Chapter THIRTEEN
‘I didn’t even want to call you,’ I heard Heidi say. ‘I was sure you’d just tell me you told me so.’
For three hours I’d been up in my room, trying to fall back asleep, but with no luck. Instead, I’d just lain there, remembering it all again: waking up so happy with Eli, my walk home, and then being blindsided by my dad’s departure, take two. But of all these images, it was Isby’s smile, so sweet and unexpected, that had stuck with me the most. Whenever I closed my eyes to try and sleep, it was all I could see.
‘No, not really,’ Heidi continued. ‘But I wouldn’t blame you. It’s just such a mess. I still can’t believe any of this is happening.’
I walked past the table, where she was sitting, the baby in her arms, and headed to the cupboard to get myself a mug. Outside, it was another bright and sunny day, gorgeous like all the others.
‘Hey,’ Heidi said suddenly, glancing at me, ‘let me call you back. No, I will. Okay, then you call me. Ten minutes. All right. Bye.’
She hung up, and I could feel her watching me as I poured myself a cup of coffee. Finally she said, ‘So, Auden. Can you sit down a sec? I… I have to talk to you about something.’
She sounded so sad and worried I could barely stand it. ‘It’s okay, I already know,’ I said, turning around. ‘I talked to Dad.’
‘Oh.’ She swallowed, looking down at the baby again. ‘Well, that’s good. What did he…’
Isby suddenly let out a little squawk. Instead of crying, though, she just buried her face in Heidi’s chest, closing her eyes.
‘He said you guys had some stuff to work out,’ I said. ‘And that he was staying at the Condor for a while.’
She nodded, her face looking pained. ‘So,’ she said, ‘are you doing okay?’
‘Me?’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Well, this is kind of unsettling, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I just… you can talk to me anytime, all right? If you have questions, or concerns…’
‘I’m fine,’ I said again. ‘Really.’
Just then, I heard a buzzing noise: Heidi’s phone. She glanced at it, then sighed, putting it to her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Hi, Elaine. No, no, I got your messages, I just… How are you? Right. Of course. Well, to be honest, I haven’t had much of a chance to think about the Bash yet…’
She stood, shifting Isby in her arms, and walked over to the glass doors, still talking. I sat there, thinking of how I watched my dad driving away earlier, the way it felt like another do-over, but with the same outcome. Maybe some things could never change, or be fixed, even with time.
A moment later, Heidi returned to the kitchen, putting her phone down on the counter. ‘That was Elaine, the chair of the Colby Visitors’ Council,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘She wants a theme for the Beach Bash, and she wants it now.’
‘The Beach Bash?’ I said.
‘It’s this annual event we have at the end of every summer,’ she explained, sitting down again. ‘It’s in the hall on the boardwalk. We sell tickets, all the merchants participate, it’s the last big thing of the summer. And for some reason, I always volunteer to organize it.’
‘Really.’
‘It’s total masochism.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, last year, I did a pirate theme, which was kind of cute. The year before, we did a whole Renaissance thing. But this year… I mean, what am I going to do? I’m not exactly in a festive place right now.’
I watched her as she ran a hand over Isby’s cheek, then tucked the blanket more tightly around her. ‘You’ll think of something.’
Just then, her phone rang again. She picked it up, settling it between her ear and shoulder. ‘Hi, Morgan. No, it’s fine. I was just talking to Elaine.’ She sighed, shaking her head. ‘I know. And I appreciate that. But it’s just… I can’t believe this, you know? Last year at this time, all I wanted was for Robert and me to get pregnant, and now…’
She gulped, then moved a hand to cover her face, even as I heard whoever was on the other end start talking, their voice low and soothing. I pushed out my chair, then put my cup in the sink as once again, I found myself on the outside, watching something I’d never really known and didn’t understand. Most perplexing of all, though, was the tightness of my own throat and the sudden lump I felt there. I pushed back my chair, slipping out of the room, into the foyer, thinking again of my dad walking out that same door, bag in hand. It was terrible and awful when someone left you. You could move on, do the best you could, but like Eli had said, an ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.
