Letting Go of Gravity

by Meg Leder

  The day of the party, everything was going as planned: Erin’s parents were out of town, and Em, May, Charlie, and I had gotten there early to help her set up. Charlie had the grill going, the guys from the baseball team had miraculously arrived on time (Em had significantly padded the arrival time solely for their benefit), and even though it was totally a mistake, we couldn’t stop laughing at the birthday message on Matty’s cake: HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATTY!

  “Shhh!” Em said when the doorbell rang, holding up her phone to record Matty’s reaction.

  When he slid open the patio door, calling for Charlie, and we all jumped out screaming “Surprise!” Matty let out such a high-pitched yelp, Em did a victory fist pump. “Totally posting this on YouTube right now,” she said, looking at her phone as she automatically held a hand up for a high five.

  Everything was perfect that day, even the imperfect cake.

  And then I saw Charlie.

  I was by the pool, drying off in the sun, a warm towel wrapped around my shoulders, half listening to May talk about the political science classes she was taking at Oberlin in the fall, when Charlie passed in front of me, pulling off his Cincinnati Reds T-shirt and, with a wild whoop, cannonballing into the water right next to Erin.

  I froze, watching him.

  Erin shrieked as Charlie surfaced, scooping her up, threatening to dunk her.

  “Charlie, I just got my hair blown out!” she said, but she was beaming at him, her arms around his shoulders.

  I stood up.

  “Park?” Em said.

  “Just a minute,” I said, walking over to the pool, as close as I could get to Charlie without actually getting in. By this point, he and Matty had started their “synchronized swimming” routine, the one that involved them holding their noses and jumping up and down in tandem.

  I rubbed my eyes, just in case I was seeing sun spots, but no, as Charlie bobbed in the water, I could see them all over his back: tiny broken blood vessels, just like the ones on his chest when he first got cancer. With all the chaos and sunlight and splashing, I guessed no one else had seen them yet.

  I rocked back on my heels right as Charlie looked at me, swimming over and splashing me from the pool.

  He squinted up at me when I didn’t move, his ears sticking out from his wet hair. They looked like they were getting burned, and I realized he probably didn’t put any sunscreen on his ears, and he really should, because of skin cancer, because of cancer, and I swallowed hard.

  “Parker, you okay? You look like you’re going to throw up Happy Birthday Patty cake all over the place.”

  The sun was too warm on my face and I could smell chlorine in my hair, and I hated what I was going to do.

  “There are spots on your back,” I said, keeping my voice quiet.

  “What? Bug bites?”

  “No.”

  “It’s probably heat rash or something.”

  “Charlie, they’re like before.”

  He craned his neck back, twisting his whole body, so he could see. I watched his face fall amid all the life around him: Matty jumping into the pool, Erin laughing at his belly flop, Em and May sneaking a kiss.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No. Fuck. No.” He pulled himself up out of the pool and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around his shoulders and yanking his T-shirt off a table before stalking into the house.

  “Charlie?” Erin called from the pool.

  “He’ll be back,” I said, following the trail of pool water until I found him standing in front of the bathroom mirror, angling his body to see his back.

  The red spots looked like a map of constellations on his skin.

  His eyes met mine in the mirror.

  “My last blood test was good. I’m fine,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound like I believed it, like I wasn’t terrified. “You’re right. And I bet Mom and Dad can get you in to see Dr. Travis tomorrow and she’ll rule it out, and it’ll all be good.”

  He pulled his T-shirt on, shaking his head.

  “I can’t tomorrow.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I’ve got the baseball recruitment camp in two weeks. I’ll go to the doctor after that.”

  “Charlie, you can’t wait. If the cancer’s back, it could be spreading. You know every day matters.”

  “I’m not missing the camp. All the good coaches will be there. Coach Franklin thinks it’ll up my chances of getting recruited for Duke or Vanderbilt’s team next year.”

  “But couldn’t you go to the doctor and still go to the camp after that?”

  “Not if I’m sick again.”

