Chapter 13
13
NOW
I ARRIVED BACK FROM MY brush with Henry’s ghost—overcaffeinated, towelless, clothes damp—to find my entire family awake and gathered on the rocks behind Sunny Sunday.
Caleb was stretching his calves. Taz was helping Helene fasten the Velcro straps of her waterproof Tevas. Pam and Tim were pointing excitedly at the rock bass swimming around the floating dock. Clarence was following Karma around, poking her with a piece of kindling. And Karma was pointedly ignoring Clarence while snooping around Mom’s shoulder, trying to get an early peek at the event list. Everyone was dressed in bathing suits, loose T-shirts, and running shoes.
And that’s when I remembered.
The Olympics. The Olympics were today.
“Do we have to do the Opening Ceremony?” Karma asked loudly, holding out a foot to try and trip Clarence during his next attack. “I thought that was just for little kids. None of us are little anymore.”
“Speak for yourself, princess,” said Clarence, giving up on bothering Karma to begin his search for a branch large enough to serve as the Opening Ceremony torch. “Adulthood is for alcoholics and suckers.”
“Or,” said Caleb dryly, raising an eyebrow at his little brother, “anyone who regularly remembers to check their mailbox for parking tickets.”
“Hey.” Clarence frowned over his shoulder. “That was one time.” He paused, chewing his lower lip. “Or maybe four. I don’t know.”
Caleb rolled his eyes.
As I watched the two of them go back and forth, I thought about what I’d overheard the night before:
How do you think she’ll feel when she finds out that she was the last one to know?
The last to know what ? It was something to do with Caleb, that much I’d gathered. Perfect, mature, wise, put-together Caleb. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be that bad. Still, I couldn’t help but be curious. Something was going on in our family, and as usual, I was the last to know.
I could have just gone over to him and asked directly. Treated the situation as I would if it were Karma or Taz or even Clarence. But then…who was I kidding? I’d never have the guts to do that. He might have been my brother, but the truth was, he wasn’t just a brother. He was my oldest brother, the gap between us almost thirty years wide. He’d been married for longer than I’d been alive. He spoke to Speedy not as a father but as a close, confiding friend. I could never measure up to someone like that. Not a chance. When you’re stuck at the bottom of the family tree, the distance to the top feels unscalable, like clawing your way to the top of a redwood using nothing but your fingernails.
Caleb intimidated me. Always had and probably always would.
Up by the cabin, the screen door slammed shut. I turned around to find a towering head of dark, curly hair step out onto the back porch. His eyes found mine right away, as if they’d been looking for me.
We both looked quickly away.
“What exactly are the Cradle Island Olympics?” asked Pam, Helene’s mother.
“Excellent question,” said Mom. “The Olympics—”
“—are one of the oldest Beck family traditions,” interrupted Clarence. “Started decades ago, back when we spent months up here at a time. There were water balloon fights and scavenger hunts and capture the flag and Greased Pig, this truly psychotic version of water polo we play using a watermelon slathered end-to-end in Vaseline.” He smiled wickedly. “Things get vicious pretty quickly.”
Pam shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.
“Ostensibly it’s a fun day for the kids,” said Clarence, who had finally located a branch of the proper size, height, and heft. He picked up the toilet paper roll on the deck and stuffed it onto the end of the stick. “But really it’s more of a safe outlet for all the grudges and frustrations that pile up when eight white people with too much time and too much money share one island for an entire summer.”
Helene laughed openly—a loud, appreciative sound. Mom looked like she wanted to murder her stepson. Clarence laid the unlit toilet paper torch against the patio railing and grinned cheekily.
I admire all of my siblings, but if I’m being honest, I probably admire Clarence the most. He possesses this magnetic self-certainty. Plays three instruments, speaks intelligently but never seriously, adopts conspiracy theories for the fun of it, and defends them with greater confidence than most display when naming what they had for lunch the day before. At every moment, he wears the same expression—glittering eyes and a bemused smile, as if someone has just said something childish and amusing. As if he’s always on the cusp of sharing some hilarious inside joke, then thinks better of it.
“You know what?” Mom said, eager to change the subject. “Let’s run through the whole schedule for the week.”
“ Schedule? ” Karma sighed. “So much for vacation.”
Mom ran inside and fetched a stack of sturdy four-by-six cardstock. The same kind we used at Blossom for mail-in promotions. She circled the group, handing them out.
Taron we were on an island. The primary activities here all involved the lake: swimming, tubing, waterskiing, wakeboarding, paddle boarding, rope swinging…the list goes on.
But the last time I saw Manuel shirtless…it had nothing to do with family-friendly fun.
He bent over and picked up the tube.
