As I’m looking around, I realize that I never noticed the print above the bed. It’s another in the family series—a faded wedding portrait. Groom in tux. Bride with pearls.
It comes off the wall easily.
I set the print on the bedspread and wipe away the dust on the wall with the sleeve of my hoodie. I take out a Sharpie from my bag. The wall has yellowed to create a perfect rectangle where the photograph must have been hanging, unmoved, for years.
I fill the whiter space with this: I never got to tell you how beautiful you are.
And then I return the frame to its place on the wall and go back out into the night.
We walk back to the Greyhound station in silence, each holding on to a handle of the amp to share its weight. Bev doesn’t ask me why I went to the room, and I don’t tell her what I did there. People are scattered throughout the station, waiting for our bus, but I don’t start conversations with any of them. Everyone looks tired, and I imagine that we are all on the edge of something terrible. We’re all broke and unemployed and desperate for something. This overweight, middle-aged man with sweat marks on his shirt sits near us, looking out the window. I watch his sad reflection and feel a sense of camaraderie. Yes, I say to him in my head. Our lives are changing, and not for the better.
Soon the bus arrives. It smells like mothballs and it’s so hot I can hardly breathe, so as soon as we find a seat in the middle I slide in first and open the window to the cooler night air. Bev sits next to me. When I avoid looking at her face, I end up looking at her bare thighs and knees.
I turn to the men and women filing in, most of them alone. The overweight guy doesn’t get on. He must be waiting for a different bus to take him somewhere else. When the bus pulls out I catch a last glimpse of him as we drive away. He’s sitting inside the bright station next to a Coca-Cola vending machine, looking out at us. But he actually doesn’t look sad. He looks peaceful and maybe even content, so I change the story and decide that his life isn’t changing at all. He just works really hard every day and then rides the bus home to someone who finds him funny or smart.
The bus turns onto the freeway and gains speed. Bev shifts on the seat and takes a breath. I think, Okay: we’re going to talk about us now.
“I can tell you more about that day,” she says. “About the boots and my mom and everything.”
I turn to the window: darkness moving fast, headlights on a rough road.
I nod, but I don’t know if she’s looking at me.
“So what happened is that a couple weeks later, I saw the boots again. I’d probably seen them a million times before the science fair day but I didn’t notice them because they hadn’t meant anything to me. You know what I mean?”
I nod.
“They were Steve’s,” she says.
Steve and his wife, Joanne, are Bev’s parents’ closest friends. They’re the people Bev’s family spends Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July with. When we were kids, she called them aunt and uncle.
“They came over for dinner,” she says. “Like they did all the time, and he walked in and he picked me up and hugged me. And when he set me down I saw them.”
“You’re sure they were the same ones?”
“They’re cowboy boots and they’re green.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
“And then I had to sit there all night, watching my dad with his arm around my mom’s shoulders, smiling at her, refilling her wineglass.” She gets quiet and shakes her head over and over.
“My dad really loves my mom,” she says. Her voice is so low I can barely hear what she’s saying. “I mean he really loves her.”
She says this like love is the saddest thing.
Maybe it is.
“He thinks they’re happy. He has no idea. But every time it’s her birthday and he plans what to get her, every time she kisses him or holds his hand in front of me, every time my dad hangs out with Steve, or Joanne comes over to do some home decorating bullshit with my mom, whenever they do anything at all, I feel sick. Everything about us is fake and my dad doesn’t know. My mom tells me she loves me and my stomach hurts, because we’re living this fake perfect family life. And then I’m mean to her and she doesn’t know why, but there is no way that I can tell her.”
Bev’s hands are resting on her knees, but her hands are shaking. She’s tall and she’s wild and she doesn’t like to be taken care of, but if things were different between us I could still reach out and hold her. Before last night I’m pretty sure she would have let me. And right now, if she asked me again if I got what I wanted, I would tell her that, No, I got the opposite. This is so far away from what I wanted with her.
“It’s incredible,” she says, “how much damage everyone does to everybody else.”
I don’t really know where she’s going with this, but then she says, “I didn’t ever want to break anyone’s heart.”
I look away from her hands. I focus on keeping my own still.
“I don’t ever want to be accountable to anyone for anything again,” she says. “I will never make another pact and I will never get married and I will never let anyone think that I am theirs forever.”
She stops talking, but I don’t know what to say. This is about us but it isn’t about us. It’s not the conversation I need. I lean my face against the cold window and listen to the occasional murmur of the other passengers, the road beneath us, the almost imperceptible sound of Bev breathing.
An hour later, the bus heaves to a stop and Bev and I go lurching forward, slamming against the seats in front of us, gasping at the impact. I sit back, my hand over my face, and look out the window. The night is so dark that I can’t see well, but then my eyes adjust.
Deer.
One after the next, they dart past the window on skinny, graceful legs. For the first time since we left San Francisco, I feel like I might cry. Not because of the deer and how fast they run, and not because my face hurts, although it does, but because of Bev. Because I’m on this bus, because I don’t know if my mom still loves my dad and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with my life. The last deer trots by and then there is stillness, and the bus groans to motion. I lean back against the seat.
