She comes in through a side door while I’m studying a picture of her in what looks like a tropical rainforest. She looks like she’s eleven or twelve in the photo.
“Here, Cole, take this.” Viola hands me a thick terry-cloth towel. She’s rubbing her own hair with another. “Do you want something to drink? I’m going to get a glass of lemonade.”
“Sure. Thank you.”
She disappears for another moment and then returns with two glasses, setting them down on the glass coffee table and sitting on the massive L-shaped couch that dominates the room. I sit near her, just around the bend of the L.
“I looked up some of your poetry. You know, googled your alter ego.”
“Oh . . .”
“I liked it. I did. It was good, Cole.”
“Thank you.”
“Sad.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“Much of it inspired by your father’s illness, I imagine.”
I nod. “I started writing a long time before he was sick, but the pieces of published—yes, they’re about him.”
“And are you still writing?”
“Yes.”
“About him?”
“Other things.” You, I think. I’m writing about you. I don’t say it, though. I look around the room again. I wonder where her bedroom is. I wonder how I could see her naked. I wonder what Matt would say if he were here in my place. He would know the way to connect the dots, to get from here to there. He knows the magic words that someone forgot to tell me.
“Do you mind if I ask whether you ever write about the shooting?” she asks. It startles me out of my reverie.
“I haven’t,” I tell her. “I’ve tried to do it, but it never seems to work out. I don’t know. Maybe some things are just too big to write about.”
“Maybe you’ll be able to write about it someday.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
“People go through big things and eventually write about them. Wars.”
“This is different. It’s hard to explain. It’s hard to understand if you weren’t there. I think it’s impossible to understand.”
“It’s a very closed club.”
“It’s a club no one wants to be part of,” I say. And that makes me think of something, a question I’ve wondered about. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Not at all.”
“Your family, moving to East Ridge. Not many people did after what happened, you know. For a long time. Maybe still not now; who knows? But definitely not many people with kids our age.”
“I can understand that.”
“But your family did. Did you not know about it? I mean, living in England—”
“Oh, I think we were aware of it. I was, certainly.”
“But it didn’t bother you?”
She thinks for a moment. “I don’t know. There wasn’t an option for me; my parents announced that we were moving and when and where, and we never talked about that aspect of it. I knew what had happened, and I’m sure my parents did too, but we never talked about it. It’s not something they would have considered. My parents are very, very practical. They would have regarded that as an emotional consideration, you know? It wouldn’t have factored into their decision making. They moved here because of the location, I suppose, and the cost, and the schools. That’s all.”
That’s all. To other people, it’s something that happened in the past. It’s a date on the calendar. It’s a bunch of plaques on benches and engraved bricks on paths, parks, and ball fields named for our brave principal and a kid in a wheelchair with an amazing attitude. For them, it’s over.
“Cole?”
I’ve been staring into my glass, watching the ice melt.
“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I asked. I should—”
“Wait here.”
Viola jumps up and hurries from the room. She’s back in another moment, a book in her hand. The book I gave her, my father’s Eliot. She sits again, a bit closer to me this time, balancing on one leg folded beneath her.
“Listen to this, Cole,” she says. “I’ve read them all through, but poetry is meant to be read aloud, don’t you think? This piece is amazing; it’s very short and strange, sort of an early take on The Waste Land.” She flips through the pages and finds the one she wants. “This is called ‘Preludes.’ ” She pauses for a moment, then begins reading.
I’ve read this one. I listen to her voice, watch her eyes scanning the page. Even though my clothes are still wet and the air conditioning is on, the room is too warm. There’s no point. I don’t know what to do or how to do it. I’m never going to learn the magic words.
Viola finishes reading. She’s right: it is short and strange.
“Now you read one.” She holds my father’s book out to me. I shake my head.
“I have to go.”
“You have to go?” She stares at me in disbelief and closes the book as I stand up.
“Thanks for the lemonade.”
“You’re . . . welcome.”
I can feel her eyes on me, but I don’t look back as I let myself out through the mudroom. Winnie yaps at me from his cage, but I ignore him, slip my sneakers on without tying them, and hurry to the car. My eyes are burning, and I’m worried that I won’t be able to drive, but I also don’t want her to see me wiping them if she looks out the front window of her house, so I start the engine and squint hard and manage to make it away from the curb and around the corner before pulling over again, pounding the wheel, and screaming something so inarticulate and angry that it tears at the inside of my throat.
I’m a helpless, useless, dickless schmuck, and I always will be. Always.
I sit for a few moments, making myself breathe deeply. Then I wipe my eyes and my nose with the back of my hand and start driving again, and I’m more or less composed by the time I pull into my driveway.
I’m getting out of the car when I hear a noise from the garage, something falling down. Some sort of animal knocking things around, I think, but when I walk over and look, the door is closed.
