I always knew Billy would return to me in the form of a clue; I just didn’t think it would take him sixteen years.
By then I was twenty-seven, living in Philadelphia, a dedicated, if overzealous, eighth-grade history teacher. I had just moved in with my boyfriend, the other eigth-grade history teacher at my school, and was testing the waters of cohabitation for the first time. The school year had just ended. Our students’ term papers on the Emancipation Proclamation and the Underground Railroad had been marked and returned. Final grades had been submitted, and unless any parents complained, we were officially on summer break. Jay insisted we celebrate with a party. A housewarming party, even though he’d been in the apartment for half a decade, and the only thing new about the space was the fact that I lived there now, too.
Jay was headed out to buy booze for our big night. There was a state store a few blocks from our apartment, but he insisted on driving a half hour to Delaware where he could buy handles of cheap whiskey and vodka at a tax-free rate.
“You know you’ll spend as much on gas as you’ll save on tax,” I argued, watching him dart around our living room, looking for his keys.
“It’s the principle.” He dug his hand between the couch cushions. It resurfaced with potato chip crumbs and lint, which he piled on the coffee table.
“That’s disgusting,” I said, stating the obvious. Jay blew me a kiss as he continued to mine the couch, unearthing his keys and jangling them in victory. “You know there’s a hook by the door precisely for that reason.” I pointed to the brass hook with a bird perched on top, my one contribution to the decor of our apartment.
“Is that what it’s there for?” he teased, pulling me onto the couch. Jay kissed my neck and cheek, pinning me on his lap. I pictured him at the liquor store in Delaware, filling a shopping cart with enough plastic bottles to make everyone at the party sick.
“We could just skip town for the weekend, drive up to a cabin in Vermont, go off the grid.”
Jay released me. I remained on his lap. “I thought you wanted to have a party,” he said.
I shrugged. Jay wanted to have a party. I wanted to want to have a party, but I rarely went to—much less threw—the type of binge-drinking-until-dawn rager ours promised to be. “It was just an idea.”
Jay lifted me off him and put his wallet and keys in his back pocket. “It’ll be fun,” he promised, offering me a quick peck before he headed out.
Although I’d been living with Jay for three months, the apartment felt no more mine than it had before my clothes were folded in his dresser, before my yogurt and grilled chicken filled his otherwise empty fridge. The apartment was decorated in the style of Jay’s mother, how she thought a single, twentysomething man should live. A dark couch that hid stains, leather armchairs that thankfully didn’t recline, a television consuming one wall, the others lined with muted abstract art. The few objects I owned were in a small storage locker. An antique dresser I hadn’t sold with my other bedroom furniture. A stone coffee table my mother had bought in the ’70s in New York. A few framed prints from the Museum of Art, which weren’t worth the fight to put up on the walls of my new apartment. Jay had no great affinity for the artwork his mother had selected, but it would have offended her if we’d taken down the paintings she’d bought from her artist friends. He said it was easier to leave the apartment be, to choose our battles. I wondered what that was like, living in constant fear of upsetting your mother.
I strolled into the kitchen to clear the countertops for the cases of alcohol Jay would be bringing home. My mail was stacked in a haphazard pile next to the fridge, mostly bills and offers for yoga classes, two thank-you cards from students who professed in sloppy handwriting that I was their favorite teacher and they would always remember our trip to Franklin’s Print Shop. In addition to the cards, there was a padded envelope, my name carefully inscribed across the front—Miranda Brooks—more elegant than by my own hand. It didn’t have a return address, but it had been postmarked in Los Angeles. I squeezed the package. Hard and square, clearly a book. Probably one of Mom’s little surprises, even if it wasn’t her handwriting on the front of the padded envelope. She was always sending me something, overcompensating for how much it hurt her that her only child had decided to live on the opposite coast. A cookbook with recipes far too involved for me to ever make. A how-to book for decorating on a budget, since she’d reasonably assumed that when Jay’s apartment became our apartment the decor would be ours, too.
I unsealed the package and pulled out a paperback book wrapped in satiny emerald paper, a greeting card taped to the front. I ripped the paper off the book. It was a play I knew by heart. The Tempest. Mom had named me after Miranda, in her estimation the purest, most beautiful girl in all of literature. On the cover of the paperback, a rogue wave threatened to capsize the vessel that transported the king and his entourage—including Prospero’s brother, Antonio—home from the princess’s wedding. Mom often sent me copies of my namesake when she found them at estate sales and antiques shops. A rare edition with gold leaf. An illustrated version from the ’50s. A miniature replica fashioned into a pendant or pin. This was a generic paperback, printed by the thousands, not Mom’s type of gift. Only, if the package wasn’t from her, I had no idea who else would have sent it.
