The Beginning of After (25 page)

David stared at the fountain for a moment and then, without looking at me, said, “Go. Just promise me you won’t ask him about the accident.”

I nodded and slipped silently away from him, out of the garden.

The room hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been there, except for the quiet.

Mr. Kaufman lay in the same bed, wearing the same navy pajamas, but he was breathing on his own. I realized how comforting the sound of the respirator had been, the steady rhythm something known and predictable in a totally messed-up scenario.

His eyes were closed, and I felt a combination of relief and disappointment. In theory, I’d wanted to see him awake. I’d wanted to talk to him and have him talk back. But the thought of that had also terrified me.

What would he think when he saw me? What would he say? Would he apologize? I’d tried to come up with something for me to say but couldn’t.

If he’s sleeping, I shouldn’t wake him. . . . Maybe I can come back.

But as I’d said to David, I knew I wouldn’t be back. It was now or never. I moved the armchair slowly, so it squeaked loudly against the floor.

Mr. Kaufman’s eyelids fluttered open and locked onto the ceiling. I froze for a moment, watching them. His gaze traveled to the window and downward, finally landing on me.

We locked eyes for a long moment. I tried to make my face mirror his, expressionless and calm. But my heart pounded.

“Know . . . you,” he said, his voice raspy but with a trace of his old strength behind it.

“Yes,” was all I said.

“Dina?”

I slowly shook my head.

“Not. Dina. D . . . D . . .”

My mother. He was trying to remember my mother’s name.

“Deborah,” I said.

“How . . . are you?”

He thinks I’m her.
The thought of it almost knocked me off balance.
Keep it together.

“It’s Laurel, Deborah’s daughter.”

His eyes scanned me up and down, then flickered with recognition.

“Look . . . like her,” he said. There was something in the way he said it that made me wonder what Mr. Kaufman thought of my mother. Did he think she was beautiful? Did he have a little crush?

Seeing him struggle with speech, with reality, I knew I shouldn’t be there. Like David had said, he wasn’t going to give me any answers. But I couldn’t move from where I stood.

And then he frowned, a familiar frown I’d seen him make so often in the past.

“Who . . . why . . .”

I leaned in like I was offering to help him find his words.

“Why . . . you . . . here?”

The question came out weak and shaky but landed with a booming thud in the space between us.

Why
am
I here?

Why isn’t it my mother? Why is it me, alive, and the others dead?

It was a gigantic question, a question I’d been hoping to find the answer to since April.

I looked at Mr. Kaufman and now, the casually puzzled expression on his face gave the question an entirely new meaning.

He wanted to know why I was here, visiting him.

Without thinking, I said, “I’m here because of my parents and Toby.”

Another puzzled frown from Mr. Kaufman. Then I remembered David’s vague request.
Don’t ask him about the accident.

What
did
he remember? Or more to the point, what had they told him?

“Do you know what happened?” I asked, my voice rising into a high octave. I knew I was breaking the rules but couldn’t stop.

He swallowed hard and said, using extra syllables, “A-cc-i-den-t.”

“Do you remember who was in the car with you?”

His face crumpled, like someone balling up a brown paper bag.

“Bet-sy.”

I took a quick breath, which felt hot as fire. My whole body was shaking. “Do you remember who else?”

Mr. Kaufman looked at me with surprise and a little bit of hurt, like I’d slapped him. He moved his head slightly from one side to another in his version of
no
, not breaking our gaze.

All movement in the room froze, the blinking lights on the IV machine and the soft billowing of curtains from the heating vent.

He doesn’t know.

To him, my family was alive. He existed in that world, still. A world that I would have given anything to have back. Why should he get to stay there, when he was the one who tossed the rest of us out?

When I opened my mouth again, it felt like slow motion.

“My parents and my brother. Deborah and Michael, and Toby.” I had to push the names into the stalled air. “They were there too. And they’re dead now. Too.”

There was a pause where nothing happened. Mr. Kaufman’s face did not change, and I wondered if he’d heard me.

Then, his mouth opened into a wide, hollow O.

Out of it came a sigh filled with pure agony. A dusty, terrible gush that reminded me of Pandora’s box.

He started to cough, almost gagging on his own breath, before the other sound came. Sobbing. Like a child’s sobbing. Soft and utterly broken.

