The One That I Want Page 17

  And as I stole through the school this past week, I couldn’t help but be awed by these kids, with their naked sense of invincibility. Just like I once had. How Tyler and I had linked arms our senior year, and just like CJ and Johnny Hutchinson, or Gloria Rodriguez and Alexander Parsons, or any number of the couples who pocked the hallways and the parking lot and the make-out spot behind the gym, we felt shinier, braver, more human than we had been without each other. I lifted the camera to my eye and marked their bravado not just for the yearbook, but for me, to remind myself that once upon a time, I, too, was untouchable.

  Eli is staring out the back window of the art room when I swing the door open and plunk the camera down on his desk. I don’t want to look at him, don’t want to loiter, because even though it’s been two months since my premonition, and even though I have done everything I can to stop thinking about it, and even though my husband has abandoned me and broken my spirit and then infuriated that spirit more than I thought possible, I am still unnerved at my jealousy over his girlfriend.

  “Here,” I say, not meeting his eyes, though he has turned toward me. “I’m returning this. But I did what you asked, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find good stuff for the yearbook.”

  “And what did you think?” he asks, taking three steps and sitting on a stool at one of the painting tables. He shuffles it closer, and it squeaks against the tiled floor.

  “I thought it was fine,” I say, the blood in my cheeks defying my ambivalence.

  “Fine?” He laughs, a disbelieving but kind laugh. “This from a former art nerd? You simply thought it was fine?” He pushes out an adjacent stool, an invitation.

  “Okay, it was pretty great,” I acknowledge, still standing. I wonder if he knows that my husband has left me, though I then remember that of course he knows that my husband has left me—it may as well have been the headline in the Westlake Courier.

  “Sit,” he says. “I’m tired. And you look tired too.”

  I am tired, so rather than argue, I obey.

  “What was your favorite thing you used to photograph? Back when you used to do it a lot?” He weaves his fingers together, his hands on the table, his nails a collage of purple and blue paint that has stubbornly refused to come off.

  “Oh, God, I can’t even remember,” I say, though of course I can remember. I remember it instantly. In the last two months of my mother’s life, she was mostly bedridden, incapacitated, tortured by being housebound. My mother’s zeal was boundless, passion that poured into her music, informed her love of all earthly things. In the summers, she tended to her garden; in the winters, she would layer long underwear and disappear for an hour through the dense forests in the neighboring woods. She would return with crisp cheeks and a bright Rudolph nose, and pour us hot chocolate before we all piled on the couch to watch a movie. I was never one for the cold, so I’d always beg off joining her. Luanne sometimes went, and once Darcy was old enough, especially that last year, she tagged along without hesitation.

  When my mother grew too sick to inhale anything other than stale bedroom air and later suffocating hospital air, I decided to bring it to her instead. Darcy and I would amble outside, through those same woods, and I would click, click, click. It was summer then, so Darcy would run through the stream near the fallen, hollowed-out oak tree, and click, my mother wouldn’t miss out. Or we’d stumble on a patch of errant wildflowers, willfully growing in the lone patch of sun, and click. I’d hurry to the darkroom shortly thereafter and then, “Here, Mom, look what we brought back for you.”

  Those were my favorite moments, of course, my favorite images to lock down forever.

  “My favorite is probably children,” Eli says. “Probably in Kenya.”

  “You’ve been to Kenya?” I say. I haven’t even been to L.A.

  “Last March.” He nods. “It was hot as hell, and I couldn’t stop sweating, but still, it was amazing. Just their appreciation for what they had, which was basically nothing. But these kids, oh man, they didn’t stop smiling. They’d play soccer in these dirt roads, singing and clapping, and even though I went there to get away from some things, I felt centered, balanced, you know?”

  I don’t, but I bob my head anyway. “What were you getting away from?”