“Oh my God,” Bev says. “You’re bleeding.”
I take my hand away from my face, and yeah, I’m bleeding. Around the bus, the other passengers appear unharmed.
But Bev has a red cut on her lip. Her bottom lip, just right of the middle.
I squeeze shut my eyes. Tears come anyway.
More time passes, and it becomes too much—the not knowing.
I get out my phone because I know that something will be okay. You don’t lose everything at once. When I think hard I can see my mom’s face as she watches Dad strumming his guitar. I can see the love in it. Adoration, even. The rightness of it washes over me. My dad will be at the table in the kitchen, and it will be the same time of night for him as it is for me now, and there will be no delay when he answers me, none of the fogginess of sound moving across continents and ocean, nothing foreign or unfamiliar when he laughs and tells me that of course they are fine.
Now the phone is ringing and I feel almost relieved already. His voice sounds hopeful when he answers and I say, “Hey, Dad,” and he is glad it’s me.
“I know this is going to sound strange but I have a question for you.”
Bev looks over at me, brow furrowed, and there may be worry in Dad’s tone when he says, “Sure, son, what is it?” But I am probably imagining things.
“Is there anything going on with you and Ma? She’s really just away studying French, right?”
I am ready for his laugh, for the worry to lift away.
Instead there is silence.
The clearing of his throat.
The weight of something terrible settling in my stomach.
There are a couple minutes worth of stammered partial explanations and promises to talk about it in depth soon and assurances that they still love one another.
br />
When I don’t say anything in response, he says, “Son, the thing is this: I just don’t know.”
A beep comes and I move the phone away from my ear to see that Jasper’s calling.
I manage as many words as I can: “Okay, Dad. I’ll call you later. I have to go.”
I click over.
“We found them,” Jasper says.
At first I don’t even register what he’s talking about, as if my world has shifted and words that once made sense are now cryptic and strange.
Found who? I almost ask, but he keeps talking.
“They’re about to leave for some trip or something so you have to go tonight. They said you could crash there if you want.”
He says this so loudly that Bev, sitting next to me, can hear him, even over the rumble of the bus and the loud breathing of all the sleeping passengers. I turn to her.
“You decide,” she says.
And yeah, every part of me feels broken and I am exhausted, but it’s not the kind of exhaustion that sleep would be able to fix. No matter where we end up tonight it isn’t going to be home.
So I tell Jasper that we’ll go.
“I have directions,” he says. “They aren’t simple. So bust out that Sharpie and prepare to take notes.”
Bev pulls a torn half sheet of paper from her bag and hands me a pen.
“All right,” I say. And Jasper tells us what to do when we get off the Greyhound in Medford. We have to catch another bus to Jacksonville and then walk a mile to get to their house.
“They said they’ll leave their porch light on. And they’ll wait up for you.”
When I hang up Bev doesn’t even need to ask what my dad said. I guess it shows on my face.
“Colby,” she says.
But I say, “Let’s not talk about it,” and she doesn’t put up a fight.
Bev texts Meg to fill her in as we walk down a gravel and dirt road. We pass a dark house: it isn’t theirs. I start to wonder why we’re doing this. I know I really wanted to, I know I pushed for it, that it’s something that mattered to me as recently as a day ago, but now I can’t think of why.
Then there is the shape of a house against the sky in the distance, and as we get closer we see it—the porch light is on.
Before we can knock, the door swings open and a man and woman stand in the doorway. They look around my parents’ age, maybe a few years younger.
“I’m Drew,” the man says.
“I’m Melanie,” says the woman. “Come in.”
In their living room, Drew, silver-haired in a Hawaiian shirt, surveys our injuries with an expression that is part concern, part enthusiasm.
“First aid is a hobby of mine,” he says. “Come with me.”
“I’ll make tea.” Melanie smiles warmly at us and rounds the corner to the kitchen.
We follow Drew down a narrow hallway lined with photographs that Bev and I don’t pause to look at. He flips on the light to the bathroom. It’s small and clean and everything in it is covered in shells—shell jars and shell drawer pulls and a shell-lined mirror, all of them pink and white and shining.
“Melanie’s hobby,” Drew explains, opening a shell-adorned medicine cabinet and pulling out a first-aid kit.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to the edge of the bathtub, and Bev and I sit side by side. Our hands touch. Neither of us has the energy to pull away.
He wets washcloths with warm water and soap, unscrews a jar of iodine, lays out medical tape and gauze.
“This might sting,” he tells me, dabbing my face, and I feel myself wincing but the burn feels good, like the iodine could heal me.
When Drew is finished disinfecting and bandaging, we walk back down the hallway and into the living room again, where Melanie is waiting for us. She has made us herbal tea in jars.
“Be careful where you hold this,” she says, handing me mine. “It’s hot.”
Steam rises: lemon, ginger, honey.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Thank you,” Bev says.