I backed up against the wall in horror.
Oh my God, Laurel. What have you done?

Footsteps down the hallway, fast with the little squeak of rubber-soled shoes.

“What’s going on?” barked a nurse as she exploded into the room.

I stammered in denial. “We were just talking . . . he got upset.”

The nurse rushed to Mr. Kaufman’s bedside, and I turned and ran.

In the hallway I saw the door marked
STAIRWAY
and crashed through it, taking the steps quickly as if someone were chasing me. Putting as much distance as possible between myself and the sound that came out of Mr. Kaufman’s mouth.

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry
, I kept saying to myself. That wasn’t supposed to happen. A gust of regret and cringing shame pushed me faster down the stairs.

When I reached the ground floor, I pushed open the stairway door and tried to figure out where I was. I looked right and saw the peach glow of the lobby at the end of the hall. I looked left, and saw a big wooden door, different from all the other doors in the building.

A small sign on it said
CHAPEL
.

In seconds I was through it, and shut it behind me. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

The room was only large enough to hold two wooden benches and a stone pedestal with some flowers on it, set in front of a stained-glass window. In the glass, a woman dressed in white knelt on a patchwork bed of grass and roses before a large black cross.

I collapsed onto the rear bench, pushing the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, and screamed silently. Maybe that would be enough to make me feel human again before anyone came to find me.

But I needed the sound that wanted to come out. In the past, this kind of thing always took me over, breaking free of some holding pen down in my gut and raging wild until I could tame it again.

Here, now, I called it up. Let it loose, almost begging for the damage I knew it could do.

I put my hands on the back of the bench in front of me and gripped hard, let my head drop as if my neck was finally tired of holding me up. Then, the low, guttural wails burst and the tears rushed. My right hand crunched into a fist and started banging on the wood.

I want. I want. I want.
It stuck in a single stubborn loop, like a toddler throwing a wicked temper tantrum.

There was so much I wanted, but could never have. It came tumbling out of me, the smallest things first. My mom smiling at me, my dad putting his arm around my shoulders. My brother laughing at one of our inside jokes, like how he always let me know I had food on my chin by saying, “Hey, Laurel. Keepin’ it real!”

Then the bigger ones. Like having three people in the world who would always know me and love me.

I also wanted there to be a reason why I was here. If there couldn’t be a reason why my family died, maybe I could at least have that much.

Or perhaps just a future that wasn’t so complicated, filled with holes and what-ifs, everything colored a few shades darker than normal.

And then, finally, I just wanted to be Laurel. Not a tragedy. Not a survivor. Just me. Who would ever let me be that?

Someone knocked on the chapel door, and I sucked in a sob.

“Laurel?” David’s voice. Worried.

“Yeah.”

He opened the door and saw my face, covered in tears and snot, and the set of his mouth changed. Without a word, he let the door close and slid onto the bench, circling his arms around me in such a smooth motion I didn’t even see it happen. I just felt them, warm and sturdy and confident.

David said nothing. He didn’t ask what was wrong or even say
shhhhh
the way some people do by instinct. He just tucked his chin over the top of my head as I curled into him. I was crying softly now, but easily. It was like a language that only he understood, because we were the same species.

David saw me, my house, my life, as a refuge somehow. Here, in his arms, I realized he could offer the same to me.

Finally, when my crying had disintegrated into just sniffles, I raised my face to his.

“Is he okay? Your dad?”

David looked at me tenderly, protectively. An expression I’d never seen on him before.

“Yes. My grandma’s up there with him now.” He paused, and the expression faded. I knew what was coming. “What happened?”

I didn’t want this to end yet, so in place of the truth I just said, “I’m sorry.”

But it ruined the moment anyway. David leaned away from me to get a better look at my face, his brow furrowing.

“For
what
?”

I bit my lip hard. “I told him . . . about my parents and Toby.”

Now he stood up, sliding out of my arms so that they fell, limp, against the wood of the bench.

“WHAT?”

“When I realized that he didn’t know yet, I lost it. . . .”

David took a deep breath, steadying himself.

“I asked you not to mention the accident.”

“He wanted to know why I was there. . . .” I knew it was a weak excuse.

“The doctors told us not to talk to him about the accident yet. They wanted to wait until he was more stable. . . .” His voice rose with every word.

