CHAPTER 1
NOW
The elevator doors open and an old lady enters.
As she shuffles in, she doesn’t see me leaning against the back wall. She’s wearing a scratchy-looking purple sweater, purple sweatpants, and glasses with lenses as thick as my thumb. She turns to face the doors as they slide closed. I watch, waiting for her to press the button to her floor. As the elevator begins to move, I feel obliged to say something.
“Fifth floor?” I ask, nodding to the small white 5 on the panel, lit with golden light.
She turns, her eyes wide as if surprised to see me. “What’s that?”
“Are you going to the fifth floor?” I ask a little louder.
“No, no, fourth,” she says, turning back around. She still hasn’t pressed a button, and now I have a social obligation. I don’t know how to do this without making her feel stupid, so I lean forward and press the button for her. She says nothing. I look over at her white hair, which is sticking up at all angles as if she’s just been electrocuted. She’s got way too much hair spray on. It’s pungent. Suffocating. A single flame in here and she’d light up like a Christmas tree. She’s the type of old that doesn’t really notice the world around her—I’m pretty sure she’s already forgotten that I’m in the elevator. I could give her a heart attack if I wanted. Grab her shoulder, scream, and watch her drop like a fainting goat. That image shouldn’t be funny to me, I know that, but I can’t help myself. Bad thoughts find me; I don’t go looking. The elevator stops and the doors open to the fourth floor. The woman gets off, and I have the small space, still fragrant with her hair spray, to myself.
Suddenly I feel the weight of all the decisions I’ve made leading to this point. It sits in my throat like bad acid reflux. My therapist tells me that we are the products of all the choices we’ve made in our lives, and each day is a new choice, a chance to reshape who and what we are. I will myself to step out of the elevator, to be someone different, to not do what I’ve come there for. Maybe I could join the old lady for a cup of tea, spray my own head with copious amounts of flammable chemicals. We could play bridge, become best friends. I’d call William, tell him it’s over.
The doors begin to close, and I reach out a hand to press the open button, my finger hovering over the plastic as I wait for myself to push forward, to watch the golden light fill the small white circle. But I don’t. I lower my hand. The doors hum shut.
I knock on the door of flat 502. After a few seconds of silence, it snaps open. And there he is, William, smile on his face, slight stubble gracing his angular chin, eyebrows straight over pale blue eyes. His hair is unkempt and slightly graying around the ears, and he’s wearing a white dress shirt tucked into jeans. On anyone else it would look ridiculous, but because he’s attractive, because he’s a brilliant professor, somehow it’s endearing.
“Jeanie,” he says. “There’s my girl.” He doesn’t mind that I’m ten minutes late; he’s just happy to see me. And his happiness is like measles—it’s airborne, highly contagious.
“How’s the conference?” I ask, stepping through the doorway. The room has a small living area, TV, kitchenette, and bedroom behind a partially closed door. From the window on the far side of the room, I can see the Thames and Saint Paul’s Cathedral—I make a mental note to visit the latter. I’m not religious, but I like the small inward feeling I get when standing beneath those stone pillars, the ancient holy art, and the great dome, which seems to rise endlessly toward the heavens.
“Oh, you know,” William says. “If you’ve been to one…” He waves a hand. He doesn’t want to talk about the conference, or business, even though I know he presented an important paper to important people. He doesn’t want to talk at all, actually. But I like to chitchat with him first, watch him squirm, wait for that moment when his patience is just tipping toward annoyance before I take my clothes off.
“Presentation went well?” I ask.
“It usually does,” he says in that confident way he has, like he doesn’t even know he’s being confident, like it’s this gut reaction he has to the world around him. Oddly enough, it’s part of what attracted me to him in the first place. The way he looks at you over the top of his glasses. How his gaze travels to the pit of your stomach and tells you that you are not, in fact, better than him. We’ve been doing this for fifteen years now, and that gaze still gets me. I need it like a fix.
“So,” he says, starting to move toward the bedroom.
“Tea?” I ask.