When I sip I feel the heat travel from my throat through my chest. I sip again.
“We like your shells,” Bev tells Melanie.
“Oh.” Melanie laughs. “Well, it’s meditative. It helps clear my mind. And somehow Drew puts up with it.”
“I love them,” he says. “You know that. They’re pieces from our other home.”
“Where is that?” I ask.
“Kauai,” he says. “It’s where we met and where we married. We go at least twice a year.”
“That’s where we’re going tomorrow morning.”
They turn to one another and smile. So much good passes between them in that single look.
“Are you going to show them what they came for?” Melanie asks. “They traveled a long way to see it.”
“Of course,” Drew says. “It was a huge surprise to hear from Danielle—it had been years—and an even stranger surprise to hear the reason she called, that you kids wanted to see this old, faded tattoo of mine.”
He stands up and turns around. Pulls up his shirt. And there it is, on his back: the bluebird, the telephone wire, the roses, the rain cloud.
“Do you mind if I take a picture?” I ask.
“Not at all,” he says, but I’m asking Bev as much as I’m asking him, which feels awful. Normally I would’ve just reached into her bag and taken out her camera.
Bev nods.
Melanie turns a reading light on and angles the beam toward Drew as Bev hands me the turquoise camera. The photo will turn out a little dark, but hopefully not too dark to see what it is.
“One more?” I pull out my phone and take another picture. It turns out fine.
“So which one is your dad?” Drew asks me, sitting back down. “I remember one of them was a kind of young Jerry Garcia type, scraggly and long haired.”
Bev and I both smile.
“That’s my uncle Pete.”
“So your dad is the more clean-cut one. I didn’t know they were brothers.”
“Brothers-in-law,” I say. “My mom is Pete’s sister.”
“Colby’s mom painted that bird,” Bev says.
“Wow.” Drew shakes his head in wonder. “Look how it all comes together.”
“Tell them the story,” Melanie says.
“There isn’t much of a story to tell. Danielle said that you were trying to solve a mystery, but I’m afraid it’s less of a mystery than a coincidence.”
Drew leans back on the sofa.
“So let’s see. I was at a café in San Francisco, visiting some friends. That’s where they were from, right?”
Bev and I nod. “We still live there,” I say.
“Great city,” he says. “What a place to grow up. So I was with my friends, and your dad and uncle started setting up. We thought about leaving because we hadn’t been planning on seeing any music; we were just looking for a place to talk. One of my friends, he was going through a hard time.”
“This was James?” Melanie asks.
Drew nods.
“We decided to stay. I don’t know why. One of us must have suggested that we give them a song or two’s worth of our attention. See what they were like. We ended up staying through the first set.”
Drew pauses, and I can see him figuring out how to say what comes next.
“They weren’t the most visionary musicians, but it wasn’t about that.” He looks at me, making sure that what he’s saying doesn’t offend me.
“Everything was earnest, you know?” he continues. “Their songs were melodic, sincere. You could tell they felt it. After the set was over, we got up to go, and I thought about buying a cassette but my friends were walking ahead of me and I didn’t want to hold them up. But then we got outside and it was raining, so we stopped under the awning to open umbrellas, and I thought: I want that tape. So I told them to hold on and I went back in to buy one. I think it was your dad who sold it to me.”
He takes a sip of his tea. Melanie rest
s her head on his shoulder and he puts an arm around her. He does it in this effortless, instinctual way. Bev shifts in her chair, tucks her legs beneath her, and I wonder if anything between us will ever feel natural and easy again.
“So it became a tape that I listened to often. I kept it in my car and it just kind of stayed in the tape deck.”
Drew stops and thinks for a moment.
“Meanwhile,” he says, “I had met this woman. Here’s where you come in, Mel.”
Melanie sits up; his arm stays around her.
“I loved her. Trouble is, I didn’t know if she loved me.”
“I was crazy about you,” Melanie says. “You knew that. You just didn’t know if I could settle down.”
“True,” he nods. “I amend that. I was in love with this wild girl, this traveler.”
“I was a journalist for a surf magazine,” Melanie says. “I was living a few months in California, a few months in Baja, off to Kauai for the winter . . .”
“I wanted her to live a life with me, and she didn’t know if she was ready to do that. Long story short, I thought I was going to lose her, and then she changed her mind.”
“Best decision of my life,” she tells us.
“I took her on a trip to Mendocino. You been there?”
“We drove by it,” I say.
“You should have stopped.”
“On the way home, maybe,” Bev says.
“Everything on the trip was perfect. She told me she would marry me. I felt so goddamn lucky. We got in the car on the morning after she said yes, and I opened the console for something, and I saw the cover of your dad’s tape. I felt just like that bird, like the rain clouds were parting just above my head. And I thought, I have to do something to capture this moment, so I can always remember how this feels. I knew that an old friend of mine, Danielle, had a tattoo artist boyfriend who ran a shop right there in Fort Bragg. So we called her up and made an appointment for that day.”
“I held his hand all the way through it,” Melanie says.