Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, page 5
* * *
Two days later, Billy came for dinner and the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. Maybe this had something to do with my concussion earlier in the week, but I think it was just the shock of Billy’s presence in our house. There was Billy, in our living room. Billy, at our kitchen table. Billy, eating our mother’s potato salad. I couldn’t make sense of it. Billy was so big at the dinner table, bigger than even Dad, and I wondered how this made Dad feel, to be smaller than a boy.
Mom and Dad were funny around Billy all night, too. They were nervous, like we were all on a date with Billy. It started as soon as he showed up, standing in the doorway with flowers.
“How did you know I loved tulips?” Mom laughed, like the flowers were for her.
“My father said I couldn’t go wrong with tulips,” Billy said, and then told us that his father was a florist, as if we didn’t know everything about him already.
“Oh, we know Bill,” Mom said. We had purchased hundreds of flowers from him when Grandpa died, and then, again, when Grandma died.
“Bill’s a great guy,” Dad said. He shook Billy’s hand, which made Billy seem a hundred years older. “Gives me discounted marigolds every year. How’s he doing, by the way?”
“He’s doing really well,” Billy said.
“Good,” Dad said.
Billy put his hands in his pockets and started answering Dad’s questions about the team. Were they planning on being champions this year?
“You bet!” Billy said.
Billy was an optimist. He believed in noble things, and he wore these beliefs literally printed down the sleeves of his shirts. That night, his sleeve said, ONE TEAM, ONE GOAL.
“Attaboy,” Dad said. Then a slap on the back. “That new coach is really turning things around.”
“He is,” Billy said.
Then Billy said a lot of boring things about the new coach, who had been a player in college. He had a wife who was a CFO and so he didn’t work.
“Which means his job is us,” he explained. “He’s crazy.”
He made Billy practice all of the time, even on weekends, even on holidays, but it was worth it. They were getting better. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT, it said on his other arm.
“We have a chance this year,” Billy said.
“That’s what all the papers say,” Dad said.
That night, I noticed something about Dad: He spoke with Billy in a way he never spoke to us—like they were colleagues or something. Two men, just talking about a game together. When they finished, Billy looked at me.
“How are you doing?” Billy said.
But you answered before I could.
“She’s still alive,” you said. “Right, Sally?”
“Right,” I said.
All through dinner, Mom kept thanking him for saving my life.
“There were a ton of people there,” Mom said while Billy ate our potato salad, stabbing each cube whole and popping them into his mouth. “But you were the only one who reacted.”
“Hey, it’s no big deal,” Billy said, as if he saved people all of the time, and, apparently, he did. Just punched his grandmother in the stomach earlier that year when she was choking on a piece of meat. The meat came flying out, and his grandmother would live another two weeks, only to die of a heart attack in her sleep.
“Oh, that’s sad,” Mom said.
“It’s okay,” Billy said. “She was really old.”
“Wait, you really punched your grandmother?” you asked.
“I did,” he said.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Dad said.
“It’s not really what you’re supposed to do. I found out later that I could have killed her,” Billy said. “My dad kept saying, ‘You could have killed her, Billy. What were you thinking?’ But I wasn’t thinking. I just did it. I just reacted.”
“Everybody chew very slowly,” you said. “So Billy won’t punch us.”
Billy laughed, a real laugh. Then he put up his hands and said, “I won’t be punching anybody, I promise.”
He relaxed.
“Mrs. Holt, can you please pass me the potato salad?” Billy was hungry. Billy was always hungry.
After dinner, you offered to help clean up, but Mom said, “Go walk Billy out,” and she gave you a wink that made only me blush.
* * *
Through our kitchen window, I watched you talk to Billy by his car for a long time. Eventually you started leaning on his car. You laughed, like Shelby Meyers. Like Lisa the Lifeguard. You held your stomach the way they did when Billy said something too funny for them to take. I wondered what Billy could possibly be saying to make you laugh so hard. Could Billy really be that funny?
“Come on, Sally,” Mom said, behind me. “Don’t spy. Give your sister some room to breathe.”
So I went up to our room, and I looked out our window, but I couldn’t see you anymore. You must have gotten into his car. I got on my bed and couldn’t believe any of it. What a strange few days. To have almost died. To have been brought back to life by Billy. To have sat next to Billy across our dinner table as he ate our mother’s potato salad.
While you were in his car, I kept trying to picture the moment he saved me. Even though I hadn’t seen it, I felt like I had seen it. You had described it to me so many times, as if you were proud of me for almost dying, like it wasn’t something you had expected from a Red Person, and so after a while, I could see Billy running and jumping into the water. Pulling me up. Laying me on my back. Leaning down to kiss me while you watched.
But then you came in the room, face flushed, as if you had lived through something extraordinary.
“Billy kissed me,” you said.
“He kissed you?” I asked.
“He kissed me.”
I thought you were going to continue, but you stopped.
“How?” I asked.
“Like a gentleman,” you said.
“I mean, how does a gentleman kiss?”
“He asks you.”
“He asked you?” I said. “That’s awkward.”
“No. It was nice.”
