Catch the Light, page 3
And then I register that he’s watching me check him out and at that exact moment I drop the lip balm on the floor and it rolls away loudly.
I scamper over to grab it, then duck back behind the shelf, trying to gather myself. I’m me, I think. Mary Sullivan. I’m at the store, picking up things for my aunt. I’m a normal person doing normal-person things.
I smooth my hair, fix my skirt, and emerge somewhat gracefully. Then I wander around the store, through the bulk bins and along the refrigerators at the back, adding items to my basket. I avoid eye contact to counteract all of the staring I was doing before. I almost start to forget what happened. Until I get to the counter.
He’s smiling at me, grinning, when it’s my turn. And just my luck, there’s no one behind me in line to rush this along.
“Hi,” he says through his stupid grin.
“Hi,” I say.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” he says, and I notice that his teeth are a little crooked on the bottom. “Are you visiting?”
“Actually, I just moved here.”
He looks surprised. “You moved here?”
I nod and notice the way his hands are dancing around aimlessly, touching things on the counter, straightening the pens. His fingers are long and graceful and an old watch with a brown leather band wraps around his wrist.
“Oh.” He’s still smiling, but it’s different now, like when the sun rolls out from behind a cloud. “Cool.”
“Yeah . . .” I say, dropping my eyes and dragging my finger across the wooden edge of the counter. I can’t look at that smile anymore or my eyeballs might burn right out of my head.
“What’s your name?” he asks, and he finally starts moving my groceries over the scanner. I brought some bags from El’s house, so I start packing everything up.
“Mary,” I say, still avoiding eye contact as I place a cold bottle of milk into a cloth bag that says GLOBAL WARMING: SO UNCOOL!
“Mary?” he says, and I look up to see his eyes wandering slowly over my face.
“It’s short for Marigold,” I say, and as soon as I say it I wish I hadn’t.
“Marigold?” he says, his brows drawing together in confusion.
My cheeks flame. “Seriously?”
“Sorry.” He shakes his head. “It’s nice. I like it.”
“Oh thank god,” I say. “I’ve actually been walking around my whole life, waiting for male affirmation.”
Shit. I can’t believe I just said that. He blinks and his mouth falls halfway open.
“Sorry,” I say, nervously tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “That was so rude. I’m having a weird day.”
The smile comes creeping back. “It’s okay. You’re right, anyway.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, Marigold is totally bizarre,” I say, shoving a box of mushrooms onto the top of my bag and handing him El’s member number. “My mom was going through a phase.”
He laughs at this. Then he nods at my camera. “You take photographs?”
“Yeah,” I say, and now I’m smiling. “It’s the best.”
“It is,” he says. “Black and white or color?”
I open my mouth to answer, but a customer who I didn’t realize was behind me clears her throat loudly. I lug my bag of groceries off the counter.
“I should go.”
“Okay.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “See you around, Marigold.”
I hesitate, wondering if I should correct him—everyone calls me Mary—but the lady sighs again, louder this time. So I give a limp wave instead.
“Yeah,” I say. “Later.”
I’m trying for casual but of course I trip on the threshold on my way out of the store, knocking my bags against the giant door and barely catching myself before I fall down the steps.
* * *
• • •
When I get home, the house is quiet and there’s a note on the counter:
Went into the new office to take care of some paperwork. Grandpa and Grandma are napping. Be ready to help with dinner at 5:30. Love you—M
Back in my room I open my computer, then close it, then open it again. I don’t really feel like talking to anyone, but at the same time I miss everyone.
I open my email, which feels so strange. Normally, Nora and I would be messaging all day long, an endless stream of jokes, memes, surreptitiously snapped pictures of ugly dogs and hot guys. But now I’m here on a faraway planet that time forgot, with no phone, so I’m using email like a thirty-year-old office worker.
I have to scroll through rows and rows of junk before I see one from Nora from a few days ago. I open it.
Mary!!!
I miss you so much. You’ve only been gone for five days but it feels like a year, at least. I feel like I should tell you that you’re not missing anything, but you’re missing EVERYTHING. JK. But not. But yes. I’m kidding. Here’s what’s new with me: I found a new surfing spot up past Malibu. And my dad is dating another twenty-five-year-old. That’s all I’ve got.
I have a million questions for you and I hope you call me soon. Do you know how much it’s killing me that you lost your phone? The universe hates us. Anyway, here are my questions:
How’s Bea? Hannah? How’s your mom? Are you still alive? Is it true that everyone wears polo shirts on the East Coast? Have you seen any cows yet?
Bennett asked why you’d disappeared so I told him about your phone. He said he’d send an email. You’d better forward all correspondence for analysis. Also, you’d better call me soon.
Love u.
Nora
I want to write her back, but I’m not sure where to begin or what to say. The road trip was depressing. I feel like my life is over. The air here feels wet to the touch. I can’t think about Bennett without wanting to crawl under the couch. The idea of trying to string all of those thoughts together seems exhausting.
