Faithful

  “You made it through,” Shelby tells Maravelle.

  “So did you.” Maravelle hands Shelby a graduation present. Shelby graduated this week, too. James was in the audience cheering her on. When he took her home he ran the bath, which he had scrubbed clean—not an easy task—and they got into the tub together and drank strawberry milk shakes. It was the perfect way to celebrate.

  “Your mom would have been proud of you,” Maravelle says now. “I know I am.” Her gift to Shelby is a photo of Jasmine, Teddy, and Dorian in a gold frame.

  “Why were you ever friends with me in the first place?” Shelby asks. She was a bald, nasty loner who wore a red sweatshirt and combat boots, just in case the world crashed down on her and she had to kick her way out.

  “I saw who you were,” Maravelle says.

  “Who was I?”

  “My best friend, stupid.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m going to a state where there’s no winter,” Shelby says. “So who’s stupid now?”

  They’re going to miss each other like crazy. Maravelle throws her arms around Shelby. “You’re always welcome here,” she tells her. “No matter what. No matter how far you go.”

  Shelby hates good-byes, so she slips out mid-party and heads for the train station. Once there, she changes her mind. Instead of heading back to the city, she buys a ticket to Huntington. James has gone to see his mother, as he does most Saturdays, and Shelby can surprise him. But that’s not the real reason for her decision. She wants to see her house. She phones her new upstairs neighbors and asks Kyla, the one who wants to be a farmer and likes animals, to take her dogs for a walk.

  Being on the train is like being in a dream, the hazy green landscape flying by, the low whistle. It’s nearly dinnertime when Shelby arrives. There’s no one on the streets, only the hum of lawn mowers in backyards and an occasional dog walker. When she gets to her house she stands in the driveway. The old paint is being scraped off, but the workmen have finished and left for the day. Clearly, the new people intend to remodel the place. Shelby goes up to the front door. There’s no answer when she knocks. She peers under the mailbox, and sure enough there’s the extra key taped there. Her mother always wanted to make sure that Shelby could get into the house, even if no one was home. It can’t be breaking and entering if you have a key, so Shelby unlocks the door and slips inside. The place is so empty that her footsteps echo. The house should look bigger without furniture, but it seems tiny to Shelby. The appliances are all missing, no refrigerator, no stove. New ones will be installed and there’ll be a complete kitchen remodel, something ­Shelby’s mom had always wanted.

  Shelby meanders through the rooms, which feel sad and unfamiliar. Then she goes down to the basement. What had been her lair is filled with boxes that belong to the new people. She sits on the stairs, where she often thought she spied Helene. This was her safe place, where no one could find her and nothing could hurt her, but nothing familiar remains. Even the washing machine is gone. Shelby says Mom out loud just to test what will happen. Maybe time will shift and she’ll be seventeen again and everything will be different. She won’t go over to Helene’s that night, she’ll have a cold and stay home in bed, and in the morning Helene will call her and everything will be all right. But the word Mom rises up and disappears. It sounds like a sob. It’s dusty in the basement, and Shelby realizes that even when she was a recluse her mother must have cleaned up when she was asleep. She was always watching over Shelby.

  Shelby leaves through the back door, as she used to do when she roamed the neighborhood after dark, meeting Ben Mink. The picnic table is gone. The new people must have had it hauled away with everything else. The grass is patchy, but a few plants in the borders are growing; they refuse to give up. There is a stray stem of a dahlia. One that managed to get through the winter. Shelby starts walking to James’s house. His car is in the driveway. His father died the year after his brother passed away, so on the weekends it’s James who drives his mother to the market and to her doctors’ appointments and to the cemetery. On his way back to the city he often stops at the beach where he and his brother went swimming. He never goes in the water, not even on the hottest days. He likes to watch the birds. Sometimes he brings along a pad and a pen and some ink so he can work on illustrations for the sequel to Nevermore.

