I try to speak quietly to myself. Nothing. The image of me shrieking and cursing and babbling jolts me. I’m back in the woods freaking out.
I close my eyes and try to dislodge the memory from my brain by shaking my head side to side. One step at a time, I remind myself.
………………….………………………...................
After my shower, I’m feeling more humanlike. I test my voice and some harsh, discordant sounds make their way out. I walk into my room. Before I can shut the door, Jerome is there.
“Hey, what’s up?” He asks. I turn and face him.” You look like shit,” he states matter-of-factly.
Never one to beat around the bush. “Thanks. I feel like it.” I manage.
“Damn. You sound like shit too. Are you sick?”
“Yes, I’m coming down with something,” I tell him.
“Oh, well, it’s good to have you home. You here for the summer?” I nod my head. “Alright. Well, you should get some rest. I can’t believe you drove home that sick. Let me know if you need anything. Mom and Joe won’t be home till later. Went dancing after the drawdown.” He wiggles his brows suggestively. I laugh a little. It sounds forced and weird. “Night, Nay Nay.”
I don’t want to ask him, but I have to know if it’s really true. “Jerome, did you hear about Michael Bang?”
He turns back around and leans on my doorframe. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I know ya’ll were friends.”
I nod my head. “It’s true then,” I mumble. Jerome goes blurry and I close my eyes.
I feel his hand pat my hand. “Hey, hey, now. It’s going to be OK,” he tells me.
“I just found out,” I confess.
“What? What do you mean you just found out?”
“I mean I just found out that he…he’s gone like,” I glance at my clock, “like four hours ago.”
His face tightens. “No one called you?”
“No, no one called me because I have no one
to
call me.”
“You’re not making any sense. What do you mean?”
I sit down dramatically on my bed, feeling every bit the petulant child. “I mean I have no one who thinks enough about me to call me and tell me that…one of my oldest friends died.” I wish he were only one of my oldest friends. I wish I didn’t feel the sharp pain thinking about every other role he’d played in life as of late. No, that’s no true. To take that pain away, I’d have to give up all the joy he’d brought to my life.
“Well, to be honest, we just found out a few days ago. It was kept real quiet for some reason. I’m sorry you didn’t know sooner. I would’ve called you if I’d known.”
“Do you know any details?”
“Not really. Only that he crashed near his parents’ place and died instantly, which is a good thing if you’re gonna go. He’d been buried a week before I’d even heard.”
I close my eyes and nod my head. He’d heard it too, so it had to be true.
Is there some measure of consolation in the fact that he hadn’t suffered?
“I’m gonna get some sleep now, OK?”
“I’m sorry about your friend. You gonna be OK?” I nod my head at him as fresh tears stream down my face. “OK. Let me know if you need anything. Night.”
I lie down and roll over on my bed and face the wall. I don’t even know what to do with all this. I close my eyes and run over our plans in my head. I weep gently as I think of all that we won’t experience. We were going to have our marriage counseling classes with Father Patty and get married in a private ceremony at the end of the summer before we left for New York. I was still waiting on my acceptance, but we’d pretty much decided we wanted to go there no matter what. Sometime before all of that we were going to let our family in our plans.
I jerk abruptly with a sudden thought. I throw my covers off and spring from my bed. I dig through my purse and find my little box. My hands shake as I slide our ring onto my finger. I’d taken it off before I’d gotten here so my parents wouldn’t question it. I wish more than anything, well almost anything, I’d never removed it. He’d put it there.
……………………………………............................
The next month is a blur. Time marched on somehow; but, for me, it felt frozen. I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Other than the mindless summer work, I didn’t do much of anything. I sat in front of the TV. I sat on the porch. I walked around our property. I saw Michael in everything around me, so it was hard to focus on anything for a length of time. I couldn’t journal. I couldn’t write. When I tried, all I wanted to do was write
Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael
until his name covered one page and then the one after that.
I’m not ready to go to our church yet, so I attend Mass near my parents’ house. I pray every single day that God will help me see a way out of this. In fact, my faith is what is helping my heart heal. I just wish it would communicate with my head a little more because I still just don’t get it. I’ve prayed so much that I don’t even need my little pamphlet on how to pray my rosary anymore.
I know I need time to grieve, but I know I need to move on. How can I do that, though, when I spend all of my time reliving every single moment I had with Michael, when I spend every moment I’m alone listening to our songs, when I stare at my little secret shrine to him? It’s amazing our six months together generated so few physical reminders. I’m sure he has tons more as he was the more productive out of the two of us, but my attempt at getting into his apartment was thwarted when his landlord told me that someone had long ago cleaned his place out.
I know that I need to put our plans into action, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that. I know that I will. If not for myself, for Michael. I could never disappoint him by giving up on everything, which is what my baser instincts tell me to do right now.
Of course, all of this must be hidden away from those around me because what would I say?
Yeah, so I finally opened myself up again, and you’ll never believe it. It was to a boy I’d loved almost my whole life, but then he died.
That doesn’t even compute for me. How would I make someone else understand it? So I try to pretend like everything’s OK. I can tell that I’m not doing a very good job by the odd looks my family gives me. When I catch those, I’ll automatically be overly enthusiastic about something, which is not me either and only invites more strange looks.
My mom constantly asks me why I’m not spending my summer hanging out with Ginny or doing other crap people my age should be doing. It’s then I realize I don’t any people my age. I’m sure they are people out there like me who’ve lived shit lives and feel older than anyone else around them. I know they are people who have loved and lost just like I have, but I don’t know any of them or how they get on with their lives. So I just make up different answers. They’re so lame that I don’t even remember which ones I’ve used. I have spoken to Ginny twice since that night. I was so tempted to tell her everything, but part of me feels like I deserve to suffer in abject silence.
