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Forty-three
ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT ON MONDAY MORNING WAS getting over to the garage to see Cowboy. For the first time, I could go in there and hug him the way I’d always wanted to. What seemed right would be right. I could kiss him and know he’d kiss me back. That would get me through a long day at school.
I was excited, a little scared, and full to my brim. I didn’t have our solution yet. I didn’t know how to tell Bampas or how I was going to handle ending things with Brady. Big changes were coming. But all I could think of for the moment was that I was sure as heck going in there to tell Cowboy that I loved him. I had never said the words on Friday night beside the river. I believed that he knew; he’d said it himself. But I was going to make sure—this very morning. I jingled some quarters, meant for our usual pair of coffees, in the hollows of my hands as I stepped into the kitchen.
“Twenty-six!” my father said loudly. He slapped his hand down on the morning paper, which lay open before him. The kitchen table shook. “I know this young man! This Silas Shepherd.”
My breath stopped. I locked eyes with my mother.
Bampas knows? About Cowboy and me?
She stared back at me, seemingly frozen, frightened—and what else? What was that other look in her eyes? Helplessness? Yes, I thought so. I pressed my quarters hard between my hands. What was going on here?
“He ran SWS Auto at my Hamilton complex.” My father went on. “Can you believe it, Loreena? Dead, at twenty-six.”
Dead?
I looked at Momma. She covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head.
“No,” I said. “No. That’s not possible. . . .” I watched Momma’s eyes begin to fill. Her face crumpled. The wall met my shoulder. “Bampas. No. You . . . you are wrong. . . .”
“What do you know of it?” Bampas said. His brow creased. “It is so. It is written right here.” He thumped a finger on the newspaper. “He is dead.”
My quarters crashed to the floor. They bounced and spun with a horrible ringing. I slid lower and lower down the wall. I pushed words from my chest.
“Oh, no! No. Momma. Please!”
I watched the quarters rolling far away from me—away from my useless arms. Weightless hands.
Footsteps pounded. Bampas was there, kneeling next to me. He reached for me but did not touch me. “Loreena!” he called into the kitchen air. “What is the matter with her? Loreena, come to us!”
“Dinos,” my mother said. She sniffled as she pushed into his place on the floor beside me. “It’s about the boy in the newspaper.” Her whispering filled the space all around me. She gathered me into her arms. My head fell heavily against her breastbone. She rocked me. “Bettina, take a breath,” my mother begged. “Sweetheart, breathe!”
My lungs let in a painful rush of air. “Oh, Mom-ma, no! Tell Bampas he is wrong!” I cried. My body shook, my teeth chattered violently. I gripped the arm of her bathrobe in my fingers and wailed.
In the unearthly kitchen air, I heard Favian calling, “Bampas! Who? Who died? What’s the matter with Bettina?” I saw his wide eyes, his open mouth. Then Avel’s bewildered face mixed into the haze.
“Get a blanket for your sister, Favian.” My mother spoke gently. “Dinos, go put the kettle on. Bettina needs to stay home today.”
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Forty-four
IT RAINED, OF COURSE, FOR THE GRAVESIDE SERVICE. AT first, I thought I would not go. I’d done nothing but stay home and ratchet my bedsheets into a knot since Monday morning when I’d dropped all the quarters in the kitchen. I still heard the ringing and the sound of them spinning—I still reached for them in replay.
Momma had tried to cook for me but I couldn’t bear to feed the stone in my stomach. God knows why, she brought me the paper, showed me the report.
A twenty-six-year-old man had “perished” early Sunday morning. Perished struck me as such a gentle-sounding word. Swished. Wished. Perished. The Chevy had gone off the overlook at the water property and crashed in the branches of the trees. Not gentle. They put the time of the accident at 12:40 a.m.—about an hour after we’d parted.
