The Beginning of After (14 page)

Chapter Sixteen

T
he hot and humid July turned into an even hotter, more humid August. Spending most of my time inside, however, I barely noticed. Between the house, Ashland, and Suzie’s office, my only jaunts into the real world were the dog walking and my quickie lunches with Eve. The sounds of this summer were the hum of air conditioners and the
huh, huh, huh
of panting dogs.

At night, sometimes Meg would come over to watch a movie. She never invited me to her house. It felt like she needed a break from something, although I didn’t ask her what.

Mr. Churchwell had arranged for me to take the Regents exams at a nearby high school, because our school district was too small to have their own summer testing. I’d taken a bunch of practice tests during the previous few weeks; they were a great way to make me drowsy late at night when I couldn’t sleep. So for two mornings in mid-August, I sat in a gym filled with students I didn’t know and lost myself in questions, answers, and essays.

When I was done and driving home, I thought of the phone call I would have made to my father.

Hey, Dad, I think I did well. I had to write a presentation on the benefits of weight-bearing exercise, so instead of celebrating with ice cream, let’s go for a nice long walk. Just kidding!

The day after the exams, I’d just barely woken up when I heard the phone ring, then Nana call out that it was for me. She’d stopped coming into my room to deliver anything weeks ago.

“It’s Eve,” said Eve sort of breathlessly, with no “Hi” or anything.

“What’s up?” I asked, confused. I wasn’t supposed to be at work until ten, although the hospital opened at nine.

“Your friend is here, with his dog.” She was practically whispering.

“David?”

“He wants to leave him here. Board him, I guess.”

I was so shocked that I couldn’t say anything.

“I thought you’d want to know ASAP. I’m stalling him, saying I have to do some paperwork. So he’s here . . . if you want to . . . see him.”

Now I could hear the restrained anger in Eve’s voice. She’d been around enough people dumping their pets; she knew the signs.

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

I jumped out of bed and threw on the previous day’s clothes, which were still lying in a heap on my floor, and rushed downstairs, pausing just long enough to tell Nana there was an emergency at work.

The traffic lights were with me and I made it at the fourteen-minute mark. Mr. Kaufman’s Jaguar was still in the parking lot, and I pulled up next to it, even though I was supposed to park in the back with the other employees.

I grabbed the front door handle and paused for a moment, trying to slow down my heartbeat. Things had happened so fast, I wasn’t even sure what I felt. I just knew I needed to talk to David but didn’t want to seem like a maniac.

Once in the door, I scanned the waiting room. Empty.

Then I saw him, behind the tall round rack of greeting cards in the corner, which the hospital sold as a fund-raiser for the ASPCA. He had dropped a card and was picking it up, dusting it off.

He raised his eyes to look at me and then stood all the way up.

“Fantastic,” he said dryly.

I took a step forward, then held out both hands as if hoping to catch some answers.

“What the hell, David?” I tried to keep my voice even.

He shot a dirty look at Eve, who had sunk so low behind the front desk you could only see the top of her head, and gingerly put the greeting card back in its rightful spot on the rack.

“What the hell is that I’m leaving. I can’t take Mash with me.”

“I don’t understand.”

David glanced at Eve again. “Can we talk outside?”

I examined his face now. He seemed calm and resolved, in the saddest of ways. I motioned for him to follow me and led him out the front door, then around a corner of the building where there was some shade.

David took a deep breath, and although there were some steps behind us going up to the side entrance, he remained standing, and so did I.

“He’s not going to wake up,” said David. “My dad. That’s what the doctors are saying.”

I folded my arms across my chest in a
Go on
type of gesture.

“I can’t stay by that bed anymore. I’ll puke or something. And things are messed up with my cousins.”

“Where are you going to go?” I asked, trying to make it sound challenging rather than curious.

“My buddy Stefan . . . he used to live here but moved to California. Maybe you remember him?”

I shrugged, even though I knew exactly who he was talking about.

“Anyway, I’m going to go check things out with him.” He looked up at the brick wall of the hospital, and I could see him start to break down. Fighting it. “I have to be gone.”

I wanted to sit or lean against the building or do something else besides stand there face-to-face with David with nothing holding me up. To make things worse, I had a split-second urge to reach out and touch him. I wanted to hang on to my fury, but it was already shrinking away.

To be gone.

I’d thought about it too. Sometimes my life here felt like a cage where I could never escape the pain. At other times, it felt like the only firm ground on earth. How could I fault David for tipping one way while I was tipping another?

