The Mourning After (29 page)

“I’ve had enough animals for one night.”

“You’re cute.  Even for a rhinoceros.”

Levon stares ahead.  “Hilarious.”

Bayside is filled with vacationers when they arrive at the outdoor marketplace in downtown Miami.  Levon hasn’t been to the tourist spot in years, though today he is more tolerant of the noise and the Mexican man who is enticing him to pay a few bucks to hold an obscenely large python.  They pass through the square and reach the often-photographed Banyan tree.  Lucy grabs her cell phone from her purse and throws it at Levon.  “Take a picture of me,” she demands. 

Lucy is dwarfed by the breathtaking trunks and limbs, which measure over seventy-five feet tall.  “The tree is over one hundred years old,” she proclaims, reading from the sign beside her. Levon snaps Lucy in a pose that has her arms and legs tangled amongst thick, descending roots.  She is staring up at the lush branches that form a canopy overhead and shade the main entrance to the shops.  He likes to photograph her when she isn’t looking; she is beautiful against the tree.

“Let’s get a picture of you in Forrest Gump’s shoes,” Levon suggests, referring to the restaurant across the cobblestone path where a bench sits with a box of chocolates and a waiting pair of sneakers. 

“Forrest had some pretty good quotes,” she says, taking a seat on the chair, resting her glasses on top of her head, and quoting how life is like a box of chocolates. Her sedate outfit is a contrast to the oversized and scuffed sneakers.  “Should we eat here?” she asks.

Levon’s mind runs wild.  Forrest was no Casanova, though he got the ethereal Jenny to love him.  How could he say no to that kind of fate?

The hostess guides them through the gift shop and beyond the pastel, floral walls before deciding on a table.  Lucy takes her time reading all the quoted wall plaques that are sure to grow her inspiration repertoire to alarming numbers. She punches him on the arm as she recites, “If Mom ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Levon takes a seat at a bright red booth.  Lucy sits across from him under the sign that reads, “A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands.”

“This wasn’t what I had in mind when I planned your special night,” Levon says.

“I didn’t expect to have to resuscitate you,” Lucy shoots back.

Over hamburgers and strawberry lemonade, they touch on every subject except Levon’s panic attack.  Lucy continues to amaze him.  He has no idea there’s a clinical name for his recent bouts of suffocation.  Instead, they discuss the latest scandal at their school that’s centered on one of its administrators and a student.  Numerous repetitions of
I heard that
and
Do you believe?
fill the conversation.  From there, they move on to Lucy’s lively descriptions of previous birthdays dating back to age four (her earliest memory) through to the present.  And finally, Harper Collins.

“Why would anyone with the last name
Collins
put their child through a lifetime of publishing house jokes?” Levon asks.

“I heard that her father died when she was a baby and her mother remarried Mr. Collins.  Hence, Harper Collins.”

“How do you find out about this stuff?” he asks.

“I heard she has a crush on you.”

“Right, and so do Simon and Schuster.”

That gets a smile out of her. “It’s true.”

Levon reaches for his glass; the unfamiliar attention leaves him feeling self-conscious.  Lucy is the last person he wants to hear from about a different girl having a crush on him.  Music is blaring—a song Levon has never heard before—and Lucy is mouthing every word while she tortures him with her smirk.  She is swaying her body against the red vinyl and her hair—half pulled up and the other half down—is dragging across the table.  She is amused with
being in the know
. She throws her head back in delight when it smacks the wall behind her and the dark wood sign with its painted words comes crashing down on her.

A snicker escapes Levon’s mouth.  It bursts out of him and sends a bubbly vibration through the air.

Lucy is fighting with the wooden board, trying to pin it back onto the wall.  Levon’s laugh is unstoppable; tears of happiness drip from his eyes.  His belly allows the laugh in—a deep, bellowing, wonderful sensation he hasn’t felt in weeks.  For a minute, he forgets that someone has a crush on him, and it’s not Lucy.

When she finishes the assault on the sign and secures the piece back in its place on the wall behind her, the torment begins again.

“Don’t change the subject,” she says, falling back against the cushion, careful about ardent displays of excitement.  “We’re not through discussing your latest crush.”

