Chapter 18

Aiden

Having my parents back in the house is strange, disconcerting. When I’d first come back here, I’d thought it’d surely been a mistake to move in, to live in the place where we’d all been as a family. It’s a small place, all one floor, but it’d felt huge and soundless to me, and I’d find myself repeating these routines of my parents’ that I didn’t even know I’d internalized—before bed, checking all the locks in a certain order, like Pop always did. In the morning, opening the back door to let extra light into the kitchen, like Mom did.

Now that they’re both here—my dad flying up just two days after Mom and I returned from Stanton Valley, a special request, I’m guessing, in the aftermath of my fuckup—I find that they’ve remembered all those routines, taking them over for me while I move through the house, quiet and devastated, angry and defeated.

I’m not going to get the campground.

That much was clear, of course, after the presentation itself, the way Paul and Lorraine had looked back and forth between me, Zoe, and my mother. For Zoe and my mom they’d at least seemed to have sympathy. But for me? Disappointment, through and through, and I’d thought nothing could be worse until Paul had called me yesterday evening, one week since the most disastrous, humiliating revelation of my life.

“We both want you to know that it isn’t about your plan for the camp,” he’d said, his voice so much more gentle than I deserved. “And it isn’t about your not...you know. About your not having a family. We both want you to know that we’re sorry if we gave you that impression—”

I’d cut him off, barely able to stand him offering any sort of apology to me. “You didn’t,” I’d said. “This was all my doing.”

He’d told me that they’d talked it through a lot, that the campground had meant so much to them, almost their whole lives. That while they hoped I’d find a place for the Wilderness/Wellness camp, they weren’t sure if I was ready for something like this. “I bought that land when I was twenty-three years old,” Paul had said, the pride in his voice unmistakable. “I bought it for her, to give her something she would love, and we’ve loved this place like it’s something that came from us, together. It’s important to us that the next owners have a similar ethic in mind.”

I’d heard that like a bomb blast—so loud that it’d deafened me to everything the rest of the day except for my own thoughts. Wasn’t it love that had inspired me to go after the camp? My love for my lost brother, my best friend, the other half of me that I couldn’t save? I’d worked it over in my mind, again and again, but I’d kept coming back to the same thing.

I hadn’t done it for love.

I’d done it for guilt. For grief and pain and the determination that I could fix something after so many years of not being able to fix the very worst thing in my life. I’d brought Zoe in on it, and it didn’t matter what I felt for her now. What mattered was what I’d felt for her then, how I’d brought her there under false pretenses. How I’d used her. Convenient, I remember telling Charlie and Ahmed. Willing. Available. After all that had changed between us, after everything she’d invested all on her own in helping me, I’d basically called her a means to an end in front of people she’d come to like and respect. It makes me sick to think of it. It had, actually, made me physically sick, that afternoon at the lodge. Once I’d realized she’d gone, I’d run out onto the porch, had seen Sheree’s car driving away, and dry-heaved in panic over the railing.

“You don’t want anything?” my mom says from across the table, where she’s been sitting for the last twenty minutes, silently working at the word jumble in the paper and occasionally looking up at me in concern. I pretend not to notice, to be interested in the front page, but I haven’t turned the page for as long as we’ve sat here, same as I haven’t touched the bowl of oatmeal she set at my elbow.

“Not hungry.”

“You’ve got a long shift ahead. You should eat.”

I wonder if Zoe’s been eating, I think, picturing her in the seat I’m in now, tidily eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while I glowered at her, every feeling I had toward her then the wrong one. I stand up, the bowl in one hand. “I’ll get something on the way in,” I lie. “You think Pop’ll want this?”

“Maybe,” she says. Pop’s outside, raking leaves, still ten times quieter than he used to be but even I can see that something’s different about him. Maybe it’s the house, getting back into the routines of his old life. “Aiden, sit down here with me for a bit.”

“I’ve got to get going.”

