Chapter 3
Joe
Ten o’clock.
This flimsy folding chair groans under me every time I throw this old ball against an undamaged part of the wall. Probably should’ve tossed the chair out with everything else when I scrubbed the place down today after surviving Rose and Angus’s interrogation.
Man, I thought Angus was scary, but Rose is freaking terrifying. A little round ball of crackling energy and intensity. I don’t think she blinked those big brown eyes once while she was grilling me. Spooky.
What was I really doing back in Galway, and how did I know July, and why was she so upset to see me, and what had I been doing all these years, and why come back now ? A bunch of good, valid questions. I answered some but then shut them down, saying July should hear it first. They stared at me so hard and so long after that I’m pretty sure they could tell what kind of beer I drank at Lindon’s last night.
But I swore to them I am not here to make trouble and I won’t hurt July, and that if she says she never wants to lay eyes on me again, I’ll leave. I’ll hire Angus to renovate this ugly, old building so I can sell it, and I’ll find myself a place closer to campus in Cullowhee.
I held their gazes, let them stare at me for another century or two, and finally they seemed to get that I was telling the truth.
July’s people love her. Always did.
That’s good.
The battered ball I found in the truck bounces off the wall with a bap ! and smacks back into my palm with a satisfying sting. Distracts me from the high-pitched stress buzz in my brain. I throw it again.
In less than half an hour, I’ll be talking to her. Just the two of us, alone together.
Am I doing the right thing?
I can’t shake off the memory of her today, the flat, hard note in her voice. I’d never heard her use a tone like that. My July was always sunny. Happy. Kind.
What are you doing here, Joe ? This time I hear it in my own voice. I’d convinced myself I was doing her a favor, coming back to let her know we hadn’t failed each other after all. Convinced myself she’d want to know. She’d care. I’d care. I’d want to know. So she must too.
But if me being here has already hurt her…I don’t know what to do with that. Maybe she was really happy with her life until I showed up to remind her of something bad. Maybe she hasn’t spent years holding everybody she meets up to a perfect memory. Maybe that’s just me.
Ten fifteen. The stress is eating away at my stomach now.
Maybe our time together wasn’t even as perfect as I remember.
But the first time I saw her—halfway across a crowded cafeteria in yet another new school for me—she was sitting with a bunch of girls, holding up what looked like botched origami and laughing, her head tipped back, her gold-streaked hair sliding across her back like silk in the light, her friends patting her as if to console her. But she didn’t need consoling. She was the sun, shining bright, everybody else in her orbit.
And when I saw her again at the steakhouse at the start of my new job a couple of weeks later, I knew it was only a matter of days, maybe minutes, before I’d be in her orbit too. I held out almost a week, just watching. She was always helping somebody when she wasn’t busy at the register. Carrying a tray for a little kid, chatting up a lonely old person, helping the busboy clear tables. Always moving, always smiling, leaving a trail of warmth wherever she’d been.
And when I finally asked her out and was reeling from the miracle of her saying yes, I realized I had no money. I’d spent my savings on an old beater of a truck a guy at school wanted to get rid of, and my first paycheck wouldn’t come until Friday. So I scouted out things we could do without money, and I ended up taking her to a private spot I’d found at Galway Lake. It was just a little clearing with tall trees all around. A big, flat, sun-toasted rock at the water’s edge. The smell of pine and a long, glittering view down the lake.
I’d snuck Cokes from the fridge and a can of Pringles from the cabinet. The drinks were warm before we even parked, but July acted like it was a feast. I spread out a towel on that rock, and we sat and talked until it got dark and mosquitos were eating us alive.
“Next time maybe we should bring bug repellent,” she said, a question in her voice as we climbed back into my truck.
“Next time I will definitely bring bug repellent,” I promised her, and her smile lit me up.
I went up to the lake today, after I cleaned everything in this building that could be cleaned. I was overflowing with energy and nerves, and wanted to see if I could still find “our spot.” It was there all right. Mostly the same, trees a little taller, still full of birdsong.
Somebody had placed a wooden picnic table over to one side in the afternoon shade. Didn’t seem right that it could be weathered and gray and splintery already, when what’s in my heart feels so hopeful and new again.
I crossed the clearing and spent an hour on “our” rock, huddled in my jacket against the early spring chill, reliving our first swim, our first kiss, our first…everything.
I wondered if people who came to this place after us could feel the leftover magic humming in our rock, haloing the trees against the sky.
Ten twenty-two.
