North Of Happy
Without Felix, I am not myself.
Shaken, I walk over to the sink, splash some water on my face. I avoid looking at my reflection, just keep my eyes down and try to convince myself that it’s all okay. When I manage to take a deep breath without it hurting, I leave the bathroom.
Right by the exit, in the little corridor between the bathrooms, I see Emma leaning against the wall. She’s in her work shirt, her hair in a bun. “Hey,” she says when she sees me. “You okay? I saw you rushing in there looking like you were about to pass out. Wanted to make sure we hadn’t poisoned you or something.” She looks over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “I probably shouldn’t say that so loud.”
I somehow manage a laugh. “Yeah, I’m okay.” Not sure I even believe that, but what the hell else should I say?
I’m expecting her to nod, lead me back to my table, say good-bye.
Instead, she pulls her phone out of her pocket and checks the time. Then she says, “Are you done eating?” I nod. “Can you give me, like, five minutes? Then wait for me outside?”
“Um,” I say. “Why?”
“I have this weird thing where if I only see someone in one location I can’t ever be sure that they’re a real person.” She readjusts her glasses so that they’re not on the bridge of her nose but out of the way, up above her forehead. Two tiny indents mark the spot where they’ve rested all day. “Plus, you’re new to town. I like showing people around. You’re free, right?”
I manage a smile. “Yeah,” I say.
“Five minutes,” she says. “Don’t bail on me.” She turns the corner. Outside, tourists walk by holding dripping ice-cream cones, changed out of their beachwear into pleated shorts and sundresses. I’m constantly on the lookout for that rising feeling of dread in my chest again, but everything seems calm within me.
Emma appears in front of me, her work shirt unbuttoned to the tank top beneath it, her bag slung over her shoulder, glasses still resting on her head.
“So, am I a real person now?” I ask, getting up.
“Yet to be determined,” she says. “We’re still too close to the restaurant. Ghosts have some range.”
“Ah, of course. I knew that.” I smirk at the irony.
Emma asks if I’ve seen the lake yet, and I admit that I haven’t even really thought about visiting it. “I saw the beach,” I offer.
“Ugh to the beach.” She looks at her phone for a second and then drops it into her bag. “Do you have any shattered dreams?”
“What does that mean?”
“Any huge disappointments? Life stomping down on you? Hope flittering away from you like sand spilling from the cracks between your fingers?”
I blink at her.
“Good,” she says. “This lake can unshatter dreams. Guaranteed. Dip a single toe in and your hopes are restored.”
She leads us away from downtown, up a street that turns into a hill. It’s a full moon, and I’m amazed by how much light it provides. There’s no real sidewalk, just the side of the road, grassy banks next to the shoulder. Few cars pass by us, and I’m constantly shocked by how quiet things are here.
“How does it do that?”
She gives me this excited look, eyebrows cartoonishly raised, goofy smile. “I want to keep it a secret but suck at keeping secrets, so we have to change the subject while we walk or I’m gonna ruin it.”
“Okay,” I say. “What about...um...” I ransack my thoughts for anything funny to say, anything that’ll make her want to keep this walk going. I look around for clues, see that it’s all moonlit shadows and trees. I finally land, somehow, on: “My brother died.”
Emma meets my eyes, and I realize what a colossally poor conversation subject this is. Emma doesn’t say anything, because I just held a pillow over this conversation’s face and watched the breath drain out of it.
“When you said ‘change the subject,’ you meant to the most depressing thing I could think of, right?”
I’m not sure if I’m digging myself into a deeper hole, but Emma laughs and says, “Yeah, that was rough. But at least now I know taking you to the lake is a good call.” We walk quietly for a while. “Is that why you had that little moment in the restaurant? Because he’s dead?”
I turn to look at her, taken aback. “Basically,” I say.
“I never had any siblings,” Emma says. “I always wanted them, though. I usually pretended friends were sisters or just made them up inside my head. They’d only show up at night, when I was waiting for my parents to get home and relieve the babysitter. I’d pretend they were taking care of me instead of whichever neighbor’s teen daughter was watching me.
