Chapter 15 Shane
Shane
I expect to wake up the way I went to sleep, with Ethan wrapped up in my arms.
But my arms are empty when I open my eyes to weak, gray daylight. The first thing I do is look for Ethan, but I hear the shower going, so the next thing I do is look out of the window. My chest gets a lift when I see the plows out on the road.
And the parking lot being cleared.
I go find the remote for the TV so I can find the local forecast.
When Ethan comes into the room with fresh eyeliner and his lock-chain necklace lying against a black sweater, I get up off the bed to go greet him with a hug and a kiss, but he stiffens when I approach him. He sidesteps me and goes over to his cigs and lighter on the table.
“What’s the weather saying?” he asks, putting on his coat.
“Um, there’s only a twenty percent chance of more snow today,” I answer, looking at the TV. “And the plows are out clearing the highway right now.”
“Great.” Ethan opens the door and cold air sneaks inside. “Be right back.” He goes outside to smoke.
I just stand in the middle of the room for a moment.
So, I guess it’s going to be like this now. I sigh.
I decide to take a shower too, and when I get out, Ethan’s at the table eating a cup of noodles and watching the weather.
I grab a cup, pour some hot water into it, and cover it, letting it sit to soften the noodles. I sit down with him at the table and we both watch the weather for a time, not saying a word and eating.
But then I can’t take it anymore. “Is everything okay?”
He stares straight ahead at the TV. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Ethan.”
He sets down the cup and rubs his face. “I don’t know. I’m going to go back to school and you’re going back to Port Leyden after all this.” He pauses. “Maybe we shouldn’t have started anything.”
I’m not sure, but to me it doesn’t feel like “starting” almost more like continuing.
It’s almost like we can sew up those five years like a ripped seam.
“Okay, well, it doesn’t really matter what either of us go back to, does it?
It’s not like you’ll never set foot in Port Leyden again.
It’s not like I can’t ever get to the city. ”
He looks down, but I catch the expression on his face. I’m freaking him out.
“I mean,” I say. “I was hoping, you know?”
He picks at the chipped black polish on one of his nails.
I sigh. “Or maybe not.”
“Look,” he says. “I don’t know. Okay? I need to think.
All right? You told me last night that you stopped talking to me because my brother was mad.
And he told me you said I was a pain in the ass.
He never told me about a picture. And I think he would have.
Maybe not that night or even later. But eventually, you know? ”
“So, you don’t know if you believe me?”
He shrugs. “And then you went off and had a kid. I don’t know what I’m supposed to believe.”
“Listen, I thought Gina could be my ‘cover story,’ you know? And I guess she felt the same about me. Gina’s been seeing another woman.
So, Gina and I aren’t together together.
We co-parent for Mikayla’s sake. We don’t even live together anymore.
We tried that, but…” I shake my head. “I know how weird and messed up it all looks, but that’s what happened.
I’m just a fucking coward that makes bad decisions.
” I move closer to him and grab his chin so he’ll look up at me.
“Except for this one. Coming along with you, being with you, it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. ”
He gets that sad puppy look in his eyes. There’s a little bit of hope there. Then he shakes his head again. “We need to get ready to go. I need to call that lady.”
He gets up then and starts picking up clothes off the floor and putting stuff back into the plastic totes. After a couple of minutes, I get up and help him.
There are giant piles of snow behind all the cars, but the parking lot is clear and same with the road. We use a combination of our feet and the fold-up shovel to clear away the pile of snow behind the car so Ethan can back out. It takes a few tries.
We make sure we’re square with the front desk and get back on the highway. We don’t say much as we drive. Ethan pops in the CD he made. I look down at the directions he wrote to the lady’s house. According to the map, she doesn’t live far from the rest stop Denny’s.
I’m a little disappointed that the unexpected layover in the motel didn’t seem to help anything between us. Ethan still seems wary of me, and I guess it’s important to him to get to where we’re going since we’ve lost two days.
“Want me to drive for a little while?” I ask.
