The Last Words We Said

by Leah Scheier

  He shook his head. “I guess not. Truth is, the waiting isn’t really that bad. You can’t be truly sad if deep down you’re still waiting.”

  Chapter 11

  I’ve had as much sharing as I can handle for the day. My mother’s reaction to Danny’s kidnapping story hadn’t been too bad. She’d been just nonjudgmental enough to fulfill her promise. But the admission still drained me, and I’m not ready for any more soul-baring for a while. So, my meeting with Nina is a bullshit session, full of cliché dreams that I made up on the spot and breakthrough epiphanies that had happened months ago. I’m not sure how much of it she believes, and I don’t know who is more relieved when the hour is up.

  I take a detour on my way home and get off at the bus stop before mine. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve visited Danny’s father. The obligation has been weighing on me since my last visit, and I’m dreading our meeting. Normally I like going to see Mr. Edelstein. For one, he’s the only physical connection I have to Danny. Even if he’s too ill to talk much, I enjoy sitting next to him and listening to quiet music and flipping through his collection of antique books. I can hang out in Danny’s room for hours; there’s no curfew, no interruptions, no judgment. Mr. Edelstein feels Danny everywhere, so he never challenges me or gives me a look when he catches us together. He just smiles and recedes back into the shadows until I’m ready to come out.

  Mr. Edelstein is the only person who understands us. But more importantly, he’s the only one who truly believes that Danny is coming back. So, I feel totally safe with him, as he does with me. We aren’t humoring each other; we accept the other’s truth without question.

  Lately, though, Danny’s dad has been taking a turn for the worse. His joint pains and chronic migraines are the same as always, barely tolerable with the cocktail of meds he swallows with every meal. But the depression that’s dogged him since his teen years has come back, and it’s worse than before.

  His father’s struggle was a shadow over Danny’s life ever since I’d known him. Oddly, after Danny disappeared, while the rest of us were barely keeping our heads above water, Mr. Edelstein managed to stay on stable ground. Maybe it was the hope for a breakthrough in his son’s case that kept him positive, but somehow he held the depression monster at bay. Recently, though, his ghosts have come back to haunt him, and it’s terrifying me. I’ve never known him like this. Danny once hinted at a time right after his parents’ separation that ended in a prolonged hospitalization. I wasn’t part of their lives at that time, so I can’t say if he was nearing that level, but I’m constantly on the alert now. I send him daily messages to check in, and stop by as often as I can. Two weeks is the longest I’ve ever gone without visiting, even when he was well.

  He sees the guilt in my eyes as soon as he opens the door.

  “Ah,” he says with a faint smile. “I see that Danny has passed it on to you.”

  I love that he doesn’t tiptoe around his son’s name. He talks about him just like he always has.

  “Passed what on to me?” I walk with him into the kitchen and place a foil-wrapped package on the counter, next to another bundle of foil, which has begun to gather dust. “You didn’t eat Rae’s pound cake?” I ask, pointing to the lump.

  “Sweets are more Danny’s thing,” he responds, and hobbles out to the living room. “Sweets and worrying about his dad.” He nods weakly in my direction. “Which he has now passed on to you. Or so it seems.” He sinks onto the sofa with a grunt.

  I sit down next to him. “I can’t help worrying, okay?” I glance at a thick packet of papers on the coffee table. “What’s that? Did you get that at your appointment yesterday?”

  He sighs. “Yes.”

  I squint at the close writing on the booklet. “What is ECT? New medication?”

  He sighs again and shakes his head. “I’ve been through their pharmacy. Twice. There are no new medications. Not for me.”

  I reach out for the packet on the table. “Can I look?”

  “If you promise not to get upset.”

  I don’t get a chance to promise because the word “electroconvulsive” jumps out at me as I scan the writing. And then I get upset. Really upset.

  “What is this?” I flip through the pages, barely registering what I see. The “possible side effects” dance in front of my eyes, terrifying me. “They want to give you a seizure? On purpose?!”

  He shrugs and pulls the papers from my hand. “You’ve never heard of shock therapy?”

