Dad, too. Even more so, because it didn’t look like he’d been crying, either. No red spots in sight.
“Is there anything nice you’d like for dinner?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“We won’t be cooking tonight, but you can pick. We’ll get anything you want. Takeout,” he added as an afterthought.
“Um …”
“Have a think about it.” He got up, too, then. “Are you all right?”
No. Yes. No. “… Yeah.”
“Great. I’m just going to sort some things out upstairs. Let me know if you need anything, all right?”
With that, he escaped, too.
Now it was just me, and the living room, and an enormous, deafening silence.
I should probably call someone, I guessed. My first thought was Ryan or Hayley, but I hadn’t talked to them that much lately. It’s not that we had a problem with each other, we’d just kind of drifted.
Lara and I didn’t have that kind of friendship. Same with Niamh.
I could call Juliette, but she’d been so down lately, it didn’t feel fair to load her up with all my problems. Besides, she’d probably overcompensate by being super perky, or taking me out for ice cream or something, and I didn’t want perkiness, or ice cream. Or sympathy.
What did I want, then? It’s not like I could call someone and they’d wave a wand so Aunt Linda wasn’t dead anymore. And that’s the only thing that could really help right now.
Mom trotted downstairs with a USB, and plugged it into the TV.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She sat herself down next to me and grabbed the remote. “We’re going to remember some of the good times.”
That did not mean what I think it did, right? “Mom …”
“Because Aunt Linda would not want us to be here moping. We need to laugh. We need to remember how good things could be. All the lovely, lovely memories she’s given us.”
The TV flickered onto a home video of us all back in San Jose. I remembered this. Aunt Linda had come to visit when Crista was just a year old, long before Dylan was even born. They’d come during summer break, and stayed for about a week or so, and I’d had to sleep on the couch so they could have my room.
The video started in on Aunt Linda feeding baby Crista in a high chair. She looked so different. Well, Crista did, too, obviously, but I’d forgotten how thick Aunt Linda’s hair used to be. Her skin was deeply tanned, and she had hardly any wrinkles. I guessed she would’ve been in her late twenties.
“Oh my God, Roy, not now,” She laughed into the camera, shooing it away.
“Here we have the mother covered in what appears to be baby vomit and baby food,” Uncle Roy’s voice said in a terrible David Attenborough impression. “It’s her way of blending into the scenery, which is, incidentally, also covered in baby vomit and baby food, in order to sneak up on her young.”
“I’m telling you, it’s the broccoli,” Mom’s voice said. The camera swung around to face her typing something on her laptop. Probably work emails. That was the year she’d been hired as the manager of some accounting firm, back when she’d still liked that kind of role. I remembered her working at all hours of the day—and weekends—just to keep up with it all. “Ollie used to regurgitate anything with broccoli in it. Didn’t matter how well I blended it, soon as it hit his mouth, bleurgh.”
Next to me, Present Mom burst out laughing. I glanced at her without cracking a smile.
“I’m not letting Crista grow up to be a picky eater,” Aunt Linda said, raising her eyebrows and turning back to put another spoonful in Crista’s mouth. Crista promptly spat it back in her face in a raspberry, and Roy lost it, laughing so hard the camera ended up pointed at his feet.
“Yeah, well, how’d that work out for you, Lin?” Mom asked the screen. “She gave up on that as soon as she had Dylan.”
“Mom.”
“I told her, you have your resolve while they’re little, but eventually you realize it’s so worth it to cut the crusts off if it saves a three-hour tantrum every lunch!”
“Mom.”
“Yeah, honey?”
“Don’t you think, um … it’s a little soon to be watching videos?”
She looked confused, like there was no reason in the world I should think such a thing. “Well, when is it not too soon? What’s the rule on that, Oliver?”
I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure “three hours after the death” was universally too early to laugh fondly about things. “Sorry. I guess I mean, maybe I’m just not ready yet.”
