“What?” He turns off the engine, grabs the door handle, and gets half out of the car before I grab him by the arm and pull him back in. “I’ll fucking kill him—”
“Don’t,” I say, and he gives me this look, like out of all the sad people on the planet there are to feel sorry for, he feels sorriest for me. And my heart breaks again and again and again. Again.
“Eddie,” he says.
“Please take me home,” I whisper.
He starts the car.
Mom and Beth are standing on the front step when we pull up to the house.
Nothing makes me want to get out of the car less than that.
So I don’t. I’m cemented to my seat and my throat is aching so bad. It hurts so bad. I can’t move. They’ll have to send for the Jaws of Life to get me out.
I’ll grow old and die in this car.
Milo squeezes my shoulder.
“It’ll be okay.”
I shake my head. No it won’t.
“They’re not mad,” he promises. “Just worried.”
I shake my head again. I even cross my arms. A petulant baby pose, I know. But I’m not petulant. Not angry, not trying to be stubborn. I mean, I am angry, but it’s not why I can’t move.
I’m scared.
I am more scared than I can say.
I am scared to get out of this car.
It’s easy for Milo. He’s not scared. After he gets out of the car and after I get out of his car, he gets to go back to his home and not think about any of this and I want to ask him, do you know how lucky you are to get a break from my life? I would love a break from my life, but I have to stay in it, endlessly on play. The sun rises and sets, a day that never stops. So pause. I have to pause when I can. This is a pause. Stay in the car. Pause.
But they won’t let me stay in the car, where life is suspended all around me. One of them—Mom or Beth—makes her way down the walk, to my side of the car, and opens the door.
I don’t move. I don’t look.
“Eddie.”
My mom. But I stare straight ahead. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t want to look at her because she’s a misery vortex and I’m already sad enough. If she sucks me into her grief, that will be it. This whole household will go under.
Even Beth won’t be able to save us.
Mom reaches over and unbuckles my seat belt.
“Eddie,” she repeats. “Honey…”
Something about the way she says my name this time makes me turn my head to her and nothing prepares me for what I see.
Her blond hair is brushed and pulled back into a loose ponytail. She is pale and drawn and her lips are red and flaky, eyes watery. But that’s not the thing that’s different.
She’s dressed.
She’s not wearing his housecoat.
This is the first time since the funeral I’ve seen her out of his housecoat.
I think I’m supposed to be happy about this. I think it’s supposed to be a gesture, but for some reason, it levels me. I feel myself completely cave in, everything unwinding, all my parts breaking down. Culler lied to me. He lied. My father is dead. He killed himself and no one can tell me why. Why. And my mother isn’t wearing his housecoat and I want her to be wearing his housecoat. I want to say, don’t give up on this, because then I’m the only one left with it, but I can’t speak. I lean forward so she can’t see my face, and before I can stop myself, I start to cry. I cry so hard I can’t breathe. I can’t see. I feel like I’m coming apart.
Mom puts her left arm around my shoulder. Her right hand brushes my bangs from my face and she kisses the top of my head and she’s saying, “Oh, Eddie. Oh my girl, my girl, my girl…”
I sleep like I’ve spent a lifetime awake. I think maybe I have. I stay in my room for three days mostly, just trying not to think about anything. On the third day, Beth bursts in. She opens the curtains and light is everywhere. It hurts my eyes.
“Get dressed,” she tells me. “Come on, Eddie.”
I don’t think she’s a big fan of how Mom is dealing with my “running away.” Mom’s chosen not to punish me for my “act of grief.” At least that’s what Beth calls it when she tells Mom she should be punishing me for my act of grief.
“You cannot maintain this permissive state,” I overheard her say. “We should have gone down to Lissie and brought her back ourselves. I don’t know what you were thinking when you agreed to let Milo get her. This is how it starts. Total downward spiral.”
“Thank you, Beth,” Mom replied.
“What was in Lissie, anyway?” Beth asked sourly.
Nothing, I wanted to say. Nothing was in Lissie.