By the time I left the house two hours later, Heidi and the baby were both sleeping. The house seemed almost peaceful, if you didn’t know better.
I, however, felt entirely unsettled, which made no sense, because first, Heidi was not my mother, and second, when this had happened with my parents, years earlier, I’d been just fine. Sure, I was disappointed and a little sad, but from what I remembered, I’d adapted pretty quickly to the new arrangements. Aside from the whole not-sleeping thing, of course, but that had been going on already. What I didn’t remember was the weird, panicky feeling, now still lingering, that had come over me watching my dad drive away from the house earlier. It was the way I usually felt around midnight, knowing that so much of the night was still to come and I had to find a way to fill it, the certainty of time passing so slowly until daylight.
Thank God I had work to do. I’d actually never been so happy to walk into Clementine’s, which was bustling with customers in a late afternoon rush. Maggie, consulting with a mother and daughter on some jean shorts, waved as I passed, grabbing the receipts and invoices on my way to the office. Once inside, I shut the door, flicked on the light, and prepared myself to buckle down into the numbers until closing. I’d just managed to lose myself in the check register when my phone rang.
MOM, the caller ID said. I watched the screen, the little phone jumping up and down as it logged one ring, then another. For a moment, I considered answering and telling her everything. Then, just as quickly, I realized that this was the worst possible idea ever. It would be like Christmas and her birthday rolled into one, the satisfaction she’d get, and I just couldn’t take her smugness. And besides, she’d hung up on me the day before, making it more than clear that she didn’t want to know me. Now it was my right to distance myself, as long as I wanted.
For the next two hours, I immersed myself in Heidi’s books, more grateful than ever for the dependability and static nature of numbers and calculations. When I finished the register and the payroll, I turned my attention to the desk, which had been cluttered since the day I started. I could almost feel my blood pressure dropping, bit by bit, as I organized Heidi’s pens, throwing out the ones that didn’t work and making sure the rest had caps snugly on and were all facing upright in the pink mug where they lived. Then I moved on to the top drawer, sorting little scraps of paper, stacking random business cards into neat piles, and collecting all the paper clips into an empty Band-Aid box I found lying nearby. I was just about to tackle the next one, when there was a tap on the door and Maggie stuck her head in.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Esther’s going to Beach Beans, you want anything?’
I reached into my pocket, pulling out my wallet. ‘Large triple-shot mocha.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Wow. You pulling an all-nighter, or something?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m just… kind of tired.’
She nodded, running a hand through her hair. ‘I hear you. My mom started in on me first thing this morning about my roommate forms. Apparently she wants me to fast track my pick because she’s worried otherwise we won’t have enough time to properly coordinate our linens. As if anyone else cares about that.’
I had a flash of my own mother, her clipped tone when I dared to question her choice of the Pembleton Program. ‘That’s what she’s worried about?’
‘She’s worried about everything,’ Maggie said, flipping her hand. ‘In her mind, if I don’t have the perfect college experience, it will be an unparalleled tragedy.’
‘That’s not such a bad thing, though,’ I said, ‘is it?’
She sighed. ‘You don’t know my mother. I’m never, you know, enough for her.’
‘Enough?’
‘Girly enough,’ she explained, ‘because I was so into dirt bikes. Social enough, because I only had one boyfriend all through high school and didn’t “play the field”. Now I’m not embracing college enough. And it hasn’t even started yet!’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘My mom’s riding me about the roommate thing, too. Except she wants me to enroll in some program where you do nothing but study twenty-four/seven and fun is not allowed under any circumstances.’
‘Really?’
I nodded.
‘I should sign up for that. My mom would lose her mind.’
I smiled. Then the front door chime sounded, and she looked down at the money in her hand. ‘Large triple-shot mocha,’ she said. I nodded. ‘I’ll let Esther know.’
‘Thanks.’
The door shut back with a click, and I pulled open the second desk drawer. Inside was a stack of old checkbook registers, topped with a couple of yellow legal pads, covered with scribbles. As I pulled them out, I glanced at the writing, which was clearly Heidi’s. There were lists for inventory, various phone numbers, and a few pages in, this:
Caroline Isabel West
Isabel Caroline West
Emily Caroline West
Ainsley Isabel West
Each was written carefully: you could almost feel her deliberation as she added them, one by one. I thought back to the day she’d admitted her dislike of the name Thisbe, and how I – and my mother – had judged her for giving in to it anyway. My father was selfish. He got what he wanted, and even then, it wasn’t enough.
