Chapter 21
21
NOW
KARMA GAVE UP ON THE last event, the Fishing Contest, before it even started. As soon as the Silver Heron was anchored in our lucky spot, she cracked open two beers—one for herself, one for Shelly—and planted herself on the lid of the cooler meant to hold our catch.
“Hey, asshole,” Karma said to Clarence. “Want a beer?”
“I’m concentrating.” He stood off to the side, silently threading and baiting a series of fishing rods. His fingers worked deftly, as graceful as spiders’ legs. When he finished a rod, he laid it against the rail. They formed a tall, regal lineup—knights at attention.
“Your loss,” said Karma. She clinked bottles with Shelly and took a swig.
Normally, it would strike me as odd to hear Clarence turn down alcohol, but the only thing my half brother likes more than having a good time is catching a big fish. When I was a kid, he went every morning. Seriously. Every day, crack of dawn, Clarence was out trawling for early risers. Sometimes, Caleb, Taz, Henry, or, eventually, Manuel went with him. For them, it was a novelty, a fun activity to do once or twice a summer. Not for Clarence. For him, it was an obsession.
Unlike the boys, I never accompanied him. Sit on a boat and stare at the water in silence for three hours? Try to think of something interesting to say to my coolest brother? No, thank you.
Manuel carried our rods over to the starboard corner of the stern, placing them inside the little holes meant to hold fishing poles. I pulled over two folding chairs and set them up on the ground while he peeled the lid off a Styrofoam cup filled with soft dirt and wiggling worms. I watched in semi-disgust as he used a fishing hook to saw one of the worms in half, then skewer each half in turn. He handed one of the baited rods to me.
“Yummy,” I said before sitting down.
“The worms aren’t for you,” he said, settling into his own chair. “They’re for the pike.”
“Is that what we’re fishing for?” I asked. “What about rainbow trout?”
“It’s more likely that we’ll catch a pike. Rainbows do happen, but not often. They prefer rivers and creeks.”
I cast my line, then peered suspiciously over at him. “Since when did you become an expert in Southern Ontario fish patterns?”
Manuel shrugged. “Clarence and I did a fair bit of fishing last year, and I—”
He shut abruptly off, realizing his mistake.
I almost dropped my rod. “Last year?”
“Uh…” Manuel glanced over his shoulder.
I leaned closer to him. “Did you say ‘last year’?”
He glanced nervously about. Looking for an escape, maybe. Then, as if making a decision, he looked back at me, rolled his shoulders, and lifted his chin. A challenge. “Yes,” he said firmly, “I did.”
“You were here last year,” I said, “without me?”
“I was.” He paused. “And the year before.”
“You…” I was dumbfounded. “But…”
“I’m a part of this family, too, Eliot.” His chin lifted higher. “Just because you chose to disappear, to cut us all out…that doesn’t mean I had to do the same.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it again. I wanted to say something back, to argue with him, but the thing is…he was right. He was part of our family.
Maybe even more than I was.
Before I could find the words to reply, Manuel turned away, adjusted his rod, and focused on the water, on the fish, on anything but me.
—
AN HOUR INTO THE TOURNAMENT, people started to get nervous. Dinner that night was supposed to be a fresh fish fry—emphasis on fresh .
“It’s just not the same when it comes from the store.” Mom always pouts.
But so far, all we’d hauled in was a big, juicy twenty-inch nothing.
“Everyone else has had a bite but me,” Dad called out from the bow, where his wheelchair was tied to the railing with two lengths of rope. He looked suspiciously over at Clarence. “You give me faulty bait, son?”
“Everyone gets the same bait, Dad.”
“Well, something’s wrong with mine.”
By that point, Karma was drunk enough to actually be enjoying herself. She teetered about the boat, making lewd comments about rods. She spent extra time over in Clarence’s corner, poking him and dangling worms before his nose and knocking his hat down over his eyes.
