Chapter 6 #2
“I just fixed the broken one in the front staircase. It wasn’t a big deal,” he says.
“Sure it was,” Matt says, sitting down and allowing Nora to climb up onto his lap now. “You basically rebuilt this place for the next century, one project at a time.”
“You did?” I ask, softening a little more toward him.
“I helped out when I could.”
Matt gives him a look. One that means that’s a massive understatement. But he doesn’t push.
“It goes without saying that I will do whatever you want to do with Birdsong,” says Austin. “Or I guess it doesn’t go without saying, but … yeah, of course. I want to respect her wishes, but this is your family’s house.”
I say, “Exactly,” just as Sammie says, “It’s all of ours.”
She goes on to add, “After all that time, didn’t it become ours? Those summers were special. They were different. Not like what other people have.”
She’s always been such a romantic.
I used to be too. The morning mist, the sound of the ocean, the citrus trees, the humming refrigerator, the shuttered windows, the creaking steps …
they had felt unusually possessed by the time we spent here.
As if everything had led us to be here, then, together.
Letting the mist fall on our faces and turning up the gravel with our bike tires.
Preordained. Fated. Every single second of it.
There’s an old carved wooden sign in the front hall that reads TIME STANDS STILL AT BIRDSONG. It was always here, ever since we were kids and used to spend the odd week here with our grandparents. It always felt true. The days of summer felt as infinite as the stars back then.
Now, I don’t know where the time goes.
“I have to get the little one to bed,” says Matt, his daughter now writhing and groaning as she slowly stretches her way to the floor with her hand on the ground instead of her foot. “What do we think, same rooms?”
Sammie nods. “Of course.”
“God,” I say. “Shit, I forgot to call and cancel at the hotel. I was supposed to stay tonight and tomorrow.”
“We can go in the morning,” says Matt. “I’ll go with you.”
I nod.
“I’m going to go for a swim,” says Sammie.
“What? You can’t do that, it’s pitch black out there.”
She blinks at me. “Didion, stop.”
“Am I crazy?” I look to Austin for backup. Then to Matt.
“It’s pretty calm out there,” says Matt. “But you should be careful.”
“I’ll go out with you. Better to have a buddy system,” says Austin.
Sammie leaves the room without looking back at me.
“I know she’s an adult. But really? Do we need to worry about her going out and dying in the ocean right now? Or is that maybe like the last thing we all need?”
“Of course we don’t,” says Matt. He stands and scoots his daughter up higher on his hip, her hands pulling at his shirt collar. He untangles her fingers from the cotton.
“I’ll see you guys in the morning. Say goodnight, Nor.”
“Goodnight, Nor,” says the little girl, dissolving into giggles as she leans her entire body weight back over her father’s arm.
Matt widens his eyes at his daughter’s joke and says, “See you tomorrow, guys.”
“Night, Matt. Night, kid,” says Austin.
Then again, we are left alone.
The air is charged between us and I feel him look at me. As if dashing out of the path of a train, I bolt from the room, muttering something apologetic as I go.
I don’t follow Matt up the main staircase, instead going to the front hall where I put my bags, thinking very seriously about hoofing it to the hotel after all, as I am unable to call a car.
I look outside and see Austin’s beat-up old truck.
He’s been driving it since he was fifteen years old and his dad gave it to him after winning it in a poker game.
It hardly worked when he got it, but Austin fixed it up.
Of course I can’t read it from here, but I recognize the faded bumper sticker and know that it says I GOT MY ASS HANDED TO ME AT HUXLEY POOL HALL.
From the glow of the porch light, I can see the shape of a tennis racket in the back window.
I suddenly, vividly recall climbing on top of him in that driver’s seat, my body unable to get close enough to Austin’s, unable to get there fast enough.
I shudder and then shut the front door and turn off the hall light. I put my bare foot on the first step of the staircase, instinctively bracing for it to creak and bend threateningly in that way it always did. But it doesn’t.
That damn bottom step!
Austin.
Upstairs, I am faced with the long hall that leads to Babe’s room.
The moment is like something out of The Shining or Vertigo. Everything contracts as I see it and move toward it like a moth to a flame, dropping my bags on the Moroccan runner that runs straight to the double doors.
My hands itch to turn the knobs, or perhaps to knock. Like Babe might be there, on the other side. Or worse, that it’ll be so very obvious that she’s gone.
I turn away from the morbid temptation and toward my own familiar door.
My room is the same as it always was. Not in a shrine way, because I had never personalized it.
My room was the one called “the canopy room” because the bed, maybe obviously, had an old canopy.
Above the ancient, uniquely comfortable mattress hung a loose-knit crocheted drapery I’d stared at through countless hot, restless summer nights.
When I’ve gotten ready and crawled in, I feel like I’ve slipped back in time. I sigh and roll over to look out the window.
One of the things I used to love about this room was how I could lie on my side and look out to see the quiet, constant ocean.
But tonight, it’s not just the ocean. There’s also Sammie.
Austin. Birdie. All lit by the tiny lanterns that lead from the house to the water, stopping just short of where high tide rolls in.
She’s in the water, and I wonder if her bikini is purple or if it’s just the moonlight. Austin’s on the shore, jeans rolled up, beer bottle hanging from his fingertips. Even from here I can tell he’s laughing.
Then I see Matt making his way down the beach, a glass of wine in hand.
I roll over on my back and consider it. What if I were to just go out there? Loosen up. Reconnect. I bet, given the right circumstances, a few sentences could fix what’s broken. I could make a joke of it. Put it in the past.
For them, anyway. Not for me. As much as I wish it were that easy.
Despite it all, I find my eyes shutting, sleep finding me sooner than it ever usually does.
At home I toss and turn all night, afraid of sleeping through my alarm and thus losing everything I’ve worked so hard for, or worrying about the extra steps in prep I need to do the next day.
But I fall strangely into a thick, black sleep without even a moment of restless consciousness.
And when I finally do wake, it’s to the sound of a bloodcurdling scream.