I took the greeting card out of its envelope. On the front, a sketch of a blonde lounging on a beach smiled back at me. Her eyes were hidden behind cat-eye sunglasses, her pixie cut caught in a strong breeze. Malibu, California was printed across the cloudless sky above her, letters as white and glossy as the woman’s teeth.
The message written inside the card offered little clarity.
Understanding prepares us for the future.
And that was it. No “hello from your dear old friend you’d entirely forgotten about.” No “here’s something that always makes me think of you, love your secret admirer.” No reference to the king’s doomed vessel drawn on the front of the play, to Prospero and his enchanted island. Just those weighty words in ink so dark it still looked wet.
Understanding prepares us for the future. I’d heard that phrase somewhere before. Possibly Dad? He was the type to forget to sign his name. If the message had been an adage on hard work or a Roosevelt quote, I would have assumed the card was from him. This wasn’t his brand of fatherly advice. Besides, Dad was more often the type to add his name to whatever present Mom had bought me. Perhaps the phrase was a song lyric or a fortune-cookie truism, a catchphrase from one of those New Age books Joanie half-jokingly quoted. Only I heard future not in Joanie’s raspy voice, but in a soft lullaby. A deep, dreamy voice that should have inspired comfort. Instead, it hit me with acute longing, regret.
Maybe the phrase was one of Prospero’s lines, although it lacked Shakespeare’s measure. Still, it sounded like something Prospero might have said to the audience in his final goodbye. I flipped through the text. The epilogue wasn’t marked, but in the second scene of the play, when Prospero told Miranda how his brother had run them out of Milan, Prospero’s words were highlighted.
’Tis time I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand and pluck my magic garment from me. So lie there, my art.
Sit down; for thou must now know farther.
Thou must now know farther. Understanding prepares us for the future. If not for the similarity in theme, I would have assumed the highlighted section was the random marking of the copy’s previous owner, but Prospero’s words, the line from the card...they were connected. Only, I wasn’t certain how.
I plugged the phrase from the card into my phone’s search engine. A few hundred musings on education and religion popped up. No direct quotations of the line itself. It wasn’t a reference to The Tempest. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t a saying at all. Still, I was certain I’d heard it before.
I tucked the play into my dresser and taped the card to the fridge, hoping the beach scene might jog my memory. The woman’s happy face followed me as I sprayed down the countertops. Although her eyes were shaded, they monitored my every move. When I looked up, I expected her expression to have changed. Of course it never did and after a few glances at her windblown hair, her blank smile, I started to feel like she knew something I didn’t.
* * *
By nightfall, our apartment was ready for the festivities to begin. A handful of our colleagues, Jay’s soccer buddies and my college friends arrived early with salads, couscous, chicken and cake.
We settled onto the living room floor, wineglasses at our sides, paper plates nestled into our laps. Everyone was talking animatedly. It was the party I would have preferred, just close friends, people you didn’t have to ask yourself how they’d ended up at your house. I sat between Jay and the art teacher. Jay coached soccer at the high school and had become the other eighth-grade history teacher earlier that year when Teacher Anne’s maternity leave turned permanent. Before he joined my ranks, I’d seen him from a distance, knew how his muscular calves looked beneath his mesh shorts, how his whistle burst in sharp tweets when he wanted to get the boys’ attention. He was good-looking in a preppy way I wasn’t normally attracted to, but he had this magnetic energy that made female teachers young and old giggle when he said hello to them. A charisma so powerful the school was desperate to keep him. They offered him the position of eighth-grade American history teacher even though he’d been an economics major in college and had never taught before. I was tasked with getting him up to speed, a job that involved more history lessons than I would have expected, evenings and weekend study sessions where I taught him about the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, the contentious election of 1800, the duel between Hamilton and Burr. He grinned apishly as I explained to him how candidates used to run on their own and whoever came in second, regardless of party, was awarded the vice presidency. I’d accused him of not listening, and he’d said, You’re so passionate. It’s adorable, and then I’d grinned apishly, too, and soon those grins had led to something more.