Manuel and I hadn’t said much to each other in the previous hour. We’d mostly stared out at the lake or the unmoving rods in our hands. Eventually, he mumbled something about needing the bathroom and slipped inside the Silver Heron ’s cabin.
As soon as he was gone, another body plopped down into his chair.
I turned to the side, expecting to find Karma. Instead, I was shocked to see Caleb pick up Manuel’s rod and cast it into the water.
“Had to get away from Karma and Clarence,” my oldest brother said, winking. “I think they’re about to get into an actual fistfight.”
I snorted. “Sounds about right.”
“So, what’s new, Boose?” He leaned back in the folding chair. “I feel like we haven’t had much of a chance to chat this trip.”
His question probably shouldn’t have taken me as far aback as it did. Shouldn’t have made me curl into myself, made my cheeks burn with the spotlight of attention I wasn’t used to getting. But I couldn’t help it; Caleb was still the oldest, wisest, and most mature of the family, and I was still the baby.
I cleared my throat, trying to think of a witty response. “Oh, you know.” I cracked a smile. Already my voice sounded weak, uncertain of whether it actually wanted to be leaving my mouth or not. “Staying out of the cross fire.”
“Smart girl.” He nodded sagely. “But I meant, what’s new outside of the inevitable shitstorm that is family reunions? How do you like living in New York? I know I sort of asked last night, but there were some rather”—he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in the direction of Karma and Clarence—“ insistent voices fighting for the mic then, and I’d really like to hear.”
My heart lifted. Here was Caleb, the brother I’d always felt impossibly distant from, taking a real interest in my life. Asking me questions about the life I’d built for myself, as if I were a proper adult, like him.
It was the first time all trip that I truly felt like I wasn’t sitting at the kids’ table anymore.
“You know, I actually love it,” I said, launching into the monologue that I’d prepared on the car ride from Manhattan. The one I’d wanted to tell the whole family at dinner. “The corporate world really suits me. I know that probably sounds crazy coming from a twenty-one-year-old, but it’s true. Sure, the two years I spent as an assistant weren’t exactly thrilling, but now that I’ve made copywriter, I really feel like I’ve found my place in the world. Like I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
When I practiced this speech during the drive over, I’d thought it sounded great. Not too gushy, not too vague. I’d been channeling my skills as a copywriter, carefully choosing my words, adopting what I thought was the appropriate tone. But now, after twenty-four hours on the island…after arriving to a former best friend and running from my dead brother’s ghost and fighting off the return of compulsions I’d thought long gone…
Now the words didn’t feel so true anymore.
“That’s great.” Caleb smiled, and cheerful lines crinkled beside his eyes.
“What about you?” I asked, suddenly desperate to turn the conversation away from myself. “How’s Addie?”
“Oh.” Caleb’s smile disappeared. “You…don’t know?”
My heart picked up speed. Is this it? The thing that Karma and Mom were whispering about in the pantry? Did something happen to Addie? Are they divorced? Separated? No, that can’t be right. His ring is still on his left hand.
“Don’t know what?” I asked, pulse racing.
“Addie is…” He looked down, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “She’s sick.”
The words landed at the bottom of my stomach like a crate full of bricks.
Addie.
Sick.
What?
It wasn’t possible. Not her. Not the beautiful, brilliant, fun-loving woman I’d always looked up to. Addie?
“Well”—Caleb laughed hollowly—“if the look on your face is any indication, you didn’t know.” He shook his head. “No one told you? Really? Not even Karma?”
“I…”
What was I supposed to say? No, sorry. I feel awful that you had to be the one to tell me when it’s clearly so painful for you, but actually, neither Karma nor my mother thought I was strong enough to handle the news of your wife’s illness. They thought my fragile, mentally ill mind might fall to pieces and ruin Taz’s wedding.
“No,” I said finally, “they didn’t tell me.”