So I open a new window and paste Bennett’s email into the address box. I try several different subject lines: Hi, and then Hey, and then Hi again, before giving up and just leaving it blank. I click down into the box for the main part of the email, and then I type:
Did you mean it when you said you missed me?
And then I click the X in the corner and delete the whole thing.
The first time Bennett kissed me, after seven years of excruciating friendship, was the day my mother told us we were moving to New York. We were sitting on my bed, watching Point Break for the thirteenth time, when the news just sort of slipped out.
“What?” Bennett said.
“I’m moving to New York.”
On the screen, Patrick Swayze was robbing another bank.
“You’re kidding,” Bennett said, shaking his head a little.
“It’s true.” I wondered how many times I’d have to say it before it felt real. “We’re leaving at the end of July.”
Bennett sat there for a minute, blinking his eyes, a whole world of incomprehensible thoughts passing behind them. Then he tackled me against the pillow and said, “No you’re not.”
His breath was hot in my face and his eyes blurred into one big circle in the middle of everything.
And then he was kissing me and holding my cheeks. His tongue tasted like Starbursts. His mouth was soft and his hands were warm and it was almost like an out-of-body experience, getting the thing I had always wanted.
I tug my backpack out from under the bed and pull out a stack of prints: a long strand of Hannah’s hair, floating across the sky; the cushion of Bennett’s palm, peppered with tiny pieces of gravel; a triangle of light on the peeling paint of Nora’s windowsill.
On my phone, under the ocean, there are other pictures—slanting afternoon sun on the beach pictures; sweaty, dancing, smiling pictures; me and Nora laughing; me and Bennett almost kissing; Bea flipping off the camera; Hannah laughing until she peed her pants.
I try to swallow the fact that those are gone. Instead of crying, I tack my photographs to the wall until I’m surrounded by lopped-off parts of what used to be.
Bea’s got her door open across the hall, so after a while I get up and head in there. She’s lying on her bed with her earbuds in and her eyes closed. I lie down next to her. She doesn’t seem startled by me, even though the music is blaring so loud I can hear it: Talking Heads. Dad’s favorite. She pulls one earbud out and hands it to me, and I stick it in my ear and we lie like that for a long time.
Here’s a secret about my dad: I’m starting to forget. I don’t remember his smell or the feeling of his skin, and my memories curve around the empty spaces where he would have stood or spoken. Sometimes, right before I fall asleep, I try to bring him into my mind. I think of a time when I know he was there, I draw his outline from photographs. Behind my eyes, I try to color it in. But the more I try to remember him, the more he’s gone.
Lying here, on Bea’s bed, I know he’s in us, somewhere. In the space where the music seeps out into our ears, in the iconic drums at the beginning of “And She Was,” in the place where our hair is mixing together on the bed, in our cells, our genes. But I can’t get to him.
I grab Bea’s hand and I pull it into mine. Her palm is soft and warm. I squeeze as hard as I can and she squeezes back, like she knows all of my thoughts, like she’s thinking them too.
* * *
• • •
Dinner is delicious, real food again, and Grandma and Grandpa are leaving tomorrow so for the most part the tension has subsided. Mom and El tell us all the old stories and we laugh until tears roll down our cheeks.
But after last night, we leave Dad out of it. Even though he was there at Bea’s third birthday when she poured ketchup all over her birthday cake. He was there when I shoplifted a fistful of fruit leathers from Trader Joe’s in second grade. He was there when Mom caught Hannah sneaking out the window her freshman year of high school with an entire jumbo pack of toilet paper in her backpack. No one knows how to mention his name anymore.
When I think nobody is looking, I lift my camera to catch the candlelight glinting off Grandpa’s wedding ring and the soft sag of skin under Grandma’s chin.
Bea gives me a look and mouths, You’re being creepy.
I wiggle my eyebrows and mouth back, You have no idea.
Grandpa and Grandma have an early flight, so after dessert and dishes are done we say goodbye. I get a stiff hug from Grandpa and a squishy one from Grandma. Both of them smell a little like mothballs. We’ve never been close, but I’m weirdly sad that they’re leaving. Like another little piece of Dad is breaking off and floating away.
* * *
• • •
The next day, El makes us a big breakfast of French toast and bacon and convinces us all to come to the river. I put on a dark green one-piece, and Bea wears a black-and-white polka dot bikini that’s cut like it’s from the fifties. El loads us up with hats, sunscreen, giant towels that are covered in flowers, and canvas bags of picnic lunch food.
It’s a ten-minute drive through town and out the other side. Then we park by the road, tromp across a field, and scramble down a brush-covered embankment. Aunt El leads the way, carrying twice as much as anyone else.
Mom is right behind her, and I watch as she laughs the whole way down. I study her like a scientist, trying to figure out what’s different. She’s lighter somehow. Like, full of light.
“Creepy, isn’t it?” Bea says as if reading my mind. “It’s like she got a brain transplant.”
I ignore her, picking my way through blackberry brambles and trying not to fall to my death.