I catch the ball. Stand and lower it to the metal seat of the chair. Head for the bathroom to examine my reflection in the cracked mirror, trying to see whether it’s a lucky man or a damn fool staring back at me. Splash my face, brush my teeth, wash my hands one more time before heading out. Lock the door and slide the long, old-fashioned key into my pocket on my way to the square.
The lights are off in July’s, except for a low glow from the dessert case at the cash register. I round the corner and am at the door in five steps. There’s no bell, so I just stand there in the doorway. Through the round window of the swinging door to the kitchen, I see brighter light. The door swings open, illuminating July’s tall silhouette and the damp marks on the freshly mopped floors.
My inner buzz cranks up a notch, my breath stalling.
She pauses, maybe looking toward the front door to see if anyone is there. I raise my hand.
Her movements seem measured as she crosses the room. Not quite as slow as if she’s dreading this, but definitely not the quick step of someone eager to see somebody they care about.
She flips the locks and pushes the door open, stepping back so our bodies don’t brush as I come into her space.
“Hi.” My voice sounds like I haven’t used it since they added that picnic table at the lake.
“Hey. Something to drink?” Hers is cool. Noncommittal. She turns to lead me through the chair-stacked tables, and her ponytail swishes, leaving behind the faint scent of baby shampoo.
My knees weaken. I clear my dry-as-dust throat. “Maybe some water. Please.”
She waves me to the booth closest to the kitchen and disappears back through that swinging door, coming out a moment later with a pitcher of ice water and two glasses. She pours for us as I slide in across from her and try to figure out what to do with my hands. My elbows. My face.
In this low light she could be sixteen again, still the girl who takes my breath away.
But her eyes come up to mine, and even in the near dark I see in them a world of emotion and experience that my girl hadn’t known. “Okay, what are you doing here, Joe?”
***
July
I’m holding it together so far. Pretty sure I haven’t shown any cracks big enough for my anger and pain and fear to be visible. My voice isn’t quite right, but it’s not far off.
God, he looks good. Tired but so good my body and my brain and my heart are a confused mess, wanting to crawl in beside him and touch him…and also chase him out of here with a cast iron skillet. My fingers twitch in my lap, and I press my lips together. His turn to speak.
He centers his water glass between his hands on the table and stares at it for a second. Then he lifts his eyes to mine, and in them I see enough to press me back against the seat cushion. His own pain, regret, sorrow, anger…and a light I thought at first must be reflected from the kitchen, but no, it’s burning in him.
I suck in my breath and hold it, afraid to let any part of me stray into his reach.
“I spent a lot of years really, really angry with you” is what he says.
A roar rises up inside me, but before it can come out my mouth, he speaks again.
“Totally wrong. I know now.” He holds my gaze. “I found out a few months ago, right before my mom died.”
I never met his mom. Once when I asked him to invite his folks to a block party on my street, he said, “Oh, July, nah. They’re…not real nice to be around.” He didn’t say more, and I didn’t push. What can you say to that?
And now, when one of those parents has died, what do I say to that ? “I’m—”
He waves me off. One corner of his mouth twists up, but it’s not a smile. “Might want to hold off on condolences till you hear what they did.”
I fall silent and he sighs. Looks down at his glass and moves it a fraction of an inch to the right.
“I’m making a mess of this. Let me start at the beginning. That night…that last night we were together?” He looks up, the light burning in him again, and I have to nod, even though I’m terrified of what he might say next.
“July, that night—that whole summer with you—it was everything to me. Everything. I know you must’ve thought afterward that it didn’t matter to me, or I didn’t love you, but it was every thing. You were everything.” He looks back down at his glass, his mouth tilting up again, and this time it is a smile. “It took everything I had to drive away from your house that night. I mean, I felt like I had a future for the first time. A future I could look forward to, with somebody I loved in it.”
He pauses, lifts his glass to make interlocking condensation circles on the table, and I try to make sense of words that don’t make any sense. If he loved me, then why…?
“And then I got home, and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table with two beers in front of him. That was never a good sign.” He huffs a laugh and pushes himself more upright in the booth. Meets my eyes again. “He told me to sit down. Shoved one of the cans toward me. Said, ‘So you got yourself a girlfriend, huh? Drink up. Tell me about her.’”
His face twists. “Last thing I wanted was to tell him anything about you. I didn’t even want your name in his filthy mouth. I sat there and drank that beer and tried not to say much. I started getting real sleepy. Last thing I remember is asking my mom why our suitcases were in the hall.”
“I don’t know what he put in the beer. Later he said it was Dramamine but could’ve been anything. I think I probably walked to the car and onto the plane, but I don’t remember anything until eighteen hours later when we were in Germany.”