“Why didn’t you call me?” I said softly. “Why wouldn’t you leave Masher with us?”

“That medication is a lot of work,” he said, almost whining, but then pulled his face straight. “You have enough on your plate. I figured, if I boarded him here, he could still see you.” David paused, looked at the wall again, and then added, “Plus, I didn’t want you to know I was leaving until I’d already done it.”

Now he forced a smile, adding, “Because, you know, we wouldn’t want to have a scene or anything.”

The thought of David being across the country, where there was no hope of seeing him occasionally, felt like one more thing to miss. I didn’t expect this feeling. And I didn’t like it.

“Please let me take him,” I said, trying to focus on Masher so that sensation would go away. “You know he won’t be happy in a kennel.”

David bit his lip and nodded. Grateful, like he’d been hoping for this from the beginning.

“Can you go in and tell Eve? She has to hear it from you.”

He nodded again, then headed into the building. Which left me standing by myself, not sure what to do next.

Since David was going to disappear without a trace, maybe I should beat him to the punch.

I checked my cell phone and saw that I didn’t officially have to be at work for another half hour. It would be just enough time for me to drive home and change clothes before coming back, at which point I knew David would be already on the road.

And we would not have said good-bye, just like he’d wanted.

Chapter Seventeen

T
he night before school started, I laid out my first-day outfit—jeans and an embroidered blue T-shirt—and Nana came in to see it.

“You’ll look very pretty,” she said, rubbing cream into her hands. This was a bedtime ritual for her, the spreading of lotion on all limbs and digits, and especially on the webby skin between her fingers. She had this idea that your skin got dried out while you slept, making you look older faster.

“I just want to seem, you know, okay.”

“You will. Because you are.”

Earlier that day, I’d had a session with Suzie.

“How do you feel about seeing everyone again?” she’d asked. “Especially the ones who were there that night, after the prom?”

I hadn’t been able to answer her then, so she helped me create a “comfort zone” that I could go to in my head if I needed it at school. (I settled on the space at home, between the white couch and the window, wrapped tightly in a quilt from my bed.)

After Nana disappeared into her room, I opened my journal, waiting for something to kick in. The window was open and a breeze swam in, almost chilly enough to raise the hairs on my arm. Fall was starting, right on cue. The
starting
part of that made me uneasy.

As a family, we got collectively bummed out by the end of summer. Toby and I would lie around and watch a lot of television, relishing the feeling of not having any homework we should be doing. My dad would work late to avoid the quiet sadness in the house, and my mother would spend extra hours at the studio to catch up on wedding season portraits.

I began forming words with my pen, but they felt clunky and stupid:

I’m going back to school tomorrow. They will look and stare and whisper again.

I stopped writing and started drawing. Big round eyes, sharp and jagged eyes, eyes narrowed to mysterious, sneaky slits. Soon, I was fast asleep, the notebook balancing on my chest, the cats on either side of my legs. Dreams came fast and short, flickers of scenes that ran into one another like a silent movie.

When Megan’s car reached the bottom of the school’s driveway, she turned to me and smiled. “Here we are at last,” she said, and I couldn’t figure out why she was so excited to be done with a three-minute drive. But now she was turning left into the senior parking lot, and I got it. What she meant was,
At last, we’re seniors! We’re going to rule the school!

Meg was no longer driving her mom’s minivan. Her sister, Mary, had left for NYU the week before, and had bequeathed to Meg her very tiny but very cute red Toyota. She was so amped about it that you’d think it was a Mustang convertible.

We had timed our arrival to be early, but not too early. Other seniors were already there, leaning against their cars in groups, chatting. Meg drove over to them and pulled into the first open space. All heads turned, scanning the front seats to register first Meg, then me.

“Ready whenever you are,” she said, pulling up the parking brake until it made a
grurt
noise. I gathered my stuff and got out quickly, wanting to appear ready, even eager. Still, it was an effort for me to raise my head from the pavement to see who was there.

Andie Stokes and Hannah Lindstrom were coming toward me. Andie wrapped me in a hug.

“Hey,” she said.

Hannah did, too. Now, suddenly, Caitlin Fish. They were practically lining up.

I was getting an air kiss from Lily Janek when I noticed three guys hanging out across the parking lot, hands in their pockets. One of them was Joe. He looked up at exactly the wrong moment and our eyes met. He just nodded. Not even a nod. Just a swoop up of the chin, then down. Our time at the coffee place had been nice, but I still wasn’t sure where it left us, and clearly he wasn’t either.