  “But if the cancer’s back, the camp won’t make any difference!”

  Charlie flinched.

  “I’m sorry, I just mean, if it’s back, you probably couldn’t play next year anyway, right?”

  “You don’t know that. If I get accepted, I could defer for a year.”

  “God, Charlie,” I said, my voice cracking in frustration.

  “Just give me these two weeks, okay? I promise, as soon as the camp is over, I’ll tell Mom and Dad and I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Travis. But, Parker, you have to let me do this on my own terms.”

  Charlie’s voice was desperate, and I had to look away.

  I took a step back, hugging myself, shaking my head. “No.”

  “Come on.”

  “No.”

  “Parker, if you ruin this for me, I will never forgive you,” he said, his voice choked up, a mix of fury and heartbreak.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Tell Matty I said happy birthday. I’ll see you at home tonight.”

  “Parker!” Charlie yelled as I left, but I didn’t turn back, just started walking toward home.

  As soon as I got there, I told my parents.

  Before Charlie even got home that night, they had booked him into a nine a.m. appointment with Dr. Travis the next day and blood tests later in the afternoon.

  I don’t know how he took the news, if he was as furious with our parents as he was with me. I was too busy hiding upstairs in my room, afraid to face him, unable to shake the feeling that even though I’d done the right thing, I’d still done something really wrong, the type of wrong you could never come back from.

  Four days later, Em and I were at the mall, hanging out on her break from the yogurt stand, when Mom called from the hospital to tell me it was official: Charlie had relapsed acute lymphocytic leukemia.

  After I hung up, I was trying so hard to be matter-of-fact, but as soon as I told Em, her face screwed up and her eyes welled up, and then I couldn’t look at her, because I knew if I did, I’d lose the little bit of myself that was still holding the rest of me together.

  Our parents withdrew Charlie from the baseball camp, told Coach Franklin the news.

  I did everything I could to avoid Charlie, while he did everything he could to indicate how much he hated me.

  Our communication was limited to the basics of simple human interaction: Good morning. Can you pass me the milk? Good night. When I did meet his eyes, his gaze was so leveling, so devastating, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all my fault: him missing the camp, the cancer coming back.

  That September, Charlie started chemo again for his reinduction therapy. Mom began leaving metal pots around the house again—by the couch, at the foot of Charlie’s bed—for when his treatments made him throw up. Dad took on as much overtime as he could get to help with the bills. I mailed off my Harvard early-action application packet.

  In November, Mom and Dad told me that Charlie was taking off at least the first half of the year so he could focus on his treatments, meaning he wouldn’t graduate with me and Matty and Em. That night, I heard him crying quietly on the other side of the wall. I raised my hand, wanting to send him our old knock, but my knuckles froze inches from the wall, unable to bear the possibility that he might not knock back.

  The day my Harvard acceptance packet arrived was our first snow of
the year. Nothing heavy, just delicate December flakes, the type that make you forget the piles of gray snow that will come later in the winter.

  As soon as I opened the letter, I felt my future solidify in front of me, edges sharp, colors bright: green rolling lawns, redbrick buildings, a stethoscope, scrubs, Dr. McCullough.

  “I got into Harvard,” I heard myself say to my parents.

  “Holy cow!” my dad yelled, doing an enthusiastic fist pump. He pulled me into a hug that crushed my ribs against each other, letting go only so Mom could hug me too.

  I gulped hard, trying to swallow, and at that second, I thought of the Wicked Witch of the East, the one who gets crushed by a house right at the beginning of the movie.

  Dad put his hands on my shoulders. “Heck, let’s go out to celebrate! Skyline Chili?”

  I wanted to say, A house has landed on top of me. There’s something wrong with me. Something bad is happening. But my head bobbed automatically, my mouth moved into a smile automatically, instinct taking over, and I nodded.

  “If we go now, it won’t be crowded,” he said.

  “I’ll see if your brother feels well enough to join,” Mom said before following Dad upstairs, calling Charlie.

