Page 5 of Into the Deep Blue

The Monterey trip is supposed to happen on the first anniversary of Mom’s death—like a pilgrimage except, I haven’t been able to pull the trigger and book anything. Now Nick’s waiting for a hotel link, so I have to deal with this ASAP, and I want to, but . . .

What if the weather is bad?

What if it’s a total waste of money?

What if my car breaks down? What if Dad gets lonely? What if the hotel has bedbugs?

And then there’s Nick. It’s one thing to crash at his house. We have a routine. It’s familiar. But going away for an entire weekend together and staying in a hotel? It’s kind of freaking me out, and I don’t know why.

When I get home, Dad’s asleep on the couch in an undershirt and his work pants. His navy paramedic’s shirt is crumpled in a heap on the floor, and there’s a hardcover of Eat Pray Love open across his chest. Dad usually reads the news, never books, especially not Mom’s books, so I’m not sure what to make of it.

Three giant portraits are on the wall behind him. Mom’s work, black and white and double-exposed. They’re supposed to be “artsy,”

but all I see are ghosts watching us.

He stirs awake and lets out a yawn, eyeing me over the top of his reading glasses. Dark inky bags hang under his eyes.

“How’s Nick?”

“Same,”

I say, kicking off my shoes by the door.

“Angry with a strong breeze of bitterness.”

“I feel like I should do something. Should I talk to his dad?”

“Why would you? You don’t even know his dad.”

“Know he’s an asshole. Leaving his kid all the time.”

I wait for the irony to sink in, but it doesn’t. My dad, the paramedic, recognizing and treating others’ distress, yet blind to it happening right in front of him. I could light myself on fire, and he still wouldn’t notice. But Nick, he’s concerned about.

Dad thinks Nick is one of those people who wil.

“do something crazy.”

I told him that’s just how Nick is, he’s not th.

“do something crazy”

type. He just internalizes until he fizzles out. Then Dad reminded me that things need to explode before they fizzle out.

I point to the book on his chest.

“I don’t think Mom liked that.”

“That’s why I’m reading it.”

He picks it up, shielding his face.

I still don’t get it. Everything he does these days is backwards, a winding of an empty spool, instead of the slow discovery of where it went in the first place.

“There’s veggie lasagna in the fridge. I ate already,”

he calls out as I head into the kitchen.

A single slice of cold lasagna on a plate is the embodiment of sadness. I slide the plate into the microwave and watch it go around in a slow circle. Everything in our house is sad now. It lingers like greasy film, impossible to scrub away, the four chairs around the table, the fruit bowl, now filled with clutter, the Mom’s Kitchen magnet on the fridge. She’s everywhere, but nowhere, and the realization hits just as hard every time.

Every. Time.

The microwave beeps. The plate is a million degrees when I take it out, but the lasagna is still cold in the middle. It doesn’t matter. I eat it anyway, standing over the kitchen counter. Standing seems to hurt less.

“May stopped by,”

Dad says. He puts the book on the coffee table and heaves himself off the couch, lumbering into the kitchen with a hand on his lower back. He fishes a container of strawberry ice cream from the freezer.

“Really? Why?”

“Looking for you. Said you had plans. Said she would text.”

I dig my phone from my pocket. I forgot I had it on do not disturb.

“Nooo! She’s going to kill me. We were supposed to grab lunch.”

I fire off a text.

So sorry

Was at Nick’s

Long story

She texts bac.

“It’s OK, ILY”

with a heart emoji a second later.

“She’ll get over it. Want some?”

He holds out the container, and I take a giant scoop with his spoon.

I notice a small, open shipping box on the kitchen counter.

“What’s in the box?”

“What’s in the booox,”

he cries out like Brad Pitt in “Seven.”

This is our thing. He would have totally appreciated my Hannibal impression from last night.

I peek over the edge. A small, silver handheld camera sits inside.

“Your mother’s camera,”

Dad says, like it’s no big deal, as he digs out another scoop.

Except it’s kind of a huge deal. He’s staring at it in a daze, probably thinking the same things I am. Are there pictures of her last minutes alive, before her convoy rolled over the IED? Was she still taking pictures after? It may as well be a bomb. Leave it to a war to create an explosion strong enough for the debris to rain down a continent away.

“I thought everything was destroyed.”

“Apparently not everything. It was being held in a processing facility in Poland, and now it’s here.”

“Are there pictures?”

I ask, putting my plate in the dishwasher.