He pauses, deciding whether to force the issue or play my game. “Sure,” he says, going along with it. He goes to the small kitchenette and fills the kettle with tap water and sets the lid down with a satisfying tick. I was never a tea drinker before moving to the UK. Now, God, that little tick—it’s the sound of satisfaction, joy, hope.
“How long are you in London this time?” I ask.
He turns away from the kettle. He’s got a weird little smile on his face, like he’s copped to what I’m doing and won’t let me play any longer.
“Does it matter?” he asks.
“I’d like to know when you’ll be back home. Is there something wrong with that?”
“I don’t think you give a fuck,” he says. He’s trying to bait me. To excite me.
“Maybe I don’t,” I say. Well, shit, I’ve lost my modicum of power; now we’re playing his game. He has that skill. The ability to subvert expectations, to make you think you want one thing before revealing this other thing that, yes, oh, this other thing that you want so much more. Damn him. He reaches out and grabs my hand. I notice his wedding ring, and for the hundredth time—well, maybe not the hundredth—I picture his wife, Holly. I’ve met her a few times. She’s blonde and beautiful and pristine like a porcelain figurine. She makes me wonder why he bothers with me. That damn ring. I wish he’d take the stupid thing off. How hard could it be to slip it somewhere I can’t see before I arrive? But he never does. It’s another power play. He thinks he can do anything he wants.
But what does it matter? I let myself be led, don’t I? I’m even unzipping my jacket as we enter his bedroom. He closes the door and there’s another tick as the metal tongue of the latch slides into place. It’s a different sound this time, one with a more nefarious meaning. My sweater is up over my head now. Now his hands are on the back of my neck. Now my hands are on the brown belt holding up his light blue jeans. Before sliding into bed, I reach out and grab his hand and carefully slip the wedding ring off his ring finger. He looks at me, suspicious, but doesn’t say a word. I heft the weight of it in my palm for half a second, feeling his nerves radiate from his pores. The room feels gravy-heavy. Then I slide the ring over my thumb, a near-perfect fit.
I’m in control now.
The bed creaks beneath us.
In the kitchenette, the kettle begins to scream.
That evening for dinner, I buy myself fish and chips and a pint of Guinness at the nearest pub. The fries are extra greasy, and I make a mental note to do some burpees in my hotel room that night to make up for the calories. I’d go for a run, but my hotel isn’t near any parks and I don’t like running in the city. I’m eating in silence while checking out the waiter. He’s got a nice smile but is definitely shorter than me. It wouldn’t be a deal breaker if not for his sideburns. Who has sideburns anymore? I astonish myself with the realization that I’m actually considering taking him back to my hotel room. But why not? William will be at some fancy party tonight celebrating his paper with his fellow professors. Why do I have to spend my evening alone? I take my time, drinking two more pints, listening to the Proclaimers bang away in the overhead speakers—five hundred miles plus five hundred miles equals one thousand miles. I decide not to sleep with the waiter. I can still feel William’s body pressed against me, like his skin cells are commingling with mine in a microscopic dance: keratinocytes, melanocytes, Merkel cells, and Langerhans cells all having a party beneath a thin layer of cotton.
By the time I’m done eating, the city is suffocated in twilight. Traffic along the Thames has slowed to a steady crawl of serious drinkers, partiers, and the homeless. Most of the tourists are at shows or restaurants, or they’ve retired for the evening. I’m not a big-city person generally, but I do prefer the feel of European cities to American. It’s the sound of heels on cobbled streets. The old stone, old wood, Gothic architecture, and history saturating every square inch. In old cities like London, especially at night, you feel as though you’re walking with a horde of ghosts.