Mom nodded. “That’s fine, sweetie. I’m going to watch some more, though. Because that’s what I need right now. I just need to watch some … some movies, okay?” Her smile was dangerously watery. “What is it you need right now? Is there something I can do for you?”
I needed to not be able to hear Aunt Linda’s voice like she was still fucking alive. I needed to not discuss dinner plans with Dad. I needed to do something, anything, other than force a smile and act like everything was fine. I needed to not be here.
“Would it be all right if I went to see some friends?”
Mom nodded vacantly. “Yeah, of course, sweetie. Just be home by nine, okay?”
She didn’t even ask me where I was going. She was 50,000 percent not okay. Maybe I shouldn’t be leaving. But then she pressed Play again, and Aunt Linda was tasting the baby food to prove it wasn’t that bad, and I had to go, I had to. So I wrenched my keys off the accent table and ran to my car.
I didn’t have a clue where I was driving to. I had nowhere to go. At first I drove aimlessly, zipping in and out of side streets, and then I found myself pulling over to find his address on Google maps.
It didn’t make much sense for me to go to him. In a lot of ways, even Lara or Niamh would’ve been more appropriate, because at least we were on speaking terms. But he’d met Aunt Linda, and knew just how sick she was, and had listened to me night after night in the summer whispering into the darkness how scared I was she might die.
I just had to see him.
Will’s house was no less intimidating in the daytime than it’d been on Thanksgiving. I pulled up, stared at it, and swallowed, heart pounding. There was no sense turning back now, though. It wasn’t exactly a small trip.
I just wasn’t quite brave enough to go up to the door. So I called him.
“Are you at home right now?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“I’m outside.”
“You’re … hold on.”
He hung up on me. Then the front door swung open, and Will emerged from the house and started down the driveway. I got out of the car in a daze and stood by it, hugging myself until Will reached me.
I think he knew as soon as he saw my face. “Ollie,” he breathed, holding out his arms. I launched myself into them like this wasn’t weird, and we hadn’t spent the last few weeks pretending each other didn’t exist. As soon as I felt his hands on my back I burst into sobs. “Oh, Ollie, no. I’m so sorry.”
He led me, crying and coughing and shaking, straight through to his room without even bringing me past his parents to say hi. Mom and Dad would’ve disowned me if they’d known I’d been so rude, but at that moment I honestly couldn’t have cared less. He left me there for a minute or two while he went down and explained to his parents, then he came back upstairs and sat with me in silence.
When I finally calmed down enough to speak, Will and I had been sitting on his bed for about fifteen minutes. He hadn’t tried to push me into talking, at any point. He’d just sat, his shoulder pressing against mine, with his hands in his lap.
“I just don’t know what to do,” I said. “What do you do when this happens? My parents are acting like everything’s fine, and they wanted to go get dinner, and Mom put on home movies—”
“Movies?”
“Movies of Aunt Linda! Isn’t that the most fucked-up thing you’ve ever heard?”
Will clasped his hands together sobe
rly. “That’s pretty ridiculous.”
“It just doesn’t feel real, Will. Everything is really distant, and blurry, and it’s like I’m dreaming but I don’t think I am. Am I? I’m definitely not dreaming, right?”
“You’re definitely not dreaming,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s fine. But also, it’s not okay, because she’s dead, and that’s real. That’s real life. It’s real life from now on, too. For every day, from now until forever, she’s still going to be dead when I wake up every morning. How do I do this? I don’t know what to do.”
I was crying again now, and Will put his arm around me to pull me into him. Not in a romantic way, just comforting. The way I’d really wanted my parents to comfort me.
“What do I do?” I asked again. Like Will somehow had a magical solution to all of this.
“Whatever you need to,” he said quietly.
I rested my head on his shoulder. I hadn’t realized how heavy it felt until then. My jaw was aching, too. From crying? Had I been gritting my teeth? I used to do that a lot when I was younger, until I’d chipped a tooth and the dentist made me sleep with a mouth guard. “It was just out of nowhere, you know? I mean, it wasn’t totally unexpected, but I thought we’d have more warning. I thought she’d start looking really, really sick, and we’d know it was coming. I can’t even remember the last conversation we had. I think it was about spoiled milk.”
