What I Thought Was True (34 page)

it have been to say it would all turn out okay?

“Don’t worry about the kid, Gwen. He’s a bit of an ass right

now, but he’ll be fine. Sometimes we all need to cut loose. I

told him if he didn’t knock off being such a hothead he was

gonna wind up just like me.” He gives me that young-boy grin

again. “That should scare him straight.”

He peers at me. “You look like you could use a drive, pal.

Maybe a getaway of your own.” He pauses, still squinting. Then

leans over, flicks open the passenger-side door, tips his head to

welcome me.

I climb in.

He backs up, screeching, zooms forward. The electric Sea-

shell gate is primed to lift when you get close enough. But dad

always barges through that. Every time I think he’s just going

to ram right through it, knock it down, but it lifts just in time.

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I love that we’re sheltered in Mom’s and Grandpa’s caring

hands. But sometimes—like now—Dad’s wildness is a relief

too. Like jumping off a bridge. A rush.

I flick up the sound on his CD. In the Bronco, it’s always sooth-

ing music Emory likes. Elmo, low-key Disney, more Sesame Street,

Raffi. Grandpa’s snappy, romantic songs from long ago.

With Dad, when it’s not talk radio, you can count on the

angry rasp of the Rolling Stones, or the frustrated yell of Bruce

Springsteen.

“Tramps like us, baby we were born to run . . .”

“Dad. There’s something I need to tell you about the Elling-

tons,” I start. “It’s not good.”

He turns down the music only slightly. “Jeez, you and Nic,

disaster-wise . . . a mile a minute. What now, Guinevere?”

I explain about Henry Ellington.

Dad gets increasingly angry. Thank God, not at me.

“He said he was counting what? His lobster forks?”
Lobstah
.

“But that’s what you told me to do, Dad. Keep an eye out

for opportunity. That’s what you said. ‘My chance.’ But I didn’t

take it. I would never. Couldn’t. Did you want me to? Really?”

He pulls over to the side of the road, halfway to the cause-

way. Rakes his hands through his hair. Looks anywhere but at

me.

“Pal,” he says finally. “I was eighteen when your mom had

you. We get to the hospital and she’s screaming and she’s crying

and she’s in pain and there’s blood and there’s just . . . I only

wanted to run. It all seemed a million miles away from how

it started, fun on the beach, a bonfire, cute girl . . . whatever.

But . . . they hand us this kid—you, with your serious eyes.

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This little worried crinkle thing you did with your eyebrows,

like you already knew we aren’t the best, and it’s . . . like . . .

like we’re supposed to know what do with all that. How to fix

that. And hell if we do. Luce knew how to clean stuff up. I knew

how to fry stuff up. Gulia was already a disaster, pills, booze,

dumbass boys. We knew what was coming our way there, and

it was Nic. Another kid. We were his only chance. There was

no other way. So, you know, we took it. Nic. You. Emory, with

all his . . . whatever. I just want it to be easier for you guys.

Something just a little bit easier. Maybe I picked a stupid way

to tell you that. I just didn’t want my way to be yours. ’Cause

mine . . . well . . . I just want better for you. That’s all.”

Dad’s starts the truck up again, heading to his house on the

water.

He takes a deep breath.

Pause.

Another deep breath.

I’m waiting for major Dad wisdom.

“Pal.”

“Dad . . . ?”

“So Nic’s here. And you’re here. Don’t try to make the guy spill

his guts. A time for talking, sure, but Mario Kart goes a long way.”

Nic’s crashed out in front of the TV, clicker outstretched in

hand. Dad throws a blanket on him, too short for his long legs,

pulls out the couch bed for me. I text Mom, Viv, and Grandpa

before I fall asleep at like two in the morning. Grandpa has

nothing to do with cell phones and Mom always erases mes-

sages while trying to retrieve them. Viv will get it, though.

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Someone is shaking my shoulder, none too gently.

I bolt upward in bed, smacking the top of my head against

Nic’s chin. Both of us yelp.

