Authors: Joann Swanson
“I’ve got to get home.”
“Not ‘Aunt Margie’s’ anymore?”
“Sorry?”
“Last week you were calling your place ‘Aunt Margie’s.’ This week you’re calling it ‘home.’”
“Yeah, okay.” I’m uncomfortable with his scrutiny, his notice. I stare at him and wait.
“Come on. I won’t keep you long, I promise,” he says. The confidence is back. He’s sure I’ll say yes.
“I can’t. I’ve got to catch my bus.”
“How about I give you a ride home then?”
“No. That doesn’t work for me.”
He grins. “I’ve never met a girl so comfortable with the word ‘no.’”
“Guess you have now.” I turn toward the bus stop again. My bus is pulling away. “Crap.”
“What’s wrong?” Nick asks. He’s sidled up beside me. I step away because he’s too close.
“There’ll be another one in half an hour,” I mumble.
“Let me give you a ride home.”
“No thanks, I’ll wait.”
Nick rolls his eyes. “Fine, then walk with me down to Pike’s. I’ll have you back here in time for your next bus.” He presses his hands together and starts to walk backward, like playing cute will make me go. “Please.”
“It’s that close?”
“I walk there all the time.” Nick’s halfway down the big concrete steps leading away from Dr. Pratchett’s building, grinning and beckoning with his hands. “Come on—no one can resist flying fish. Seriously, as far as fish throwers go, these guys are the best.”
I already saw the fish throwers with Mom last summer, but I don’t say this. I look around, trying to memorize where I am, making sure a not-Hank or real-Hank isn’t following. I’ll have to pay attention now.
I follow Nick like I’m a normal person shopping for some produce or a CD or a new scarf, maybe a tie-dyed T-shirt if I’m in the market. We walk into the main arcade and Nick goes right over to the flowers and buys a big bunch. I think his mom’s sent him on a flower-getting mission until he hands them to me. They’re Gerber daisies. He can’t know they’re my favorite.
“For you,” he says.
I haven’t caught up yet and say, “Won’t your mom want those?”
“Um, I bought them for you.” He’s smirking now, giving me his lopsided grin.
I take the flowers. “Thanks.”
“You don’t like these?”
I look at some pomegranates in a box to my right. Bright red orbs with two bees buzzing around them. Not my buzz. Their buzz. “They’re great, my favorite, actually. Thanks. Really.”
“You’re welcome.” I look up at Nick when his tone turns shy. He’s smiling like he’s just won the lottery. I guess he thinks picking my favorite flower is a pretty amazing feat. Seems like his being shy is the amazing feat.
“Let’s walk around a bit?” he says.
I hold the daisies close to me so they don’t get crushed by the crowds. My hands are full between Dr. Pratchett’s bag with the book that tells about my issues and Nick’s daisies. We make our way down aisles of fruit and more flowers, Nick leading the way. There’re a lot of people browsing, picking things up, putting things back down. I notice the mothers and daughters the most, how sometimes the kids are impatient when their moms try to get them to look at something, how they just want to be left alone with their cell phones and iPods. I want to tell them to spend the time and don’t worry about how it looks to their friends. If they just spend the time maybe they won’t regret so much later on.
Pretty soon we hear some guys hollering—the fish throwers. Nick’s standing a little close, but I don’t mind so much right now. We watch fish fly through the air and guys with rubber aprons laughing like it’s the best time of their lives.
Nick pulls me away just as a wayward fish flies by.
“Sorry, kids!” one of the fish guys hollers. “Free fish for the lovebirds!”
Nick holds up his hand. “No thanks. We’re fine.”
We move on so we’re not almost hit by more fish. Nick’s arm is around my shoulders and I don’t mind so much. He’s warm and where he touches feels alive. It’s the only place that does. My skin: alive from Nick’s touch. There are no flutters inside, though. No room for nerves. All seats taken. “Thanks for pulling me out of the way back there,” I say.
He drops his arm and says, “Guess you’re lucky I was available, not off saving the world or something.” Nick’s chin is up, his chest out like he’s going to show me the big S he’s got painted there. “I’ve heard of people getting killed by flying fish.”
“I think maybe you’re full of it.”
Nick gives me an exaggerated look of hurt. “You save a girl’s life—”
“You saved me some laundry,” I say and point at Mom’s sweater.
