“I wanted to get out of this town so badly, experience the world this town tries to ignore. And it just ruined me, instead.” If I were a betting man, I’d say there’s more to this story she’s not sharing. The way she says ruined seems like her mind is running over something else from her time in California that she hasn’t shared yet. She doesn’t have to share it, but I am intrigued. And a little sorry for her. That sounds like one hell of a depressing experience. But, I suppose at the end of the day, she has no one to blame but herself.
Despite my thirst for knowledge and love of learning, I hate being in school. I hate sitting at a desk and taking notes over things that could be handed to me in a printout for me to read on my own. I hate group work and tests and pop quizzes. I hate being judged by others on ridiculous criteria. I knew college wouldn’t be a good fit for me, that’s why I started trade school classes my senior year of high school. By the time I graduated, I had enough training to start my business. Dylan followed my example and I was so thankful for it. He really helped me get the business off the ground. Being computer savvy, he also built the website and a social media presence toget us customers. It’s grown so much in two years. I wouldn’t have life any other way than building a career with my brother.
But I know he’s not completely happy here.
We clear the trees and come to my favorite spot on the mountain. A crystallized lake engulfed by winter and cast in frosted ice. In the summer, it’s the perfect deep dive to escape my thoughts and submerge myself in water. Water is the only place I feel fully relaxed. The shower. A bath. The lake. On the rare occasion we make the three hour drive to the beach, the ocean is an even greater security. Where others find uncertainty and fear of the unknown, I find peace.
Although I can’t dive into the lake right now as I’d like to do, the sight is almost as placating. The gradient of opaque white snow piled on the shore toward the transparent center eases my mind like I imagine those adult coloring books do for some.
The entire lake is surrounded in a circle of pines securing and secluding my sacred place from the rest of the world. While it’s not technically on our property, I feel possessive of it. It’s as much my home as the lodge. I’ve never seen another soul here. Dylan will go for a swim on especially hot summer days, even though we live in Oregon and the water never really heats up past sixty degrees. As far as I know, Mara is only the third person to ever come here, to see this nirvana.
Her body went stiff as a board when we passed the tree line and she could fully see the beauty of this place. Her breathing slowed too. The puffs of air that escape her are not as steady and close together as they were before. But they return to normalcy after she speaks.
“Wow,” she breathes, “this is incredible.” I don’t think she realizes when her body relaxes back into my chest and I brace her. The top of her head is a centimeter away from my chin. I can smell her shampoo, it smells like Dylan’s, he uses something that’s supposed to be better for hair health but I’ve never given a shit. He was generous enough to share some of his hygiene products with her since she didn’t want to use my “heterosexual, ineffective man products,” as she so kindly described them.
There’s nothing wrong with shampoo from the dollar store. It gets thejob done. If I end the shower clean, then it works. She was also repulsed by the fact that I use shampoo to clean everything.
Soap is soap! I don’t know why I’m the only one who gets that.
“Thank you for showing me this,” Mara sits up straighter, either because she realized she’d been leaning against my chest or because she realized she was slouching. The cold air that slips between her back and my chest where body heat kept me warm moments ago feels like ice to the balls.
I wait a moment longer before steering Bessie around back the way we came and head back to the house. Being jostled around a bit makes Mara lean back into me again and I savor the heat, the warmth, the contact I didn’t think I’d enjoy as much as I do. She’s silent the rest of the way back but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It feels…natural. Like the way Dylan and I can be in the same room and he doesn’t feel the need to speak to me. Maybe she’s finally getting used to my silence.
It’s a little scary to think Mara Meyers has spent enough time with me to get used to things. I never thought I’d see her again after graduation. And now she’s living in my fucking house. God really does have a sense of humor. He enjoys forcing me to face my demons.
That’s been a consistent pattern in my life.
Chapter Eight
Mara-Present
I’ll Get By-Avi Kaplan
Thanksgiving is tomorrow.
My entire childhood, Thanksgiving was one of three days my dad took off every year, the other two being Christmas (even though we are technically Jewish) and Super Bowl Sunday. The holiest of all days.
Thanksgiving was always catered with normal Thanksgiving foods, and the house was decorated to the nines with pumpkins, rust tones, and the occasional turkey. My mom thought it would be a good idea to get a live turkey one year to greet guests in the front yard. But the wild beast tried to take out the food delivery boy’s eye so he was shot on the spot and his body discretely disposed of.
That’s something an eleven year old never forgets.
All those holidays spent in my parents house was akin to being a third wheel on a date. I was seen but not heard, present to keep up the loving family facade. Though I think I preferred that. My parents usually invited the most insipid of guests and the last thing I wanted to do was make small talk with people who didn’t want to interact with me. I guess I should be thankful they didn’t try to engage with me.
In college, my parents never protested that I wanted to stay in California for the holidays. I spent my first Thanksgiving away from home eating Chinese take out in my apartment with my boyfriend at the time.
The second year, I spent it in a bar trying to drink a turkey’s weight in vodka sodas. I was unsuccessful. At least the bartender put me in an Uber home before I left with the guy I was making googly eyes at across the bar. And thankfully, Mr. Bad Idea didn’t try to tag along. I woke up a foot away from vomit on my rug the following morning. Not my classiest moment but there were no witnesses, so no one has to know.
This year, I figured I’d be fielding questions about why I’m home from college at another awful party my parents threw. While being stuck in a cabin in the woods with tweedle-mute and tweedle-always happy isn’t my first choice, I don’t think it will be too bad. It might even be my best Thanksgiving ever, which is kind of sad, really.
The Thanksgiving I spent with my boyfriend eating Chinese was pretty nice, but it’s now tainted by his betrayal.
A quiet holiday eating a basic meal that consists of less than twelve courses is far more appealing.
We’re just having chicken since one of them started biting and Dylan said they don’t tolerate biters. I can’t wrap my head around having to eat an animal with a name that I helped feed everyday. But maybe if I tell myself I pulled it out of the meat section at the store, I’ll be able to stomach it.
Dylan insists it’ll be better than any store bought chicken. We’ll see about that.
I decide to try my hand at baking and use ingredients from the pantry to make a pumpkin pie. The filling seems easy enough. Just dump and mix the ingredients, no such thing as over mixing. But the crust seems a little trickier. Anything that requires precision and worrying about consistency is a recipe for disaster in my book.