I’d assumed it would be a tryst, greeting each other in the halls as Teacher Miranda and Teacher Jay, as though we’d never seen each other naked, until the secrecy felt rote. Turned out Jay was more than athletic legs and an inviting smile. He spoke about soccer like it was art, a metaphor for life. He knew everyone in his—now our—neighborhood by name, helping the aging Mrs. Peters carry her groceries to her third-floor apartment, and walking his friend Trevor’s mutt when Trevor couldn’t get out of work in time to let her out. He was close with his parents, never losing patience with his mom, telling her he liked the collared shirts she bought him, shirts that gathered dust in his closet, and hanging her bland artwork across his—now our—walls. He was close to his sister, who lived a few blocks away and was currently sitting across from us, flirting with my college friend as she snuck sideways glances at Jay and me, still not quite accustomed to our partnership.
“How’d your last day go?” I asked Jay. I didn’t want to talk about school, but I was still learning how to be with Jay in a crowd. We spent so much of our time alone that I had to remind myself I couldn’t pounce on him when others were around; I couldn’t ask him to divulge his feelings in the way that caused him to blush.
Jay proceeded to describe his last day of class, a well-plotted game of Murder that the students probably enjoyed more than my lesson on Abraham Lincoln. That was the difference between me and Jay. He knew how to win them over. I knew how to teach them something they might not value today, but in a few years would resonate, at least so I hoped. So much of being a teacher rests in that blind hope. Jay reached over to play with one of my curls, and I kissed him on the cheek, testing out what it felt like to display affection in front of friends and colleagues. That kiss was the physical equivalent of changing your Facebook relationship status, a pronouncement that, while not quite irreversible, was indelible.
By eleven, the randoms started turning up. Friends of friends of friends—Jay greeted them all. He slapped high five to guys in baseball caps and hugged girls in tight, bright tank tops whom I’d never met before. I could imagine the back and forth he had with those tall, muscular guys, details about Saturday morning soccer league and woes of the Phillies’ latest loss. I couldn’t imagine the conversations Jay had with those girls. I tried not to be too obvious as I watched them talk. Jay’s sister caught me staring, an unmistakable smirk on her face.
As more strangers crowded our apartment, the living room became unbearably hot. Someone turned the stereo so loud you couldn’t talk, you couldn’t think, you could only dance. I stood against the wall with Jay, watching the gaggle of brightly clad girls move effortlessly to the electronic beat. Couples bumped into each other as they danced, sloshing beer onto our hardwood floors. Desire radiated from Jay’s body and I wanted to get lost in him, to turn the corner of our living room into our private lair. Jay tapped his foot against the baseboard and asked if I wanted to dance.
We sidled in beside the group of girls, cognizant of their fluidity. I tried to be fluid, too, but dancing always made me overly aware of the orders my brain issued to my body and my legs’ inability to enact them. Jay wasn’t a good dancer, either, and we laughed at how terribly we moved, inching closer to each other until the beat became ours, until Jay’s desires aligned with mine.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. Normally, I would have ignored it, but the buzzer to our apartment worked intermittently despite my countless calls to the super to fix it, and I didn’t want one of my friends to be trapped outside. When I saw it was Mom, I knew instantly that something was wrong. Mom and I had spoken that morning. She’d given me her recipe for fresh-squeezed brown derbies, which I hadn’t had the heart to tell her would have been wasted on me and my cheap beer-drinking contemporaries. While we often spoke more than once a day, she wouldn’t have called during my party unless something had happened.
I angled the phone toward Jay so he could see that it was Mom, and we spoke in gestures. He shrugged his shoulders, asking if everything was okay. I swatted away the worry I felt, motioning that I was slipping outside. I fought the current of people out of the apartment.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I stepped onto the stoop.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your party.”
“Is everything okay?” I sat on the top step.
“I figured you’d want to know. I didn’t feel right not telling you right away because I thought—”
“Mom, what happened? You’re scaring me.”
“I just got a call. It’s Billy.” All the alcohol in my system hit me with the weight of his name. Billy. Uncle Billy. I was suddenly very dizzy. I couldn’t recall the last time Mom had mentioned him. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d thought of him. I already knew what she was going to say, but I waited for her to tell me.
“He...he passed. This afternoon,” she said distractedly, like she’d taken a sedative, and maybe she had. Her voice was unnaturally calm.