And I really, really do. Right now work’s the only thing holding me together, the only place I feel useful. But even work’s not easy—Ahmed and Charlie know that things have gone wrong, and the only thing I can say about that is that neither of them have bothered to say that they told me so. Instead they pick up a lot of my slack, doing all the extra, anal-retentive chores I usually take care of—inventory and fridge clean-out and equipment testing. And they tread lightly, particularly after Tuesday’s shift, when Ahmed told me that the night before, he’d run into Kit and Greer coming out of Betty’s. No sign of Zoe, he’d said, though they’d had takeout bags with them. I’d felt my chest compress under the weight of all the questions I had no fucking right to ask.

But then we’d got a call, Mrs. Gilchrist again in another new nightgown, and I’d been spared from even trying.

“Just for a bit,” she says. “You look tired.”

Seems like there’s been no point in sleeping, either, really. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Even when I’m foggy headed and bone tired, I see her, that gray-faced shame I’d seen in her when my mother had said, You’re with this person? I’d said nothing—nothing at all—to defend her.

I slide back down into my chair, too tired to bother arguing. I’m in this house like a ghost, not even in my own body. It’s not even the phantom-self feeling I used to get, right after Aaron was gone. It’s worse, if that’s possible, as if I’ve compounded the loss.

It feels as if there’s no self there at all, no part of me that I can rally to care about what’s coming.

My mom takes a deep breath, pushes her word jumble away. “I know you’re disappointed about the camp.”

I keep my eyes down on the table, my hands clasped loosely across my stomach, waiting for this to be over. There is not one thing worth explaining to my mother about my disappointment, about how little of it has to do with that fucking camp.

“But you’ll find another location, Aiden. I know you will. You made a mistake, getting that woman involved, and I’m sure that was a big part of the problem, and—”

“Mom,” I say, for the first time realizing that I do, in fact, remember how it feels to care. I run my hand up the back of my neck, over my hair, inhale through my nose before I speak again. “I did make a mistake. But Zoe is not even one single shred of a part of that mistake. What she did, how you know her—that is not her.” I pause, take a big breath through my nose before blowing it out on a frustrated sigh. “Or—you know what? It is her. It’s part of her, same as the part of her that wanted to fix it, and if I hadn’t fucked everything up she’d have had a chance to say her apologies to you and Pop and get on with her life. It’s me that was the problem.”

“Well, I doubt that,” she says, defensively.

“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t doubt it. Don’t make me into the perfect son here, Mom. I have never deserved it less than I do right this second.”

“Honey, all of us, even Paul and Lorraine, we understand what you were trying to do for your brother.”

I push back from the table, taking up the bowl again and dumping it into the sink, relishing the clank it makes. “I wasn’t doing it for him,” I say, turning and leaning back against the counter so I can see the surprise register on her face. “I was doing it for myself, to feel better about what a shit job I did when he was alive. To make it okay that I couldn’t save him.”

Mom is silent, her mouth slightly open, her eyes darting to the back door, where my dad still rakes. She doesn’t want him to hear this, but oddly enough, I get the feeling he could take it.

“The only good that came of it was her,” I say, quietly. “I’m sure you don’t believe it. But with her—I felt like myself again, for a while.”

“Aiden,” she says, her voice disbelieving. “Do you…love this woman?”

Involuntarily, I laugh—it’s a dark, ugly thing, short and scornful. “Yeah, Mom,” I say, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, because, at least to me, it is—now it is, at the worst possible time, now that I’ve lost her. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes before I let them drop back, curling them around the edge of the counter behind me. “It hurts how I love her.” I can feel how I’ve steeled my middle to say it. That’s where it hurts, right in the center of me.

“Hurts all the time?” she asks, quietly.

I think about being with Zoe, at the campsite. The way I’d loved to watch her, right from the beginning—the way I’d loved it, even when I thought I was hating it. The way she made me laugh—out-loud prayers and peanut-sized ticks and Cocktoberfest and marshmallow stuck in her hair, every time she called me on my shit or served me up a steaming hot plate of you’re-being-an-asshole, every time she called me Boy Scout. “No,” I say. “Hurts since she’s gone.”