Caleb nodded, looking back out at the lake. “Well. She is. Breast cancer. We caught it early, but…” He shook his head. “I wanted to stay home with her this weekend. I tried to stay, hadn’t even packed my bags two hours before the flight took off, but she put her foot down. ‘Stop acting like I’m bedridden,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly fine. This is your brother’s wedding we’re talking about. These days with your family are precious, and I can take care of myself. You’re getting on that plane. End of story.’?” He laughed, the sound heavy but genuine. “So, here I am. Worried sick but doing exactly what she wanted me to do.”
As a copywriter, I think of myself as having words for any situation. Marketing campaign? No problem. Instruction manual? You got it. Apology email because our holiday gift boxes went out without any gifts inside them? I’m your girl. I can always find the right words, the right tone, the right cadence to suit Blossom’s needs.
But when your older brother tells you his wife has breast cancer?
Well, on that, I drew a blank.
“It’s okay to be speechless,” he said, glancing sympathetically at me. “When we got the news, I was, too.”
I’d never seen my oldest brother look like this before. Bruised. Breakable. And, for the first time in my life, I realized that he was both of those things. That he wasn’t just Caleb Beck, Acting Patriarch of the Beck Family. He was also Caleb, a person with flaws and troubles that he hid well from the world around him.
Just like me.
For a moment, I thought about opening up to him. I thought about telling the truth, the real truth, about my life in New York.
But before I could even open my mouth, Manuel returned, claiming his seat. And Caleb was gone as quickly as he’d arrived.
—
TEN MINUTES LATER, MY FISHING rod leapt from my hands with such force I almost dropped it into the water. “Shit!” I grabbed for the handle, leaping up out of my folding chair.
“She’s got something!” called Helene.
Manuel appeared beside me. I looked at him helplessly. He nodded once, then took the rod. “I’ll get you started, but this guy is yours.”
All pretense of competition quickly dissolved when it became clear that our team had something big on the line. My family gathered around and started yelling cheerful obscenities at the fish:
“Let’s go, big guy!”
“Get your ass up here!”
“Papa wants pike for dinner!”
For the previous hour, every glance I’d made in Manuel’s direction had felt like a violation. Like a failure on my part to keep a promise he didn’t know I’d made. But with everyone else’s attention squarely upon him, I was free to look. To ogle. I watched him shout and shift and reel. He cranked aggressively, angrily, as if he hated the fish even before laying eyes upon it. Sweat built on his brow until he had to remove his hat altogether. When he did, frenzied curls sprung outward, falling into his eyes or sticking to his glistening forehead. Inchworm-sized things, damp and dark as soil.
Unfortunately, because I was busy studying my best friend, I missed the entire tutorial on how to reel in a fish. So when Manny turned to me and shoved the rod back into my hands, I realized that my entire family was counting on me to land this fish and I had no idea how to do it.
I started to reel.
“Not like that , jueputa !” Manuel grabbed my wrists and pulled them upward. His big palms wrapped around my slender arms. This did not help my ability to pay attention to what he was saying. “Reel and yank! Reel and yank!” He let go of my wrists but stayed close to my side.
Tugging my attention away from the memory of his calluses on my skin, I homed in on those three words: Reel and yank! Reel and yank!
Yes. I could do that.
I reeled and yanked for several minutes. Whatever was on the other end of the line had no interest in joining us. Just as I started to worry the rod would snap, it disappeared from my hands.
“I’ll finish this off,” growled Clarence.
Manuel opened his mouth to protest, but I shook my head. My half brother clearly needed this.
Clarence’s fishing didn’t look like fighting. It looked like dancing. It took only a few minutes of reeling and yanking before he hollered, “Net!”
I spun around and snagged the tall metal pole.
“Get down in there and scoop him up,” he said.
I leaned over the gunwale and plunged the mesh into the water. The surface bubbled with angry white foam. Inside the chop, I made out a thrashing tail. I slid the net’s wide mouth over the tail until I felt the fish’s full weight under my arms. Then I tugged upward and nearly fell headfirst into Lake Huron.
“ Christ. ” My knees caught the gunwale, saving me from splashing into the drink.
“Pull, Eliot!” Clarence’s teeth were bared with the gleeful insanity of expectation. “Pull!”
