Every Day

  And if I only could, I’d make a deal with God.…

  Now Rhiannon goes from surprised to suspicious. Justin never sings along.

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asks.

  “Music,” I tell her.

  “Ha.”

  “No, really.”

  She looks at me for a long time. Then smiles.

  “In that case,” she says, flipping the dial to find the next song.

  Soon we are singing at the top of our lungs. A pop song that’s as substantial as a balloon, but lifts us in the same way when we sing it.

  It’s as if time itself relaxes around us. She stops thinking about how unusual it is. She lets herself be a part of it.

  I want to give her a good day. Just one good day. I have wandered for so long without any sense of purpose, and now this ephemeral purpose has been given to me—it feels like it has been given to me. I only have a day to give—so why can’t it be a good one? Why can’t it be a shared one? Why can’t I take the music of the moment and see how long it can last? The rules are erasable. I can take this. I can give this.

  When the song is over, she rolls down her window and trails her hand in the air, introducing a new music into the car. I roll down all the other windows and drive faster, so the wind takes over, blows our hair all around, makes it seem like the car has disappeared and we are the velocity, we are the speed. Then another good song comes on and I enclose us again, this time taking her hand. I drive like that for miles, and ask her questions. Like how her parents are doing. What it’s like now that her sister’s off at college. If she thinks school is different at all this year.

  It’s hard for her. Every single answer starts with the phrase I don’t know. But most of the time she does know, if I give her the time and the space in which to answer. Her mother means well; her father less so. Her sister isn’t calling home, but Rhiannon can understand that. School is school—she wants it to be over, but she’s afraid of it being over, because then she’ll have to figure out what comes next.

  She asks me what I think, and I tell her, “Honestly, I’m just trying to live day to day.”

  It isn’t enough, but it’s something. We watch the trees, the sky, the signs, the road. We sense each other. The world, right now, is only us. We continue to sing along. And we sing with the same abandon, not worrying too much if our voices hit the right notes or the right words. We look at each other while we’re singing; these aren’t two solos, this is a duet that isn’t taking itself at all seriously. It is its own form of conversation—you can learn a lot about people from the stories they tell, but you can also know them from the way they sing along, whether they like the windows up or down, if they live by the map or by the world, if they feel the pull of the ocean.

  She tells me where to drive. Off the highway. The empty back roads. This isn’t summer; this isn’t a weekend. It’s the middle of a Monday, and nobody but us is going to the beach.

  “I should be in English class,” Rhiannon says.

  “I should be in bio,” I say, accessing Justin’s schedule.

  We keep going. When I first saw her, she seemed to be balancing on edges and points. Now the ground is more even, welcoming.

  I know this is dangerous. Justin is not good to her. I recognize that. If I access the bad memories, I see tears, fights, and remnants of passable togetherness. She is always there for him, and he must like that. His friends like her, and he must like that, too. But that’s not the same as love. She has been hanging on to the hope of him for so long that she doesn’t realize there isn’t anything left to hope for. They don’t have silences together; they have noise. Mostly his. If I tried, I could go deep into their arguments. I could track down whatever shards he’s collected from all the times he’s destroyed her. If I were really Justin, I would find something wrong with her. Right now. Tell her. Yell. Bring her down. Put her in her place.

  But I can’t. I’m not Justin. Even if she doesn’t know it.

  “Let’s just enjoy ourselves,” I say.

  “Okay,” she replies. “I like that. I spend so much time thinking about running away—it’s nice to actually do it. For a day. It’s good to be on the other side of the window. I don’t do this enough.”

  There are so many things inside of her that I want to know. And at the same time, with every word we speak, I feel there may be something inside of her that I already know. When I get there, we will recognize each other. We will have that.

  I park the car and we head to the ocean. We take off our shoes and leave them under our seats. When we get to the sand, I lean over to roll up my jeans. While I do, Rhiannon runs ahead. When I look back up, she is spinning around the beach, kicking up sand, calling my name. Everything, at that moment, is lightness. She is so joyful, I can’t help but stop for a second and watch. Witness. Tell myself to remember.

  “C’mon!” she cries. “Get over here!”

  I’m not who you think I am, I want to tell her. But there’s no way. Of course there’s no way.

  We have the beach to ourselves, the ocean to ourselves. I have her to myself. She has me to herself.

  There is a part of childhood that is childish, and a part that is sacred. Suddenly we are touching the sacred part—running to the shoreline, feeling the first cold burst of water on our ankles, reaching into the tide to catch at shells before they ebb away from our fingers. We have returned to a world that is capable of glistening, and we are wading deeper within it. We stretch our arms wide, as if we are embracing the wind. She splashes me mischievously and I mount a counterattack. Our pants, our shirts get wet, but we don’t care.

  She asks me to help her build a sand castle, and as I do, she tells me about how she and her sister would never work on sand castles together—it was always a competition, with her sister going for the highest possible mountains while Rhiannon paid attention to detail, wanting each castle to be the dollhouse she was never allowed to have. I see echoes of this detail now as she makes turrets bloom from her cupped hands. I myself have no memories of sand castles, but there must be some sense memory attached, because I feel I know how to do this, how to shape this.