“Well,” she says, and then repeats it. I wish I could say there was some understanding there, some way I’ve gotten her to change her mind. But I can’t tell what she’s thinking, can’t tell if she’d ever have room for forgiving Zoe, and that’s a damn shame. It’s what Zoe had wanted from me, more than anything, that first day, and I wish I could go back and give it to her.

“If you knew her,” I say, because it feels like I have to say it, some last thing I can do for Zoe even though I’ve lost her. “You’d see her the way I do. She’s funny as hell and ten times smarter than me on her worst day. She’s loyal and she works harder than anyone I’ve ever met. On herself, on whatever her friends need, on whatever I needed from her.”

She doesn’t say anything, looking down at her hands and then back out to the yard. I don’t have time to stick around for what she may or may not have to say in response. I say a quick goodbye, grab my keys and phone, and head out.

I doubt I’ve convinced her, but I guess it doesn’t matter.

* * * *

When I get home that night, my dad’s in the pink chair, swiveled to face the flat-screen, one of the few possessions I’d brought back from Colorado, though I haven’t watched it much. Seeing him there brings a fresh sting of pain to my chest, the way he’s so passive. He’s barely acknowledged my coming in. “Hey, Pop,” I say, clapping his shoulder as I pass by him on my way to the kitchen, same as he used to do to me. It’s late, past 11:00 p.m., so I know Mom’s been in bed for at least an hour, and she’s left a container of food for me on the counter, a sticky note stuck to the plastic cover with instructions on how to microwave it, like she’s forgotten that I’m a grown-ass man, living on my own for over a decade. It’s nice, of course, how thoughtful she is, but holy shit, I wish I was alone here. I don’t feel like being taken care of, not right now, and especially not by my mother, not after our tense exchange from this morning.

Still, a man’s got to eat, especially after almost thirteen hours on duty, so I heat up the plate.

I bring it out to the living room, set it on the coffee table in front of me while I lower my aching, sorry ass to the couch. I’ve got the next two days off, a good thing for my body, I suppose, though I don’t relish the thought of negotiating this house with both my parents in it for forty-eight hours, and they’ve said nothing about when they plan to leave. On-screen is some kind of police procedural, a big, broad-shouldered bald guy in a leather jacket and a badge showing on his hip lecturing a room full of rookies about contaminated evidence. My dad looks completely enraptured.

“You like this show?” I say, and he grunts an acknowledgment.

Normally I’d let that go, but something about that noise he makes is so familiar to me. I know it’s because I’ve made the same one a hundred times, clammed up and barely engaged and trying not to let loose all the shit I’m really thinking, and the only person who’s never let me get away with it is Zoe. “What’s it about?” I ask, and shove in another forkful of—fuck, I don’t even know what this is, some kind of hamburger-potato mash that’ll probably keep me up with heartburn. I chew slowly, waiting for his answer.

I feel my dad look over my way, but I keep my eyes on the plate, not wanting to push him. “This cop’s gone bad,” he says. “Everyone thinks he’s great, but he’s got some kind of situation with a hooker and a bunch of illegal guns.”

“Nice,” I say, which makes no fucking sense, but at least we’ve had some semblance of a conversation.

I finish off my food, take a big gulp of water, and sit back, watch with him for a while. I don’t much like this kind of show, but something about it ends up being pretty soothing—the cop’s gone bad in general but in specific he’s about to bust some asshole who beats on his kids, and I guess that’s something. When the credits roll, my dad looks at his watch, taps his finger lightly over a button on the remote, not changing channels or shutting it off, just—contemplating, I guess. “You know, I think he loves that hooker,” he says, out of the blue.

“Probably don’t call her a hooker, Pop. I don’t know if people say that anymore.”

He shrugs. “I know you think I watch too much TV.”

I look over at him, surprised. This isn’t what we do, me and my dad. We don’t talk about the stuff that there’s good reason not to acknowledge. “I didn’t say anything.”

He mutes the TV, clears his throat. “Guess you probably don’t see it so much, but I watch less than I used to. I like this show and another one, one your mother’s got me into about a lady park ranger.”

