Chapter 48 #2
And yet, it’s real. She’s real. I’m real.
“Come here.” Greta approaches, cheeks red and almost frozen. In her purple skates, she’s almost as tall as me. I try to walk toward her. “Tonight,” she says, “is the perfectest, stupidest thing anyone has ever done for me. I’ll never forget it.”
She hugs me, gives me a few quick kisses, glides off, cracking up, and she looks like a shooting star leaving behind a trail of glowing dust. For ten minutes, she whirls around me, speeds up, slows down, twirls…
“I wish I didn’t have to say this, but we need to go.”
“I know. I know.” She’s panting as she comes back, takes off the skates, and puts them in the box.
Her smile doesn’t vanish even as the guard comes over and tells us, “It’s time.”
We follow him back to the gate. Greta’s goodbye is so enthusiastic she seems drunk. I shake the guy’s hand.
“Thanks. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
He nods and locks up.
We walk to the car. It’s a cold night, and I turn on the engine to get the heat going. We’re holding hands, rubbing each other’s fingers, but each of us is in our own world, until Greta finally says, “My parents are getting divorced.”
“Fuck. I didn’t know anything was wrong. They seemed to be getting along the other night.”
“They’re friends. Or something. I just found out today. I mean, yesterday now, in the afternoon. He’s in love with another woman.”
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
After a moment, she tells me, “I don’t want this night to end.”
“Me neither.”
“Can we just talk till dawn?”
“Sure.” I lean back into the headrest.
“You know something, Will? I had this revelation one time when I was skating, and I had forgotten it until now. It came back to me all at once. That afternoon when I kept falling down over and over on the ice, I realized success is made of tiny failures. And when you lose balance and fall and it no longer scares you, everything changes. Life changes.”
Now is when I should ask her, How do you stop being afraid? Because maybe Greta could finally tell me the answer. But I don’t. I just hold her hand and listen to my heart beating.
And we talk in whispers about whatever pops into our heads.
Her parents, her uncertainty about what’s going to happen, Lucy’s letters to her parents, which Greta has to give them when the time is right.
And our trip. She’s got a route mapped out, but she’s not done with all the guidebooks, and maybe there’s somewhere she’s forgotten.
We fantasize about all the adventures in store for us.
“When we go to Italy, you can eat pasta and cheese until you burst,” she says as we watch the sun appear over the horizon.
“I think about that every day,” I joke.
Greta moves across the console and curls up on my lap.
I never thought I could feel so close to someone in a parking deck.
Nightfall may be magical and may fill you with longings, but watching the sunrise is like witnessing a new beginning, staring down at a blank sheet of paper, seeing all your opportunities laid out before you.
The light is soft, with faint pink and yellow streaks like watercolor.
And everything around is calm and peaceful.
We are calm and peaceful too, and eventually we decide it’s time to go home. As I pull out, I tell Greta to catch some shut-eye if she wants. She shakes her head. I turn onto a busy avenue full of carloads of people heading to work or school, then off onto a straight road of identical houses.
“You seem to know your way around,” Greta says.
“Yeah. I used to live close by.”
“Really. Want to show me?”
Actually, I don’t. It’s the last thing I feel like doing, not just because I’m tired after a long drive and a sleepless night but also because I don’t want Greta to see a part of my world that reminds me of nothing but my bad decisions.
She doesn’t fit there. Those are two different parts of my existence.
But I give in. I give in because it will just be a moment and then we’ll leave and go back to Ink Lake.
We pass a couple of other neighborhoods before reaching mine. My parents’ house is close to the corner. Next to it is where Josh’s family lives. I stop a few yards away and leave the motor running.
“It’s that one,” I say and point.
“With the trellis?”
“Yeah.” I look at the windows, the trees in the yard. Nothing’s changed, but it feels strange to me.
“Are your parents home?”
“Probably. Why?”
“You should go in and say hi. This is the perfect excuse for us to meet. We could have breakfast. What do you think?”
“No.”
“But—”
“No, Greta.”
I stomp the gas to try to get the hell out of there.
Soon we’re out of the neighborhood, and not long after that, we’re out of the city.
For twenty long minutes, we say nothing.
We don’t need to for me to know Greta is pissed at my reaction, but what did she expect?
That we’d just go in there and have orange juice and toast with my parents like that was normal?
I remember then that we haven’t eaten and I decide to break the silence.
“You hungry? You want to stop for a bite to eat?”
“No thanks. I’m fine.”
“As you wish.”
I don’t utter another word until I park in front of her house. I can sense the tension in the air, and I can’t stand it occupying the space where so much happiness had been just a few hours ago. How perfect it was when Greta was sailing across the ice.
“You don’t have any reason to be mad at me,” I tell her.
Her look is like a freshly sharpened razor.
“Really? Is that what you think? Look, what you did for me tonight was wonderful, just like everything you do. I could easily forget that there is another side to you. But I won’t, Will. I refuse to. Because you actually matter to me.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“You do too. You refuse to face anything that makes you uncomfortable. You can’t get it together to talk to the girl you were going to marry, you can’t open up to your parents and show them who you are now, but you also can’t put it off forever.”
“Greta, damn it it’s not that easy.”
“Can I ask you a question?” she says, a strange gleam in her eyes.
“You know you can.”
“Why do you want to come to Europe with me?”
I thought she was going to ask about my relationship with Dad or Lena. I think for a moment before I finally find my answer. “Because I want to make you happy.”
“Goddamn it, Will.” She turns away and exhales a long breath.
“What’s the problem?”
“You honestly don’t see it?”
“No, damn it I don’t. Listen…” But before I can say anything else, Greta leans toward me and kisses me on the lips to say goodbye.
She opens the door and gets out. For a few seconds, I try to understand what just happened, but I don’t know, and at last I take off down the street gripping the wheel tight.
Back at the RV, I fall into bed.
And I sleep. I sleep watching her twirl on the ice.