Then, “C’mon, cuz,” he says, his voice hoarse with sleep.

I slope off the couch, dragging the quilt with me, following

him out the door to the slatted wide boards that run from the

house over the salt marsh to dry land. Nic sits down heavily,

wearing a pair of Dad’s faded Red Sox boxers, dangling his

feet over the edge of the small bridge, flicking his toe into the

water, scattering ripples. He looks awful. Dark circles under his

eyes, which are a little bloodshot, his hair rumpled. He’s wear-

ing one of Dad’s plaid flannel shirts too, too tight on his wide

shoulders, the front straining at the buttons. I wrinkle my nose.

Beer and sweat. Ugh.

He clears his throat.

“Wanna hit the pier?”

“I want to hit
you
! I looked everywhere, Nic. I thought . . .

We all thought you’d drowned yourself in the creek!”

“Seriously? I would never do that, Gwen.”

“Nic—”

“Not here,” he orders. “Come on.”

He already has Dad’s truck out in front, engine purring. So

unlike Nic to premeditate. Everything is different now.

I slide into the passenger seat with the torn upholstery inad-

equately patched by duct tape. Nic adjusts the rearview mirror,

fastens his seat belt, moves his seat back, doing all these safety checks as though he’s about to take off in a Cessna rather than

a battered Chevy.

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Silence as we ride down to the bridge. Nic doesn’t slow on

Ocean for the speed bump, and the truck bounces hard as we

go over it. Driving like Dad. He pulls in sharply, spraying sand,

then turns to me.

“Did you know?” he asks, at the exact same time I blurt out

the same question.

“About Vivie?” I press, because Nic doesn’t. “Had no clue. I

would have . . .”

I don’t know what I would have done.

We slide out of the truck, pick our way down to the beach,

the sand so cold and wet, I’m shivering. Cass would have

grabbed a sweatshirt for me, offered me his. In this short time,

I’ve gotten accustomed to these little things, little watchful

courtesies, enough for their absence to feel strangely like a

presence.

At the creek’s edge, Nic sits down heavily. I fall into place

next to him. He shifts sideways, reaches into his pocket, pulls

out a flat rock, balancing it in the flat of his hand as though

weighing it, staring at it as though he’s never seen such a thing.

I reach for it, planning to snatch it from him, throw it into

the rush of water, not to skip, just to get rid of it, wipe out the memories Nic must be leafing through, wondering what signs

he missed . . . how what he thought was true turned out to be

nothing like the truth at all.

But Nic curls his fingers around the rock before I can take it.

“So, I’ve been a douche lately,” he begins.

“Well, yeah. You sure have,” I say. “But that’s not why Vivie—”

He opens his mouth to answer, then closes it, a little muscle

jumping in his jaw. “I’m not talking about Vee.”

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“Nico—” I start, but he shakes his head, stopping me.

“Last year—even this spring—you never for a moment

would have thought I’d offed myself in the creek. That’s true,

right?”

His brown eyes pierce mine. I nod.

“Did you know?” I ask. “About Spence?”

He shakes his head, kicks at the water. “Yes. No. Something

wasn’t right. She was . . . I was . . . I just figured I’d fix it later. I mean, she’d be there. Of course. Get the captain thing squared

away, then deal. But . . . I mean . . . what happened on the beach.

Pretty clear that ship had sailed while I wasn’t even looking.”

I wait, quiet. Dad said not to push.

“I . . . couldn’t face you guys, after . . . Aunt Luce,

Grandpa . . . you . . . You’d be all sorry for me.” He rolls his

shoulders as though shrugging off our imagined sympathy.

“Knew Uncle Mike wouldn’t be like that.”

“Did you get the What a Man Does lecture?”

“Hell yeah,” he says. “I knew you’d be freaking. Told him to

call you. He said a man spoke for himself. If I wasn’t ready to

talk to you, he sure as shit wasn’t going to do it for me.”