Mechanical failure, road conditions, driver error—all were suspects. What? I thought. What could have happened? Did Cowboy really make a mistake—punch the gas? Was something wrong with the car? Was it those brakes I had watched him install? All the possibilities dug their jagged edges into me. I thought about what the report didn’t say—didn’t say because nobody knew: he had been with me minutes before.
I’d kept my phone off, while I’d balled myself into my sheets and salted my face with tears. When Sunday afternoon came, I was numbly conscious of needing to be at the service. I’d heard about “closure.” But I didn’t want to close this. I could not concede that Cowboy was gone. It was Momma who nudged me along.
She lent me her long, black skirt and her dress boots. She followed me out to the front step and dropped her gray tweed coat over my shoulders. She pressed the handle of her black umbrella into my palm. “Stay dry,” she said.
She looked up into the weeping sky and I looked after her. Sometimes even grayness is too bright. I had to look away.
“Ready?” my father asked. He sounded like he was about to take me to the merry-go-round. Since the morning the news all came spilling out, I’d had the sense that Bampas was having as much trouble acknowledging the truth as I was. Momma had told him about Cowboy and me. He seemed dumbstruck, very unsure how to treat me.
As we neared the cemetery gate, I saw a dozen or so cars entering—some of them classics. My heart skipped. I’d seen the parts of those cars—the bolts, tailpipes, and radiator caps. I’d seen them before Cowboy had used them to make each car whole. I watched the cars park one behind the other in the long U-shaped drive. It dawned on me that none of them would be able to move until the first one did.
“Don’t pull in,” I told Bampas. “Drop me off here. I want to go alone.”
“But Bettina . . .”
I had the car door open. I stepped out on the curb and let the umbrella pop up. “Just come back for me in an hour.” I pressed one palm toward him.
“No, no. I will drive the way around and watch for you—”
“Go, Bampas. Please.”
“We meet at this gate,” he said.
The grass was spongy underfoot, still spotted with rain-weary snow. There was a tiny gathering, a circle of maybe thirty people. I stayed on the outside, my mother’s umbrella open over my head.
There was the urn on a draped pedestal. It was simple—made of marble I guessed, ivory with gray veins. The base was narrow, and the shape rose to maybe fourteen inches. The top was full-shouldered. The rim narrowed to meet the flat lid cleanly.
It is not Cowboy. Cannot be Cowboy. I thought it over and over again.
The people stepped closer as the service started.
A solemn voice began, “The family would like to invite—”
I looked up. I saw them—the family. The four stood together beneath a portable awning that seemed to expose them more than it sheltered them. I saw the brothers with the beautiful names. And his mother—she was small—her hair in tight curls, her mouth a straight line. She held her own hands clasped at her chest. It seemed like my heart should go cold at the sight of her, knowing what I knew. But she looked like a mother, was all. I wondered what kind of sorrow she felt.
Behind her, a tall man stood with his hands on her shoulders. His sweet, sleepy eyes so much like Cowboy’s. I stared at him. I watched his gaze move slowly around the circle of people, then to the outside until he was looking right at me. Then it hit me; I’d seen him before. He’d seen me too. I was the girl who had stared up at him from a ditch bes
ide a back road while an apple rotted nearby. He was the man who’d let me go that night. “Shep”—that’s what his friend had called him. Shep, like Shepherd. His eyes narrowed, he tilted his head at me—the tiniest of movements—as if to ask, Why are you here? I think he smiled at me. Then he bowed his head.
A flicker of color caught the corner of my eye. A little girl in a bright blue coat and tights was stepping up and down over the footstones well outside the circle. She held a yellow umbrella almost over her head. She tipped and bobbed like a toy against the gray-flannel backdrop. Mud began to dot her tights. But she didn’t seem to notice. I glanced back into the circle where Cowboy’s father stood pressing his thumb and finger into his eyes. The woman in front of him stood unblinking. Two brothers stared at the ground. I turned my gaze back to the little girl and watched her while all the words rasped the air.
