The Darkest Joy Read online

  I sigh, adding plumber’s tape to the list.

  I sling my backpacklike purse across my shoulder, head outside, and start up the bus. It zings to life beautifully.

  It’s colder than a witch’s tit on the shady side of an iceberg, I think, stuffing my hands between my knees.

  I let off the clutch and the bus lurches forward. I put it in first gear and crank down the hill.

  I make the solitary trek to town, which, as I live at the very end of East End Road, requires nearly fifteen minutes of winding driving. And though I’m from drippy Seattle where everywhere you look is a tapestry of greenery, I can’t help but notice the majesty this rugged place possesses. I carefully avoid handling the memories of Aunt Milli too intimately but her voice breaks through without my permission.

  The mountains are like jewels made of ice, Milli whispers inside my brain.

  My eyes move to the Kenai Fjords and their glacial peaks rise to my left, the long finger of Homer Spit, the world’s largest natural sand spit, holds its rows of small shops . . . and fishing boats moor to those mountains like an anchor at its feet.

  I tear my eyes away from the same view that’s just outside that dirty cabin I’m now living in and move into the parking area of Safeway.

  I get out of the bus and slam the door. It shrieks as I do, protesting.

  Pulling out my list, I write: W-D 40. Awesome invention, I think.

  I walk toward the glass door and pass some girls who are my age, their long dresses brightly colored with metallic thread picking up the low light of the morning and glittering as they move. Their skirts sweep the ground as they pass by me. One of them turns and looks at me, her deep eyes framed by a vaguely Amish-style cap with thin cotton ties. The girl stares.

  Sees something she knows, maybe.

  She says something in a language I don’t recognize.

  I look away. Sometimes strangers will recognize my sadness intuitively, though I try to hide it.

  I ignore my feelings of uneasy grief, as per usual, going through the automatic glass doors of the grocery store.

  I’ll just grab what I need, then rush back to my lonely little cabin where I can breathe, like an asthmatic without an inhaler. Solitude gives me oxygen.

  Just keep breathing.

  I don’t dwell on the precept that existing is not the same as living.

  I died that night five months ago, along with my family.

  TWO

  I collapse backward on the couch and watch a plume of dust explode into the air, colliding with the dust motes that already float.

  Yuk.

  I fold my arm underneath my head, crossing my feet at the ankles, and scroll through my phone until my finger lands on Lacey’s image. I tap her face and wait as the dialing continues. I’m about ready to tap end call when she picks up, out of breath.

  “Brookie,” Lacey answers in a voice tinged with relief.

  “Yeah,” I say, a small smile on my face at just hearing her voice.

  “I told you to call right away, lame-ass,” she chastises, her voice at once distant with a touch of desperation and that “I need a Brooke fix.”

  I sigh, recrossing my legs as I watch the dust settle again.

  “Uh-huh . . . I was totally wiped.”

  Lacey gives a grunt of disapproval. “Well? How is . . . it?”

  I look around at the countertops littered with products from my supply run, the filth in every corner, the showerhead in the bathroom doing a slow, sporadic drip.

  “It’s . . . a dump.” I give a small laugh and it comes out sad.

  The open phone line’s ongoing buzz sounds during the pause of our conversation. “Oh, Brooke . . . come home,” Lacey says in an insistent voice and I clench my eyes, the heat of my sadness burning like acid behind my eyelids.

  “No,” I reply quietly. The relocation hasn’t muted my sadness, my guilt . . . but at least I no longer have to contend with the torment of familiar surroundings that inspire too many memories, that turn my sadness into unbearable grief.

  The silence stretches. Finally, I fill it. “It’ll be really quaint when I put in some elbow grease . . .”

  “Quaint?” Lacey asks in a disbelieving tone and as usual she doesn’t think anything’s good enough for me.

  “Charming?” I add hopefully, though my tone belies my words.

  “Those are terms that people use when something could be cute if it was torn down and rebuilt.”

  Exactly. Out loud I answer, “It’s not so bad. There’s heat . . . kinda. And there’s running water.”

  More silence.

  “Like, was no running water really a possibility?” Lacey asks.