I sobbed all the way through the last sentence, so hard I could barely stammer the words out.
“It’s not fair,” Will said.
“No, it’s not fair.”
“No.”
And in the weirdest way, even though I felt like I was being buried alive by grief, it was the tiniest bit more bearable now. Just having Will back me up, and agree with me, and not try to make me look at the bright side, or remember the nice times, made me feel less like I was alone in this. Even though Will barely knew Aunt Linda, I felt like he was right there with me in the darkness. Waiting with me for as long as I needed to be there.
Eventually, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and sat up. “I’m sorry. I just came over here out of nowhere, and you probably have a ton of homework, and you haven’t even had dinner—”
“It’s—”
“I should’ve at least texted, or—”
“Ollie.” He grabbed my hand, and I looked down at it, startled. “It’s fine. I’m glad you came. You can stay as long as you want.”
I nodded, and gently took my hand away. “Thank you. I should get home, though.”
He walked me through to the living room, where his parents were watching Inception. They’d reached the scene where everyone was banging around upside down in the corridor, but they paused it when they noticed us.
“Hi, Ollie,” Mrs. Tavares said. “Will told me about your aunt. I’m so sorry to hear. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
Mr. Tavares nodded and gave me a tight smile. “It’s good to see you again, Ollie. I thought after Thanksgiving we might start seeing your face around here more often.”
I had a sudden flashback to Mr. Tavares practically walking in on Will and me. I forced a fake laugh.
“Oh, and Will,” he said mildly. “I know tonight was a bit of a special situation, but please remember our rule about not closing bedroom doors.”
Will blinked at his dad like he’d spontaneously combusted or something. Swallowing, he gave a stiff nod, and walked me to my car.
The whole way, he stared into the distance without a word.
“You okay?” I asked.
“We don’t have a rule about not closing bedroom doors for friends. Only for girls. Me and the guys hang out with the door closed all the time.”
Oh. Uh-oh. “I’m sorry …”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault. I’ll just … see if he brings it up again.”
His words were reassuring, but his face said otherwise. Will did not want to go back inside that house.
I hesitated at the car. Part of me wanted to hang around to make sure Will wasn’t having an internal breakdown, but if we stayed out here for too long wouldn’t that look even more suspicious? What if his dad felt the urge to come out here and tell us to wrap it up? “Okay. Well could you please text me in a bit, then? To let me know if he does bring it up again or not?”
Will nodded. “Sure. And you text me later to let me know you’re okay, all right?”
Oh. Of course. For the briefest moment I’d forgotten about Aunt Linda. Then it came flooding back, fresh as if I’d only just found out. But I was not going to cry. Not now. It could wait approximately eight seconds. “Yeah. All right.”
All right.
20
Home felt like a graveyard.
I was given the rest of the week off from school, which was a relief because I had developed a startling habit of crying without warning. Sure, I cried about Aunt Linda, but then I also cried at a dog adoption advertisement on TV, sobbed because I realized I’d be missing a math quiz on Thursday when I hated math, and bawled for about twenty minutes drinking orange juice one morning because it made me think of how Saint Nick used to give oranges to poor children and how some people never get oranges while I’d taken them for granted my whole life.
I wasn’t the only one crying, either. It’s what Mom did most of the day now. She’d gotten over that initial, way-too-optimistic reaction quite quickly. I didn’t like seeing my mom cry, but it was less unsettling than her unnaturally loud laughter on that first day. Dad was less of a crier, but he didn’t smile once. We were somber through the funeral preparations, and through the funeral itself on Friday, and while we went through the motions of living, trying to figure out what that looked like now.
For my parents, at least, living looked like doing everything they could to help Uncle Roy and the kids. Which, that Sunday, meant cooking up an army’s worth of soup, lasagna, and casseroles for them to freeze and reheat as needed.
