The Story of Us (9 page)

Amy smiled. Dan shut his eyes briefly as if hoping to find strength behind his eyelids.

This was going to be the longest week of my life.

We rented mopeds at the Bishop Rock Moped Shack, and followed behind Gram and Aunt Bailey, who were ticking along at five miles an hour. I couldn’t really concentrate on the scenery because I was too worried about the way Aunt Bailey was screaming and then swerving toward the edge of the road whenever a car came. The edge, too—it went straight down a sheer rocky cliff toward the sea, and I had visions of a happy trip turned film noir. The twisted metal of a pink moped, splayed daffodil limbs on the rocks. Jesus.

I scooted up next to Ben. At five miles an hour, you could carry on an entire conversation on one of those things, as if you were sitting comfortably in a living room.

“Reminds me of you learning to drive,” I said. I went along once when Mom was teaching him, and I wore the
old 49ers football costume that Great-Grandma Shine had given him, helmet, pads, and all, which made Mom laugh and pissed him off.

“And who ripped the side mirror off the Bermuda Honda?” he said.

I shut up. Gram was getting too far ahead, and Ben was shouting at her to wait up, so obviously we were both worrying like parents whose toddler was walking too far ahead in a crowd. In town Gram put her turn signal on and then waited several weeks before pulling over. We all followed and parked behind her.

Gray hair curled under Gram’s helmet. Her face was rosy. She unstrapped that helmet like a pro, held it under one arm, same as a NASCAR driver.

“I stopped feeling my butt cheeks three miles back,” she said. “Who wants a Coca-Cola?”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Fine,” Ben said.

“I can’t hear what you guys are saying,” Aunt Bailey said. She was struggling with the clasp of her helmet.

“We were saying how our parents always liked me better,” Gram said.

Ben helped Aunt Bailey with the clasp. She finally got that helmet off, and shook her hair loose. She’d been watching too many shampoo commercials. “My keister is still vibrating,” she said.

We got Cokes in red plastic glasses at Butch’s Harbor
Bar, one of those cool places with the groovy beer signs of waterfalls that look like they’re moving. That had to have been Butch behind the bar. He winked at Aunt Bailey, which made her blush. Ben ate fried clam strips and french fries, proving for the millionth time that he was always hungry. He and Janssen were both like that, I swear. They’d eat a big breakfast, and a half hour later they’d be scarfing cold pizza from the fridge. Still, both of them were lean. Janssen had those great strong shoulders, but he was trim from all those hours in the pool, practicing with the swim team. I remember the first time I watched him, racing against some team whose name I forget. The way he got out of the pool. The way he leaped out, with water dripping off of him, standing there with confidence, no thought at all to the crowd’s eyes on him. Me, I could watch him forever, he was so beautiful. My heart was so full then, it hurt. His wet skin. As slick as a seal.
My
seal.

Gram and Aunt Bailey wanted to hit the shops, those cramped places with ceramic seagulls on rocks and glass floats held in nets. Ben and I were set free, and so we hit our respective gas pedals and headed out. For the first time you could see how beautiful the island was. Blue, twinkling sea set around the jagged curves; a lighthouse perched on one tip like a postcard picture. I breathed deep, salt air and sun, and I passed Ben just to be an ass, and he passed me to be a bigger one, and I started having a great time. We parked our mopeds by the lighthouse and sat out there on the grass, admiring the view.
He handed me his phone to take his picture. He wanted to send it to Taylor, a girl he was seeing back at home.

“Your ugly face is going to make her miss you?” I said. He actually looked great in the picture—blond hair, wavy, like Mom’s. He was starting to get tan.

“You’re just jealous because I got all the looks
and
the brains,” he said. “Want me to do your picture?”

“I don’t think Janssen would appreciate that.” I wrapped a piece of beach grass around one finger.

“Yeah, he would. I’m sure he’s going crazy not being here.”

“He tell you that?”