I took a second to check out the rest of the lot. Was I hoping to see David? Even though I knew he was surely in California by now, the familiar school setting caused a knee-jerk hope that maybe he’d be there. I’d have to get over that.

Now I smiled quickly at Joe, then someone touched my shoulder and I turned to see Meg ready to usher me inside like a bodyguard. As I walked toward the school entrance, feeling Joe’s eyes on my back, maybe even on my swinging shoulder bag or my new shoes, I wondered how soon I’d get to see him again.

One car was missing from the driveway when Meg and I pulled up to my house that afternoon.

“Nana must be getting her hair done,” I said.

“You sure you don’t want to go with us to Vinny’s?” asked Meg. She was meeting Andie and Hannah and their crowd to celebrate the first day of senior year with pizza.

“Thanks, but I just need to chill.” The day had been good. People had been nice. Mr. Churchwell tracked me down to check up on me, and Nana called at lunchtime to see how I was, but I didn’t mind. Now, even the weight of my book bag as I heaved it out of the backseat had a reassuring, solid feel to it.

“Pick you up tomorrow?” she asked.

“Call you tonight,” I said, then got out of the car.

I waved at Meg as she backed down the driveway but quickly turned toward the house. There was Masher in the front window, his ears forward and high, panting. When I opened the door, he ran past me into the driveway, then stopped and shot an intense look in my direction. “Yeah, just give me a few minutes,” I said. I dropped my stuff in the house and changed into my sneakers.

Back outside, at the end of the driveway, I stopped to open the mailbox. Masher sat in the middle of the road, looking up the hill, then down the hill. I slid out the pile of mail and started walking, the dog a few yards ahead of me. Bills, the
PennySaver
, some junk mail for my dad.
National Geographic
, addressed to Toby. I touched my finger to Toby’s name printed out in dot matrix, thinking
At least he’s still alive in a computer somewhere.

Then there was an envelope addressed to “Masher, c/o Laurel Meisner.” I froze, staring at it, while Masher began peeing in the Girardis’ ivy patch.

I tucked the rest of the mail under my armpit and opened David’s envelope. Inside was a letter written on lined notebook paper.

I read it twice, then folded it into my pocket. Masher took that as his cue to stop peeing and start walking again, and I followed him, past the Girardis’ and every familiar spot after it.

Chapter Eighteen

E
very few days, a postcard from David to Masher would show up in our mailbox.

As he made his way slowly, zigzaggedly east, David told his dog that it was hard for him to get online and send an email, but he liked being able to jot things down on a twenty-five-cent postcard and mail it off when he got the chance. He told Masher about how being alone on a highway in the middle of nowhere gave him a sense of peace he’d never felt before, and how he’d had the best meal of his life late one night at a truck stop outside Salt Lake City, served by a waitress named Melba.

I read the notes aloud to Masher because it felt wrong not to, but secretly wished just one letter would come addressed to me. There was never a return address, so I couldn’t write back to him even if I wanted to.

“How is David?” Nana asked one day as I turned David’s latest over and over in my hands. This one told Masher all about what it felt like to ride a raft down the Snake River in Wyoming.

“He seems good,” I said.

“His grandparents were up here last weekend from Miami.” Nana paused. “They’re talking about selling the house.”

I felt something lurch in my stomach. “Why?”

“Well, nobody’s living there, but somebody has to pay all the taxes. The house is worth quite a bit, and I think they want to put something away for David. Also,” she leaned in to whisper, although nobody else anywhere could possibly hear us, “I got the impression that Mr. Kaufman’s care is quite expensive.”

I thought of how Mr. Kaufman drove the nicest cars of all the neighbors and was always buying pricey electronic gadgets before anyone else had heard of them. Now he needed help to cover the cost of being only half-dead, and I didn’t feel one bit sorry.

“What will they do with all the stuff?” I said, after a few seconds.

“I don’t know, sweetie.” Then Nana was miles away, staring out the window.

“Are you okay?”

She snapped out of it and looked back at me with a sudden determination. “Yes. But I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

I just raised my eyebrows at her, tired of asking questions.

“I need to go home in a few weeks, to take care of some personal business. How do you feel about that? It would just be for three or four days. I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Dill, and you can stay with them.”

It was so easy to forget that Nana had a house full of her own furniture and uneaten food and
Reader’s Digest
s piling up in the mail stack.

“What kind of business?” I asked.

“I’m thinking of renting out my house for the next year. I’d like to see Dr. Jacobs about my arthritis, too. And I need to meet with my lawyer about selling the condo.” When Nana said “the condo,” she winced like it hurt.

