Always Chloe and Other Stories

  ALWAYS CHLOE AND OTHER STORIES

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Tender, amazingly hopeful.” –Kirkus Reviews, of Becoming Chloe

  “Vibrant and heartbreaking.” –Publishers Weekly, of Becoming Chloe

  By the bestselling author of Don’t Let Me Go and Pay It Forward, this captivating short story collection features ALWAYS CHLOE, the long-awaited novella sequel to Becoming Chloe, Hyde’s award-winning novel.

  Jordy and Chloe are living above a restaurant in Morro Bay, the first place they landed after their trip down the Big Sur Coast. But Jordy has a boyfriend now, an old flame who’s come back into his life in a big way.

  Chloe stretches herself as far as she can go to give them her blessing, but her issues about living—or even sleeping—alone turn this happy reunion into a potential disaster. Chloe stops eating, stops sleeping, stops paddling her beloved and battered blue kayak in the bay.

  No one knows how to help her. When her friend Old Ben, the man who runs the fuel dock nearby, gives her some advice, his words could either save the day or send her out to sea forever, depending on her unique mind’s understanding of them.

  A heart-wrenching stand-alone novella, and an answer to the many readers who asked for a sequel to Becoming Chloe, ALWAYS CHLOE is ultimately about the struggle to balance others’ needs with our own—and exactly how expansive and forgiving the human heart can be.

  This collection also includes four previously published short stories, including Breakage, which won honors in the Tobias Wolff award, and The Lion Lottery, which was cited in Best American Short Stories.

  For my faithful reader Misty, who said just the right thing, in just the right way, at just the right time, to help me see that Jordy and Chloe needed more story.

  Author’s Note:

  The only piece in this collection that has never been published in any form is the novella Always Chloe, which is a sequel to my 2006 Knopf novel Becoming Chloe. So many people expressed interest in what happened to Jordan and Chloe that I made the singular decision to return to their story. I hope those who have read Becoming Chloe will enjoy this continuation of their journey, but I’ve done my best to make this a stand-alone piece, one that doesn’t require much—if any—previous knowledge of the characters.

  The story “Breakage” won second place in the Tobias Wolff award, and was published in the Bellingham Review. “Pet Care, Tarot Readings, Maid Service” appeared in the Worcester Review, and “Fortunate Son” was first published in Eureka Literary Magazine. “The Lion Lottery” was published in High Plains Literary Review and cited in Best American Short Stories in 1999, under the title “Castration Humor.” I changed the title because it made the subject matter sound so very much worse than it is.

  Table of Contents

  ALWAYS CHLOE

  PART ONE: This Is My Right Now

  Chapter 1 — FLUKE

  PART TWO: This Is Just a Couple Months Back

  Chapter 2 — EARTH TIME | Chapter 3 — BLUE BOAT | Chapter 4 — OLD BEN | Chapter 5 — GOD, THE DEVIL, AND RABBITS | Chapter 6 — DRIVER CLASS | Chapter 7 — CHLOE’S CHOICE | Chapter 8 — HAPPINESS

  PART THREE: This Is Back to My Right Now

  Chapter 9 — LIGHT | Chapter 10 — BEAUTIFUL

  OTHER SHORT STORIES

  THE LION LOTTERY | PET CARE, TAROT READINGS, MAID SERVICE | BREAKAGE | FORTUNATE SON

  EARTHQUAKE WEATHER AND OTHER STORIES

  ABOUT CATHERINE RYAN HYDE

  ALSO BY CATHERINE RYAN HYDE

  ALWAYS CHLOE

  PART ONE:

  This Is My Right Now.

  FLUKE

  I push off from the dock. Paddle away.

  Amazing. I’m really doing this thing.

  I don’t even know if I’m scared.

  Probably I’m scared. Probably I just don’t know.

  I can hear Ethel barking at me. And barking. And barking. I’m scared she’ll wake up Jordy and Kevin. I’m hoping Jordy’ll just yell at her to be quiet, and then he’ll go back to sleep again.

  I’ve never heard Ethel all panicked like that. I thought she could take anything. She’s been through a lot. Like me. So I figured she could roll with just about anything by now.

  But I was wrong. She wants to come along.

  Or maybe she doesn’t want to go. Maybe she just wants me not to.

  I don’t look back. I couldn’t stand to look back and see Ethel’s face in the window.

  She can get along without me. She’s done stuff like that before.

  I wave at Old Ben on my way by his fuel dock. He waves back.

  He calls out to me. “Chloe! Good to see you back on the water!”

  It hits me by surprise how much I’m going to miss Old Ben.

  I didn’t know that.

  I knew Jordy was just about everything in the world, and I knew I would miss Ethel, but I didn’t know Old Ben got so important. I wonder when that happened. And why I didn’t know.

  It doesn’t matter now. I don’t need to try to figure everything out anymore.

  I look again at Ben’s quote. That’s what he calls it. A quote. I would just call it a little poem. I’m still not quite sure what a quote is, even though I think he tried to explain it to me. I only know he painted it onto the wood that’s boarding up the windows in the shop next door to his.