Ben held up both hands. “Don’t know the details, not my business. Just know how he feels about you. All of us. Mom getting
married
, and not being here. You know how he loves her.”

“Great. I feel like crap now.”

“Look, I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t care. As long as you two are happy. Together, not together, fine with me.”

“Did he tell you what happened? What I did? God. I am truly a fuck-up. A mess.”

“You were born that way. Hey, I don’t know anything. I don’t want to know. I’m just saying, it’s strange not having him here.”

It was tricky when your best friend was going out with your sister. But Ben walked this great line. He loved us both and didn’t discuss us with each other. He had lots of practice
keeping people separate, I guess. We’d both done the same with Mom and Dad. It was a skill. You had to have the firm tones and the patience of a recess teacher. If one veered too close to the other with questions or opinions—
Is your Mom still with that guy?
or
Fathers need to show up emotionally
and
financially,
you shut down the conversation as efficiently as Mrs. Johnson with her whistle on the Challenger Elementary School playground, separating Jason and Jared, who couldn’t play together without someone getting hurt.

“Well, you’re right about that,” I said. “It is strange not having him here.”

Ben got up, held out his hand to help me up too. “Let’s go buy some stupid T-shirts,” he said.

We went into the cool, musty lighthouse gift store, bought two
BISHOP ROCK ROCKS!
shirts from the girl that worked there. I went into the bathroom to put mine on. Ben took his shirt off outside and wore his. We thought we were hilarious.

I looked at Ben, straddling that moped, flinging up the kickstand with one foot. It made me think of him on his bike and me on mine. At our old-old house, even, the times we rode with Dad and Mom. And with just Mom, around the wooded trails. That time she screamed when she almost drove over a snake on the path.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Come on, what?”

I thought. “Not everything changes,” I said to him.

I expected some smart-ass remark. But he just looked at me calmly. “Some things never will,” he said.

When we got back, Gram and Aunt Bailey went to their rooms to clean up, and Ben went to his to take a nap. He slept as much as he ate, I swear. From my own windows I could see Dan Jax down there on the beach with Hailey and Amy. He was running back and forth, trying to get a kite to fly. He had his shorts and a T-shirt on, and his black hair was pulled back but was coming loose in frazzled strands. The kite would lift a foot or two above his head and then nose-dive into the sand. He was working so hard. I felt something I couldn’t name, maybe sadness, but not just sadness. The feeling you get, anyway, when you see good people trying and trying. Same as hearing Mom in the old days, too cheerful on the phone with the gas company, bill past due, or watching Janssen trying to change that tire when I got a flat one time, his face red and puzzled and the jack and hub cap and three of the four bolts lying on the street in the mocking way objects have after two hours of frustration.

Of course, now I needed to go out there. Goddamn it. I had always preferred the peace that came with doing the right thing, like it or not. My attitude had been bad, and probably needed changing. Hailey and Amy were the ones who lived away from their father, and I saw more of him than they did. Maybe that’s what made them seem clinging and unhappy. They were thrown together with us too, and my old T-shirt and jeans were as foreign to them as their pink, tight clothes
were to me. I hadn’t done much to help them feel welcome either, had I? Likely they were good people trying to adjust to something they didn’t ask for. The attitude I was feeling from them—well, what about mine? It could get complicated, maybe, to figure out who was rejecting who.

I trotted down the boardwalk. “Hey, guys!” I shouted.

“Cricket!” Dan’s face lit up. “We’re trying—”

Hailey’s hands were stuck deep inside her sweatshirt. “
He’s
trying.”

“No wind?”

“Too much, not enough,” he said.

Amy was throwing sticks down the beach for Cruiser, but when she saw me, she came running. She came up behind her father, stuck her fingers in his belt loops. “Dad!” she said, breathless. O-kay, I got the idea. He was hers. Might have been simpler to just urinate in a circle around him, same as the dogs. Her legs had sand on them, which she brushed off. She swatted at her ankles. “Something’s
biting
me.”

