Look Closer

by Stewart Lewis

  Out of earshot, I say, “She was weird.”

  “Look at this place.”

  I realize I’m still holding the Scientology books and drop them in a nearby trash can.

  There are really, really, old people scattered about the common spaces. Not many of them are talking. Most of them seem to be dying, like, right now. One old man stares at me, pointing, like he’s scolding me for something. For having my youth? Another woman, whose pale flesh is spilling out of her wheelchair, holds a doll with one eye, cooing to it, pretending it’s a real baby. There’s droopy elevator music playing, and it smells like mothballs and split pea soup.

  I grab Edge’s arm, and we continue down the hall. There’s a door slightly open at the end. We peek in. A nurse is wetting a patient’s lips with a foam brush, murmuring something followed by, “Okay, Jean?”

  Edge and I turn to each other, holding our breath. It’s her.

  We wait in the hall until the nurse leaves. She smiles at us, and we try to act normal, but it’s clear something is happening.

  “What are we going to do?” I whisper to Edge.

  “Wing it, as usual,” he says.

  We knock on the door, but we don’t hear anything. Can she not talk? Is it that bad? I open the door slightly to peek in. An elderly woman is staring in our direction. Her eyelids are heavy, and she scowls, until she sees us and says, “Come on in,” as if she’s expecting us, like we’re some kind of angels. Are we? Is this all in our minds? It feels real. A little scary, but real.

  Jean’s glassy eyes now stare at the ceiling, as if drawn to some higher power beyond it.

  “Sit down, my darlings.”

  She must think we’re her relatives. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt like an imposter.

  We sit on each side of the hospital bed, and she turns her head both ways and smiles at us. It’s odd, but also kind of lovely.

  She points at a dog-eared book of poems by Mary Oliver on her side table.

  “I love the poems,” Jean says. “Each time I read them, I think different things. Words are so open to interpretation. And hers are so beautiful. Can you read one?”

  There are some pages bookmarked. I find one called “Wild Geese.” As I’m reading it, I’m thinking about Edge hearing the words in my voice, and I glance up at him. His face is soft, his eyes almost glowing.

  After I finish, she says, slowly, “Now, what is your interpretation?”

  I don’t tell her that the words may as well have been going from my mouth into Edge’s soul. That I’ve never felt closer to someone I barely know.

  “Darling?”

  “Umm…I think it was about feeling safe in the world. Knowing that things are bigger than you are.”

  Jean’s eyes well with tears, and I grab her hand. Edge wipes at his own eyes with his shirtsleeve.

  “You are so smart,” she says to me. “You’ve always been so smart.”

  Jean closes her eyes, and I keep holding her hand. Edge comes around and hugs me from behind. From the hallway, we would look like a portrait of a grieving family. In a strange way, it feels as if we are. A family of strangers.

  After a few minutes, Jean wakes up again. She points to the foam brush, and I moisten her lips like I saw the nurse do. Then she points to the book again and says, “Another?”

  I read another, and another, then Edge reads a couple. With each poem, Jean seems to be going somewhere new in her mind, someplace that makes her happy. Her smile remains. We take turns reading to her until she gets sleepy again.

  A different nurse comes in and asks who we are.

  Edge says we’re distant relatives.

  “Oh,” the nurse says, motioning us into the hallway. “Are you sure you have the right person? Jean doesn’t have any living relatives that we know of. We have expected to make burial arrangements for her when she passes.”

  “Tonight,” I say.

  “Excuse me?” She turns her head to me.

  “Nothing,” Edge says. “So, do you need us to sign something?”

  The nurse sighs. “If there’s no next of kin, she becomes a statistic, you know?”

  “Yes,” I say. When my father died, he was a statistic. On the news they never said his name. He was lumped into some general number of fatalities. There was a service where a ton of people showed up, but I was pissed I never got to see him, that he was literally blown to pieces.

  “My name is Leila,” the nurse says. “Come find me before you leave?”

  “Okay,” Edge and I say together, then we go back into Jean’s room. She’s sleeping.

  We both sit, the only noise the whoosh of the oxygen machine. I slowly reach out and take her hand again. It’s soft and twitching a little.

  “Do you think she’s dreaming?”

  “Hopefully, right?”

  “I wish I could have held my father’s hand one last time,” I say. “Told him I loved him, that he was everything to me.”

  “But he knew that. With Tom…”

  “Edge, he must have known. How long were you friends?”

  “Since we were ten.”

  “How did you meet?”

  Edge smiles. “At sleepaway camp. There was a clown the camp had hired.”

  “A clown?”

  “I know, right? It was so embarrassing, we snuck out of the hall. We went to skip rocks on the lake…”

  As Edge continues to tell the story, I get lost in the beautiful map of his face, the ridges and the colors and the way the light hits it.

  “…he had smuggled in candy, and he shared it with me. He was always really generous, about everything.”

  “What about the girl, Sam?”

  “She’s trouble. She was using him to get back at another boy.”

  “She gave me a major evil eye.”