  When we are done, we walk back down to the water to wash off our hands. I look back and see the way our footsteps intermingle to form a single path.

  “What is it?” she asks, seeing me glance backward, seeing something in my expression.

  How can I explain this? The only way I know is to say “Thank you.”

  She looks at me as if she’s never heard the phrase before.

  “For what?” she asks.

  “For this,” I say. “For all of it.”

  This escape. The water. The waves. Her. It feels like we’ve stepped outside of time. Even though there is no such place.

  There’s still a part of her that’s waiting for the twist, the moment when all of this pleasure will jackknife into pain.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s okay to be happy.”

  The tears come to her eyes. I take her in my arms. It’s the wrong thing to do. But it’s the right thing to do. I have to listen to my own words. Happiness is so rarely a part of my vocabulary, because for me it’s so fleeting.

  “I’m happy,” she says. “Really, I am.”

  Justin would be laughing at her. Justin would be pushing her down into the sand, to do whatever he wanted to do. Justin would never have come here.

  I am tired of not feeling. I am tired of not connecting. I want to be here with her. I want to be the one who lives up to her hopes, if only for the time I’m given.

  The ocean makes its music; the wind does its dance. We hold on. At first we hold on to one another, but then it starts to feel like we are holding on to something even bigger than that. Greater.

  “What’s happening?” Rhiannon asks.

  “Shhh,” I say. “Don’t question it.”

  She kisses me. I have not kissed anyone in years. I have not allowed myself to kiss anyone for years. Her lips are soft as flower petals, b
ut with an intensity behind them. I take it slow, let each moment pour into the next. Feel her skin, her breath. Taste the condensation of our contact, linger in the heat of it. Her eyes are closed and mine are open. I want to remember this as more than a single sensation. I want to remember this whole.

  We do nothing more than kiss. We do nothing less than kiss. At times, she moves to take it further, but I don’t need that. I trace her shoulders as she traces my back. I kiss her neck. She kisses beneath my ear. The times we stop, we smile at each other. Giddy disbelief, giddy belief. She should be in English class. I should be in bio. We weren’t supposed to come anywhere near the ocean today. We have defied the day as it was set out for us.

  We walk hand in hand down the beach as the sun dips in the sky. I am not thinking about the past. I am not thinking about the future. I am full of such gratitude for the sun, the water, the way my feet sink into the sand, the way my hand feels holding hers.

  “We should do this every Monday,” she says. “And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday.”

  “We’d only get tired of it,” I tell her. “It’s best to have it just once.”

  “Never again?” She doesn’t like the sound of that.

  “Well, never say never.”

  “I’d never say never,” she tells me.

  There are a few more people on the beach now, mostly older men and women taking an afternoon walk. They nod to us as we pass, and sometimes they say hello. We nod back, return their hellos. Nobody questions why we’re here. Nobody questions anything. We’re just a part of the moment, like everything else.

  The sun falls farther. The temperature drops alongside it. Rhiannon shivers, so I stop holding her hand and put my arm around her. She suggests we go back to the car and get the “make-out blanket” from the trunk. We find it there, buried under empty beer bottles, twisted jumper cables, and other guy crap. I wonder how often Rhiannon and Justin have used the make-out blanket for that purpose, but I don’t try to access the memories. Instead, I bring the blanket back out onto the beach and put it down for both of us. I lie down and face the sky, and Rhiannon lies down next to me and does the same. We stare at the clouds, breathing distance from one another, taking it all in.

  “This has to be one of the best days ever,” Rhiannon says.

  Without turning my head, I find her hand with my hand.

  “Tell me about some of the other days like this,” I ask.

  “I don’t know.…”

  “Just one. The first one that comes to mind.”

  Rhiannon thinks about it for a second. Then she shakes her head. “It’s stupid.”

  “Tell me.”

  She turns to me and moves her hand to my chest. Makes lazy circles there. “For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind is this mother-daughter fashion show. Do you promise you won’t laugh?”

  I promise.

  She studies me. Makes sure I’m sincere. Continues.

  “It was in fourth grade or something. Renwick’s was doing a fund-raiser for hurricane victims, and they asked for volunteers from our class. I didn’t ask my mother or anything—I just signed up. And when I brought the information home—well, you know how my mom is. She was terrified. It’s hard enough to get her out to the supermarket. But a fashion show? In front of strangers? I might as well have asked her to pose for Playboy. God, now there’s a scary thought.”

  Her hand is now resting on my chest. She’s looking off to the sky.

  “But here’s the thing: she didn’t say no. I guess it’s only now that I realize what I put her through. She didn’t make me go to the teacher and take it back. No, when the day came, we drove over to Renwick’s and went where they told us to go. I had thought they would put us in matching outfits, but it wasn’t like that. Instead, they basically told us we could wear whatever we wanted from the store. So there we were, trying all these things on. I went for the gowns, of course—I was so much more of a girl then. I ended up with this light blue dress—ruffles all over the place. I thought it was so sophisticated.”

