Chapter 19
WILLIAM
William woke up on the beach. Curled on his side, his head on his bicep, a small, iridescent beetle scuttling near his nose.
He jerked up and found Oscar, splayed out on the sand like a man pulled from a shipwreck, though in the end, they’d never even gone into the water.
His chest rose and fell in steady waves.
The night before, they’d stuttered their apologies to Mr. Pruitt as they hurried from the room.
They knew it was time to leave the party, and Oscar had nipped a bottle of rum from the bar before they fled.
William abandoned the crystal decanter on the blue grass as they ran down the hill, not toward the golf carts, but into the island’s moonlit wilds.
Vivian held her heels in each hand. At first, it felt good to run.
It was a release—no one asking him any more questions about Shay, the figures in his head dissolving to vapor—but then it became a punishment, for his body had nothing left to burn, his stomach still empty except for the bucket of beer and liquor he’d drunk.
They’d sprinted across gravel roads and cut through a garden, until Haven House was nothing but a candle flame, and Scott yelped that he had a cramp.
“Let’s go swimming,” Oscar had said. They were near the gas station. A house William had passed that afternoon flickered with the white light of a television.
“No,” Scott huffed. “I saw Jaws, I’m not doing that.”
“Let’s race back to the hotel,” Vivian said, and William nodded. If he couldn’t eat, he needed water and a bed.
“It’s too early for that. Race you to the beach!” Oscar panted and took off at a sprint.
Vivian groaned, and Scott raised his face to the sky. “I can’t run anymore,” he said. Oscar let out a triumphant yip as he splashed through the marsh. His jacket flapped behind him. He had drunk even more than William, and if he made it to the water, he could drown.
“My feet are all torn up,” Vivian said, looking down at her bare heels.
“It’s okay,” William said. “I’ll go after him.”
When William woke, the sun was already high in the sky.
He did not wear a watch, but he lifted up Oscar’s wrist, powdered with sand.
It was nearing seven in the morning. His tongue felt desiccated, and there was a terrible pressure in his head, as if his brain was swelling, too large for his skull. He jostled Oscar’s shoulder.
“Come on,” he said, but Oscar only moaned. “Get up.”
William could have eaten two dozen biscuits, a whole stick of butter, if Red had offered, but he only had two dollars in his wallet, and Oscar’s pockets were empty except for his crushed carton of cigarettes and three pieces of green sea glass neither had a memory of him collecting.
There was also an arrowhead, which he exclaimed over like a boy finding a prize in a Cracker Jack box. It was the umber of dried blood.
“The party just ending?” Red asked.
“Probably not,” William said. “We went a bit rogue.”
“Ah, to be young.”
William smiled and picked up the mugs of coffee, knowing Red wouldn’t have said anything of the sort if he’d seen William pulling Oscar away from the water, begging him to just sit down on the sand.
These sorts of comments were common as dandelions, and he could never say what he wanted, which was that youth was exhausting.
It was unstable and without meaning. It was as if he were hungry all the time and did not know what to eat to feel full, but no one wanted to hear this.
He opened the door with his shoulder. Oscar was hunched over one of the plastic tables, scratching at the nape of his neck. On the route to the gas station, he had complained of sand mites. He said his skin felt hot and bitten.
They ate their biscuits in silence. Even though William had brushed himself off on the walk, somehow there was sand in the biscuits and the lip of his mug, the granules lodged in his molars.
He shook out his blazer again and realized how bad he smelled: his acrid, stale sweat; the yeast of old beer.
Oscar tipped his coffee back and drank it one long gulp.
“I’m going to go back to the hotel, and I’m going to shower, and then I’m going to sleep all day,” Oscar said. “That way I’ll be back in fighting shape for tonight.”
“I have to go to the church this afternoon for the rehearsal,” William said, chewing his thumbnail. He realized Mr. Pruitt would be there, that there would be few people to hide behind, and his headache intensified.
“Hooo,” Oscar said. “I’m glad I’m not a groomsman.”
“I’m not, remember? I’m just an usher.”
“Well, whatever. I’m glad I’m not you.”
“Thanks.”
The island was already awake around them. A woman across the way was soaking a rosebush with a watering can, and three boys rode past on bicycles. They brimmed with purpose, their chests angled over the handlebars and legs pumping furiously, as if they didn’t have all the time in the world.
“I can’t believe ol’ Eleanor refused to come,” Oscar said. “She’s the only family left on your dad’s side, right?”
William startled at the mention of her, feeling suddenly alert, as if Oscar might know something. “Yeah, I guess it was just—too much of a journey for her.”
“Missing her one chance to fly in an airplane.” Oscar pressed his thumb against a stray coffee ground stuck to his mug. “Did you ever talk to her about everything with Shay?”
“A little.” Aunt Eleanor hadn’t seemed surprised when William brought up Synanon.
As if all along, she had expected something like this from Shay.
She found her own way in, and you know Shay—she’ll have to find her own way out, she said.
Aunt Eleanor was always honest and unflinching, the only one who would tell stories about William’s father, who would speak of him at all.
How as a boy he cut himself wings from paper grocery bags and broke his arm leaping off a balcony.
How he knew every alderman’s favorite liquor but often forgot his own birthday.
How on Christmas he used to pen limericks for each family member about their past years.
These were the moments when William remembered how he had loved his father, how his mother and Shay had loved him, how singular they each felt when they were in the blinding light of his attention, and William worried that if Eleanor was no longer with them, he would forget any echo of that warmth.
“You all right?” Oscar asked.
“Yeah. Yes, I’m good,” William said. And why did he always say that?
He remembered a moment in the restaurant kitchen when he tried to clean a burner that was still scalding hot.
How he had mumbled, I’m fine, even when tears sprang to the corners of his eyes, when the burn was so severe that, later, the skin peeled off from his palm in a gossamer sheet.
Oscar yawned and arced his arms over his head, and William heard the soft pop of a joint cracking. He looked off into the distance, but there was not a single golf cart in sight.
“Time for bed?” Oscar asked, and William nodded, collecting their mugs as if he were at work, like Oscar was another patron he was serving.