“Did you hear me?” Beth asks. “Up! Up! Up! It’s summer vacation. I’m—I’m not letting you waste any more of it. Up.” She’s trying to be back on form, but even I can tell it’s different now. She doesn’t sound as sure of herself when she says these things to me. She pulls my blankets back, leaving my legs exposed. I don’t care. “Eddie, come on. Please.”
I close my eyes. Beth never says please to me and means it.
“My father’s dead,” I say.
“Believe it or not, that’s something that’s never far from anyone’s mind.”
I open my eyes.
“Why is he dead? Why do you think he killed himself?”
The question startles her a little. She stutters—I actually make Beth stutter.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say and—and I—” She clears her throat and picks imaginary lint from one of my blankets. “I don’t like to think about it.”
“Why?”
“Because … I don’t want to give up a second of this,” she says, and I guess she’s talking about living. “And that he could…” She shakes her head and blinks and her eyes get bright and her voice gets small. “It’s a waste … it’s just such a waste.”
It’s all a waste.
“Your mom wants you up and about. She’s worried.”
“That’s funny.”
“Downstairs, now.”
“It’s all I think about,” I tell her.
She stares at me for a long while.
“You know,” she says. “You’re still alive. I don’t know how many different ways I can try to tell you before it finally sinks in.”
And she goes downstairs.
I stay in bed for a while longer.
And then I get up.
Mom is sitting at the kitchen table when I make my entrance.
She’s dressed.
This absence of housecoat shocks me. I wonder if I’ll ever be used to it. She looks up when I enter the room and forces a smile at me, but the right side of her mouth twitches a little. She still looks like she’s just seconds away from crying—I’m used to that. I hold on to that. I don’t know why. It centers me from the fact that she’s not wearing the housecoat. That she’s in actual clothes. And she knows what I’m thinking all by the way I’m staring at her. She looks down at her outfit, self-conscious. She’s in a lime green blouse and black jeans. It’s something I’ve seen her in before, but she’s not wearing it like she used to. She’s lost weight.
“It looks all right, doesn’t it?” she asks. I nod. She studies me and I’m not sure what to say to her, and then she pats the seat next to her and I sit down. Neither of us moves for a minute and then she gently tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I haven’t been doing well. I’m not.”
Like it needs saying.
“I know,” I mumble.
“You’re not doing well.” She pulls me close and I let her. “And I want you to know that I understand why you left…” No, you don’t. No, you don’t. You don’t. I close my eyes. She will never understand why I left. “And I want you to know things will change. Not overnight. I’m still trying to figure out where to start … But we’ll get there. Okay?”
I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how she could be okay to start over without knowing why. That she’s willing to try. How it’s even possible.
“Okay.”
I stare at the wall behind her head, where there is a photo of my father.
In the photo, he’s laughing at us.
I leave on my bike, pumping my legs hard because I’m angry and I don’t know how else to work it out. Milo is at Fuller’s right now and I need him. Mark is going to relieve him any minute and I want Milo to spend what’s left of the day with me.
I bike across two streets and cut through an alleyway and round the corner off the main street. Fuller’s comes into view. The place is busy. Two trucks and a car. I recognize one of the trucks. Roy Ackman’s truck. It’s taunting me, tempting me. Let’s go again. You call that last one a hit? I speed up, pumping my legs hard, harder until I can feel it in my heart.
I just keep moving—
Until Roy Ackman rounds the side of it and I screech to a halt so hard I almost fly over the handlebars, but I don’t. He stops, surprised, and then he smiles at me.
And laughs.
“Funny, Eddie,” he says. He taps the side of his head. “That’s funny.”
He gets into the truck. He doesn’t ask me how I’m doing. How my mom is doing. I want to shout after him. My father is dead. He’s dead.
But I don’t.
I throw my bike on the ground and I walk into Fuller’s, where Missy, with her long, tanned, perfect legs, leans against the counter and talks to Milo. My heart goes into my throat a little bit, but when Milo sees me, he smiles warmly, like I’m the only person there is to see and that he wants to see, which keeps me where I am.
“Eddie,” he says. “Hey.”
Missy turns. “Hi, Eddie.”
“Hi,” I say.
“So I was just asking Milo if he wanted to waste an afternoon at Jenna’s again,” she says. Her voice is impossibly friendly. “Everyone’s going to be there. You in?”