  “Oh, you know, relationship crap. Bad breakup. That boring old stuff.” He waves his purple-and-blue-spotted hands. He looks at me, and I know that he knows, that he is well aware that I’m a stray dog milling about, feeding on emotional scraps. But he doesn’t articulate this, and for one gushing moment, I am so grateful that he refuses to pity me, that he doesn’t ask me “What happened?” and say “Oh my gosh, Tilly, I simply cannot believe that Tyler up and left!” which is exactly what Gracie Jorgenson said three days ago in the cereal aisle at the Albertson’s.

  “I guess I’ve always wanted to go to Paris,” I hear myself saying, though I didn’t even realize this to be true.

  “Well, that explains prom.” Eli laughs.

  “I guess it does.” I laugh along with him, a cramp building in my belly like in a muscle that hasn’t been used in far too long.

  “So go,” he says simply.

  “Nah, maybe one day. But not now.” I dismiss it with a flop of my hands.

  “Paris is amazing,” he says. “My parents took us there when I was ten. My dad worked for the government, so we were always traveling around. We lived there for six months, and my sisters—I have four older ones—used to take me out to cafés and storefronts and roaming about the streets …” He pauses, his thought a memory. “Anyway, you should go, you’d love it.”

  “Why aren’t you married?” I say suddenly, and then realize my candor, a look of utter horror illuminating my face. I burst into staccato nervous laughter. “Oh my God, I’m sorry! I’m going a little crazy right now.”

  He laughs with me. “No, no, fair question. I think my parents would like an explanation too. All of my sisters are, though one is getting divorced.” He winces. “I’m an uncle five times over … but, I don’t know, I guess I’m always moving around, looking for the next big adventure. It’s just never suited me well for relationships.”

  “Hence Kenya,” I say.

  “Well, actually, Kenya was a reaction to the one relationship I’d decided to stick around for. Turns out she didn’t want me to.”

  We fall silent, a mutual understanding of the pain of being so disposable.

  “Anyway, you’ll like those pictures,” I say finally, pushing back the stool, heading for the door.

  “Take a look at them with me,” he says.

  “I have to run,” I answer, which isn’t true at all, but I feel like I’ve already exposed too much.

  “Well, then, hang on.” He unsnaps the tiny door on the bottom of the camera and pulls out the memory card, then reaches for another in his desk and slides it right in. “This is yours for now. Take it. Bring it back when you’re ready.” He pushes the Nikon over to my side of the table.

  “I can’t,” I say, though certainly, I know that I can, that I’d even like to.

  “You can,” he answers, as if he can read my mind.

  I stop by my father’s store on the way home from work. Darcy has opted to pick up a shift or two each week as a means for extra cash; when she finally dialed her boss at the bar she waitressed at in L.A. last week to inform him that her return date was indefinite, he promptly also informed her that he’d fired her back in August.

  The store is deserted in this dead time of late September to early November, the before-Christmas shopping moratorium that too many households impose on their budgets. Not cold enough to replace heating systems, not warm enough to overwork a freezer. Come November, the door will be in nonstop motion: DVD players for wives who intend to learn yoga at home (though they never will); big-screen TVs for husbands who already spend too much time watching ESPN and big bass fishing on Saturday mornings; Wiis for teenagers who should be studying instead. Jesus, Christmas. I wonder whether or not I can shove a metaphorical b
ag of coal right down Tyler’s figurative stocking. Possibly.

  As I get deeper inside, I hear them arguing near the stockroom, in my father’s office. I wind my way back there, through the mini-fridges, and the boxed-up microwaves, and the digital cameras. It smells like stale coffee here, in the bowels of the store, which, I consider, is better than smelling like old beer, which it once did.

  When I pop into my dad’s office, they both freeze, creating a vacuum of noise. Their eyes are wide orbs, and quickly, though they clearly hope that I won’t notice, they glance over to each other.

  “Hi, love bug,” my dad says. “What brings you here?”

  “What’s going on?” I’m deflecting. “Why were you guys fighting?” Why weren’t they fighting? I think, only to realize I hadn’t heard Darcy snap at him in the better part of the last few weeks.

  “It’s nothing, doll,” my dad says, leaning back in his rickety office chair, which emits a squeak in reply.

  Darcy glares at him—her look of a thousand scorched suns—and her neck turns stiff.