  “I don’t think she even cared that he died.”

  Jean’s breath becomes more labored.

  “It’s so weird to say that. He died. He died, and I could’ve done something…”

  Edge starts to cry, like really cry, and it shocks me a little. I hold him in my arms and say, “Shhh,” like my mother used to do to me. Eventually, he calms down.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “Please, please don’t be sorry. I know what it’s like to feel helpless.”

  “Yes.”

  Jean makes a noise, and it startles us, then her breathing calms.

  “Do you think she’s dying right now?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Edge says, slowly backing away from the bed.

  Then she squeezes my hand and abruptly wakes up. Her expression has changed. Her eyes are wide, and there’s fear in them, like a child being read a ghost story. Is she going to call us out? I try to make my face normal. Caring.

  “Do you see me?” she asks.

  I nod. “Yes, yes, I see you, Jean. I see you.”

  “I need to take the train,” she says, her eyes glossing over and rolling back. “The one with the white clouds. There’s a man reading the paper.”

  “Okay,” I say. My whole body is trembling, and the words just come out. “I think you should take the train, too.”

  I wonder if the man with the paper is her husband. It is all so crushing, this line between life and death. Do we really go to a better place? A train with white clouds sounds pretty good. I squeeze her hand once more.

  Her lips curve into a hint of that earlier smile, and she closes her eyes. I take my hand away.

  We sit for a while longer, the sides of Edge’s and my bodies touching. In the midst of death, I can feel how alive we are.

  “Edge, thanks for being here,” I say.

  He nods, his face all serious now. He grabs my hand and places it on his heart. It’s beating fast. I do the same with his hand so he can feel mine. We sit l
ike that for a second, hands on each other’s hearts.

  “There’s nothing we can do about this one,” Edge says softly, and I nod.

  In another room, a woman is quietly moaning.

  I stand and get really close to Jean’s face, ravaged with lines and saggy with age. Beneath it all, though, those two blue eyes are shining. Shining until the very end. Which must be right now.

  “Goodbye,” I whisper.

  And Edge says, “Tegan, let’s go.” He doesn’t want to hear her last breath. I get it.

  I place the book of poems on her stomach, and move her hand over it. Then I take a picture with my phone, and we leave.

  In the hall, we are like stunned animals. The nurse who wanted us to fill out paperwork calls after us, but we keep going. When we get outside, I have to hold on to Edge in order to stand upright. We sit on some swings in the yard of the school next door.

  “She was definitely dying. I felt it.”

  “You were great with her. The poems…” he says.

  “You were good at that, too, by the way,” I tell him.

  “You mean I have a future in poetry reading?”

  “Completely.”

  We get out of the swings and start down the bike path. I can hear birds and distant traffic. Even though that whole experience was eerie, I feel peaceful. Something tells me she just passed. I feel a flash of gratitude, for knowing my father as long as I did, and that out of all the people in the world, he was the one who shaped who I am.

  “So,” Edge says, looking at his phone. “I have to do more damage control.”

  “Can I come along?”

  A shadow washes across Edge’s face.

  “It’s cool, you know, if you don’t…”

  “Look, hang on. Let’s take a detour. Come.”

  He leads me to a little patch of grass between the bike path and the woods. We sit, and he says, “I’m going to tell you this, but not because I want sympathy. I lost my father, too.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t die, but he left, when I was seven.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since?”

  “No.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “It’s not all that bad. But my mother…like I said, she goes through a lot of boyfriends, and this latest breakup, she’s taking it really hard. And my aunt is a hot mess. Alcoholic gambler. My mother bankrolls her. So, my home life is not so…”

  “Wow. Okay. What does your mother do?”

  “She listens to my aunt’s rants. She watches TV. She used to write books, now she writes a blog. But during these times, she gets really depressed and stares out the window. I need to be around her more.”

  “What does she write?”

  “A blog about wine, which she hasn’t really done in a while.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I lean my head on his shoulder.

  “Remember, no sympathy,” he says.

  “A little?”

  “Okay, a little, but that’s it.”

  I hug him full-on, and he smells like fresh-cut grass.

  “Did you mow your lawn this morning?”

  “No, I mow the lawn at the church in my neighborhood for extra cash.”

  “Wow. An entrepreneur.”

  “Reaching for the stars.”

  This time, when we part, I kiss him quickly, and he watches me walk away. I know because before I round the corner, I look back. And he’s there, still looking.

  * * *

  When I get home, my mother is picking out tiles with the tile guy. She’s renovating the whole top floor of our house, or, I should say, Larry is. He’s paying for it. At least there’s going to be a hot tub on the patio, although getting into water Larry’s been in is pretty gross to think about.

  When the tile guy leaves, my mom is holding the estimate, and I can see the high-five-digits number.

  “Mom, are you sure Larry’s not running a Ponzi scheme?”

  She laughs heartily, which I realize I haven’t heard in a long time. At least not from something I said.

  “He’s not.”

  “But what does he do, really?”

  “Investment stuff.”

