Chapter 14
Thunder in My Head
For two weeks, I’ve let my apathy carry me along.
My life is a succession of fictitious conversations with no one in particular, jobs I don’t get, hours thrown in the trash, imagining different lives that will never be a reality.
The only interesting thing I’ve done since I last saw Will was walk two new dogs and look for a driving school, because I’m apparently the only prospective driver who doesn’t have a single adult who can help her learn. Tomorrow I’ll take my test.
I guess that’s why I’m nervous.
That and the fact that the last letter I got from Lucy put me on the spot. I still don’t know what my sister expected out of the Map of Longing, but it’s been a bittersweet road. The note said:
Donate all my clothes, please.
And good luck with your driving test. You’ll ace it.
Maybe I’m a little—just a little—mad at Lucy. I don’t understand why, out of all the things she could have told me, she picked something so empty. And I miss her. I miss her so bad that it hurts me when I get these letters from her and there’s not a single word of consolation in them.
I’ve been lonelier than usual these past few days.
Without Taylor. Without Will. Without Olivia.
Without Grandpa. Without my parents. This makes me realize how tiny my universe is and how it must be my fault.
I could have been someone different, one of those girls with tons of friends, the kind who meets her high school sweetheart when she’s sixteen, and they marry and stay together forever. But no. I don’t have any of that.
I look at my bedroom wall.
Most of what’s hanging there are prints of famous photos or artworks.
Around them are words I collect because they awaken something in me.
Usually, art is so moving, it’s enough to look up at those pictures for my troubles to start to dissipate.
But now I feel so numb that nothing brings me any relief.
I look away, stand up.
Dad’s in the kitchen talking on the phone, but he hangs up when I appear. He’s got a half-eaten apple in his hand—it’s funny, it makes me think of original sin.
“How’s your day been?” he asks, looking distracted.
“It could have been better. Or worse, you know.” I sit at the round table in the corner. “Like I could have won the lottery, but I also could have gotten run over by a car and broken all my ribs.”
“Greta…”
“I’m just kidding.”
Dad takes another bite and sits down. “I know. So everything’s okay?”
Yeah, just another day following the instructions to a game that your dead daughter came up with as a postmortem joke. How about you?
“I’m taking my test tomorrow,” I offer.
“What test?”
“My driving test.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.” He throws the apple core into the trash, and I ask myself if he’ll one day do the same thing with Mom. We look each other in the eyes.
“You want to help me practice?”
“Now? It’s late…”
“I could really use it,” I insist.
I don’t even know why I ask. I don’t actually need it.
What I want is…a piece of him, maybe. Just one more piece before the man I thought I knew disappears completely.
Even now, he’s almost all surface: the high cheekbones, the stare intense if a bit duller now, the abundant hair now interspersed with gray, that slightly feline way of moving that I associate with reddish auras.
“Okay. Let’s go then,” he agrees.
Dad’s car is parked in front of the garage.
We get in and I put it carefully in gear as he repeats to me, “Easy, easy, easy…” This makes me feel like he doesn’t trust me, and I want to stomp the gas, but I hold myself back, my foot trembling on the pedal.
I’m a good girl, I tell myself. And I drive through Ink Lake as night falls over us.
“You’re doing great,” Dad said.
We keep going for a while, until we pass my favorite burger spot. Instinctively, I stare over at the nearby RVs, wondering which one Will lives in, wondering if he’s home. I ask Dad if he feels like getting dinner. He frowns at first, knowing how strange the proposal is, but then he agrees.
It’s almost empty inside. We sit at a small table, and Mia, my usual server, comes over to take our order. She raises her chin in greeting, recognizing me.
“What’s up, Greta?”
“Nothing new.”
“You having the usual?”
“Yeah. What do you want, Dad?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure…” He reads the menu but starts to get nervous as Mia shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “I’ll just have the same as her.”
“Perfect. It’ll be up in ten minutes.”
When she leaves us alone, the silence turns uncomfortable.
There’s an older guy eating at another table and a couple being amorous a bit farther off.
My father looks at his cell phone, and I look at him.
Who is he? I keep asking myself. Who is he?
There’s a disjunction between memory and reality, I read that somewhere, and so I’m not sure if the guy who used to carry me on his shoulders, who would let me off the hook when Mom’s punishments were too harsh, who called me “Grasshopper,” even still exists.
Maybe he did, maybe he existed and now he’s gone.
Things happen, they vanish, and they’re like thunder in my head: lost friendships, the changes that make us leave behind part of what we were, love for a sister, sorrow when someone vanishes into darkness.
