I went back to the cantina the next day. The beach was starting to get crowded and I didn't really know where else to go. I'd gone into the Solar Café but Roger and Nancy weren't there. There were a couple of people sitting at the counter and a middle woman with bad highlights and leathery skin taking orders. I thought about asking hers what happened to Roger but I didn't. When she saw me standing in the doorway she told me to sit anywhere but I just said thanks and left. It didn't feel the same.
I was just finishing lunch when the waitress came over with my check. Instead of putting it down, she slid into the chair across from me.
"You're not a surfer."
"I could be a surfer."
"Could be, but you're not."
"Why do you say that?"
"Cause I know all the surfers around here and I don't know you."
"Is this were you get all local pride on me and tell me this place is only for surfers?"
"No. Just wanted to say hi." She smiled and held out her hand. "So what are you in town for? We don't get many of the vacation types this far down the beach."
"I used to come out here four, maybe five years ago. I don't remember this place though."
"This is our second year." A couple of girls in wetsuits came in, their hair dripping on the rough wooden floor. "I've got a table. See you tomorrow?" She asked, dropping my check on the table.
"See you tomorrow." I said.
That afternoon I noticed how much things had changed. Antique furniture stores and high-end clothing stores had moved in. The coffee places were corporate chains now. They were the kinds of places Sarah had hated and had refused to shop in and now they'd taken over. Even the cafes, which had been small and maybe dingy but had had character, had been redone. Barristas in khakis and white shirts had replaced the kids with Mohawks and bondage belts that used to bring us our food. I felt a stupid walking around Main Street trying to find something that felt familiar. Eventually I gave up and went back to the campground. I walked passed the trailhead and headed for the cliffs.
Sarah's parents had asked me to come to the funeral. They had wanted me to talk about the Sarah I knew, the one they never got to know. At first they had been polite, their messages simple requests because they knew how much we meant to each other. When they didn't hear back from me their requests turned to demands and eventually to begging and bribery. They offered to pay for me to spend my whole summer on the coast. They promised to put me up at the Seaside, anything I wanted. But even if I had gotten their messages they had it all wrong. This was the last place I'd wanted to come. Even now, walking along that path four years later I found myself thinking that if I could just get to the top, she'd be standing there with her arms wrapped around herself to stay warm as the fog rolled in over the ocean. I thought about turning around to save myself the disappointment.
By the time the funeral came around I was halfway across the country, head rested against the passenger side window while Ryan drove. When I had walked out of the hospital my dad had already booked a ticket to come get me. I kept telling Ryan that I wanted to go home but when we got to our dorm, I just sat in the car and told him to take me to the airport. He called my dad because he didn't know what to do with me. He didn't want to put me on a plane by myself and I wouldn't get out of his car. In the end he did the only thing he could think of. He started driving. It took four days and when he dropped me off in front of my house my dad was standing in the doorway, waiting for us. Ryan only wanted to stay long enough to sleep and eat before he turned around to start driving back. He was sure that he needed to get back for finals. My dad wouldn't let him leave, saying that was crazy. Ryan called the honors counseling department and explained what had happened. The story about a freshman who killed herself had already broke and after my dad faxed them my medical records and they saw that Ryan was my roommate, they said he could take his finals whenever he got back.
I didn't get her mother's messages for almost a year. They'd left them on the answering machine that Ryan and I shared at school. The first one was left while I lay in a hospital room counting ceiling tiles. Ryan didn't know what to do with the tape. He told me later that he didn't want to delete the messages, even though by the time he got back to school the funeral had long passed. But he didn't want to send me the tape either. I couldn't sleep, couldn't talk, the last thing I needed was a tape of Sarah's mom alternately begging and demanding that I speak at a funeral I hadn't gone to.
He held onto the tape until I moved back to school to start my sophomore year which was his junior year, I was now a year behind him. I didn't know if I was going to be coming back to school but after staying home and working with my dad for all those months, I wanted a change. I called Ryan to tell him and he said he'd get us an apartment, if I still wanted to live with him. I almost cried with relief. He didn't tell me that his last roommate didn't work out. An alcoholic with a pension for peeing himself when he was passed out, Ryan was all to happy to get out of the dorms.
