Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

I used to find Jeff out here sometimes a few years ago, and again lately, stuffed into a swing, his arms wrapped around the metal chains, staring off into space.

Tim sits in a swing and motions for me to sit in the other. The stiff rubber gives under my adult weight, cutting into the backs of my thighs, reminding me of the scratchy dress I’m still wearing. The itch of grief.

Tim’s swing creaks back and forth, screaming for oil. Last year’s leaves are gathered under our feet, rotting into earth. A chore we never got to.

“You want some?” Tim asks as the grainy smell of alcohol hits me. He’s holding out a fifth of something dark, wiping his mouth with the back of his other hand.

“I’ve been looking for that.”

“How could you be? I brought it with me.”

“No, I mean something like that. All the alcohol seems to be missing.”

“I noticed.”

“My mother,” I say, and he nods in agreement.

He passes the container to me and I take a swig. Jim Beam, I realize as soon as it hits my throat. An old flavor, full of memories.

“That’s awful.”

“It was the only thing I could find at my parents’ house.”

“You think they keep it to dissuade guests from drinking?”

“Maybe.”

“Sometimes I think it wouldn’t take much to turn this town into the one in Footloose.” I take another burning swallow. “Anyway. Thanks.”

“Wasn’t that town called Bomont?”

“It’s not about the name, doofus.”

“Put a girl in a swing and suddenly she’s using terms like ‘doofus.’ ”

“If the swing fits.”

I twist the creaking, rusting chains, like I used to do as a child. I twirl and twirl and twirl—and release! I’m twirling in the opposite direction. The world blurs, my brain goes dizzy and feels loose in my skull.

“What did he want?” Tim asks when I come to rest.

“Who? Marc Duggard?”

“The one and only.”

“To give me Jeff’s effects, and to tell me that they’ve closed their investigation. Accident. Unavoidable. ‘One of those things.’ Did you know the woman who did it is in the hospital?”

“Was she injured?”

“They’re worried she’s going to kill herself.”

“Maybe they shouldn’t try to stop her.”

“Tim!”

“What? You don’t think she should pay for what she did?”

“What’s it going to change?”

“That’s a weird thing for you to say. Whatever happened to ‘light ’em up’?”

“Did I ever say that?”

His feet push at the ground. He sways slowly. “Many times.”

“That was a long time ago. Another lifetime.”

“We only have one lifetime.”

“Right.”

“Do you know who she is?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. Someone from out of town.”

I look down at my own feet. I raise my toes up and try to dig them into the mud, but the ground won’t give.

“Are you going to forgive her?” he says.

“I can’t think about that right now. I’m still trying to forgive myself.”

“What does that mean?”

I look at him. His face is flushed from the alcohol and the cold breeze.

“Do I have to say it?”

He holds my gaze for a minute, then takes another drink.

“It’s not the same thing, Claire. It never was.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he gives a big push backward, leaving the ground, arcing through the air, then jumps from the swing, landing gracefully on the ground, sticking the landing like a gymnast.

He stands in front of me, blocking the wind. And now, for the first time, the day feels warmer than it is.

When I get back inside, I decide it’s time to finally get out of these clothes. And the thought of climbing into bed, pulling the covers over my head, over this day, is there too.

And Seth. I want Seth.

I pull Beth aside and let her know where I’m going, ask her if she can handle the people who don’t seem to want to leave. She agrees to see that the guests get out of here eventually, sooner rather than later.

Upstairs, I go first to our room, my room, and change into an old pair of flannel pajamas Jeff always used to make fun of me for wearing.

“But they’re so comfortable,” I’d say.

“You look five,” he’d reply, then nuzzle his face into my belly. “And you smell like the cottage. Like mothballs.”

The pajamas did date from our cottage days, a rickety old house thirty minutes away that wasn’t winterized and seemed to be slowly sinking into the ground. Everything in that house smelled like beach towels that had never quite dried, and the occasional mothball we found in the back of a closet, left over from its grander days when my grandmother kept fur coats there for special occasions.

We played dress-up in those coats, Beth and I, wrinkling our noses against the mothball tang, ladying around in our mother’s high heels while our parents bickered downstairs. These pajamas smell like memories, mostly good ones. Ones from before life became something too complicated to be fixed by a juice Popsicle pulled fresh from the freezer.

Seth is in his room, lying on his car bed that was super cool when he was seven, and has now become almost kitsch. Something a hipster might choose if he was discovering irony. Only Seth is twelve and his father’s just died and I doubt he’s thinking much about irony these days. Either way, he needs a new bed.

His back is propped against the headboard, a pillow at a weird angle, and he’s reading a book. A slim volume I don’t recognize.

“What you got there, buddy?” I ask as I sit down next to him, my feet in the same direction as his.

“Dad’s book.”

I lean my head against his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“That book of Dad’s. You know, the one I got the poem from.”