He glances over at me. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, because we can switch it up. If you want.”
I see his jaw working like he might snap at me. Instead, he says, “Maybe. We’ll see.”
And that’s that for a few miles.
I look out at the snowy landscape, rolling white hills and a dim, cloudy sky.
It’s depressing. The most fitting weather for what we’re doing, except that Everett wasn’t a big fan of winter.
He loved being outside when it was warm.
All those summers we spent outside blur together like a video on fast-forward. My eyes sting.
A random memory pops into my head. “You remember when Kevin Blake and Mike Craft busted up your Lego project?” Ethan looks at me and frowns.
“When we were using the pay phones reminded me. Because you had to call your parents, and I spoke to your mom. You were going to be home late, and you didn’t really want to tell her what happened. ”
He nods. “Yeah, I remember. It took hours.”
I look over at him. “What did?”
“Putting it back together. My science project.”
“Yeah, it did.” I laugh softly, looking out of the window. “You were so excited about it. You’d talk about it with Ev sometimes.” I paused. “I was a little jealous.”
He snorts. “Jealous of what?”
“That you guys could talk about stuff like that. Science-y stuff. I dunno. Smart stuff.” I look over at him. “I wasn’t as smart as you guys. So, I felt left out.”
He rubs his lips together, and glances over at me, then back at the road. A few seconds pass before he says, “Why do you say you weren’t as smart as us? You got good grades.”
“I guess. But I wasn’t like, in all the AP classes like you guys were.”
“I thought you were.” His profile looks genuinely confused.
“No. I was in all the dummy classes.”
“You’re not dumb,” he says firmly, and his tone sort of startles me. He glances over at me. “You shouldn’t say that about yourself, you know. You weren’t dumb. You were talented. With the photography stuff.”
It’s the nicest thing he’s said to me so far. I shrug in response, not really wanting to ruin the moment.
The directions Juanita gave us leads to a trailer park just a few miles from the exit.
Ethan parks the Blazer next to a lemon-yellow single-wide with lemon-yellow curtains in the windows.
I knock on the door and there’s the sound of footsteps from inside, then a woman with long white hair and a dentured smile opens the door.
Ethan clears his throat. “Um, hi,” Ethan says. “I’m here for my brother’s ashes?”
“Come on in, Ethan and Ethan’s friend,” Juanita says, opening the screen door and stepping aside.
We stomp snow off our boots before stepping into the trailer.
I get an eerie feeling, one that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as we go inside.
I’m not really sure why, because everything inside the trailer—including her—makes me feel like I’m in some kind of hippie storybook dream.
Juanita wears a frilly, patchwork skirt with a sage-green knitted sweater.
A couple of layers of beads are around her neck.
Some of the beads are shaped like little flowers and mushrooms. As Juanita offers to take our coats, I look around and see lots of knickknacks everywhere.
Mostly of mushrooms. Lots and lots of mushrooms. And gnomes.
The air is heavy with the scent of patchouli.
“We really can’t stay,” Ethan says. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
“I know you do, honey,” Juanita says. “But I made us some tea.”
Ethan frowns and looks around the sunshine-bright trailer. He looks almost comically out of place, standing there in all black, with his eyeliner and nail polish. But Juanita just smiles at him as if she hasn’t even noticed.
I take off my coat. “Let’s have a cup of tea, Ethan.”
Ethan seems like he’s going to roll his eyes and argue, but he takes off his coat too, just as Juanita turns to us from her little lemon-yellow kitchen, also decorated with pictures of mushrooms and gnomes.
In the middle of the kitchen table is a porcelain figurine of an anthropomorphic mushroom with wide, innocent eyes and green moss for hair, grinning at a caterpillar on its hand.
It weirdly reminds me of something my grandma had in her hoard years ago.
I start to wonder if it’s something that all old ladies like.
“How are you, sweetie?” Juanita asks Ethan, pouring hot water from a lemon-yellow kettle into lemon-yellow mugs.
Ethan shoves his hands in his pockets. “Okay.” He looks around again. “Um, where’s the urn?”