I pulled. Nothing happened.
Something wrapped around my back—something soft and supportive. I glanced down and saw a pair of long sandy arms wrap around my own. Their hands grabbed the pole just above mine.
“We’ll pull it in together,” said Manuel. His voice was low. It came from just behind my ear.
He placed both feet against the gunwale, mirroring my stance. Manny’s thick frame held me upright as we inched steadily backward. Grunt by grunt, the pole made its way into the stern. Two dozen torturous seconds later, we heard a gleeful, “ MINE ,” and opened our eyes to see Clarence hauling in the single largest fish I’d ever seen emerge from the North Channel. For one moment, he cradled it with greedy tenderness, like a mother clutching a newborn child. Then the net tipped, dropping the fish—a forty-inch rainbow trout—onto the beveled white floor. It slid sideways, flopping and thrashing, leaving behind an erratic trail of slime.
Thus the scene came to rest: Manuel and me sprawled on the floor, my body tucked into his; next to our waists, a slimy being forced unwillingly into sunlight from the safety of its dark, wet home; and the rest of the family above it all, gazing proudly at the creature we’d pulled out of oblivion.
—
“THREE CHEERS FOR THE LEAST likely fishermen on Earth,” said Clarence, grabbing our wrists and waving them about in the air. “Little Boose Beck and our Resident Harvard Genius!”
The family erupted into applause. My cheeks burned with pleasure as Clarence released our wrists so Caleb could pass us the official Fisherman’s Trophy. Manuel grabbed one side of the trophy. I grabbed the other. Together, we hoisted it into the air.
We did it , I thought as Karma and Shelly whooped and whistled. We won.
Granted, we didn’t win the entire Olympics; that honor went to Karma and Shelly. But we won the most important event—the one that would feed the entire island.
When the Closing Ceremony ended, everyone else dispersed to change out of their wet bathing suits, but Manuel and I stayed. In exchange for saving the day, we had the honor of cutting our prize open and yanking out its insides.
“Eugh,” said Manuel when I made the first incision in the trout’s neck.
“Scared of blood?”
“You know this.”
I ran my knife down the trout’s shiny back, tracing a slit down its lateral line as cleanly as in a pat of butter. “Not me.”
“No?”
“Nope.” I flipped the fish over and lined the knife up just above the pectoral fin again.
“How do you know how to fillet a fish like such an expert?”
“You don’t remember?” I asked, looking up at Manuel, genuinely surprised.
“Remember what?”
“Dad put a knife in my hand when I was like four years old. Said it would teach me ‘safety.’?”
Manuel burst out laughing. “He what ?”
“Oh yeah. I always filleted what the boys brought back. In middle school, you sat beside me while I did it.”
“I did?”
“Definitely. You didn’t want to touch the fish yourself, but you liked watching me pull it apart.”
Manuel tilted his head. “I don’t think so.” He frowned. “In fact, I know I didn’t. I remember now. I remember you liked filleting. And I remember you inviting me to come watch, that first summer I was up here. But the idea of looking at fish guts grossed me out. I thought you were sort of insane for enjoying it.”
“That’s so odd. I swear to God, I have this memory of you sitting right here, right next to me, same as you are now, watching me do exactly this. Your eyes were as wide as saucers.”
He shrugged.
I closed my eyes, running a thumb along the knife’s handle. Was that Manny in my memory? Or was it Henry? The boy in my memory has tan skin, like Manuel’s, or like Henry’s after a long summer under the sun. His eyes are brown. No—hazel. No—brown.
Agh. It’s happening again.
I pressed my fingers to my temples, forgetting about the knife. The blade nicked my forehead. “ Ouch. ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Manuel. He grabbed my wrist. A thrill of sparks shot up my arm, completely distracting me from the pain of the cut. “What the hell was that?” He took the knife from my fingers and laid it next to the half-carved fish carcass. “I knew you were crazy, Beck, but I didn’t think you were suicidal.”
