Ryan
Granite Harbor, Maine
Summer 1995
Merit, Eli, and I lie on the grass just past the harbor. It’s been two weeks since Rebecca’s passing.
The seagulls are a mess today. I swear, they get louder during the summer, begging the tourists for more food. Tourists feed them bread or whatever leftovers they have with them. I want to tell them not to do it, that it’s bad for the birds, but I don’t.
“Ryan?” Merit whispers.
I look at her. “Yeah?”
Her hands cradle her head, her blonde hair falling around her. “Who was that lady at your house today?”
“My mom.”
Merit turns on her side to look at me. “It was?”
I nod.
“Why’d she look so sad? Wh-why’d she have a black eye?”
I shrug. “Dunno.”
“Why’d she come back?”
It’s quiet for a moment.
“Said she wanted to get help, so she could be the mom I needed.”
“What’s she gonna do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has it happened before?”
“Once. I think I was five.”
Merit rolls to her back, staring up at the same blue sky as me.
Eli’s on the other side of me. He rolls on his side to face me and Merit. “What are you gonna do?”
I shrug. “Wait, I guess.”
“Should you call the police? She looked real bad, Ryan. Skinny. And beaten up.”
The difference between Merit and Eli and me is that I’ve seen her before like that. She always seems to survive. It’s not that I don’t worry; I do. But, when I ask her about it, she tells me not to worry and that she’s okay. I want to believe her.
“No.”
“Maybe we should talk to Pop about it?” Eli asks.
I shrug. “Maybe.”
But all I want to do is let the sun soak into my face, allow its rays to warm my body. Lie in the grass like a kid without a care in the world. Not one who has to go back to the house of uncertainty and violence.
When I go back home, I’ll smell—vanilla and cigarettes. It will waft through the house for a few days. It will make Dubbs angry. He’ll leave on the boat for a week or two. It will be quiet again. I’ll feel more at peace, knowing I don’t have a fist coming at me for a week or so. That’ll be nice. So, things are good. Things are real good for the moment.
Maybe my mom will come back, and she’ll be wearing a blue dress, like Rebecca did on Sundays. Her face will be like a doll’s. Her nails will be clean, and the white powder under her nose and on her fingers will be nonexistent. I think that’s the stuff that makes her act the way she does.
“Worst-case scenario,” Merit whispers, trying to take away my fear.
“She turns up dead.”
Merit turns to her side again and faces me. She stares at the side of my face for a long minute. “That she’s been abducted by the circus and forced to perform as a tightrope walker. She fought tigers and elephants and bears to come find you.” A grin starts on either side of her mouth as she twists back onto her back.
A warm feeling starts in my stomach and moves to my heart.
Yeah, I like that, I want to say but don’t.
“Sorry, not all worst-case scenario. I blame it on my optimism.”
I love Merit for giving me her best, even when she doesn’t feel it on the inside.
I wonder, too, if Merit is trying to bring back her own mom. Maybe the scenario she wants to believe is about her own mom. Because, truth be told, in my scenario, it’s my best-case scenario.
I think it would be better if my mom was dead. It’s hard for my brain to wrap around this thought that I have as it washes over me. What boy wants his own mother dead? I see the hurt and pain in my mom’s eyes. Rebecca never had that. Not even as she was dying. Life wasn’t a burden for Rebecca. Eli and Merit weren’t her burden; they were why she fought until she couldn’t fight anymore.
Rebecca had always tried to protect us, put an escape route on both our plates, an allowance of time and space to be kids. Even if it’s just for a moment.
“She won’t die, Ryan,” Eli adds. “Worst-case scenario. That she comes back a few more times in a few more years, more tired. But she’ll come back to check on you to make sure you’re all right.”
Worst-case scenario started as the three of us playing out the worst that could happen. But Eli and Merit always seem to bring in the positive in my scenarios.
Fools.
I smile and allow the clouds to soothe me, my two best friends on either side of me.
We walk home in silence. Dusk meeting the streets, the trees, of Granite Harbor as the sun slowly travels to a new part of the world. Streetlights pop on, as if on a timer. The peak of the day’s heat is behind us. Somewhere between the harbor and Sand Street, the sun fades.
Worst-case scenario: I lose Eli and Merit. That we grow apart. That, one day, all that exists of us is a faded picture of our childhood.
“Hey, what are you kids doing out so late?” a man who doesn’t fit as a Granite Harbor resident says to us.
He doesn’t look familiar. He must be a passerby from Portland or Augusta.
“It’s not late,” Eli says to the man.
His eyes are blazing red, his demeanor calm, but there’s something about the twist of his lips that I don’t like when he speaks. His hair is a dark brown and pushed to one side, like he’s covering up a bald patch. His words, the way he speaks, are as if he makes a living selling used cars at Mel’s, outside of town. Something tells me there’s nothing innocent about this guy.
“Come on, guys. Let’s go home.”
The three of us, Merit in the middle, walk fast, passing the man with bad hair.
“Hey,” the man says.
I stop and flip my head around to show him that he doesn’t scare me.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I know you from somewhere.” The man smiles and rubs his whiskers on his chin.
He eyes Merit. My blood boils.
“Get lost, asshole.” It’s not something I intentionally want to say, but it comes out in a tone I’ve used a handful of times in my life.
Don’t look at her like that.
“Go back the way you came. We don’t want you in our parts.”
I don’t ask how he knows my mother. I assume it’s one of the guys she lives with. But I’ve never seen him with her before. I’ve never seen her with any man, so it’s hard to say. I can’t prove that they’re traveling together, but when my mom comes to town, there’s always a little bit of trouble.
Standing my ground, my fists balled at my sides, I feel Eli and Merit tugging at my arms.
“Come on, Ryan. It’s not worth it. He looks crazy anyway. Let’s go home. Come on,” Eli says.
Merit hooks her arm in mine, and she and Eli pull me in the opposite direction.
Tears start to build in my eyes. He’s the one who hurts my mom. He’s the one who gives her the black eyes and the white powder I see under her nose.
Can I prove it? No, it’s just a gut feeling.
He’s the one who took my mom away.