Chapter 21
CATHERINE
Johnny’s blue truck pulled into the driveway. He waved and got out wearing his yellow polo shirt. Redox slid out and came right up to the porch. The bruiser of a Rottweiler poked his nose between my legs one time to make sure it was me, then flopped onto the floor.
“Did you come for the grill?” I asked as Kyle got out of the passenger side.
“Yep.” Johnny lowered the gate on the back of the bed. “Meat was pretty good last night. We nailed the timing on the evaporative cooling effect.”
“Sure did,” Kyle said.
My guess was that Johnny had worked out the equations to the half degree and Kyle had agreed to drink beer by the fire.
“You got coffee made?” Johnny asked me. “Been a long morning already and we have to bury Lance.”
The funeral. Today. I’d told him I couldn’t go and that was that.
“In the kitchen.”
“Funny thing, Carmichael showing up last night.”
Johnny stayed on the porch. Did he need an answer? Did he need me to say that I was skipping the funeral because I didn’t want to see Chris or because I had a ton of chores to do? That I’d sent Chris away because I was confused or because I was empty? Because I was protecting myself from getting hurt again or from being happy?
“There’s half and half in the fridge,” I said.
He nodded and went into the house. I fell onto the porch swing, wishing this damn day would be over so I could think. Wishing Chris would disappear so I could decide if I’d made the biggest mistake of my life or dodged a bullet.
Harper was staying, at least for a while. I still didn’t know the details of what had happened with Taylor, but he wasn’t taking her away. At least not now. But she had to go. His presence had gotten me used to the idea that she should leave. I had time to convince her to go to college. Then once she got in, school wouldn’t start until September. I could stay in Barrington a little longer.
If I wanted to.
I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
Johnny and Kyle came out with their travel cups and headed for the back. My eyes fell on the four mildewed boxes Taylor had left on the porch. I’d never bothered to take them inside. The crawlspace had not been kind to them. Maybe Johnny could haul them away on his way out.
I bent over the top box and used my fingernail to bend the flaps. Something shone from inside.
I decided to go all in. Sinks and soap were invented for curious hands. I opened the box all the way. The shine was from a glass doorknob that was probably one of the few made in the factory, along with a broken glass towel rack, a blue glass soap dish. Fancy hinges. A sconce. A door baseplate and a kitchen faucet.
I could sell some of it to the antique fixture place in Springfield. Some looked worthless. All of it was interesting. I didn’t recognize any of it. It must have been Grandma’s stuff from before the eighties, when Mom redid the house. Johnny would have things to say about what was in there; what had been made in the factory and what was worthless. He and Kyle were halfway down the driveway with the grill. I could ask when he was finished loading it.
I picked up the top box to lay it aside, but the bottom gave out and spilled the stuff all over. Well, that was just the kind of day this was. I got on my knees to clean up the mess before they ran over to help. I could do it myself.
A ceramic lamp base got stuck between the flaps of the box under it. When I pulled it out, the top opened. It was full of paper. Termites had made holes in the envelopes and left dust-sized wood chips all over the surface.
I put the lamp down.
The termites had eaten around the ink of the recipient’s name, which was Catherine Barrington. They’d eaten around the postmark ink, which was New York, NY10005. They’d eaten around the return address label, which was a PO box in the same zip code, and of course the sender was Christopher Carmichael.
I flipped it over. The envelope had been eaten open, but the glue still hung on. It had never been opened.
Under it, another letter.
And another.
One fell apart in my hands.
Another was so black with mold, the address was unreadable.
None were opened.
All were to me, from Chris.
My hands shook so hard, I couldn’t get my fingers in an envelope. I opened a folded piece of paper that fell out of an envelope. It was almost completely destroyed.
—I spilled coffee all ove—y pants I had but—you and—
I chose another. The ink had run when water hit it.
—Lan—in the dog park th—I hate to think he—nice guy. No guarantees of anything of c—and we can be together sooner rather tha— blooming because the flowers lie. You are the scent of roses—
I dumped the entire box on the porch and kneeled beside the pile. I went through it quickly, separating the readable from the unreadable.
—e getting used to—crowded but if you were with me b—everything—
—your skin and—hacked at the tennis b—pleated skirt wa—one time in reality but in my—Frank Marsh—
Frank Marsh—? Could that be Frank Marshall? The Christmas after Chris left, I’d started dating him. He’d begged me to, as a favor, and I stayed with him for his benefit and my own, until he finally came out of the closet. Mom had been devastated. I was happy for him.
—ny people. You’d li—used to i—re you getting these? Be—ove you, Catherine of the Roses
I stopped sorting them and searched for a whole letter. I couldn’t bear another minute. He’d written me and I’d ignored him. What kind of hurt had he suffered because of me already? I needed to know the exact height and weight of it so I could beat myself to a pulp with his pain.
I opened one that looked relatively whole. A picture of Chris and Lance fell out. He was kneeling next to the bloodhound, who looked away from the lens at a squirrel or a pigeon or whatever a loved dog looks at when his eyes are off his master.
The date was ten years before. Three years later, my father died, my mother took most of the money and left. Harper stayed home from MIT forever. I’d already stopped waiting to ever hear from him again.
He was a cross between the hardworking, carefree, bronzed boy I’d known that summer and the serious man who’d put out a fire in my yard. The sun angled over his face, casting deep shadows over one side and washing the other in white. His hair was cropped and businesslike and his cheeks were smooth. Whatever transition he was making had been halfway over by the time that letter came.
