Chapter 23
23
NOW
AFTER PRYING AS MUCH CLEAN flesh from Manuel’s mangled skeleton as I could, I wiped all the soft webbed fillets down until the meat shone clean and white. He offered to help, but I just laughed at the green tint in his cheeks and told him to go wash up.
I dumped the blood and guts and bones, brittle like pine needles, back into the lake. Back where they came from. Then I sealed the meat into a plastic bag, wiped down both knives, and carried it all back up the steps onto the porch.
When I reached the top, I found my father parked before the railing, staring out at the choppy water. The Nurses were nowhere in sight. I walked over and stood next to him. We stared out at the water for a few quiet moments. Then, before thinking about what I was going to say, I asked, “Dad, do you ever think about drugs anymore?”
He looked over at me in surprise. I was about to apologize, to take back the question, but then he started to laugh. Big, rattling cackles, the kind that make you gasp for air.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh,” he said, still laughing.
“I don’t…”
“I forget you’ve never been a drug addict before.”
I smiled awkwardly. “I don’t understand.”
“Asking an addict if he ever thinks about drugs is like…” He cast around for a suitable comparison. “Is like asking a priest if he ever thinks about God.”
“Oh. So…” I laid one hand on the railing. A sliver of wood pressed into my palm, not quite piercing the skin. “The answer is yes.”
“The answer is yes.”
“And…” I picked at the sliver with one finger. “It never goes away?”
He sighed and looked back out at the lake. “There’s a reason addicts are only called recovering , never recovered .”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
We became quiet again. The lake was now well stirred up into its evening churn. I watched the wind make wrinkles across its surface.
Finally, Dad cleared his throat. “How have the, uh…” He drummed two fingers on his padded armrests. “You know…how’ve they been?”
“How have who been?”
“Not who, not who.” He waved one hand. “The thoughts, the Worries. The stuff , you know. Has all of that…has it been okay?”
Now it was my turn to look over in surprise. Dad never asked me about my mental health. Not since the first time he drove me to therapy.
“They’re…” I wasn’t sure what to say. “Yeah, they’ve been okay.”
It wasn’t a lie. Not really. The Worries had been okay for almost three years. Just as I’d hoped, the move to New York—a city where I knew no one, and more importantly, no one knew me —let me start fresh. Stuff that portion of my life into a little box. Wrap it in cinder and chain, sink it to the bottom of the East River.
It was only now, away from the safety of the city, that I felt them starting to creep back in.
He nodded. “Good. Your mother…she worries about you living all alone in New York.”
I almost laughed. Oh, does she? Does she worry?
“I’m fine, Dad. Really.”
“You know…you’ve always impressed me with your independence, Eliot,” he said. “It’s remarkable. You never ask anyone for anything. Never. Not even when you were little.”
“That’s not true.”
“But it is. You never needed us, any of us. That’s why your mother and I were so shocked when you told us about the…the thoughts. You never gave us any reason to think you were suffering. You always seemed…I don’t know…content. Happy, even.” He sighed. “Shows you how much I know about being a father.”
“Don’t say that, Dad. How could you have known?”
He looked at me head-on. His wispy blond hair blew across his forehead. But I could see his eyes, the same eyes staring out from my own face. They looked helpless in a way I’d never seen before.
“No, Eliot.” The words rolled out in a tight knot. “How could I not have known?”
—
“TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT,” I instructed.
“Excuse me?”
Manuel and I had decided to go for a sunset swim. After our moment while filleting fish…I don’t know. Something had shifted between us.
We stood on the floating dock, which held two days’ worth of vacation debris: goggles, flippers, frisbees, water skis, inner tubes, sunscreen. Off in the far corner, there were two concrete blocks and a long coiled chain—supplies to make a new anchor for one of the water trampolines. Next to all the brightly colored fun-time gadgets, the concrete looked oddly menacing.
“You heard me,” I said.
“Okay, then,” said Manuel, and he obliged.
“Where’s your phone?”
“On the kitchen counter,” he said through folds of cotton. “Why? Do you want to take a picture of my hot—”
“Spectacular,” I said, then shoved him into the water.
He reemerged with a splash and a sputtered, “What was that for?” I scooped up two masks and tossed one to him. He caught it before it could sink. Still standing on the dock, I pulled back the plastic strap on mine and snapped it onto my head.
“You look like the fish we caught today,” he said.
“Shut up.”
We spent a full hour in the lake that evening. Once we were in, I wondered why I hadn’t spent the entire vacation there. The water was so clear you could see twenty feet in every direction. A school of smallmouth bass lingered under the dock. Manuel swam beneath it and they all scattered, darting away in one terrified mass. We swam to the bottom and looked for bright pops of color that indicated lost frisbees and tennis balls. Manuel took my hand underwater and pulled me over to the rocks, where we inspected vast swaths of zebra mussels—the prolific, invasive clam shells with razor-sharp mouths that coat every inch of rock deep enough to be protected from waves and ice. We held out our hands to the zebra mussels, then pulled them back, then forward, then back, and watched the shells open and close their tiny mouths as we did.
After snorkeling I hauled two inner tubes into the water. We floated atop the surface, letting the warm evening wind roll across our bodies. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Only a few moments later, I heard a splash off to the side. “Hey!” I yelled, opening my eyes just in time to see Manuel leap from his tube and tackle the side of mine, sending us both back into the drink.
Finally, pumped full of energy and a long-forgotten giddiness, we swam out to one of the water trampolines, where we bounced for a few minutes, then did synchronized backflips off the side. Our bodies sliced into the waves, plummeting as one toward the bottom—just like they used to. When we tired of flips, we collapsed onto the trampoline. Its webbed mat was older than we were; it sagged beneath our bodies. In the air above, a cormorant traced wide circles with its wings.
We didn’t talk. It had been a long time since I’d lain out on the water with Manuel, nothing else pulling at our time.
As kids, my siblings and I played King of the Hill out here, a game that involved shoving each other off the trampoline as hard as possible, bodies flopping into the water, until only the victor remained. As the youngest, I never won, but Henry, lithe and nimble, knew how to use his small size to his advantage. He bobbed and weaved beneath the long legs of his brothers, tripping them at the knees rather than using brute force.
The cormorant gave up flying. It landed in the lake with a great splash. The waves swallowed all its body but the head. They have these gorgeous, whip-thin necks, cormorants. Long but muscular. It bobbed gently on the waves.
Manuel’s fingertips brushed the back of my hand. He turned his head to face me. “What are you looking at?”
I felt daring that evening. Maybe even a bit crazy. I was so confused by the competing emotions within me, the urges in different directions, but that evening in the water…it had been so nice. It felt just like our friendship used to feel.
Rather than answer, I turned onto my side, rolling until my nose was just millimeters from Manuel’s. He stared back at me. The trampoline undulated beneath our bodies. If I wanted to kiss him, all I’d have to do is close the gap, to move forward just a breath. I felt him suck the air between us and hold it inside.
That was the first time I thought it. The first time I really allowed myself to think: Maybe I’ve been a fool. Maybe this is where I was supposed to be all along.
“What are you doing?” he whispered. His words smelled like freshly cut cedar.
“This,” I whispered, leaning in.
Then I pushed him over the edge and he splashed back into the lake.