When a Relationship Breaks Down

When he was younger, Benji was always running away from home once the trees had turned green, and he would walk for hours before climbing up into one of them. If the wind was coming from the town, he would scream as loudly as he could, roaring out everything that hurt. If the wind was coming from the other direction, he would sit still until it numbed his cheeks so much that he could no longer feel the tears.

It was his three older sisters who taught him to hunt. Not because they wanted to, but when their mom was working, the boy clearly couldn’t be left alone at home without causing all sorts of chaos. The only reliable thing about Benji has always been that he’s unreliable. But to everyone’s surprise, nature managed to get through to him where people failed. When someone learns to be in the forest as a child, it’s like gaining an extra language. The air talks here, and Benji understands. It’s mournful and wild.

His sisters were taught to hunt by their father, and Benji hated them for that, for being able to remember him. So when he met Kevin, it was the first time he had anything in his life that was his and his alone. In the summer they would disappear to their secret place, a small, overgrown island in a lake that not even the hunters went to. The boys could be themselves there. They swam naked and let themselves dry in the sun on the rocks, they fished for their supper and slept under the stars, sometimes not saying a word to each other for several days. The first summer they spent twenty-four hours there, but by the time they were teenagers, that had stretched to weeks, every moment until hockey training started again.

During the first years of their friendship Benji still wet the bed when he dreamed about his father. But never on the island. Once he’d rowed out and knocked a stake between the rocks and made the boat fast, the dreams couldn’t reach him there. Kevin meant everything to Benji. The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.

Benji leads Ana and Maya to the tangled, overgrown shore. There’s no jetty in the lake, but he pulls out a rowboat hidden under the bushes and throws his backpack into it. Then he dives into the water and swims.

At first the girls don’t understand what they’re rowing toward; there are just some overgrown rocks in the middle of the lake, a few low trees, and from the water it doesn’t even look possible to go ashore. But Benji appears behind some big rocks and pulls the boat toward the island with water dripping from his arms and his bare feet pressed hard against the ground.

Ana finds some metal stakes in the backpack and uses the hammer Benji gave her to knock them into a crevice in the rocks and ties the boat fast. Maya gets out after her, and only then do the girls realize what they’re looking at. In the middle of the little island is a cleared rectangle in the grass, impossible to see from anywhere on the water, just large enough for a two-man tent.

“It’s a good place to hide,” Benji mumbles quietly, looking down at the ground.

“Why are you showing it to us?” Maya asks.

“I don’t need it anymore,” he says.

He’s lying, she can see that. For a fleeting moment he looks as though he’s about to admit it. But instead he points, almost shyly, and adds, “If you swim over there, you can’t be seen from the forest.”

Maya and Ana don’t ask who he used to share the island with. It’s theirs now. The best thing about nature is that it isn’t nostalgic; rocks and trees don’t give a damn about their previous owners. Benji walks toward the water, but just before he jumps from the rocks Maya calls after him, “Hey!”

He turns around. Her voice breaks. “I hope you’re one of the people who gets a happy ending, Benji.”

The young man nods quickly and turns away before she has a chance to realize how much that means to him. The young women stay on the island as he dives into the lake and swims away.

Ana follows his arms as they break the water, peering at the taut body as it climbs up into the forest on the other side. Mournful and wild. She bites her bottom lip happily. When Maya shoots her an accusing glare, Ana snaps, “What? I was just thinking . . . he didn’t have to go off right away, did he? I mean, he’s welcome to watch while I go for a swim . . .”

Maya taps her temple. “You’ve got serious mental problems.”

“What? Did you see his arms? All I’m saying is that he’s welcome to watch when . . .”

“Thanks! That’s enough! If you keep going on about it, you can’t stay on my island!”

“What? So now it’s your island all of a sudden?”

Maya bursts out laughing. Her best friend is the craziest, smartest person she knows, and in her own screwed-up way Ana is struggling to get everything back to normal again: boys, sex, life, the world. She starts where she always does when it comes to survival: with humor.

They stay on the island almost all summer. Ana makes sporadic trips home to fetch supplies but mainly to clear away the empty bottles from her dad’s kitchen. She always comes back before it gets dark, and she always makes sure that Maya has enough to eat. One morning Maya wakes up to find her friend standing naked at the edge of the water, swearing as she tries to catch fish with her bare hands, because she’s seen some idiot in a survival program on TV do it; from then on Maya refuses to call her anything but “Gollum.” In return, Ana watches Maya the first time she takes her clothes off and, noting the tan line made by her T-shirt and shorts, says, “You’re going to make a great dad someday. You’ve already got every dad’s beach holiday T-shirt tan.” They spend one last summer singing loudly and dancing badly, sleeping without nightmares beneath the starry sky. Maya plays her guitar, calm and free. She doesn’t know it yet, but in ten years’ time one of the songs she writes here will be the first thing she plays at every concert when she goes on tour. She will have tattoos on both arms then, a guitar and a rifle, and will dedicate the song to her best friend. Its title is “The Island.”

* * *

Benji is running alone in another part of the forest. He finds new hiding places; he’s had a lot of practice over the years. He’s become a man who doesn’t take anything for granted; only children think certain things are self-evident: always having a best friend, for instance. Being allowed to be who we are. Being able to love who we want. Nothing is self-evident to Benji anymore; he just runs deeper into the forest until his brain is gasping for oxygen and he can no longer feel anything. Then he climbs up into a tree. And waits for the wind.

* * *

You have to keep your promises. That’s one of the first things children learn when they start to talk. When Maya was little, she made her dad promise that she could be an astronaut, and Peter promised, because that’s what parents do. He promised everything else as well: that no one would ever hurt her. That everything would be all right. Even though it isn’t true.

After everything that happened in the spring Peter asked his daughter if she wanted to move away from Beartown. She said, “No. Because this is my town, too.” He asked what he could do for her, and she said, “Build a better club, for everyone.” So he promised.

He’s never been good with words. Never been the kind of dad who could tell his kids and his wife how much he loves them. He’s always hoped that just showing them he did would be enough. But how can he show them anything now? Beyond the fact that he’s a loser?

He pulls up at a pedestrian crossing. A young father is crossing the road with his daughter, eight or nine years old. The father is holding her hand, and the girl is making it very plain that she thinks she’s way too old for that. Peter has to stop himself getting out of the car and shouting at the father to never let go. Never let go! Never!

When Peter and Kira had their first child, Isak, Kira said to him, “This is what we are now. Everything else comes after this. First and foremost, we’re parents!” Peter already knew, of course. All parents know. It’s not a voluntary process, it’s an emotional assault; you become someone else’s property the first time you hear your child cry. You belong to that little person now. Before everything else. So when something happens to your child, it never stops being your fault.

Peter feels like leaping out of the car and shouting at that father, “Never let her out of your sight, never trust anyone, and don’t let her go to that party!”