Chapter 57 Leaving Again
CALEB
Saturday morning I woke up at five without an alarm, which was the thing that happened on mornings that mattered, my body understanding before my brain caught up that something significant was happening and declining to wait for the alarm to confirm it, and I lay in the apartment that was mine in the specific way things became yours when you chose them without anyone else choosing them first and I listened to the street below coming slowly awake.
Mom called at seven from her private number.
How are you, she said.
Ready, I said. I think. Which is probably as ready as anyone actually gets before something they have been building toward for a long time.
She was quiet for a moment.
I am proud of you, she said. Not for the contract or the evaluation or any of the specific achievements. For the person you chose to be this year. That is the thing I want you to know.
I stood at the window with my coffee.
Thank you, I said.
Take care of yourself, she said. And take care of the girl.
She takes care of herself, I said.
I know, she said. Take care of her anyway.
Eli arrived at eight with his own labeling system prepared and found that I had preemptively labeled everything to avoid the negotiation and he looked at my labels for a long moment and then said acceptable, which was the highest compliment available.
I drove to Mia's at nine.
She was on the front steps with her nursing textbook open in her lap and she was looking at it or she was performing looking at it, because she had been out there for a while, I could tell from the way she was settled into the step, the specific comfort of someone who had been sitting long enough to get comfortable, and she looked up when I pulled in and said hey, and I said hey, and I sat beside her on the step.
We did not hug immediately. We just sat in the Saturday morning with the street doing its ordinary things and the very end of August in the air, that particular last quality of summer warmth that knew its time was ending and was not trying to pretend otherwise.
Mom came out in her pink beanie and clean sweater and she put both hands on my face and held it for a moment and said nothing and then let go and went back inside.
Mia watched the door close behind her.
She is going to be okay, I said.
I know, she said.
Walter is coming Thursday, I said.
I know that too, she said.
She looked at me.
You arranged the Thursdays, she said.
In May, I said. He needed somewhere to be and she needed someone there.
She was quiet for a moment.
That is either very thoughtful or very annoying, she said.
Those are apparently my two modes, I said.
She almost laughed.
Jamie came out at nine thirty and offered his hand the way he had in March, steady and direct, and Caleb shook it and Jamie went back inside, because Jamie had learned this year that some moments did not need anything added to them and leaving two people to a moment was its own form of care.
We stood at the truck.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
There was not a right thing to say and we both knew it and neither of us tried to find one, because some mornings did not need the right words, they needed the people to just be inside them for a moment.
I love you, I said. Go.
He looked at me for a moment.
I love you, he said. Same time tonight.
Same time, I said.
Drive the speed limit.
I always drive the speed limit, I said.
Caleb, she said.
I know, I said.
I kissed her on the front step of her building the way I had kissed her all summer, like the most ordinary thing in the world, which it was, which was the whole point.
I got in the truck.
I drove through Hamilton one last time this summer, past the rink and past the cancer center and past the park and the corner where I had once stood with a phone against my ear learning things I had not known about the girl I was falling for before I knew I was falling, all of it, everything the city had been this year, and then I got on the highway.
My phone buzzed on the seat.
Mia: Drive safe.
Same time tonight, I typed back.
She replied: Same time.
I put the phone down.
I drove.
The highway stretched ahead long and straight and full of what came next and I was ready for it, I had been ready since October of the year before, and everything since then had just been the proof of that.