  But this Saturday is different. James has come to tell his mother he’s leaving. He’s going to California with Shelby. When he quit working at Scorpio, the guys threw him an after-hours party to which Shelby was not invited. “Don’t tell me what went on,” she advised when James finally came to her place at four in the morning. “I didn’t drink, but I almost tattooed your name on my back,” he told her as he got into bed. Shelby laughed and drew him close. “Very funny.”

  It’s their private joke: never write someone’s name on your skin if you know what’s good for you. “Our love will never be a burden,” James promised her that night. He was sober and very serious. “Never is a long time,” Shelby told him. “Not at all,” he said, his hands all over her. “Not for us.”

  The Howards’ house is identical to the house where Shelby grew up, only the Richmonds’ house was painted gray and this one is dark green. There’s a picnic table in the yard, like theirs, only in better condition. James mentioned he painted it last summer. There are some roses growing here, red with centers so dark they’re almost black. Birds perch in a sycamore tree, peering down at her. Shelby thinks they’re robins. She raps on the back door for some time and hears Cooper barking like mad before James finally swings it open, eyes narrowed with suspicion until he sees her. Shelby can’t tell if he’s horrified or delighted. He’s certainly puzzled. Coop runs to greet her warmly, rubbing his head against her.

  “I thought you were going to a party and I was picking you up at Maravelle’s.”

  “I went. But I wanted to see my house.”

  “How was it?”

  “Not mine anymore.”

  James glances at the house where he grew up. “Well, this is mine. When I told my mother I was leaving New York, she didn’t say anything. She just froze me out. As usual.”

  “You don’t live here,” Shelby says. “You just pay your penance here.”

  James eases himself onto the picnic table and lies on his back in order to look at the sky. Shelby lies down beside him, the way she and her mother used to do. The sun looks like it’s falling to earth. Everything is red. They go inside, down to the basement, which served as James’s bedroom when he was younger. Coop hops onto the bed and curls up. Shelby and James lie down beside the dog, entwined. James tells her he used to lie in his bed thinking about her. He says that every time he was with a woman, no matter where he was, he was with Shelby inside his mind.

  “Mind-fucked,” Shelby says.

  “I’m serious,” James says. “It was always you, Shelby.”

  She goes to wait in the car while he finishes packing up. She’s not the kind of girl who has to befriend someone’s mother, and she’s sure his leave-taking will be difficult. He’s come here every week to run errands and help his mother, despite the fact that he says they’ve never been close. It’s growing cooler, and Shelby wishes she had her Burberry raincoat. She hugs herself to keep warm. She’s so wrapped up in her thoughts about leaving for California she doesn’t notice Mrs. Howard has come out of the house and is approaching. When there’s a tapping on the window, Shelby nearly jumps out of her skin. She buzzes down her window. She says the first thing that comes into her head. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Howard.”

  “When you lose a son, people being sorry doesn’t do much good,” Mrs. Howard responds coldly.

  “But you have James,” Shelby says.

  “James is it? I thought that was the son you were talking about since you never knew Lee. Now I’m about to lose Jimmy, too, thanks to you.” Liz Howard stares Shelby down. “I don’t think you’re sorry at all, Shelby Ric
hmond.”

  Shelby’s heart is beating too fast. “I am.”

  Mrs. Howard isn’t wearing a sweater. She must be cold standing out on the curb. “He was in jail, you know,” she says.

  Shelby understands. Mrs. Howard is trying to drive her away. “He told me,” she says gently.

  Mrs. Howard appraises her coolly. “Young girls can be stupid.”

  “I’m not that young.” Shelby sees that James’s mother has a little tremor just like she does when she’s anxious. Right now, for instance, Shelby is shaking. “And I’m not stupid.”

  James is headed down the path, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, his dog following. He’s wearing the same coat he wore on the night of the accident, the one he covered her with until the ambulance came. He slinked off, and Shelby’s mother came to lie beside her on the asphalt until she was lifted into the ambulance. He stops to reassure his mother. “All the bills for next month have been paid. Mr. Boyd is going to look over the lawn until you hire someone.”