While I did my best not to stare at Manuel rubbing shiny orange sunscreen all over his tan skin, Karma’s loud voice drifted over to us. “Got enough SPF over there, kiddo?” She was talking to Caleb, who had slathered his body in so much Neutrogena he resembled a ghost.
Caleb is almost twenty years older than Karma, but she speaks to him as if it were the other way around. She’s the only one in the family—parents included—who does so.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when you’re getting melanoma scraped off your body at forty-five,” he said, stretching out on the rocks with a satisfied sigh.
“What would you know about melanoma? Aren’t you an ass doctor?”
“Even ass doctors go to four years of med school, Catherine .”
“Oooooh.” Shelly grinned and ruffled her wife’s hair. “Careful, Caleb. You know how this one feels about her real name.”
“Your real name is Catherine?” asked Pam. “Then where does Karma come from?”
“No one knows,” said Karma, deadpan. “That’s what makes it such a bitch.”
—
ONCE PARTNERS HAD BEEN ASSIGNED, Clarence dumped a quart of gasoline onto the roll of toilet paper, flicked open his lighter, and sent the torch up in flames.
“All righty then,” he hollered. “Line up, kids.”
“No way,” said Caleb. He snagged the branch and handed it to Taz. “The groom carries the torch.”
Taz pushed it away. “I’m good, really. Clarence can do it.”
Caleb pivoted. “What about Helene?”
“I’ll stick back here with Taron,” she said.
“Well, in that case”—Caleb turned to me—“I believe the torch should be carried by the youngest, as is tradition.”
I’m not used to being addressed directly by my oldest brother. The experience is always somewhat unsettling. “Um,” I said.
“Or is Manuel slightly younger?” Caleb swiveled to the left.
“Oh, for the love of God .” The voice came from up on the porch. It was Speedy, who had just rolled out of Sunny Sunday, the Nurses in hot pursuit. “June, get me out of this chair.” Nurse June hunched her hulking figure over and scooped Dad into her arms. Once comfortably secured, Speedy yelled, “Music!”
The first crashing cymbals of the Olympic fanfare sounded from on high. We turned around. Mom stood at the wide back window of Sunny Sunday. On the sill before her: a massive set of speakers. She beamed and waved at the crowd.
“Let’s show the children how it’s done,” said Speedy.
June marched down the porch steps, Dad dangling from the basket of her grip. She breezed past Caleb, and as she did, Speedy grabbed the torch out of his son’s hands. “Onward!” he yelled.
Normally, we line up in a neat, single-file line organized by team and proceed down to the water. Not that year. That year, it was less of a parade and more of a mob. Pam and Tim slipped as they dashed down the rocks. Karma and Manuel caught them before they fell. When we reached the shoreline, June turned around so the sturdy rag doll of my father could face the crowd. By then, the fire had consumed nearly all of the toilet paper, leaving behind just a charred cardboard cylinder and a few pitiful flames.
“We are gathered here today,” Speedy began, “to revive a—” But at that moment, the fire burned all the way through the cardboard and consumed the stick itself, crumbling the torch in a shower of glowing embers—several of which landed in June’s hair.
“Christ!” she screamed.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Dad frantically brushed smoldering cardboard from her hair with his free hand. The other gripped a branch that was now on fire.
Caleb ran forward. “Give him to me!”
June, whose hair was now burning in earnest, tossed my father into Caleb’s arms. She turned and dove straight into the lake. Caleb stumbled and fell ass-first onto the rock, catching Dad in his lap with a gentle thump.
The crowd surged forward.
“Oh God,” said Pam.
“Dad!”
“Are you all right?”
“Give me your hand!”
Dad and Caleb flapped their hands. They didn’t want assistance. Offshore, June resurfaced and spat out a stream of water. She swam back to the rocks and hoisted herself out. Her hair appeared intact.
“June?” called my dad.
“I’m alive, you big asshole.” She shook the water from her shorts and T-shirt.
Speedy nodded approvingly. Then he shut his eyes and slumped sideways in Caleb’s lap.
“Is he okay?” whispered Helene.
“Honey?” asked Mom.
“Dad?”
“Hospital,” Speedy mumbled without sitting up.
“Oh God,” said Pam again.
“Is he having a heart attack?”
“Someone call 911!”
“Can we get a helicopter out here?”
“Oh, quit scaring them.” June reached down and pulled Dad back up into a seated position. “He does this shit every day.”
Dad’s head peeked mischievously back up. He started to laugh. He laughed so hard it looked like he might fall out of Caleb’s lap.
Out of habit, I glanced over at Manuel. He was already looking at me, wearing the smirk he used to wear back when we would sit side by side and admire my family’s insanity.
Before I could stop myself, I flashed it back.