“What if your dad comes in?” I say.
“He won’t. He’s hardly ever here. He says his work is at the grocery store, the bar, the Little League games.”
“There are no Little League games,” I tell him.
“No, but you know what I mean,” he says, and when I don’t look like I do, he makes his voice deep like his father’s. “‘You can’t spread goodwill behind a desk, son. The most important work is always fieldwork.’” His voice returns to normal. “So you don’t have to be nervous.”
I am anyway. But that’s not why. He unlocks the office door, then stops and turns toward me.
“I was just kidding about taking off your pants, you know.”
“You were?”
“Not kidding exactly,” he hedges. “Trust me, I meant it when I said you taking your pants off gave me an idea. This idea.”
This is very honest.
“But I did not mean to suggest that what happened next would necessarily have to involve you taking them off again. Though you could. You know. If you wanted.”
I consider this. “Not by myself,” I say finally.
“No, no,” he agrees. “It would be a real shame to be the only one without pants.”
“Not first,” I add in a whisper because if we’re going to keep talking about what we’re talking about, I don’t want to do it out loud.
“Maybe together?” he suggests.
And that seems okay, and he reaches over and opens the door and takes me by the hand and leads me in and closes it behind us. And then, while we’re still fully dressed, he kisses me, standing there, first a little, then a lot. And then he leads me over to the blue sofa, and first we’re sitting on it and then I’m lying down on it and he’s lying over me, still with our pants on, stopping every once in a while to make sure it’s all still okay. It is. More than okay. Dizzying. When I said before falling was nothing like flying? I was so wrong.
And then he says, “Ready?”
And I wonder, for what? For taking my pants off? For what comes after that? Or for what comes after that? And since there’s no way to know what that is, how can I possibly know if I’m ready for it? But that’s Monday-logic, so I swallow it and breathe. “Yes, I’m ready. Yes I am. Are you?”
And we’ve been kind of laughing about everything, but now he stops and looks in my eyes and holds my hand against his chest and just nods. So I guess we’re both ready. Except I feel like he should know something so I say, “I’ve never done this before.”
“That’s okay,” he says.
“Have you?” I ask, and my heart beats hard while I wait for the answer, though that may or may not be why or what I’m waiting for.
“Are you kidding?” he says. “Loads of times. I take my pants off every night.”
* * *
Later, when Monday and Mirabel ask what this is like, which they will, which they should, I will have to lie. They have a right to know, I know, but I can’t tell them. There are words for it, but they don’t describe what it feels like. It feels like full. It feels like singing but not out loud. It feels like opening, like everything is opening, like everything in the whole wide world is suddenly open to me. It feels like magic.
After, we are lying together on the blue sofa, and I say, “What will he do with this place?”
“Who?” He is tracing a line on my shoulder with his finger.
“Your father.”
“When?”
“When we shut it back down. He’s got all this new equipment. All these new supplies. Do you think he’ll be mad?”
“My grandfather will be furious. My dad will just be taking it.”
“Will your grandfather be mad at you?”
“Me, you, my father, my mother, your mother, everyone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say but that’s not it, not exactly. I’m not sorry to be doing it. I’m desperate to be doing it. I’m not sorry his grandfather will be mad. It’s his turn. But I’m sorry River will have to bear it.
“It’s okay.” He pulls the back of me against the front of him. “I’m used to my family.”
“You think they’ll raze the whole place or convert it into something else or just leave it here to rot?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean not right away, of course. I know it’ll take a while. But when it’s a done deal and they have to give up. When they realize it’s dead.”
And what River replies is “If.”
But I’m not really listening.
* * *
I get home distracted, floating, a little bit sore in the best, most secret way.
I would like the house to myself.
I would settle for the bedroom to myself. For an hour to myself. For a little bit of time alone to consider what just happened and replay it without anyone watching me or demanding to know what I’m daydreaming about or making fun of the stupid smile on my face or pestering me with questions or wanting me to think about what they want to think about instead of what I want to think about.
But, as usual, what I would like has nothing to do with what I find when I get home.
“Mirabel found the gun,” Monday reports before I even have my coat off.
Gun?
“Smoking gun,” Mirabel’s Voice corrects.
“At therapy,” Monday continues. “Nathan Templeton invented GL606 in college for his environmental chemistry dissertation, and he tested it, and the tests showed it caused bad things, and he wrote them all down, and he told his father, but Belsum Industrial changed its name to Belsum Chemical and made GL606 anyway, and now we know they knew.”
“Apple said all that in therapy?” This doesn’t sound right.
“Lie,” says Monday. “Nathan himself came to therapy because he feels worried about what the GL606 did and worried about what it will do next when they reopen the plant but not that worried because they fixed it.”
I hear and I follow and I understand, but I don’t believe it. Not quite. It’s too big a thing.
“Was it a trick?” I ask.
Mirabel shakes her head no. “He was scared,” her Voice says.
I nod. The room is spinning. “Mama must be … Is she celebrating? Buying party supplies? Buying fireworks?” I’m happy for her, for all of us, but “happy” isn’t really the right word. Even Petra wouldn’t have a word for this I don’t think. Or maybe the point is more like I have just had a big beginning, the first of firsts, which makes it feel unsettling rather than joyous to come home to such an unexpected, unnameable end.
“She will not use it,” Monday says.
“Won’t use what?” I don’t get it. Maybe it’s the spinning room. Maybe Monday is just maddening.
“The gun.”
I look at Mirabel, wordlessly, and she looks back the same way. It’s slower for Mirabel to explain, but it’s often the more direct path to get where you’re going.
“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” her Voice intones like it’s nothing, like the world hasn’t just been offered and then snatched away.