“I was wrong, I know. I’m sorry.”

“You should be!”

His scolding, indignant tone made me instantly furious. What was I thinking? He would never completely understand.

“You would have done the same thing,” I said, trying to make my voice match the pitch of his. “Think about it, David. Just think about someone besides yourself for a change and imagine what it’s like for me.”

David opened his mouth to say something in response, but froze.

We were caught like that, staring each other down in a minuscule chapel, when Nana found us. The look on her face told me she had an idea of what had happened.

“Laurel and David,” she said sternly. “I’d like to leave now before traffic picks up.”

David forced a smile at her and nodded, then followed her out. I took one more look at the stained glass and then turned, trailing behind them.

Chapter Thirty-seven

N
eedless to say, the car ride home was more awful than the one that morning. This time, even Nana was too beaten down by the strain of the day to make small talk. It was a very long forty-five minutes of quiet, quiet, quiet with just the hum of the car and static-laced news radio.

I felt a dull pain behind my eyes from all the crying, but it was a good hurt. Like someone had swept something away back there and suddenly, I could see again. As we crossed back over the Tappan Zee, the water looked clearer than it had that morning.

My cell phone beeped one more time, now with a voice mail. Desperate for something to do, I listened to it.

“Laurel, it’s Joe. I’m kind of worried about you, you haven’t answered my texts. Can you please just call me and let me know everything’s okay?”

But there was no way I could call him back, even if I’d wanted to. I couldn’t even think about why I didn’t want to.

Finally, we pulled into our driveway to find a red truck squatting in front of the house.

Joe’s truck. I gasped, then shut myself up.

And Joe, sitting on our doorstep with a takeout cup of coffee in his hands. Wearing a ski hat topped with a pom-pom, and fingerless gloves. He looked up when he saw our car and squinted.

“You have a visitor,” said Nana as she turned off the car. My eyes darted to the rearview mirror to see David glance up and register Joe. He looked confused for a second, then lifted one side of his mouth into a half smile.

Then he quickly got out of the car and said, “I’m taking Masher over to the dog park.”

He walked toward the house, and Joe stood up. I watched Joe watch David warily, like they were crossing paths in a dark alley. Then, a few feet before David reached the front door, Joe started walking over to our car. Where I sat, unable to move.

“Hey, man,” said David, nodding quickly as they passed each other.

“David,” said Joe flatly. Joe opened Nana’s door for her, helped her out.

We heard Masher barking, then David fiddling with his key in the front door, finally getting it open and stepping inside. Nana watched Joe move around to my side of the car, then she turned quickly and went into the house too. It was starting to get dark now, and the temperature had dropped sharply since we’d left the Palisades Oaks.

Joe opened my door, but I climbed out before he could help me. He glanced at the house and back at me, quizzically. “David Kaufman has a key to your house?” was all he asked, his breath visible in the twilight.

“Uh-huh,” I said casually, then closed the car door and glanced up at Joe. He looked cold. And still sick. “What are you doing here?”

“Meg told me about David’s dad, and that you were going out there today.” He paused. “I left you a bunch of messages. . . . I thought you might need someone to talk to after.”

Now the front door opened again. David and Masher. Neither of them looked at me as they climbed into the Jaguar. Joe and I stepped aside as David backed up past us and then, once out of the driveway, sped down the hill.

I felt something catch in my throat, and my eyes get wet. If Joe hadn’t been standing there, I was pretty sure I would have started chasing after the car.

But now that it was gone, I looked back at Joe, at his runny nose and bloodshot eyes, waiting for me to say something.

Someone to talk to.

But I couldn’t think of anything. Where would I even start?

I thought back to that night in the truck outside Yogurtland, and how happy I’d been for those moments Joe had had his skin on mine. Things were best between us when we weren’t talking. At least, not about anything that mattered.

My hesitation must have been obvious, because Joe said, “Or we don’t have to talk. You just look like you could use a distraction. If your grandmother says it’s okay, can we go have dinner? I brought you a Christmas present.”

There was suddenly nothing I wanted more than to get distracted somewhere public and normal with Joe. We could eat and maybe do more sketches together and make jokes about the other diners, then make out somewhere in his truck.

