The Beauty That Remains

by Ashley Woodfolk

  After, we go to your room. Your mom is more and more like herself these days, so I don’t think the closed-door privacy I’ve enjoyed with Dante for the last couple of weeks will last much longer. But for now, we still have it, and I’m glad. We decide to stay up until midnight like we’ve done with you almost every year. Even two years ago, when you had to be up super early the next morning to get ready for your quinceañera. Even when you sobbed all night last year because your parents refused to also throw you a sweet sixteen.

  So it’s just the two of us, sitting here casting long shadows, waiting for the alarm I set on my phone to go off. We play cards on your floor and watch a few of your favorite movies, and we drink a few beers that Dante sneaks from the kitchen, even though you loved champagne best. But when there’s only a few minutes left, we just kind of sit there looking at each other.

  It’s 11:47 p.m.

  “What do you think she would have wanted?” Dante asks me.

  I smile and picture the birthday version of you in my head: wearing a tiara and fancy clothes and makeup, even when we were six. Even that year when you had the flu and you were feverish and sick.

  “Probably a sequin-covered dress. Or red glitter-covered shoes. Or a new keyboard,” I tell him. “But she would have said, ‘I need a gown that looks like the stars’ or ‘ the shoes that Dorothy wore on the yellow brick road’ or ‘I want to make music,’ and she would have made me or you or your parents figure it out.”

  Dante grins and touches the end of one of the braids I put into my hair. I never did get it cut, so his hand and the end of the braid are hovering near my elbow. After I cried the first time, my hair didn’t bother me as much anymore. Plus, this is the last way you ever saw me. I feel like too much is changing. I don’t want to change that just yet.

  I rub the side of Dante’s face. It’s getting scruffy because he hasn’t shaved in forever. His eyes are still so bright and boyish, but we haven’t been kids for a while. I kiss his cheek despite the stubble, and it’s rough beneath my lips.

  It’s 11:51 p.m.

  “What do you think she would have wanted to do?” he asks me next. I twist my shaky hands together and squeeze my own fingers.

  “Probably go ice-skating to show off,” I say. “Or go to karaoke to show off. Or go to a play and reenact the entire thing once it was over because she’d think she could have done the whole production better.”

  I pause and drum my fingers on his knee. Look up at him.

  “Or maybe she would’ve just watched a movie with us. Eaten some ice cream. Gotten drunk and covered us with kisses. Fallen asleep spread across our laps like a kitten.”

  Cats grow out of the overly affectionate habit, but you never did.

  He nods and nibbles on his bottom lip, and I start to miss you in that sudden way that always makes me lose my breath. I audibly inhale and exhale a few times, and Dante grabs my hand.

  It’s 11:55 p.m.

  A tear slips out of my eye before I can stop it. And when I look up, Dante’s crying too. He clears his throat, though. And smiles one of his sad smiles. I press my lips together and nod, even though he hasn’t said anything.

  “What do you think she would have said about us?” he asks next, scooting closer to me on the bed. We’re sitting cross-legged, face-to-face, and he moves forward until our knees are touching.

  I have to swallow a few times before I speak so my voice will come out right.

  “Probably something funny. Probably something like ‘You guys can never procreate because I’d love that kid more than anyone has ever loved anything.’ ”

  I don’t look at him when I say, in a smaller voice, “Or maybe she’d think it was weird.”

  This is what we don’t talk about. It is our biggest fear. Because if you were alive, your brother would never have asked me out without asking you first. And I’d never have fallen for him without your permission. The first time we hung out without you, you died. It haunts us.

  We need your blessing, and you can’t give it.

  So we sit there with wet eyes, and Dante leans in close to kiss me. His lips are soft, and his big hands are warm where they rest on either side of my wet face.

  “I don’t think she’d think it’s weird,” he says, stooping his head and looking up at me through his thick fringe of lashes. “We were her favorites.”