“Random House or Little, Brown?” he asks, spent from the bout of hysteria.

Lucy rolls her eyes.

“HarperCollins published James Grippando’s new novel.”

“So you’ve noticed her, too?” Lucy says.

“No, I’m reading the book.”

“So you’ve been thinking about her?” 

“Jesus, Lucy, you’re such a pain.”

“Aha,” she says, “you like her.”

Levon shakes his head and motions for the waitress. He had cornered her by the bathroom and asked her to bring out a dessert for Lucy’s birthday when he waved to her.  Lucy is eyeing him while she uses a straw to clean the cracks between her front teeth.

“Does this mean you’re finally done pining over Rebecca?  I bet her pregnancy thing wasn’t much of a turn-on.”  And before he can respond to such a wildly outrageous statement, she continues with, “Harper’s pretty, Levon.  Don’t say you haven’t thought about it.”

“She’s a midget.”

“But a charming midget,” Lucy says.

Levon sighs.

“Can’t you just be happy?” she asks, plainly.

The young waitress with the bouncy blonde hair arrives at their table flanked by her fellow wait staff.  She is shy, holding a plate in one hand and a lighter in the other.  No one had told her that her job description included mild forms of humiliation.  Slipping the chocolate chip cookie sundae in front of Lucy, the enthusiastic group sings in unison while Maggie, according to the friendly name-tag, lights the candle.  She reminds Levon of a book he read as a child,
Muggie Maggie
.  Maybe
Muggie Maggie
was also published by HarperCollins.

Lucy’s green eyes are closed, and the revelers have parted.  Levon longs to reach across the table and touch her warm cheek—with his lips or his hand.

Lucy is thinking hard about her wish; her lips are mouthing private prayer.

Levon is savoring the time that has allowed him to gawk.  He thinks to himself:

I am in love with you
, and then,
can you feel how much I love you
?

She opens her eyes and stares at him, long and hard, before blowing out the candle.

Levon’s heart races, and his reckless thoughts litter the space between them.  They are words without sound; she does not hear the loud timbre of his thoughts. Instead, she is busy devouring the vanilla ice cream with its gooey cookie.  Her lips are glazed in thick syrup, her tongue swirling around buttery crumbs.  Ordinarily, he’d be dying to join her in the food frenzy, but watching her is enough.  She looks more beautiful than ever, and Levon is aching inside. 

He would never tell Lucy that he knows about Harper’s crush.  Unlike Lucy, Harper censors her speech and is soft-spoken.  The signs she sends his way that let him know how she feels about him are subtle yet noticeable—the way she blushed when he caught her looking his way, how she always manages to turn up by his locker when they’ve finished lunch.  Levon isn’t blind.  Harper’s cute, albeit in a teeny human sort of way.  She has pretty blue eyes and stick-straight black hair. 

“She’s got a huge rack,” Lucy says, while Levon is thinking she’s disproportionate.  Some things are hard to miss.  Harper Collins is known to have the largest breasts in the tenth grade.  “Do you like big-breasted girls or are you an ass man?”

“I don’t know.  Are you an ab girl or an ass girl?”

“Ass for sure.  And don’t think I haven’t noticed yours shrinking in those Levi’s.  You’ve lost a lot of weight, Levon.  How come you’re hiding it under loose fitting clothes?  Do we need to take you shopping?”

The numbers on the scale had dwindled into digits he had not seen for some time.  Folds have been replaced with lean lines, and muscles he never knew existed have made themselves known.  He thought he was the only one to notice, but Chloe asked him the other day if he was wearing high heels. 
High Heels?
  Had what he lost in weight been made up for in height?  He locked himself in the bathroom and studied his face.  The Vitamin E was working and the battered skin was fading into a nice macho battle scar. Pulling at his cheeks, there was a noticeable difference in the elasticity.  What had once been pliant, rubbery flesh has transformed into a term once used to describe David’s profile: smooth and noticeable.  He supposed most boys his age emerge from being unbearably awkward into a man.

“You look good,” she says, before adding, “not that I had a problem with you before, and don’t get carried away.  You can still afford to lose a couple more pounds.  I’d hardly call you
skinny
.”

