Return to Me

  We never talked about my near drowning off Grandpa’s houseboat; none of us did. Grandpa tightened up whenever I mentioned missing his houseboat, sold shortly after the accident.

  “Isn’t it weird to think that you can find something this soulful… even here in a big city?” I asked as I watched a blonde girl with a birthmark like a cloudburst on her face sketch a robin bathing in a water fountain. The boy at her side wasn’t studying the bird or her artwork or the GPS device he held, but her, as though she was the most beautiful being he’d ever seen.

  Grandpa smiled, a Cheshire cat smug with a delicious secret. “When you come to the Big Island, you’ll see…. There are sanctuaries everywhere.”

  I loved the idea of a sanctuary where people could find peace. That’s what Mom had tried to create for us in the family binder she had assembled, a place for each of us to regroup in our new lives. This was no different from our personal spaces on Lewis Island, custom-designed without any of us appreciating her effort: my treehouse, Dad’s man cave, Reid’s library of a bedroom. When had Dad decided that he wanted to be a refugee in someone else’s arms? I shut down the image of Dad with another woman. The thought, the idea, was way too disturbing. Way too revolting.

  On the street below us, the rumble of traffic mingled with slammed brakes and yelling, so different from the lulling surf edging our island home. When had I decided that New York was my refuge? It was inconceivable that I would ever feel at home in nonstop traffic and thick congestion and crowds of strangers. Automatically, I pulled out my phone to text Jackson with that thought, only to notice he hadn’t written to me. Trepidation shot through me, and I pushed my uneasiness down as I wedged my phone back into my messenger bag.

  “Ready?” Grandpa asked, wadding up his soggy aluminum-foil wrapper. “We’ll just hop on a subway, and you’ll see how easy it’ll be to get here. Plus, up closer to where you’ll be at Columbia are the Cloisters. You’ll love it there, too.”

  We retraced our way down the stairs and into the streets of this quaint neighborhood of boutiques and wine bars Mom had wanted to call her own.

  Later, I would ask Dad and get a mumbled confirmation I didn’t need. I knew as positively as I knew that Jackson would be mine, that my treehouse had been sited in the absolute right spot on our property, that I wanted to be an architect—I knew that this very street corner was where Dad lived with his mistress. An old brownstone home with a door freshly painted bright as a new beginning. An old brownstone home I had seen in a fever dream.

  I could feel Dad and Giselle around me, laughing as they strolled hand in hand along this charming street, not caring that we were home alone with our broken hearts. I could picture them, heads bowed together as they snuggled at one of the cozy outdoor cafés, their only concern their next trip together. All the while, Dad had been lying to us in his sporadic texts and infrequent phone calls about how his “business trip” was going.

  People always say life is stranger than fiction. My personal experiences confirm that is true. What I tell you next is no lie, not even the slightest bit of exaggeration. Reid, Grandpa, and I were about to head to the subway when I spotted them far down the same street: Dad and Giselle.

  You might say, What are the chances of that?

  You might say, Yeah, right.

  You might say, Get your eyes checked.

  But I know what I saw.

  It was as if my feeling Dad and Giselle had conjured them here near the High Line park.

  What the hell was she doing here? I wanted to run to them and tear them apart; I wanted to run away. But then Dad threw his head back and chortled. It was the liquid laugh of a man without responsibilities. Suddenly, superimposed on the father I knew, I saw Dad at twenty-four, the hotshot MBA who had picked Mom out on the lawn in front of her freshman dorm. Dad before sacrifices in his career, in his travel plans, in his bachelor life had to be made because of unanticipated, unexpected me.

  In that vision, I saw Dad as he wanted to be once again.

  Reid’s eyes grew fierce. He strode toward them.

  “No, Reid,” I said, holding him back even as I watched Dad pull Giselle into his embrace. She tucked her head on his shoulder so naturally, she must have done that a million times before. That’s my spot, I wanted to yell at her, at him. My father’s hands slipped down Giselle’s tiny waist, then lower. I yanked Reid around, despite his protests.