  And being one of your favorites has always been one of the things I liked most about myself. To be loved in a special way by someone like you, who was loved by everyone so much, was the best part of being your best friend.

  You could have had anyone you wanted. But you picked me.

  My alarm sounds softly, a tinkling piano version of the happy birthday song, and Dante pulls me toward him and then down, until we’re lying side by side.

  We stare at the ceiling. We hold hands. We stay quiet and listen to the song.

  On the fourth or fifth loop, I shut off my phone. I’m weeping, but in the quiet kind of way, even though my insides ache for you at a frequency so shrill, it would be deafening if anyone could hear it. And Dante’s crying again too. He’s shaking and covering his face with his hand, so I press my shoulder into the vacant space below his lifted arm. I press my wet eyes against his quivering neck.

  When we’re done crying, it’s 12:14 a.m.

  Dante brings the yellow cupcake with vanilla icing that I bought earlier into the room from the kitchen and sits on the floor with it. I climb down from the bed and sit across from him as he pushes a tiny violet candle into the frosting. It takes me six tries to light it because my hands are trembling so badly. We blow it out together. Neither of us wants to eat the cake, so we decide to save it until morning.

  “Happy birthday, Tavi,” I say.

  And Dante says, “Wish you were here.”

  He turns out the lights and then curls around me, right there on the floor of your bedroom, and even though I wasn’t planning on sleeping over, it feels like he won’t be letting me go anytime soon. I don’t want him to. I text my mom and ask her if it’s okay for me to stay the night. She calls me, and when I answer, I don’t even let her say anything. “It’s Tavia’s birthday,” I whisper. “Please.”

  She sighs, and hesitates, and then she says, “Okay. I love you.”

  I’m sure she would have said no if she could see the tangle of limbs Dante and I are right now. If she could see your brother, with his arms wrapped around my torso.

  If I’m being honest, I’m almost as worried as my mom is. I’m worried that I’m starting to cling to him the way I clung to you; that I’m becoming more important to him than I want to be. When you died, I got lost, and I’m still finding my way back. As good as it feels to have someone I need and who needs me, I don’t want our lives to become so wrapped up in each other’s that we’d be broken if anything were to happen. I have to know that I can live without him. And he needs to be okay without me, too.

  But I can’t think about that for too long without feeling like I’m going to cry again. So I close my eyes and imagine you in a sequin-covered dress, and sparkly red shoes, with a brand-new keyboard. I imagine you as I know you would have been at seventeen: a glamorous show-off. A misfit performer.

  A beautiful mess.

  * * *

  —

  When I close my eyes, I dream that it’s fall. Your voice fills my head all night.

  Everywhere I look, all I see is you. This one’s that milky-tea color, like your skin, you say. You’re holding light brown leaves in your hand, collecting them as we walk home from school, and we’re ten or eleven or twelve.

  You pick up a few more leaves. This one’s sunset pink like your lips. This one’s purple, but it’s almost as dark as your hair. You hold them up to my face, like nature is a palate for all the parts of me.

  No wonder your name is Autumn, you say, giggling, and I knock th
e leaves from your hands and start running so you chase me home. I don’t worry that you won’t follow me, and you know I’ll never leave you too far behind, even though I’m faster.

  Then it’s summer, and it’s raining. You show up at my door drenched and laughing in your pink bikini and yellow rain boots. You coming? you ask me. Your bronze skin shines, even though it’s cloudy, and of course I’m coming, so I run to get dressed. I step out of the house with a big T-shirt over my swimsuit. I’m barefoot because I like the feeling of the gritty water and wet grass beneath my toes, and we hold hands and jump into the puddles in my front yard.

