Chapter Nineteen
“Are you okay, honey?” His mother slipped an arm around him.
Lee leaned on the patio railing and showed her a smile he wasn’t sure he meant. “I’m okay, Mom.”
He stood as far as he could away from the steps. Away from the light that pooled out of the back door. He felt more comfortable watching from where he couldn’t be seen.
The backyard was strung with party lights. Smoke came off the barbeque and brought the scent of grilled steak all the way back to the house. Lee could hear talking and laughter, and someone’s kids squealing as they chased one another around the yard.
At the back of the yard, behind the tool shed, there was a wilderness. Kids were always drawn right to the narrow patch of untamed grass and creepers that hung between the back fence and the shed. It was a pirate’s jungle. It was an unexplored planet. It was a magical land. Lee had played there every day when he was a kid, until he hit adolescence. He had a sudden urge to see it now, but he didn’t want to thread his way through the party just to be disappointed because it wasn’t what he remembered.
Lee rested his beer bottle on the top of the railing for a moment. It had gone warm, and he’d hardly drunk any of it. He’d been carrying it like a prop. Can’t shake hands; I’m holding this beer. Can’t stop and talk; it’s a party—look, I’ve got a beer and everything. Here I am with a beer like a normal guy.
His mother released him. “Maybe you’ll want to come down and say hello to some people later.”
“Yeah, sure.” It surprised him how natural that sounded when he was already planning to sneak away upstairs and hide in his bedroom.
He’d overheard his mother on the phone earlier in the day. “Yes, he’ll be here, he got back last night. Just don’t bring it up, please.”
His parents had collected him at the airport. Between his escorts and his parents, he hadn’t had a moment to himself since Canberra. It had felt more like a hostage exchange than a homecoming. He’d given his mom the fuzzy koala toy he’d bought at the airport—the closest he’d made it to the real thing—and she’d burst into tears. Lee still wasn’t sure why. Relief or pity. He’d looked like shit, he guessed. He was so tired after everything—the inquiry, seeing Shaw, the flight back—that he’d ached all over. He could have fallen asleep on his feet in the terminal. He had fallen asleep on the ride home and woken up at one point to see the lights on the highway flashing past.
“He’s just tired,” his dad had been saying. “He’ll talk when he wants to talk.”
“I want my son back,” his mom had said.
Lee didn’t know where to find him.
“Okay, honey,” his mom said now and headed back inside to get the salads.
There were fewer than twenty people in the yard, but it might as well have been a crowd of thousands. These were the people Lee had known since he was a kid, the same people who came around every few weeks. The same people, he kept reminding himself, who had worn black at his memorial service. He didn’t feel ready to face them yet, and he wondered if he ever would.
Lee took a sip of his warm beer. It tasted sour. He left the bottle on the patio and slipped back inside. He headed upstairs, avoiding that squeaky third step, before his mother came back out of the kitchen.
He closed his door and crossed the room to push his window open. The cool breeze smelled of steak and barbeque smoke, even on the other side of the house. Lee’s stomach growled, and he tried to remember if he’d eaten lunch earlier. There was a chart taped in the kitchen he could check—his nutritionist was a dictator—but that would mean sneaking downstairs. He’d rather just wait in his room until the barbeque was cooked.
He hated small talk these days. Hi, he said when people noticed him. Good, when they asked how he was doing. It sometimes felt like those were the only two words he used in a day. His customer-service skills sucked, so his dad had him working in the stock room at the hardware store. And that suited him fine. It got him out of the house, which everyone from his parents to Doctor Fisher agreed was a good thing, and it got him busy, which he needed. Stocktaking, ordering, and doing the books; he even enjoyed it. He just couldn’t work out on the floor.
Lee lay on his bed and took a deep breath. Small steps, one foot in front of the other just like always. And maybe he was getting somewhere after all.
He heard a car and then the crunch of tires on the shoulder of the road as it pulled in. Doors slammed, and people laughed. A moment later, the doorbell rang. More guests.
Lee closed his eyes and wondered if tonight would be the night he actually started talking to people again. Maybe. Maybe not.
The third step squeaked, and he heard footsteps in the hall. There was a knock at his door.
“Hey, babe.”
Lee’s eyes flashed open, and he smiled before he even thought not to. He sat up quickly. “Chas!”
“You look okay,” Chastity told him, “for a corpse.”
There was nothing subtle about Chastity. There never had been. She regarded him frankly with her eyebrows raised, as though she was daring him to react badly. That was Chastity through and through.
Lee felt his smile grow. “I feel okay, for a corpse.”