  The neighbors think the other guy painted it, before he closed up his shop and ran away.

  But I know it was Old Ben.

  It says:

  All men should strive to learn before they die

  What they are running from, and to, and why.

  —Thurber

  Ben told me what a Thurber is, but now I forget.

  He also told me that women count the same as men for a thing like that.

  I don’t think I know any of those “from” and “to” and “why” things. I guess I didn’t learn them. And I guess I should have. But it’s too late to fix that now.

  Old Ben keeps looking and looking after I go by. I keep turning to see him over my shoulder, and he’s still watching me.

  Maybe I’m wearing something about this day, about this plan, like a sign on my forehead that anybody can read. Or maybe it’s just because I’m paddling my little blue kayak out farther than the sign. The sign that warns about little boats near the breakwater. How waves can break inside the breakwater and get small boats in trouble. I guess Old Ben must know by now that I never paddle out farther than the sign.

  I turn one more time and wave at him. All happy and fun. So he’ll figure I know exactly what I’m doing. And maybe think everything is peachy.

  I’m too far away to see if he’s buying it.

  I guess I don’t have to worry anymore about how I’m doing with people.

  What a relief.

  No waves break inside the breakwater. My little boat doesn’t get into trouble. So I keep going.

  I had no idea I’d gone so far out. Morro Bay looks totally different from out here on the ocean. Like a whole different world.

  I’ve been paddling toward a huge bank of fog a little ways in front of me. Like a big thick gray curtain lying on the water.

  But when I look back, the town is all sunny under a blue sky. I can see the little houses on the hills above the bay.

  I can see the big ugly power plant, with its three big ugly smokestacks.

  I can see Morro Rock.

  Well, duh. You could probably see Morro Rock from outer space.

  I can see the sand spit from the far side, the side I’m not used to, and all the little shops and restaurants on the Embarcadero. Including the one we live above.

  I mean, Jordy lives above it. I used to live there with
him.

  It used to be only the two of us. I miss that a lot.

  It looks like a place you wouldn’t want to leave.

  I feel that for a minute. I mean, really let myself feel that.

  Then I turn back around and keep paddling.

  I have no idea how long I’ve been paddling. But my shoulders hurt a lot. And I have that really sharp sore place right under the bottom of my neck. And I’m a very good paddler. I paddle for hours every day. Or at least I used to. Until everything got weird again. But I think I’m still in pretty good paddling shape. So if I hurt this much, I must have come a long way.

  That big fog bank came in now to where I am. Either that, or I paddled out to where it was. It’s thick and dark, and it always gets cold when the fog is in.

  Nothing seems happy and friendly anymore.

  I’m wondering what I’m supposed to do out here. I mean, what’s going to happen.

  I guess I thought of this as an end to everything, but I’m just sitting out here, shivering in the fog with this pain between my shoulders, and nothing is ending. That might be a part I didn’t figure out all the way.

  I do that a lot. I think I have things figured out, but then it turns out I only had a little bit of it right. It’s like my brain doesn’t stretch far enough.

  I’m not paddling now. Just sitting with the paddle across my lap. I’m not really sure what good it would do to paddle more. And besides, it’s just making me sore.

  I hear this big noise, and I look up to see a great blue heron land on the nose of Blue Boat. If you have ever seen a great blue heron, you will know this is a big deal. “Great” actually means big in this case.

  They are very big birds.

  They have long legs like those plastic pink flamingos you see on people’s lawns. I look past him, and I see another one, only this guy is standing on the kelp. I didn’t know a big bird like that could stand on kelp, which I’m pretty sure is just kind of floating there on the water. The kelp has these big bulbs that are filled with air, though, so maybe that’s why the bird doesn’t sink. And also I guess birds are light for their size.

  And here’s something else surprising about the kelp guy. He’s holding his wings out. Like he has them out on a line to dry.

  I’ve seen cormorants do that. Just a couple of times, though.

  I asked Old Ben once. Why they do that. He said nobody knows.

  Speaking of being surprised, back to the bird who is standing on my boat. I have never met a great blue heron who was brave enough to get so close to me. Back in the estuary at Morro Bay, where I lived until today, the birds stay a long way away from people. Maybe it’s because they live in a city. They know people too well.

  Maybe this guy lives out at sea and never met a person before. That might explain all that trust.

  Or maybe he just doesn’t like for his feet to get wet.

  I watch him for a long time. I don’t move a muscle, because I don’t want him to fly away.

  He picks up one long stick of a leg and pulls it up until it disappears under the feathers on his big belly. He’s more whitish on the bottom. He’s not really blue. Great blue herons are not really blue. They are more like sort of a grayish color. I don’t know why they call them blue when they’re not.

  They have long necks that curve. They can make the letter S with their necks. This guy has a fringe of feathers trailing off his chest, right near the bottom of his long curvy neck. And another couple of long feathers trailing off the back of his head. I’m trying to remember if they all do.

  I keep looking at him, and he keeps looking back at me.

  Then I ask him a question. I know that sounds weird. But really, there’s nobody else to ask.

  “Do you think I’m making a mistake here?”