  I see the roof of the outhouse from my perch on the couch. “Yes,” I say with real feeling.

  “Okay,” Lacey says, and I can see her shoring up, the mental image of her folding her slim arms across her chest, blowing an errant strand of light hair out of her face as she tries to resolve my chaos for me. Typical Lacey mode; she’s always been there for me that way.

  I don’t want my broken fixed. If I’d wanted resolution I’d have stayed in Seattle and faced whatever music was there.

  Instead, I fled.

  “Send me a pic of your car,” she demands.

  I groan. This just keeps getting worse. Sometimes I want to lie. But I don’t; my honesty is as brutal as my circumstances.

  “God, what now?” Lacey asks.

  “Well . . . the guy I bought it from thought he’d do me a favor and give it a quickie paint job.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s his idea of hippie chic.”

  “Oh for shit’s sake, it can’t be that bad.”

  I look through the haze of grime on the windows and can make out the bus from fifty feet away; the bright colors are beacons of tackiness.

  Pretty bad.

  “Hang on,” I say, then slipping off the couch I shove my feet into my Crocs and step out onto the porch. Like some scene from a movie a ray of light pierces the cloud cover, dousing the bus with its strobe of light.

  I hold up my phone, click, then hit send.

  I wait for the inevitable.

  “Oh. My. God!” Lacey shrieks in my ear and I take the cell away from my ear.

  “Right?” I agree, wincing at her pants of hyperventilation.

  “It’s like someone puked paint on your car . . .”

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  “Sorry,” she finally says in resignation.

  “Thanks,” I reply, but I’m smiling, thinking about how happy Tucker had been, thinking he’s doing me a good turn.

  A pause then, “So what do you think? Really?”

  I look around at the cabin . . . the open pasture that rolls to the woods as they stand watch over the cold sea. I can vaguely hear waves crashing on the rocks below.

  “I think Alaska can get in your blood.”

  “Huh? Really? Don’t you miss . . . everything?” Lacey asks.

  My family.

  “Not really,” I lie.

  “Huh,” she replies, not believing anything. “Turnouts for Juilliard happened,” Lacey says casually.

  I knew that. Late April—for entrance in the fall.

  I swallow past the painful lump that forms like a soft rock in my throat. The sea breeze tears through the open posts as I stand on the porch. The freshness of the air is indescribable. It’s full of sea and green, and it’s just . . . clean. I suck in a lungful, my cheeks wet.

  I say nothing and the conversation stalls.

  “Brooke . . . are you, have you . . .”

  “No,” I answer in a short, chopped-off syllable. “I told you, I’m not playing again.”

  More silence.

  “Don’t stop calling me, Brookie. Don’t let what’s happened stop . . . us.”

  My hand grips my cell, that thread of our friendship pulling taut between us. It’s from before and it hurts. A million memory fragments swirl in my head like dandelion seeds caught in the wind. I se
e the Barbies, then the boys, the late-night talks, the tears . . . each one shared, every milestone of our adolescence shared. It hurts so much because when I think of Lacey, my past knocks on the door of my memories. When things were normal. We went from playing dress-up in our mothers’ clothes to actually dressing up to growing up, separate but together. Lacey is feeling the sting of my defenses. The barricades I’ve put up are impenetrable. I don’t want anything breaking past them. Even her right now.

  I breathe.

  “Brookie . . . I love you,” Lacey says in a low voice, needy.

  Breathe.

  “I love you too,” I say and mean it. Then suddenly it hits me deep in the gut that she’s the only person left in the world I can say those words to; say them and mean it. “Gotta go.”

  My finger hovers over end call, swiping it smoothly.

  I take a deep, gulping breath as the wind swoops in, biting at the tears that run down my face. It doesn’t care about my sadness—nature moves forward, the world spins. Tragedy doesn’t stop the world.

  Just my world.

  You wouldn’t think it’s bright in Alaska. You’d imagine igloos everywhere and polar bears running free underneath a pewter sky that’s pregnant with snow.

  It’s just not like that.

