Page 40 of Fated

There were tears at the corners of his eyes and his little button nose was red. I pulled him into my arms and he dropped his head to my chest and sighed as if to say, “Where have you been?”

I kept him close as I dried off and changed, letting him toddle around me dressed only in a nappy, dragging a raggedy-eared bunny over the wood floor behind him.

I set down my fork and lean back in the old wooden chair, its joints swollen in the humidity. It creaks and moans as I do. The only delicious part of the meal is the coffee. I make good coffee.

I take a sip of it now, cradling the chipped orange mug in my hands. The heat of it spreads through me and a drop of sweat drips down my back. I set the mug back on the table.

“It’s so gross. I can’t eat it?—”

“Amy,” McCormick says, shaking his head.

“It is! Even Sean won’t eat it, and he chews on flip-flops if you don’t stop him.” She smacks her fork to the table and Sean squeals at the noise.

“Mom isn’t feeling great?—”

“Neither am I! Mom.” She focuses on me, leaning across the table. “I want to go to New York this Christmas, and I want?—”

“You’re not going to New York.” McCormick glances at me—a look that tells me this isn’t the first time he’s had this conversation with his daughter.

“But why not? I’ve never left the island. Never. I feel like I’m in a prison. I’m fourteen years old and I’ve never beenanywhere. I’m stranded at sea like Robinson Crusoe, except he eventually gets toleave.”

“Maybe next year?—”

“You say that every year! Yet here I am, stuck on four square miles of rock in the middle of the ocean. Forever. I hate it here. I want to go to New York. I want to meet people. I want to explore. I want to live!”

I’m caught up in her passionate plea. Her dark hair is wildly curly and bounces around her cheeks with every word. She’s so animated. Her hands flash through the air, darting like the silver fish that swam below us in the ocean. She flings herself forward and back in time with her argument. She’s red-cheeked and impassioned, extolling all the reasons she should be allowed to break through the bars of her prison and fly to New York City for Christmas.

Watching her, I wonder, was I ever that passionate? Did I ever want something so badly that I nearly vibrated from the desire?

Once, maybe.

But then that potion turned out to be poison, so I haven’t trusted that impassioned feeling since.

“Amy—”

“Dad! You don’t understand.” She picks up the paperback book on the table next to her plate. It’s a tattered, yellow-paged copy of “Robinson Crusoe.” “The fictional people in this book are more alive than I am. They’ve lived more in three hundred pages than I’ve lived in my entire life! Sometimes I feel as if I’m going to die here, never having left, and no one is going to notice and no one is going to care. How can I live if I’m not allowed to leave this island? Am I even alive if I’m not living? What’s the point?”

Well.

I’ve never had a dream where the people in it are having an existential crisis. It’s actually somewhat disconcerting. She’s so earnest, so vehement in her desire, that I reach over and press my hand to her arm.

She isn’t alive. Not at all. She doesn’t exist in the world, but she seems alive, so I tell her exactly what I’d tell Mila. “The point of living isn’t where you go or what you do. You can live in a small place, you can live a small life, and it has as much value as any other. The point of living is loving, and you can do that anywhere.”

Amy stares at me, her eyes unblinking. “Oh my gosh. Mom. You literally just got back from New York. You and Robert were there for two weeks. You lived in Miami for a year, and Dad, he’s been all over the world. And so not letting me go is like, like?—”

Who’s Robert?

I glance over at McCormick as Amy searches for a metaphor to end her plea.

He winks at me and the wink settles over me, prickly warm and happy. I flash a surprised grin and he hides a smile, burying it in his coffee mug.

I notice he made a valiant effort to eat the charred banana and gelatinous pancake.

“Hypocritical!” Amy shouts, slamming her hands to the table, ecstatic at finding a word to fit her situation.

McCormick stands then and says, “You can go to New York when you’re eighteen.”

Amy deflates, sighs like a balloon losing its air, and slumps back in her chair. “Four more years trapped on the rock. Super. Thanks, Dad.”

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