“My parents are both chefs so they were always working a lot,” she says, grabbing at a long stalk of grass and twisting it in her hands. “This was back when they were still together and we lived in New York. But they could barely handle being parents and cooks at the same time, and they sure as shit couldn’t handle a marriage on top of it. Anyway, it’s probably why I always have a book on me now. I need something to keep me company.”
In the silence that follows, I glance over at Emma, seeing her face in the moonlight. “That’s also why I’m constantly inviting people to do things with me,” she jokes, not meeting my eye.
“Including near-strangers-slash-possible-ghosts that hang around your place of work.”
“Exactly.” Emma finds another nearly invisible break in the woods, leads us back out to the street. I can see the lights from downtown, and I’m surprised to see how high we’ve gone up the hill. “Wait for it,” Emma says, reading my expression. “It gets so much better.”
Near the top of the hill there’s a scenic overlook on the side of the road, but Emma leads me across the street and into the woods again. We have to fight through brambles to reach the peak, me and this girl I don’t really know.
On one side, the moon reflects off the crystalline lake that’s at the near end of the island and gives the place its name. It really does look like a needle’s eye. The moon looks like some fantastical orb that lives in the lake, only visible from this one spot. It’s as if we’re witnessing something in another dimension. To the other side there’s the town, a spattering of lights that would pale in comparison to any neighborhood in Mexico City, even its most remote suburbs.
All around us, the ocean does a weak impersonation of the lake’s reflection of the moon, the waves too disruptive for the water to be a mirror but still stained beautifully by the silver glow. And to the east, just beyond the silhouette of another island, the lights of Seattle are a haze on the horizon.
“How do you know about all these amazing spots?” I ask.
“My mom and I moved here right after the divorce. I had a lot of alone time,” Emma says. “Gave me time to explore.”
I take in the view, unable to decide in which direction I want to look. Hands on hips, still a little winded from the climb, or maybe actually struck breathless, I say, “This place is magical.”
“Yeah,” Emma responds. “I’m glad you think so.”
She’s standing only a few steps away, arms still folded across her chest, looking in the direction of Seattle. A breeze picks up, and I can see goose bumps appear on her arms.
“Look at all this, man,” Felix says, appearing at my side, putting an arm over my shoulder. “I wish I could have seen this for real.”
Go away, I think. Emma and I are having a nice moment here. We’re quiet for long enough that my words have a chance to echo in my head. Tears come to my eyes, and I have to pretend the wind is to blame.
Emma catches on to some extent, and she reaches out and gives me a reassuring forearm touch that lasts only a second but still does what it’s meant to. Then she pulls away, grabs her sweatshirt from out of her bag and slips it on as I compose myself.
Felix stands by, hands in his pockets, his gaze going from me to Emma and then out at the expanse of the island. His shirt wrinkles in the breeze, and I remember how Mom would always say the shirt was one strong gust of wind away from disintegrating. Two red bursts of blood start spreading across his chest, and though I want to look away I force myself to keep my eyes on him. I think for a second that this is it, this is when Felix leaves me. Then Felix looks down at the blood and groans. “Every time,” he says, taking out one of those stain-remover pens and starting to dab furiously and futilely at the still-growing splotches.
Felix doesn’t disappear; I’m still half-here.
CHAPTER 6
SEAWEED SALAD
50 grams rehydrated wakame
1 cucumber, julienned
1 stick surimi, shredded
¼ cup scallions
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon wasabi paste
METHOD:
Emma glances down at her phone. She looks indecisive for a moment and then types something. A little sound effect swoosh tells me she just sent a message. “We’re gonna meet up with my friends at the lake, if that’s okay?”
“Sure,” I say. We stand up, brush away the loose strands of dried grass. I hope Felix stays gone, but I hope it a little more gently this time. “That’s so quaintly small-town American, hanging out at the lake. What do you guys do there?”
“The usual. Bonfire, drinks if we can get them, or someone brings weed, or we play charades. Why? What do you do for fun in Mexico City?”
Sit on the couch alone watching cooking shows, have my friends drag me out to parties because they don’t know how else to deal with me. “Umm, I don’t know,” I say. “We have these things called comidas, where everyone from school gathers at a house for tacos and a shit-show amount of drinks. It’s supposed to be a lunch, but it’s really just an afternoon party.”
