go to Jacksonville to take care of it.” There’s more that he isn’t saying. I can hear it under his words.
I lie back and say, very still, very quiet, “I can only imagine what that was like, and I’m so sorry it happened. But it’s not okay to get edgy with me or take it out on me or make me feel like some kind of inconvenience. And it’s not okay to ghost me. The first thing I’ll think is that it’s something I did or that you’ve changed your mind or that you’re fucking things up because this is good, you and me, and I’d rather just know what the real story is. You be honest with me; I’ll be honest with you. I’m talking this is you; this is me. Take it or leave it.”
He holds my gaze for a second. “Shit.” He turns his eyes back to the sky. “Okay.” He sighs. And I can see him thinking and struggling and trying to figure out what to say. Finally he goes, “So I’m used to it. It happens. It’s been happening all my life and I’m there, I show up, I handle it. But I’m supposed to have eight weeks this summer here on this island. Just me. Eight weeks. That’s all. Two months for me to be here and do the work I need to do without having to go take care of everyone.”
“What about your brother? He’s older. Can’t he help?”
“Was older.”
“What?”
“My brother was older.”
Before I can ask what happened, if this is the heartbreak he’s alluded to that he’s not ready to talk about, he says, “It’s the first summer I haven’t ferried home every weekend. I’m getting ready to go away for a year, and they need to get used to me being gone. But how can I go away when my mom needs me? The thing is, she’s sick but not sick enough to not know what she’s doing. ‘So now that you have this fancy life, you’re just going to turn your back on us? Do you want to tell your ten-year-old sister that you don’t care about her enough to stay here and look after her, or are you going to leave just like your dad? Who do you think put up with you all those years you were causing trouble? Of course you want to be there with all those rich people instead of here where I raised you.’ ” He exhales as if he’s been holding his breath. “This is going to sound stupid, Captain, but I just want to be eighteen. Free to fuck up and make my own decisions and not be an adult all the time. It’s like, what if I go away and something happens, something worse, and I’m not there? Or what if I stay in Jacksonville and nothing happens? Either way it’s shitty.”
I picture what this life would look like for him. No island. No adventures. No Jeremiah Crew lit up by the sun, only Jeremiah Crew working and worrying and withering away indoors.
“It’s your life too.”
“But it isn’t. It never has been. It’s always been someone else’s.”
I say, “My dad broke my mom’s heart. And sometimes all I want to do is give up college and stay with her and make sure no one ever hurts her again. But she’s the adult. She’s the mom. I have to go do what I’m supposed to do.”
“But the difference is, she lets you be free to worry about you. You don’t have to feel selfish if you want to go off and live your life. It’s what you get to do. I can’t even look my sisters in the eye knowing I’m going to leave them, much less my mom. The day before I came to the island this summer, my sister Channy gave me a present wrapped in a paper grocery bag. It was her favorite stuffed animal, the one she’s had since she was a baby. The one she sleeps with every night. She said, ‘I’m giving you BeeBo so you won’t have to go away.’ ”
I don’t know what to say, so I reach for his hand, threading my fingers through his. We lie there for a long time, the blue filling us both.
After a few minutes, I turn to look at him. “So what are you doing in the fall? The real answer.”
“Joining the rodeo circuit, becoming a full-fledged cowboy.”