Chapter 39
Will
Half an hour passes, and the sun comes up, and Greta is still in my arms naked, her lips red.
Some moments in life are so simple that they’re perfect, and this is one of them.
I don’t even want to move and shatter this fragile beauty.
I wouldn’t change anything. Not the cracking ceiling, not this miserable excuse for a bed.
“Will.”
“What?”
“Remember the day you taught me to drive?”
“Yeah,” I murmur.
“That farm we passed…” I tense up, and I know she knows the answer to her own question, but still she asks: “Was it your home?”
“Yeah. It was.”
“What about the photo?”
I get up and search through a pile of books to find Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, which I open to take out the yellowing photo I found in the back of one of the closets. I go back to bed and show it to Greta.
“This was my grandmother. She’s much older in my memories. My parents are older too, but they’re still the same somehow, despite everything that’s changed in their lives. They still love each other. She collects thimbles and he gives her a special one every Valentine’s Day. He never forgets.”
“How sweet. And is this you?”
“Yeah. Just a little chubbier.”
“Adorable as ever, though.”
She looks at it for a while, we both do, then she grabs the book and opens it to put the photo back in.
I’m grateful that she’s so careful with it.
My parents have tons of photo albums at home with lots of instant photos from our days on the farm, but this one is special to me because I never thought I’d find it there two decades later, and it’s a symbol of the fact that there’s still something left, something palpable, of the person I was back then, back there.
“Do you go back often?”
“No. Just that one time with you.”
“I don’t get it.” She knits her brows and gives me one of those persistent stares that seems to dive down all the way inside me.
“It was just kind of random. I knew the road. I knew there wasn’t much traffic there. But I didn’t imagine we’d go that far. And then, well… You always manage to distract me. And there it was.”
“So you decided to go in.”
“And you came with me.”
“What if I hadn’t?”
“Then I probably would have stayed behind,” I confess. I hug her and take a breath. “Anyway, nothing special happened. I didn’t have some revelation. I didn’t find what I was looking for. It was just nostalgia. And ruins.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Who I am,” I whisper. “Isn’t that what it’s all about, Greta? Don’t you realize that’s the whole point of the Map of Longing?”
“Maybe, but…”
“No buts. That’s the key.”
Greta jostles and sits up. She doesn’t bother to pull up the sheet, doesn’t blush. I like that. I want to be inside her again, but we already did it several times last night, and now my body’s loose, relaxed, and I can’t remember when I last felt that way. The light of dawn is streaming in.
“You got anything to eat? I’m dying of hunger,” she says.
I go find a box of cereal bars. She takes one gratefully. I put on my underwear and put on the coffeepot. She watches my every movement like a bird of prey.
“I’ve got more questions, Will.”
I smile. We both knew this would happen. I lean against the stove, arms crossed. It’s fair. I’d have questions too, if I were her.
“Shoot.”
“Why didn’t Taylor recognize you?”
“Are you really surprised? It’s been years since I left, and I was a kid back then. I looked totally different. Also, the victim usually remembers things clearly, the bully…”
“Not so much.”
“Exactly.” I nod.
“You know that from experience?”
“Sort of,” I admit, trying not to think of the blurry faces of those I’ve tormented in the past.
“The night Taylor went to the bar and was an asshole about the beers, I remember you said something to me in that alley.”
“Mm-hmm.” I pretend I’m distracted.
“I’m not like that. I’m not like him.”
“I said that?” I grab a cup.
“Yeah. And now I understand why. That’s what you’re scared of, isn’t it? And you need to know who you are so you can finally breathe.”
It’s almost as if she had a bow and arrow in her hands and was hitting the bullseye over and over. But she doesn’t know she’s doing it because she’s got her eyes closed.
“I won’t argue with you about that, but after a sleepless night, I don’t really feel like reflecting on life and its depths. You take yours with milk?”
“Yeah, please.”
She settles in with her warm cup in hand and contemplates the coming day through the window, and I contemplate her.
And as I do, I can’t stop thinking about the obstacles I put in our path so there wouldn’t be an us.
I think about how we dodged them too. I could never be the right person for someone who had their life in order and the whole world at their feet.