An image flashed into my fuzzy brain: Billy sitting behind the wheel of his car after he’d dropped me home for the last time. He’d smiled as he drove off, only his smile was too wide, uneasy. I tried to recall a happier moment, his pleased expression earlier that day when he’d bought me the dog, his face whenever I solved one of his riddles. Instead, I kept seeing that forced smile as he waved goodbye for the last time, how he’d failed to hide his sadness from me.
“Oh, Mom.” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t imagine how she felt. Even though they hadn’t spoken in sixteen years, she must have been devastated.
“I should let you get back to your party.”
“No, Mom, it’s just a party.”
“You go have fun. We’ll talk soon, all right?”
“Mom,” I said before she hung up. “I’m really sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she said.
I stayed on the stoop, watching her number blink across the screen until it disappeared. It was a sweltering night. Nine years in Philadelphia, and I still wasn’t used to the humidity, how it outlasted the sun. I thought back to the last conversation I remembered having about Billy, how Mom had told me she didn’t know if they would work it out, and they never did. I must have asked her about Billy after that, but she made it clear that Billy was a ghost, disappearing him from the stories of their childhood, avoiding Temescal Canyon where the three of us used to hike, the scenic beaches in Malibu that had been Billy’s favorite. Eventually, I must have stopped asking after him. Billy was dead now, but he’d been gone from us for years. Still, I felt his loss acutely. And I could tell Mom did, too.
The vibrations of Jay’s footsteps thundered as he neared the door. I was relieved that he’d come looking for me but wasn’t ready to share the moment with him.
“Hey you,” he said, offering me that smile that made me dizzy, only I felt the greater dizziness of Mom’s words, of thinking about Billy after such a long time. The smile fell from Jay’s face. He leaned against the frame like he was posing in an outdoor catalog. “What’s wrong?”
“My uncle died.”
“Fuck.” Jay sat on the step, hugged me toward him. “Should we get rid of everyone?”
“No, I don’t want everyone to know. It’s just... I haven’t seen him in, like, sixteen years. I can’t believe he’s dead.” Even as I said it, it still didn’t feel real.
“I can set off the smoke alarm, light a match under the sprinklers. That will get everyone out.”
I forced a laugh. “We don’t have sprinklers.”
“Okay, then, a fire in the trash can? Nothing dangerous.”
My smile grew strained. “Please don’t set our apartment on fire. Really, I just want to not think about it for now.”
Jay didn’t seem convinced, but he lifted me off our stoop and led me upstairs. Before we walked into the apartment, he wrapped his arms around me.
“One word and they’re all gone,” he promised.
But as soon as we were back inside, one of Jay’s friends lured him into a circle with the thick promise of a blunt. The walls had begun to sweat. Our couch and coffee table had been pushed against the wall, enlarging the dance floor. My old roommate spotted me from across the room and dragged me onto the dance floor where bodies coupled, their limbs entwined as they swayed to the music.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Billy, the scavenger hunts he’d crafted in my backyard, the adventures we took together across the parks and beaches of Los Angeles, the presents he bought me abroad—beaded jewelry from South America and electronics from Japan. I wondered what had happened to those gifts, if they were still in my parents’ house, if Mom had thrown them out long ago.
Jay’s arms appeared around my waist, swinging my body almost to the beat. I tried to move with him as one, but I was distracted by Mom’s words—I’m sorry, too—how quickly she’d rushed off the phone before revealing the depths of her grief.
And as suddenly as Jay was there, he disappeared again, to the far corner where there was a commotion over something that had broken. My limbs grew heavy as they mimicked the movements of those around me. Jay crouched down to pick up whatever had fallen, cradling it as he carried it toward the bedroom. The song ended and the couples surrounding me danced to the rhythm of drunken conversations as they waited for the next song to begin. I shut my eyes and saw Billy, his conflicted smile. What was it he called me as a child? “My special girl?” No, “my favorite girl.” There’s my favorite girl, he would say before whisking me off on one of his adventures.
The music kicked in. I tried to get swept up in the rhythm of the room, but I was lost in thoughts of Billy, his lessons on geology and biology and evolution disguised in adventure. He’d taught me almost everything I knew about the world, how it had shifted and collided and evolved, how our lives were shaped by the movements of the earth. I stopped moving and opened my eyes. Of course. I didn’t know how I’d missed it. My legs felt like lead, but I forced them to move, jostling between the gyrating couples until I reached the kitchen. The blonde on the greeting card still smiled from the refrigerator, only I now knew as much as she did. Understanding prepares us for the future. Those were Billy’s words. It was something he said to me after my first earthquake.