Every Moment After

by Joseph Moldover

  “Now I have to clean up all kinds of shit,” he calls from the open window. “You fucking stay here and watch this gear until someone comes to get it.” He starts the engine. “Asshole!” he calls once more as he tears a tight U-turn, and roars across the field in a cloud of exhaust.

  I finally get to my feet when the sound of his engine fades. There’s blood in my mouth, and I spit into the grass. There’s a patch of clover at my feet, but I can’t think of its name. There has to be a way to do this. There has to be a way to adapt. It’s 6:18, but Viola might be late, if she comes at all. I have done this before. I saw Eddie do it. I took notes. I grope for my notebook and flip to the right page. She’s probably not coming, anyway.

  The jottings don’t mean a thing to me right now. I’d made a diagram that looks like spaghetti. There are at least three different kinds of rope on the ground at my feet, and I can’t remember what the differences are or what any of them are for.

  And then I hear a car behind me. Not the loud truck engine. Not Matt’s Explorer.

  The motor shuts off, a door opens and closes, and then there is silence. I don’t turn around. I wish I were someplace else, anyplace else. There is literally nothing in this world that I can’t mess up.

  You’re stronger than people think you are.

  “Is this my surprise?”

  I suck at my lower lip and bleed more into my mouth. “This was the surprise. It didn’t work out the way I planned.”

  She steps to my side and studies my damaged face, then walks past me and approaches the balloon. She is wearing jeans and a sleeveless purple T-shirt, her hair up in a ponytail. It hurts me to look at her. She stops by the basket and turns back to me. “What exactly was the plan, Cole?”

  The plan suddenly seems incredibly stupid. It always was, of course. Juvenile, stupid, an impotent attempt at winning the affection of someone whose mind is already a thousand miles away on the West Coast. I walk over to her. “The plan,” I say, because it doesn’t matter anymore, “was to go for a balloon ride.”

  “A balloon ride?”

  “A tethered ride. I don’t actually know how to fly a balloon.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “We’d just go up and down. On a rope.” She looks doubtful. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to happen.”

  Viola hops up onto the edge of the basket, swivels, and drops inside.

  I have two choices. I can stand here in the field, watching her. I can watch her examine the remnants of my plan. I can watch her drive away. I can watch her leave for college, leave my life, leave me here.

  Or I can get in the fucking basket.

  Promise me: All the way.

  Matt would already be in the basket.

  The awful daring of a moment’s surrender / Which an age of prudence can never retract / By this, and this only, we have existed.

  Holy fucking Christ, I love Eliot.

  I swing up and over, into the basket with her. She leans against the far side, looking at me. I look at the sky, imagining the sunset I was planning on.

  “Your mouth is bleeding,” she says.

  “I know.”

  Neither one of us speaks.

  “Well?” she finally asks.

  This is it. The piece I’ve been working on for three weeks is on the tip of my tongue. I’ve labored over every line, every image. I’ve spent afternoons debating commas. I can say it in my sleep. It’s good. It’s very good.

  “I’m not going to recite my poem,” I say.

  “No? After all that?”

  “No.”

  I step toward her. She crosses her arms over her chest.

  “You disappeared on me to go and write a poem, and now I don’t even get to hear it?”

  I take another step. My eyes don’t leave hers. My face hurts. I haven’t done anything right all summer, but standing in this basket in the middle of a silent, empty field, I don’t care about any of it. I don’t care about my mom and Mr. Finn and I don’t care about Eddie or about Paul and, for a sliver of time, I don’t even care about Matt. I care about this moment that’s never going to come again, and I care that I’ll never forgive myself for missing it.

  “You don’t get to hear it. Not right now.”

  By this, and this only, we have existed.

  I take the final step, and before I have time to think about the blood in my mouth or about any of the other reasons that this is an unreasonable thing to do, I kiss her.

  This, and this only.

