As quiet as I can, I maneuver around Brody to place each sheet of photo paper in the developer, fixer, and rinse trays systematically. He moves away from me and backs into the furthest corner of the small space as Gavin says, “He has been gone so long. I’m starting to forget the way his voice sounded when he said my name.”
The emotions rise into my throat and my own tears threaten to fall as I listen to Gavin’s quirky, stiff, but sad voice lament about his father.
The images of the waterfall and two Ferguson brothers splashing in Hamilton Pool appear before Gavin and me as we both hover over the trays. “Wow,” Gavin says in an astounded yet very faint voice. Even though the knot in my throat threatens to release a shaky voice, I try and keep it steady. “There they are. They turned out perfect.”
A tear breaks away from my eye and I quickly turn my face from Gavin just in case he’s looking. I lift the waterfall image and lay it on the wire drying tray. Brody looks at me, arms crossed and sullen faced. I collect the image of Brody and Gavin splashing in the pool from the rinse. Again, I turn and place it on the drying rack next to the first.
All of a sudden, unnatural light fills the shed and Brody clears his throat, “Ah, man, I just remembered. I have to go into work early today. I have to work on a car that came in late last night.”
Brody is looking down and fidgeting strangely, but I take it as him trying to shake the emotions Gavin’s Christmas wish has stirred.
He moves to the door swiftly. “Gav, we’ve got to go. I’m taking you over to Ash’s house.”
“But I wanted to see Evan develop some more.”
Brody is doing everything to not look directly at me or Gavin. “Can’t buddy. I’ve got to get to work and you have finals to study for. Ash’s mom said she wanted to help you with it today.”
Gavin looks back at me and I quickly shift my concern for Brody to a happy face for Gavin. “It’s all right Gav. We can do this again.”
“Promise?” he asks in all seriousness.
I nod and fold my arms over my chest, suddenly the chill in the room has increased. “Yes, I promise.”
“Thanks, California. See you later,” is all Brody says before opening the shed door to leave with Gavin following closely behind him.
“Bye, Evan,” Gavin calls to me from the yard.
“Bye,” I whisper as I stare fixedly at the leaves, dancing into the open doorway, bearing colder air in with them.
“So, Brody seems like a nice guy,” Dad says making conversation over leftovers dinner - beef stew.
I look up at him, checking if he really thinks so.
“He works to help out his mom is the way I take it,” he adds then looks over at Mom. “That is something you don’t see a bad kid do.” He scoops another spoonful of beef onto his spoon. “I like him,” Dad adds before he places his spoonful of stew in his mouth.
Dad’s words make me want to smile, but I hold my grin at bay and glance over at Mom.
She chews her food slowly, eyeing me for any reaction to Dad’s compliment. “No, bad kids don’t do that kind of thing, you are right.” She takes a sip of water and I expect the conversation to stop with that, but then she adds, “It makes me wonder if Brody has had a chance to think of his future. With him so busy working, taking care of Gavin, juggling school, he can’t be expected to keep everything afloat. And, with this mysterious disappearance of his father and Sarah Ferguson being awfully close mouthed about what happened...anyway, it is a lot of pressure and pressure can make people do things you wouldn’t expect.”
I don’t know what direction she is taking with this conversation, but it doesn’t settle well. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Here we go again,” Dad mumbles.
“Wait, you asked Mrs. Ferguson about Mr. Ferguson’s disappearance?”
“Yes, the night of the Bar-b-Que, when Mr and Mrs. Bell, Dad and I walked her home.” Mom looks to Dad for confirmation.
Dad nods. “I can understand her still being emotional about it and we didn’t interrogate her or anything. It was more like us just showing concern, because we are. I mean, her husband disappeared in a foreign country for God’s sake. We told her if there was anything we could do to help we would.”
“She seemed really stand offish, unsure of saying much of anything. Nikki’s mom said that she has been that way since it all happened, not wanting to talk about it at all. It’s no wonder everybody is reaching for straws to figure out what could have happened to him.” Mom takes another spoonful of stew.