  The scene changes again, and it’s spring. You’re picking flowers and then making crowns out of the smallest ones. You place a crown of buttercups on my head while I bundle together bouquets for both our mothers, and the petals tickle me just above my eyebrows. We wade through a field of wildflowers and weeds, and you say, Dandelions will always be my favorite flower. They change like costumes. You pick a yellow one and tuck it behind your ear. I pick a white dandelion puff and close my eyes. I make a wish: that we can be together like this forever. I blow the cloud of seeds out in front of me, like I’m blowing a kiss to you. I wake up.

  I turn to look through your bedroom window, and it’s bright white outside because we slept well into the afternoon. Dante is standing there, with his finger hooked into the curtain, pulling it aside. It’s snowing, and it’s your birthday, and I feel so close to you after that dream. There’s only one way I can feel even closer.

  “Let’s go to the bridge,” I say.

  Dante turns around and stares at me for a long time before he answers. He chews his bottom lip and then rubs the back of his neck. “Okay,” he finally says.

  Dante drives and I stare through the window at the snow, thinking about you. My hands are shaking, but I squeeze them into tight fists so your brother won’t notice.

  Before we left your house, he asked if I was sure; if I was ready. I told him yes, even though it wasn’t true. But I can’t keep driving dozens of extra miles every time I have to get on the freeway. I felt closer to you this morning than I have since you died, and you’ve always had a way of making me feel brave.

  “You okay?” he asks, and I nod. But he sees my eyes, even though I try to look away quickly.

  “We don’t have to do this today,” he says, reaching one of his hands across the emergency break to lay it on my thigh. I want to cover his hand with my own, but I don’t want him to see how badly I’m shaking.

  “I know,” I tell him. “But we have to do it eventually. So why not now?”

  We’re almost there. My throat throbs, but I try to keep it together, at least until we get to the mile marker. Even if we have to leave right away, I want to see the place where you died. I know that if I can’t stay calm, Dante will turn the car around. And I don’t want him to do that when we’re so close.

  Dante looks nervous, too. He has that wrinkle in the center of his forehead; you know the one I mean. And he’s holding the steering wheel with both hands now, so tightly that his bronze skin had gone taut across the knuckles.

  I look through the windshield and stare straight ahead. I can see it. I can see the outlines of the teddy bears and balloons, flowers and photos and cards. They’re all still there beneath the dusting of snow, a few red rose petals and yellow plush fur poking out through the wet white blanket. I don’t know why, but I thought the gifts would be gone by now. I wonder how long the authorities will leave them there. Maybe they think it will serve as a warning. Maybe they hope it will make people slow down.

  Do you even know how it happened? You were speeding, going too fast, in a rush to get to Perry to make your dramatic declaration of love. They think you hit a patch of black ice, lost control, and hit the guardrail, which, on any other day, with any other car, might have stopped the forward motion. But the angle was wrong or the car was too heavy. Physics or maybe the universe was not on your side.

  Or you were just going way too fast.

  We pull up short, and Dante turns off the car. He’s the one breathing heavily now, and I reach over to peel his fingers from the steering wheel. I grip his hand in mine.

  “Want to get out?” I ask him, hoping this won’t turn into a total disaster like when I asked him to take me to school. He looks out of my window at the pile of lumpy snow. I want to uncover it all to see what’s there. I want to know who came here before me.

  He nods, but he doesn’t move to open his door.

  So I let go of his hand and open mine before I lose my nerve. I step out into the snow, and it crunches a little under my boots. I don’t go around to open Dante’s door. He’ll get out when he’s ready.

  I kneel in the pile of snow that’s been pushed away from the road by a plow. Only a few inches fell last night, but here along the side of the road is where it’s deepest. With my gloved hands, I push away the thin layer covering the gifts and lift the first thing my fingers uncover to get a closer look.

  It’s a big sunflower stiffened from the cold, and a small note is wrapped around the stem. The paper is wet, so I unroll it carefully. I recognize it right away as a few lines of Shakespeare, and even though the words are a bit smeared, I can still read what it says.

  “Death lies on her like an untimely frost

  Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

  You’re gone too soon. I’m so sorry. I’ll miss you.