We fight through the bramble again, start to descend the hill. I still can’t believe how much I can see of the woods. Each branch and leaf is lit up as if it’s beneath a spotlight. This place feels like a fantasy, like any minute now we’ll cross paths with a group of fairies, and Emma will simply wave hello at them, used to the sight. “Parents are just cool with that?” Emma asks.
“Whoever’s hosting usually has parents out of town or something. I haven’t been to one in a while.” I think out loud. “That might just be a thing that’s specific to my school, though. My school is kind of its own world: lots of rich kids, embassy kids, people who move every two years and have lived all over the world. I’m never really sure if my experiences are typically Mexican or not.”
“Sounds like maybe not,” Emma says. “But what the hell do I know?”
We break through into another clearing, with another insane view.
“So, what else do you do?” Emma says. “Like, for fun?”
“I mostly just go to movies, I guess,” I say, with a chuckle wrought mostly from nerves. Then I add, “I like cooking.”
“Really? How come?”
I’ve answered this question in my own head for years now, as if waiting to defend myself from someone’s accusations. Maybe the way Dad treated Felix’s love of travel helped prompt the preparation. “I love food and the joys it brings people. Cooking, to me, is an easy way to provide joy to myself and to others.”
Emma cocks her eyebrow. “Good answer,” she says.
“My brother may have helped me phrase it. He was much better with words than I am.” I duck away from some low-hanging branches. “What about you?” I ask, thankful but not wanting to just keep coming back to my dead brother. “What do you do for fun?”
“I walk with ghosts through the woods,” she says with a smile, and I laugh more than I probably should.
* * *
When we get to the lake, Emma’s friends have started a bonfire. Embers float up into the night sky, and I swear to god they just keep going up and up until they stick to the night sky. There’s about ten people huddled around the pit, most holding beers. I recognize a couple from the restaurant, servers and bussers who have shed their black shirts and now look younger than I would have guessed. The cook with the tattooed sleeves is here too, his perpetual cigarette tucked between two knuckles. Emma calls out a hello as they approach and then introduces me to the group.
Someone asks where I’m from, and the usual onslaught of follow-up questions ensues. The tattooed cook, Matt, brings up one of those questions I’m shocked I’ve been asked more than once in my life: “Did you ride a donkey to school every day?” He laughs, proud of himself, until I say that, sure, all twenty-five million Mexico City residents ride around on donkeys. The city built a second-story highway just to deal with all the donkey traffic. The group laughs, someone calls Matt a dumbass.
Emma and I both accept beers and then take a seat on a blanket. We rest our backs against the cooler, which is heavy with ice and bottles. Emma gets pulled into a conversation pretty quickly, and I want to just sit back and listen to her, watch the embers float and wait for the island to keep doing impossible things. But a girl sitting to my left ropes me into a conversation. Her name’s Brandy and she very quickly tells me that she’s looking forward to leaving to go to college, all the new experiences that await her. I feel like a dick for not really caring about what she’s saying, for just wanting to be alone with Emma again.
“But this place is great,” I say, struggling to engage.
“For a while. You left Mexico, though. So you were probably kind of sick of it, right? But if I went I’d probably be amazed by everything there.” Brandy narrows her eyes, maybe a little drunk, maybe just a little like Felix, able to slip into earnestness without being self-conscious about it. “It’s beautiful here. I know that. But I’m kind of blind to it now. I can’t wait to get out.”
I don’t get the chance to think too long about what she said, because a few of Emma’s other friends join in on the conversation. They’re curious just because I’m not from here.
They want to know about drug lords, whether Mexicans eat burritos or if that’s just Americans, all the differences between here and there, but only weird surface questions that won’t actually tell them anything. In between their questions, or when Emma moves to throw another log on the fire, tosses someone else a beer, I look at her. I look at this strange place I’m in, the strangers around me, how it feels like I’ve been plopped in the middle of all of it. I find myself thinking: What a world.