I want to say that no one has any right to be reaching for straws. It is none of their business. But, I realize that I have been guilty of this too over the past few weeks. I have wondered if the military has tried searching for him. If their searches have turned up nothing and that is why Brody is hurt when Gavin brings him up in conversation, like today.
“I don’t think anyone has the right to pass judgment on what they think has happened to Mr. Ferguson,” I say, just as the doorbell rings.
Mom looks from Dad to me. “Busy doorbell, today.”
Nikki is at the door. I feel nervous when she smiles at Mom and asks to come in to speak with me. I was a total bitch in the hallway. Is she coming over to tell me what she really thinks of me now that she has had time to calm down?
I think again on what Brody said about Nikki taking up for Gavin and how doing that had repercussions for them. She had been a co-captain of the varsity cheerleading squad. She was a friggin’ Samantha Johnson.... but not really because she wasn’t an asshole. Brody and Asher were jocks, but not the douchebag kind of jocks. Lia, she was an ingénue cheerleader, up and coming. They were part of the top tier of the caste system until they showed their humanity for one of the untouchables: Gavin. In that moment the wall of stereotypes, social caste systems, and the untouchables was completely obliterated. Nikki Bell mightn’t be here at this very moment to rip me to shreds. She just might be here to be a friend.
“Hey,” she says as she inches toward the table behind Mom.
“Hey,” I say softly.
I help clear the table before Nikki and I head up to my room.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you, like ever again,” I say as I flop down on my desk chair.
Nikki climbs onto my partially made bed and sits cross legged in front of me. “Yeah, well. Forever is too long for me.” She smirks. “Plus, I had to know how the car ride home with Brody went.”
Just like that, everything that was said between us in the hallway at school seems to disappear and I think to myself that this must be what real friendship is like.
“So, did he kiss you?” Her question takes me by surprise; typical Nikki.
“What?” I squeEl.
“Hey, I’m pulling for ya Evan Phillips,” she laughs.
I realized I haven’t told her. After a small silence, I decide to tell her. “It kind of already happened.”
“What? And you didn’t tell me! You bitch!” Her squeal trumps mine and I hush her the best I can while trying to silence my own laughter.
I tell her all the details from the memory of Brody kissing me in the shed even though there isn’t much.
“Wow, that is kind of beautiful,” she says, laying propped up on her elbow. “But Brody has always been a romantic kind of guy. Just glad he is giving it to someone who deserves it.”
I think of Celine and an image of him kissing her pops into my head. I quickly snuff out the raunchy image and try and downplay what happened between Brody and I. “It was just a kiss. It probably won’t happen ever again.”
Nikki’s head perks up. “Are you shitting me? Let me tell you something sister-friend...”
Sister-friend? Is that some kind of southern thing?
“...Brody Ferguson doesn’t just kiss anyone. I have known him my entire life and I can count on one hand the number of girls he has kissed... including you. I can tell you that none of those girls have anything on you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Evan. He is reall
y into you.”
I think of Brody leaving me in the shed earlier, wondering why he gave me the cold shoulder when Gavin started talking about his dad. “Yeah, well maybe not as much as you think.”
“What do you mean?”
I tell her what happened.
Nikki fiddles with a loose thread on my comforter. “Evan, you have to understand that Brody doesn’t talk about his dad because it hurts too much.”
“I know it does. I just want to be there for him.”
She nods and looks at me in all seriousness. “And you are by doing what you are doing, you are. Hell, he has never talked to Ash or me about Mr. Ferguson’s disappearance and we have known him our whole lives. It is just going to take some time.”
I nod, but I don’t whole-heartedly believe that I am really doing everything I can to help him.
