2
It took a little over two hours to get to Gran’s. My mom never talked much in the car so mostly I watched the cold New England landscape as we drove. The colors flowed into each other as they rippled in a sea of green. It was raining, as per usual for this time of year in Massachusetts. The trees drooped sadly against the harsh but refreshing water. My mom finally decided to say something as I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know. We would have worked something out.”
“I know. That’s not why I’m going Mom. Maybe Gran isn’t the only one who needs saving here. You have to admit, I haven’t exactly been a shining example of a daughter lately.”
My mom looked over at me, concerned. “Paige, no one blames you. As soon as you stop blaming yourself, things will get better, you’ll see.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Paige,” she continued in a more authoritative tone, displaying exactly where she was going. She had this sort of quiet strength about her. She got it from my grandmother who’s always been more of the stoic type. But, she had to be. My grandfather passed away when my mom was only twelve and since then, it was just the girls. My mom wasn’t alone, since she had this excellent support system in my dad, but she still felt the need to run the show.
“Really, Mom, I’m fine. This has nothing to do with Nick.”
I sighed without even thinking about it. Just saying his name made me feel like something was missing.
“Then what is this all about, Paige?” She looked away from the water splashing on the windshield to check my eyes, as if they would tell her all my secrets.
I looked directly at her and said, “This is about me getting my shit together and my life back on track. Not to mention this is a great excuse to give you and Dad some alone time, that you deserve.”
I’d given them a rough year, it was true, and they needed a little drama-free time. If that meant Paige-free time, then that’s what I needed to do. For them and for me.
“Oh, honey, you know we don’t mind you living with us, it’s fine!”
“I know you guys don’t mind, but I’m starting to. I mean come on, I’m almost twenty-two, I should be on my own, or at least moving towards it.”
Okay, so I was going to be the loser living with my grandma, but at least I wasn’t the creepy grown up child living in my mom’s basement anymore.
My grandmother had a lot of money so there had always been people around to help her do things. As Gran got older, she’d started to worry about people stealing her money, so she’d allowed for fewer people to help her. As a result, when she broke her kneecap last spring, we didn’t even know for three days. When one of her neighbors went over to play Bridge with her and saw the swelling in her leg, she was immediately rushed to the hospital and she had to have emergency surgery. Of course, she had looked at it as an adventure, just like she always had.
Mom gripped the steering wheel tightly, her knuckles becoming white from the pressure. I could tell that this whole thing had left her pretty shaken up. I felt bad for her. We had left Salem so my dad could find a better job. Salem had become mostly a tourist trap. My dad worked in computer engineering and Salem’s not really the place where you’re going to find some big warehouse, filled with a bunch of geeks, working on computers. So, we moved down right outside of New York City and have been living there ever since. I was maybe nine when we moved, but I still saw my grandmother all the time. I used to stay with her until I was about thirteen, since then, I hadn’t gone up without my mom. I felt bad about that, I should have gone to see her more. She was all alone up in Salem, she moved there to be closer to my grandfather’s family, not hers. At least that’s the way my mom always explained it. Her loneliness only furthered my decision to get out of my parents’ house.
They’ve been totally on my ass lately about picking a real career, finding a good job, building a life for myself. But, what if that’s not what I want? I mean, yeah, the white house with a picket fence and one point five children, I look forward to things like that. But right now, what I looked forward to the most was getting some of my paintings in an art show. The thing about living outside New York City was there’s not a lot of opportunity, or maybe there’s too much. There was so much competition, so many people moved in just to go to art school, or just to show their work at a fabulous New York City gallery. So many people are trying to be discovered in New York, so I was interested to see what a smaller field had to offer. Show my things in a small gallery where people would really appreciate them.
My mom let me bring four paintings with me, she said they’d be good for my grandmother, that they would make her feel better. I closed my eyes for a moment to visualize them. There was the large one of the poppy and another of my friend Julie’s fish, Swish. Then there was the small black and white I painted over a year ago. Finally, I let my mind float to the last one, an eight by ten of Nick in his full glory. He was standing in the sunshine, hands in his pockets, wispy blond strands flying into his face. My eyes brimmed with tears as I let my thoughts linger on him. I rubbed them so I looked sleepy and Mom wouldn’t notice my pain.
I remember that day so clearly, like a photograph in my mind. A perfectly wonderful summer day, we had lain out by the lake on a blanket all afternoon. I asked him to pose near a Willow by the water while I painted his portrait. It took hours, but he said he didn’t mind because he liked what he was looking at. He always made me blush like that. That day was the first time he kissed me. He looked at me, biting his lower lip, like he had a secret he couldn’t tell me.
I smiled sweetly back at him and he said, “Paige, you may very well be the most beautiful girl I have ever known.”
I laughed lightly, thinking he was joking, but then he put his calloused hand on my cheek and pulled my face slowly to his, kissing me. It was beautiful and passionate and full of emotions I didn’t understand then. I didn’t understand any of them until the night he disappeared. Then they came to me in waves, love, loss, lust, grief and one so new to me I hardly noticed it at first, anger. All the crazy things that make you want to hold onto someone even tighter than before, but when that person is gone — you can’t. Some people in our upper crust community said he had run away, because he was “that type”. I knew better. I knew he had been taken because otherwise he would never have left without me. We weren’t meant to be apart.