I closed the pad, pushing it aside and digging down deeper into the drawer. There were various invoices, which I set aside to file properly, a flyer for the previous year’s Annual Colby Beach Bash – Ahoy, Mateys! – and, at the very bottom, a stack of pictures. Here was Heidi, with a paintbrush dabbed with pink paint, standing with a wide smile in front of a white wall. Heidi again, posing before the front door, the CLEMENTINE’S sign arcing over her head. And finally, at the very bottom, a shot of her with my dad. They were on the boardwalk, her in a white dress, her belly round and full, him with his arm around her. The date stamp was early May, just a few weeks before Isby was born.
‘Auden?’
I jumped. Somehow Esther had managed to slip in the door right behind me. ‘Oh,’ I said, looking down at the drawer, the contents spread across the desk, ‘I was just –’
‘Your caffeine,’ she said. She was holding out the cup to me when suddenly, something blurred past behind her. Something red, which then crashed against the end of the hallway with a loud, bouncy bang.
‘Hey!’ Esther yelled out the door. ‘What the hell was that?’
‘What do you think?’ I heard a male voice – Adam, I thought – yell back.
She opened the door wide, just as a red rubber ball rolled slowly past in the opposite direction, heading back toward the sales floor. ‘Oh, man. Seriously?’
‘That’s right,’ Adam hollered. ‘Kickball. Tonight. Get ready to get wet.’
‘And who,’ I heard Maggie say, ‘decided this?’
‘Who do you think?’
Esther stepped out into the hallway, picking up the ball. ‘Not Eli.’
‘Yup.’ I heard footsteps, and then Adam came into view, holding out his hands. Esther handed over the ball, and he nodded at me. ‘Came in late today, with this under his arm. He actually seemed cheerful.’
‘Really.’
‘Yup. We were all totally freaked out.’ He gave the ball a bounce. ‘But he was serious. First game of the season, tonight after closing. Drawing for second base commences sharply at ten oh five.’
‘Oh, God.’ Maggie groaned, joining them in the hallway. ‘If I have to be second base, I’m not playing.’
‘That,’ Adam said, pointing at her, ‘is a quitter attitude.’
‘Last time I got totally soaked!’ she protested.
‘Last time was over a year ago. Come on! Eli’s finally pulling out of this thing. The least you can do is get a little wet.’
‘It is pretty major that he’s up for it,’ Esther said to her. ‘I wonder what changed.’
I started to turn back to the desk, taking another sip of my drink. But not before I saw Maggie look right at me.
‘Who knows?’ Adam said. ‘Let’s just be glad and get on with it. See you at ten!’
And with that, he was gone, bouncing the ball as he went. Esther sighed, then followed him, but I could feel Maggie’s eyes still on me as I carefully stacked everything back in the drawer, stuffing the pictures in on top. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You all right?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
This should have been true. After all, I’d had the same night as Eli, and he’d woken up with a whole new attitude. I should have been just coasting and happy, more ready than anyone to jump into kickball, especially with Eli there. And yet, as the nine o’clock dance passed and the minutes of the next hour ticked down, I could feel my stomach getting tighter and tighter.
At ten on the nose, Maggie appeared in the doorway to the office, keys in her hand. ‘Come on,’ she announced. ‘The second base drawing is in five minutes, and believe me, you don’t want to get stuck with it. You’re basically in the water.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘actually, I think I’m going to stay late tonight. I have this payroll to do, and some filing…’
She looked at me, then at the pens arranged neatly in the jar next to my elbow. ‘Really.’
‘Yeah. I’ll be along eventually.’
‘Eventually,’ she repeated. I nodded, then turned back to the desk. Her voice was flatter as she said, ‘All right. We’ll be waiting for you.’