I could swear he’s telling me the truth, but how could he be? Who does stuff like that to their kid? I’m leaning toward him, my belly pressed to the table edge, my muscles locked. “Why?” is all I can squeeze out between my rigid jaws.
He shakes his head, those bright eyes sad and angry. “July, he never gave us reasons for anything.”
Something in me thrills when he says my name in that low voice, even as terrible as this story is.
“I have an idea why, but it’s a guess.” He clears his throat, picks up his glass, takes a sip, thunks it back down. “I think Mom and I were too happy here. Evil son of a bitch couldn’t stand it. Probably afraid he’d lose control of us. I was as tall as he was by then—nowhere near as big but as tall—and Mom had made a friend or two at work, and…I think he just couldn’t have that.”
Andi and Donna and Tina have told me bits and pieces about families with dynamics like that. The implications of his words sink in slowly as he watches me. My stomach rolls. “Did…? Was…?”
He nods. “Yeah. I was pretty sure you didn’t know. I didn’t want you to know.”
My god, I should have known. I should have been able to tell if the boy I loved was being abused. “Joe, my folks might have been able to help! We could’ve—”
He shakes his head fast, cutting me off. “July, nah. No.” He tilts his head, gives me a sad smile.
“ Why? ” How could that not have been better than leaving him in a house with a monster? Than letting him be drugged and dragged away from his home here? From me?
He reaches out and touches my hand where I’m gripping the table edge, strokes my skin once, burning me. When we were young and sprawled together on our rock at the lake, sometimes I’d touch him like that with a single fingertip. The tight skin of his belly would quiver, like a vibration, like something momentous was about to happen.
I feel that now. Something’s rising in me, and I don’t know what it is or what might burst out. I’ve got goose bumps all over. Makes me feel naked. I cross my other arm over my chest.
“I didn’t want to leave my mom alone with him, and she wouldn’t leave him. But also, I wanted to be your man . I wanted your family to see me as a good man for you. Not some pathetic kid who needed rescuing.” He pulls his hand away and now I’m so cold.
I close my eyes and see my young Joe, his lopsided smile, his bright quick-change eyes. The long bruise down his spine I’d only found because I hugged him too hard one day and he gasped. Tripped and fell against the door, he told me.
He must know where my thoughts have gone. “That’s not the thing I needed to tell you though.”
I open my eyes. His expression is so bleak it makes me shiver.
“When I realized we were in Germany, I was… I couldn’t believe it. I was in a rage, screaming at him in the taxi. He twisted my arm, leaned into me, got right in my ear, and said, ‘You shut the fuck up right now. Germans don’t mess around. A kid doesn’t honor his father, he gets locked up for a long time.’ I didn’t know whether that was true, but Dad wouldn’t hesitate to use it against me if it was. And he had our passports, and I’d never get away without that.”
He slumps a little, as if just the memory defeats him all over again.
I’m pushing up from the bench to go around the table to him when I realize there’s a lot he still hasn’t explained. I freeze myself in place.
“So we got to our new apartment, and I found some paper and wrote to you. Tried to explain what had happened. I wrote to you every day. Sent you my address, told you how much I was thinking about you and how I’d find a way to come back as soon as I could. Worse come to worst, I could get away when I was eighteen. I’d just try to find some work and save up money for a plane ticket in the meantime.”
Okay, this isn’t right. I shake my head, frowning, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. As awful as it was, it has seemed like he’s been telling the truth up till now.
He’s reading my thoughts. “I know. You didn’t get them. That’s what I learned when Mom was dying. She finally felt guilty enough to tell me.” He shoves his water glass to the side and clasps his hands on the table, his knuckles white. “All the letters I put with our outgoing mail, every day for three, three and a half months? My folks got hold of them. Kept them and didn’t tell me. Mom had them all these years.”
He falls silent, looking at me with eyes that could break a stone heart.
And my heart is not stone.
I try to catch up. Try to take in what this means. “So for twenty years…” My words grind out at a glacial pace, which is how slow my brain seems to be working.
“For twenty years, you thought I up and disappeared and didn’t care enough to even say goodbye.” He nods. “And for twenty years, I thought you’d gotten all my letters and didn’t care enough to write back.”
Twenty years. He didn’t voluntarily walk away from me. He didn’t fool me and then blow me off as some gullible fat girl. He did love me the way I thought he did, and his parents stole him away and kept us apart for twenty. Years .
The world as I know it rears up and topples over sideways.