“Hello.” Large, cool hands closed briefly over mine as I held the handle of Momma’s umbrella. Startled, I stared up at the moon-faced man. “I’m Kenneth Shepherd,” he said. I managed to give him my name. He waited, then asked, “You a friend of Silas’s?”
“Mmm.” I nodded.
“Well, that’s nice for Silas,” he said, but not in an indecent way. He sounded equally sincere and surprised. “Thank you for coming.” He faltered a little. “There’s a small reception at my farm. Would you like directions? Or can we take you with us?”
The small crowd was breaking away in pieces all around us.
“N-no. Thank you,” I said.
“Another time then,” he said. He smiled such a sad smile.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant for his loss—the way people say. He was a father with a dead son. My throat was in a horrible cramp. I couldn’t form another word. I nodded at Mr. Shepherd one last time. Then I turned and walked away as if I had somewhere to go.
It’d taken only thirty minutes for them to say goodbye to him—their brother, their son. Bampas might not be back for a while, so I walked. The ground made sucking noises under my mother’s boots. I reached the opposite end of the cemetery and turned to start back again. But then I got off course. I could not find the shoveled path, nor my own footprints. No matter where I looked I saw no one. Even the awning was gone. So quickly? That’s how this works? You just fold up? How is that enough? The tallest monuments in the yard made a dizzying pattern, like pieces on a giant disorderly chessboard.
Where is the place I was just standing? Where is the urn? Why does the whole world keep warping?
Finally, the trampled and melted snow gave it away. The awning was on the ground, rolled and packed to go. But the urn was still on its little temporary stage. Not a soul stood near it now. I stepped up and held Momma’s umbrella over the urn and over me. If that was really Cowboy, what could I say to him? What words could I whisper—
“Bettina?”
I gripped the umbrella handle and turned. Bonnie Swenson blinked back at me.
“Whu—?”
“My dad threw out his back so I’m helping today,” she said quickly. She gestured. I looked and saw a lone van slowly making a turn near the cemetery gate. Its taillights glowed and a funnel of exhaust rose from its tailpipe.
“Oh. He’s waiting for you,” I said.
“He’ll pull around,” Bonnie said. Then speaking in a very gentle way, she added, “We have to take the urn.”
I looked slowly from Bonnie to the urn, and back again. Maybe I looked like I was guarding it. I took a step back.
“I-it’s really sad,” Bonnie said. “He was so young.”
I nodded.
She hesitated then asked, “How did you know him?”
“He was . . . my friend,” I said. I swallowed hard. “Like . . . the best . . .”
“I’m so sorry,” Bonnie whispered. She touched my arm and let her hand slide gently down to mine. She held my fingers for a second. She stepped toward the vessel.
“Wh-where do you take it now? The urn?” I asked.
“Storage,” she answered. I hated that. “The remains won’t be interred until later. Some families make that request.”
“Really?” I said. Why? I wondered. What was the point of a graveside service then? I did not ask that question, but Bonnie was on a roll, talking shop.
“Sometimes unmarried children are buried alongside their parents. . . .”
Suddenly, I felt like I would puke in the mud. I stepped back from my own feet and leaned forward. Bonnie hushed. A few seconds throbbed by, and the feeling passed.
“I’m sorry, Bettina,” she said again.
I nodded and took a deep breath. “I better go. My father is meeting me at the gate.” I started away.
“Bettina?”
I turned back to see her holding the urn in her capable, chapped hands.
“Are you going to come back to clay class soon? I’ve missed you.”
Beyond Bonnie I could see Bampas pulling the car to the side of the street and motioning with one hand for me to come. “I—I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know.”
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Forty-five
FOR THE REST OF THAT DAY I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I should be doing. Closure did not show up to put its armor around me. All I felt was dread for each new minute. My phone was off but I heard the house phone several times. Momma did not make me take the calls. But she told me, “Brady again. It is the third time. I know you are hurting but, Bettina, we don’t know what to tell him.” She did seem helpless. “And now the cheerleaders have called, too.”