“Your mom sent me to come and get you,” Chastity told him. “But I say I go downstairs and get us some burgers, and then I sneak back up here, and we eat ’em. What do you think?”
“I think you’re just what I need right now,” Lee told her. He sighed. “You won’t ask, will you, Chas? About what happened?”
“No, Anderson,” she said. She tossed her hair back and gave him the same haughty look he remembered from high school. The grade-A-bitch look. “I’m just here for the burgers.”
Lee felt relief wash over him.
“Do you want ketchup?”
“What sort of dumb question is that?” Lee asked.
She laughed. “Ketchup it is! I’ll be right back.”
Lee kicked off his shoes while he waited.
Later, sitting on the floor with their beers and burgers, he saw how fragile their masks were. They talked about school, college, and how the last time either of them had seen Shaun, he was pumping gas, but they didn’t talk about the thing that was right there between them: Lee’s death and resurrection into a man who would never be the same one Chastity had mourned.
She caught his wrist once when he reached for his beer bottle and then bit back whatever she had been going to say. Lee’s answering smile had wavered.
“Remember how we used to go up to the lake?” he asked to change the subject.
He’d gone there that morning with his dad. Round Lake had gleamed in the sunlight. Lee walked along the bank, one foot in front of the other. He kept his eyes down as he walked, looking at the stones, at the grass, at the mud, and half looking for sand dollars he knew wouldn’t be there. His lips quirked.
One foot in front of the other.
One sand dollar and then another.
The lake was popular in the summer, with fishermen during the day and with high school kids at night. It had been early in the morning when they’d arrived, and a few beer cans had littered the lake’s edge from the night before. Beer cans, Lee thought, instead of sand dollars.
When he was a kid, he’d thought that Round Lake was as big as an ocean.
“Have you ever seen the Pacific?”
His dad looked at him sideways. His forehead was creased in a worried frown. “The Pacific? No.”
“It’s beautiful,” Lee told him. He thought of the shards of sunlight that had bounced off the ocean’s glittering surface, blinding him. The roar of the Pacific had comforted him. He thought of the whispering waves that had chased up the beach and slipped back to reveal gleaming sand dollars. And he thought of Shaw and the way his face had softened when he had stared out at the horizon. The Pacific had revealed Shaw as well.
Lee wondered now if the wish-wash of waves on a white beach would still comfort him and lull him gently into sleep.
“God, yeah.” Chastity’s blue eyes shone. “We had great times at the lake. Remember all those times I tried to tease you by pretending I’d forgotten my suit so I had to go skinny-dipping? Goddammit, I should have known you were gay long before college. You never even looked, and meanwhile, Shaun used to follow me around with his tongue hanging out.”
Lee leaned back against his closet door. “Yeah, also, Shaun would have punched the shit out of me if he’d caught me looking.”
Chastity screwed up her nose. “What did I ever see in him?”
“He was the quarterback. You were the cheerleader. It was mandatory.”
She snorted. “God, I was so stupid.”
Lee picked at the label on his beer bottle. “Yeah, well, we all were.”
“I missed you,” Chastity said suddenly. She leaned forward, and her blonde hair curtained her face as she picked at a spot on the carpet. When she looked up again, her eyes were wide. “I don’t mean the last few months, Lee. I mean since we graduated. I miss snuggling up and watching bad sci-fi movies at night. I miss going to brunch every Sunday. I miss getting together and bitching about men!”
Lee took her hand. His throat ached. “I know. I missed you too.”
She flung herself at him, and they ended up entangled on the floor together. The smell of her perfume made his chest tighten. He hugged her tightly. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too, babe,” she mumbled into his chest and then rolled off him.
They lay close together and stared up at the bedroom ceiling.
“Are you gonna stay in Andover?” she asked him after a while.
“I don’t know yet.” He turned his head to look at her.
Chastity shuffled closer. “Well, there’s always room on my couch if you ever find yourself in Chicago.”
“I know,” he murmured, but he couldn’t picture it. The problem was that he couldn’t picture much beyond these four familiar walls, the stockroom of his dad’s hardware store, and Doctor Fisher’s office. Three fucking places in the world where he didn’t feel afraid. And, apparently, that bathroom stall in Canberra where he’d cried all over Shaw, just like he always did.
Three places and one person. Maybe that meant something.
He’d always trusted Shaw. Maybe it was time to trust himself.
“I’ll miss you too, Lee,” Shaw had said in Canberra, and it had sounded like the truth.
“Do you want me to go and get us more beer?” Chastity asked him.
Lee squeezed her hand. His heart raced, but he ignored it. He had to see if he could do this. “You wait here. I’ll go.”