“I’m not,” I said too quickly. “I’m just…that was stupid.”
“No kidding.” Manuel reached out a hand and brushed his thumb below the scratch. He touched my skin gently, tenderly. The gesture sent little shivers down my body. When he pulled his thumb away, red pooled on its surface.
For a long moment, we just stared at the sight of my blood—which came from within my veins, which pumped through my heart, which represented the most private, hidden part of me—resting on his finger.
I averted my eyes. Picked up the knife and started filleting again.
“You’re okay,” Manuel said as he wiped off his finger, even though I hadn’t asked. “I’ll get you a Band-Aid.” He stood up and disappeared through the back door of Sunny Sunday.
I didn’t touch the fish the whole time he was gone. I couldn’t. I was stilled by nerves, knowing what would happen next.
When Manuel returned, he said nothing, just crouched by my side and dabbed at my forehead with an alcohol wipe. He tossed the wipe aside and peeled the Band-Aid from its wrapper. His fingers worked quietly, deftly. I watched them dance along the paper and cardboard, feeling oddly jealous of inanimate objects. When the Band-Aid was extracted, he raised it high and pressed it gently to my forehead. I stayed perfectly still throughout the whole process. It was a regular, everyday act—a friend putting a bandage on another friend’s cut—but it felt oddly intimate. Every shift of his body brought him closer. Every dart of his eyes was a secret glance. Every touch a caress.
I had to still my very skin to keep the shivers from showing.
When he was finished, he left his fingers on my skin a beat too long. They lingered. Luxuriated. Then—slowly, so slowly, as if waiting for me to stop him—he brought them up to my hairline and drew them down my cheek, tucking one long strand of hair behind my ear.
I was no longer breathing.
“Eliot,” he whispered.
No. That look in his eyes—God, I desperately wanted to tell him not to stop. To keep touching me, even if it was only right there, at the base of my ear, where my jaw met my neck. Anywhere would suffice. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t let this go on. It wasn’t fair to Manuel.
So I did the only thing I could.
I pulled away and picked the knife back up.
Manuel looked down. Cleared his throat.
I did the same.
“So,” he said, eyes searching the dock below us, “tell me more about being a copywriter.”
I exhaled. Held back a laugh. “Are we…making small talk?”
A small smile pulled at his lips as his eyes darted up to mine. “I guess we are.”
Huh. Never thought I’d see the day.
“Why?” I asked. “You considering switching careers?”
“No,” he said. “It’s just…well, it seems like your schedule is pretty grueling, what with you never being able to come home for any holidays.”
Little alarm bells sounded in my head. No. This is not a good direction for the conversation, either. Lightly, I said, “You know how it is. The busiest times for e-commerce companies are during the times when everyone else is resting. Christmas and Black Friday, especially. But we have sales on all the other holidays, too. President’s Day, July Fourth, Memorial Day…all of that.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you never came to Cradle over the summer,” he said, and I knew that he was pushing for the information he really wanted. “Surely you had vacation days. Personal days. Sick days, for God’s sake. You never took any of them?”
“I wanted to establish myself,” I lied smoothly. “To show that I’m committed to the job. You know, most investment bankers don’t take any holiday their first year on the job.”
“But you’re not an investment banker. You work a cushy tech job, and it’s no secret that those jobs come with plenty of benefits and a relaxed work environment.”
“You don’t know anything about my job,” I snapped. It came out too harsh, too defensive, even to my own ears. “You’re still in college. You’ve never worked full-time.”
Manuel’s voice softened. “I know. And that’s not really what I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to say is…well, I know how work culture is in New York. And I know that OCD and work obsession, they…they go hand in hand, two passengers on one bus. That’s how my psych professor described it, anyway, and he—”
“Would you relax?” I slipped the blade back into the first incision on the trout’s back, edging it to one side of its spine. I kept my voice as light as humanly possible. “Just because Dr.Phil gave you a nice bus metaphor doesn’t mean everyone you know is riding it.” I sliced and, with one stroke, took nearly half the fillet with me.
