A week after Dad’s forgotten birthday, with the rain beating the crap out of the house, Mom and Dad seat Jude and me in the frozen part of the living room no one ever sits in to inform us that Dad’s temporarily moving down to the Lost Cove Hotel. They, well actually, Mom tells us he’ll be renting a studio apartment by the week until they can work out some issues they’re having.
Even though we haven’t spoken in forever, I can feel Jude’s heart clenching and unclenching inside my chest with mine.
“What issues?” she asks, but after that the rain gets so loud I can’t hear what anyone’s saying anymore. I’m convinced the storm’s going to bust down the walls. Then it does and I’m remembering Dad’s dream because it’s happening. I watch as the wind sweeps everything off the shelves: knickknacks, books, a vase of purple flowers. No one else notices. I grip the armrests of the chair tight.
(FAMILY PORTRAIT: Assume the Crash Position)
I can hear Mom’s voice again. It’s calm, too calm, yellow fluttering birds that don’t belong in this life-bucking tempest. “We still love each other very much,” she says. “We just both need some space right now.” She looks at Dad. “Benjamin?”
At the mention of Dad’s name, all the paintings, mirrors, family photographs come crashing down from the walls. Again, only I notice. I glance at Jude. Tears suspend in her eyelashes. Dad seems like he’s going to say something, but when he opens his mouth, no words come out. He drops his head into his hands, his teeny-tiny hands, like raccoon paws—when did that happen? They’re too little to cover up what’s happening on his face, how his features have all squeezed shut. My stomach churns and churns. I hear pots and pans in the kitchen plummeting out of the cupboards now. I close my eyes for a second, see the roof whip off the house, reel across the sky.
Jude explodes, “I’m going with Dad.”
“Me too,” I say, shocking myself.
Dad lifts his head. Pain’s leaking out of every part of his face. “You’ll stay here with your mother, kids. It’s temporary.” His voice is so flimsy and I notice for the first time how thin his hair’s getting as he stands and leaves the room.
Jude gets up and walks over to Mom, looking down on her like she’s a beady little beetle. “How could you?” she says out of clenched teeth and makes her own exit, her hair twisting and winding angrily across the floor behind her. I hear her calling for Dad.
“Are you leaving us?” I say/think, rising to my feet. Because even though Dad’s leaving now, Mom’s already left. She’s been AWOL for months. I know this and I can’t look at her.
“Never,” she says, grabbing my shoulders. I’m surprised by the strength of her grip. “You hear me, Noah? I will never leave you and your sister. This is between your father and me. It has nothing to do with you kids.”
I melt into her arms like the traitor that I am.
She strokes my hair. It feels so good. “My boy. My tender boy. My dream boy. Everything’s going to be okay.” She repeats how okay everything’s going to be again and again like a chant, but I can tell she doesn’t believe it. Neither do I.
Later that evening, Jude and I are shoulder to shoulder at the window. Dad’s walking to his car carrying a suitcase. The rain’s wailing down on him, stooping him more and more with every step.
“I don’t think there’s anything in it,” I say, watching him toss the piece of luggage into the trunk like it’s filled with feathers.
“There is,” she says. “I checked. One thing. A drawing of you and him on some weird animal. Nothing else. Not even a toothbrush.”
These are the first words we’ve exchanged in months.
I can’t believe the only thing Dad took with him is me.
That night, I’m in bed unable to sleep, wondering if I’m staring at the darkness or it’s staring at me, when Jude opens the door, crosses the room, and gets in bed next to me. I flip the pillow so it won’t be wet. We’re lying on our backs.
“I wished for it,” I whisper, telling her what’s been tearing me up for hours. “Three times. Three different birthdays. I wished he would leave.”
She turns on her side, touches my arm, whispers back, “I once wished for Mom to die.”
“Take it back,” I say, turning onto my side. I can feel her breathing on my face. “I didn’t take it back in time.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Grandma would know how,” she says.
“That’s a load of help,” I say, and then out of nowhere and at the exact same moment, we both burst out laughing and can’t stop and it’s the gasping snorting kind and we have to put the pillow over our faces so Mom doesn’t hear and decide we think Dad being kicked out of the family is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to us.
When we settle back into our selves, everything feels different, like if I turned on the light we’d be bears.