  I sucked in my breath and it got caught on a tangle inside me, and I held my head down on my lap, trying to find oxygen in the dark tent of my arms.

  Harvard.

  Premed.

  Dr. McCullough.

  It was what I’d always wanted.

  But my heart felt sweaty, and my legs felt jumbly, and I couldn’t get out from under that house.

  “Parker?”

  My head jerked up. Charlie was standing in front of me.

  It was the first time he had looked at me in months when his gaze didn’t make me shrink, didn’t make me hate what I’d done.

  “I got into Harvard,” I said.

  “Is this what you want?”

  I stared at him. He looked gaunt, and I saw the new patches where his hair had come out in clumps. “Yes.”

  He didn’t react, just turned and left without another word, not joining us for dinner that night.

  At the time, I had hoped the being-crushed-by-a-house feeling was just nerves, being excited.

  But afterward, I started dreaming about the helium people again.

  I dreamed about them flying near my window at night, tapping on the glass pane.

  I dreamed about them following me when I walked outside, pulling on my hair as I curled my toes against the earth.

  I worried about their insides being exposed, convinced it couldn’t be good to show your heart out in the world like that.

  Each time, late in the dream, I realized (or maybe just remembered) that Charlie was standing next to me too, right as one of the helium people took his hand, lifting him off the ground.

  He always looked so happy, yelling, “Happy Birthday to us, Parker!”

  And each time, I grabbed his foot, circled my hand around his bony ankle, tried to keep him tethered to me.

  But I couldn’t keep him close—the helium people were too strong—and with a cry, I watched Charlie break free, leaving me behind, my gravity feet on the ground.

  I always woke up with loss aching through me, a sense of missing something so essential, it took me a while to remember where I was, even who I was, to remember I hadn’t done enough to save my brother.

  It was never enough.

  Twenty-Seven

  WHEN I ARRIVE FOR my first shift at Carla’s, the four older ladies from the previous day are already there, this time painting what appear to be small shallow dishes.

  All of them except for Alice, that is. This time she’s actually sitting at the same table as the other three, but she still isn’t painting. Instead, she’s staring at her hands in her lap, neatly folded. The crabby one from yesterday, Harriet, just grunts, but the other two murmur hellos.

  Right then, the front door opens behind me, and both Carla and Finn come in, boxes stacked in their arms.

  Finn stops in his tracks when he sees me.

  My heart does a weird optimistic surge, hoping maybe what happened the other night between us wasn’t as bad as I remember, but he only nods, walking past me.

  “Parker! Good to see you,” Carla calls out, following him toward the back staircase. “Just give me a few minutes. We have to bring some clay downstairs.”

  “I told you I got ’em, C,” Finn says. “Just put your boxes there and I’ll make another trip.”

  “Such a well-mannered young man,” says the woman who was decked out like the sun last time. Today she’s in blacks and silvers, with a marvelous shooting-star pin on a sparkly sweater.

  “Yes, but he could use a haircut,” the lavender-haired woman says too loudly, and Finn’s already red face goes redder.

  Carla drops her three boxes on the back counter and shakes out her arms afterward, rolling her shoulders. “Morning workout!”

  She tries to ruffle Finn’s hair as he passes, but he ducks. “Thanks, Finnegan.”

  “Anytime,” he says as he troops downstairs.

  “Parker!” Carla says, motioning me over.

  I hand Carla my W-4 and references, but she only glances at my paperwork before shoving it in a drawer and leaning conspiratorially forward.

  “So these four are from Wild Meadows Retirement Community. They’re here as part of an art outreach program.”

  “Oh, that’s nice—” I start, but Carla flaps her hand, motions me closer, and drops her voice to a whisper.

  “They fight. All the time. Harriet over there, the one in the green muumuu? She’s usually the instigator, but I can assure you Miss Peggy—the one with the purple hair?—she isn’t blameless. It’s like a grade-school playground. All I need you to do for the morning is to babysit and make sure they don’t destroy anything valuable or each other.”