This thought hits home with me. I’m handling this much like my first self-imposed mental exile. That wasn’t me anymore, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do to change that right this moment.
I’m sitting on the couch one afternoon pondering my favorite Michael memory when Jerome plops down beside me. It takes me a minute to realize that he’s waving something in my face. “Oh, hey. What’s that?” I ask, feigning enthusiasm.
“Hey now. Calm down,” he replies dryly. My feigning really does need some work.
“I don’t know, but it’s thick and it’s from NYU.”
“Really?!” That almost sounded like real enthusiasm. “Hey, you can’t say anything to mom. I applied there, though.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured that part out. You gonna open it or not?” He waggles it over my head playfully.
I grab for it and he jerks it farther out of my reach quickly. My momentum is such that we both tumble to floor. I laugh hard from the impact and silliness of it, but laughter soon turns into sobs. He slaps me in the face with the packet. “Stop it,” he commands me.
“I know,” I murmur as I dry my face. It’s like my brother knows that something’s eating it’s way through me; but, thankfully, he doesn’t probe. “OK. I’m good. Give it here,” I demand.
He hands it to me and I rip it open. A couple of brochures fall out as I focus on the cover letter. I hold it up over our heads, and our heads knock as we maneuver to read it. I laugh a little more.
Hey! I didn’t have a complete meltdown that time, I muse.
This is both good and bad news.
“‘We are pleased to inform you of your acceptance to New York University’s prestigious College of Arts,’” I read aloud.
“Wow. That’s cool. New York.”
I sit up and shake my head. He sits up with me, watching my face. “You’re not going.”
“What? I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. You’re an idiot if you don’t go.”
“How can I? How can I do this on my own I mean? In theory it sounded great, but I’m not so sure now.”
“What’s changed?”
Every-freaking-thing, but I can’t tell him that. Maybe one day but not today. “I guess I was just feeling particularly brave when I applied. I don’t know how I feel now.”
He turns to look at the wall and says nothing for a minute. I move to get up off the floor, but his words stop me. “What if I went with you?”
“Huh? You wanna go to New York? With me?” My voice rises with every question.
“I gotta get out of here, Nay. I don’t know…I just…I gotta go. I never considered New York, but if you’ll be there we can lean on each other. And it’s about to get real crowded around here with Weldon and his new family moving in.”
Our parents had agreed to let Weldon and Mariah move in here. They’re gonna help with the baby while they finish school. Of course, they had to agree to get married. So it would be crowded. Nevertheless, I can’t picture Jerome living in New York but if that’s what he wanted, I will not stand in his way. “I think it would be very cool. I wouldn’t be as apprehensive if you were there with me.”
“There’s a shut down crew that I know of that works out of New York, so I wouldn’t be in your hair too much.”
“Let’s do it,” I tell him. I could do this.
“Alright then,” he replies on a smile.
………………………………………………………
As summer starts hedging t
owards an end, my outlook is much better. In only a couple weeks, it would be time to put this place behind me for a little while. My world is starting to feel real again. Like when he first passed, it felt so artificial. Part of me thinks it wasn’t real. Like he’s still out there somewhere, but we just can’t be together. Like before, only this time is more permanent. It doesn’t suck any less, but it makes the pain more palatable when I imagine it that way.
My motivating factor—I want to make him proud. He had such great faith, and I was fortunate enough to be included in that if only for a little while. So I can and will do this. I will live my very best life even though it can’t be with him.
I’m in my room organizing things to bring, things to leave behind when a knock at my door breaks me from my reverie. I’m kind of relieved to have the distraction, so I bound to the door quickly. I throw it open, and a handsome young man greets me. He’s unexpected. The only people that ever come around here are old horse-traders and old farmers. Keyword there is old.
I blink my eyes a couple of times and prompt him, “Yes?”
He stares at me for what feels like a full minute. “Hey. My name is Jamie Jones. Um…You, uh, we’ve never met, but I’m Mike’s brother.”
I feel my whole world shift. I knew he had one out there, but I’d never even seen him. I think we exchanged pleasantries a couple of times over the phone when Michael lived with him back in ninth grade, though. I finally remember that I should say something. “Um…Hi, I…Do you want to come in?” I finally manage a coherent utterance.
“Yeah, yeah. That’d be great.” He smiles a little, looking slightly relieved.
I watch him walk in, and I’m just utterly and completely stunned. He has dirty blond hair similar to mine, and it’s cut real short. He’s very tall and broad compared to Michael. He carries himself nothing like him either. Maybe he’s just nervous.
Then, the questions start bombarding me. First, how did he know about me? Second, why did he come to see me? Third, how is that he looks the exact opposite of Michael? I don’t want to formulate my other question into actual words. I have to talk myself down to keep myself from badgering him.
I guide him to the living room. I wan
t to ply him with my questions but don’t want to overwhelm him. Fortunately, he makes it a little easier on me.
“I know you’re wondering what I’m doing here. I hope that it’s OK that I’m here.” I nod my head fervently. Anything. I’ll take any little piece of Michael. “Oh, good. Well, when I cleaned Mike’s place up a couple of months ago, I kinda just put it all in boxes and stared at it for a while.
When I finally got the gumption to look through his things,” he pauses to release a shaky breath, “I quickly realized that he had a lot of secrets. And a great many of them had to do with you.”
I just nod my head. I’m not sure what he knows, what he wants to know, or what I should tell him.
“One thing was very clear. He sure loved you.”