“Ollie, can you fill the rest of these Tupperware containers?” Mom asked. She was covered in splatters of tomato sauce, had a splodge of gooey cheese in her eyebrow, and one of her sleeves was rolled up haphazardly. Her eyes were puffy from crying on and off half the morning, and her hair hadn’t been washed in a few days now, so she wore it scraped in a messy bun.
“Yeah, of course.” I took over for her and started scooping casserole into various-sized containers. “How about you go take a minute upstairs before we bring this all around?”
She hesitated, and Dad walked into the kitchen and made shooing motions with his hands. “You have your orders. We’ll cover things in here.”
Silently, she nodded and disappeared, leaving Dad and me alone in the kitchen.
He started to load the dishwasher. “Thanks for being such a champ with helping out your mother and me.”
“No problem.”
“Really, you’ve been a champ all year.”
I paused and looked over my shoulder. He was bent over the dishwasher, hiding his face, but his voice had sounded unusually tight.
I clipped the lid onto another container and added it to the cooler we’d been stacking all the food into. “Well, when someone you love needs you, you step up, right?”
When Dad finally turned back around, his eyes were glossy. “Right. Yeah. That’s right.”
At Aunt Linda’s—well, I guess I shouldn’t call it that anymore … it was Uncle Roy’s now, right?—the kids were set up in the living room in front of Coco. I didn’t know if Uncle Roy realized it was a movie about deceased family members in the afterlife, but I didn’t want to trigger anything by bringing it up. Who knows, maybe he thought it’d be helpful for the kids to watch it to process the last week.
Uncle Roy thanked my parents over and over again for the food. It turned out every family in the whole town had had the same idea, though, because his freezer was already so overflowing there was no way to cram any more food in. In the end, they decided
to fill the cooler with ice, and set it up in the corner of the kitchen as a second refrigerator.
All three adults seemed to be actors in an improv play. Not very convincing ones, either. They smiled like they’d learned how to from written, step-by-step instructions. They talked about anything, anything but Aunt Linda, but she was in everything they said anyway. I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Because he’d been crying. The kids go back to school and preschool on Monday. Because they, too, had taken the week off to mourn, and were now expected to somehow return to life like there wasn’t an enormous gaping hole in the middle of it. Ah, no, I didn’t get around to watching the series finale. Because he used to watch the show with Aunt Linda—she’d told me—and I guess he didn’t know how to watch it knowing she’d never find out how it ended.
Ever.
I slumped down on the couch with the kids. Coco had been such a big movie last year. What would be the next Pixar hit? Whatever it was, Aunt Linda would never get to know it. Even if it was bigger than Frozen, she’d never know it existed.
Any song that came out from this week onward, Aunt Linda would never hear. Not once.
Everything she was ever going to know about had already happened. Britney Spears could be voted the new president of the United States, and Aunt Linda would never know. The government might finally admit they have aliens in a warehouse, and Aunt Linda would never know. The world would keep moving, and tragedies would happen, and beautiful things would happen, and we’d invent things and grow and Aunt Linda would never see any of it.
And … God, I was so selfish and self-absorbed, but while I was completely devastated about Aunt Linda, I was also scared for myself. I mean, I knew about death, obviously, but it had always been in the abstract. Now it felt startlingly real. Real people I knew would die. All of us. Every real person I knew would die.
And I would die, too.
One day, I would see the last thing I was ever going to see. And the next day, someone would release a song I’d never hear. Statistically, the most amazing events that would ever happen in the world would probably happen sometime in the far future, and I’d never get to know about it. So many beautiful, wonderful things would happen one day, in a world that didn’t have me in it. And I didn’t want the world to keep going if I wasn’t in it. I mean, obviously I did, it’s not like I wanted to take everyone else down with me. But the idea of just being here, and then not being here, and the world not really caring that I was gone was so … it just … it made me feel hollow.
Only Mostly Devastated Page 20