  I splutter for a minute before I can respond. “Well, yeah. In movies. Like, as a last resort.”

  “Exactly. That’s where I am. The last stop.”

  “The last stop before what?” Even as I ask it, I know the answer and I rush ahead to block it out. “Come on, Mr. Edelstein. You don’t need this. We’ll work through it together. Like you used to with Danny. I’ll come by more often, okay?”

  “Ellie—”

  “No, I mean it. I’m sorry it’s been two weeks. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for—”

  He has no idea, of course. Nobody does. But I can’t let him choose this path; I can’t let my selfishness destroy him, too. I have to keep him well until Danny comes back. Nine months ago, I took his son away from him. It’s the least I can do now. “Every day. After school. Or after Nina’s on Mondays. I’ll be here like clockwork. Five p.m., the latest. You can count on it.”

  “Ellie, I don’t expect you to—”

  “But I want to. Okay?” My voice is high-pitched, hysterical. “I want to!” I’m grasping the edges of the packet and tugging at it; maybe if I pull hard enough, I can yank this awful therapy out of his mind. “You don’t know what will happen to you if you do this! It says here that ECT causes memory loss.”

  “That’s usually reversible—”

  “Usually? And what if it’s not? Are you going to forget him? Is that what you want? That’s why you’re doing this? You want to forget him, like everyone else!”

  “Ellie!”

  I know I’ve finally crossed the line; his watery, weak eyes are blazing, and there’s a glow of rage in his pinched cheeks, as if I’ve smacked him across the face.

  I can’t bear to see his hurt expression, so I duck my head. When I look up, Danny is standing in the doorway, just a few feet away, watching us. I’m surprised to see him; since the accident he rarely interrupts me when I’m hanging out with his dad; instead he waits quietly in his room for me to join him. I’m not sure why he’s kept apart from us until now. Guilt, maybe. Taking care of his father used to be his job.

  Next to me, I feel Mr. Edelstein start; his breathing has gone shallow. I steal a glance at him, but he’s staring past me—at the doorway. At his son.

  Danny walks toward us and squats down opposite me, his thin knees almost brushing the edge of my skirt. For a moment it seems like he’s going to take my hand; I reach out to him, but he keeps his arms crossed on his lap.

  “We talked about this, remember, Ellie?” he says.

  He knows that I can’t answer him in front of his father, so he continues as if I’ve spoken.

  “It was one of my stories. You thought that it was fiction.”

  The memory is beginning to stir, but I can’t quite grasp it. Danny’s told me so many stories over the years. It’s hard to remember which ones were real.

  “The man who is slowly going numb,” he prompts me. “He touches the exposed wire on the highway. And loses his memory from the spark. But he’s reborn. What’s important is that he gets to live.”

  Next to me, Mr. Edelstein shifts, clears his throat. I’d almost forgotten that he was sitting next to me. “It’s not what you think,” he offers. His voice is barely audible. “I’m not going to change.”

  I close my eyes, shutting them both out.

  I can hear them breathing next to me—Mr. Edelstein’s wheezy rattle and across from me, Danny’s calm exhale. At that moment, I can’t tell which one is more real.
“But memory is everything,” I insist. “You can’t love someone if you don’t remember them.”

  Mr. Edelstein’s hand grips mine, a sudden cold weight around my wrist. My eyes fly open. Danny is gone, and his father is staring at me with a fierce intensity. “Ellie, nothing will ever remove my son from my mind,” he says. His voice shakes, but the pressure on my arm doesn’t waver. “There isn’t enough electricity in the world to steal even one moment of him. Do you understand?”

  I nod, silently. How can he be so sure? I wonder. But my doubts stick in my throat.

  “Danny and I discussed this possibility years ago. It was always an option—if I really needed it. I believe that he supports it.”

  I’m grateful that, as always, he uses the present tense when referring to his son.

  “It won’t be as bad as you think,” he assures me. “Most of the memory issues are short-term. We’re not talking about soap- opera amnesia. I’ll still know who I am. And I’ll still be waiting for my Danny to come home. I promise.”