  I kiss her with my broken lip, and when I stop and step back, her eyes are closed. She keeps them closed for what feels like a very long time.

  Then she opens them.

  She looks surprised.

  Eighteen

  — Matt —

  How long have I been here?

  It could have been an hour. Two. It could have been five minutes.

  No, that’s not right. Longer. On the longer side. When I got here, they were still closing, the last families packing up and heading home, closing up the Snack Shack for the night. And now it’s dark. Mostly dark. There’s still a tiny bit of pink in the sky, off to the west, beyond the Monument.

  The smell is back, stronger than ever, unbearable. I wonder if my nose is bleeding on the inside somehow, or if I’m hemorrhaging into my sinuses from the beating I took, because when I focus on it, I think the smell of blood seems to be coming from inside of my head. But when I try to blow my nostrils out onto the sand, nothing comes.

  It isn’t just blood that I’m smelling. There are other things. There’s something chemical mixed in, sharp, biting at the inside of my face. I try to scrape it out of my throat with a deep hock into the sand, and then I lie back.

  When did I last eat?

  When did I last check my blood sugar?

  I can’t remember. My granola bars are in my truck, parked downtown by the restaurant.

  I shut my eyes. I think of Cole, floating out there somewhere at the end of a rope in a basket with Viola. I smile. I might doze a little.

  When I open my eyes, I’m standing up and shedding my clothes.

  There’s a thin breeze coming in off the water, and I’m sweating.

  I’m thinking of Cole’s face, staring out of the newspaper. Of his eyes.

  I’m thinking of Chris Thayer’s little body, like Jell-O.

  I’m thinking of eighteen empty chairs.

  I’m thinking that maybe there were meant to be nineteen.

  I’m not thinking anything at all.

  The wind isn’t blowing away the smell, and in the moment before I step into the water, I finally know what it is. It’s familiar, but I’ve never smelled it before. It’s the thing Cole told me about when I saw him for the first time afterward. Out in Vine Cottage, he told me the one thing he remembered, because I asked, and maybe he doesn’t remember it now, maybe his brain scrubbed it just like mine seems to have, but that’s what this is. Sent from his seven-year-old brain to mine in whatever words he used that day, it hid deep down, wherever you put the memories that you don’t want, the ones that aren’t even memories at all but are terrible things that you imagine because you don’t have any choice. And now it’s drifting up again.

  It is the smell of blood, and gunpowder, and urine, all mixed together, lingering in the air in the long, terrifying minutes before Officer Jessup took Cole out of the classroom.

  I’m in the water. I’m up to my knees, then my hips, then my waist, and now I bend and push off into the deep.

  I hear a voice calling, somewhere in the distance, maybe back on the main road. Maybe some kids, heading to the Monument. It doesn’t matter.

  I don’t pull too hard. I aim straight out to the center of the lake, straight toward the farthest bank, and whether I get there or not won’t be my choice or anyone else’s choice. The dice weren’t thrown that day, but now they finally, finally are. I’ll know the answer. I’ll know whether I am meant to have a life.

  One arm over another, churning the wa
ter behind me with my feet, I reach the center of the lake and stop. My arms and legs are shaking with the effort and with a lack of sugar.

  I turn in a slow circle, gauging the distance from the shore. Finally, I raise my head. I’m dizzy, like I can feel the planet spinning around me. It’s supposed to be infinitely deep here; it’s supposed to keep on going and going. No one’s been to the bottom. I lean back in the water and float, letting my arms and legs rest, letting the lake hold me up. I imagine myself as I would look from above, a naked white speck in a great circle of darkness.

  What would I find if I dove all the way down? What things that no one besides me has ever seen? I wonder about it for a moment, and then I turn myself in the water. I take a deep breath and let it out, feeling the air fill my lungs, and then I take another and I flip, driving myself downward.