Dad eyes the box like something is alive inside of it.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to look?”

He thinks about it for a second and puts the tub of ice cream back in the freezer.

“No. It’s yours if you want it.”

But, I don’t want to touch it, at least not now.

“I’m going upstairs, I’ve got some stuff to do.”

“Picking your courses?”

he asks hopefully.

The absolute last thing on my mind.

“Monterey,”

I answer, and immediately regret it.

“You’re serious about that?”

“I am.”

“Don’t you think . . . ”

I can tell he’s choosing his next words carefully.

“It’s not the best use of your time?”

“Dad, you’re reading Eat Pray Love.”

He raises his hands in defense.

“Okay, okay, but I don’t know what you think you’ll find out there.”

“I could say the same to you.”

He smiles. I think that means I win.

My phone buzzes from the counter.

Nick: You home?

Shit. The hotel link. I need to book this, like now.

“Everything okay?”

Dad asks as I hurry out of the kitchen.

“Yeah. It’s just Nick,”

I mumble, texting him back.

Me: Walking through the door now

Nick: Bullshit

I run upstairs, flop onto my bed with my laptop and google Monterey hotels.

Nick: I can’t wait to find out how long it takes to research and book a hotel in Monterey

Me: Just digging up the confirmation email

Six hundred results fill my screen. Why are there so many? I eliminate the chains, lower the price range, and the list shrinks considerably. I zero in on a small motel. It looks a little sketchy, with its white stucco exterior and grounds that are little more than a parking lot, but it’s close to the ocean, and the rooms are renovated in shades of oceanic blues. The reviews are mostly positive, and the cancellation policy is generous. I book it—a lifetime record for me. When the confirmation email lands in my inbox, I text Nick the link.

Nick: I’m impressed

Me: I don’t know what you’re talking about

Nick: We don’t have to go you know

Me: I want to go

I think. I think I want to go.

Me: What are you doing?

Nick: Sitting at my desk in front of a blank screen

Alex got to him with the victim’s statement. I knew it. He talks a tough game, but he’s really a giant marshmallow.

Me: Noooo stop

Not tonight.

Nick: Nothing to stop

Me: Your self-torture

Nick: That continues regardless

Me: If it makes you feel any better, my

version of a bucket list showed up today

Nick: ?

Me: Mom’s camera from that day

The day she died. I can’t even type the words. There’s a pause before he types back.

Nick: You okay?

Me: Well, you know . . .

How it feels to never be okay, but you have to be because you’re alive and a level of function comes along with that.

Nick: Yeah, wish you were here

Me: Yeah, but my room is way comfier than yours

Nick: Goodnight,

I miss him already. Sometimes, it feels like Nick lives on the flip side of my heart. That he’s the upbeat, the oxygen that reinflates everything. He gets it—this lost-in-space feeling we’re trapped in because no matter how many times we call out to ground control, nobody answers.

I slide my laptop onto the floor and pick up Mom’s photo album from my nightstand. A narwhal is sketched on the cover in light blue ink, with two black dots for eyes and a horn bedazzled with seven carefully glued sequins. She even drew a simple blue line to make it smile. A giant red heart encircles the whole thing with The Narwhal written above in calligraphy. She was a photojournalist and only shot in black and white, so when I found this wedged in the back of her closet three months after she died, it seemed odd for three reasons:

1. The super happy rainbow-vomiting-unicorn equivalent of a cover.

2. The fact that it was hidden in the back of her closet.

3. The photos.

It’s full of objects from this one bar, and they’re . . . in color. Some are double-exposed, Mom’s signature, but this album doesn’t fit. Mom isn’t a smiley narwhal drawing kind of person.

Was not. Still working on that.

Dad said the photos were part of a college project she did twenty years ago, but school projects aren’t circled in giant red hearts. He gave me a location—Monterey. That was all he told me.

I flip through the pages for the millionth time. There’s a red bar stool with silver studs around the seat, a worn wooden floor covered in black scuff marks, a jukebox lit up like a rainbow, and amber bottles of liquor lining the wall. Six pages of details.

When I close the album, Mom’s narwhal grins like it’s guarding a secret, dangling a key for me to find. I googled it. The Narwhal is still there. It exists—so I need to see it.

I put the album back on my nightstand and switch off the light. Doubt seeps in with the darkness.

We don’t have to go, you know.

What if Nick doesn’t want to go?

Maybe he just told me.