  It’s the only thing I wanted to hear. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how scared I was to lose the security of his faith. “Good. Because I’ll be waiting with you,” I say. “And I’ll go with you to the sessions. If that’s what you choose in the end.”

  He sinks back against the couch and releases my hand. “Thank you.” His eyes wander over the empty room, before focusing back on me. “And thank you for giving me—a glimpse.”

  My breath catches. “What do you mean? You—you saw him? Really?”

  He shakes his head. “No. But I saw the look on your face. And that was enough.”

  SEXY ASTRONOMY (OR—MY FRECKLES ARE THE BEST THING THAT HAVE EVER HAPPENED TO ME!)

  It was a matter of time before Rae butted heads with the school administration, and I wasn’t surprised that it was her new boyfriend, Greg, who ended up being the cause for all the trouble. When they started going out, he didn’t exactly join our foursome, because Rae was very careful to keep her dating life and her friends separate. “Boyfriends are for high school, but friends are forever,” she’d say. Still, despite her convictions, Greg did manage to create some tension in the group. Personally, I didn’t mind it when he joined us. I could see why Rae was attracted to him; he was tall and built, with a thick mop of auburn hair. He was a staunch atheist, prone to go on rants about the subject, but as long as no one got him started on politics or religion, he was actually a lot of fun. Danny also seemed to enjoy hanging out with him and often called him when he wanted some guy time. Only Deenie obviously disliked him. Though Greg was always nice to her, his disdain for anything religious got under her skin in a way that Rae’s rebellion never had.

  “He actually asked Rae why she was so careful to keep the plates kosher when she cooked!” Deenie complained to me. “It’s because she’s not the only one eating the food! How can he not understand that?”

  “She put him in his place, remember?” I assured her. “Don’t worry. Rae isn’t going to screw over her friends because of a guy.”

  And she really did put her friends first. But she also sometimes went along with Greg’s ideas. Her decision to wear a “Thank God I’m an Atheist” T-shirt to a school charity drive was definitely his influence. (It was also his T-shirt.) The incident should have ended with a teacher quietly asking Rae to change, but nobody noticed until it was too late. Someone snapped a photo of Rae in front of the school sign, and the shot was included in an article about the event.

  Rae received a call summoning her to an honor council meeting the following day. “They want to discuss how I made the school look bad,” she told me darkly over the phone.

  An honor council meeting was our school’s equivalent of a trip to the principal’s office. Students were summoned for infractions such as cheating, smoking on school grounds, and similar sins. None of us had ever been called to one, and we were all a bit scared of the prospect.

  I sent a message to the friend group calling for an emergency meeting in my basement. Rae arrived a few minutes after us, but there were no traces of worry on her face as she thumped down the stairs. “They want to lecture me about misrepresenting the school,” she declared defiantly. “Well, I’ve got something to show them.”

  Without warning, she lifted up her shirt and exposed her lower back, which was covered in sloppy black letters. Hebrew letters.

  Deenie and Danny moved forward to get a better look. “What does ‘ASHDINAT’ mean?” Danny asked, slowly sounding out the print.

  “That’s the initials of my three best friends,” she replied. “It can be like our blood pact. What do you guys think? Who’s in?”

  We were all silent for a moment, digesting this drastic declaration of loyalty to the group. Would she be expecting a similar gesture from all of us? How could she make a decision like that without asking us first? “Rae, I can’t get a tattoo,” I said finally. “You know that, right? My parents would kill me.”

  “And it’s forbidden to get tattoos,” Deenie put in. “I can’t do it either.”

  Rae dropped her shirt and turned around. Her face was unreadable. “I wasn’t asking you guys to do anything. This is my personal statement. They want me to issue some kind of apology. For misrepresenting Judaism.” She sank heavily to the ground and put her head in her hands. “But I wasn’t trying to represent the school or the Jewish people with a T-shirt. So I’m going to tell them that these are the initials of the only people I want to represent. My three best friends, who’ve always stood by me.”

  We all stared at her, dumbfounded. Deenie looked like she was going to cry. “I do support you, Rae. But I didn’t want this. I don’t want my name branded on you. I never asked for that.”