You said you were tired of all the boys who tried to get you drunk at Priscilla’s theater parties, boys who, with no segue whatsoever, just leaned over and tried to kiss without you noticing.
“How do you not notice?” I asked.
“You know what I mean,” you said, and I nodded, even though I didn’t really.
“If anybody ever tried to kiss me, I’m pretty sure I’d notice,” I said.
Then you set the scene: “I walked him out and we were talking for so long he was like, Why don’t we get in the car? Then we listened to some music and before I got out, Billy said, If this is like a ‘we’re just hanging out kind of thing,’ I wouldn’t kiss you. But if this is a date, I would.”
“What was it?”
“A date,” you said. You turned off the light. “Obviously.”
But I wasn’t done. “What was it like?” I asked.
“Nice,” you said. “Except maybe he used too much tongue. But that’s what boys do. It’s their way of trying to have sex with you before they can have sex with you, you know?”
I didn’t know. I had never kissed anything but the back of my hand, and even that was embarrassing, practicing in the dark with nobody watching. Except for Jesus, Grandma said once, when she barged in on me doing it. You shouldn’t do anything that you wouldn’t do in front of Jesus, she scolded, which made no sense to me, because I wouldn’t ever do anything in front of anyone. Especially not Jesus.
But I said, “Yeah, I know.”
By the time we returned to the town pool, it was August, and everything was different. Lisa stayed seated on her lifeguard chair, stern and dutiful, looking out at the pool. Shelby Meyers was nowhere in sight. And you never stayed put on our towels. You spent all day at the snack bar, sitting on Billy’s lap. Sometimes, he even let you sell candies.
I didn’t know what to do with myself next to Mom.
“Can I have some change for the snack bar?” I asked.
“You’ve had enough,” Mom said, without turning from her book.
“Just one more snack?”
“Leave your sister alone,” Mom said, and turned the page.
But I couldn’t help it. I watched as you sat on his lap, as he tickled your sides, as he threw you in the pool. I watched the way you laughed as you emerged out of the water, mouth opened wide and up to the sky, as if you had just been born. Mom watched, too—and I thought she might scold you for letting a boy touch you that way in public, but she didn’t.
“He’s a handsome boy, isn’t he?” Mom said.
“Actually,” I said. “Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he’s too good-looking to be good-looking.”
“I don’t follow,” Mom said.
“He’s so good-looking he’s actually ugly,” I said.
“That makes no sense, Sally,” Mom said. “There’s no such thing as someone being too good-looking.”
“Well, he is.”
Mom sighed. “It’ll happen to you, you know. One day, you’ll have a love like that.”
I couldn’t imagine it.
“I had a love like that once,” Mom said. “In high school. He was very special to me, but then he died.”
“How?”
“In Vietnam.”
“Oh,” I said. “Did Dad go to Vietnam?”
“No,” Mom said. “He joined the National Guard so he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam.”
Dad dug ditches for years, while Mom’s boyfriend was blown up overseas. Mom was devastated when she heard the news about Fred—that was his name. Mom and Dad both went to his funeral, and that was how Mom and Dad started dating. Dad was kind to her. Took her out for a drink. Took her dancing. Anything to get her mind off her dead boyfriend. And it worked.
“But Dad’s a terrible dancer,” I said.
That’s what Mom always said when Dad put on Frank Sinatra after dinner, twirled and dipped her so hard, she threw her head back and laughed. “Richard!” Mom said, as the laughter rolled out her mouth and hit the floor like a marble. “You’re a terrible dancer!”
“That’s what I liked about him,” Mom said. “He dances anyway. To make me laugh.”
Lisa blew the whistle. The sun was setting. It was time to go home. Thank God. But you weren’t ready.
“Billy’s going to drive me home,” you said, dripping water all over my towel. “Is that okay?”
Of course, it was okay. Mom loved Billy. Billy saved my life. Mom would probably let Billy drive you to the moon, if you asked.
The whole way home, I kept picturing Mom’s old boyfriend running through some field, running toward the end of his life, until Mom turned on the radio. The news report. The traffic report. The weather report about a hurricane that was heading our way.
“Shh,” Mom said, even though I wasn’t talking. “This sounds like a big one.”
“Good,” I said.
I loved listening to the weather report for the same reason I loved waiting for a hurricane. It felt like something big was about to happen to me for a change. But when I got home, nothing was different. The storm was late. So I turned on the TV to see where it was. I watched the weatherman as he stood on a beach in Jersey, picking up a fistful of sand, holding it up to the camera dramatically. I reenacted it for you when you finally got home.
“In a few hours, this beach will no longer be a normal beach!” I said, but you didn’t say anything. You sat down and turned on the computer that Dad had bought a few months back. He had plopped it down on the desk in the living room and said, “Girls, this is the future,” and I didn’t understand what he meant at the time, until you started talking to Billy on it.
“And this sand!” I shouted, pretending to pick up a fistful. “It will become blinding!”
Then, the sound of Billy’s instant message fluttering into the room like a bird. I tried to see what he wrote, but you covered it with your hand.
“Sally,” you said. “You’re so weird sometimes. Go away.”