I know what her sister wanted for her, I know the potential she saw in her, and I ask myself if I’ll end up being a burden to her.
“You know, I’ve opened almost all the boxes in your sister’s game.”
“It would be nice if the last move came at summer’s end,” Greta says, hugging her knees. “That gives us time.”
“Yeah. Whose address was that I took you to?”
“Oh, that.” She smiles. “A friend. A real friend. Her name’s Olivia, we’ve known each other since we were little, but we had a misunderstanding… Remember the thing with Sebastian?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it had something to do with that.”
“Do I want to know this?” I quiz her.
“Probably not.”
I finish my coffee, clean the cup, dry it with a rag, and put it away. I can feel her eyes roving over me before she grabs me around the waist.
“I love that about you.”
“What?”
“How you’re so methodical, so detailed. I’ve never washed a cup right after drinking. I always think I’ll do it later. I always think I’ll do everything later.”
“And what do you think when later comes?” I ask, teasing again.
“That I wish I’d done it earlier.”
She laughs and I feel a tingle in my chest that can only be happiness.
The way she relaxes as laughter rises in her throat is perfect, it’s like a musical instrument playing all its chords at once.
I wish she’d never stop. I end up laughing too, as she hangs around my waist and gives me a kiss that tastes like coffee.
We fall into bed. She caresses my jawline, my chin, and back…
All night she’s been analyzing every inch of my body, as if this were an anatomy lesson.
“I want to tell you something,” she says. “When I went back home the other night, after the fair, I was…confused.”
“Confused.” The word surprises me. It’s unclear, and Greta is usually always clear.
“Yeah, maybe because I’d just turned twenty-three, and when these dates come along, it’s easy to get obsessed with this idea of taking stock of your life, and then all these emotions came up when you told me who you used to be…”
“It wasn’t my kisses?”
Greta narrows her eyes and chuckles. “So you are still arrogant.”
“That stings,” I joke.
“Anyway, Will, the point is, I was confused. And so I got home and grabbed a pen and paper and I filled out a college application.”
“What?”
“It’s crazy, right? Plus, my narrative didn’t even make sense.
I always heard you were supposed to show your talents, but I was just honest and told the truth: that I feel lost most of the time and not even the knowledge that I’m slowly dying, that all of us are as time passes, is enough to make me get up and do anything useful or interesting with my life.
And I wrote about my sister. I said how I’d been born to save her and how now that she’s gone…
I sometimes feel I’ll just fade into the background and finally vanish. ”
Too much information. When Greta speaks from the heart, when she sputters word after word with such shocking sincerity, I feel overwhelmed, and I worry I’m not enough for her.
“You’ll never fade away. Believe me. I’m holding you in my hands and I’ve never felt anyone so solid. As for the other thing…” I push the hair out of her face. “I think it’s evidence that something in you is starting to change.”
“I know,” she admits.
“And that’s good.”
“But…”
“What?” I say gently.
“It’s the worst application anyone’s ever written.”
“I doubt that. What do you want to study?”
“Art history.” Now she’s clear as a bell.
“I should have guessed,” I say brightly.
“Why?”
“You’ve talked about it before. And that’s like you, studying something from the past that’s still relevant today.
Don’t look at me like that, you know what I mean.
There are people who devote their lives to learning Latin or Greek even though some people don’t understand and think it’s pointless.
Art’s the same way—someone may have made it hundreds of years ago, but it’s still there, and after all those years, it’s still… ”
“Beautiful.”
“Yeah. And a historian helps preserve that.”
“Anyway…” She traces out spirals on my arm. “It doesn’t matter because no one in their right mind would admit me on the basis of that letter, and that’s all I’ve got to offer. My grades in high school were nothing to write home about.”
“Where’s the university?” I ask nervously.
“San Francisco.”
“Why there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the weather, maybe because I was supposed to go there with my family before our plans got canceled. I didn’t really think too much about it.”
She kisses me. I think we both realize that city, San Francisco, stands between us like a wall. Not because of how far away it is but because Greta is starting to travel her own road—sometimes taking two steps forward, sometimes one back—and I’m so, so far behind her.