I sat on the porch rail and unfolded it. Most of the letters were handwritten, some were printed. This one had his pointy scrawl all over it. Had he written it at the dog park, or in the back of a cab? I smelled the paper. Past the mildew from the box, I caught a little bit of cologne, so I imagined him writing it at home, in the morning before he went to work.
Dear Catherine,
It was as bad as I told you. I got everything out before the bottom dropped, but it was a scare. I was hoping to come back for you soon, but not now. I can’t give you the life we agreed on.
But—and this is a big but—I have someone interested in a hedge fund that I’ve been pitching around. It’s based in quantitative trading and something we call market inefficiencies (totally legal, I swear). I’ll explain that to you when I see you. It’s so safe and profitable, I’m sure I’m never going to come that close to losing everything again.
Which brings me to the same thing I end every letter with.
I hold on to you like I’m alone in the ocean and you’re the last piece of wood from a shipwreck. What we had, I’ve never felt before or since. I belonged. I had purpose. You haven’t answered a single letter, and I have no idea if you hate me or if your parents are hiding the stamps. I don’t know if you’re waiting or if you’ve forgotten me. My mother left Barrington months ago. If I come back, it’s for you, but if you’re finished with me, I don’t want to know. I’m not ready to let go.
I’ll keep on writing, but I have a bad feeling that one day I’m going to drown.
All my love,
Christopher
I folded the letter but didn’t put it back in the envelope. That would be like folding Chris up and putting him away. I couldn’t betray him another time.
I read it again.
At some point before Mom left or Dad died, he’d written a last letter. It was in the box, shredded, damaged, or obliterated. He’d made a hundred, maybe two hundred, attempts to reach out to me and been ignored. He’d worked harder to contact me than I’d worked to forget him.
And my mother, or my father, or both had stopped the letters. Or one had intercepted them and another had fought to keep them from being destroyed.
The only words they spoke to each other in those last years had probably been about those letters.
Was it too late to find him? Where was he staying? His mother’s trailer was gone. The only hotel in Barrington, Bedtimey Inn, had closed years earlier. He didn’t have any friends to stay with and Lord knows someone would have told me if he’d made plans to stay on their couch.
What was the difference anyway? Was I going to knock on his door and say, “Hey thanks for the letters,” after I’d chased him away? And then what? Was I going to let him whisk me away like a knight on a white stallion? I still didn’t know him. He wasn’t the answer to my loneliness.
I put the photo of Chris and Lance in my pocket and looked through the two boxes underneath it.
Jesus.
More letters.
I owed him an apology, or at least an explanation. But it was too late. I was numb and I’d already sent him away. The letters would go into the trash with the rest of my mistake-filled life.
My foot landed on something soft and round. It rolled under me and I fell, dropping the box and landing on my wrists.
“Catherine?” Kyle and Johnny were loading the barbecue onto the truck, and Kyle dropped his end with a metallic clank.
“I’m fine.” A yellow tennis ball rolled slowly away.
They were both off the truck. I held up my hands, but they helped me to my feet.
“You all right?” Johnny asked.
“Yeah. I stepped on a ball.”
The culprit rolled to the porch step and Redox appeared, locking the tennis ball in his jaws. He came back and dropped it in front of me, sitting on his haunches expectantly.
I shook out my wrists, wiped my hands on my jeans, and picked it up.
“Yuck.” It was slimy, but not everywhere. Still kind of new.
“Must be his,” Johnny said. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine.” I threw it into the grass and he chased it with the slow roll of a king who knows the ball isn’t going anywhere. I fixed my hair and the guys went to strap down the barbecue.
With the hollowness still haunting me, I looked at my house as if for the first time.
What had Chris seen? Had he been disgusted by how I lived? The cracks in the paint, the missing shingles, the patchwork of roof tiles. I scanned the porch as Redox dropped the ball right in the letter box, as if he was done with this game. I was about to take it out, but the sad state of my house through a stranger’s eyes was too horrifying to look away from.
The marks by the second floor window were still there from thirteen years ago, when a tennis ball had been thrown from the ground to get my attention.
He’d written to me. All of his feelings were lost to the elements, but he’d written to me repeatedly.
He hadn’t abandoned me.
I’d abandoned him.
In a moment of vulnerability falling in a crack of time between breaths, my defenses fell away and the hollowness filled.
In that moment of opportunity created by a fracture in my armor, that old love I’d shut away saw an opening and took a chance, bursting through the fissure.
The feeling was like getting too close to a car moving at ninety miles an hour. I almost lost my footing. Emotions flooded me. They hurt like a too-rich bite of food early in the morning. It was urgent, heavy, and hot, an electrical current animating my body. Jacket. Bag. Keys. Box.
Sixteen.
I was sixteen. Smarter. More experienced. Twice as tired and half as ashamed, living from moment to moment, risk to risk, decision to decision.
Sixteen had been terrible, but the love had been real. It saturated my skin and laced my bones. His rightness. The click of the clouds and the sky locking together.
I ran back up to the porch and snapped a random letter from the nearest box, then I ran to my car.
“Catherine?” Johnny was strapping down the huge grill. “Are we blocking you in?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I got in and started the car. I had a quarter tank. “Johnny?” I called out the window. “Wild Horse Hill, right?”
“Yeah, we can go together.”
Backing the car onto the lawn, taking down a hedge and a ceramic frog to turn, I drove around Johnny’s truck and onto the driveway, avoiding their reactions in the rearview. I was sixteen again, and I only had the will to go forward.