  “It’s nothing,” he repeats, deflecting her gaze, shutting her down.

  “Are you okay, Darcy?” I ask. “Is something going on with you?”

  “This isn’t about me! Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Um, are you okay, Dad? Is there something going on with you?” I consider the past month, whether anything has been particularly askew, whether or not my dad still seems sober, whether or not I can even remember monitoring him, keeping track. No, not really, I can’t. I eyeball him up and down.

  “I’m fine; there’s nothing going on with me,” he answers, and I nod because, well, he seems fine, and I have enough problems of my own.

  “Oh, give me a goddamned break,” Darcy says before stomping out of the room. A few seconds later, the chime of the front door rattles as she makes her escape. I’ll find her waiting for me, stewing in the car, right back where we began before the whole mess unloaded itself on me: before my dad, before Tyler, before the visions of my royally screwed future.

  “You should go after her,” my dad says, sighing, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, a habit I inherited. “But it’s just our usual stuff. Nothing more. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay,” I say, turning to leave. “Hey, by the way, are you friends with Valerie Simmons? Ashley’s mom?” I’m certain I’d have known if he was, but I can’t stop thinking about him at the hospital, his hands pressed against the glass, a prostrate position of mourning.

  “Who?” he asks, already lost in some papers on his desk. Likely September inventory with the month nearly to a close.

  “No one,” I answer before heading out the door to my thunderstorm of a sister. “Forget I even mentioned it at all.”

  twenty

  The Westlake grand premiere of Grease is slated for homecoming, the second weekend in October, during which time the town virtually spins itself into a self-parodying snow globe, filled with red and white streamers, red and white banners, Wizard hats, Wizard wands, Wizard glitter that lays sprinkled in the streets long after the Westlake Wizard parade has wound its way through town. Old players return and sit atop convertibles, waving to their friends and family, who cheer and shout and screech like there isn’t something a little weird about the subtle acknowledgment that maybe these grown men, at twenty-five or thirty-five or sixty-five, reached their peak at seventeen. I’d never actually thought of it that way until just now, now that I don’t have my husband to hoot for, to get a little misty for, as he and his classmates are wheeled around, kings on their rusted thrones.

  I texted him three days ago, “Will u be back for homecoming?” thinking he’d never miss a chance to have his own horn tooted—this, after all, was what these men lived for. But he replied six hours later, “No, might have to delay some more. Maybe end of Oct. WLYK.”

  I spent the better part of an hour trying to decipher WLYK— Will love you k? Would like your knees?—until Luanne peeked over my shoulder and said, “Will let you know,” and then under her breath added, “A-hole.” To which I said, not at all under my breath, “Amen.” I then resisted the urge to respond with a short and succinct, “FU” (“Even he could interpret that meaning,” Luanne noted), and instead simply left it at, “LMK.”

  Three days later, on homecoming morning, he still hasn’t—hasn’t LMK—though I know that his silence lets me know everything all the same. That one day soon, the winds will push in a cold rain from the west, and he and Austin will lug his belongings—all of the material items he’s collected as he built his life with me—out of our house, out of this town, out of my life entirely. I consider for a fleeting moment, as I run a blush brush over my cheeks, calling the Salvation Army, dumping all of his crap—the sweaters I bought for him, the prized ball he caught at a Mariners game, the golf clubs I gave him two Christmases ago—right into their truck. Ha! Yes! Ha ha! I flourish the brush over my left cheek, a smile worming its way over me. Would that be rich, wouldn’t that be just the perfect capper for him to return to—coming back to pack and discovering there’s nothing here to pack at all! I wrap myself into the fantasy, knowing I’ll never have the guts to do it but reveling in it all the same. I can at least revel in that.

  The homecoming parade is set to kick off at eleven, and Darcy and Murphy’s Law have been invited to play at the staging site. I wouldn’t be going at all if not to support her: I tried to convince Susanna to let me deal with the last-minute Grease snafus—someone had spilled gallons of water, God knows how, over our “Beauty School Dropout” backdrop, which left it looking more like a blurry sea of tacky, glittery blues, golds, and silvers; and the chorus (aka, the kids who really, really couldn’t sing but needed to fulfill a music elective and thus were relegated to the ensemble) still couldn’t master the hand jive, but she tsk-tsked me and shooed me away.