Again I open my mouth, but he shuts me down with the

wave of a hand. Or in this case a fist, since he’s still holding

the stone.

“Do you remember,” he asks, “when Old Mrs. Partridge had

that skunk under her porch, cuz? When we were, like, seven?

And she called Dad to handle it? He threw a towel over it and

tossed it to me and it bit me through the towel?”

I do. I remember Viv holding his hand in the clinic, crying

the tears Nic would never let himself cry.

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Oh Nic.

“And Vivien—”

“This is not about Vivien. I had to get rabies shots, ’mem-

ber? And the nurse was standing there with this wicked big

needle. Aunt Luce and Vovó were crying, and Grandpa Ben was

praying, and you were asking if it would work if you took it

instead. I asked if it would hurt . . . Grandpa and Aunt Luce

started to say no and Uncle Mike said it was gonna hurt like a

motherfucker. Do you remember that?”

I do, partly because I’d never heard that particular word before.

“Thing is, he was right. It did. But it helped. Knowing how I was

going to feel. Can’t deal with the truth if no one tells it, right?”

I nod.

“I’ve loved that girl all my life,” Nic says.

“I know.”

He weighs the stone in his hand, angles his wrist, flips it

across the water. A double skip, not one of his best.

“And I’m more bummed about not getting the captain spot.

Want to tell me what that means?”

That what you’ve always had doesn’t mean that’s what

you’ll always get. That what you’ve always wanted isn’t

what you’ll always want.

I don’t realize I’ve spoken out loud until Nic says. “Yeah.

Exactly, cuz.”

Mom’s just pulling on her sneakers as I get home, sitting on the

steps. I hear the shrill of Disney coming from inside the house.

Mulan
. “
I’ll make a maaann out of you,
” Emory’s voice wobbles, sweet and high.

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“Nic okay?” Mom asks.

I nod. “He’ll be fine.”

She studies my face. “For sure,” she says finally, firmly. “But

if he isn’t? For a little while? It’s not your problem to solve.”

Mom picks up one of her Nikes, with an inextricable knot,

tries to untangle it with the fingernails she has to keep short

because of cleaning houses.

“Here, let me,” I say, pulling at the shoe.

“Gwen.
I
can solve this.” A pull and a jerk here and there and the shoelaces untangle. She slips them on her feet, reaches for

her can of Diet Coke. Shuts her eyes as she drinks it, closing out the world, the way she does with the things that take her away,

her books, her sodas, her stories.

A rattle of gravel and a flash of silver. Mom and I both look

up in time to see Spence’s Porsche flash by. His sunglasses

pushed up into his hair, arm along the seat. He pulls into the

Almeidas’ driveway, slanted, the way the car was that first sum-

mer day at Castle’s, taking up more space than it needs.

Viv runs down the short steps, climbs into the car, long hair

loose and blowing.

“This is gonna take some getting used to,” Mom says. “That

boy sure looks out of place.”

The paradox of Seashell. He does and he doesn’t. Precisely

the sort of car that belongs on the island, pulled into exactly

the driveway where it doesn’t. Not Viv in the place she’s always

been, all she ever wanted, or Nic in the place he was afraid

would be all he had.

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I stand on the steps of the Field House for a few minutes, work-

ing up my courage, raise my hand to knock but, before I can,

it flips inward, so that I basically fall into Cass, who’s opening it with a blue plastic recycling bin balanced on his shoulder.

“Hey,” I say.

He sets the bin down on the steps, straightens. He’s backlit

from the indoor light, which picks out the bright of his hair,

but leaves his expression in darkness.

Silence. Not even his ingrained politeness is going to get me

in the door unless I talk fast. Which I do, so swiftly the words

tumble over one another. “I have to tell you some things and

ask you some things and you need to let me in.”

He takes a step backward and raises an eyebrow. “Is that an

order? Am I Jose here?”

“I’m asking. Not ordering. Can I . . . come in? Because . . .

