“Sorry,” I say. Liam looks shocked. My mom, stricken. I feel guilty, even if I shouldn’t. “Long trip. Uh. So…yeah, let me get that luggage.”
And I get the fuck out of there before this can blow up any worse.
At the top of the stairs, though, I’m faced with a fresh problem: With Liam staying in the house, there’s just the one bedroom left for me and Ely to share. One bedroom, one bed.
Shit. Maybe I should have explained the whole not-my-girlfriend thing to my family after all.
I’m still hovering in the doorway, staring at my childhood double bed, neatly made with faded dove sheets, when Ely comes up. My mom must have changed this. The room used to be all pink and glitter and bows. Now the coral throw pillows are a muted green, and the curlicue white furniture has been replaced by solid wood pieces. Cheap ones, probably from the thrift store, but it puts a lump in my throat.
I cough and move into the room properly, giving Ely room to come in after me and pull the door gently shut.
“You okay?” she asks. She’s noticed the bed—I saw her gaze linger on it for a second as she looked the room over—but she hasn’t said anything. Even though she surely realizes there’s not a fourth bedroom hiding in this tiny clapboard house. “That seemed…tense.”
Understating it, frankly. “Do you think I was an asshole?”
Both of Ely’s brows go up. “What? No. No, of course not. You could’ve laid into them harder, honestly. They would have deserved it.”
“But they changed their minds. It was all my dad in the end. He scared them.”
“Was it?” She shrugs. “I mean…maybe. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what it was like living around him.”
I do. I remember the fear. It still got me even years after I’d left the state. I remember hearing a familiar-sounding voice on the subway and feeling the floor vanish from underneath me, reeling through space and memory until I realized I was nowhere near him. I wasn’t a little kid hiding scared in his childhood home. I was just another dope fiend scaring tourists off public transit.
So, yeah. Maybe I can see it. Maybe I know exactly why my mother never even tried to call me, all those years. If she really did send that book, it would have taken all the courage she could save up. She probably sweated the whole rest of the week, waiting for someone to mention seeing her in the post office around him. Say, Mrs. Cole, what were you mailin’ off the other day, anyhow?
But understanding doesn’t seem to make me feel better. Resentment still curls its vine tight around my insides. Those thorns stick in deep.
The funeral isn’t until tomorrow, which means we’ve got a long night ahead of us. I should have thought of that when I bought the plane tickets. We could have landed later, spent less time here. Could have flown out tomorrow night instead of the next morning. Shortsighted.
“Sorry for dragging you down here,” I manage eventually.
Ely shakes her head. “No. Don’t start with that. I’m glad you did. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
You’re such a good friend, Ely said the other week. I replay that in my head very intentionally, over and over again. Good friend.
“I can sleep on the couch,” I say.
“Don’t be stupid, Wyatt. It’s your room.”
“Honestly, that’s part of why I don’t want to sleep in it.” Memories are painted all over the walls in eggshell white. Even a fresh coat hasn’t covered up that depression in the wall where Dad shoved me so hard I dented the drywall. The dresser is still positioned discreetly in front of that spot.
I suppose it’s not like I only have evil memories here. Liam and I would hang out sometimes and play “murder zombies” with his action figures. I’d stolen our mom’s lipstick and would smear it all over their bodies to look like blood.
I kick my duffel where I’ve dumped it on the floor by the dresser. All that’s in there is my funeral suit, pajamas, a change of clothes, and my toiletry kit. I didn’t even bring my camera, which I usually take everywhere. There’s nothing I want to memorialize here.
“Want to go out?” she suggests. “Walk around?”
“Sure. We can if you want.”
Downstairs, my mother is making a racket in the kitchen. I can’t hear him speaking, but I’m sure Liam’s in there with her. Ely and I make it out the front door without being intercepted, which feels like its own special ops mission.
The street heading into town is sand dusted; the wild grasses that grow out on the dunes aren’t quite enough to hold erosion at bay. The sun bakes down on the tops of our heads; I’m glad I brought a hat. Walking around this place with a baseball cap shoved on my head and my hands stuffed in my pockets, I feel like I’m fourteen again. Always playing at being a man. Playing at being Liam, really. Up in New York, I might pass; here, I feel like you could take one look at me and tell. I feel like I’m wearing a cheap and badly sized costume, one that might come apart at the seams any second.
It’s been a long damn time since I’ve felt this insecure. And I hate this place for it, all over again.
“What are you thinking about?” Ely asks eventually, once we’ve turned a few corners and are in sight of downtown. Or what passes for downtown, anyway. Really it’s just a few bars, a couple B and Bs, and a tourist shop masquerading as a “general store.” Every single restaurant on this street serves seafood.
“Oh, you know. The usual emo teenage nonsense. I gotta get out of this one-horse town, et cetera, et cetera. I guess there are some things you never grow out of.”
“Where did you hang out when you were younger? I’m guessing not here and not at home.”
I snort. “Yeah, hard no on both of those options. You remember that bridge we drove over to get here? The one off the mainland?”
She nods.
“There’s a little access road that cuts beneath it. On one side you’ve got some dinghies tied up, although who knows who they belong to, because I’ve never seen them get used? On the other side there’s this patch of flat grass where me and Liam used to go smoke blunts and listen to the car radio. It was a shitty spot, trashed with all the garbage people threw off the bridge overhead. But it had the best view of the sunset on the whole East Coast.”
Ely gives me a look. “Maybe we should have gone there instead.”
“Maybe. I have no idea if it still exists. If it does, it’s probably even more trashed than it used to be.” And I’m worried that if I go back now, as an adult, it won’t be how I remember. I don’t want to dull one of the few good memories I have from growing up.
We wander along the boardwalk until the road ends—abruptly, as if the town used to exist past here but one night the sound rose up and swallowed the rest of the street in a mouthful of salt water. It’s almost dinnertime, the sunlight taking on that amber quality of late afternoon; we have no choice but to head home.