I buy one of the last tickets of the day for the London Eye and ride the giant Ferris wheel in its lazy circle. I do this almost every time I visit London. There’s something relaxing about it. About watching the city descend beneath your feet, the Thames growing thin and the people small. I sit on the bench as, beside me, a beautiful East Indian couple snaps pictures, takes selfies, and records a video for their vlog, or Instagram, or Snapchat, or whatever people are using these days. Something about them annoys me. I think maybe it’s the mere fact of their presence in a space I’d rather have to myself. As we’re reaching the zenith of our circuit, they approach me and ask if I’d take their picture for them and I shake my head no as if punishing them for intruding on my solitude. At first they seem confused. Is it possible? they think. Can people actually deny this simple social nicety? I give them a smile to show I wish them no ill will, but the smile seems to confuse them even more. Eventually they walk away and ask a young man in a puffy vest, and he obliges them.
The carriage begins its slow descent, the moon rising as a counterbalance, cold and sharp and crescent. I reach inside my jacket, pull out a Snickers bar—drinking Guinness always makes me crave chocolate—and begin to eat in slow, methodical bites. Twenty more burpees when I get back to my hotel, I think. But I don’t care; the sugar is luminescent on my tongue, as if I can taste in color.
CHAPTER 2
THEN
Before Dad uprooted us from the life we’d settled into, and well before he showed up at the cabin, his hands covered in purple blood, Jamie and I were living with Uncle Derek and Aunt Eileen in Santa Clara, California. They were nice enough. He was a high school English teacher, and she was a secretary at their Baptist church, which we attended every Sunday. They made us toast with homemade jam in the mornings and Uncle Derek would shoot hoops with us in the driveway in the afternoons. In the backyard, there was an orange tree that we picked from every spring, gorging ourselves on the sweet fruit until our mouths were sticky with sugary pulp and our fingertips stained and chalky from the peel.
We went to a nice school and made the friends you might expect, had our soccer teams, my stint in gymnastics, our school concerts, our barbecues with the neighbors, and, of course, Jamie’s piano lessons. In the beginning, we both took lessons. I remember sitting at the bench first, plunking away at notes and realizing, for the first time, that you could be both bored and frustrated at once. Our teacher was a plump woman who always wore these long hippie dresses and had round fingers that weren’t conducive to playing the piano, and yet she made them work nonetheless. She smelled of raspberries, and I didn’t know if it was some weird perfume she wore, or if she was just constantly eating raspberries.
From the beginning of our lessons, two things were clear: I did not like the piano, and Jamie was a complete natural. His hands, small as they were back then, were already meant for subtle work: pressing keys, forming chords, making music. I quit after the first three weeks.
“You can’t quit, Jeanie,” Aunt Eileen told me. “You’re so good.”
“I’m not good. Jamie’s good,” I said.
“Jeanie, you’re good.”
But she couldn’t talk me into it, and she wasn’t about to force me. So I stopped. Jamie, on the other hand, practiced all the time. He even began to sleepwalk in the middle of the night, descending the steps to sit at the piano and play. Aunt Eileen didn’t like the sleepwalking; she thought it had something to do with the trauma of losing our mom. So she invited their pastor over to pray for us. He prayed for all kinds of emotional healing and well-being and that Jamie would stop sleepwalking.
That night, Jamie played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, an easy enough piece, but impressive considering the small amount of time Jamie had been learning. It was strangely beautiful. The music echoed through the still house. It put me right to sleep.
But what did all that matter, anyway? The sugary tang of oranges, Jamie’s piano playing. It was all about to disappear.
It was evening when Uncle Derek got the phone call. Jamie and I were watching a show with our dinner plates propped up on TV trays—a regular Friday tradition. During the rest of the week, dinnertime was “family time.” That was how Aunt Eileen and Uncle Derek put it. Even though they weren’t our real parents, they liked to pretend they were, like kids playing dress-up.
Uncle Derek was quiet on the phone. Short responses: “Yes,” “Of course,” “Are you sure that’s—”
Afterward, he and Aunt Eileen disappeared upstairs for a good long while as Jamie and I ate our pasta by the TV. I remember it taking a long time for them to come back—I know that because both Jamie and I had finished our meals, and normally when the meal was finished, we had to shut off the show. We didn’t want to jinx anything, so we stayed quiet with our empty plates, spotted with flecks and smears of red sauce, while the show ran on and on.