“I just—”
“So I work a lot. I love my job, and it makes me happy. End of story.”
“I just want to make sure someone is keeping an eye out, you know, since you’re living alone and…”
“I’m fine , Manuel,” I said. “Okay? I don’t need another lecture. I’ve had enough to last a lifetime, thank you very much. Especially from my sister.”
“Right.” He looked down at the fish he was supposed to be filleting, a small perch caught by Clarence just after we landed the trout. It sat untouched. “I’m sorry. I just worry, you know? I worry about you being alone in the big city.”
“Yeah, well. Get in line. Queue starts behind my mom.”
“Well”—he picked up the knife by his knee—“let’s talk about something else.”
Finally. “Sure. Tell me about the food at Harvard.”
“Oh God.” He cut into the perch. Skewed left, missing the lateral line by a full half inch. “It’s complete shit.”
I half smiled. “And the rest of it?”
He shrugged. “You know. It’s college. It’s the Ivy League.”
“No.” I folded open the loose fillet and repositioned the knife. One long stroke and the entire fillet came free. “I really don’t know.”
“It’s an incredibly expensive way to get a high-paying job.”
“So, you don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So, you do like it?”
He sighed. Scraped the point of his knife absentmindedly into the soft, weathered wood of the dock in a way that made me wince. First rule of filleting: keep your knife sharp as hell.
“Yes. No. Yes, I do like it.” He nestled his knife back into the perch, copying the way I hugged the spine, and started to drag it down. “I love it, actually. The people there…they listen to me, you know? They listen to my thoughts and opinions in a way high school kids never did.”
“In a way I never did, you mean?”
“Yeah, well. At least none of these kids blocked my phone number.”
“Hey”—I pointed my knife at him—“I didn’t block you literally . Just metaphorically.”
He laughed. A real laugh, too—not forced, not withheld.
Did that just happen? Did I reference our separation, and did he laugh ?
Could it really be this easy?
As casually as possible, I asked, “Any girlfriends?”
He looked up at me, raising his eyebrows. “Seriously? That’s your next question?”
“Yes.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, then. Absolutely. I’ve got girlfriends. I’ve got all the girlfriends. Girlfriends for miles. Girlfriends coming out the eyeballs.”
“Makes sense. You always were a lady-killer. Especially back when you had a unibrow on your forehead the size and shape of downtown Manhattan.”
He picked up a stray fish gut and chucked it at my head. I laughed. Then he started scraping the knife against the dock again. “Can I tell you something?”
“No,” I said, “I prefer we sit here and gut these fish in silence.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you’re serious, Manuel. You frown, like, eighty percent of the time. It must be a requirement for getting into the Ivy League.”
“I just…” Scrape, scrape, scrape. “I miss you, Eliot.”
Silence.
By then, I was almost finished filleting the back half of the trout. I felt Manuel’s gaze, but I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. I focused entirely on the raw muscle beneath my knife. I sliced off two more chunks, clean and quick, and then it was over. The whole operation. I set my knife next to the severed head and reached for the dirty rag on the ground. As I massaged my palms into its grimy cotton, wiping away as much gore as I could, I said, quietly, “I miss you, too.”
“Do you?”
I looked up. I didn’t find anger in Manny’s eyes. It would have been easier if I did. Instead, I found hope.
My chest constricted.
“Of course I do.” I swallowed. “I haven’t seen you in three years.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He reached out and placed his hand over mine. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
I looked down at the fish skeleton at my feet. There wasn’t a single thread of meat left on it. It was perfectly empty. I glanced over at Manny’s fish, which was a hacked-up mess, an amateur operation that left juicy pieces of flesh dangling loosely up and down the spine. Little clusters of translucent white muscle and fat. I sighed, pulled my hand gently from his, and pushed my pristine skeleton aside, then picked up Manny’s and started working its flesh with my knife.
“This is a mess,” I said. “Let’s see if there’s anything left for me to save.”