“Or maybe she got bodysnatched.” Bea’s eyes are hidden behind giant sunglasses, but I can hear the hint of bitterness in her voice.
A pricker scratches across my kneecap. A bead of blood seeps out, sticking to my skin. I wipe it off with my thumb and push ahead.
“I’m glad she’s back,” I say.
“I hope it lasts,” says Bea.
The trail ends and we see the river. It looks deep and cool, with big, round stones all along the bank and giant rocks cropping out above the water for jumping. We have the place to ourselves. The thick layer of trees around us makes it feel like an oasis.
We lay our towels out over on the pebbled beach, and then Aunt El scrambles up on the tallest rock and leaps into the water. She’s under the surface for a few long seconds, lost to us, then she emerges, her long gray-and-brown hair slicked back perfectly and shining in the sun.
“Get in here, girls!” she calls. “The water is fucking exquisite.”
“Language, El!” my mom shouts, but she’s laughing, and for a moment the two of them look so much alike they could almost be twins.
Mom heads up to the rocky ledge and I follow her. Bea declines, deciding instead to sunbathe. She looks like someone famous in her big, cat-eye sunglasses with her black hair fanning out around the daisies on her towel.
Mom and I scramble upward, slippery little avalanches of rocks collapsing under our feet. When we’re standing at the ledge, ten feet above the water, I feel like I’m swaying at the edge of a skyscraper. The fear of letting go, of dropping into and under the rushing water, wraps around my ankle like a snake.
But I look over at Mom and she suddenly looks so young. Her smile is stretching across her face like it actually belongs there. So I grab her hand, bend my knees, and leap.
My stomach drops when I hit the water. I’m shocked by the cold that covers every inch of me. But when I emerge, breathless, the world looks different through my wet eyelashes. Everything sparkles.
Mom swims gracefully over to the edge, and I watch her pick her way back over to the towels, squeezing the water from her hair. Then I float on my back and squint up at the clouds. I can feel the water moving around me, washing one second of time and space into the next.
* * *
• • •
When we get home that afternoon I see an email from Bennett:
Hey Mary,
How’s New York? It’s Thursday night and I’m bored as hell. I wish you were here. In case you’re wondering, I really do. Miss you. When are you coming back home?
Bennett
I read it at least ten times before sinking back onto the pillows and closing my eyes.
I think about that last month together, the in-between. Nora was on her yearly summer trip to Seoul so it was just Bennett and me for three whole weeks. We were more than friends but not really enough of anything else. Existing in a finite sliver of time. Trying to make it last. Spending hours in my room while my mom was at work, lying on our sides and kissing. Letting his hand creep up my shirt while I touched every freckle on his cheeks.
I look around at this unfamiliar room, my half-empty suitcases spilling out clothes. How did this happen? Why does it seem so impossible to ever get back to that feeling?
I open the computer again to work on my reply. The words feel clumsy, ugly, somehow both too emotive and without any meaning.
Once we started kissing, Bennett and I didn’t talk very much. My head was too crammed full of questions like What does this mean? and How do you feel? and What do you want to do in August? I knew that saying any of them out loud would puncture the perfect bubble we’d created in my bedroom, would move the ending of everything a little bit closer.
The first and only time we ever had sex was two days before I left. Right before it happened, he looked down into my eyes and said, You know I love you, right?
And I nodded and tried not to cry.
Hi Bennett,
New York is weird. Lots of trees and Trump signs. I’m taking tons of pictures, even though I’m not yet sure if this is an experience I want to remember. I really do. Miss you too.
M
I read it back a few times. It doesn’t feel like enough. I used to tell Bennett everything but now it’s hard to tell him anything at all.
A new email pops up from Nora:
Marigold. Whyyyy are you avoiding me?
She only ever calls me by my full name when she’s pissed, so I get to work on writing her back. I tell her about my aunt’s house, about the way my mom is coming back to life, about the town of Cumberland and swimming in the river. When I come to the part of the letter that would be about the guy with the long limbs and dark hair, I skip right over it. I don’t even know his name.
3
My parents named me Marigold on some kind of anomalous hippie kick. My older sister, Hannah, and my younger sister, Beatrice, both lucked out and were born during normal name phases, even though I’m the most normal out of the three of us.
Hannah is the kind of dramatic you might find in a Victorian novel. She’s always sulking or pining, shutting herself in her room for a week because of some heartache or another. When Kristen Jameson broke up with her in the seventh grade, she forced Bea and me to participate in a full-moon ceremony she’d read about online, claiming that it was the only way she’d ever be able to “move on with her life.”
She bought actual crystals, and we tried to burn all of the notes they’d passed. Hannah made me hold a letter while she did the lighter—because I was too young to handle such a dangerous tool—and it ended up burning up much quicker than any of us expected. I lost half of my bangs and ruined my favorite sweater smothering out the flames—because Hannah had just screamed, “Oh my god, fire!” and run out of the room. And still, for weeks, all she could talk about was how our failure was a sign from the universe that they needed to get back together.