When they did come back downstairs, Uncle Derek had this sad look on his face and Aunt Eileen’s eyes were red and puffy.
“What happened?” Jamie asked. He was the more sensitive of the two of us.
“We need to talk to you about something,” Uncle Derek said.
“About what?” Jamie again.
“About your dad.”
They proceeded to tell us that Dad had been wounded on duty. “He’s fine,” Uncle Derek said quickly. “But he’s coming home. For good this time.”
Three years. Three years we’d lived with our aunt and uncle, seeing our father briefly between deployments. Even then he’d become something of a stranger to us—more of a concept than a person. An idea. A noun. Dad, Father, the patriarchal figurehead of our nonexistent household. It wasn’t just that so much time had passed since we’d last seen him. It was that—slowly, between each mission—something began to change about him. He used to pick me up and toss me into the air when he’d first come home, and I’d laugh and laugh, flying above his head, weightless as an astronaut. Sometimes he’d let me ride on his shoulders. The world looked so much smaller from that vantage point, and I felt so much bigger. Eventually he stopped doing those things, though. I remember the first time he came home and didn’t pick me up. I remember standing in front of him, not wanting to ask but hoping he’d remember, hoping he’d look at me with that smile on his face, lift me by my armpits, and everything would be the same. Only it wasn’t the same. And, slowly, neither was he. His visits became brief. His hugs became perfunctory. His conversation became terse and aloof.
And now, now he was coming back to pluck us from our lives like flowers from a well-groomed garden.
“But will we still live here, with you?” Jamie asked. What a stupid question.
“No, honey,” Aunt Eileen said.
“Idiot,” I said.
“Jeanie,” Aunt Eileen said, a mixture of sternness and pity on her face.
“He wants to take you to Washington state,” Uncle Derek said. “You’ll stay at the cabin on the coast.”
We’d been to the cabin before. Half-remembered vacations when Mom was still alive. Small rooms, huge trees, the ocean as wide and impossible as the horizon. We’d played board games in that cabin—Candy Land, Trouble, Sorry—and roasted marshmallows outside while Mom made hot chocolate. They were vague, tenuous memories, but ones filled with a strange mixture of fear and joy.
“I don’t want to go to Washington,” Jamie said, already beginning to tear up. I remember wanting to punch him for those tears. I know that seems callous and insensitive, but maybe I’d wanted to cry, too. Maybe, for once, I’d wanted to be the weak one.
Dad came on a Tuesday morning. It was a bright, sunny day. He had a long beard and smelled of a strange, musty deodorant. He was limping slightly, and he looked much older than when we’d last seen him. His face carried more lines, there was gray flecked in his beard, and his hands were rough and leathery. He was always a big man, six-four at least, with wide, imposing shoulders and anvil hands. He had dark brown hair and brown eyes like me. We hugged him like we were expected to, Jamie looking sheepish and scared.
Aunt Eileen, Dad’s sister, kissed him on the cheek and tried to get him to stay a few days, but he wouldn’t. He wanted to get to the cabin as soon as possible.
“At least stay for some lunch, Johnathan,” Aunt Eileen said, her voice shaking with emotion. In the end, we did stay for lunch, but no one seemed very hungry despite the fact that lasagna soup was my and Jamie’s favorite.
After, we said our goodbyes and hugged Uncle Derek and Aunt Eileen. I looked away when I thought I felt tears coming to my eyes, which I assumed were there only because Aunt Eileen and Jamie were openly crying, and even Uncle Derek looked a little misty.
Dad thanked them for everything, and we piled into his truck with our things tossed in the bed and took off down the road.
“You want music?” Dad asked.
“Sure,” I said. Jamie sat silent with his hands on his lap. I figured anything would help drown out the horrible sound of our not-talking, of the engine grumbling, the wheels spinning on pavement, carrying us farther and farther away from the life we’d grown used to, the surrogate parents we’d come to love, ...
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