The garage is detached from the house and is set back a little bit. The blue paint is peeling off, and it’s full of junk. We don’t use it for anything anymore, I just go out there when I want to get some of Dad’s old beer. I make my way to the side and try to look in a window, but the glass is too dirty to see. There’s another noise from inside. Maybe there’s a hole in the roof, and a bird flew in. I walk to the front, take a firm hold on the door handle, and quickly pull it up as I jump to one side, waiting for something—possibly rabid—to fly or run out past me.
Matt looks up from the garage floor, where he’s lying among scattered paint cans, and he bursts out laughing. “What’s happening, Cole?”
I stare at him wordlessly. I haven’t seen Matt in a few days, but I figured he was just busy with Sarah Jessup, and the thought made me so angry, so unreasonably but violently angry, that I ignored him the two times he tried to call.
“Is that my dad’s beer?”
“It is your dad’s beer, Cole, and I apologize for drinking it.” He pushes himself up onto his elbows, puts the bottle he’s holding to his mouth, and tips it up, sucking the last remnants. Then he peers inside, burps, and tosses it into the nearest corner, where it joins a pile of others.
“How long have you been out here?”
“What time is it?”
“About nine fifteen.”
“I don’t know, then. Few hours, at least.”
“Let me see your phone.” He hands it to me without protest, and I swipe the screen and tap on his blood sugar app. It’s 112. Normal.
“How am I doing?”
“You’re fine.”
“Great. Hand me another beer?”
“How many have you had?”
“I’ve lost count.”
“Then you should probably stop.”
Matt pulls himself to his feet,
looks around, and finally seats himself on Dad’s old workbench. It looks like he’d tried to sit on a pile of paint cans, and that was what caused the noise. “Did I wake you up?” he asks.
“No. I was out.”
“Where?”
“Viola’s,” I say, and I immediately regret it. He lets out a low whistle.
“Spend the night?”
“No, I did not spend the fucking night.”
He looks hurt. “What’s the matter?”
I shake my head. It’s the last thing he could possibly understand. “Nothing. I’m just not sure—I’m not sure things are going to work out.”
“With her? Why not?”
“I just don’t think—”
“Dude, you haven’t even done the balloon ride yet! I’ve been working on that. I have something for you!”
“What?”
“The shit for Eddie, Cole, I’m working on the shit for Eddie. I’m gonna have it for you. I’m working on it.”
“Where are you—”
He puts a finger to his lips, almost poking himself in the eye. “Just trust me. You cannot give up on this.” I stand with my hands in my pockets, looking around the garage. He probably can’t imagine how badly I want to give up. “You look sad, Cole.”
“I guess I am.”
“Someone told me I look sad too.”
“Who?”
“You should try having a drink.”
“It’s a little early.”
“Let’s go for a drive, then.” He tries to stand up, but his knees give out and he sits back down, hard. “Ooof. You do the driving.”
“That’s probably a good idea. I’m going to drive you home.” I pick my way across the garage, put an arm under his, and pull him to his feet. He’s heavy, and he leans on me hard.
“Not home,” he says. I don’t answer as we thread our way through the tipped paint cans, around a big toolbox that’s covered in spiderwebs, and out into the morning light. “Not home,” he says again as I support him across the lawn. I don’t have a good grip on him, and he’s not taking much of his own weight. I need to lower him onto the grass; I mean to adjust my hold on him and stand him back up, but he sits all the way down. “Yo, Cole,” he says, “you need to mow the lawn.”
“I will.”
“You want me to do it?”
“Not right now.”
“And listen, Cole, I know you don’t want to talk anything about it, but would you please please please just answer me one question please? The first time I saw you,” he continues, without waiting for me to respond, “the first time afterward, you told me something. We were out here, see, out here in the yard.” He gestures toward the overgrown backyard, toward the pond. “There used to be a little, I don’t know what, a little place out there.”
“Vine Cottage.” My dad built it out of plywood for me; he painted it and planted vines all along one wall. It’s long gone.
“Yeah. We sat in there and had snacks. My parents, I think they brought me over to help. It was like a week after. It was the first time I saw you after.”
“All right.” I don’t remember it.
“Well, we had snacks in, in, Vine Cottage, and our parents were in the house and you told me something. You told me about something you remembered.”
I’ve never remembered anything. “What was it?”
“I . . . don’t . . . know. Isn’t that crazy? You told me something. I know you told me something, but I can’t remember what it was.”
“Well, neither do I.”
“I didn’t even remember being over here with you at all until I came out to the garage last night or this morning or whenever it was.”
“Maybe you’re imagining it. Sometimes that happens. People imagine things and think they remember them.”
He shakes his head and stares out toward the spot where Vine Cottage used to be. After a moment, I get him back up, braced on my shoulder, and we start moving again. “Where’s your truck?” I ask him. He hiccups and waves a finger in my face with his free hand. “Streets away,” he says. “I’ve learned . . . you don’t park right where you’re going, am I right?”
