Relative Strangers by Paula Garner

Author:Paula Garner [Garner, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780763699611
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2018-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

When the sun started to peek out from the vast swaths of gray, Luke took me outside. We wandered around in the wet grass in our unzipped coats, looking for clues, bits that might spark something buried in the far depths of my mind. I felt like I almost had a memory of the birdbath, where apparently I used to slap at the water with my hands, but it could easily have been anything — a different time, a scene from a movie, the power of imagination fortified by longing. I didn’t at all remember the rose garden. Or a swing set that was no longer there. Or the crib in the garage, which had been Luke’s before it was mine.

Back inside, he showed me pictures of my old bedroom. Pictures from holidays. Pictures filled with things I didn’t remember.

It was exhausting, the tax on my mind, on my memory. The expectations, the silent pressure to recognize something, anything. It was too much for one day. What I wanted was a long nap, but we had a dinner and evening to get through. By 5:00 the sun sat on the verge of the horizon. Mima was still resting, and I hadn’t seen any sign of Buddy, either. Maybe he stayed with her when she rested. He seemed totally devoted to her. A more opposite upbringing I could not have had.

I made Luke play piano for me. I sat next to him on the bench. Occasionally his upper arm would skim past my breasts as he reached for the lower keys, shaming me with confused feelings of pleasure and yearning. I should have leaned back, more out of his way. But I didn’t want to. I wanted that contact. Everything he did felt so good.

I forced myself to focus on his playing. I was mesmerized by his command, by the movements of his hands, the invisible intricate matrix of nerves and impulses that resulted in such beautiful sounds. Already my thoughts were turning toward the countdown, the bits of time we had together before I would return to Maplebrook and he would return to Appleton, three hours away from me. I tried to enjoy being near him in the moment rather than obsessing about being apart, but it was there now, hovering around the edges and coming into focus. But we still had a night ahead. I would gladly stay awake all night to have every possible moment with him. I hoped he’d also want to stay up late. Just us.

After a while, Buddy came down and found Luke and me in the breakfast nook with the photos I’d brought — two slender volumes whose contents petered out almost completely by the time I was eleven or twelve.

“Can I see?” Buddy said.

I nodded, and Luke and I scooted over so Buddy could sit on my other side. I was a sad excuse for a narrator. Most of the pictures were of just me, and there wasn’t a lot of story to them.

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