“Right over there.” She nods to a bay window at the end of the trailer. Ethan goes over and picks up the urn and cradles it in his arms.
“I think your brother liked watching all that snow we had,” Juanita says, setting a lemon-yellow tray with the tea on a little table by the window. “My neighbor’s boys were out in that lot yesterday, trying to build a snowman.” She sits and invites the both of us to sit as well.
I sit down, but Ethan hesitates. “What do you mean my brother was watching?”
Juanita hands him a steaming mug. “He was your older brother, wasn’t he?”
Ethan tentatively takes the mug, and I pick up one from the tray. “Yeah, he was,” Ethan replies and tries to take a sip of the tea.
“That’s hard,” she says sadly. “When it’s someone you looked up to.” Her kind smile settles on me. “You must be a family friend.”
“I…am.” I smile back, glancing at Ethan.
Ethan quickly glances at me and takes another sip of the tea. I take one too. It tastes kind of floral.
Juanita looks from him to me. “It’s hard to lose a friend too. You boys have been through a lot.” She nods to the mugs. “Drink up now while it’s nice and hot. It’s got chamomile in it.”
Ethan and I take a drink in unison. If this were any other situation with a different person, I might be suspicious of them wanting me to drink some tea they made.
But the eerie feeling I had earlier has settled a little.
I feel oddly comforted by this lady, as if I’ve met her before.
The tea is sweet and soothing, and I vaguely remember the taste.
I think maybe I made this tea for my grandma once before when she was anxious.
“My goodness, it’s a strange life, isn’t it?” Juanita says, looking out of the window. “The people that come into it and leave it. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to make any sense.”
Ethan clears his throat. He sets the mug down and hugs the urn closer to him.
“But I think,” Juanita continues, “that people come into our lives and leave them at just the right times.” She spots the skeptical look in Ethan’s black-lined eyes.
“I do. I really do. It’s hard to think about.
It is. Because it just doesn’t seem fair or right.
It can seem too soon and all you want is more time.
” She looks at me and then at Ethan and leans a little bit toward him.
“But some people leave and come back, don’t they? ”
Ethan blinks his eyes at her, and I stop drinking my tea.
“And you know what else?” She leans closer toward him, as if she’s going to tell him a secret she doesn’t want me to know. “Just when you start thinking that this is all there is to life, you find out there’s much more.”
Ethan’s chin trembles. “What?”
Juanita’s smile is kind. “I didn’t mean to upset you, honey. But I think your brother was very proud of you. And he loved you just the way that you are.”
The eerie feeling comes over me again, but it’s not in a bad way.
The scent of patchouli is replaced for a few seconds with the smell of something burning.
I look around Juanita’s bright trailer for a candle or a furnace, but I don’t see any.
I just see lots of crocheted blankets. I bet she’s someone’s grandma.
She’d have to be. She has that way about her.
But she’s not like mine. She keeps her trailer neat and clean.
I look over at the kitchen table and notice the porcelain figurine is gone.
I open my mouth to say something, but Ethan stands up. “It was really nice of you to keep my brother’s urn for me, but we’ve got like an eight-hour drive.”
I stand up too, a little surprised, and politely finish the tea she made for us. I see her mug is still full. “Yeah, thank you. Thanks for helping us out.”
“Anytime,” Juanita says, rising from her chair as we put on our coats. I step outside onto the front steps, and wait for Ethan, but he turns before he walks out and gives her a big hug.
“Thank you,” he says softly.
“You’re welcome, honey.” She pulls away from him and looks at him. Then she whispers something in his ear that I can’t make out.
Ethan looks at her for a second or two before he nods.
We tell her goodbye, thanking her again. I get into the driver’s seat this time, and Ethan gets into the passenger seat with Ev’s ashes on his lap.
We’re quiet as we get back on the road and onto the entrance ramp for the interstate. After driving a couple of miles, I feel Ethan’s hand slide over my thigh and squeeze. I reach down and take his hand in mine.