Someone asks me what brought me to the island, and I feel a tightness in my chest. I look down at the beer in my hand, peel at the label. Matt barks a laugh at my awkwardness until someone smacks him and tells him to shut up again. Sound gets sucked out of the evening, and all of a sudden it’s just me, feeling like a moron in front of some strangers. I’m afraid I’m about to freak out like in the restaurant again.
Emma breaks the silence with a sigh and then stands up, patting me on the shoulder as she does, rescuing me. “Wanna take a walk?”
I try to contain my smile, nod. I expect Brandy or a few others to follow along, but it’s just me and her walking away from the bonfire. When we’re only a few steps away, the stars, which have been hiding behind the glare of the flames, reemerge overhead. It feels like Emma’s just flicking switches around me, making things beautiful.
“Sorry about my friends,” Emma says. “You were getting pounced.”
We walk along the edge of the lake, tiny waves lapping at our feet, though the lake as a whole seems perfectly still. “I don’t mind. It’s just weird being the center of attention.”
“Usually when people pay attention to me,” Emma says, “I’m certain they’re after something. Like they’re going to ask me for a donation or to sign a petition at any moment.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” I say, pretending to reach into my pocket for a pen. “I have this petition I need six thousand signatures for...”
“Shut up,” Emma says, smacking my arm. We fall quiet, and I can make out the sounds of wildlife in the surrounding trees. Bugs, an owl, the scattering feet of critters in the leaves. “I mean it, though. I can’t meet new people without giving a little side-eye to their intentions.” I don’t ask if I’m an exception. Emma goes on. “It’s gonna sound like such a whiny thing to say, but I’m sure it’s my parents’ fault. You can’t leave a kid so alone that she makes up imaginary friends for herself and not cause some long-lasting trust issues.” She says this jokingly, but I can tell there’s something tugging at her voice.
She kicks at a pebble, and we both watch it bounce toward the lake and then skip across the surface. Like, the entire surface. Hundreds of skips, the ripples visible in the moonlight. I’d say I’m losing my mind but, well, that ship’s probably sailed. At least this insanity is aesthetically pleasing.
“You think parents know?” I ask. “When they’ve messed their kids up in certain ways?”
“Oh, I’ve written several manifestos to my parents about All the Ways They Messed Up.”
I chuckle. I don’t know where she’s taking me, but I don’t want this walk to stop. I want to circle the lake all night. “What’s number one on the list?”
Emma thinks for a second. “Well, my mom never taught me her secret to make the perfect grilled cheese.”
I gasp. “You poor thing.”
“That’s not even a joke. I’m exaggerating a little about her messing me up, of course. I think I turned out okay, mostly.” We’ve made it far enough away from the bonfire so that the voices don’t carry over, and it feels like it’s just the two of us again. Emma’s face is lit up by the moon, tiny replicas in her glasses at certain angles. “But she seriously makes the greatest grilled cheese of all time, and she’s never told me her secret. I can just picture myself in college, during the prime grilled cheese days of my life, each one a slight disappointment.”
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The lake has a little bay that dips into the woods, out of sight from the bonfire, and we follow the grassy shore until we’re completely isolated.
“So, have you been planning to come here for a while?” Emma says, stopping at a boulder near the lake. She leans against it, starts to untie her shoes.
“No,” I say, continuing my surprising trend of truth telling in her presence. “I kind of ran away. Bolted from my own high school graduation party.” I look around at where we are, the little nook of lake that has us hidden from the rest of the world. “What are we doing here?”
“I’m showing you more cool island things,” she says, peeling off her socks now. “This is a great night for it too. When the moon’s out, it looks even better.”
“What does?” I ask, following her lead and stepping out of my shoes.
“Plankton.” Emma leans down and rolls up her pant legs until they’re halfway up her calves. Her toenails have traces of purple polish on them, long ago chipped. She tip-toes her way to the edge of the lake, avoiding rocks and twigs. I expect her to dive right in, but she stops before she reaches the water, looks back at me.
It’s really tempting to get caught in that look, so instead I tuck my socks inside my shoes, roll up my pant legs, step up to Emma’s side. It’s a little chilly out, and I expect the lake is colder, but there’s no way I’m not doing whatever the hell Emma has in mind.