“How do you do that?’ he asks.  “How do you manage a compliment and an insult all in the same sentence?”

“Think of it as me saving you from a lifetime of vanity and self-importance.”

“How noble of you.”

Levon contemplates her words.  “I haven’t told them yet.”

“What are you waiting for?  They’ll be so proud of you!”  He didn’t have the answer.  Perhaps he was merely accustomed to not sharing.

“If it makes any difference, I’m really proud of you.”  Her eyes sparkle, and she seems genuinely impressed with his recent accomplishments.  The timing couldn’t be better.

“Here,” he says, reaching under the table and handing her his gift, which Chloe wrapped in white.

“You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“I know.”

She takes it in her thin fingers and shakes it.  “Doesn’t sound like much.”

“It’s a lot,” he says, feeling his heart jump-starting, the thump thump thump growing hideous and loud as she tears at the paper.

Lifting the lid, Lucy peers inside.

“There’s only paper in here.”

He knows that.  He was the one who placed the neatly stacked sheets along the bottom of the Bloomingdale’s box he found in his mother’s closet.  Strategically placed upside down, she reaches in for the first lined sheet.  Turning it over, she sees Levon’s scrawly handwriting.

It’s not easy watching someone read your most private thoughts.  And what’s on the six pages changes everything.  Lucy is the kind of girl who would jump to the ending of a book because she lacks the patience to plod through.  Levon notices how she carefully reads each word, every sentence, eventually holding the stack in her hands like valuable treasure she often teased him about.  She is reading his words, and her face reacts in this order: her cheeks turn pink, her eyes enlarge, the eyebrows rise and fall in harmony, and her lips, processing what she’s reading, release the final
Oh
.  Her chin is resting on her left palm as if unable to hold the exclamation in. 

“Oh my God, Levon, you have to tell them about this.”

“I can’t,” he says.

“You have to.”

“David’s gone.”

She says, “There’s no way you could have predicted…”

“How’s that for a birthday present?”

“This craziness?  You think this is a gift?”

“No, that you get to be right about me.”

“Right about what?”

Levon shakes his head back and forth.  “My secret.  You were right all along.  I have a big one.”

“Levon, you have to tell them.  You owe it to everyone, especially yourself.”

“How can I do that to my brother?”

“Jesus, Levon, what about
you
?  How could your brother do this to you?”

Levon doesn’t have an answer.  David is gone.  He’s the real victim. 

This isn’t the response Levon predicted.  Her birthday is ruined.  All he wishes for is to disappear, like he has done for most of his life.  Lucy is irritated, or angry, he can’t tell.  He thought he was giving her a gift by sharing this piece of him.  He sees he was wrong. 

She gets up from her side of the table and, instead of walking out of the restaurant, she scoots him over and takes the seat beside him in the booth.  Her hands are clasped in her lap and she nudges him with her shoulder.  No sooner has the chaos inside him diffused, when she says, “You’re so brave, Levon.  David was lucky to have you.”

“How come I don’t feel brave?”

“You need to tell them.  This changes everything.”

“I know,” he says.  “That’s what scares me the most.”

I take it back.  I don’t hate Lucy at all.

There is a stranger waiting at the door when Levon pushes through.  She looks a lot like his mother, but there is a sparkle to her that has her lit up like a Christmas tree.  There is a pep in her step he hasn’t seen in months; this was not the woman who had persecuted him hours before.

“Is there something you want to say to me?” she asks, lingering around the doorway.

Levon is taking off his shoes and setting them alongside the collection along the floor of their foyer.  His mom’s latest obsession is maintaining clean floors.  The dirt and grime on sneakered shoes are no longer permitted throughout her house.  She has gone so far as to purchase guest slippers, so anyone could walk around her spotless floors with germ-free feet.

There is something amiss about her, though Levon can’t put his finger on it.  He appraises her again, searching for the piece that has her resembling someone softer and serene.  That is when his father walks in the room.

“How could you keep this from us?” he asks.

There is no physical way Lucy could have gotten to them this fast.  Coincidence? Or was someone playing with his head? 

“Don’t you think you should have said
something?”
his mother adds.

“I’m sorry,” he says, while air fills his hungry lungs.