  A babysitter for old ladies? My face must be betraying my surprise, as Carla pats my hand reassuringly.

  “Trust me. I need you up here. The real pottery stuff will come later.”

  Right then, Finn comes back upstairs and grabs the remaining boxes. I can see the muscles in his arms, and I blush, looking away, meeting Harriet’s eyes.

  She winks at me.

  “Just yell downstairs if there are any customers or if you need me—I’m going to go help Finn.” She turns toward the table. “Ladies, I’m leaving Parker in your good hands. Be nice.” She looks relieved to leave.

  I listen to her follow Finn down the stairs, and I realize I have no clue what to do next.

  “Hi?” I say to the ladies.

  Harriet snorts, stabbing her paintbrush in black paint. Her bowl’s design seems to consist solely of sharp, jagged lines.

  “Parker, it’s so nice to meet you,” says the lavender-haired woman. “I’m Miss Peggy.”

  The woman with the star pin pats the empty stool beside her. “I’m Lorna. This is Alice,” she says, nodding toward the quiet woman.

  “And that’s Harriet,” Miss Peggy says.

  “Nice to meet you all,” I say.

  Harriet glares in our direction from across the table.

  “What is it you do, Parker?” Miss Peggy asks.

  I nearly mention the internship, but I catch myself. “I just graduated. I’m going to Harvard next year. I’m going to be a doctor.” As the words leave my mouth, they feel hollow. But what’s on the other side feels too empty to begin to contemplate.

  “That’s very impressive,” Miss Peggy says, and Harriet sniffs loudly. Lorna shoots an anxious glance in Miss Peggy’s direction, but she seems to have missed it.

  “My husband, Leonard, was a dentist,” Miss Peggy says. “The hours were hard, but it was worth it, knowing he was making people’s lives better.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Harriet grimace.

  Miss Peggy begins listing all the sacrifices she made as a dentist’s wife, while Lorna nods sympathetically in response and Harriet ignores all of it.

&nbs
p; Alice is in her own world.

  While they talk, I study the space around me. There are a few painted objects on the shelves, and I can hear the creek babbling softly through the open window, a hearty laugh from Carla downstairs.

  When I got up this morning, Charlie had already left for tutoring. My parents were in the kitchen, Dad in a much better mood than the previous night, both of them discussing the morning’s news. I tried to ignore the pangs of guilt in my stomach when they both wished me a good day at my internship.

  Miss Peggy’s voice brings me back to earth. “In other news, I also heard we’re getting a new resident on the second floor.”

  “Interesting!” Lorna says. “How’d you find that out?”

  “I have my sources. And guess what?” She waits, clearly savoring having the knowledge. Even Harriet seems to be leaning slightly closer.

  “It’s a man. A widowed man,” she adds.

  “Well, that’s something!” Lorna says, immediately patting her hair, trying to push the curls into shape.

  Harriet shakes her head and points at Miss Peggy. “No one likes a know-it-all.”

  Miss Peggy rolls her eyes.

  “I think Miss Peggy is just sharing some information,” I say, somewhat surprised by the unprovoked aggression, but Harriet only shrugs, while Miss Peggy whispers something in Lorna’s ear.

  Whether it’s due to hearing aids, passive-aggressiveness, or a healthy degree of both, it’s definitely more of a declaration than a whisper, and I suspect even Carla may hear it: “They clearly cut back on Harriet’s meds.”

  Lorna cringes.

  Harriet glares murderously at Miss Peggy, then bellows, “I can hear you, asshole!”

  My mouth drops open.

  “Takes one to know one,” Miss Peggy retorts.

  At this point, Harriet wags her head at her and slowly draws a finger menacingly across her throat.

  Lorna gasps, looking to me for reassurance.

  I can’t believe these are grown-ups.

  “All right,” I say. “Enough!”

  Everyone looks surprised at my tone, and I feel a little guilty about the ensuing sulky silence, but then I remember this is what I was hired to do—to make sure these ladies don’t kill one another.