* * *
When the hurricane arrived the next night, the house shook you back into being yourself. We were all stuck inside together. We became sisters again. We played Scrabble. Dad drank a beer and Mom had a glass of wine. We all got silly. You spelled penis on the board, because it was the only thing you could do with your letters. “I swear!” you said. And we laughed hard as you spelled it on the board, until I realized this meant you won and said, “But swear words don’t count?”
“Penis is just a body part,” Mom declared.
And so it was official. “I win!” you said.
“Your sister is a champion,” Dad said.
He actually seemed proud.
Dad went to set up the candles before the power went out, so it’d feel less like the power going out and more like a magic trick. Ta-da! Look at all the beautiful candles. He smiled, and I could tell he liked it when it stormed, too—he liked the TV off, the hum of the world silenced, the four of us in the kitchen.
“Our little family,” he said, and kissed Mom on the lips.
* * *
“See? They are in love,” I said, when we got to our bedroom. “They just kissed.”
“It’s just for show,” you said. “It’s just to make us leave the room.”
But that couldn’t be, because soon after, they followed us upstairs. Dad came to tuck us in. On nights like this, he treated us like we were still little kids.
“Girls, there’s no need to be afraid,” he said. “The storm isn’t going to kill you.”
He paused.
“I mean, the only way it would kill you is if a tree fell on the house, which is always possible,” he said. “But not likely.”
He had been meaning, he said, to cut down some of the trees.
“Richard,” Mom said, appearing in the doorway. “Girls, you’ll be fine. The trees in our yard are very strong. They’ve been here since before we were.”
“That’s what worries me about them,” Dad said. “Those trees are dying. Ready to topple.”
“We know,” I said. I did not want to be reminded of our dying trees on a night like this, when the sky was purple and ready to hurl things at us through the window. Neither did you. You looked at me. A gust of wind shook the glass.
“I’m not taking my chances,” you said. “I don’t want to die young! Come on, Sally.”
We went downstairs. We built a tiny house made of blankets and couch cushions. We crawled in.
“I love forts,” you said.
You were too old to love forts—you were sixteen, a girl with a learner’s permit and a boyfriend now. But I didn’t remind you of this, because that was the fun of being sisters. Sometimes, you got to be younger than you were, and I got to be older.
“Me, too,” I said. “This is a really good one.”
Then we began our favorite game. Would you rather get a massage from Satan or have all your hair ripped off by a loved one? Would you rather make out with a prince who has an STD or a very healthy serial killer? Would you rather be stuck in a box for all of eternity alone or in a box with a Nazi?
We didn’t know. Agh. Life was hard.
“Give me death!” I joked.
You laughed, but no, no, you can’t choose death, you said. “Death is no fun. Death is not an option.”
“Okay, fine, I’d rather be with a Nazi,” I said.
“You’d rather be with a Nazi?” you said. “Do you know what a Nazi even is?”
“Of course, I know what a Nazi is!”
“Being trapped with a Nazi would be the worst,” you said.
“It’s not my preference.”
But at least if you were with the Nazi, you could ask him questions. You could pretend to be a journalist after the war, pretend like you were visiting his prison cell in very tall high heels, and say, “Tell me, when was it that you first realized you wanted to be a Nazi?” and make the Nazi think about his childhood and cry.
“I don’t know,” you said. “That sounds weird. I’d rather be alone.”
But I knew then that anybody who chose to be alone had no idea what it really meant to be alone.
* * *
In the morning, Dad went outside to assess the situation with the trees. The storm didn’t knock any of them over but ripped off enough branches to concern Dad. We followed him as he put his hand over each tree trunk to determine which ones were survivors and which ones were beyond repair.
“Survivor,” he said. “Survivor. Survivor.”
Then, he put his hand on the maple outside our bedroom. “Not a survivor.”
“What are you going to do to it?” you asked.
“Maybe your boyfriend’s father will come and cut it down,” Dad said. It sounded weird to hear Dad call Billy your boyfriend. It sounded very official.
“I’ll ask Billy,” you said. “Maybe he’ll give us a discount.”
“Isn’t his dad in a wheelchair?” I asked.
“Sally, that was years ago,” you said. “He’s fine now.”
Dad dragged the broken branches to the center of the yard, and we used them to build a campfire that night. We roasted marshmallows and listened to your ghost stories. You loved ghost stories.
“Apparently, according to Billy, there’s a ghost who haunts the town pool,” you said.
“Ghosts can’t haunt pools,” I said. I didn’t even know if I believed in ghosts, but I felt strongly that if ghosts existed, they wouldn’t haunt municipal pools.
“Ghosts can haunt anything they want,” you said with the same certainty you said everything.
“How do you even know ghosts exist?” I asked.
“How do you know they don’t exist?” you said, and I couldn’t explain.
“I’ve just never seen one,” I said.
“Well, I’ve seen one,” you said. “Sometimes, Grandma visits me in my sleep.”
“Me, too, actually,” Mom said.
I was shocked. What? I wanted to ask more questions about Grandma’s ghost—How long had she been haunting you? And was I the only one not being haunted?—but you continued with your story.