  “Do you think I care?” his mother says.

  “Probably not.”

  He opens the car door, and after Coop leaps in the back, James gets behind the wheel. “That went well,” he says darkly. Shelby is watching Mrs. Howard. Her face has fallen, her complexion is chalky, and her tremor has worsened. She understands that Mrs. Howard can’t afford to show her love for James. She can’t lose another son.

  “She cares desperately,” Shelby says.

  James gives Shelby a look. “You think you understand my mother?”

  “Trust me,” Shelby says. “You’re her everything.”

  James gets out of the car in order to speak with his mother. They stand there for quite a while, and at the end of their conversation James hugs her. When he gets back into the car he looks at Shelby with admiration. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  They stop in Northport and drive to a strip of land called Asharoken. As far as Shelby is concerned the only thing he needs to know is whether or not he really wants to leave this place. She wants him to be sure. They park and walk along the rocky shore as the sky hangs down in bands of gray and blue twilight. Coop runs off to chase seagulls. James tells her that when he dreams, it’s always of this beach. If his brother ever were to return, it would be here.

  “There are beaches in California,” Shelby says.

  “What if he comes back and I’m not here?”

  James picks up a rock and throws it as far as he can. Shelby feels a chill. She may have lost him to the burden he carries. He has been trapped here since he was ten years old. Under this pale sky there is a soul as free as a bird and a man who has never taken off his mourning clothes. Shelby folds her arms around James and presses her face to his. She can hear his heart beating against hers. He’s in there somewhere, just as she was when she couldn’t say anything or believe in anything or want anything or see anything or be anything. She was hiding inside, waiting for an angel.

  “Do something,” she says.

  It is a late Sunday afternoon like any other, except for one major problem. Ben Mink is at the door. Not at the lobby door downstairs that a visitor has to be buzzed through, but right here on the fourth floor.

  “Ben,” Shelby says when she opens the door to see him, stating the obvious and doing her best not to let on that she’s having an instant panic attack. They’ve been packing and there are boxes everywhere.

  “It’s me,” Ben says.

  One of the girls from NYU unlocked the door in the lobby for him. He probably looked harmless, like the nice guy whose heart you break. He’s holding a bunch of tulips, yellow and deplorably cheerful.

  Shelby is wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt that may be Ben’s. Her hair is in braids and she looks about fifteen years old. She’s been reading a text on skin diseases in canines. Other than that, the most she’s done so far this morning is brushed her teeth and had coffee and an energy bar. James took the dogs for a long walk before he went out to his publisher’s in Queens. He has begun a sequel called Evermore, in which the Misfit must travel through an enchanted woods alone, without his brother, but with a series of loyal companions: a dog, a white horse, a woman who will never betray him.

  “God, this place looks terrible,” Ben says when he comes inside. The dogs mill around him. “Who’s this?” he says when Cooper warily comes to sniff him.

  “He’s Coop,” Shelby says. James will soon be home, and Shelby would very much like to get Ben out of here before then.

  “Another dog?” Ben looks around. “Where’s Blinkie?”

  Shelby leans against the arm of the couch. “Not here, Ben.”

  “What does that mean? Does that mean he’s dead?” When Shelby nods, Ben is distraught. “Are you kidding me? Blinkie is dead and you didn’t tell me?”

  Ben is wearing a suit and tie, and he looks completely out of place in the mess of the apartment. He tosses the tulips on his great-aunt Ida’s table.

  “I didn’t want to bother you,” Shelby says.

  “Well, thank you for not bothering me,” Ben says with biting sarcasm. “Blinkie was my dog, too, wasn’t he? I paid for his dog food and he slept in our bed, but what the hell, don’t bother me and tell me he’s dead.” Ben sits on one of Ida’s chairs. It’s the only clean space in the room. “You still have the table,” he says.

