Content warning:
This book contains depictions of
mental and physical abuse,
drug abuse, racism,
eating disorders, and self-harm.
For further information, please see
the back of the book for resources.
July 11
I’ve always felt relaxed in airports.
I don’t know why, but the chaos that eats away at everyone else’s well-being creates a dome of serenity around me. I guess that’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. In airports, I’m compact. Boiled down to the few items I’ve chosen to take with me. I know where I’m going, I know what I have with me, and I don’t need anything else.
Airports used to be my favorite place to write. The solitude that I feel when I’m completely surrounded by strangers is better than uppers. I have a notebook hidden in my coat pocket, but I don’t take it out. I don’t have time, anyway. My grandparents are already at the airport, driving around so they don’t have to park. I poke my head out between other travelers and find them.
Always there’s that jolt—that moment when all the features come together, and a stranger becomes a relative. Makes a person wonder how big of a difference there actually is between the people they’ve known their whole life and someone they’ve never met. I wave, and they pull over.
Hugs first, and then, “You’ve gotten so thin!” from my grandma.
“I haven’t lost a pound,” I say, shrugging. “They weigh us every morning.”
My grandfather shrinks away from me, and from the unfortunate circumstances that have brought me to stay with them for the summer. And, possibly, forever. But he soldiers on, tacitly letting me know we will not talk about it. Not even if I need to.
“Let’s put your bags in the car,” Grandpa says cheerfully. “Where are the rest?”
“This is it,” I tell him, wheeling my carry-on to the back of their Range Rover.
“But you’re staying for the whole summer, right?” Grandma asks, confused now. She’s the type of woman who changes her clothes multiple times a day. Her morning ensemble is always business casual, though she’s never had a job. Then comes the gardening gear, complete with a wicker hat and mud clogs, even if she’s just going out to stand there. And she still dresses for dinner. Always wears jewelry to the table. Nothing ostentatious, but enough to be noticed.
My grandfather tries to help me with my bag, but I won’t let him. “I can do it, Grandpa,” I say with a smile, and then I hoist it into the trunk easily.
“You pack light,” Grandma says, while I settle into the back seat and put my seat belt on.
“Summer clothes,” I say. “If I remember right, it gets hot out here when it isn’t raining.”
Trust the weather to soothe their WASPy souls.
Grandma and Grandpa eagerly launch into a diatribe about the weather in the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. They have all their descriptive adjectives honed. Every simile has been carefully chosen. They lavish the never-ending rains of western Washington State with all the fiery contempt of true love. The weather is their solace. As a topic of conversation, it safely delivers us back to their summer home on the edge of the forest.
It’s not the largest house set back from the street. There are other big constructions dotting the fringes of the wild, but my grandparents’ Tudor revival place has a cozy storybook feel to it. And it’s buried the deepest, tucked right in between the ocean and the forest, which are the two things that make this a summer destination for the stupid wealthy. The working-class people who live in this town year-round would never have a house right here. They couldn’t afford it. We go down their long drive, and the updated two-story springs into view among the tangle of trees and moss.
“Your garden is lovely, Grandma,” I say. It looks almost wild, except for the artfully placed splashes of color and the perfectly tiered native ferns and perennials.
“I could use some help with the vegetables out back,” Grandma offers, making it clear that the flowers in the front are hers.
“I’d be happy to help,” I say.
My grandmother punches a long code into the alarm panel, and we go inside. We have Long Island Iced Teas in the salon. Mine is virgin. Theirs definitely aren’t. My grandparents hold firm to their inalienable right to cocktail hour, like it’s written somewhere in the Constitution. I look around at the Chippendale furniture, Great-Grandma’s collection of Fabergé eggs, and…oh yes, the Degas that hangs so casually on the far wall in its hermetically sealed protective frame as I listen to my grandparents talk. They’re thinking of selling after this season and buying a new summer home in Santa Barbara.
“Are you really thinking of leaving?” I ask, just to make conversation.
“The area’s changed a lot… That reminds me—I’ll have to give you the code for the door,” Grandma says primly. “It’s not like it used to be when we summered here with your mother, or even when you were younger, and you used to spend July with us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I tell them. “Everyone says Santa Barbara is lovely, though,” I add. It’s bad manners to linger on depressing things. I’ve grown up changing the subject as soon as anyone says anything unpleasant. It’s expected.
When I’ve finished my refreshment, I take myself to the guest room I used the last time I stayed with them four summers ago. As soon as I open the door, it’s like I’m thirteen again.
I laugh under my breath at the frilly bedspread and the smell of powdery, girlish perfume that still emanates from a neon bottle left on top of the vanity. I was so determined to make it my signature scent back then that even the walls soaked it in.
All the furniture is white. The wallpaper is thick, alternating pink and white stripes. It’s not a tacky room. My grandparents would never allow me to choose tacky furniture. But how strange that this used to be me. Or the me I wanted to be, I suppose.
“There are still some clothes in the dresser,” my grandmother says quietly. “And a lot of pretty sundresses in the closet that you could still wear.”
I open the closet at Grandma’s urging and notice that, yes, it is stocked with very pretty sundresses. They’re young-looking, but they’d still fit. I grew up, not out, as I got older, and most of that length was in my legs.
“Everything is perfect,” I say. “Thank you for keeping it just as I left it.”
Her eyes shoot over to the writing desk, tucked snugly into the dormer window, betraying her misgivings about leaving it.
“Did they give you a schedule for your medication?” she asks quietly.