  “Let’s go,” I gritted out, tugging Reid along with me.

  Even though it would cost us far more than taking a subway, Grandpa flagged down a cab. Gratefully, I slid onto the torn leather seat, ripped from overuse.

  That unexpected encounter with Dad and Giselle left us too worn to visit Columbia. To lighten the shell-shocked atmosphere on the way home from the train station, I told Reid, “If Mom had been there, she would have marched right up to that woman and said, ‘Move this.’ ” At that, Reid laughed. We all did as we imagined the mama-bear scene, but the Mom we found was slumped on the front steps, worrying her loose engagement ring around and around her finger as though our future was right there in her hands. But was our future here or back on Lewis Island? Give up or fight back? Broken family or simply bruised?

  She raised her eyes, haunted, to meet mine in the car. She knew what we had seen. I had no doubt of that.

  “Oh, Mom,” I sighed.

  No sooner had Reid and I left the car than Mom stood. She was so achingly thin, her clothes billowed in the wind. She straightened, proud and rooted firmly in the ground as she waited for us. And what she told me with her hands heavy on my shoulders, as if she wanted me to feel the weight of her words, was this: “New York is just as much your place as it is theirs.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The first thing the next morning, I checked my cell phone. For once, there was no extra-late-night message from Jackson. No early-morning greeting. The reason was in his status update: Heading to the boondocks with a good friend to watch the Pleiades meteor shower!

  A good friend? Sharp-edged unease prickled me. Since when did Jackson ever use the words a good friend? Buddy, yes. Friend, yes. But good friend, left unnamed? Never.

  Unsettled, I sought girlfriend support, but knew better than to call Ginny at this early hour. She valued sleep as much as she did her flaming-orange KitchenAid mixer. So I phoned Shana, who was normally up and running by five to log her summer mileage.

  “So… do you know who he went with?” I asked her as I laid out my harvest of found objects from the backyard: slender twigs and boat-shaped leaves, earth-toned pebbles and baby pinecones. This was my insurance policy. I needed to keep my hands busy to distract myself in case I heard something worrisome.

  “No,” Shana said without panting, since she was in such good shape, “but why don’t you just ask him?”

  Though I fell silent, the answer blared in my head: because I was afraid of what I’d find. Look at what full disclosure had done to my family. Nothing could soften the raw pain I felt after I spied Dad with his girlfriend in Manhattan. Nothing could muffle the sound of Mom’s crying late at night when she thought everyone was safe asleep.

  My voice rose a strained octave, then two, high-pitched with forced cheeriness. “Okay! I’ve got to go hang out with my grandfather.”

  When I hung up, I felt worse than before the call. I scooped all the materials for my fairy house into an untidy mound and went outside to scavenge more.

  After helping Mom rent a car late that afternoon, Grandpa was reluctant to depart for the airport to fly back to the Big Island alone. With a dejected expression, he lobbed one last plea to Mom in the kitchen: “Sweetheart, if you change your mind, call me day or night. I’ll get you the tickets.”

  Perhaps it was superstition, but suddenly I needed my broken clock—that timepiece of love—fixed. If there was one person who could repair anything, whether food processor or fairy house, it was Grandpa George.

  “Wait a sec, okay?” I begged as he began to rise from his seat.

  ?
??Reb, he’s going to be late,” Mom admonished.

  I sprinted upstairs to get the clock. Returning, I set the paralyzed timepiece before Grandpa on the kitchen table. Without saying a word, he cradled the device in his big hands, gentle as if it were a wing-injured bird. After inspecting the exterior, Grandpa slid on his bifocals to peer into the inner workings.

  “I can fix it,” he said, turning his steady gaze on me.

  I nodded solemnly back at him as though this were a pact. If only a broken family could be so confidently repaired.

  As soon as Grandpa drove away, my invalid clock carefully swaddled inside his carry-on bag, Mom grabbed the broom from the closet and announced it was time to tidy the house. That led Reid to retort hotly, “You’re the only one who wants to stay here instead of go to Hawaii. So you clean the house yourself.”