  “Scotty volunteered, anyway,” she said, the corners of her mouth upturning. “He’s bringing me coffee, and we’ll repaint the sets.”

  “Nice.” I smiled back.

  “Whatever,” she said, though neither of us believed her.

  So while it is quite possible that the last place on the planet that I wanted to be right now was out and mingling with the very people who had pinned their hopes on Tyler’s right arm a decade and a half ago at the state championship or gifted us with hams or cheap knife sets for our wedding, or who, I know, burned up the phone lines when he left, I’m here regardless. To cheer on my baby sister, who has tried to cheer me on during these past few desolate months.

  The parade begins in the same parking lot that I careened into way back in July, swerving in for a fix of tequila when I simply couldn’t take another second of clarity. Clarity. The word clangs around in my brain, and I nearly laugh, because whatever Ashley hoped to impart to me, she has done just the opposite. I have tried to shut down my brain, stop it from wondering about the unresolved questions the visions have raised, or why they matter in the first place. It all happens anyway! What, really, is the point? Enough with everyone’s issues—Ashley and my father and Darcy—and their hiccups and their problems! I’ve had enough of everyone else’s crap, and God help me, I’m not about to see any more of it. Not when all it proves is that more crap is ahead on the horizon.

  I watch as one of the reporters from the newspaper staff interviews Principal Anderson, and I spot Principal McWilliams from my own years at Westlake, grinning beside him. His face now looks like a worn cowhide, and his dentures are still one size too big for his mouth. Good God, some things never do change.

  A hearty crowd of several hundred, most adorned with red and white face paint or ridiculous wizard hats or some sort of school pride paraphernalia, has gathered by now. A platform is set up toward the side, nearly in front of the liquor store, bordered with two large speakers, already emitting tiny, grating waves of feedback into the crowd. It is one of those quintessentially perfect fall days, with apple crisp air, ruby red leaves, and bursts of sun we’ll all be longing fo
r in another few weeks. I glance around, wondering if Ashley will show today. I haven’t seen her in half a week, since she showed up at my office unannounced right when I was busy procrastinating, doing nothing.

  “She seized,” she said, her hands cradling her face. “Her eyes rolled back into her head, and I called nine-one-one …” She paused for breath. “So this is probably it. She’s going into hospice. She’s never coming back home.” She looked up at my wall of Polaroids and tried to smile. “I wish I could be sixteen again.”

  “No you don’t,” I reminded her. “You hated being sixteen.”

  “Probably.” She shrugged. “But I’m not loving thirty-two either.”

  I knew that she wanted me to offer to tell her more, to try to flash forward and tell her when she—when we all—could be put out of this misery. But she didn’t ask, and I wasn’t about to offer, because, as I’d learned already, who knew if we’d ever be put out of our misery, and really, who needs to know that it might never end?

  I swivel my neck skyward: there are no signs of the incoming storm that will mark Tyler’s arrival, only, in the distance, my dad flapping his arm at me across the way, moving closer. He is wearing his Elks Club jacket, ready to march through the town with his compatriots, waving at neighbors and friends like he doesn’t see them every other day at the gas station or the drugstore.

  I’ve walked in the parade three times, all in high school, all as a cheerleader for the Westlake Wizards. Each year, we’d spin ourselves mad, tossing legs high into the air, punching pom-poms with gusto that only fifteen-year-olds can possess, screaming our little hormonal lungs out for our baseball-playing, football-playing, basketball-playing boyfriends, who had captured the championship crown earlier that fall. My senior year, just after we crossed the end line, with the Wizard band blaring behind us, Tyler whisked me up, tossed me over his shoulder, and plopped me down in his truck, where we proceeded to make out to a particularly off-key version of “La Bamba,” in which the tuba players needed neutering.