I stay up most of the night contemplating how I can. Yeah, can’t sleep, but not because of the insomnia. Holding up my end of “the doctor’s orders” bargain... somewhat anyway... I tell Mom I’ll be fine getting to sleep. It isn’t a complete lie; I am tired, but then I start thinking about Mr. Ferguson, Gavin, Mrs. Ferguson, and Brody. I yawn as I lay in bed imagining what Mr. Ferguson might look like, how the Fergusons might react if he does miraculously return from Afghanistan. I imagine the Braxton Springs parade that would be held in his honor and how the naysayers, the speculators will feel guilty for thinking anything other than an honorable man being a prisoner of war being brought home to be united with his family who have suffered at the hands of a cruel community. Yeah, I’m a little bitter you could say.
What will the Fergusons do if he doesn’t return? Will Mrs. Ferguson finally get insurance for Brody, Gavin and her? Finally get Gavin back the medications needs? Will Gavin be different because right now, I think Gavin is pretty awesome even with all the quirks. Will he stop reading obsessively? Will he stop quoting Frodo Baggins? Will Hamlet have the same appeal? Will the Gavin I have come to love in a brotherly way still exist?
What about Brody? Will he be able to stop working so hard, dividing his time between Gavin, the shop, and school? Will he be able to pursue his passions? Go to college knowing that Gavin will get the care he needs? Will it take him to a faraway place, and will he become unrecognizable as the Brody I met when I first moved here to Braxton Springs?
Okay, I am driving myself crazy. I toss the covers off and get up to throw some water on my face when I notice a warm glow through the sheer curtain of my side window. That glow isn’t new and I know whose room it is coming from - Brody’s.
Feeling butterflies attack my stomach, I inch over to the window slowly and try to look out undetected, but it is impossible. Brody is literally leaning against the pane of his open window dressed in jeans and a plain white t-shirt. His eyes meet mine and his hair rustles, unruly, in the frigid night air.
Hesitantly, not wanting to be assaulted by the wind, I open my window only half way. “Are you crazy? It is freezing! Close your window!” I hiss at him.
He smiles slyly. “Were you sleeping?”
“No.”
“I was hoping you weren’t.”
“What, did you think if you turned on your light, the glow would somehow call to me?” I say sarcastically.
He bows his head, hiding the growing smile on his face, then looks up at me charmingly. “Can’t say it didn’t work, California.”
I lean against the window pane slyly and respond, “I reckon it worked, Texas.”
“Reckon,” he mimics me, then his smile changes and becomes more serious yet tender. “I was hoping it would come across as romantic.”
I breathe in deep as my teeth start to chatter.
“Kind of like Romeo and Juliet,” Brody adds as he his fixed gaze waits for a response, any response from me.
I wrap my arms tightly around myself as the cold starts to bite at my skin and I shift my gaze away from him. “It is romantic.”
Silence settles between us, lingering with the air long enough for Brody to ask, “About earlier today in the work shed...”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“No, I do,” he says as he shakes his head. His voice suddenly sounds so mature and deep. “When Gav says things like he did earlier... it is just hard for me to take. It is hard for me to talk about him without getting upset.”
“Do you want to come over to the work shed?” I ask guardedly, not knowing how he will take my offer.
He looks off into the distance for a minute as his eyes dart nervously. A war is being waged behind those eyes and I want to reach out to him.
“Do you want to meet in the shed? Talk maybe?”
Suddenly, he looks straight at me. “Yeah, I would like that.”
I should have brought a blanket, jacket, something; it is freezing in here. Really need to get a space heater for this shed. The door knob noisily rotates and Brody appears in the opening. He quickly slips in holding his shoulders up stiffly. “Shit, it is freakin cold!”
He clutches two blankets under one arm. “Here,” he tosses one to me. “Cover up with this.”
“Thanks.” I quickly wrap it around my shudders and he does the same with only the incandescent glow of the moonlight illuminating and filling the space around Brody and I. Neither of us make an attempt to turn on the light.
Silently, Brody carries over the drum of developer then the drum of fixer, sitting one if front of me and one in front of him. He sits down, and I follow suit as he comments, “This night thing is becoming a habit.”