Finally she left, and I busied myself labeling some file folders as she and Esther shut down the registers and headed outside. Once the door was locked behind them, I pushed back from my desk. After fifteen minutes of just sitting there, I went out to the now dark store, walking up to the front windows.
Everyone was gathered just down the boardwalk, at the main entrance to the beach. I could see Maggie sitting on a bench next to Adam, with Esther beside him. Wallace and some other guys from the bike shop I knew by sight if not by name were milling around, joking with one another: I watched as they said something to Leah when she showed up, and she rolled her eyes, swatting at them before Maggie slid over to make room for her. More and more people came along, some I recognized, others I didn’t. But then suddenly everyone began to move in closer, converging, and I knew Eli had arrived.
He had on the same blue hoodie he was wearing the first time I saw him, the red ball tucked under one arm. His hair was loose, blowing over his eyes, and as he approached he bounced the ball once, catching it as he turned his head, scanning the assembled group. When he turned, looking behind him right at Clementine’s, I stepped back from the window, out of sight.
After a moment of discussion, teams were organized, and some sort of decision was made. From the looks of it, Adam came out on the losing side, if the jeers and pointed fingers in his direction were any indication. Then, en masse, everyone headed onto the beach, with one group assembling by the dunes while another spread out across the sand. Adam, I saw, took his place right by the surf itself, reaching down to roll up his pant legs, while Eli moved to the center, the ball still in his hands. He was just rolling out the first pitch when I turned and went back to the office.
An hour later, I went out the back door, then made my way across a parking lot and down two alleys before finally popping out by the Gas/Gro. I’d been planning to just go home, thinking Heidi might need the company, but instead I found myself walking back to the boardwalk. I sat down on a bench in front of the Last Chance, which was still bustling, to watch the game from a distance. Just as I arrived, Leah was up: she kicked the ball far and long, out into the water, and a guy I didn’t recognize, now at second base, dove in after it.
‘Auden?’
I jumped, then turned slowly, bracing myself. Of course Eli would sneak up on me, especially when I was doing my best to stay lost. But as I turned, I saw instead the last person I ever would have expected: my former almost-prom date, Jason Talbot. He was in khakis and a collared shirt, hands in his pockets, smiling at me.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’
He nodded back at the restaurant behind him. ‘Just finishing up some dinner. I’ve been sitting in there for the last fifteen minutes, wondering if that was you, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think I’d seen your name on the list for the conference, but…’
‘Conference?’
‘The FCLC? It just started today. Isn’t that why you’re here?’
‘Um,’ I said. ‘No. My dad lives nearby.’
‘Oh. Right. Well… that’s great.’
There was a sudden burst of voices from down the boardwalk. We both looked over, just in time to see Maggie running the bases, laughing, while Adam started to wade out into the water. ‘Wow,’ Jason said. ‘Kickball. Haven’t seen that since third grade.’
‘So what’s the FCLC, again?’ I asked.
‘Future College Leadership Course,’ he replied. ‘It’s a month-long series of lectures, workshops, and symposiums, with incoming freshmen from schools all around the country. It’s basically designed to give attendees skills they’ll need to make an impact on their campuses from day one.’
‘Wow,’ I said. There was another round of cheering from behind him, but this time I didn’t look. ‘That sounds great.’
‘Oh, I think it will be. I’ve already met, like, twenty people from Harvard who are already involved in campus leadership,’ he said. ‘You know, you should check it out. I know you weren’t that into student government, but it’s a great networking opportunity. It’s not too late to sign up, and there are tons of people from Defriese there.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m kind of busy.’
‘Oh, tell me about it,’ Jason replied, shaking his head. ‘I got the syllabi from my fall classes and have been reading already, and it’s really intense. But everyone I’ve met is doing the same thing.’
I nodded, even as I noted that my heart was already beating a bit faster. ‘I bet,’ I said.
‘That’s really what I’m hearing again and again. That you can’t just come in on the first day of the semester and hit the ground running anymore.’
‘Really.’
‘Oh, yeah. You need to prep early, and seriously.’
‘I’ve been doing my reading, too,’ I said. ‘I mean, between working and everything else…’
‘Working?’ I nodded. ‘What are you doing? Like, internship stuff? Service projects?’