  Mom’s answer may have been just as pointed, but I heard the hurt coursing beneath her curtness as she swept the porch outside: “Stop being so disrespectful.”

  My breathing quickened during this spat, and I had to escape to the laundry room, not only because I had run out of underwear and Mom hadn’t done the laundry in days, but because I finally knew why Reid’s scowl looked so familiar. Dad had worn the same defiant expression when he told Mom about his affair.

  After rewashing everyone’s laundry, which had been left in untended piles for so long that all our clothes were wrinkled, I checked in on Mom in the kitchen. As soon as I neared, she mumbled furtively on the phone, hung up, and continued washing our breakfast dishes. Her hands trembled so much our dishes were in peril.

  “What was that about?” I asked, worried.

  “Oh, nothing.” Mom nearly dropped a sudsy cup in the sink.

  “Who was that?” I insisted. By the way Mom’s lips tightened, I knew it had been my father. “What did Dad say?”

  Mom countered, “What do you want for dinner?”

  “I’m not hungry, thanks.”

  “You need to eat.”

  I studied my gaunt mom. “You do.”

  However much Mom protested, I was going to force-feed both of us a high-calorie snack at the very least. She had always maintained a strict five-day-a-week regimen of hot yoga and running, as well as her fresh-and-local dietary habits, but she was starvation-skinny now. Moments before I hustled downstairs this morning, I noticed that I, too, had become all jutting bones. Even my tightest pair of pants gaped at the waistband.

  A smoothie, I thought.

  Before I could open the refrigerator, Mom throttled full-force into our future as she picked up her clipboard from the counter, pen attached by a pink ribbon for last-minute list-making. “So, what should we do this week before we move?”

  I forgot my smoothie-making intentions. “Wait. We’re still moving?”

  “Yes.”

  My vulture thoughts circled my parents’ dying marriage. Dictatorship was the first word that came to mind, difficult and demanding the fitting adjectives. Immediately, I felt guilty. My feelings teetered practically on the hour, every hour, first sympathizing with Dad, then siding with Mom. Angry at Dad, enraged at Mom. I felt like I was going crazy, mood-swinging dizzily between the opposite poles of my parents.

  “You’re just giving up because of some stupid legend in our family. The curse isn’t real, Mom,” I said as I wrenched the refrigerator door open. Cold air chilled my neck, my shoulders, my brain. Sighing loudly, I was about to slam the door shut when I beheld the nonfat milk instead of 2 percent. Over the last few months—surprise, surprise—Dad had become suddenly obsessed about getting in shape. There was the organic blueberry yogurt he loved for breakfast. On another shelf, I spied the six-pack of the dark ale Dad swigged during his nightly ESPN–and–e-mail marathons. Dad’s favorite brand of Brie cheese, waiting for him like a faithful golden retriever.

  Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad.

  I sucked in my breath. This refrigerator was the still life of Mom’s quiet and constant devotion to my father. For as long as I could remember, she had always kept these items stocked for him. In the refrigerator’s chill, I could feel our family curse weave briskly around us.

  At first I thought it was my scratchy sigh I heard, but I found Mom studying the refrigerator, too, her eyes filling with tears. Maybe neither of us could get our minds around the magnitude of Dad leaving us forever, what that meant for our family. But these little signs of lost love—an entire care package of a refrigerator—these we felt keenly. And maybe discrete, doable steps, like moving back home and arranging therapy, made pushing through this pain possible. And bearable.

  So I took one doable step now. I grabbed the container of nonfat milk and poured its contents down the drain, every last drop.

  Mom jerked when the plastic container thudded against the bottom of the trash can. I thought she’d rail about Dad and his “emergencies” at work. I thought she’d become one of those hell-hath-no-fury women who’d cut the crotches out of all his pants and sell his prized possessions for a penny.

  Instead, Mom moved to the lonely outpost of the kitchen window and hugged her clipboard to her chest. Without turning to me, she urged gently, “Go check on Reid.”