  Danny sat down on the floor beside Rae and placed his hand on her shoulder. “We don’t actually need to get a tattoo,” he said with a smile. “Do you guys own a good razor?”

  I gaped at him. “What for?”

  He lifted his mop of hair. “There’s enough room back here. I bet you can etch all your initials into my scalp.”

  Rae shook her head. “Are you serious?”

  “Why not? I know they’ll make me get rid of it. It’s against the dress code—or hair code or whatever. But I’m going to go with you to that meeting tomorrow. Wearing your name.”

  Rae’s lower lip actually quivered. For a moment I thought we’d see the impossible: the vision of Rae weeping. But then the mask came down and a smirk lit up her face. “God, you guys are so gullible!” she crowed. She smacked her back. “Do you think I could do that after a real tattoo? Those things hurt like hell! And I’m only sixteen. No tattoo parlor would do this without my parents’ consent.”

  “Whatever,” Danny said with a shrug. “The offer is still open. I think it would be cool.”

  “I want to do something too,” I said. “Something personal.”

  “Didn’t Deenie teach you to crochet?” Danny suggested. “You can make us matching bracelets or something.”

  “Uggghhhhhh.” Rae snorted her contempt. “So cheesy.”

  “Rae, you’ve got my initials floating over your butt crack,” Danny retorted. “You don’t get to shoot my ideas down.”

  She smothered a smile.

  “And by the way,” he added, “I’m really glad those letters aren’t permanent. Because you actually got them wrong.”

  It was my turn to be shocked. Names were my thing. And Danny was my best friend. How could I not know this?

  “What are you talking about? Your name isn’t Danny?”

  “Of course it is.” His calm smile was mocking my surprise.

  “Short for Daniel, right?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Right?” I persisted.

  “Ellie, maybe we should focus on Rae,” Deenie suggested mildly. “And the meeting tomorrow.”

  I was shamed into swallowing my questions. But it was going to come up again, I warned Danny with my eyes. This wasn’t over.

  “I don’t know what I ca
n do before tomorrow—” I began.

  “I have an idea,” Danny interrupted. “Do you have a thin marker?”

  We didn’t have any markers in the basement, so Danny followed me upstairs to the kitchen. After a little digging in the junk drawer, I pulled out a pink pen. “Will this work?”

  “Perfect.” He picked it up and took a step toward me. His eyes swept over my face, down my neck, and finally rested on the dip over my clavicle. I followed his gaze, and for a moment we both stared at the little button that held my blouse closed.

  “Let’s see…,” he said. He seemed to be analyzing the little clasp.

  “What?”

  There was something about his look that made me lift my hand to the button, made me pluck resentfully at it. I was suddenly glad that Rae and Deenie had stayed behind in the basement. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I was very happy that we were alone.

  “I bet I can find them, if I look hard enough,” Danny declared after a heavy, breathless silence.

  “Find what?” My voice was an unattractive croak, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Our initials.”

  He touched the uncapped tip of the pen to a freckle beneath my jaw. “Like the Milky Way.” With a quick, soft stroke he traced a line between two freckles on my neck. “And now they’re gone,” he whispered, like a magician shocked at his own skills. Predictably, as the pen descended, my skin had flushed and cloaked my thousand freckles in a ginger fog. I never realized that connect the dots could be so sexy. Apparently, neither had Danny. By the look in his eyes, Danny was discovering a whole new side to astronomy.

  “Hmmmm. There’s really not much room to work with,” he mused regretfully.

  I don’t remember doing it, but I must have popped open my collar button because the next moment Danny was staring in stunned silence at my bare shoulder. “Is that better?” I asked, stepping closer to him.

  I knew the effect I was having on him, and it was making me giddy; he was breathing so fast that I was worried he would pass out. My modest clothing had always covered me from neckline to elbow, from waist to knee. I didn’t even own a V-neck or anything sheer, so this was the first time he had ever seen this much of me. It was just a shoulder, but for Danny, the vision was as shocking as if I’d suddenly stepped out in a string bikini.