“I—I can’t talk to anyone,” I said, putting my hands up like a shield. “Not yet. I’ll—I’ll do something. Soon. I will.”
I slipped away to my bedroom and stared out the window at the place where Cowboy had stood the couple of times he had come for me—the place I would never see him again. All places were like that now. He would not be anywhere . . . unless I could dream him. I watched the world beginning to refreeze in a changing wind. All that early drizzle had been a waste of a good snow, I thought.
Later, I went into the kitchen and I carried a shopping bag in my hand. Neither of my parents saw me in the doorway.
“Loreena, this you should have told me!” My father towered close to my mother as if he would step on her feet.
“Two days, Dinos! Two days I knew about it! Then he is dead!” She brought her hands to her head. “I didn’t have time to tell you. I was still trying to think.”
“To think?” My father stepped back and brought his fist down onto the counter with a thud. “That is the problem then!”
“Dinos, you are being unfair,” my mother insisted. Her eyes were filling.
“He was twenty-six, Loreena! The girl is fifteen. . . .”
“Sixteen.” I interrupted hoarsely. “I’m sixteen. Seventeen soon.”
They both looked at me.
“Bettina!” My mother reached for me, trying to apologize for my father’s mistake. I wanted to say that it didn’t matter. Instead, I held the bag out to her.
“Momma, I need you to turn this in,” I said. “It’s my cheerleading dress. You have to tell them I am not coming back.”
“No, no,” Bampas started up. “Bettina, quitting is not the answer—”
“Bampas . . .” I cut him off with a whisper. “Do I look like I can jump up and down and make noise? Do you think I can care about ridiculous basketball after everything that has ha—” I choked. It took a huge effort but I pulled myself together. “Don’t you understand why I won’t take Brady Cullen’s phone calls? Because I can’t!” He stared back at me. I actually had his attention. “And Bampas, I hope you never blame Momma for any of this again,” I said. “I sprung it on her—the whole thing. She did her best.” I turned to face my mother. I held out the bag. “Take it to the school for me, Momma, please. The cheerleaders will need to make other plans. T
here is a Jenna Somebody. She can step in. I won’t hold them up any longer.”
“I’ll do it,” Momma said, and she took the bag.
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Forty-six
MY BED BECAME MY NEST; MY NIGHTGOWN WAS MY cocoon. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to find Cowboy in a dream.
My parents left me to it. They brought cups of tea and small dishes of food. The boys knocked softly on my door in the afternoons, as if they were wearing mittens. For all those days they whispered my name, whispered offers of card games and cocoas and videos. I couldn’t do any of it. They looked at me with big, round eyes every time they closed my door.
There was no single thing that dragged me from that bed. But three or four days after the funeral, I got up. I stepped straight into my clothes, slid my window open, and walked out into the snow. I walked the swath to River Road. When I saw the place I had last seen Cowboy—the place where we’d held each other—I reached into my jacket to check for his cigarettes. I turned left and kept on going for an hour, or maybe it was more, until I reached the water property.
In the ruined and refrozen snow, there was evidence of something having been pulled up and out. There were muddy gashes in the hillside from heavy equipment. These scars in the earth were right where Cowboy and I had stood together on New Year’s Day. I wondered, did he think about telling me he loved me that day? And if he had, how would that have made this day different? I looked into the bowl below and saw the split treetops, the sickening hole in the snow—the place where the Chevy had to have lain with Cowboy in it. I twisted my arms together and held them to my chest.
I asked myself again, What could have gone so wrong that night after he left me? But no answer could ever unbreak my heart.
The little mental movie played—us running along the snowy ground—clouds of Cowboy’s breath—gray bark on winter trees—the pair of cardinals.
The Things You Kiss Goodbye Page 20
