74

She was out on the sand that night. Abigail. On the green-and-white blanket. Hot, sunny days gave the lake a spongy kind of scent—like wet wood and seaweed—that drifted into the warm evenings and mixed with the smell of beach grass and the lingering whiff of sunscreen that never quite washed away.

Abigail had on a blue T-shirt with the long sleeves pulled down over her hands.

“Want company?” I asked.

“Sunset’s over. You missed the best part,” she said without turning around.

“It’s all good at the beach.”

“It is for tourists.”

“It is for everyone,” I said.

“Some of us live here,” she said.

“I live here,” I said, and she glanced sideways at me. “I do for now.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“So how do you know that guy Dum?”

“He worked at my dad’s firm for a while. Now he’s the director of some community center in Kalamazoo. Plays in a church band on weekends.”

“That’s a gear-shift.”

She shrugged when she said, “His choice.”

“And all that God Yacht stuff doesn’t weird you out? And the ‘future and beyond.’ I don’t even know what that means.”

“No. It’s his thing. It’s not mine,” she said, scrunching her eyebrows down, like it was wrong of me to ask somehow. “Why? Are you the kind of guy who can only hang out with people just like you?”

“No,” I said, a little pissed at the “kind of guy” thing again. “Buddy of mine’s Buddhist. Another one’s nothing, as far as I know. We just don’t sit around talking about God or this life and the next all the time.”

“He’s all about the future. I thought you’d love that since you’re the one who has his whole future planned.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

She shrugged.

“Are you telling me you don’t think about the future?” I asked.

She slid her butterfly charm back and forth across her chain a couple times and said, “Let’s talk about yours.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Why is it so important to be rich?”

“This again?”

“You never said why it’s important to you.”

“It’s important to everyone.”

“But it’s not everyone’s impetus like it is yours.”

“Impetus?”

“It’s a word.”

“Yeah.”

“So why the drive?”

“Because I’ve been poor, and I didn’t like it. None of us liked it,” I said, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal. It was a big deal, but my answer was true.

“How poor?”

“Not exactly food-from-the-church poor, even though my grandmother thought we were. But we lost just about everything.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I said, and picked a small black stick—a piece of wet driftwood—out of the sand and tossed it in the lake.

“What happened?”

“Ever see an Oldsmobile?”

“I don’t think so. If I have, I don’t remember.”

“Exactly,” I said. “My dad owned the largest Oldsmobile dealership in Southwest Michigan. My grandfather started it in 1961. So it was nice for a while, you know?”

“Must have been.”

“Yeah, we had a huge house. A boat and a slip here. A dog. Cars. Oldsmobiles, obviously,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

“Obviously.”

“So in 2004, GM stopped making the Oldsmobile, and my dad took it as a sign to get out of the industry. Don’t ask me why. So he took the buyout offer, sold the repair side of the business to a buddy, and sank all the money into real estate.” I leaned a little closer when I said, “All of it.”

“Uh-oh.”

I nodded.

“Lost everything in the crash.”

“I’m sorry,” Abigail said, and put her hand on my arm for a second.

“Your fingers are like ice.”

“Sorry,” she said, and moved her hand just as I said, “I don’t mind.”

“What happened then?” she asked, and tucked her hands underneath her legs.

Girls can make sitting on their hands look completely normal.

“My dad lost his shirt,” I said, and it came out weird, like, with a little resentment. “He lost my mom’s shirt. He would have lost mine if I’d had one to lose.”

“No college fund?”

“He never started one. There was always money. Until it was all gone.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Downsized. Big-time. We sold the house.” I tipped my head toward her house. “Big house. Sold the boat. Mom sold her jewelry. Sold the cars.”

“How’d you get around?”

“Walk, bus, bike, or Grandma Ruth,” I said. “And let me tell you, walk, bus, and bike were better.”

“Is she mean?”

“No. She’s just difficult. Angry, I guess.”

“Why?”

That stopped me for a second.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“So then what happened?”

“My parents sold just about everything to pay off creditors, and with a loan from my grandmother and sweat equity, my dad bought into this business.” I told her about Foam Works. “He paid my grandmother back, with interest, because he works like a fiend. And he never declared bankruptcy. Which I respect.”

“Sure,” she said, and the confirmation was nice.

“But, man, we had nothing. I mean, compared to what we used to have. I get that we weren’t, like, destitute. But it was . . . it was a serious gear-shift. We rented a dinky house on cinderblocks for a couple years. Now Dad wants to buy out his partner, but that’s years off. He doesn’t have the money for that right now.”

“Does he have to buy him out?”

“No.” I threw another stick into the water. “But he likes to be the guy in charge. It’s his”—I leaned closer—“impetus.”

Abigail poked my shoulder, and for a few seconds then, we watched a cabin cruiser leave the channel and slowly travel across the horizon. Dad used to take Mom and me for evening cruises up or down the coast, all of us tired from the day and quiet in the night air. Until Dad broke the silence when we docked with “Not a scratch on her.” He said it every time. There were some scratches, but Mom and I ignored them for his sake.

“And?” Abigail said, tipping her head so that her hair fell out from behind her left ear. When I reached to tuck it back, she didn’t stop me.

“And what?” I asked.

“Well, what was happening during all that? What was going on in your head?”

“I was nine,” I said, and brushed my hand against her cheek. “So, you know, I was a little-kid-mess.”

She put a hand on my arm. Her fingers were warmer then, and I put my hand on top of them.

“What was that like?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I felt”—I shrugged—“bad. You know.”

“Bad?”

“Bad. Awful. Miserable,” I said, like, How many ways could I say bad?

She was quiet.

“I don’t know,” I said again. “I was—” I looked at her eyes, her mouth, and then at the lake until it blurred into dark blue nothingness. I remembered Dad bitching, Grandma Ruth lecturing, Mom packing. I remembered lawyers at the house and Dad swearing and Mom squinting at piles of papers. I remembered the day I came home to no dog. I remembered the day I came home to the shoebox. I remembered it smelled like wet dirt. I remembered Dad looking bloated and Mom looking pale. I remembered peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner. I remembered thinking my parents looked old and tired. I remembered worrying about them like I never had before, and I looked back at Abigail and I told her, “I was scared.”

Her eyes didn’t move from my face. And I turned back to the lake and exhaled like I was breathing out more than just air. “And I was mad.”

When I looked at her again, Abigail Howe smiled at me. And nodded.

“I’m glad you said that,” she said, which was weird, but I didn’t really care. I was just glad she got it.

I shifted toward her, and when she didn’t move away, I lifted both hands and held her face. Her eyes were open and intent, and I kissed her. Gently. She smelled fresh and flowery, like lake water and soap. I breathed as much of her into me as I could. She deepened the kiss and leaned into me. I felt it in every part of my body, like a stone dropped in water. I slid my hands into her hair, then back to her face, cool like the air. We parted once. Her eyelashes grazing my cheekbone for a second, two, three . . . then she tilted her chin up and we came together again. And again. And again.