The next thing I know, there’s a shuffling of motion and Jude’s sitting on me. I’m so surprised I do nothing. She takes a deep breath. “Okay, now that I have your undivided attention. Are you ready?” She bounces a few times.
“Get off me,” I say, but she’s talking over me.
“Nothing happened. You hear me? I’ve tried to tell you so many times but you wouldn’t listen.” She spells it out. “N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Brian is your friend, I get it. In the closet, he told me about something called a globular cluster, I think. He talked about how amazing your drawings are, for Pete’s sake! It’s true I was so mad at you because of Mom and because you totally stole all my friends too and because you threw away that note—I know you did that and it really sucked, Noah, because that was like the only sand sculpture I ever made that I thought was maybe good enough for Mom to see. So I might’ve had Brian’s name on a piece of paper in my hand at that party but NOTHING HAPPENED, okay? I did not steal your—” She pauses. “Your best friend, okay?”
“Okay,” I say. “Now get off me.” It comes out gruffer than I intend on account of my spanking new voice. She doesn’t move. I can’t let on what this information is doing to me. My mind is speeding around, rearranging that night, the last few months, rearranging everything. All the times she tried to talk to me, how I walked away, slammed the door, blasted the TV, unable to look at her, forget listen to her, how I even ripped up a card she gave me without reading it, until she gave up trying. Nothing happened. They’re not in love. Brian isn’t going to come back in a few weeks and escape with her into her bedroom like I kept imagining. They’re not going to be watching movies on the couch when I come home or looking for meteorites in the woods. Nothing happened. Nothing happened!
(SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy Hitches Ride on Passing Comet)
But wait. “Who’s Spaceboy then?” I was so sure it was Brian. I mean: outer space, hello?
“Huh?”
“Spaceboy, on the computer.”
“Spy much? Jeez.” She sighs. “That’s Michael, you know, Zephyr. ‘Spaceboy’ is the name of some song he’s into.”
Oh.
OH!
And I guess other people—probably millions of them—besides Brian and me have seen that alien movie. Or might joke with her about teleporting. Or might use the name Spaceboy!
Now I’m remembering the Ouija Board. “Zephyr’s M.? You like Zephyr?”
“Maybe,” she says coyly. “I don’t know yet.”
This is news but Nothing Happened steamrolls right over it. I forget she’s in the room, not to mention sitting on me, until she says, “So are you and Brian like in love with each other or something?”
“What? No!” The words fly out of my mouth. “God, Jude. Can’t I have a friend? I totally hooked up with Heather, if you didn’t notice.” I don’t know why I say all this. I push her off me. I feel the stone in my stomach get bigger.
“Okay, fine. It’s just—”
“What?” Did Zephyr tell her what happened that day in the woods?
“Nothing.”
She gets back in bed and we shoulder up again into the smush. She says quietly, “So you can stop hating me now.”
“I never hated you,” I say, which is a total lie. “I’m really—”
“Me too. So sorry.” She holds my hand.
We start to breathe together in the dark.
“Jude, I’ve—”
“So much,” she finishes.
I laugh. I’d forgotten this.
“I know, me too,” she says, giggling.
My next sentence, however, she will not be able to mind-read. I tell her, “I’ve probably seen all of your sand sculptures.” I feel a stab of guilt. I wish I didn’t destroy the photographs now. I could’ve shown them to her. She could’ve gotten into CSA with them. She could’ve had them forever. She could’ve shown Mom. This will have to do. “They’re freaking amazing.”
“Noah?” I’ve caught her completely off guard. “Really?”
I know she’s smiling because my face is too. I want to tell her how scared I am that she’s better than me. Instead, I say, “I can’t stand the ocean washing them away.”
“But that’s the best part.”
I listen to the waves pounding away at the shore outside, and think about all those incredible sand women being swept off before anyone can see them and I’m wondering how in the world that could possibly be the best part, tumbling that around and around in my head, when she says very quietly, “Thank you.”
And everything in me goes quiet and peaceful and right.
We breathe and drift. I’m imagining us swimming through the night sky to the bright moon and hoping I remember the image in the morning so I can make it and give it to her. Before I’m all the way gone, I hear her say, “I still love you the most,” and I say, “Me too,” but in the morning I’m not sure if we said it or if I just thought it or dreamt it.
Not that it matters.