We can count the money we have in the bank, how many minutes a day we spend on our phones, how many inches tall we are, but there’s no way to count the things that actually matter except words like a lot, a little bit, not much at all.
And we can’t hold on to them: We use a watch because we can’t put time in a drawer; we hold on to old letters because we can’t grab love and put it in a glass jar and preserve it.
Things change. And change brings forgetting.
There was a day when my admiration for my father vanished, and I can’t feel that emotion again the way I could put on an album I liked when I was fourteen.
Feelings aren’t albums or books or works of art.
They change—they’re the things that change the most. But I’m sure there must be some parallel reality where the very opposite happens, and you can buy back every idea and thought and every scrap of love and stuff it in your pockets to keep.
Dad puts down his phone and breaks the silence. “I know that look.”
“Yeah? What’s it mean?”
“That you’re so deep inside yourself, you’ve lost the thread of your thoughts.”
I don’t know why, but I get defensive. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
He doesn’t try to convince me otherwise. We say nothing till Mia returns with the burgers and a basket of sauces. I put on everything, mayo, mustard, ketchup, and I scarf it down to keep my hands and my mouth busy. Dad just nibbles his fries, looking distracted.
I wipe my mouth and hands with my napkin when I’m done.
He still has half his meal left.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course, Greta.”
“Why’d you move to Ink Lake?”
“You know why.”
“Tell me again.”
He takes a deep breath and leans back. Mia comes over to ask if we want anything else, but I say no and wait for his response.
“I met your mother at a convention in San Francisco. Your grandmother had just died, and Rosie didn’t want to leave her father alone in such a delicate moment.
And she was the best real estate agent around, she’d gotten a promotion, and even though this wasn’t a big city, we thought it would be the perfect place to lead a calm life with our family. ”
“Why’d you fall in love with her?”
“Greta, I don’t know what you’re—”
“Please.”
He sighs and drops the french fry he was holding. He looks at the ceiling, looks back down at me, and finally grasps that this matters.
“She was dazzling. Lucy reminded me of her from that time. She had this gift—she could walk into a room and light it up. That day at the convention, there were more than a hundred agents from all over the country, but still, when she walked in, she was like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. ”
I notice he’s speaking of my mother in the past, even though she’s not dead, like Lucy. And I know he notices this too.
“What else?”
“She liked being in charge, she wasn’t someone to be bossed around.
She used to say if a mistake had to be made, she preferred to make it on her own so she wouldn’t have to blame herself for listening to someone else.
She was funny but with a weird sense of humor, the same one you two girls inherited.
We could talk for hours. I remember when we used to go out to eat, we were always the last two people in the place.
They’d be cleaning up all around us, and we’d laugh about how we could happily stay till dawn.
” All of a sudden, he returns to the present.
“So what about now? Are you still in love with her?”
I can’t tell if his expression is anger, confusion, or grief. He toys with the saltshaker a moment and shakes his head.
“Of course I am, Greta.”
I wish I could believe him. But I know he’s lying.
We share an ice cream for dessert, but our serious talk is over.
I tell him I’m taking care of some dogs and that I hope to find something more stable soon.
We walk back to the car and I sit behind the wheel.
I drive slowly, stop in front of the house, take out the key, and suck in a breath before letting out what I’ve avoided saying up to now.
“Lucy told me to donate her clothes.”
“What?” he hisses.
“It’s a long story. She left me this game, the Map of Longing, and I have to follow a series of steps basically.
It’s crazy, right?” I don’t know if I’m saying this to him or myself.
“So now I’ve got a problem on my hands—a big one.
Mom doesn’t want me to empty her closet. That means I need your help.”
Looking exhausted, he runs a hand through his hair. “Is this some kind of weird joke?”
“What?! No! You know I’d never joke about something like that!”
“You’re right. I’m sorry…”
He asks me about the game, and I tell him everything I know, but I don’t really go into Will’s role in it, as if I want to keep him to myself, not sharing him until I understand what he really means to me.
For now, there’s too much that remains in the shadows.
I know he’s a part of my life now, but I don’t know what that part is, and I’m not sure how much of myself I’m willing to give away.
“It all sounds so surreal,” Dad says.
“I know. Will you help me though?”
“I’ll try. But we both know it won’t be easy.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
As we’re getting out, I hear him take a breath and ask, “Did Lucy leave a letter for me?”
“No,” I whisper.
And seeing then how the pain and disappointment cast a shadow over his gaze, I realize how valuable a note from Lucy is, even just one where she tells me to clean out her closet.
Because it means she’s still here with me.
Accompanying me at every step. Still here, with parts of her for me to discover.