  I’ve been here for three days and still find myself trying to acclimate to the cold and fiercely fresh bite in the air, the brightness of a sun that sits low on the horizon but stays lit like an eternal flame. I throw my sunglasses on the instant I slide into the bus, the newly oiled door closing almost soundlessly as I get in. I take the mainly dirt road to town.

  East End Road is known for its seclusion and beauty.

  I watch the fjords run parallel to me as I drive, rising up like ice kissed by the palest blue as the ocean shimmers at its feet. My eyes move to the road, then unerringly they float back to the view. I note the nutmeg-colored sand of the Homer Spit bisecting the sea as the sandbar extends its finger into the ocean depths. Fathomless . . . secret.

  A sea I’ll be fishing in soon.

  I swallow over the sudden dryness in my mouth. It had all seemed so easy a few months ago when none of it was real yet, when one hand gripped the solid brass key that eventually would lead me to Aunt Milli’s Alaskan homestead and the other searched through the want ads for work. I remember exactly when I hit upon just the right wording, its vagueness and ambiguity calling to me:

  Looking for adventurous, hardworking male/female, age 18–25 for seasonal employment. Must be adaptable.

  Murder forces one to adapt. Check.

  I’d answered the ad and gotten the job. Chance Taylor had asked for my résumé via our email correspondence and I’d lied through my teeth—alarmingly easy to do without face or voice and only the click of the keyboard for accountability. All those summers that Joey stayed with Aunt Milli and I’d come up with every excuse under the sun not to, has come full circle. I feel like I owe it to my family to do what they would have done . . . had they been here. And it cultivates my desire for forgetting superseding my morality in a clean one-two punch. Motivation and evasion are a deadly combination.

  Did I have deckhand experience? Why, yes. Did it count that I’d watched people fish in Puget Sound from my family’s back deck? Probably not.

  Did I get seasick? Hell if I knew.

  Did I have problems working in close quarters with others? I didn’t used to.

  Could I use a gun? A bat? I thought of my family’s murders. Odd questions that had caused a low thrill to unfurl like a sail upon a mast.

  Yes, I was pretty certain I was up for that.

  Mr. Taylor didn’t sound too friendly, didn’t want my picture, didn’t ask why I was moving from Seattle to Homer. Hell, my only truth in the whole thing had been that I was female and twenty-one.

  Well, almost twenty-one.

  I smile as I cruise up the spit. It looks so small from the top of East End . . . but it takes almost six minutes to drive to the other end. I make a large loop at the gas tank farm, condos standing at its tip like an afterthought, blocking the view of the beach.

  The sand of the beach isn’t brown, I think as it appears from a distance . . . it’s charcoal-colored, like pebbled smoke on the ground. I park the bus and step out, the wind this far out on the spit snapping the color to life on my cheekbones.

  I need a hat, I think, remembering the one that Tucker wore when I met him. I understand better now. A wool hat in May. I shake my head in wonder. Summer’s almost here but Alaska’s bitter hold on winter can still be felt everywhere, the icy tentacles of the season loath to let go just yet.

  I walk to the only wedge of beach I can see, the state ferry slapping against the pilings driven into the ground that hold it tight against its moorings. I take in the brutal beauty of the place, and I feel like I’m truly at the end of the earth. I feel the pull of the tide against my body, calling to that fragment of soul that still cries for life, that despair can’t snuff out. It’s the only part of me that still wants to live. The rest is just pretending. I walk down the gentle slope of beach pebbles, held in rough swaths of finely ground sand that is a mixture of many different shades of gray. Every color in that elusive spectrum emerges in the beach that looks like stormy salt. The sky is blue overhead as the seagulls swirl around their position as stewards over the big ferry. A horn sounds and I glance at my cell . . . noon. My stomach rumbles and I sigh, not wanting to leave the bosom of anonymity that this small stretch of beach has given me. But I feel my list of supplies crinkling in my hand and I trudge back to the bus, reminded of why I drove into town in the first place. I’m pacing myself. One trip for household and one trip for fishing gear. Baby steps. The heavy burden of my guilt-tinged grief makes even minor chores feel insurmountable. I read it for the fifth time, my eyes scanning the unfamiliar garments:

  Slicker plus bibs

  Xtratufs

  Carhartts

  Wool hat (I smile at this.)