Cruiser ran up from behind us, full speed. He was dragging a rope of seaweed in his teeth.

“Eyuw, gross!” Hailey screamed, and dodged him.

“Drop it, Cruiser,” Dan said. His voice was husky. He sounded exhausted.

Cruiser dropped it. Then he started to roll in it. Dogs, they love their stinky stuff. We’d want to roll around in a summer day or new love or clover. But they want to roll around in glorious, smelly dead things.

“Sick,” Hailey said.

“You guys want to go to town or something? They’ve got the required beach town taffy shop,” I said.

“That’s a great idea!” Dan said. He patted me on the back. “You can take my car!” He was suddenly talking in exclamation points. Dan wasn’t usually an exclamation point kind of guy, but now he was throwing them like spears at the approaching enemy. He was someone who always tried hard. You got the feeling he was always trying to make a kite fly in no wind if it made other people happy. It made you wish he’d wake up one day, open his window, and see a hundred kites flying all on their own.

“We want to stay here,” Amy said.

“My phone’s about to die,” Hailey said.

“I can show you guys this rock cave I found yesterday,” I said. “Up the way from here. Very Hardy Boys. Totally cool.”

Nothing. I tried a different approach.

“A long walk in the sand is great for leg toning.”

“All I’ve been doing is sitting around, eating,” Hailey said.

“Great!” Dan said. “I can see how your mom and Rebecca are coming along.” He clapped his hands for Cruiser. “Come on, boy!” Cruiser ran full speed forward, had a little trouble stopping. Man, he looked happy. He loved it out there.

“We’ll be fine.” Hailey sighed.

Amy carefully brushed sand from her legs but didn’t say a word. “Come on!” I said. Awkward silences could bring out my inner camp counselor. It was Mom’s optimism coming down
the genetic line, taking a left turn and becoming some twisted belief that you could cover up most shit with enthusiastic effort. Or maybe I’d learned this from Jupiter. She did the same thing every morning in the front yard.

I watched Dan Jax walk up the boardwalk to the big white house. His head was down. His shoulders sloped like lonely desert hills. His ponytail, usually buoyant and cheerful, was riding as low as a dragging tailpipe. If a ponytail could be defeated, it was. All that kite flying had tired him out. He had one hand on the boardwalk railing to aid the climb up. I had always thought of Dan Jax as being a man of total commitment. Solid. He would stand by my mother’s side and never waiver, and if she herself did, he would hold her elbow firmly and guide the way. I guess I thought she had room to falter, because he never would. Same as me and Janssen, yeah. Same thing.

But Dan Jax’s bent shoulders reminded me of something. Something that made me feel suddenly unsettled. He was only a man, wasn’t he? He could fall too, if enough weight were loaded upon him. I realized it then: anyone,
anyone
, could buy a ticket and get on the next plane out. We don’t like to think it. No, better not to. But it came to me. I could be left standing there by myself. I could be the one holding a suitcase full of hope and ten days of clean underwear.

I used the trick I’d accidentally discovered when I got stuck being partners with Zoe Hammell for a junior year project on
the Middle East. Zoe was a golden wall of inapproachability; she’d never talk to me unless she had to, and her friends wouldn’t either. She smelled like nail polish and self-tanner, and her hair glowed. No matter what situation you’re in, just like dogs, there’s a hierarchy. You don’t understand the reasons for it, but it’s there, and I was somewhere in the middle, too average for Zoe Hammell and her friends, too boring. I’d had the same steady boyfriend for forever, and my friends liked their parents and we thought getting high was stupid. But we weren’t Shawna Jarredy and her group either. We didn’t wear creepy black felt fedoras and black vests and discuss fantasy books in odd but arrogant detail. We took AP classes and got grades that were good enough to get us into college but not so perfect that we’d become like that
other
group (which, let’s see, fell below us but above the Shawna Jarredys)—the isolated slaves of parental expectations.