Letters From The Ledge (27 page)

Nate pulled out a card. "Now, I know you’ve already got one of these, but really–if you have any problems with the site, I want you to let me know. We’ll follow up every month for six months and trouble shoot problems as they come up, but we’re also available in between."

"Yes, I'll–have my people take a look at things."

"Thanks for everything Frank! I'm sure we'll be in touch."

Once they were alone in the elevator Paige felt suddenly drawn and colorless and numb. "You have no idea what you walked in on. You rescued me. How did you know?"

Nate turned toward her and took a deep breath. "Paige? I can’t do this anymore. It’s driving me insane. I’ve tried so hard not to overstep my boundaries in your life, but this ends here and now. You’re not going back there again–ever. I don’t care if he blacklists you. I don’t care if we have to move away. I’ll start over somewhere else. Frank Evans is a violent, dangerous man and I don’t ever want him near you again. No job is worth this. No career is worth this!"

Paige just nodded. For once she didn’t argue.

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged.

Their feathers are just too bright.

And when they fly away,

the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice.

Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone.

- The Shawshank Redemption

A few days before graduation Brendan went to Nate’s office and left an invitation with Christina. The girl looked up at him and smiled, recognition written on her face.

“Nate’s not in this morning.”

“That’s ok. If you could just see that he gets this before Saturday.”

“No problem.”

She looked down at the invitation and then back up at Brendan. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” With one more glance in the direction of Nate’s empty office, Brendan tapped the top of the reception desk and turned toward the door, remembering the time he’d punched the wall near her head and the look on her face at the time. Tracing the area where his fist had been, he turned back around, his hand still touching the offending wall. “I’m…really sorry about that other time I was here–if that startled you. I was…a little angry.”

Christina smiled with the memory. “That’s ok.” She looked toward Nate’s office and back at Brendan. “These walls have seen worse.”

Brendan laughed softly. “Oh really!”

She nodded, unwilling to give away further details, her allegiance clear.

“Thanks.” Brendan smiled.

“Bye.” She waved at him as he walked out.

Somehow it was comforting to know that Nate had a temper. It didn’t scare him, like it did with Frank. Hell, it wasn’t even intimidating. Just comforting–and maybe a little amusing.

He left the office and headed to his AP exam. He and Sarah hadn’t spoken since her visit to the cemetery, and this would probably be the last time he’d see her. The faint smell of apples drifted past his nose, assaulting his senses and bringing him back to the softness of her mouth. His body warmed with the memory and he sniffed at the air. Nothing but sewage and hot dogs. It didn’t make any sense. Some day he’d ask her about her apple perfume–or maybe it was lip-gloss. Being with her really
was
like falling over the edge of something. He could feel it when he was close to her–the loss of balance; the absence of inertia.

With a deep breath he entered the exam room. It was a somber place, half-f already with nervous looking students drumming number-two pencils against bare desks. He listened for a moment. It was like a cacophony of Morse Code, every one of them tapping out the same S.O.S. He chuckled, feeling perhaps overly confident, but sure enough of a passing credit.

Sarah was already seated in the far corner. She looked up immediately, flushing slightly when their eyes met. There was an open spot three seats behind her, but instead of coming down the back of the far row, he cut one row over and went all the way to the front of the room so he could walk past her desk. As he did he leaned over slightly and whispered over her head.

“You can do this. Just remember Star Wars…”

He watched a smile kiss the corners of her mouth as she tried to keep her head down for the proctor’s benefit. His mouth was dry. He wished he’d brought a water bottle.

“Quiet please.” The proctor seemed to direct her comment toward Brendan, whose back was toward her, making it difficult to ascertain the exact source of the noise. “The exam will begin in ten minutes.”

Mr. Taylor wasn’t allowed to proctor the exam, for obvious reasons, so one of the assistant principals, Ms. Meissenheimer, was taking his place. She was a sour looking woman, who seemed much too far past her expiration date to still be hanging out in high school hallways. He took his seat quietly, and after a minute or two of staring at the back of Sarah’s head she finally peeked around at him. It didn’t take long for him to convey what he needed to say. She blinked once and looked down, turning back to face the front of the room. He really
was
sorry.