  First he holds perfectly still. Then he gives his head this giant shake. But it goes as much up and down as back and forth. It goes in every direction. So that’s no help at all. Then he holds out his wings, still. But after a second, he shakes them really hard, and it makes a big flappy sound in the air.

  Then he flies away.

  Probably I shouldn’t have asked him that.

  I probably didn’t know him nearly well enough to ask his advice on a thing like this.

  I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here. No idea at all.

  There’s a special sort of way the boat moves. Just a little movement. But the same one, over and over. Maybe I was wrong about the ocean. I thought it only took two breaths a day. Tide in, tide out. Tide in, tide out. But I was deciding from the estuary, from inside the sand spit. Where the water is flat. I shouldn’t have decided from there.

  From out here, the ocean breathes about as much as I do.

  I always paddle in my bare feet. My bare feet are really cold.

  That movement has gotten into my head and my bones now, like the world has always felt exactly like this. Like if you took the movement away, nothing would feel natural, not ever again.

  I wonder if I’m drifting farther and farther out to sea.

  Then I wonder why I wondered.

  It doesn’t really matter much now.

  I look down, and see something weird. Like the ocean bottom is only about a foot below my boat. Like I could almost reach down and touch it. Only it isn’t rocks and sand. It’s pebbly and silver. It’s bright. It looks like some kind of fabric woven out of pieces of shiny silver about the size of my fingers.

  I keep hearing all these splashing noises, and seagulls calling in that way they do. It sounds almost like a person laughing. At first I’m so fascinated by the silver bottom that I don’t look up. But then I look to see what’s splashing. It’s pelicans. Dozens of big brown pelicans. Going hunting. With the seagulls bobbing on the water and circling in the air beside them. Making those sounds.

  Pelicans have this weird way of hunting. They circle around and around in the air, a few feet over the water. Then they put on the brakes and stop in mid-air, with their beaks aimed down. And they fall right in, beak first. I guess hoping they’ll surprise something.

  But what I like is the way they fall in. Because they don’t fold their wings all the way up, but they don’t hold them all the way out, either. All these crooked feather arrows, dozens of them, dropping into the sea.

  Splash.

  The seagulls always stay close by when the pelicans are hunting.

  Old Ben told me it’s because the pelicans take in a great big mouthful of water and fish, and then they push out the water. And something in their beak sort of filters it so they get to keep the fish. He says the little fish get through. And it’s like a free lunch for seagulls. Old Ben says seagulls are lazy. But what they’re doing looks like hard enough work to me.

  I watch them, and I watch the silvery bottom, and I wonder something.

  If I’m a lot closer to the shore than I thought I was, is that good news or not?

  Before I can decide, a big black harbor seal comes slashing up through the water. I never knew they could swim that fast. I never knew anything could swim that fast. He’s so close I can see his mouth is open.

  Maybe fifty little silver fish, each about as big as one of my fingers, fly right up out of the water to get out of the way of that seal mouth. Right up into the foggy air. Then they land on the water again like giant drops of rain and disappear.

  I’m still shaking a little from how much that seal startled me.

  I look down again. But I get what I’m seeing now. It’s not the bottom of anything. It’s the top of something. Or millions of somethings. Now that I know, I can make out what I’m seeing. Millions and millions of tiny little silver fish, swimming so close together that they look like all one big thing.

  So I’m not closer to shore than I thought.

  I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.

  Seems a person could make a pretty good argument either way.

  The fog is really thick now. It’s almost hard to believe this is the middle of the day. It’s alm
ost hard to remember this is planet Earth. When I look in front of Blue Boat, I can’t even see where the water meets the fog. Only white. The whole world is white.

  It’s a weird feeling, to not be able to see anything at all. I mean, other than Blue Boat and me. We’re here. It’s the world that went away.

  I might have been taken out of the world entirely, for all I know. If I haven’t been, there’s really nothing here to prove that I haven’t.

  It makes me wonder how blind people have the guts to do what they do every day.

  I can hear noises, but I don’t know what they are. But they’re sort of comforting. Like a big wind. Like a giant breath. But only every few minutes. Not with any sort of timing. Just all of a sudden.

  Whoosh.

  Then I see something that really freaks me out.

  It’s an eye. A giant eye. It’s about two or three feet away from my right knee, which is leaning against the edge of my little boat. Whatever kind of giant face that giant eye is attached to, I can’t figure it out. It just looks like a big dark place that goes on forever, with a giant eye.

  And it’s looking right at me.

  I can’t really describe what it feels like to look down at the water and see an eye that big staring at you. It doesn’t seem right that anything that lives on the planet with me could have an eye that big. A body to go with that eye must be bigger than a Greyhound bus. It must be like the size of those giant dinosaur bones you see put together at the museum to make a whole sort of after-the-fact dinosaur.

  I know I talk about sea monsters a lot, but I swear I was only kidding. Mostly. I mostly didn’t think there really was any such thing.

  He’s still looking right at me.

  My whole self is frozen. My brain. My body. Frozen in place.

  But somewhere under the ice, I can feel myself thinking, Well. This is it. This is where it ends. She paddled out to sea and was eaten alive by a giant sea monster.