  “I’m sure it was classy,” I say.

  She hits me. “Shut up. Let me tell my story.”

  I hold her hand on my chest. Lean over and kiss her quickly.

  “Go ahead,” I say. I am loving this. I never have people tell me their stories. I usually have to figure them out myself. Because I know that if people tell me stories, they will expect them to be remembered. And I cannot guarantee that. There is no way to know if the stories stay after I’m gone. And how devastating would it be to confide in someone and have the confidence disappear? I don’t want to be responsible for that.

  But with Rhiannon I can’t resist.

  She continues. “So I had my wannabe prom dress. And then it was Mom’s turn. She surprised me, because she went for the dresses, too. I’d never really seen her all dressed up before. And I think that was the most amazing thing to me: It wasn’t me who was Cinderella. It was her.

  “After we picked out our clothes, they put makeup on us and everything. I thought Mom was going to flip, but she was actually enjoying it. They didn’t really do much with her—just a little more color. And that was all it took. She was pretty. I know it’s hard to believe, knowing her now. But that day, she was like a movie star. All the other moms were complimenting her. And when it was time for the actual show, we paraded out there and people applauded. Mom and I were both smiling, and it was real, you know?

  “We didn’t get to keep the dresses or anything. But I remember on the ride home, Mom kept saying how great I was. When we got back to our house, Dad looked at us like we were aliens, but the cool thing is, he decided to play along. Instead of getting all weird, he kept calling us his supermodels, and asked us to do the show for him in our living room, which we did. We were laughing so much. And that was it. The day ended. I’m not sure Mom’s worn makeup since. And it’s not like I turned out to be a supermodel. But that day reminds me of this one. Because it was a break from everything, wasn’t it?”

  “It sounds like it,” I tell her.

  “I can’t believe I just told you that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. I don’t know. It just sounds so silly.”

  “No, it sounds like a good day.”

  “How about you?” she asks.

  “I was never in a mother-daughter fashion show,” I joke. Even though, as a matter of fact, I’ve been in a few.

  She hits me lightly on the shoulder. “No. Tell me about another day like this one.”

  I access Justin and find out he moved to town when he was twelve. So anything before that is fair game, because Rhiannon won’t have been there. I could try to find one of Justin’s memories to share, but I don’t want to do that. I want to give Rhiannon something of my own.

  “There was this one day when I was eleven.” I try to remember the name of the boy whose body I was in, but it’s lost to me. “I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends. I mean, the brutal, tackle kind of hide-and-seek. We were in the woods, and for some reason I decided that what I had to do was climb a tree. I don’t think I’d ever climbed a tree before. But I found one with some low branches and just started moving. Up and up. It was as natural as walking. In my memory, that tree was hundreds of feet tall. Thousands. At some point, I crossed the tree line. I was still climbing, but there weren’t any other trees around. I was all by myself, clinging to the trunk of this tree, a long way from the ground.”

  I can see shimmers of it now. The height. The town below me.

  “It was magical,” I say. “There’s no other word to describe it. I could hear my friends yelling as they were caught, as the game played out. But I was in a completely different place. I was seeing the world from above, which is an extraordinary thing when it happens for the first time. I’d never flown in a plane. I’m not even sure I’d been in a tall building. So there I was, hovering above everything I knew. I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it
to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.”

  Rhiannon leans into me. “That’s amazing,” she whispers.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “And it was in Minnesota?”

  In truth, it was in North Carolina. But I access Justin and find that, yes, for him it would’ve been Minnesota. So I nod.

  “You want to know another day like this one?” Rhiannon asks, curling closer.

  I adjust my arm, make us both comfortable. “Sure.”

  “Our second date.”

  But this is only our first, I think. Ridiculously.

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Remember?”

  I check to see if Justin remembers their second date. He doesn’t.

  “Dack’s party?” she prompts.

  Still nothing.

  “Yeah …,” I hedge.

  “I don’t know—maybe it doesn’t count as a date. But it was the second time we hooked up. And, I don’t know, you were just so … sweet about it. Don’t get mad, alright?”

  I wonder where this is going.

  “I promise, nothing could make me mad right now,” I tell her. I even cross my heart to prove it.

  She smiles. “Okay. Well, lately—it’s like you’re always in a rush. Like, we have sex but we’re not really … intimate. And I don’t mind. I mean, it’s fun. But every now and then, it’s good to have it be like this. And at Dack’s party—it was like this. Like you had all the time in the world, and you wanted us to have it together. I loved that. It was back when you were really looking at me. It was like—well, it was like you’d climbed up that tree and found me there at the top. And we had that together. Even though we were in someone’s backyard. At one point—do you remember?—you made me move over a little so I’d be in the moonlight. ‘It makes your skin glow,’ you said. And I felt like that. Glowing. Because you were watching me, along with the moon.”

  Does she realize that right now she’s lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon, as not-quite-day becomes not-quite-night? I lean over and become that shadow. I kiss her once, then we drift into each other, close our eyes, drift into sleep. And as we drift into sleep, I feel something I’ve never felt before. A closeness that isn’t merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we’ve only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging.