Happy Place, page 17
I don’t want to go back into the theater, but something has to give. We can’t keep walking out along this tightrope, or someone’s going to get hurt. I’m going to get hurt.
I clear my throat. “How’s the furniture repair business?”
His Cupid’s bow twitches. “Still a furniture repair business.”
“Oh?” I say. “Not using it to run drugs and host illegal gambling nights yet?”
His lips split into a smile. “Still in the same apartment?”
Our apartment. It still manages to hold traces of him. Or maybe that’s me, carrying his ghost around wherever I go. “Mhm.”
“How’s your sister?” he asks.
“Good, I think,” I say. “She and her hairdresser friend went into business together. They mostly do weddings and dances. Still FaceTimes me twice a month, makes about five minutes of small talk, then says goodbye.”
His teeth skate over his bottom lip. “I’m sorry.”
He’s the only person who knows how much it bothers me that I barely know Eloise, that despite having a sister, I always felt acutely alone in our childhood home. Between our six-year age gap and her constant disagreements with our parents, we didn’t have much time to bond.
I shrug. “Some things never change, and the best thing is to stop hoping they will.”
“Other things do, though,” he says.
I break eye contact. “What about your sisters? How are they?”
“Good,” he replies, half smiling. “Lou’s with my mom this week. Said to tell you hi.”
I smile despite the twinge in my chest. “And Michael? Still in Colorado?”
He nods. “She’s dating another aerospace engineer, who works for a competing company. They moved in together, but they’re both under NDAs, so neither of them even lets the other into their home office.”
I laugh. “That,” I say, “is so unbelievably on-brand.”
“I know,” he says. “And Lou finished at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in May.”
“That’s amazing,” I say.
Together, the three of them could be loud and rude and competitive. They argued over everything—what to have for dinner, who got first use of the shower, who really understood the rules of dominoes and who was totally off—as if as soon as a thought or feeling occurred to them, it spewed out.
But nothing ever blew up. Little arguments flared and extinguished; small insults casually faded. And everyone went back to joking, hugging, kicking, acting like siblings do in movies.
I wonder but don’t ask whether his younger sister, Lou, is just visiting their mom or if she ended up moving home after grad school like she’d been planning, back when Wyn’s stay out there was supposed to be temporary. She was going to take over Gloria’s care.
“I miss them,” I admit.
“They miss you too,” he says.
I ask, “Do they wonder why I never visit?”
“I go out of town sometimes,” he says. “For work stuff.”
“Work stuff?” I ask.
He nods but doesn’t clarify. “They think we’re seeing each other then.”
I nod. I don’t have anything to say to that.
He clears his throat. “My mom said you were taking a pottery class.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.”
“I pretended I already knew about it,” he says.
“Right. That’s good.”
“But she mentioned that she thinks you’re getting better. And your newest bowl looked way less like a butt.”
The laugh rockets out of me as if shot from a cannon. “That’s funny, because you should have seen the rapturous text she sent me about that butt-bowl. She pretended it was very good.”
“Nah.” He grins. “She wasn’t pretending. She told me it was really good. It just also looked like a butt. You know how she is.”
“Remember how nice she was about that painting we gave her as a joke?” I ask. “The fucked-up Velvet Elvis that looked more like Biff from Back to the Future?”
His smile widens. “She kept saying how unique it was.”
“But fully making unique sound like a good thing. So much nuance to Gloria’s opinions.”
“The nuance being that she can know something’s objectively terrible,” he says, “but if it’s even loosely connected to one of her family members, then it’s got to also be groundbreakingly special.”
The idea of being one of Gloria’s family members, of being groundbreakingly special, pricks at my heart.
“It’s been weirdly fun, living with her,” he says.
“Nothing weird about it,” I say. “Gloria’s a blast.”
He smiles to himself. “It’s just funny. I spent all those years convincing myself I needed to get away. I saw my sisters finding their things and talking about leaving, and my parents being so proud of how they were going to make something of themselves, chart their own path or whatever. And I thought I needed to do that too.”
I think back all those years to the day the five of us, sans Kimmy, lay on the Armases’ dock, charting our alternative paths, how even then, Wyn used his hypothetical other life to go back to the one he’d left behind. A part of him knew he belonged there.
Once I went home with him for the first time, met Hank and Gloria and Lou and Michael, saw the woodshop and the childhood bedroom filled with proof of a happy, love-filled childhood, a part of me knew he belonged there too.
I tried to hold on to him anyway. Watched, those months in San Francisco, as the walls closed in around him—and it killed me to see him so broken, so hunted, but I hadn’t been brave enough to cut him loose. Maybe that was part of the anger that burned in me too: disappointment that I hadn’t loved him well enough to make him happy nor well enough to let him go.
“Anyway,” he says, “if someone had told me, at twenty-two, that I’d end up living in my childhood bedroom and doing crosswords with my mom over breakfast every morning, I would have believed them, but I’d be shocked to hear I’m actually happy in this scenario.”
“You do crosswords?” I say. “You never wanted to do crosswords when we lived together. I used to try to get you to, every time it rained.”
“And I always said yes,” he says.
“And we never finished them,” I say.
“Harriet.” His eyes settle on mine, a knowing glint in them. “That’s because I could never sit still that long across from you without touching you.”
Blood rises to my cheeks and chest, thrums down into my thighs.
Without my realizing it, we’ve moved closer together. Maybe it’s like Cleo’s Bernie’s-induced hangover: a Pavlovian response that will always draw us together.
I say, “And here I thought it was the crosswords themselves getting you riled up.”
“As it turns out,” he replies, “it’s not writing letters in tiny boxes that gets me riled up.”
“That’s good,” I manage. “That would make breakfast with Gloria pretty awkward.”
The fan blows a wisp of hair across my face, and he catches it, twisting it between his calloused fingertips. My heart pounds, my every cell tugging toward him.
Behind us, the door to the theater swings open. Our friends stream out in a flurry of chatter and laughter. Intermission has begun.
I start toward them, but Wyn catches my wrist.
“I like the bowl,” he says. “She showed me a picture. I thought it was beautiful.”
19
Real Life
Wednesday
“I thought you weren’t staying for the second movie,” I whisper to Cleo as we settle back into our seats. This time, Wyn and I are in the middle, and I can’t help but wonder if Sabrina nudged us into this position so we wouldn’t run out again.
Cleo shrugs. “This clearly means a lot to Sab. Plus, I don’t want her hanging it over me that I left early.”
“Pssst.” Kimmy leans forward around Cleo. She holds a plastic sandwich bag out to me.
I squint at the contents. “Are you trying to sell me drugs?”
“Of course not,” she says. “I’m trying to give you drugs.” She swings the little red gummy bears in front of Cleo’s face and tosses them into my lap.
“You are,” I say, “so discreet.”
“I don’t have to be discreet,” she says. “It’s legal here.”
Wyn leans in. “Is Kimmy selling drugs?”
“Want some?” she asks.
Sabrina shushes us, eyes glued to the screen as she shovels popcorn into her mouth.
Wyn looks at me, then back to Kimmy. “If Harriet’s in, I am.”
“How strong are they?” I whisper.
Kimmy shrugs. “Not too strong.”
“Not too strong for you or not too strong for me?” I say.
“Let’s put it this way,” she says. “You’ll have a great time, but you won’t make me call the hospital and ask them if you’re going to die. Again.”
What the hell. When in Rome.
Each of us takes one. We tap them together in a toast before throwing them back.
“Hey,” Sabrina says at full volume, “are you guys doing drugs down there?”
“We’re taking tiny weed gummies,” I say.
“Got any more?” Sabrina asks. “I haven’t gotten high in forever.”
Kimmy passes the bag down the line. Parth and Sabrina each take one. Cleo waves off the offer. “I don’t smoke anymore, really.”
“And I’m cutting back too,” Kimmy says. “So whatever we don’t finish this week, you all can fight over.”
“Okay, is it possible this is already making me hungry,” Sabrina asks.
“No,” Cleo, Wyn, and I all say in unison.
From the back of the theater, someone shushes us. We all duck down in our seats.
“Holy shit,” Kimmy hisses. “Did anyone know there was someone else back there?”
Parth sneaks a look over his shoulder. “I think he’s a ghost.”
“He’s not a ghost,” I whisper.
“How can you be sure?” Parth says.
“Because,” I say, “he’s wearing his sunglasses backward. That’s Ray. He’s a pilot.”
“Just because he’s a pilot doesn’t mean he’s not a ghost,” Kimmy says sagely.
* * *
• • •
The gray-shingled buildings on Commercial Street steadily drip, but the downpour has ended, and everyone is out for the first night of Lobster Fest. The concerts, contests, and parade of red-gowned former Lobster Ladies don’t start until Friday, but the food trucks and carnival games are open, their lights flashing not quite in time with the Billy Joel hit piping through the speakers. Kids in lobster and mermaid face paint dart through the crowd, couples in matching windbreakers dance in front of the wine-slushie stand, and glassy-eyed teenagers pass around suspicious water bottles.
“Do you smell that?” Sabrina literally skips ahead of us. “If there’s a heaven, this is what it smells like.”
Salt water and burnt sugar, garlic simmering in butter and clams frying in oil.
“I want a cup of extremely foamy beer,” she says dreamily.
“I want french fries covered in Old Bay,” Kimmy says.
Cleo’s nose wrinkles on a laugh. “I want a video camera so tomorrow you can see how high you all are.”
“I want to win at Whack-a-Lobster,” Parth says, peeling off toward the game’s flashing lights like a hypnotized magic show volunteer, and Wyn follows in a daze.
I hook an arm around Cleo’s shoulders. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t miss out on all this?”
“It wasn’t this I wanted to miss,” Cleo says. The others have moved on to a milk-bottle toss game. She jerks her head toward the lobster beanbags and the bottles painted to look like nervous lobstermen. “What do you think the narrative is here? The lobsters fighting back?”
“Let’s hope it’s not prophetic, or this town’s the first to go,” I say.
She turns back to me. “I guess I feel like . . . this week’s already half-over, and we’ve all barely gotten to catch up. And I know how important this is to her—to everyone. Doing all these things one last time, and I get that.