  I start the bus, the heat kicking on as I drive back down the spit to Kachemak Gear Shed, the local catchall of hardware and, I guess . . . fishing apparel.

  I move through the doors. My eyes scan the interior where hanging dead animals line the walls. Their glass eyes follow me as I peruse shelves filled with gear for fishing and every other outdoor recreational activity I can imagine, and some that I can’t.

  Hardy group, Alaskans, I think. My hand runs over the folded stacks of bright orange plastic slickers, suspenders sold separately.

  A guy around my age with wild hair and hip-hugging jeans walks up and gives me a quick head-to-toe. “Help ya?”

  I nod, handing over my list and he looks at it. Then his eyes meet mine again, a friendly moss green, his errant shock of dark blond hair stuffed underneath a Monster Energy Drink cap parked backward atop his mane. “Deckhand?”

  I nod. “Yes . . . How do you know?”

  He smiles and chuckles. “It’s like the pat uniform for ’but fishing.”

  “ ’But fishing?” I ask.

  He glances over his shoulder with a critical eye, gauging my size even as he responds. “Halibut fishing . . .” he says with a raised brow, already deep into sizing me up. He stacks a set of bibs, size small . . . unisex, on top of a pair of the ugliest brown boots I’ve ever seen.

  “Are those the . . .”

  “Xtratufs? Yeah,” he replies, kicking up a foot, and I see he’s wearing a lovely pair himself.

  “Do you fish?” I ask, confused as to why anyone would ever wear them. Voluntarily.

  “Nah . . . but they’re great all-round footwear.”

  I look at them again, unconvinced.

  He gives a low chuckle and sticks out his hand, shifting my pile. “Evan.”

  I smile. “Brooke.”

  “You’re not from around here, are ya?”

  I cast my eyes down, feeling sort of exposed. “No . . . Seattle.”

  He gets a thoughtful look, palming his chin, his other arm holding my gear load. “Brooke
from Outside . . .”

  I laugh. “Outside?”

  Evan smiles. “Yeah, people who aren’t from Alaska.” Then his eyes take in my Seattle mix of jeans with bling, so skinny they’re more like leggings, my almost black hair piled up in a messy bun on my head, and a slow grin spreads across his face. “How long have you been in Homer, Brooke?” Evan asks over his shoulder as he walks my gear to the cash register.

  “About half a week,” I say.

  His eyes sweep to mine then shift to the pile of purchases he thumbs through, mentally ticking things off my list. “Size six on the Tufs?” I look at the boot critically, then kick off my ballet flat and jam my foot into the sucking vinyl ugliness. I move my toes.

  “Feels big,” I reply. Evan squats down, his face close to my feet and I blush. Awkward.

  He presses his finger between my toe and the end of the boot.

  A sudden swelling grief grips my throat and my chest tightens.

  My mom used to do that.

  Evan stands, giving my boot-encased foot a contemplative stare. “Looks about right . . . With a wool sock it will feel snug but not tight . . .” He looks up and sees my face.

  “What is it?” he asks sharply, his eyes scanning my face.

  The pocket of grief rips open, the vulnerable stitching torn. This is the nature of grief. A small, seemingly insignificant comment or memory comes to the surface in an unguarded moment. You’re helpless against it. Like the tide, it washes over you and however much you cling to the rocks, the ocean breaks you down with its tireless cycle, until the bits of you are carried away on the current.

  “Hey,” Evan says in a low voice, dumping the rest of my purchases onto the counter.

  I can’t breathe.

  He sees it. “It’s okay, Brooke . . . whatever it is, it’s okay.” He grips my shoulders, staring into my eyes, and I notice his have flakes of brown like sprinkled sugar, swimming in the forest green of the irises.

  I take a great swooping breath. Then another. He breathes with me like we’re in a Lamaze class or something.

  I regain control then give a shaky laugh.

  Evan releases my shoulders, his eyes searching mine. “Did I flip some kind of switch . . . trigger?”