The condo meant Nana’s deluxe two-bedroom apartment at a retirement community in Hilton Head, where she’d been planning to move. My dad had helped her find the place just a few months before the accident.

Nana had had plans. She was old, yeah, but she still had a future. So what did she have now?

I looked at Nana trying so hard not to cry. “Is it okay with you if I go?” she asked. “You can come with me if you’d like, but I’d hate for you to miss school now that you’ve started again.”

She had given up so much to be here. Did she ever resent it? Or me?

“Please go,” I said. “I’ll be fine. Please do what you need to do, Nana.”

She nodded, biting her lip, wrinkling her nose. Then I watched her walk quickly out of the kitchen on her way to break down somewhere away from me, the perfectly centered back seam of her straight, straight skirt wiggling like a tail.

Andie and Hannah talked Meg and me into coming with them to Vinny’s Pizza for lunch the next day. “We’re seniors! We have to take advantage of our off-campus privileges!” Andie had argued. I was game. Tell me there’s an alternative to sitting in the cafeteria with people stealing glances at me between Tater Tots, I’m there.

At Vinny’s, we couldn’t agree on toppings, so we ordered a large pizza divided four ways: pineapple (Hannah), veggies (Meg), sausage (Andie), and plain (yours truly). Vinny himself was behind the counter and gave us a dirty look when Hannah placed the order, but later, after we’d squeezed into the booth in the window, he brought us over a free plate of garlic bread. I noticed his wife back in the kitchen, staring at me sadly.

“So Laurel,” said Andie, peeling the crust off a slice of bread. “Do you see that bench out there?”

I looked out the window to a bench on the sidewalk. A young mom was sitting on it, desperately rocking a stroller back and forth with a defeated look on her face. I glanced back at Andie and nodded, then watched her eat the crust and hand the middle of the bread to Hannah, who popped it in her mouth. This seemed like a ritual for them.

“I was trying to think of something else besides planting a tree, because I realized that’s a little tired, and one day I noticed that bench has a plaque on it,” continued Andie. “Some person I’ve never heard of, but I called the town office and guess what? They’re memorial benches. You can buy one. We can buy one, the senior class, for you know, you.”

As gung-ho as Andie was about this whole memorial idea, she didn’t seem capable of actually talking about the people it was for.

I thought of my parents’ names, Toby’s name, on a plaque on a bench. Sweaty backs and bra straps pressing against it, stupid kids sticking gum in the corners. I wasn’t sure my family would have wanted to be remembered in any way that had to do with people’s butts.

“What store would it be across from?” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. Meg kicked me under the table, so then I added, “Because my dad always loved the sandwiches at the Village Deli.”

Andie and Hannah looked at each other, both chewing their bread components. “That’s a great idea!” said Hannah.

“How do you plan to raise the money?” asked Meg.

“We’re going to do a bake sale at each of the home football games,” said Hannah. “We’ll ask the senior class to make cookies and brownies and stuff. It can really add up.” She paused, then added, very seriously, “But don’t worry. We won’t ask you guys.”

“And Laurel, you can get stuff at the bake sale for free,” whispered Andie.

Just then, my cell phone rang.
HOME
it said on the display.

“Hello?” I answered, like I didn’t know it was Nana.

“Hi, Laurel. How are you?” Her voice strangely formal.

“I’m having lunch in town.”

“I just wanted to see how your day was going. You’re with Meg?”

“And Andie and Hannah.” The girls were trying not to watch me.

“Those popular girls?”

I lowered my voice. “Yes, Nana. What does it matter?”

“Mrs. Dill told me some things about those girls. I’m not sure I want you hanging out with them.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Can I go now? Our pizza’s here,” I lied.

I hung up. “My grandmother,” I said to Andie and Hannah. “She’s going a little control freak on me.”

I thought of the last postcard I’d gotten from David. He’d written,
Masher, would you believe I can no longer keep track of what town I’m in? It’s an incredible feeling.

I could see why, sometimes.

Later, when Meg and I went to the restroom together, she asked me, “What was that about with Nana?”

“I honestly don’t know.” I wondered how much to tell Meg about what Nana said. “I think your mom has been trash-talking Andie and Hannah.”

Meg sighed as she turned on the sink to wash her hands. “Yeah. She decided last week that they’re slutty.”

We paused, awkwardly, so I said, “And you’re not?”

Meg flicked water at me. I flicked some back. Which meant we didn’t have to talk about it anymore.