Cass, just let me in so we don’t have to have this conversa-

tion on your steps. Old Mrs. Partridge probably has supersonic

hearing.”

He opens the door wider but doesn’t move, so I have to

brush past him going in, catching a faint whiff of chlorine,

sun-warm skin.

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I sit down on the ugly green couch. He sinks into the stained

armchair across from me. I tug my skirt lower. He clenches and

unclenches his hand.

“I need to ask you a question. No, three.”

“Go for it,” he says briefly.

“You knew about Spence and Viv, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

One quick word. I was expecting an explanation, an excuse.

It takes me by surprise for a second. I press on. “For how long?”

“Since the day after the boathouse. That night. At the B and

T. I saw them,” Cass says.

“Okay,” I say. “Next one.”

“Why I didn’t tell you? I—”

“Shh, not that. Did you have condoms that day in the boat-

house? Along with the towels and the Dockside Delight? Truth.”

He shuts his eyes. “Yeah. Just in case. I mean, not that that

was the goal or all it was, but—I didn’t want to get caught

off guard and not be smart. Again. And then, the next day, the

next
day,
Gwen, I find out that there’s this whole thing I can’t tell you. That’ll hurt you. When I’ve already said I’ll be honest, when we’d finally gotten around the roadblocks and it was

clear sailing.”

“Mixed metaphor. But I know now. I got it.”

A hint of a smile. “Okay, word girl, got what?”

“Your superpower.”

“Uh—my what?”

“You can’t lie. You don’t lie. I just asked you about these

awkward things that have gotten in our way before and you

told the truth anyhow.”

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“I should have before. I just . . . didn’t want Spence and

Vivien—or anything—between us. I just wanted . . .”

“Me,” I finish.

“Us,” he says.

We haven’t said everything we need to, but I have to kiss

him now. I straighten up, he does the same, take a few steps,

just as he does. Loop my fingers around his neck as he pulls

my waist close. As always, he smells like everything clean and

clear. Soap. Sunshine. The kiss starts carefully, his lips warm

against mine, gentle and firm, knowing and calm, but then

deepens, turns wild, because that is us too. He sets his hands

at the back of my neck and I pull his shoulders closer, my

hands on his back, breathing in Cass, this moment, all of it,

all of him. I can’t get enough, and, intoxicatingly, it seems as

though he can’t either. Not just of kissing me. Of me.

And we don’t talk for a while.

Then . . . “How does this make you feel?” Cass asks, but

before I can answer he groans, ducks his head. “I can’t believe

I asked that.”

“Was there something wrong with it?” I inquire. “Because I

thought it was nice. That you did.”

“Mom’s favorite phrase,” he says, rolling onto his back on

the rug. “The therapist thing . . . ‘How does that make you

fe-eel?’ She’s great, but I don’t want to think about her right

now. Much less sound like her. God.”

He sits up, a little flush on his cheeks over the sunburn. I slip

my hand into his hair, ruffle it.

“One last question, honest answer. How come you had

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never—um—you say you aren’t like Spence, and I get that. But

what
were
you doing at those parties while he was collecting hot tub trophy girls? Recycling the empties?”

Cass snorts. “Hardly. I’m no saint. I just didn’t go, um, the

distance.”

I start laughing. “The distance? A swim team metaphor?”

“Could you not laugh? This is awkward enough,” he says,

attempting a glare but half smiling.

“Why awkward?” I ask.

“Because . . . well, because . . . I’m thinking you’re asking

this because I’m doing something wrong or don’t know what

I’m doing or—” He winces, draws his hand quickly across his

face, then says hurriedly, “I’m a fast learner, though. I mean,

when I care. And I—”

“Cass.” I rest my hand on his cheek. “If we’re going to talk

about me having some experience, a little more, than you, can

I tell you what I know . . . from experience?”

He nods.

“That I would so much rather be with someone who cared

what he was doing than someone who knew what he was

doing.”

And then we’re kissing again.

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