Fall For Anything (21 page)

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?”

“No thanks…”

“Actually, I think I’ll rain check it too, Miss,” Milo says.

He’s still looking at me.

“That’s cool,” she says. She straightens. “Okay, well. If you guys change your mind, you know where I’ll be.” She pats my shoulder on the way out. “I’ll see you.”

And then we go. Me and Milo. Together. Milo walks my bike for me. We go to the Ford River, where the water is still so painfully low and the grass next to it is still yellow and thirsty. I sit down and tilt my face toward the sun. Milo is next to me, stretched out. I can feel his eyes on me and there is so much between us that needs to be said.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “For what you did for me.”

I’ll start there.

But the rest—I think it has to wait.

“You’re my best friend,” he says.

I bring my hand to his face. I run my fingers lightly across his skin. My index finger traces his lips.

I just want to feel that he’s here.

I lay down next to him and rest my head on his chest. He tenses just for a second, surprised, and then he relaxes and puts his arm around me. I don’t want to talk. I just want to be quiet with him. Listen to his heart—that constant.

He kisses my forehead.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

I think you could walk across the river and not get your feet wet. I think I’ve caused a shift. People are changing, slowly becoming different. I see the beginnings of it in them. I think I made it happen—or maybe it was just something that was always going to happen.

But I’m still the same.

And then the next thing happens, which I think is supposed to be the last thing.

I’m sitting in the living room, staring out the window when Mom comes in with a thick, padded envelope. She hands it to me. I look at her, confused.

“Package for you,” she says. “I signed for it.”

I stare at it for a minute, and then I notice the name on the return address.

Culler Evans

Mom notices it too.

“Oh…” she says, surprised. “Culler Evans … Culler Evans. Your father was teaching him. He thought he was just brilliant. He sent a very nice card after the funeral. Did you know him, Eddie?”

I look at her and she’s looking at me funny.

“I met him once,” I say.

She nods. I take the envelope upstairs to my bedroom. It’s heavy, a little. I sit on the bed with it forever, picking at the corner, before I finally gather the courage to open it.

It’s hard to get my hands to work.

Photographs spill out onto the bed. So many photographs. A memory card. I’m not sure what to think as I sort through them. I’m looking for a note. I’m always and forever looking for a note, but there’s none. Just photographs. Culler’s photographs. Only his photographs.

I go through them slowly, my fingers trembling, and watch my life play out in stills.

First, Tarver’s. Culler’s empty interpretation of the outside of it. Photograph after photograph of this place, and I remember what he said.
Just knowing it inspired him; that he came here to be inspired … I’m hoping to feed off that.
And then, suddenly I’m there. This girl, peering into his station wagon. These photographs turn into my discovery of the initials on the door. I know this story; I lived it. The photographs he took of the studio after we cleared it out. The one snap he managed to get with me in it. These turn into the point-and-shoots he showed me at Chester’s and those photographs turn into the schoolhouse. In one photo, I’m talking to Milo and I remember what we were talking about. Fighting.

We discover the second message.

The photograph of my hands after Milo left.

Then the photograph of the gazebo at night. The photographs of me on that street in Labelle. The house. Burdens. Burdens.

Nothing worth staying for.

The photographs in the motel. These give me pause. I stare at the girl in them and I don’t believe I am her. Soft and naked. Porcelain skin, standing in front of Culler. The TV is a bright white light behind me and I’m looking at him in a way I am not sure I’ve ever looked at anyone before. My grief is on me. I can see it plainly in my eyes and that makes my throat tight and my stomach hurt. I remember how I felt that exact moment, knowing how alive and young I was—am—and I see it here, so much. It’s like there’s something there in me, just waiting to be realized.

And now it’s gone. I think it must be gone.

I feel a deep sense of loss. More now, maybe, than before. I run my fingers over the pictures of myself slowly. I was so close. I thought I was so close. And now I am farther from where I started and everything is far from me because I still need an answer and I think of Culler and how far we are from each other, how brief and intense we were, and then over. It’s amazing, when you think about it. And sad. Just like that. Like that—intense, everything, over.

Like being alive one moment and dead the next.