Nick shakes his head. “So ungrateful.”
There’s easy silence between us as we head out to where the street performers and artists are selling their stuff. Nick stops at a musician’s booth to look through some CDs. The guy pictured on the cover is sitting on a wooden stool a few feet away. He’s holding an acoustic guitar and singing softly into the noisy crowd. I watch him and after awhile he watches me too. He’s singing something I’ve never heard before. I’m listening to this guy with a long white beard who’s wearing a hat I’m pretty sure I’ve seen on an old TV show—a panama or something—and he’s singing about shouting down the wind. Shouting down the wind like he can make a difference. He doesn’t get that something as constant as the wind can’t be changed. Rain, lightning, wind, bullets—none of it can be changed. You can’t shout down anything. You can’t win.
I look away from the old guy with too much hope and see Hank standing behind him, watching me with his flat mantis eyes. Watching and waiting. His shirt is the same as what he wore at the bookstore—black button down. No jeans, though. Khakis this time. His work boots are the same, splattered with dried paint. He lifts one hand and waves. I think he tries to smile, but it’s something else, something not right. His head tilts, his eyes roll to the side and I see he’s busy listening again. Not to the music, though. Hank’s listening to something else and by the look on his face it’s something he doesn’t want to hear.
Hank’s whole face is frowning and he’s turning away when Nick comes along and bumps my hip. “Wanna sit by the water?”
Light green, Nick’s eyes, and full to the brim. He wouldn’t agree with me about not being able to shout down the wind. I think inside Nick there’s a lot of hope and happiness and sureness. Something behind it all too, I see now—something that makes me a little curious. I look back to where Hank or not-Hank was standing. He’s gone now, disappeared into the crowd or thin air. I don’t know which.
“Okay, then I have to go,” I say to Nick.
We’re walking toward the water and Nick’s touching my back lightly with is fingertips and I feel that aliveness again—little dots of light even through Mom’s sweater.
I stop a few feet behind a bench. This is where Mom and I sat when we visited last summer. The bench is where she told me our trip to Seattle wasn’t a vacation, that she’d already contacted a lawyer. The bench is where she told me we were leaving Hank.
“You okay?” Nick is asking.
“I’m okay.”
“Want to sit on that bench?”
I walk toward it.
Nick’s laughs. “Guess that’s a yes.”
We sit down and I stare out at the water. Except for a few more boats in the harbor today, the scene is exactly the same. I remember my thoughts then—how big the water seemed, how infinite and unending. I wondered about the fishermen, how they didn’t go crazy with just water around them, how they could stand the too-big quality of it.
Now I know different. Now I know there is no vast out there. It’s like Margie’s metal boxes, some heavy and small, some light and big, everything you think you know turned on its head. The vastness is when Hank came with his bullets and took Mom. The smallness is everything else. Even the ocean’s a puddle.
Nick is speaking.
“Sorry, what?” I say.
“How are things going at your Aunt Margie’s?”
“Fine.” I’m busy shoving away thoughts about the day I came here with Mom. I’m thinking
Fish Throwers
and
Moby Dick
and
King book signing
. I’m thinking
Binka
’
s whiskers
. The bees stay away, but the bench feels like a conduit. It’s sending the memories right through me.
“Just fine?” Nick’s asking.
I glance at him and wonder if he sees me remembering. “This isn’t my first time in Seattle.” My words surprise me.
“Oh yeah?” Nick says. He doesn’t know what else to ask, is probably afraid I’ll start hacking again, coughing because I can’t say the words.
I watch Nick’s face and think about Mom’s that day. The sunshine didn’t let her makeup cover the bruise on her cheek and the white bandage over her stitches was bright against her creamy skin—reminders of Hank’s year with Grandpa Henry, his growing rage, his hitting Mom a few days before we left for Seattle. I wanted to reach out, touch her cheek, tell her I’m sorry Hank decided to keep installing rain gutters after his year was up, that he thought Grandpa Henry was right after all. I wanted to tell her that I missed Dad too, that I wanted us to be a real family again. But then she said we were leaving for good and everything froze on my lips.
