Chapter Seventeen
I make it twenty-four hours before I break down and text Katy, on my lunch break from work, sitting at the dining room table
with my laptop and the leftovers of a salad I made last night that felt a little too complicated to prepare for a single person
but I have to admit tastes pretty good. At least with Professor MacAndrew gone, I’ve got a proper workspace, instead of balancing
my laptop on my knees while sitting on the couch and killing my back.
Have you heard from Nathan? I text Katy.
A half hour passes before she texts back. Sorry, she writes. In the middle of a color appointment. Haven’t heard from him. Something wrong?
I chew my lip. Part of me wants to just tell her that Nathan kissed me. That I kissed him back. That I’m fairly sure I would
like to kiss him again.
The rest of me is too afraid to.
Just sent him some texts but haven’t heard back, I write.
A minute passes. Three dots pop up—Katy typing. The dots disappear. Pop up again and then disappear. Finally, she texts, Yeah, he does this sometimes.
Exactly what Sharon said. I frown at my phone.
So you’re saying I shouldn’t worry? I ask.
She replies, I’m saying it’s nothing personal. Sometimes he just ghosts for a bit. He’s done it to me too. He’ll turn back up.
None of that really makes me feel better. I consider asking her for his address, but I suppose if he’s ignoring my texts,
showing up on his doorstep probably wouldn’t go over particularly well. So I do my best to let it go. I turn my phone face
down on the table and go back to staring at my laptop.
I have my work Slack open, and I am technically in the middle of working on a project, but I also have several internet browser tabs open, and I’ve been idly
flipping among them all day, as though maybe this time they’ll tell me something different.
I still have no idea why Professor MacAndrew disappeared, or why Jackson and my dad haven’t. And while I certainly didn’t
love having my former thesis advisor stuck in the dining room, the fact that she’s the one who vanished and I still have my dad
and my ex as uninvited roommates is just making this whole situation even more grating. And since Dina clearly won’t give
me any answers, I’ve been resorting to Google. Again.
I’m not having any more success than last time. Googling can hallucinations disappear is amazingly useless, since I have no idea if Professor MacAndrew was really a hallucination in the first place. Googling
can ghosts disappear and what makes ghosts vanish just makes me feel fully unhinged.
Really, I know Google isn’t going to give me any answers, because Google has no idea what rules the cottage is playing by,
if it’s playing by any at all. There’s been no sign of the other Nathan either—the younger one in the bedroom. So maybe nothing
in the cottage makes sense and I should stop trying to impose rules where there clearly aren’t any.
Maybe none of this means anything.
But I can’t quite make myself believe that. Because if none of this made any sense, why wouldn’t Dina just say that when I asked her about the cottage? Why wouldn’t she just shrug and say Oh, yes, the cottage is very strange, it doesn’t mean anything, just ignore it?
I wish I could find the other Nathan in the bedroom again. I have a feeling, somehow, that he holds the key to all of this.
To understanding whatever’s happening.
The night before the kickball game, I’m sitting on the couch, half watching an episode of Diamonds and Divas, the reality show full of betrayal, enormous engagement rings, and tiny dogs that I’m now utterly addicted to, and half texting
Rika about it because I’d really like to know her queer reading of Pink Nails and Purple Nails, when a text notification pops
up on my phone screen.
My heart jumps. For a split second, before my eyes focus, I’m sure it’s Nathan, finally responding.
But it’s not. It’s a text from my dad. I tap on the message.
Hello, Harlowe. Tried calling you a while ago but I haven’t heard back. I’m hoping to discuss an upcoming visit to Boston.
We are going to Maine at end of summer to drop Kendra off at college. It will be a quick trip and mid-week but could you take
a day off so I can see you?
I read the message a second time. And then a third, frustration simmering in my gut.
I toss my phone onto the couch cushion next to me and lean my head back, staring at the ceiling. Well, at least my instincts
were right. I had a feeling that’s why he was calling when I was driving out here with Rika and Yasmin—because he wanted to
do another one of his drop-in-and-drop-out visits.
I still haven’t told him I’m not in Boston. Or that Jackson and I broke up.
And I know it’s sort of ridiculous that it’s been more than a month now and I still haven’t told him. But he also hasn’t called
me to say hello. He hardly ever asked about Jackson to begin with, even when we did talk. Not in a homophobic, avoidant way—more
in the way where his go-to questions were always about the weather. Was Boston always this hot/humid/cold/rainy/whatever happened to be occurring on the day he dropped in? And then, whatever my answer, he would tell me all the ways Michigan was different.