“All right. We’ll get it later.” I hope to God he was at least a bit sober when he drove here. I lower him into the passenger seat of my car and go around to the driver’s side.
“Cole,” he says as I start the engine, “let’s go somewhere.”
“I’m taking you home.” I wish he would just pass out.
“No, no, no, no, no. Let’s go to Mrs. Ryan’s house.”
“No.”
“Over on Pine Street.”
“I know where it is. We’re not going.” I back the car down the driveway, shift into drive, and take off. I can have him at his house in five minutes. Both his parents are probably working; I’ll get him up to his room, drop him in bed, and be done.
“I’ve been, you know.”
“Been where?”
“Mrs. Ryan’s!”
“I know, Matt. I was with you.”
“No, since. I drive over. She has so many goblins.”
“Gnomes.”
“So many little goblins. I’ve given them names.”
“That’s great.”
“She goes out, sometimes.”
“Okay.”
“She goes out at night.”
“Right. You probably shouldn’t be there, you know.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Sure. What do you want to tell me?”
“She doesn’t always lock her back door.”
It takes a moment for the implications of that to sink in. “Wait a minute. Wait a damn minute. Are you telling me that you’ve gone into her house? Have you gone into her house when she wasn’t there?”
Matt doesn’t respond. His head has rolled off to the side, and his forehead is against the glass. I try one more time to ask him, but he must be out.
I can’t imagine that he’s doing that, driving over to the old Keeley place and sitting outside in his truck, parking up the street, letting himself in when Mrs. Ryan goes out. Except that I can. Ever since he sat down in that black-draped chair, I’ve been able to imagine him doing all sorts of things.
I get to his house, pull as far up his empty driveway as I can, and shut off the engine. His head comes up when I open his door, and he’s able to give me a little bit of help standing up, but not much. I get him up onto my shoulder, almost over my back, and support him as we slowly make our way up onto the Simpsons’ patio. There’s a code to the sliding back door, and I punch it into the keypad, open it, and get us into the chill of their central air. For the second time this morning, I’m standing in a mostly empty house far bigger and nicer than my own.
Matt’s room, unfortunately, is on the third floor, and by the time we make it up to the landing, I’m covered in sweat, air conditioning or not. I pause, breathing hard. He raises his head just a little bit and speaks for the first time since the car.
“You all right, Cole?”
“I’m great.”
“You seem out of breath.”
“Come on.” I haul him down the hall, his feet tripping over each other, my arm around his waist, his arm over my shoulders and gripped tightly in my hand, the muscles in my legs and back and abdomen screaming at me. We finally make our way into his room, and I get him over to his queen-size waterbed and lower him down onto it. I even get his head squarely on the pillow and try to stand up, but he’s still holding on to me.
“Cole,” he says, squeezing my upper arm.
“You’re down,” I tell him. “You can let go of me now.”
“Cole,” he says again, “I gotta tell you something.”
“Okay,” I say, “but you can let me go.”
“Cole.” He squeezes my arm harder, feeling the muscle, the tendons. “Cole, you are much, much stronger than people think you are.”
He lets his arm drop to the bed. I straighten up with a groan and stretch my back and shoulders, looking
around his room. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in here, not since we used to have sleepovers when I was younger. The Star Wars posters have come down and been replaced by lighthouse prints, probably chosen by his mother. It’s been repainted, a color that would probably be called cosmic blue or something like that. It doesn’t feel like it’s Matt’s room.
I fish his phone out of his pocket and check the app. It’s 102. Still, alcohol can be a problem for diabetics. I go back down to the kitchen, get a tall glass of orange juice, and put it on his bedside table in case he wakes up with low glucose. Then I sit at his desk and read some of his old baseball magazines for forty-five minutes, check his sugar again to make sure he’s still normal, and get up to go.
I’m closing the door behind me when I hear Matt’s voice. I had thought he was asleep, and in fact I think he may be. He sounds like he’s talking from down in a deep hole, addressing no one in particular.
“I wish,” he says, “I wish. I wish I knew.”
I wait in his doorway for a moment, wondering if he’s going to say anything more, wondering what it is he wishes he knew, but there’s nothing else, and I quietly let myself out of the room and then out of his silent, empty house.
Twelve
— Matt —
I’ve been working on my stories. Chris said that they had to be true, and they are. They’re just a little exaggerated is all.
I mean, I have only so many of them. It’s not like Rosie and I were screwing every single day. I don’t want to tell him about Sarah, but I’ve been stealing some of that material. Like, taking things Sarah and I have done and just replacing Sarah with Rosie and telling it like that. Technically a true story, just altered a little bit.
And Chris has come through in return, though not as much as I had hoped. He’s let me into his house two more times, and we raided the supply in the bathroom and the medicine cabinet, but we take only a bit here and there so his parents won’t notice. Still, the bag of pills at the top of my closet is getting more and more full.
Every Moment After Page 19