“Night thing?” I question him, not because I don’t understand, but because I want to know what he’s thinking when he asks that.
“Yeah, meeting here in the shed while everyone else is asleep. It’s kind of like a date... sort of,” he says as he pulls the blanket tighter around his broad shoulders. A chill runs the length of my spine but it isn’t from the cold.
“So, I looked up that poem you told me about,” he suddenly says.
Poem? “What poem?”
“The one with your name in it; ‘Evangeline’ by Longfellow.”
“Oh.” I’m kind of surprised. “Why?” I don’t mean for it to sound rude, but I wonder why he would want to read some poem written from the 1800s.
“I wanted to know why your dad named you after it,” he says as he shrugs. “It is kind of sad and beautiful at the same time,” he adds.
“You really did read it?”
“Yeah, I said I did,” he says jokingly with a hint of defense in his voice.
“Tell me about it?”
“What? You don’t believe me?”
“No, it isn’t that. I just want to know why you think it is sad and beautiful at the same time.”
Brody’s features become weighted with a sense of seriousness as he looks into the glowing ray of the moon shining through the shed window. “This girl, Evangeline, and the guy she is supposed to marry, Gabriel, they are separated when they are exiled to the United States. Throughout the poem she travels all over in search of Gabriel, her true love.”
He draw his eyes from the hypnotic state the moon had him in, and looks at me. “She finds him just before he dies.”
“That is really... sad.” I’m having a hard time finding the beauty in it. “What makes it beautiful to you?”
Brody shrugs. “She traveled across the country to find him. She is one determined woman. Anyway, I’m sure there is some scholar that has analyzed it to pieces over and over again, but the beauty to me is that she gets to see him one last time before he dies. That is beautiful to me.”
We both sit silently and I contemplate the beauty Brody finds in it when all I really see is the sadness. Does he think of me as being this determined Evangeline from the poem? Does he really think that seeing someone before they die is a beautiful event? It is tragic. It is sad and full of pain. I can’t wrap my mind around his line of thinking on this one.
“If I could see my dad again, just once more, that would be beautiful,” he says shak
ily. Everything becomes clear suddenly and I understand why the poem is beautiful to him. It is because of his father, his disappearance, and the thought of maybe not seeing him ever again.
Then, something happens that I’m not prepared for. Brody begins to weep. He lowers his head, the heavy blanket laying over his rocking shoulders as his body responds physically to his soft cries. He tries to mask the cries by keeping them as silent as possible; holding them in and trying to remain strong. But, I can still hear them in the silent night of the work shed.
He shouldn’t have to be alone as he breaks like this.
The desire to wrap my arms around his broad shoulder and just hold him is too strong to deny. I close the small distance between us to hold him and just as I touch his shoulder, he opens his arms and pulls me by the waist into them.
I feel on the verge of weeping as well. Weeping for this son that doesn’t know if he will ever see his father again.
His cries begin to soften then cease, but he doesn’t pull away and neither do I.
I can’t really think of anything profound to say, the only thing that comes out is, “I’m sorry.”
His chest presses against mine as he breathes in then out with a deep, cleansing breath, the heat of it warming my shoulder.
“There is nothing to be sorry about, California,” he says.
He is right, but I still want him to know that I share this sorrow with him even though it will never be as strong as his, Gavin’s, or his mother’s.
Then it occurs to me; the poem, my name. He will always associate me with the beautiful image of seeing his father one more time until the day he returns... if he returns.
“My name,” I say through ragged, emotional breath.
“What?” he mutters
“My name will always make you think of...”
Brody pulls his head from my shoulder and puts his hands on either side of my head. His voice is an emotional whisper. “Listen to me. It means so much more. Your name means determination, loyalty, spirit, bravery, and so much more Evangeline because you have made the name your own, not some poem that an old crotchety poet wrote in the 1800s. You are the Evangeline I think of every time I say your name. Every time I think of you. It is only you.”
Dismantling Evan Page 28