  It’s from Alexa. I can imagine her small hands laying that flower in the snow, and a few minutes later, I uncover things from Margo and Faye, too. It feels wrong that there isn’t something here from me.

  I walk down the shoulder a little farther. I dig out a tiny stuffed dog and a large stuffed bunny. I grab a handful of flowers and pictures of you with the drama club and the choir. And by the time I hear Dante open and close his door, my hands are full of everything everyone left behind for you.

  “Should we take this stuff?” I ask Dante when he gets close enough to hear. But when I look up at him, I can tell he isn’t okay. He looks scared.

  I reach out for him, but he flinches away from me. I know what’s going through his head. Because the second I looked at him, I realized that for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t going through mine.

  “If I had been driving, this never would have happened,” he says. He squats down beside me and clenches his jaw, his fists. “If I had been driving—” he starts again, but I cut him off.

  “If I had gone to the party. If you had gone to the party. If she hadn’t gone to the party. If it hadn’t been icy. If she’d taken a back road…” I stand up, and even though I’ve felt so strong since I woke up this morning, tears are falling like heavy stones from my eyes all of a sudden. But maybe this is strength. Maybe holding on to all the circumstances I couldn’t control was the weak thing to do.

  “If she’d been listening to something else on the radio. If she’d looked up a second earlier. If she hadn’t been going so fast!” I yell. I keep going. “If she and Perry hadn’t broken up. If they had never dated. If Perry had been at the party. If she had just waited until the next day, or called him or called you or called me!”

  The number of ifs and what-ifs are infinite, and I keep listing them—trying to convince myself or Dante, or maybe you, that I’m sorry; that life and death are random; that we can’t control anything except how we deal with it all now—until Dante stands up too. Because I dreamed about you all night, and something about hearing you again so clearly has assured me that this is true: It wasn’t my fault or Dante’s or Perry’s. Or even yours. Your brother grips my shoulders so I’ll stop, and I do. He swallows hard, then nods like he gets it.

  “All right. Okay.” He wipes my face with his gloved fingers.

  “Don’t do it again,” I beg, blinking, and shaking my head. “We’ve both done it enough.”

  I kneel back
down and pull a vanilla-scented candle out of the snow. I place it in front of his feet. I wrap my arms around my knees and just stare at everything else. He walks over to the railing and looks down at the road that runs below the one we’re standing on.

  “She landed down there,” he says softly. I barely hear him. The sun’s just starting to set, so his shiny black hair is reflecting the light at an angle that makes it look almost white on top. The snow looks orange and pink and yellow. And the sky is every color in between. I stand up to look over the edge with him.

  I’m holding the small stuffed dog in my hand. The ears are black and the body is white, and he’s holding a tiny red heart that says I MISS YOU. There’s no name and no card, but I just assume it’s from Perry. Both of you were obsessed with beagles, and the dog kind of looks like Snoopy. I look over at the wooded area on either side of the empty road. It looks so ominous in this light, and I know that this was what you saw when you broke through the guardrail.

  You must have been so scared.

  “I wish she died right away, you know? That I could know for sure that she didn’t know what was happening to her, that she didn’t have time to be afraid,” Dante says, and it’s as if he’s reading my mind. He looks straight ahead, and the failing light makes his eyes shine more than normal. Or maybe the shine is from the tears, but I can tell by the set of his jaw that he isn’t going to let them fall.

  I drop the dog back into the snow. I slip my arm around his waist and take a deep breath. I’m not used to touching him like he’s mine just yet.

  “This place…,” I say. “It almost feels sacred.” Dante nods.

  I reach into his coat pocket. I have a feeling he’ll have a lighter, and he does. I walk back over to the pile of gifts, looking for the candle. When I find it, I try to light it, and at first the wick is too wet. But Dante sees what I’m trying to do, and he dries it with the bottom of his coat.