  “Okay, we’ll go with that. Investment stuff.”

  “How’s Edgar?”

  “He’s good. Taking care of his mom.”

  “How sweet!”

  “Kind of.”

  “Soooo…I ran into Coach at Whole Foods, and he told me you’re on top of your 50 meter. That’s amazing.”

  “Yeah. It felt good.”

  “Do you think…”

  “Mom, what is it you used to tell me when Dad died? Baby steps.”

  “Okay, fair enough. But please start on your applications. You know our deal about your trip to LA.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, but in all honesty, I haven’t thought about the trip in a while.

  On my way out of the kitchen, I kiss the side of my mom’s head. She seems a little surprised, but smiles genuinely.

  I go up to my room and open my unfinished application. Only my name and address are filled out. Then I look at the laptop screen with the empty essay.

  College seems like another world. Right now, I’m so focused on getting through each day. Waiting for the names to stop, or for me to see another one. How can I possibly write a college essay that would explain this?

  My FaceTime starts going off, and it’s Jenna. I let it go unanswered. I don’t want to hear about celebrities. Something else is going on in my life, something way more powerful than celebrity sightings. I have been chosen to make a difference.

  8.

  stay focused

  I wake to the buzz of my phone.

  It’s Jenna. I can’t keep avoiding her.

  “Hey,” I answer groggily.

  “Rough night?” Jenna says.

  “You could say that. There’s a lot going on.”

  “T, what is it? You have to tell me. I’m your girl.”

  So I do. While going through my morning rituals, I tell her everything. Apparently, now I’m the type of person who can pee while talking to her best friend, but everything is up in the air at this point.

  “So wait, is he your boyfriend now?”

  “Seriously, Jenna? That’s your first question? I told you that names are appearing to me and they are connected to real people who are dying that same day!”

  “Yeah, that part…are you sure about that?”

  “Look, Jenna, I know it sounds batshit, but it’s true. And the helping people part? It’s great. Like, I have this power.”

  “Well, remember you can’t be the hero every time.”

  “I know. I just stood there while a kid leapt off the Dupont Circle platform.”

  “I actually read about that online. Maybe seeing that is messing with your head.”

  “Jenna, you don’t get it. Let’s talk about something else…oh, you’ll like this. I’m swimming again! Or at least letting Coach time me.”

  “T, that’s amazing! Remember when you couldn’t even get out of bed?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Now you’ll definitely impress the pool boy out here.”

  “I can’t believe you’re even staying somewhere with a pool boy.”

  “And the towels are heated!”

  “Sounds decadent. How’s your internship?”

  “The work part is boring, but the play part is fun.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “I wish you were here. I’ve met friends, but they’re not real friends, you know? They’re like, ‘OMG text me’ and then they never respond. Ghosting is like, a sport in this city.”

  I think about Jenna, and how if she were a real friend, she wouldn’t dismiss my whole story. She wo
uld trust me. Maybe she’s not who I thought she was. But there’s no way I can cancel the trip; she would be devastated.

  “Well, I’m still planning on coming,” I add feebly.

  “I’m counting the days. And you need to tell me more about Edge! Seriously, he sounds like a super snack.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes, he’s very cute. In a skinny sophomore kind of way. Actually, I meant to ask you…that person who does your hair, do you think she might lighten mine a little?”

  “Girl, they can work wonders on anyone. I’ll ping you the salon info.”

  “Is she a woman or a man?”

  Jenna laughs. “They’re transitioning. Just call them Rochelle.”

  I notice my reflection in the mirror as I walk past. I always thought my hair would look better lighter. My eyes are a light brown/hazel mix, and lighter hair would make them…what does Jenna say? Pop. It would make them pop more.

  “Okay.”

  “And T, don’t do anything stupid.”

  “In other words, do whatever you would do?”

  “Wow. You really have changed. I like it.”

  “Stay away from the pool boy.”

  Jenna laughs. “I got my eyes on someone else. He’s an actor.”

  “Of course he is.”

  There’s a silence on the line. I can’t tell her I feel chosen, and that there’s a reason, I have to find out what it is.

  “Anyway, call me soon?”

  “Okay.”

  After breakfast, I go to the pool. The woman at the gate actually smiles at me, and she looks familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s like when she smiles she’s a different person. I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile before.

  I stretch, then swim my usual mile. I don’t see any names, but I feel as if at any moment one will appear. I don’t want to live like this forever, but there’s a certain thrill to it. I keep almost seeing names in the water, in the clouds, in the trees. Or maybe it’s my mind wanting me to see more.

  I find the salon that Jenna texted me. Rochelle isn’t there, but a guy they call Loopy does my hair. I guess they call him that because of his curly hair, but I don’t ask. I watch him, methodically layering the foil wipes, humming along with the hip-hop song that’s playing. When he’s finished, he spins my chair around toward the mirror. It’s hard to hold back my pleasure. I feel like a little girl again, about to go to the pool or get ice cream. I text a selfie to Jenna, who replies with a hundred emojis and hearts.