“Oh, right. Where’d you find that again?”

“In his bag.”

“His golf bag?”

“Nah, his travel one. He never unpacked from that trip he took a couple of weeks before…Anyway, just like Dad, right?”

I smile. Jeff’s the worst unpacker in the world.

“What’s the book about?”

“She seems to have a thing for trees. And snow. She likes snow.”

I take the book from him. It’s called Just This Side of Childhood and contains about fifty poems. On the back is a black-and-white picture of a girl about Seth’s age—the National Spoken Word Champion of the previous year. She has long dark hair and a pale face, and something about her straight-on stare seems familiar. Only with more confidence, if that makes any sense.

Zoey Underhill.

What was Jeff doing with this book?

Seth takes it from me and goes back to the page he was reading.

“You enjoying that?”

“Dunno. Makes me feel a bit better.”

“Because it was Dad’s?”

“Maybe.”

“You want me to leave you alone?”

“No, you can stay.”

“Okay, then, I’ll stay.”

I pull up the covers from the bottom of the bed and tuck them around us. I close my eyes and listen to Seth slowly turning the pages, muttering a word or two out loud.

The wind is rattling against the panes, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I can hear the creak of the unoiled swing.

Will you play a game with me? Jeff wrote to me about a month after we’d come back into contact.

Since those first few email exchanges, that first phone call, I’d felt a fizzy excitement, carbonated, letting loose little bubbles of happiness. A crush, a work crush, I’d tell myself when I opened his profile to figure out the exact color of his eyes, or when he’d race through my thoughts at odd moments. He was fun, and I needed that. And I was different with him, I felt different with him, and I needed that too. Friends, we were friends, and if our interactions had secretly become the best part of my workday, that was play, pretend, nothing to worry about.

What kind of game? I wrote back.

Word association.

Like in Psych 101?

Nah. Well, maybe. There’s this thing I read about on the Internet and I thought…I’m curious what you’ll say.

You were reading a women’s magazine, weren’t you?

I smiled as the email floated away from me, imagining his indignant snort.

If you’re not going to play nice…he wrote.

I’ll be a good girl, I promise. How does it work?

I send you a word, you write back the first thing that comes to mind, and so on.

Is there some kind of scoring mechanism?

Sure, that comes at the end.

I put my phone on do not disturb.

All right. Hit me.

Distill.

Moonshine.

Really?

I shook my head as I typed.

Aren’t you just supposed to ask me the next word?

Right. Okay. Sunshine.

Day.

Off.

Crazy.

Your current score is crazy.

I thought you could only check the score at the end?

Yeah, yeah.

I glanced at his picture. It felt like he was smirking at me.

This was your idea, remember? I typed.

Motherfucker.

Excuse me?

Sorry, he wrote. That’s really the next word.

Where did you find this thing?

The Internet, I told you. Answer please.

My answer is: Really.

Totally.

Seriously.

Yeah.

Wait, I wrote. Are we still playing?

We are. Yeah is the next word. Promise.

Okay. That’s my next word, for clarity.

A long pause while I drummed my nails on the desk.

Hello? You still there? I wrote.

I’m still here.

Is there no next word? Or does the computer say that I’m an axe murderer?

No…there’s a next word.

Well, what is it then?

You sure you want to know?

Of course.

Another pause. Then: Sex.

Sex? Really?

Really.

Huh.

What?

I never would’ve thought you could get from distill to sex in so few words.

His answer felt instantaneous.

I might’ve gotten there sooner.

My heart was suddenly racing.

What’s that supposed to mean?

Just…God. Forget it.

What were you going to write?

The pause was so long I was about to type another prompt.

Probably better left unwritten. Unsaid.

Oh, right. Yes. Probably.

Unsaid, but not unthought?

It was my turn to pause.

Not unthought, I wrote eventually, my fingers sweaty on the keys.

When the cab from the airport drops me at home, the windows are fogged from the unrelenting rain that feels like it’s been falling for days. The storm drain outside our front walk is clogged with last year’s leaves, and a puddle that looks like it has ambitions to be a lake is blocking the way.

The cabdriver helps me navigate the walkway, along with my hastily packed suitcase, but without an umbrella I’m soaked through to the skin before I get to the front door.

Brian must hear me fumbling with the keys in the lock because he has the door open and is pulling me into the house before I can do it myself.

“Where’s Zoey?” I ask.

He looks like he hasn’t changed clothes since yesterday, or shaved. And though he hides lack of sleep well from many years of experience, I’m guessing he hasn’t had much of that either.

“She’s upstairs in her room. Sleeping, the last time I checked.”

I move toward the stairs, the water running off me forming puddles on the hardwood floor.

“Let her be. She needs to sleep.”

My hand rests on the banister. The adrenaline that’s been propelling me since Zoey’s tearful voice came through my revived phone dissipates. I feel like I could sleep for a week.

“Is she okay?”