“But it’s also been a long time since we’ve been together, and today just felt like kind of a bummer. Sitting through hours of movies when we could be talking.”
I grab her hand. “I’m sorry. That makes complete sense.”
She glances back, to where Sabrina and Parth are taunting each other in front of the game, and smiles a little. “I just want this week to be perfect for them.”
“Me too.” I squeeze her hand. “But hey, the night is young and so are we. What do you want to do? I’ll go on any ride or play any game. I’ll even let you monologue about mushrooms.”
She laughs and tucks her head against my shoulder. “I just want to be here with you, Har.”
The weed must be hitting me hard, because I instantly tear up a little.
It’s that happy-sad feeling, that intense homesick ache. It makes me think of my semester abroad. Not the old cobbled streets or tiny pubs overstuffed with drunk university students, but Sabrina and Cleo FaceTiming me at midnight to sing me “Happy Birthday.” The feeling of being so grateful to have something worth missing.
We walk, we talk, we sweat and frizz and eat. Funnel cakes and lobster rolls, overstuffed whoopie pies and battered-and-fried fiddlehead ferns, caramel corn and salted popcorn.
“Does anyone else feel like time’s moving really fast?” I ask when I realize it’s full dark.
Cleo and Sabrina look at each other and burst into laughter.
“You’re so high,” Sabrina says.
“Says the woman who spent like nine minutes making us stand in one place while she googled whether corn is a nut or a vegetable,” I say.
“I wanted to know!” Sabrina cries, eyes shrunken.
“A nut, babe,” Cleo says. “You thought corn was a nut.”
“Well, they look like little nuts before you pop them,” Parth says, coming to Sabrina’s defense. Cleo is now laughing so hard she’s doubled over.
Wyn is wandering toward the Ferris wheel, saucer-eyed.
“Dude, Wyn’s about to be beamed up,” Kimmy says, and I have no idea what she’s talking about, but it makes me laugh anyway.
Wyn looks over his shoulder and says, “Look at it. It’s beautiful.” Sabrina stares at him for one second, then throws her head back and cackles.
But he—and his not-quite-tiny gummy—is right.
Everything looks soft around the edges, dreamy.
Parth leads us into the Ferris wheel line. I try to pair up with Sabrina, but she sidesteps me in the queue, switching places so she’s with Parth and I’m with Wyn.
“Okay, okay,” Parth says. “Raise your hand if you’re high.”
“What if we all close our eyes first?” Kimmy says. “Just so no one’s embarrassed.”
Wyn’s head droops against my shoulder, his laughter spilling across my skin, dripping down my spine, lighting up my nerve endings as it goes. A mixed metaphor, sure, but when are you supposed to mix your metaphors if not at thirty years old, high as a satellite?
“I feel young!” I cry, which makes Sabrina cackle again, throw her arms out to her sides, and spin twice.
Parth grabs my shoulders and says urgently, “We are young, Harry. We’ll always be young. It’s a state of mind.”
“Now seems like a good time to tell you,” Cleo says, “Kim buys this shit from a neighbor who makes it at home. It’s not regulated. Hope you’re all prepared to go to the fucking moon.”
Kimmy’s eyes have essentially disappeared at this point. “Listen,” she says, “you’re gonna have a great time. Moon’s beautiful this time of year.”
Normally the idea of unregulated weed gummies might make me a tad anxious. Or, like, have a full-blown panic attack. But the way Kimmy says it and the goofy look on her face make me snort-laugh some more.
“Wait,” Wyn says, face stern and serious, “how do you make gummies at home?”
“Listen,” Kimmy says. “It’s a mystery.”
“Listen,” Sabrina says. “I love it.”
The very unimpressed twentysomething Ferris wheel attendant waves us up the metal steps to the loading platform.
Sabrina and Parth take the frontmost open bench, and Wyn steadies me as we climb in the next one, my breath still coming in giggly gasps.
“These,” he says, “are not my mother’s weed gummies.”
I chortle into his shoulder, then pull back quickly. Well, in all honesty, I doubt I’m doing anything quickly, but I do remember to remove my face from his neck region, and that’s not nothing at this point.
We lift our arms as the attendant checks our lap bar, then drop them again as he moves to the bench behind us to latch Kimmy and Cleo in.
“Remember the maritime museum?” he says.
I wipe my laugh-tears away with the back of my hand. “Remember might not be accurate. I have bits and pieces floating around inside my hippocampus like little soap bubbles.”
“It was the trip right before your last year of medical school,” he says.
“Seriously?” My hand flops onto his on the lap bar. I pull it back. “It was that long ago?”
He nods. “It was the same trip where Sabrina and Parth first hooked up.”
The memory feels like it’s being broadcast from another life. Sabrina and Parth had stayed up later than all of us, caught in a viciously competitive game of gin rummy, wherein they took turns winning. Late the next morning, they’d come down to the kitchen together, cranky but glowing. “Don’t say a single word,” Sabrina warned. “We aren’t going to speak of it.” And we’d all nodded and hid our smirks, but that night, they’d shared a room again.
