movie,” George said. “Now the spy from the United States of America will step out with his briefcase of important documents.”

“I saw that one,” Gram said.

“That’s not a spy,” Dan said. His voice sounded funny.

“Dan?” my mother said.

“That’s not a spy,” he said again.

It was a woman. Wearing a big parka and high heels. She was speaking to Randy, and he was gesturing in the direction of Bluff House.

Suddenly Dan was shouting. “Gayle! Goddamn it, Gayle, is that you?”

“Mom?” Amy said.

“What?” my mother whispered. “What! No. You’ve got to be kidding me. This isn’t happening. This. Is. Not. Happening.”

“Oh. My. God,” Hailey said. “My crazy mother. That’s my crazy mother! Gavey, what did I tell you?” She stood at the deck rail and shrieked. “Go home, Ma! Go home! We’re fine, see! Fine!”

The voices were lost in the thick tunnel of wind. The woman didn’t even look over.

Dan, though—he began to run. Down that boardwalk, down that beach. I had wanted him to do something, and that’s what was happening, all right. I’ve never seen him look like that, so furious. I didn’t know he could even get truly angry—it was one of the things I liked about him. But it was there now. Anger, and decisiveness. Needed action.

The waves were crashing white against the dark shoreline. I’d lost all track of time. It had to be quite late now. I watched Dan’s determined figure stride across that beach. But it was my mother who made me do what I did next. Her face—crushed, fallen. It looked like defeat. The face of someone who had given up.

“I can’t believe this,” she said. “This is
nuts.
This is
too much
.”

I made my way back through the group. Me, with my dog still under my arm. I needed to get inside. Away. I got the hell out of there. I heard Ben say, “Hey, George. Better than a spy movie, eh?” But I didn’t feel like joking. Farthest thing from it. It
was
too much. She was right. I felt the landslide—the ripples building on ripples, the rock pushing against rock, until the cracking, roaring crash became inevitable. The polite image of a balloon tied to the ground with strings—it shattered in natural disaster, the crashing roar of avalanche, and the strings were yanked from the ground with the endless and insistent forces of change. Because the rain
keeps falling, and the wind keeps blowing and the sea keeps making small shoves of water against sand, change, change, change, and there was not a thing you could do about it.

I went to my room and slammed the door. I put my face against Jupiter’s body. Maybe safety was only a creation of our imagination. I smelled Jupiter’s comforting wet-wool-blanket smell. I could feel her heart beating. She looked at me with concern. Her eyes said,
I am worried.

I found my phone. And then I called my very own Janssen Tucker. I did. There he was. His same, familiar voice. I wept. I could barely talk, I was sobbing so hard. I was filled with sudden, crashing grief. I was saying the most important thing, asking the biggest question.
How,
I cried,
how am I supposed to do this without you?

I was awakened the next morning by a knock at the door.

“Crick?”

Ben.

“I’m sleeping.”

“Do you know where Mom is?”

I sat up. I saw Jupiter over there, looking up at me without lifting her head. She was tired from being up late last night too. “Don’t say this. Don’t say you can’t find her.”

“Dan woke up, and she wasn’t there. He was wondering if I’d seen her.”

I scrambled out of bed, flung open my door. Ben—for all of his easy, let-it-go advice, he looked troubled. He was
still wearing the same clothes from the day before. He was unshaven, and his eyes were bleary. “Wedding day,” he said.

“Shit, Ben. Shit.”

“I know.”

“We would have heard that helicopter leave, for one thing,” he said.

I pulled a sweatshirt over my head. I clipped Jupiter to her leash. I had the irrational thought—maybe we should look in the same places Charles had hid, the places even small people know to seek for escape.

“She probably just went to get coffee,” Ben said.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

“Dan was just wondering if I’d seen her. He isn’t even concerned. We don’t need to get crazy. We don’t need another Baby Boo search party.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said again. And then I did something I hardly ever do. I stood on my toes and kissed his cheek, and he crooked one arm around my neck and gave me a hug.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “She has her own reasons.”

“Maybe I just want to see her off,” I said.

The house was quiet; only Dan was awake, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, innocent about the changes barreling his way. I felt bad for him. Mom’s first good guy, and he was about to get his heart broken. I snuck out without going in to see him. I didn’t like the feeling of knowing his future
when he didn’t. I was the doctor with the cancer diagnosis before the patient knows anything is wrong.

Outside, the air felt different. Calm, as if the hard wind had blown something bad away. The fog was jogging past, revealing spots of blue in the sky that meant a sunny day was on its way. The waves twinkled with merry mischief. The storm had brought in all kinds of shit at the part of the beach where wet met dry. I saw a rubber boot and a Coke bottle, the lid of a cooler. It’s like the sea had spit out all the garbage and was now feeling better.

I waited for Jupiter to sniff for the right pee spot and squat for what seemed a very long time. Her legs were shaky again. Her little white spot on her back, which always looked so proud, seemed small and unsure. I’d have to tell Mom about her legs. Her old age was catching up, I guessed. It was hard to watch.

I looked over at Randy-the-Ex-Marine’s house. I tried to see if the helicopter was still in its place, but the slope of the cliff made it impossible. Ben was right, though—you couldn’t have missed the noise of it taking off. Still, I headed toward that house. I could picture the scene—my mother there with her bag and her purse slung over her shoulder. Her wallet would be in her hand, and she’d be taking out the bills to pay for the ride out.

I didn’t even know what had happened the night before. I’d forgotten to even ask Ben. Amy and Hailey might be gone already, sleeping soundly in one of Bishop Rock’s B and B’s
with their mother watching over them, preparing to head back to Vancouver.

I walked in the sand, concentrating on our path—I didn’t want to lead Jupiter over broken shells or driftwood logs. I was so focused that I didn’t even see the figure a short distance away. The figure heading back toward Bluff House.

“Cricket?”

The voice startled me. I was so sure about what was going to happen. But I looked up, and there she was, our mother, bundled up in Dan’s sweatshirt, her cheeks rosy from the morning walk.

“Where you headed?” she called.

It was as good a question as any. The best question.

I looked down at her hands. I didn’t understand. They were empty except for a whole sand dollar that she must have found on her walk.

Jupiter was pulling at the leash, and I let it go so that she could run to my mother, who scooped her up. It struck me how the ocean had spit out all that junk, but, too, a whole sand dollar. Other treasures, likely, as well. After all this mess, there were no bags in my mother’s hands. How do I explain this feeling? It’s like my heart opened up and out, and everything I’d been holding released. Relief, sorrow, but joy, too. I had to sit down right there on a big flat sandy rock.

“Ah,” I said. It wasn’t too different than the cry I heard Ted make in the bathroom. “You’re getting married today. Still.”

Her face turned concerned. “Cricket, yes. What did you think?”

I put my head down, looked at my sandy shoes. I had gotten this so wrong. It’s hard to see clearly when your eyes are squinched tight out of fear.

“What did you think?” she said again, and then she understood. “Oh.” She sounded hurt. She set Jupiter down and sat beside me. I scooted over on my rock to make room. Jupiter sniffed happily at a clump of seaweed.

“Cricket, there were reasons before. Really good reasons.”

“There are reasons now,” I said.

“There’s a
problem
now, one that Dan and I can handle. And there are a million more reasons why this is the best decision I’ve ever made.”

“So you’re not going to take off to Tahiti by yourself?”

She narrowed her eyes at me like I’d gone mad and she was trying to figure out exactly when that had happened. “Tahiti? Why would I go to Tahiti by myself?”

“To enjoy the blessed isolation.”

“Cricket, you lost me,” she said. She dug her feet in the sand, buried her toes.

“That pamphlet in your purse.”

“What were you doing in my purse?”

“Aspirin.”

“I don’t know of any pamphlet. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Wait. Tahiti? Did it have
gum
stuck in it?”

Oh no. Oh, how we could get things wrong.

“Dan and I went to this travel agent to see if we could even afford to take a trip. I was sick of my gum by the time we got out of there. Jesus, Cricket.”

I was silent.

“Okay, I know what you thought. I’m sorry you thought that. But, Cricket, I love Dan. I’m committed to Dan. Dan and I are right together.”

Wait—last night. “What about Amy? What about the helicopter?”

“Dan told Gayle she needed to leave. Amy decided to go with her mother.”

“No.” I groaned.

“Cricket, it’s okay. It’s too bad, but okay. Dan is fine. He’s hurt, but he can handle it. Amy will do what she’ll do right now, but Dan won’t let it get in the way of our life together. He’s taking care of it. That’s all I can ask for.”