“Okay, when I say so, we’re gonna take three superlong strides into the lake. Stomp as much as you can. You’ll get a little wet, but, trust me, it’s worth it.” She moves her glasses again so that they rest atop her head. “Don’t look up, don’t look ahead, don’t look at me, okay? You can only look down at your feet. And really stomp down. Splash as much as possible.”
Emma counts down to three, and as soon as we splash into the water, it comes alive. Millions of white lights sparkle. They radiate out like a shockwave, tiny brilliant explosions like nothing I’ve ever seen. Emma is stomping onward, a path of light in her wake. I follow along, but I go slower, not wanting to take the next step until the last one has subsided, afraid that the magic will run out. It’s like lightning underwater, like microscopic fireflies raging in sync. When the water calms back to darkness, I lean over, run my hand through the water. The lights follow suit, like it’s my skin that’s charged and not the water.
I hear Emma’s stomping and near-maniacal laughter get closer. “What is this?” I ask, my face only a few inches away from the water. I hadn’t even noticed how warm the lake is, how soaked through my jeans are. I swirl my fingers across the surface, enchanted.
“This is nature being ridiculous,” Emma says. “Bioluminescent plankton. Like swimming in fireworks.”
We step back to shore, sit on the muddy banks with our toes dipped into the water. Every now and then one of us will kick out to bring the lake back to life. I think back to how I lost it at the restaurant and it doesn’t feel like something that really happened to me. A dream, maybe, or a story I heard someone else tell.
“Thanks for bringing me here. I needed this,” I say. I raise my foot up from the water, watch electric white droplets cling to my heel. “You were right. This unshatters dreams.”
“I could tell you’d appreciate it.” Emma scoots closer to the lake so she can bend her knees up and still touch the water. She folds her arms around her legs, looking out at the water, a beatific smile on her face. Then she turns her head a little, rests her cheek on her knee to glance at me.
In that one glance, I know I’ve never been here before. I’ve never been in a moment like this one, never wanted a night to stretch out the way I want tonight to stretch out. If this island is as magical as it feels, it’ll stop the flow of hours into a trickle. If I’m here for a reason, it’s not the meal I had at Provecho.
I smile at her and she smiles back, and then I stomp my heel down in the water so that the air around us is lit up by bright droplets. Emma stomps too, hard enough that the splashes soak us both.
When we stop, I look at that spot in the lake where our feet are touching underwater. The particles of white light in the water rearrange. Felix again. Quick urge to kick him away before I think: How many nights like this did he have? How many was he robbed of?
“Hey, you okay?” Emma asks.
I takes my eyes off the lake, not sure how I managed to get pulled away from this. “Yeah,” I say, smiling. “Really don’t want tonight to end.” She lays her hand on mine, and as soon as she does I really do feel okay. Like my time here isn’t going to be all panic attacks and solitary cooking.
For the first time in a long time, I am okay.
CHAPTER 7
SALMON WITH ANGEL HAIR PASTA
¾ bottle dry white wine
5 lemons (and zest)
½ cup fresh dill, roughly chopped
1 pint heavy whipping cream
4 8-ounce salmon filets
500 grams angel hair pasta
¼ cup sun-dried tomatoes, julienned
1 4-ounce jar capers
METHOD:
The next morning, I leave the motel at sunrise. When I said good-bye to Emma yesterday, she told me to come by the restaurant early. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t really bother asking.
Fog encroaches again, but it’s tinted pink by the dawn. The whole island looks like cotton candy. I linger in the parking lot awhile, see that couple who walked past me the other day packing up their car. Maybe I should be booking my flight home, but for some reason I don’t want to think about it. Not after last night. Felix didn’t show up again the rest of the night, and though I didn’t sleep long, I slept deeply.
Before I can knock on the front door of the restaurant, Emma pokes her head from around the corner. “Come this way,” she calls.
I follow behind. She’s standing by the back door, keeping it propped open. “I have a surprise for you,” she says with a smile.
“Me too.” I hold out the coffee I bought for her on the way here.
I want a little moment reliving yesterday, some eye contact or a forearm squeeze or something. Emma takes the coffee unceremoniously and urges me inside. The short hallway we walk down is much colder than the temperature outside. It’s quiet, though I can tell there’s someone else here.