  I open my eyes, but there’s nothing to see. It’s black all around me, and I think you could really lose track of which way is up and which is down in a place like this. I kick, driving myself deeper, and I see something ahead of me. It’s a burst of color, red then green. My legs are starting to shake, and I feel a hollowness in my stomach. I blow bubbles out of my nose, almost the last of my air, and I feel them trace the side of my face as they rise. I’m still descending.

  The lights are exploding in front of me now, and I can hear them, their voices and their names.

  Steven Abrams. Patrick Clemson.

  They seem to be coming from somewhere ahead of me, though there can’t be that much farther to go.

  Susan Edwards.

  I kick harder, reaching out with both hands and pulling at the water. No one else knows what is down here, but I do. I do now. I kick as hard as I can. I’m reaching the last of my strength.

  Andrew Gerber.

  The last of the air is gone from my lungs, and I stop, because I know I’m never going to get there. I stop descending and turn in the water, hanging suspended in space, and my last clear thought is that while I do remember the way back to the surface, I may have come too far to reach it on my own.

  Nineteen

  — Cole —

  I’m looking out at the water. I’m listening.

  I pulled into the lot just in time for the sweep of my headlights to catch something moving, a flash of white out on the water. I got out of my car and called Matt’s name, but nothing came back to me.

  His mother’s Land Rover is on the far side of the lot, tucked in the trees. She called me and said that both he and her car were missing and that he wasn’t answering his phone. I told her I knew where he was, because I knew he wouldn’t want her to call the police.

  Viola and I had sat by the basket for a long while, sometimes talking and sometimes not. No one ever came to get the balloon, and after the call came, we left it lying in the dark field. She went home, and I came here.

  I might have again assumed that Matt was with Sarah, or at the gym, or out driving somewhere, but I didn’t. I knew where he was. At least, I thought I did.

  I stand in the stillness. He wouldn’t be in the water alone; that can’t have been him—​it would be too crazy. He brought me with him when he tried to swim the lake; he at least had the good sense to do that. I walk around to the car and peer inside. Then I turn and make my way across the lot.

  There is a moment, as I reach the boundary between the asphalt and the sand, when I think I hear something splash out on the water, and I stop and listen. There’s nothing.

  I continue on, past the locked-up Snack Shack, toward the boat. There had been a bit of moonlight, but now it is covered by a cloud, and I can’t see much of the water.

  I round the inverted hull of the rowboat. I see the pile of familiar clothes in the sand. I hear a splash again, far out on the water, farther than it should be. That’s when I know, and I break into a run, reaching the waterside and calling my friend’s name. There’s no response. I hurry back to the clothes, dig into the pocket of his shorts and take out his cell phone, swipe the screen, enter the password, and tap on the icon for the app, cursing as it takes moments to appear.

  Forty-six. The arrow pointing straight down.

  I should call the police, but there’s no cell signal, and it would take time for them to come. It would take time for them to bring a boat and get it in the water. It would take time for them to set up their searchlights. An image comes to me: dawn, here, on this beach. Cops. Divers trudging into the water. Men with dogs walking along the shore.

  I’m not going to let that happen.

  I run back and plant my hands on the wooden hull of the lifeguard boat, pushing as hard as I can. It hardly budges. I crouch and wiggle my fingers between the wood and the sand, and I lift. My feet scrabble, seeking traction, and I cry out to the sky as my legs and arms and back all strain.

  My father had done this; my father, who stood six foot four inches tall and before the cancer weighed two hundred and twenty-five pounds, all of it muscle. I’m not my father, but I keep straining, keep lifting, and the boat begins to turn, rolling over reluctantly, the center of gravity hovering between earth and sky and then shifting, leaving me on my knees as it flips right-side up.

  I leap to my feet, seize the oars that had been under the boat, and throw them inside; then I run around to the stern. I plant my feet again and push. It takes a moment, but the craft begins to move down the beach, the hiss of passing sand mingling with my panting in the silence. The momentum builds, and then suddenly the bow strikes the water and I plow directly into the solid wood, the wind knocked out of me, and then I’m pushing again and leaping in, seating myself in the center and seizing the oars, positioning them on each side, pulling as hard as I can.

