Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You

Someday, when she’s ready, she’ll pull the curtains, gather the clothing from the bureau, stack the books from the floor and pack them away. She’ll wash the sheets, open desk drawers, empty the pockets of Lydia’s jeans. When she does, she’ll find only fragments of her daughter’s life: coins, unsent postcards, pages torn from magazines. She’ll pause over a peppermint, still twisted in cellophane, and wonder if it’s significant, if it had meant something to Lydia, if it was just overlooked and discarded. She knows she’ll find no answers. For now, she watches the figure in the bed, and her eyes fill with tears. It’s enough.

• • •

When Hannah comes downstairs, just as the sun is rising, she counts carefully: two cars in the driveway. Two rings of keys on the hall table. Five sets of shoes — one Lydia’s — by the door. Though this last causes a sting, just between the collarbones, these sums bring her comfort. Now, peeking through the front window, she sees the Wolffs’ door open and Jack and his dog emerge. Things will never be the same again; she knows this. But the sight of Jack and his dog, heading for the lake, brings her comfort, too. As if the universe is slowly returning to normal.

For Nath, though, at his window upstairs, the opposite is true. Awaking from his deep and drunken sleep, the whiskey purged from his body, everything seems new: the outlines of his furniture, the sunbeams slicing across the carpet, his hands before his face. Even the pain in his stomach — he hasn’t eaten since yesterday’s breakfast, and that, like the whiskey, is long gone — feels bright and clean and sharp. And now, across the lawn, he spots what he’s sought every day for so long. Jack.

He does not bother to change his clothes, or to grab his keys, or to think at all. He simply pulls on his tennis shoes and barrels down the stairs. The universe has given him this chance, and he refuses to squander it. As he yanks open the front door, Hannah is merely a startled blur in the front hall. For her part, she does not even bother to put on shoes. Barefoot, she darts after him, the asphalt still cool and damp against her feet.

“Nath,” she calls. “Nath, it’s not his fault.” Nath doesn’t stop. He’s not running, just marching with a fierce and angry stride toward the corner, where Jack has just disappeared. He looks like the cowboys in their father’s movies, determined and tense-jawed and unshakable in the middle of the deserted street. “Nath.” Hannah grabs his arm, but he keeps walking, unmoved, and she scurries to keep up. They’re at the corner now, and both of them see Jack at the same moment, sitting on the dock, arms wrapped around his knees, the dog lying beside him. Nath pauses to let a car go by and Hannah tugs his hand, hard.

“Please,” she says. “Please.” The car passes and Nath hesitates, but he’s been waiting for answers so long. Now or never, he thinks, and he jerks himself free and crosses the street.

If Jack hears them coming, he doesn’t show it. He stays there, looking out over the water, until Nath is standing right over him.

“Did you think I wouldn’t see you?” Nath says. Jack doesn’t reply. Slowly, he gets to his feet, facing Nath with his hands tucked in the back pockets of his jeans. As if, Nath thinks, he’s not even worth fighting. “You can’t hide forever.”

“I know it,” Jack says. At his feet, the dog utters a low, moaning whine.

“Nath,” Hannah whispers. “Let’s go home. Please.”

Nath ignores her. “I hope you were thinking about how sorry you are,” he says.

“I am so sorry,” Jack says. “About what happened to Lydia.” A faint tremor shakes his voice. “About everything.” Jack’s dog backs away, huddling against Hannah’s legs, and she’s sure now that Nath’s hands will unclench, that he’ll turn around and leave Jack alone and walk away. Except he doesn’t. For a second he seems confused — then being confused makes him angrier.

“Do you think that changes anything? It doesn’t.” The knuckles of his fists have gone white. “Tell me the truth. Now. I want to know. What happened between you two. What made her go out on that lake that night.”

Jack half shakes his head, as if he doesn’t understand the question. “I thought Lydia told you—” His arm twitches, as if he’s about to take Nath by the shoulder, or the hand. “I should have told you myself,” he says. “I should have said, a long time ago—”

Nath takes a half-step closer. He is so close now, so close to understanding, that it makes him dizzy. “What?” he says, almost whispering, so quiet now that Hannah can hardly hear him. “That it’s your fault?”

In the second before Jack’s head moves, she understands what’s going to happen: Nath needs a target, somewhere to point his anger and guilt, or he’ll crumble. Jack knows this; she can see it in his face, in the way he squares his shoulders, bracing himself. Nath leans closer, and for the first time in a long time, he looks Jack right in the eye, brown on blue. Demanding. Begging. Tell me. Please. And Jack nods his head. Yes.

Then his fist smashes into Jack and Jack doubles over. Nath has never hit anyone before, and he’d thought it would feel good — powerful — his arm uncoiling like a piston. It doesn’t. It feels like punching a piece of meat, something dense and heavy, something that does not resist. It makes him feel a little sick. And he’d expected a pow, like in the movies, but there’s hardly any noise at all. Just a thump, like a heavy bag falling to the floor, a faint little gasp, and that makes him feel sick, too. Nath readies himself, waiting, but Jack doesn’t hit back. He straightens up, slowly, one hand on his stomach, his eyes watching Nath. He doesn’t even make a fist, and this makes Nath feel sickest of all.

He had thought that when he found Jack, when his fist hit Jack’s smug face, he’d feel better. That everything would change, that the hard glob of anger that has grown inside him would crumble like sand. But nothing happens. He can still feel it there, a lump of concrete inside, scraping him raw from the inside out. And Jack’s face isn’t smug, either. He’d expected at least defensiveness, maybe fear, but in Jack’s eyes he sees nothing of that. Instead Jack looks at him almost tenderly, as if he’s sorry for him. As if he wants to reach out and put his arms around him.

“Come on,” Nath shouts. “Are you too ashamed to hit back?”

He grabs Jack by the shoulder and swings again and Hannah looks away just before his fist meets Jack’s face. This time, a trickle of red drips from Jack’s nose. He doesn’t wipe it away, just lets it drip, from nostril to lip to chin.

“Stop it,” she screams, and only when she hears her own voice does she realize she’s crying, that her cheeks and her neck and even the collar of her T-shirt are sticky with tears. Nath and Jack hear it too. They both stare, Nath’s fist still cocked, Jack’s face and that tender look now turned on her. “Stop,” she screams again, stomach churning, and she rushes between them, trying to shield Jack, battering her brother with her palms, shoving him away.

And Nath doesn’t resist. He lets her push him, feels himself teetering, feet slipping on the worn-smooth wood, lets himself fall off the dock and into the water.

• • •

So this is what it’s like, he thinks as the water closes over his head. He doesn’t fight it. He holds his breath, stills his arms and legs, keeps his eyes open as he plummets. This is what it looks like. He imagines Lydia sinking, the sunlight above the water growing dimmer as he sinks farther, too. Soon he’ll be at the bottom, legs and arms and the small of his back pressed to the sandy lake floor. He’ll stay there until he can’t hold his breath any longer, until the water rushes in to snuff out his mind like a candle. His eyes sting, but he forces them open. This is what it’s like, he tells himself. Notice this. Notice everything. Remember it.