The Summer We Said Goodbye [Installment 8]

The Elephant, Pt. 2

Best I could tell, there were three ways into and out of Windy Hollow: the route we had taken through the holloway, which egressed the village perpendicularly at its midpoint, and two roads connected with the High Street at either end. 

I headed left for the more promising vistas and set off at a light jog. 

A babbling brook running the length of town cut sharply and intersected the High Street just below the Windy Arms. I vaulted the stone bridge and picked up the pace as the walls of shops gave way to private lodgings, the church, and, finally, the cots and wolds lending the region its name. 

It felt good to be out working my legs. I loved the feeling of lightness and invincibility running gave me. It was my time to ponder, to dream. 

And what occupied my thoughts this morning was the elephant.

The truth is, I’d developed a bad habit of avoidance dating back to my parents’ divorce. I never had come clean with my friends about it, even after my parents had named it. 

My dad actually skipped over that part, showing up one day unannounced with his new fiancée, another recent divorcée. They behaved like puppies and expected me to play along, the consummate salesman.

My mother at least acknowledged it for what it was. Late one Sunday afternoon, she materialized with my brother as if out of the ether at my bedroom door. My brother had never been in my room before, yet there he was, his arms akimbo with an unpleasant task to check off his “to-do” list. 

They got straight to the point.

My mother and I would stay in the house for the foreseeable future; I’d continue at school with my friends; nothing would change.

My life would remain the “normal” life it had always been. 

I cried when it was finally out in the open. My brother recoiled, and my mother came up short, a stunned look on her face. 

“Now Cosimo…” It was the tone she used whenever she thought I was being childish.

“Everything has been done with your best interests at heart.”

At heart

The lesson was clear. Inconvenient facts + uncomfortable emotions = don’t talk about the elephant. 

And I didn’t, even when my friends and their parents knew what had gone down. It got so awkward that my friends held an actual intervention. They all thought it was important for me to talk about the elephant. So I was, like, “Yeah, sure, no big deal. I thought you all knew.”

It was humiliating.

I vowed never to be ambushed like it again and devised a strategy moving forward using methods I was already familiar with as the youngest. By paying attention, I found I could predict with surprising utility what was coming down the pike next and had yet to meet a crisis I couldn’t nip in the bud with some well-timed misdirection and glib jocularity. 

But this current elephant wasn’t some mood or dynamic. It was an actual thing, and it wasn’t going anywhere. Perhaps if I’d been paying attention during the planning, but I’d left all of that to Aris.

The road dipped suddenly into the surging green. I was high above the town by now and nearing the summit. I sprinted the final meters and broke over the lip in a rush of adrenaline. 

Windy Hollow lay before me, an island of jutted limestone lost among grassy waves. Loose field stone walls crisscrossed the pastures while clanging sheep bells wafted on the breeze. 

A signpost just beyond marked a fork in the road. Arrows in either direction pointed to destinations throughout the Kingdom:

Birmingham

Cardiff

Oxford

Exeter

Stratford

Cirencester

London

Bath

I straddled the split, taking it all in. 

On its face, it shouldn’t have been that big of a deal. It was a small bed for any two people. Why hadn’t Aris just pointed that out and been done with it? Wasn’t that her purview anyway? Boys aren’t supposed to complain about having to sleep with girls.

“BLEEEEAAAAT!”

A tour bus lurched from a bend in one of the roads, blasting its caterwauling horn.

“BLEAT, BLEEEEAAAAT!”

Another one barreled down right behind, swerving to avoid hitting me.

One after the other, they dove over the brink like two ocean liners, belching clouds of black exhaust. 

Across the hollow, a third had topped a ridge and was busy plying its way into town from the opposite direction. 

The sunlight had shifted, and I took off after them.

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You can find an archive off past installments here.