  Dad was always the one to row, even when I was old enough to try. I would sit behind him in the bow, but when we came to an interesting place to stop, he would turn around so that we were facing each other, and we would talk. We talked about biology, mostly, about the flora and fauna of the lake and the shore around it, the birds above us in the sky. It seemed like he could see whole universes in a little patch of water, or under a boulder by the shore. He could answer any question I asked, all the way up until the last one, when there had been nothing he could offer other than holding my hand and whispering that this, too, like all things, would pass.

  The oars are heavier than I thought they would be. My muscles ache as I try to lift them simultaneously and make the long, sweeping movements that Dad had made. I lean back, looking up at the night sky, and propel myself out onto the lake, and when I’ve come some way, I turn and scan the water around me.

  I have no idea where to look. The sound I had heard seemed like it was far out in the water, but this is a big lake, bigger when you’re looking for someone in it. I spin in a complete circle on the seat, straining my eyes, and then I scream Matt’s name out over the water. Again, there is no reply.

  I resume my rowing. I’ll position myself in the center of the lake so that I have the best chance of spotting something in any direction. I will stay out here for as long as I need to, all night. I will row in concentric circles until I have covered every square foot of water. I will not leave without him.

  I reach what I think is the middle, and as I rest the oars, the moon emerges and the light spills down over the water and there he is, floating just a few feet off of the bow. He is face-down, and as I watch, he waves his arms slowly and turns his head to the side, gasping for air. I seize the oars, my hands burning and blistering, but I’m able to maneuver the boat close to him, managing to guide it near Matt’s shoulders without striking his head, and I lurch over to grab him and I pull him in, tipping and nearly capsizing.

  He lies naked in the bottom of the boat. He doesn’t respond to his name. He is breathing, shallowly and quickly, and he is shaking. I turn us toward the beach, and even though I think I have nothing left to give, I get us to land. As the bow grinds into the sand, I vault out and pull the boat up onto the beach, and then I turn back to Matt, who is not moving.

  The fir
st time Matt slept over at my house, well over a decade ago, his mother gave my parents a lecture on diabetic shock. I listened to it too. I was fascinated by the idea that all the strength could drain out of a person if he took a bit too much insulin or was too active without eating enough. I’d carefully memorized the symptoms, and when Matt came over, I always made sure that there was some orange juice in the fridge. I don’t have any orange juice now, though.

  I leave him in the boat and run up the beach. The door to the Snack Shack is locked. I step back and kick it as hard as I can, but it doesn’t budge. I try again, and a pain explodes in my hip. I hobble around to the front, but the order window has a board over it with a heavy padlock. I continue up the beach, my hip screaming, my shoulders and back still aching to the point of numbness from rowing. I reach the parking lot and then my car. I back up my old Volvo in a wide U-turn, pause for a moment to fasten my seat belt, and then I step down hard on the gas.

  The station wagon lurches across the parking lot with the screech of rubber, the rear fishtailing back and forth as I pull hard on the wheel, and then I’m in the sand. My tires fight for traction and I keep my foot down, urging it to go faster, bracing my arms against the wheel until at the last moment I remember that’s not what you’re supposed to do, and instead I throw myself behind the dashboard, across the passenger seat.

  The car crashes into the Snack Shack like a battering ram. Wood buckles, the door is knocked off its hinges, and an entire corner of the structure crashes down onto my hood. For a moment, everything is silent. I slowly sit back up and look out at dust settling in the glow of the headlights. Then I unbuckle, open the door, and stumble from the car, bruised and dazed, crawling over the fender and through the wreckage, forcing my way into the building. I finally reach the fridge and pull it open, grab a bottle of juice, and then crawl out and run down the beach. I climb back into the boat.