As though I hadn’t grown up in Indiana, right next door. With him.
I tilt my head forward and glance in the direction of the kitchen. And then I push myself up, leaving the reality TV episode
playing while I go through the dining room and open the bifold door to the kitchen.
My dad looks up from the sink. He’s washing the dishes. As usual. “Hello, Harlowe. Did you decide whether you want that—”
“I don’t want coffee,” I say. “I want to ask you a question.”
He blinks a few times, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “Oh. All right.”
“Why do you come visit me?”
He looks blank. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question, Dad. Why? What do you get out of it?”
“I see you.”
“And?”
He frowns. “Well, I like seeing what you’re up to. Catching up. You know. Seeing how you are.”
“That’s it?”
He shifts again. Takes a breath. Lets it out, scrubbing at his hair with one hand. “I’m not quite sure what you want me to
say, Harlowe. We keep up. I know it’s not perfect, but I’m busy and so are you.”
This digs, painfully, under my skin. “You’re retired.”
“Well . . .” He gestures vaguely with the mug he’s still holding in one hand. “I’ve got work to do on the house.”
He says it as though his house projects are just as inflexible as my forty-hour-a-week job. As my limited vacation package.
As my deadlines. As the hours and hours of overtime I pulled six months ago when the company was switching over to a new scheduling
software.
“Right,” I say.
He looks lost. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” I say, because I don’t, not exactly.
I just feel certain that there’s another answer I was hoping for, and I wish I knew what it was.
I’ve clearly spent too much time in Boston and seen too many Red Sox games on TV, because when Dina told me the kickball game
was at Wellfleet Park, I pictured . . . Well, not a stadium, but at least an expansive baseball diamond surrounded by bleachers
with a big scoreboard and an announcer and maybe somebody selling popcorn.
Instead, I walk onto a small field surrounded by a chain-link fence, with one set of bleachers, no scoreboard, and no snacks
to be seen—unless you count the bag of chips Marcus is holding, but I’m pretty sure he brought those himself.
Dina wasn’t kidding when she said there would be a cheering section. Besides Katy and Marcus, and John and Cathy, all of whom
are decked out in hats with rainbow O’s on them, there are several buff, hairy men in tank tops (friends from Dave’s bear club, Marcus tells me), members of the
teams that aren’t playing (the Switch Kickers and Three Dykes You’re Out), and even several families with kids.
I barely have time to say hello to Katy and Marcus before Sharon waves me over to the baseball diamond, which is not at all manicured and barely even green. Half the grass is worn to dirt or turning brown.
“Come get your gear,” Sharon says, pulling me over to a long, narrow bench on one side of the baseball diamond. There doesn’t
seem to be a formal dugout. Dave and Bill are already sitting on the bench, lacing their sneakers, while Yan digs through
a big cardboard box.
“Let’s see . . . What are you, a small?” She pulls a blue T-shirt out of the box and holds it up. It says OUTfielders on the back in bright white letters. “Give this a try.”
“Where’s your wife?” Sharon says, looking around. “We need to talk strategy.”
“I’m here, I’m here!” Meryl shouts, motoring toward us from the direction of the bleachers. “Had to park the car. Is it true
we’ve got a new whiz ball-kicker?”
Bill winces. “Meryl, please just say kickball player.”
“Harlowe’s joining us,” Sharon says, handing me a hat with a rainbow O on it.
“Oh, good, good.” Meryl beams at me. “We could stand to inject a bit more youth into this team.”
Dina arrives a few minutes later, wearing magenta leggings in addition to her OUTfielders shirt, her wild hair pulled into
a frizzy ponytail that sticks out the back of her baseball hat. Across the baseball diamond, the other bench begins to fill
with the opposing team—Ace of Base—all in gray shirts with purple A’s on the back. I can see why they keep winning the championship. They are, on average, several decades younger than the OUTfielders.
I swap T-shirts, settle the cap on my head, and check my phone: 1:45. There’s still no sign of Nathan, and the game is supposed
to start at two. I notice Dina checking her phone too. Even Sharon seems vaguely antsy.
Finally, at 1:54, I see him jogging across the grass from the direction of the parking lot, wearing a blue OUTfielders T-shirt and a cap pushed back on his head.
My heart jumps, caught somewhere between relief and a lurch of anxiety. He’s here. He’s popped back up.
“Sorry,” he says as he reaches us, pulling off his hat and running a hand through his hair. “Traffic was a mess.”