Brendan was the second one to finish the exam. It’d been about what he expected. When he walked his test up toward the front of the room and passed her desk, the smell he’d thought about on the way there tickled his nose. He hadn’t smelled it the first time he’d passed her. Must have been some shift in the way she was sitting now. Or maybe her nerves had heated up her body temperature, releasing more of the fragrance.

He laid his test and answer key in the appropriate wire baskets on the proctor’s desk and turned once more. She was staring at him, with a range of emotions filling her eyes until they looked ready to spill over. His forehead creased with concern. She couldn’t afford to lose focus. She needed to concentrate and he was obviously not helping.

“Brendan you need to go now.”

Ms. Meissenheimer was right, of course, he just couldn’t bring his feet to move. Sarah looked down at her test again and it seemed to release the suction.

Out in the hallway he sat down against the wall. He could still feel her drawing him, like he was caught in her force field. He shook his head, laughing. Star Wars indeed. It was another full hour before Sarah left the exam room. A whole hour he’d spent figuring out why he couldn’t leave things as they were. He bargained with himself, going round and round until he reached an
her lips fell open
equitable compromise.

Of course, once she walked out into the hallway all his arguments went right out the window. She burst into tears when she saw him and started running the other way.

“Sarah, wait!” He caught up with her about three quarters of the way down the otherwise deserted hallway.

“I’m sorry!” she sniffed, clutching her purse tightly against her stomach with both hands. “I don’t want to do this to you!”

“Do this to
me
!? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t want to distract you from your future.”

Brendan laughed. “My future.” She was nodding through her tears and it made him hurt in places he didn’t know existed. He blinked a couple of times and swallowed against the pain. This was one scar that wouldn’t heal right, no matter how much he left it alone.

Against his better judgment, he held out his arms. “Come here.”
She shook her head and clutched her purse even tighter, but his eyes were set, and strong. “It’s ok. Come here.”

Sarah dropped her arms and allowed him to pull her gently into his chest. He could barely breathe with her pressed up against him like that, but he put his arms around her anyway and tried to inhale her scent, stroking her hair and committing every touch, every sensation to memory. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so without words he tried to press into her every bit of comfort he could, pushing it out through his pores and across to her skin.

“You’re so warm.” She murmured.

He kissed the top of her head.

“I’m sorry I’m being such a baby.”

He just shook his head against her hair and felt the softness of it brush against his lips. The electricity ignited them, jolting through him until suddenly every nerve cell was awake and he was fighting for control in ways he hadn’t dealt with since puberty. He’d never had to fight back this kind of desire for Tess, but then again they’d never been this close before.

Sarah pulled back slightly, as if she sensed the change in the atmosphere around them, and he released his hold a bit. She was trembling. He brushed her tears back with the thumb of one hand and kept the other solidly on her waist. He tried not to think about the curve of her skin underneath her thin sweater, or the way the electricity kept sparking, igniting a series of small fires all over his body that he was having trouble extinguishing.

She blinked a couple of times and swallowed, voicing his thoughts. “Wow. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

She smiled at the relieved expression on his face. At least one of them was man enough to admit what was really happening, and unfortunately it hadn’t been the one with the “Y” chromosome.

“Yeah.” He tried looking down the hall, concentrating on a bank of lockers. “You noticed too, huh?”

“And we didn’t even kiss.” She smiled then and her lips fell open as she locked eyes with him. She put both hands around his face, gently feeling her way from his cheekbones to his jaw. “Do you mind tempting fate, just this one last time?”

She was asking
his
permission? She didn’t wait for a response, but pulled his mouth toward her. In his mind he was falling again, losing his bearing, losing sight of the ledge. Her lips were soft and he gently backed her up against the bank of lockers to brace himself against the loss of balance. He opened his mouth slightly and tried once again to pour into her every ounce of feeling he couldn’t put to words. Turns out she gave as good as she got. By the time they pulled out they were both breathless.

He knew he would still go to Europe and she would go to Canada, but he stood there, his body on fire, wondering what kind of a fool walks away from something like that. Before he could say anything she read the battle in his eyes and slipped out from underneath his arms. Once she’d put a few feet between them she hooked her purse over her shoulder and grabbed hold of it tightly, as if it could somehow steady her. She licked her lips and smiled and immediately the taste of her rushed back through his mouth.