But then I looked down the driveway, and I could almost still hear the Jaguar’s tires screeching.

The only thing I knew for sure at that moment was that David would be back.

If I was gone when that happened, would he leave again? For good?

David, do you know that’s a chance I can’t take?

Now Joe reached out tentatively, slowly, and took my hand. His glove scratchy, his fingertips icy as they laced through mine.

“Let me take you out,” he said, trying to sound confident.

I felt my ears burning and my throat closing and the tears coming.

“Joe,” I sputtered. “Why are you being so nice to me? I completely blew you off today. You sent me all those sweet, concerned messages and I didn’t answer.”

I thought he would let go of my hand, but I felt his grip tighten instead. “It’s okay. I understand.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“No.”

Now I was the one to pull my hand from his.

“But you should. You should get mad at me, even just a little. You’d get mad at anyone else.”

“You’re not anyone else,” he said.

“Yeah, you told me. I’m amazing in spite of everything I’ve been through.” The bitterness was rising now; I could almost taste the bile, and it was all I could do to keep it down.

“Uh-huh,” said Joe, an almost-question.

“Joe, I shouldn’t be anything in spite of anything. I want to be someone you can get pissed off at when I do something that’s not cool.”

His eyes changed shape as he started to get it, and he dropped his head. It reminded me a bit of what Masher did when he knew he’d done something wrong.

“I’m sorry, Laurel. You’re right. Let’s just go somewhere and talk about it.”

“I can’t,” I said weakly, forcing it out before my throat clapped shut again.

I looked toward the road again, and this time Joe followed my gaze. And I could see him get this other thing. David. His face scanned the house and the driveway uncomfortably, like a stranger in a foreign country, hopelessly lost.

“Joe, you—you are—” What? Wonderful. Delicious. Something that was doomed before it even began.

“Stop,” he said. Then he took off his hat, pulling it by the pom-pom, and shook his hair out a bit. “It’s all good.” Now he caught my eyes and held them. “I’ll see you.”

He pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket and loped toward the truck. I walked parallel to him, aiming for the front door, and stood there long enough to watch him drive away. Unlike David’s Jaguar, Joe’s truck moved slowly, but quietly. Maybe he was hoping I’d stop him.

When he was gone, I took a step and felt my foot knock something over. I looked down. It was a wrapped gift that had been leaning against the house, shaped like something framed. I picked it up and slowly tore it open.

On a sheet of notebook paper, in pencil, Joe had drawn a figure in jeans and a plain T-shirt, wearing sneakers. Her hair down and her arms hanging simply, confidently, by her sides. Me.

There was no cape or helmet or anything on my shirt. But Joe had written a name on a slant in the corner:

SURVIVORGIRL

Was that what made me so amazing to Joe? I never wanted him to see me as someone with superpowers. Even Superman wanted Lois Lane to love him as Clark Kent, not as the Man of Steel.

I stared at the drawing until my hands were too numb to hold it. Finally, I went inside where Nana waited for me, knowing better than to ask any questions.

An hour went by. No David. Two more hours. Then Nana and I ate frozen lasagna on TV trays while watching an old movie. The final credits rolled and still, no David. I saw Nana checking her watch, and I got even more pissed at him, for making her worry, this grandmother he had no official claims on.

Finally, Nana said, “It’s late. Go to bed. He’ll come when he comes.”

So I did as she told me, not wanting to cause her another ounce of stress. I changed and brushed my teeth, trying to shake off the pain of Joe’s
Oh, I get it
expression. Then I got into bed with Elliot and Selina and tried to read
Persuasion
for AP English like we were supposed to over break.

When in doubt, Laurel, do what you’re supposed to.

And somewhere in there I managed to fall asleep.

The first thing I felt was a hand on my cheek. Not really a full hand, just a good part of four fingers, pressing lightly.

“What?” I said, startled out of a dream where Joe and Meg and I were fishing off a boat on a river.

“Shhh. It’s me. Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

I felt something settle on my bed, and I propped myself up to see David’s silhouette, growing more and more 3-D as my eyes adjusted to the dark.

“David. Where have you been?”

“At the park. And then, driving around.”

I smelled something weird on his breath. “Have you been drinking?”

“Uh, yeah . . . coffee?”

“Oh.”

“I’m about as sober as I’ve ever been right now.”

