Page 28 of The Castaways
[_Can we please go to Auntie Dee’s house tomorrow after camp _
and perhaps spend the night?
Andrea was speechless. She resisted the urge to throw the formal request onto the grill flames. It was innocent, she reminded herself. Chloe and Finn wanted to see their friends. But still, the “formal request” was for “Auntie Dee’s house.” Auntie Dee would cut their grilled cheese into fun shapes; she would permit them to run through the sprinkler until the fireflies came out. The twins did not want Andrea. They wanted Delilah. She couldn’t blame them, but it infuriated her.
She handed the formal request back to Chloe, not able to look her in the eye. “We’ll see,” she said.
Chloe stood before her for one resigned moment. “That means no.”
“That means we’ll see.”
Chloe fled.
Andrea collapsed onto a deck chair and sank her face in her hands.Need anything?
“I need Tess back,” she whispered. Denial was such a stupid phase of grief, especially for a forty-four-year-old woman who had lost both her parents and well knew that death happened to each and every one of us. And yet at any second the finality of Tess’s death could level Andrea. She wanted to rip her hair out, tear her clothes, get on her knees and beg the sky,Bring her back!
The grill was smoking. Andrea pulled the steaks off just as the Chief walked onto the deck.
“Hey,” he said. “Those smell good.” His voice was light and chipper. How could he be chipper? It was twenty minutes to eight. He had stayed at work for twelve hours. He didn’t want to be at home with her either.
Andrea stared at the platter of steaks. They did smell good, and they had cost her seventy dollars. The grocery store was booby-trapped with land mines. She couldn’t stand to see anybody she knew. She didn’t want pity or sympathy or understanding. But neither could she tolerate cheerful, normal life moving on. She was falling apart. Couldn’t anyone see that she wasfalling apart?
She flipped the steaks off the deck, and they landed in her unwatered perennial bed.
“Jesus!” the Chief said. He grabbed her arm. “Andrea! What thehell?”
Need anything?She crumpled.
That night, after the Chief had pulled the steaks out of the garden dirt and washed them off, sliced them thinly, and cajoled both the twins and Andrea to eat, Andrea wandered into her bedroom, lay down on her bed fully clothed, and fell immediately to sleep.
She had the dream a third time. The man shouting for help, shouting in a language she didn’t understand, but no matter, she understood the urgency. She swam out, she grabbed hold of him, she said,Just float. I’ll get us in. I’m a lifeguard!She noticed his deep blue eyes. And then later, when he was walking away, she noticed his salt-and-pepper curls, his earring. When Phoebe lifted her face from the towel, Andrea felt her heart break. Of course he belonged to someone else. He belonged to Phoebe. But she felt something else, too: hope, anticipation.
And there they were, in the Jeep, clawing at one another, sucking, biting. He was behind her, but she didn’t like it.I want to see you!she said.I want to see your face!She could feel his fingers on her nipples, his mouth on her neck. But she wanted to see his face! She turned.
It was Jeffrey.
DELILAH
Delilah was the best storyteller, and so she would tell the story of Greg and April Peck, the whole sphere of it—Greg’s side, April’s side, Tess’s side. That was the only way to understand. To hear only Greg’s side or only April’s side was like taking one slice out of an apple and claiming the rest of it wasn’t rotten.
Delilah considered herself a neutral third party, a Switzerland, a safe place for either Tess or Greg to go. But really, it was so much more complicated than that. (The most frustrating thing about being an adult was, indeed, how complicated everything was. Throw a party, write a letter to the editor, buy your children a PlayStation—there would be consequences and repercussions you never expected.) The Greg-and-April-Peck story was complicated by the fact that Delilah was in love with Greg.
Okay, there, she’d said it.
She was in love with Greg MacAvoy, who was now dead. And would it be flattering herself to say that he had been in love with her, too? Halfway in love? Delilah had been his confidante, his almost-lover. They were alwaysthis closeto crossing the line intothat territory.
It had started in Vegas, at Le Cirque, with his hand on her foot and then trilling up the back of her leg. This had tipped her off: Greg was interested. His interest made her interested. His interest had, tangentially, been responsible for her taking the dining room manager position at the Begonia. She wanted to be close to Greg outside of the scope of their group friendship. How? The Scarlet Begonia. Delilah worked four nights a week, most of them nights when Greg played and sang. It was officially impossible to watch Greg up onstage with his dark hair flopping in his eyes and his vine tattoo encircling his biceps and his feet in deck shoes no matter what the weather and listen to him sing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and feel anything except powerless against his charms. Every woman in that bar, on any given night, would sleep with him. Delilah placed herself in a distinct category from these women; she was his friend.
But just admit it, Delilah!
No, it was more than that. To sleep with Greg MacAvoy would be a disaster. She had slept with his type before—nascent rock stars, athletes just off the winning field. They looked at Delilah like she was a juicy cheeseburger, they devoured her… and then they wiped their mouths with a napkin and walked away.
She wanted Greg to love her, to value her—someday—more than he valued Tess.
They hung out nearly every night after closing. Greg drank copiously and played a private concert for Delilah, Thom and Faith, Graham the bartender, and whoever else happened to be lingering. He and Delilah talked, he told her everything—or if not everything, then most things, things he did not tell Tess. It happened organically. They started talking about their kids. Barney had been only eight months old when Delilah went to work, the twins were a year and a half, Drew was two. Talking about the kids, after a few drinks, morphed into talking about their spouses. How long had it been before both of them realized there was no forbidden territory? Delilah complained:Jeffrey acts like my father! I did not want to marry my father!Greg complained:Tess treats me like one of the children! She thinks I am completely incompetent!They were simpatico in their restlessness. And where did this lead them? It led to nights when, at three in the morning, Delilah would drive Greg home. Greg would sometimes sit in the passenger seat oblivious to the world before stumbling to his front door, his guitar in its case banging into him like an inebriated sidekick. But he would sometimes direct Delilah to Cisco Beach, where they would watch the waves. Greg would tell her how much he wanted to touch her, kiss her, make love to her, and Delilah would stave him off.We can’t, it will end up in such a mess, our incredible friendship trashed, the guilt will kill you, you don’t think so now, but trust me.
A few nights he shushed her, his finger, callused from too many E minor chords, lightly touching her lips. And then he cupped his hand around her neck and pressed his face to her ear. He breathed into her until she thought,Okay. Just this one time, okay.But they had never so much as kissed. Not even one kiss. She held steady. Her body was the Hoover Dam, resisting the force of all that water. Itcouldhurt. It would hurt Tess and Jeffrey and the four little children at home; it would hurt Greg and Delilah’s friendship. Once Greg had her, he would weary of her. It wouldn’t be as great as he hoped. Whereas to keep him at bay, to keep him always wanting this thing that was just beyond his reach, was to hold him captive.