“Goodbye Brendan.”

The words stung, even though he’d known they were coming. He swallowed hard and nodded once.

“I’m not sure if I’ll be at graduation, so I’m glad you waited for me.” She looked at her shoes with a guilty smile. “This was better, anyway.”

He tried to smile, but he couldn’t help thinking he was making the biggest mistake of his life, letting her walk away like that. The hurt in her eyes before she finally turned away confirmed it. He was a fool.

She didn’t look back again. She was stronger than he was, standing there pathetically, watching her back. Just like the cemetery. He cursed himself and walked the other direction, heading out a different set of doors and walking the opposite direction from the path he knew she’d take.

It took a few minutes for his anger to douse the last of the fire that raged through him, but soon all he could think about was getting the hell out of New York.

__________

On Friday there was a rehearsal for the graduation ceremony. Brendan donned his cap and gown and looked in the mirror. The holes in his lip were beginning to close but the marks on his arms were still fresh enough. He was glad they were requiring the guys to be in buttoned down shirts.
Just one more day of pomp and pretense
. Once he hit the plane he’d already decided he would be in a t-shirt for the bulk of his trip. No one would know him. Let them think what they wanted.

He grabbed the package that had come in the mail and took one of the books out, stuffing it in his backpack as he headed out the door. He looked around his room, realizing that in forty-eight hours’ time all the years spent brooding and bleeding would be a distant memory.

After the rehearsal was over he took the subway out to Queens and as he came up out of the station, the sunlight hit him in a strange way. The world looked different somehow, and so did the cemetery. Peggy’s cart was only there on the weekends, so there would be no flowers for his goodbye. Maybe that was best. Even the air smelled different–not green and flowery like late spring or early summer, but earthy and wet, like winter somehow.

When he got up to Tess’ grave everything felt
still
. A strange sort of emptiness replaced the closeness and comfort he’d almost always felt being there. He looked back toward where Peggy’s cart was usually parked and suddenly he saw himself as Peggy must see him–a pathetic picture of grief in perpetuity. If that was reality then what had the last year meant?

The emptiness rang so loudly in his ears it was almost deafening. Nothing of the hours they’d spent together remained. He laughed at himself. Maybe that was because she wasn’t really there. Still, it was as if a strong wind had come through and carried it all away.

“You know Tess, how sometimes you look around and you can just tell that you’ve changed somehow? Yeah, that’s how I feel today.” He brought out the small book, the cover of which held the leaf picture titled ‘Fall’. It was the one Nate first picked out of his photos. The same picture was also on the first page, only this time with her poem superimposed onto the black and white background and gradually lightened from top to bottom. On the inside cover he’d inscribed a message:

Dear Tommy,

Now you don’t have to worry about that old box. I’ve made you a memory book that doesn’t have to stay hidden. You and I both know that the contents are very special, so take care of it, ok?

See ya,

B

He flipped through the book page by page, reading the poems and lyrics he’d already committed to memory, checking one last time that he’d done his best with every image, every page. Seventeen pages, one for every year she lived. Satisfied, he closed the book and tucked it under a small but heavy stone.

“This is for you.” He waited, stupidly, for an answer that would never come.

“I made it, kind of like a tribute. Your words and my pictures, melded together to create something new.”

He tried to will the tears back, but they wouldn’t stay put behind his eyes. “You’re a part of me Tess. You always will be. But I’m moving on, and I’ve come to say goodbye.”

He looked at the silhouette of the skyline and imagined her, fairy-like, leaping happily from building top to building top, some otherworldly combination of Tinkerbell and Spiderman. The afternoon sun warmed his body until he could relax enough to picture her face.

"You don’t have to hang around and watch over me anymore Tess. I want you to be free. I came to set you free, but it seems like you knew I was coming and said your goodbyes without me. Typical Tess. You always were too impatient."

“So yeah.” He stood up and brushed off his pants. “You might want to stick around from time to time though. I think Tommy still needs you.” He looked down at the book, hardcover and bound with paper. Barring any heavy rains that the oak tree couldn’t handle, it seemed like it would last until Tommy came again. And if not, then maybe it would just decompose and leech into the ground, and become a part of her too. Either way, it was a gift. Some way to thank her for her wisdom, her love…