“Pop,” I say, shaking my head, the first real smile I’ve felt in days twitching at my mouth. I’d pay good money, all my fucking money, to see Zoe’s face when my pop said “lady park ranger.”

To see her face at all, I guess, if I’m being honest.

“I’m doing a lot better than I was, you know,” he says, and he reaches up, wipes his eyes. Fuck, he’s crying again, and I drop my eyes back to the now-empty plate. “I go to those meetings sometimes, the ones your mother likes. And I got someone I see down there in Florida, someone who helps me with things. Take a lot of walks with your mother.”

“That’s good.” I swallow twice, then clear my throat. That choking feeling again, and I push the plate even farther away from me, wishing I hadn’t eaten.

“All different ways people get over things,” he says, pushing up out of his chair and tossing the remote at me. It lands with a slap on my chest, then falls to my lap. “You’d better figure out yours.”

He looks down at me for a second, one brief nod of his chin—a poor substitute for affection, but I’ll take it. I watch him walk toward the front door, unlocking and locking the deadbolt, then leaning his shoulder against the door until it makes this little click of approval. I watch him move down the hall, hear him do the same at the back door. The routine completed, he heads back to bed, his footfalls quiet on the carpet.

For what feels like a long time, I don’t even move. I stare right at that muted television, not registering anything that’s on the screen. I’d thought I was getting over it, I guess, or maybe I thought there was no getting over it, and so I hadn’t really tried. The camp wasn’t trying, not really—the camp was just me running, running to something else so I wouldn’t have to stop and look around me, to really catalog everything I’d lost. And so look what I’d done, look how I’d fucked everything up, the very same thing Zoe had warned me about all those weeks ago, driving back from the campground after the first weekend I’d been with her, been inside of her. She’d told me it was easy to make mistakes. She’d told me about her own.

She’d tried, so far as I would let her, to stop me.

There’s that pain in my middle again, breath-stealing. I’d done wrong by her, not just because I brought her in on this mess with the camp, a mess she’d agreed to for her own reasons. I’d done wrong because of this mess, the mess that’s inside of me ever since I got that call, the last call for Aaron. The call I’d known was coming, somewhere deep down inside me. I’d known it was coming years before it actually came. I’ve been fucked up and grieving, too scared to face it, too willing to let her take the lead in getting me out of my own head.

I shut off the TV, set the remote next to my abandoned plate, and stand, my eyes running over every piece of furniture, every lamp, the old carpet, the curtains my mother made back when Aiden and I were in ninth grade.

It’s like being in a museum.

I walk out of the living room, down the hall to where I had my office set up, where I’ve blown up an inflatable mattress so my parents can sleep in my—their—room. I stare down at it, this sad-as-fuck bed, twin size, basically a life raft, smaller and less comfortable than my camp bunk. I hear my dad moving around in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. When he’s done, he does this little cough, and it sounds so much like Aaron that I bend down, yank the edge of the mattress, sheets and all, toward me. At first I’m just trying to cover the noise, but pretty soon it’s clear to me what I mean to do with this air bed, and I don’t even care that my dad sees me pull it out into the hallway, his brow barely wrinkling before he gives me another nod of acknowledgment and turns toward his room, closing the door behind him.

It’s awkward, doing this—I’ll have to go back for the pillows, and the fitted sheet pops off, bunching everything else with it. But I drag it across the hall, reaching out behind me with one hand to open the door to Aaron’s room, pulling it all the way in until I can lay it right down there in the center. It’s sad in here; that’s all there is to it. On the walls you can see faint outlines from where pictures used to hang. If I open the closet door, I’ll see a badly drawn Yakko from Aaron’s probably too-long Animaniacs phase. If I close my eyes, I think I can still catch the smell of him—not his deodorant or cologne or the cigarette smoke that used to cling to him there at the end, but him, skin I knew as well as my own, skin that was my own.

Yeah. It’s fucking sad.

But I think it’s time I lived in it for a while.