“Poor Lily, I knew her when she had a future bright with the promise of door management.” Nick-the-joker’s waving his hands at the water like he’s talking to a crowd of people. “Now she’s just another girl, sucked into an un-ambitious world, a world where lethargy is the only skill one needs, a world of...” He shakes his head, clasps his hands to his heart. “Bench warming.” He purses his mouth and squints his eyes up like he’s going to cry. “So much potential… wasted.” He hangs his head dramatically and looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “You awake, Spacey?”
I give him a little grin. “I’m here.”
He straightens up and scrutinizes me in that bright, curious way of his. “What’s up?”
“I sat on this bench with my mom,” I say before I can stuff it back inside, save it for Dr. Pratchett or Binka, who won’t tell my secrets.
“When?” he asks. His voice is gentle now, all joking gone. That something behind his happiness, his lightness, is front and center now.
“A long time ago.” A year, a lifetime.
“What happened? I mean, obviously something happened.”
I run my fingers along the splintery space between me and Nick. “Here is where she told me we were leaving Hank.”
“Is Hank your dad?”
Nod.
“Your parents are divorced.” He doesn’t ask, just assumes. His eyes say he understands me now, thinks I’m broken because my parents split up.
“She died,” I say.
Nick is surprised. He turns his body toward me. “I knew there was something about you.” He smiles a little and takes a deep breath. “My mom died too.”
The something behind his eyes is right there in his frown now—recognition, familiarity, understanding, sadness. “I’m sorry,” I say. “What happened?”
“She was sick for a long time. Cancer.”
“Oh.”
“What about your mom?”
Moby Dick
.
“Hank.”
King book signing
.
“Shot her.”
Fish throwers.
Nick takes in a big lungful of air. I’m looking at the daisies in my lap now, how the petals are a dark red and velvety and beautiful. His hand comes on over and covers mine up. Light and dark, mixed right there together. Our hands, the Yin and Yang now. His fingers are long, slender, and when he touches me, I jump a little. The sparks are so unexpected. Still no flutters, though. My skin knows about Nick, but the knot in my chest doesn’t much care.
“Where is he now?”
I tilt my chin and gesture with my head because I don’t want to move my hands. “Out there.”
“He got away?”
“Yes.”
“Were you…?” Nick waits, hoping I might fill in his question I guess. I don’t know my lines or what he wants to ask.
“What?”
Nick pulls his hand away and swallows hard when I look at him. “Were you there?”
“Oh.” Cloudy plastic, an arc of blood that says Mom lived but doesn’t anymore. Little animal sculptures that tell more about Hank, about me, than I thought. Gouged plaster. Glass mosaics. “I was there.”
There’s a lot of quiet between us. Nick looks at me. I look at Nick. In his eyes I see understanding and fear. Always fear. I think as long as I live people will have that look when I tell them Hank came with his gun. They don’t understand how a person could still talk, still
be
after that. I don’t know either, but I think it has something to do with the bees and the hollow inside, with Margie and her boxes, Binka and her whiskers.
I look around for Hank, wondering if talking about him might conjure him up. He’s nowhere. I think maybe it was a not-Hank standing behind the old guy with too much hope after all. Just another not-Hank in a city full of not-Hanks.
I look back at Nick, see words behind his expression, but none touching his lips. “You don’t know what to say.”
“Did he, um, hurt you too?”
I think telling Nick about Hank’s kitchen bullets, his coming for me, isn’t such a good idea. “No,” I say.
We watch each other for a while and I decide this might be awkward. “I’m sorry about your mom. Is your dad okay?”
Nick smiles a little. “Actually, it’s my mom who’s not okay.”
I wait for him to explain.
“My mom—the one who died—is my bio mom. Her partner—wife—is my other mom.”
“You have two moms?”
Nick nods. “And two dads. My dads are married to each other, so were my moms.”
“That’s a lot of parents,” I say.
“Yep.” He watches me, gauging my reaction. I don’t know what he’s looking for, what he wants me to say, so I tell him a little story.
“Mom and me, we lived next door to Mel and Bobby. We loved them. They were our only friends at the dog food house. Sometimes they came over for Mom’s hamburgers or to borrow a cup of whatever, sometimes just to watch the sun go down.”
Nick looks relieved, like he thought I might not understand about his parents. “They sound nice,” he says.
“The best.”
“Do you keep in touch?”
I shake my head. “I forgot to say good-bye even. I was sort of out of it.”