THE RUMBLE OF NEIL’S PICKUP coming down the driveway echoed in the barn like young thunder. I closed my eyes for a moment before I went to the door. He was on his way to the house, but stopped in his tracks when I called his name.
He walked toward the barn slowly, squinting his eyes, turning his head like he was trying to see the whole situation better, in a way that was more than suspicious; it was almost like he was afraid.
“Hey,” I called out to him, waving my hand.
He stopped several feet away from me, and said, “Well, I’m here. What is it?”
“Come in,” I told him, pushing both of the barn doors open all the way, letting the light inside.
He crossed the threshold, still looking at me like I might pull something shady, but then, once he was inside, he stood still, looking around. It was nearly the same as when he had last been here. Close enough, anyway. He turned in a circle, and then his eyes set on me. He shook his head and raised his arms toward the ceiling.
“Why?” he said, his voice shaking. “Why did you lie to me?”
“I don’t really know,” I said, but that wasn’t true. I did know. I knew that I had been in so much pain that I’d felt the only way to get rid of it was to push some of it off on someone else. He was there. It was as simple as that.
“Not gonna cut it,” he snapped.
“Because I was jealous of what you had with her. And I was angry and hurting and scared,” I answered—all of those things were part of the truth. “I hated that she belonged to you more than she belonged to me.”
He looked down at his feet. “She didn’t belong to anybody.”
“You know what I mean,” I insisted. “I was so angry that I never got a chance to make things right with her, and I took it out on you because things were right between the two of you.”
“You know she didn’t think like that,” he argued.
“Do I? I feel like I don’t know anything.”
“Yes you do,” he countered. “So maybe you weren’t tight in the last year. So what? That doesn’t take away the other sixteen years that came before!” he shouted, gaining steam. “And don’t think I don’t have regrets too. Things weren’t right between us either.” He paused to take a breath. “There’s so much I wish I would’ve said to her. A million things!”
“I—I didn’t know that,” I tried to tell him, but he kept talking.
“You know, you were right about what you said to me that night.”
I knew immediately what night he was talking about.
“I loved her,” he admitted. “Yeah, maybe it was obvious. Maybe you and everyone else in the world thought I was pathetic. But you were wrong when you said she’d never love me back.”
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t get to take that away from her. You don’t get to take that away from me. Because she did love me. No, maybe not in the same way, but she could’ve. If I ever worked up the nerve to tell her, maybe she could’ve.”
He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, even though I knew “sorry” didn’t come close to being enough.
He turned his back to me and walked up to the big wall of photos.
“What was your question?” he asked, clearing his throat. “In your message. You wanted to tell me something and ask me something. I’m guessing this was what you wanted to tell me, so . . .”
“Right. You said before that you knew which ones were important, which were her favorites.” I paused, swallowing my pride, my guilt, and all those other troublesome emotions that I usually let hold me back.
He pointed out at least a dozen photographs, which I couldn’t have picked out if I’d tried (and I had). Not one of them was among the pictures I had singled out over the past three months.
“You look disappointed, or something,” he told me.
“No, it’s just those weren’t the ones I was thinking were most important.”
“You know what she would say to that,” he said, but he was stating it as a matter of fact, not a question.
“No. What would she say?” I asked.
“I dunno. She’d probably say something like . . .” He switched his voice to be higher and wispier like Mallory’s, and he got this far-off look in his eye. “What you think the important ones are is the only thing that matters.” He smiled sadly, and said in his regular voice, “Something about the eye of the beholder, or whatever. I don’t know. Sounds like her, though, doesn’t it?” He let out the smallest of laughs, and then shut his mouth tight.
“Yeah,” I agreed, laughing. “It does.”
“Well,” Neil said. “I’m really glad you’re a pathological liar, Maia.”
He was standing there, uncomfortably, putting his hands in his pockets, then touching his eternally over-gelled hair, then crossing his arms. He looked younger, somehow, than the last time I was this close to him. Or maybe it was that I suddenly felt a lot older.
He was making his way to the door, when I asked, “Hey, what’s your favorite, then? If that’s really the important thing, like you said.”
He stared at the wall for a moment, held his finger in the air as he walked over to the corner next to Mallory’s darkroom, where there was a metal chest of long, narrow drawers. He was opening them, one by one.
“I didn’t know there was anything in there,” I said, following behind him.
I looked over his shoulder—he was lifting sheets of tissue paper that separated all these black-and-white prints, drawer after drawer, searching for one in particular.
He pulled out a stack of photographs wrapped in a folded sheet of white paper, and set them on top of the drawer. He opened it to reveal dozens of the same picture—two tree trunks side by side, and they had a strand of barbed wire that was embedded into the bark, the trees having grown up around it, so close together that they had even grown around one another.
“This one,” he said finally. “She took it last winter when we were up in the mountains.”
“Take it,” I told him.
“Really?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me uncertainly.
“I mean, isn’t that what she would’ve wanted?”
He nodded, whispering, “Yeah, I think so.” He took his photograph, holding it gingerly, like a baby, as he crossed the barn and headed out the door.
“Hey, Maia?” he said, stepping into the light. “Mallory never hated you. That was my lie, okay?”
I think maybe somewhere deep in my heart I knew that, but I was thankful to hear it anyway.
After Neil left, I searched the metal drawers for the graffiti picture and found it almost right away. There were dozens of this one too. I picked up a copy of the photograph and held it gently at the corners.
My entire motive for asking Neil over was to find out what these words meant, but he had already told me without even realizing it. They meant whatever I wanted them to mean. They meant that anything, everything, only means what you say it means. You are who you believe you are, no more, no less.
In a moment of clarity, I knew exactly what I had to do.
I’d already decided I was going to call in sick to work today—I couldn’t handle the clearance aisle or fitting room duty. I needed to start living again. I needed to stop thinking about how badly I’d fucked everything up and do something about it. Because getting a fresh start doesn’t mean you can just forget about everything that came before.
• • •
After waiting in the shadows of her porch, I ambushed Isobel when she got home from work that night.
“Good god, girl!” she shouted when she saw me standing on the top step. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was waiting for you because I wanted to ask a favor.”
She side-eyed me, handing me one of the tote bags she was carrying, so she could open the door. “A favor involving Chris?” I followed her inside as she turned the kitchen light on and set her armfuls of things on the table.
“Sorta.”
“Go on,” she said as she took her shoes off and lowered herself into one of the dining chairs.
“I have something I want to send him, only I don’t have his address.” I flashed her my best fake Bargain Mart smile. “Please?” I added, my smile nearly collapsing. “It’s important.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, then reached over to one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out a notepad and slapped it onto the tabletop. She reached into the drawer, her fingers disrupting its contents, until she found a pen.
• • •
The next morning, I was waiting at the post office when it opened. On the back of Mallory’s photograph I had written Chris a message:
I think I finally understand what it means. Please call me.
Love, Maia
I hoped the photograph would signify to Chris that in spite of everything, he saw me for who I was and I saw him in the same way. I sent a silent prayer out into the universe as I slid the envelope across the counter and into the hands of the postal worker. I paid extra to have it delivered overnight. I watched closely as she weighed the envelope and placed the postage in the upper right corner before tossing it into a bin behind her.
“That’s it. You’re done,” she told me, since I was still standing there.
I left. I went home.
I’d wait to hear from him.
I could do that. I was capable of waiting.