  How little Dad—and I—knew my mother at all.

  Late that night when my cell phone rang in my bedroom—not outside on the balcony, not in the one corner of our house with reliable cell phone coverage, but in my bedroom—I took that miracle as a sign.

  Wouldn’t you know it? The miracle was Jackson.

  “Rebel,” he said, “you’re alive.”

  Not until I heard the familiar timbre of his voice did I realize how much I missed him. How much I ached to hear that “Rebel.”

  “Jackson.” In truth, I sighed the two syllables of his name with relief… and delight. I left my desk, where I’d been assembling Reid’s hobbit house, and snuggled into my bed.

  Instead of berating me for ignoring him, or explaining his own incommunicado absence, Jackson began with this: “So what’s the latest?”

  There are times when words tumble unexpectedly out of your mouth, expressing a wish you never knew you had until it was spoken aloud. This was one of those times. To my own surprise, I found myself revealing, “I don’t know if I want to go to Columbia anymore.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well…” I studied the cracked skin on my heels. I swallowed, my throat parched as if these last days had sucked every last bit of me dry. “I’m not sure it’s where I want to be. I mean, you should have heard Sam Stone! That’s where he went to school. And besides, I don’t even know if we can afford it.”

  My thoughts, I knew, were disorganized, a rambling path to an unknown destination. I turned around to fluff my pillow and felt irritated when Jackson asked what I knew was only a clarifying question: “So you’re rethinking college because you think all the students are going to be Sam Stone clones or because of the cost?”

  “I don’t know…. All of the above, I guess.”

  “Well, this is a big decision. It could change your life.”

  To maneuver from a topic that made me feel stupid for not knowing what I meant, I deflected: “No, what’s going to change my life is that Mom’s not even fighting to keep Dad!” That deep-seated frustration pushed aside my overworked censor, the one that squashed every vision, the one that denied every premonition. I sat up in my bed. Now my confession flowed free. “She’s giving up all because of my stupid family curse. All of the women on her side are single because every single man has left them.”

  “I thought your grandmother left your grandpa.”

  “She did…. When Mom started college.”

  “So that was some kind of preemptive strike? Kind of like you not talking to me?”

  Darn it, I had forgotten how perceptive Jackson was. And how forthright. I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Now was a perfect time to ask him about his cryptic update post, about the “good friend” who had accompanied him to the boondocks. But I didn’t want to know.
So I changed the subject and told him that Grandpa wanted to take us to Hawaii.

  Jackson said, “Escaping for a few days to regroup sounds like a good idea.”

  “I know, but Mom wants to move back to Lewis. I mean, she hasn’t even tried to work it out with Dad.” If it was hard enough for me to maintain a long-distance relationship with Jackson, how was Mom going to repair hers with Dad if both of them lived on opposite coasts?

  “Does he want to work it out?” Jackson asked.

  I sighed, flipped onto my side restlessly, and studied the hobbit house that I had left on my desk.

  In Jackson’s voice, I heard its echo, louder than the original question: Do you?

  Louder yet was my answer: “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I got home from running to the post office to mail the bills for Mom, dinner for once wasn’t on, and she was sleeping heavily. So pulling my best Mom, I called Ginny and asked her to step me through preparing a meal while catching up. Multitasking with the best of them.

  “Where’s all your food?” Ginny demanded after I had inventoried aloud the paltry ingredients in our pantry, refrigerator, and freezer.

  “I guess none of us have gone grocery shopping,” I admitted guiltily. Why hadn’t I swung by the grocery store after the post office? I had assumed Mom would take care of us, the way she always had.

  “I am so mad at your dad!”

  “Geez, why are you so angry?” I peered into the pantry again, as if a bounty of ingredients had magically materialized inside. “This is my father.”

  “That’s just it. I mean, he’s your father. Fathers are supposed to stick around. Fathers are supposed to put family first. Fathers don’t just pick up and leave, not when they have a choice.” That last word verged on a baleful wail, and I ached for Ginny at that unwitting admission. We may have both lost our dads, but mine was still alive.