* * * *
After the barbeque, Lee sat in the darkness of the steps and listened to his parents in the kitchen. Their conversation drifted up to him, punctuated by the clatter and splash of dishes being washed.
“Well, there’s no harm in going,” his dad said. “Just to see what they want.”
“I know what they want,” his mom returned, “and I’m retired. I’ve got enough to keep me busy around the house. I don’t need to go back to teaching.”
“Karen,” his dad said, and Lee could hear the tender smile in his voice, “you’re going stir-crazy around the house.”
Lee leaned his head against the banister and watched the play of light and shadow on the walls. This is not a sanctuary, he’d thought of the closet on the island; this is a prison. It was important to know the difference still. For him and for his parents. They all deserved better.
His mom changed the subject, like she always did when she didn’t want to admit his dad was right. “Linda is pregnant again. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
Whatever his dad said was drowned out by the noise of the sink draining.
“Chastity’s looking well,” his mom said. “I think it was good for Lee to see her again. I wonder if she’ll be staying in town for a while. I should call her to see if she’ll take Lee out for lunch tomorrow.”
“Lee’s old enough to make his own lunch dates,” his dad said.
“If we didn’t push him, he’d stay in his bedroom every day,” his mom replied.
Lee closed his eyes. True, probably. He relied on his parents to push him because he had forgotten how to push himself. And that was unfair on them. He just wished he wasn’t so afraid. Maybe he would always be afraid. Maybe getting better didn’t mean entirely losing that fear. Maybe it just meant living his life again despite it. And maybe, in time, it would go away. What was the harm in believing that?
Lee smiled to himself. There was hope again. Stupid, breathless hope. He wondered why he still distrusted it so much. It had saved him on the island.
He rose to his feet and moved downstairs. The third step from the bottom creaked.
His parents were drying the dishes with their backs to him.
“Hey,” he said, and they turned around.
“Can’t you sleep, Lee?” his dad asked him.
“I’m not tired,” he said, looking at his dad’s face and wondering when he’d gotten so old. He hadn’t looked this gray, this weary, at Christmas. His mom too. Jesus, Vornis cast a long shadow.
He reached for the cookie jar on the bench and opened it. His mom made the best macaroons.
“I think you should take your job back, Mom,” he said.
Her mouth tightened, and her eyes flashed with worry.
“I’m not going to stay in Andover,” he told her. “Not forever. And you miss those kids, right?”
She raised a hand to her mouth.
Lee fought not to back away, not to run up the stairs and hide in his closet. He was so scared of confrontation these days. So scared to look anyone in the eye, even his own mother. His heart pounded. He swallowed. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to choose between your life and me, Mom. You’ll just end up resenting me.”
She reached out and caught his hands. “I would never…”
“It’s okay.” A shower of cookie crumbs fell to the floor. Lee withdrew his hands and wiped them on his jeans. “When you retire, it should be for you, not me; that’s all I meant.”
Tears shone in her eyes. “I want to be here for you.”
“You are,” he said. “You always are. Both of you.”
His dad put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly.
Lee closed his eyes briefly. The touch felt so good. When he opened his eyes, his parents were both still watching him, both of them wary, hopeful, and afraid. Just like always. And shit, they deserved more than that. They deserved not to have to hold their breath every time they talked to their son. They deserved not to be so scared of hurting him that they were afraid to be themselves.
Lee was sick of fear.
Lee brushed his fingers against the button of his shirt. He looked at the crumbs on the kitchen floor and then back at his parents’ faces. “I think, um, I think maybe I can tell you guys what happened now, if you want to hear it.”
His dad nodded slightly. His face was set, but his eyes were wide with concern.
His mom bit her lip.
Lee pulled his top button free and then began to work on the one below it. His fingers trembled. His heart was racing again. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, and it sounded a little bit like the ocean.
Every scar on his body told a story, and maybe it was time to share them with the people who loved him. He thought of what Shaw had said in Canberra: “You don’t have to tell them everything.” But Lee thought that maybe he did. He hated the space that had grown between his parents and himself. He hated feeling ashamed and angry and afraid. They needed to know why he was like this. They deserved the truth.
“It is what it is, Lee,” Shaw had told him on the island. No judgment. There didn’t have to be judgment, just acknowledgment.
His fingers hovered over his last button. He looked down at the crumbs on the floor, unable to look at their faces just yet. Not yet, and maybe not while he was talking, but afterwards. He would be able to look at them afterwards. He was strong enough to ride this out. He wasn’t going to break now.
Not now and maybe not ever again.
“Just, um, just don’t freak out, okay?”
Lee shrugged off his shirt.