  “Are you here for the table?”

  Ben notices the half-packed boxes scattered across the floor. “What is all this?”

  Shelby tells him she’s moving to California. “I got into Davis.”

  “But don’t feel like you have to tell me that either!” Ben’s face furrows with anguish. “It was my idea, after all, but what the hell.”

  “Oh, Ben. How are you?” Shelby asks, worried. She can still chart his moods.

  “Miserable.”

  “You look it.”

  “I don’t want to be married,” Ben tells her.

  “Ben.” Shelby doesn’t think they should be having this conversation.

  “At least not to her.” He is looking right at Shelby with a fevered expression. “Ana and I are all wrong for each other.” That is why he’s here. He’s come back for her.

  “Marriage is difficult,” Shelby says. When Ben laughs, she adds, “So I hear.”

  “It wouldn’t be with you,” he tells her.

  “Yes, it would be. Come on, Ben. It would be ten times worse.”

  “It was always you,” Ben says. “Everything I’ve done since has been a mistake.”

  “That’s not true.” Shelby feels her heart opening to him, but they’re each other’s pasts now. “I was a horrible girlfriend. You were always so nice, and I was the worst. You were smart to dump me. And you’re right. I should have called you about Blinkie.”

  “Did you bury him? Did you have a funeral and everything?”

  Shelby goes to the bookcase and brings out a little metal box. Blinkie’s name is printed on it. She paid extra for that. “He’s in here. I’m taking him to California.”

  Shelby hears footsteps on the stairs. In her shock over Ben’s admission of unhappiness, she’d forgotten about James. He’s arrived with an order from China Sea in hand, the next best thing now that Hunan Kitchen has closed down. James stops in the doorway when he sees Ben, dropping his hand to pet Cooper when the dog races to him.

  Ben looks at James, then glances at the overjoyed German shepherd. He’s beginning to see the light. “It’s his dog?”

  “Ben?” James says, surprised. “Ben Mink?”

  “He stopped by for his great-aunt’s table and chairs,” Shelby tells James. “He just got here.”

  “I don’t want them. And that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to see you.” Ben is still staring at James. “Jimmy Howard?”

  James comes in and deposits the takeout on t
he table. “Don’t worry,” he assures Ben. He just can’t help himself. “I don’t have any rubber bands.”

  “Is he serious?” Ben says to Shelby. He turns to James. “You have the fucking nerve to mention the rubber bands? That was a trauma for me. I didn’t live it down for years.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m glad for this opportunity to make amends to you,” James says. “I get the whole Bambi thing now. I actually think it’s the most disturbing thing in film.”

  “Do you?” Ben says. “Because I think the most disturbing thing in real life is that you’re fucking Shelby and living in my apartment.”

  “It’s not your apartment,” Shelby says.

  “I have my own place,” James tells Ben.

  “Congratulations,” Ben sneers. He grabs the bag of food and takes out one of the white cardboard containers and some chopsticks. He opens the General Tso’s chicken. “Same order, different delivery boy. You don’t mind if I eat at my aunt Ida’s table, do you?” he asks James.

  “Go right ahead. I hate Chinese food,” James tells him.

  “He hates Chinese food,” Ben says pointedly to Shelby. “So how did this happen? An online dating site? I was the first choice for a match for her, you know,” he tells James. “He’s been in prison,” Ben informs Shelby. “He was the guy I bought drugs from.”

  “We fell in love,” James says.

  “Really? Well, fuck you.” Ben has begun to eat the General Tso’s chicken, which he always hated. “You know nothing about Shelby. Were you there for her when she really needed someone?”

  James throws Shelby a look. He was there, but neither of them can say anything that will hurt Ben anymore.

  Ben has noticed a copy of Nevermore on the table. “What’s this supposed to be?”

  “James wrote and illustrated it,” Shelby says.

  “He’s a writer?” Ben says mournfully. “I’m the one who loves books. I made you read Ray Bradbury.”