“What pills?” I say to Beth. “What happened?”
“All I know is her mom found her. Our phone was ringing when we got home, and when my mom picked it up, Stephanie’s mom was screaming. They’d gone out to dinner, and when they came home, they found her.” Beth starts to cry again. “In her bedroom, all by herself. We were all at commencement, and she—”
“Ah, shit,” I say.
“She didn’t even leave a note,” Beth says, crying harder. “That’s what really gets to me. She thought none of us would even care.”
I turn away from them and walk back down the driveway.
“Jax,” Beth calls.
“Let him be,” I hear someone say. “He’s upset.”
What I am is pissed out of my mind. I don’t need a note to know what Steph meant to say. Fine, don’t love me; you’ll be sorry.
Back in my bus, alone, I close my eyes, but I still see the empty seat where she sat every day this spring. I hear the music blaring from Eric’s backyard. I hear Steph’s voice, too—telling me some crazy story, bitching about her life. I remember lying by the fire with her that first night, the length of her body against mine, her slow breathing.
“Parts of me are all over the place,” she said. I didn’t listen.
I should go back where the others are, I think. But when Kate and Tom come over to the bus and ask if I’m all right, I tell them to go away. It’s Brady I want to talk to. He’d know what to do.
“Where are you, anyway?” I say, pounding my fist on the steering wheel. “Where are you? Maybe I fucked up with Steph. Yeah, okay—I fucked up big-time. But you’re the asshole, buddy. You fucked all of us. You left us all behind.”
I’m still there, just sitting there like a zombie, when Mom and Ted pull up beside me.
Mom gets out and hurries to the bus while Ted goes to find a place to park. “Beth’s mother called me,” she says when she gets in. “Oh, Jackson. That poor girl. Honey, I’m so, so sorry.” She leans over to hug me, but I put my hands up so she can’t.
She gets this kind of frantic look on her face. “It’s not your fault,” she says. “You don’t think that, do you, Jackson? Jackson?”
“I don’t think anything at all,” I say. “I don’t think—” I shake my head. If I keep on, I’ll start crying and I don’t want to cry. It’s stupid to cry now. It’s way too late for crying. But I don’t want to try to explain that. I don’t even understand it myself. I don’t understand anything. I close my eyes, try to breathe deeply. I could go to sleep right here, I think. What Steph did weighs so heavily on me, it’s a kind of darkness pressing all around me.
Ted appears at the open window and says in a quiet voice, “Jackson, let’s go home. Will you let me drive you home?” I move to the middle seat to make room for him, and he gets in the driver’s seat. Mom’s crying now, her face in her hands. Ted reaches across to pat her leg, then he turns and looks at me, his big face so kind, and he says, “Jackson, I’m just god-awful sorry this had to happen to you.”
We drive in absolute silence. In the dark yards, fireflies are still blinking. Windows still frame families washed in yellow lamplight. But everything else has changed, everything. When we get home, I go straight upstairs to my room and lie down on my bed, still in my clothes.
“Jackson?” Mom calls up the stairs.
I’m grateful when I hear Ted say, “Leave him, sweetheart. It’s all right. He’ll come to you when he’s ready.” When Dad comes a little later, I pretend that I’m asleep.
I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I only want to talk to myself because if I do that I can stay angry. Stupid, stupid, stupid is all I say—aloud, in my head. Like a stuck record. But it gets me through the next few days until Steph’s funeral.
We gather in the room full of flowers, all of us who might have helped her. Me, Tom, Kate, Beth, and all the others. That punk guy she was dating. Her father, clinging to his pretty young wife. Her mother, who stands beside the casket, wringing her hands, saying over and over, “Oh, dear God, why did she do this to me?”
If she could, Steph would say, “To her, Jax. I hope you heard that. The woman thinks of no one but herself.”
She’d roll her eyes, go limp as a rag doll. “And if you still have any doubt about it,” she’d drawl, “look what the bitch has got me dressed in. Would I be caught dead in a dress like this if I had any choice?”
It is a stupid dress—flowery and old-fashioned, with puffed sleeves. Steph would hate it. She’d hate the way they’ve fixed her hair, too. And the fact that they’ve put makeup on her. She hated makeup. If I had the guts, I’d sneak in later, wash her face, and paint a rainbow there.