“Okay.” I was still trying to shake the sleep from my head, to be sure that this wasn’t a dream.

“I talked to my grandmother. She said my dad’s fine.” His voice sounded gentle, airy, but I still felt overcome with shame as he mentioned his father.

“I’m so sorry, David. I really messed up there.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure I would have done the same thing, if it were me. Plus, you kind of did us a favor, because I think me and Etta were both too chicken to tell him.”

We were silent, but I could feel something different in the shadows between us, the tension gone.

“I needed to see what it might be like, to be back here,” said David after a few seconds. “Every inch of every road has some kind of memory for me.” He paused. “Not all of them are good. . . . Although it’s the good ones that hurt the most now. You probably know that too.”

I had to be able to see his face as he said these things, so I reached out and turned on my bedside lamp. We both flinched from the light, and then David scanned my nightshirt. It was a new one for Christmas, with frogs and candy canes all over it. Extremely dorky.

“Nice outfit,” he said.

“Thanks.” I smiled, and then he smiled. I sat up and then, as an invitation, offered one of my pillows to him. He propped it against the wall and took off his shoes and scooted back to lean on it, sitting cross-legged on my bed. His getting all comfy made me a little brave. “What if you got a place near your dad?” I asked.

David nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve considered that. I’m not sure a strange town where I don’t know anyone would help. For months I’ve been in nothing but strange towns where I don’t know anyone, and it’s not making me feel better.” He looked at me. “You would stay. You would do the right thing.”

I started to protest, but knew it was true. “Yeah, I probably would. What I’m confused about is who decides what the right thing is.”

“I think it’s a panel of hundred-year-old white guys in a room in a tall building somewhere.”

“Eating pork rinds and smoking cigars.”

“And getting lap dances, because that would be the perfect kind of hypocritical.”

I chuckled, and then stopped, and blurted out, “I still haven’t decided whether or not I want to go to Yale.”

“Why not?” he asked flatly. There was no reaction there, no judgment. He was the only person in the world who could do it like that.

“I feel like I need to be here. For
them
. This was their life, and now I’m the only one living it anymore. If I’m not, then am I betraying them?”

“And anyone else would tell you, oh, but your parents would want you to move on and get an education and fulfill all the dreams they had for you.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I don’t know, Laurel,” said David, and I loved how he said my name, like he enjoyed it. He looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe instead, your folks would have wanted you to dedicate your days to remembering them. Maybe it makes them feel better, wherever they are, to see you give up your life so you can be closer to them, since they don’t have one anymore.”

“I wouldn’t be giving up my life,” I whispered.

“Of course you would be. What the hell else are you going to do here?”

“A lot. My work at the animal hospital, for instance.”

He tilted his head into a
Come on!
slant. “There are animal hospitals in New Haven, if it’s that important to you.”

“Nana wants me to go. She wants to spend the winters in Hilton Head. So I feel like for
them
, I should stay but for
her
, I should go.”

David paused, then said, “Aren’t you talking to your therapist about all this?” like it had just occurred to him.

“I’m sorry. Am I boring you?”

“I’m just thinking maybe I’m not the best source of advice here. Look at me. You said it yourself. Everything I’m doing is completely and totally all about myself and what I want.”

“You’ve given me good advice before,” I said, prodding him.

He paused, then looked at me squarely and said, “Just forget about the
for
thing. Don’t do anything
for
anyone else but you. You can be a little selfish.” Then he smiled crookedly. “Come on. You know you want to.”

I remembered all the things I’d silently screamed to myself back in the chapel at the Palisades Oaks. He was right.

“Thanks, David,” I said, trying to make his name sound like I, too, enjoyed saying it. But the end curled up into a strange ball of sound, high and tight. And before I knew it, I was crying again.

Within a few seconds I heard the short, sharp breaths coming from David that meant he was crying too. And then I felt his hands on my shoulders, and a shifting of weight on the bed, and now he had me in his arms.

I wiped my face with the palm of my hand and raised it up, and kissed him. I don’t think he was expecting it, because he jerked his face away for a half second. But then he kissed me back. Fast, with energy. He moved his hands to either side of my face and I felt like I was falling, not into a place or a hole, but into colors. Red and orange and purple. Deep and rich.