I thought of the office at Clementine’s, all that pink. ‘More business-related. I’m working for a small business that’s in the process of expanding, helping with accounting and marketing during the transition. I figured it would be a good way to experience some real-time economics while at the same time studying the larger trends.’
‘Wow,’ he said, nodding. ‘That sounds really interesting. Still, though, you should think about the FCLC. I mean, if you’re here anyway. I think you’d be a real asset to the conversation.’
There was a loud whoop! noise from the beach, followed by a round of applause and laughter. I said, ‘Maybe I will.’
‘Good.’ Jason smiled. ‘Look, I should get back to dinner, I guess. We were in the middle of this big discussion about class rank, the pros and cons, and I don’t want to miss it.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
He took a step back, then paused. ‘Are you at the same number, though? Because while I’m here, maybe we could get together, you know. Just to catch up, compare notes.’
Everyone was coming off the beach now. I could see Maggie and Adam, who was soaked, in front, with Leah and Esther following. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sure.’
‘Great!’ He smiled again. ‘So I’ll just see you soon.’
I nodded. And then, before I could even begin to react, he was stepping forward, pulling me into a hug. An awkward, too-much-elbow, faceful-of-fabric-softener hug, but at least it was over quickly.
But not quickly enough. Because as he walked away, there was Eli. Standing with the ball under his arm, watching me, his expression unreadable. For a moment, we just looked at each other, and I had a flash of that first long night, near this same place. Aren’t they all.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘How was the game?’
‘Good.’ He bounced the ball once. ‘We won.’
Two couples, dressed for a night out, walked between us, chattering happily among themselves. For a fleeting instant, I just wanted to fall in with them, go wherever they were going.
‘So,’ he said, coming closer, ‘what happened?’
‘I had to work,’ I said. ‘We’re behind on payroll, and there was all this filing…’
‘No.’ He bounced the ball again. ‘I mean to you.’
‘Me?’
He nodded. ‘You’re acting different. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. He kept his eyes on me, steady, unconvinced. ‘What, you mean that?’ I said, nodding at the Last Chance, where Jason had now disappeared inside. ‘He’s just this friend of mine from home. My prom date, actually, although he ditched me at the last minute. Not that I was that upset, we were never, like, serious. Anyway, he’s down here for some conference, and he saw me out here, so –’
‘Auden.’ The way he said my name was like a brake, applied hard. I stopped in mid-breath. ‘Seriously. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I said again. ‘Why do you keep asking me that?’
‘Because you were fine last night,’ he said. ‘And then tonight you duck out and hide from me and now you won’t even look me in the eye.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘God, I just had to work. Why is that so hard to believe?’
This time, he didn’t answer. But he didn’t really have to. It was a total lie, paper thin. And yet I stood there, holding on to it for dear life anyway.
‘You know,’ he said finally, ‘if this is about what happened with your dad and Heidi…’
‘It’s not.’ My voice was sharp. Defensive. Even I could hear it. ‘I told you, I had to work. I have a lot on my plate right now, okay? I can’t just spend my whole summer playing kickball. I have classes to prepare for, and books to read, if I want to hit the ground running at Defriese this fall. I’ve been slacking off so much, and now…’
‘Slacking off,’ he repeated.
‘Yes.’ I looked down at my hands. ‘It’s been fun and all. But I’m totally behind. I have to get serious.’
As I said this, down the boardwalk I could hear all those familiar voices, laughing, jeering, happy together. I knew it instantly, as the sound was much more familiar at a distance than from within it.
‘Right,’ Eli said. ‘Well. Good luck. Getting serious, and all that.’
There was something in his tone – final, distant, exactly what I’d thought I wanted – that made me suddenly realize maybe I didn’t. ‘Eli,’ I said quickly. ‘Look. I just…’
But no words followed. I just let this hang there, open-ended, waiting for him to jump in, finish it, do the hard part for me. It was my dad’s signature trick, and now I understood why. It was just so much easier than having to say what you didn’t want to aloud. But Eli didn’t fall in, doing the hard part for me. He just walked away. Not that this should have surprised me. What did he care if this sentence was finished or not? He was.