When I moved back in with him, he handed me the tape and told me what was on it and he thought I should just trash it. I didn't take his advice, listening to it late one night while he was out. I threw it away the next day.
When I reached the top of the cliffs I found the flat rocks overlooking the ocean where we used to sit and I stood by them looking out. It was still sunny but already the fog was coming in. I could feel the soft cold bite of the wind changing. There were sailboats off in the distance, nothing really visible except for the white triangles of their sails as they streaked so easily across the horizon. Sarah had loved them. We would bring lunch up there and sit here for hours watching the boats until it got too cold to stay. She'd never been on a sailboat before but she wanted to own one.
"Don't they look so free?" She'd ask me. "We could go anywhere we wanted and we'd never have to come back."
"You don't know how to sail."
"You can teach me."
"I don't know how to sail."
"How hard can it be? You can learn." She'd say and laugh and I never said it but I would have learned to sail for her even though she was just kidding, trying to get a rise out of me. I would have done anything for her, I realized now.
I stood there for a long time, until the wind picked up and whipped my t-shirt around me. I didn't realize I was crying until I could feel the tears cold against my cheeks. By then it was too foggy to see the boats anymore but I didn't want to leave. I stood until it started to get dark. Then I headed back to the Seaside.
In the room I sat down and started to write. By midnight I had written everything I could remember about her. I think Sarah's parents had stayed in the same house, they'd called my dad at some point and given him their address and phone number. That was during the year I lived with him. I'm not sure why they did that, whether it was their way of reaching out or if they thought maybe he could force me into talking to them.
He didn't give it to me right away. Those first couple of months that I was back were rough for both of us. I wasn't talking much and I was sleeping all the time. I had nightmares and started sleeping with the TV on in my bedroom. When that didn't help I would sleep on the couch in the living room. I looked for anything that was a distraction.
He wanted me to talk to someone, which surprised me. I never thought of him as the 'talk about your feelings' type. After my mom neither of us had gone to talk to anyone but then, we'd had each other. This was something he watched from the outside and I didn't know how to let him in, even if I'd wanted to. Sometimes I couldn't say anything because when I'd open my mouth I was afraid I'd just start screaming and I wouldn't be able to stop.
Eventually though I began to sleep less and talk more. It took three or four months. I couldn't stand to be alone though and I asked for my old job back. I had worked with him during the summers in high school and I started doing that again. On the weekends we'd go out and work on the plane in the garage. We get up late and make breakfast then go out and get started. All year we worked and by the end of that year it had started to take shape. He put his pilots license on hold when I had come back and now we had almost a full airplane in the garage with no one to fly it. After I returned to school, he picked it back up. When I went home the next winter break he was flying and instead of doing Christmas with his brother we spent the whole break flying down the coast, just checkout out whatever small town we could find near a runway.
It was a few weeks after I started working with him that year that he came into my room one night. He handed me the note with Sarah's parents' phone number and address, like I didn't know it.
"They called for you a few months ago but I didn't think you'd want to talk to them then so I saved this. You can do with it what you want."
"Thanks."
"I know you were involved with their daughter and all and nothing against her, I know what she meant to you, but her parents are fucked up something bad." I looked at him for a long moment then just started laughing. I laughed until it hurt and then I started crying. He hugged me to his chest until I stopped. When I pulled back my nose was running and we smiled at each other. It was the first time since I'd been back that I'd laughed or cried.
He didn't tell me all the details of the phone call then. Sarah's mom had dumped her life story on him the moment he picked up ending the story by saying that she and her husband had been in the process of separating when Sarah killed herself. After the suicide they stayed together although she didn't say why. Just that things were getting better between them. I suppose after a thing like that you hold onto whatever you can. My dad had listened to the whole story not wanting to be rude, but after that particular piece of unsolicited honesty he just hung up on her.
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Chapter 22 | Suicide and Keg Stands Index | Chapter 24
Posted by Ben Corman at 8:34 AM