She’s dead, I tell myself. What she looks like doesn’t matter. Nothing can hurt her now.
But I hate the thought of her wearing that dress forever, being buried in it. Oh, God—being buried at all. She was so scared of the dark. She had nightmares. Even on the beach, under a skyful of stars, she woke up crying at least once a night, and I had to light the kerosene lantern so that she could get her bearings. In her bedroom at home, she slept with the same Snoopy night-light she’d had since she was little. Her mother knew this. Why would she put her in a box now?
If I stay, I’ll say something terrible. I have to walk away—walk outside and take a deep breath. The anger finally dissolves, but when it does, I go watery inside. I’m shaking. If I don’t keep my grip on this stair rail, I swear I’ll fly up, become nothing and everything the way Stephanie should be allowed to do now. She’s dead. Dead. Time rushes through me. Someday I’ll be dead, too. We all will.
That’s the worst moment I have. Nothing afterward seems real. It doesn’t hurt much to hear the minister’s sermon because the happy, popular fantasy girl he describes is not Steph. It’s as if some other girl has died. Once the casket is closed, I can’t even imagine the real Steph in it. It seems easy now to think of her as she would want me to. A person lost to me in this life, like Brady is—but existing somewhere in the universe, existing inside me.
“We’re supposed to learn something from all this shit we go through,” Steph told me more than once, when she still believed there was something to be learned that might help her. In the days after her funeral, I believe this might still be true for me.
Then a voice on the radio announces that the Grateful Dead will be in concert at Deer Creek the second week of August, and I think, Brady will be with them. I’m absolutely sure of it. And that’s when the real grief hits me, the howling, terrifying grief I should have felt all along. Steph wouldn’t have killed herself if she had known Brady was coming back. I’m as sure of this as I am that Brady will come with the Dead. The news of the concert coming too late seems like a terrible, stupid misconfiguration of the stars.
If only, if only, I think. I lie awake at night, too overwhelmed to cry. I drive out to the reservoir alone and sit in the place where I broke up with Steph. Again and again, I replay that morning the way I meant it to be. I tell her the truth about how I feel and say, “Steph, I’m your friend. We’ve both got to get our shit together. We’ll help each other the right way.” And we do.
I tell no one how I feel. I lift weights. I run. I swim laps. I go on long bike rides. It’s a game with me: how long can I go without thinking? I especially don’t think about Amanda: I figure she’s the price I paid for fucking up what my life might have been.
Dad’s no problem; he’s gone. Out with the Moody Blues as promised. Mom worries, though. “Maybe some counseling would be a good idea,” she says. “It’s been such a strange year … ”
“I’m fine,” I say, “really.” And to convince her, I keep on going about my business as if I’ve miraculously survived all that’s happened in the last year, as if I’m looking forward to going off to college. I help her in the garden. I let her take me shopping for school clot
hes and dorm supplies. We take a family trip to Myrtle Beach, and I act the perfect brother. Every day I take Kristin and Amy to the boardwalk. We ride the rides. We poke through the souvenir shops. We get ice cream.
I’m just biding my time, waiting for Brady. It never occurs to me that I might not find him when the Dead come. I know I will. I lie on my bed, the Dead blasting on my stereo, imagining how it will be. Maybe I’ll walk right past him, cool, like I don’t care. Or act surprised. “Brady, whoa! What brings you here?” In one scenario, I hug him, say, “You’ve been gone long enough. Come home,” and I save him, as I should have saved Steph. In another, I take a long look at him, step back, and deck him.
forty–five
The afternoon of the Dead concert, I put on jeans and the tie-dyed T-shirt Steph made me, grab my backpack, and head out to Deer Creek. My VW bus fits right in, though its plain orange paint job looks a little dull next to some of the custom jobs on the ones the Deadheads drive. There are buses that look like they’ve been tie-dyed. Buses decorated with solar systems. Wild, distorted flowers. There are cars and people as far as I can see. There are makeshift tents and real tents. Sleeping bags and Indian blankets spread out on the grass, like a surreal summer camp. There’s strange-smelling food cooking over open fires. There’s the smell of marijuana and incense. Girls in hippie garb. Guys with shoulder-length hair lounging on rumpled blankets, smoking. Some pluck mellow chords on guitars, some finger flutes to make a lovely, random kind of music.
Methodically, I go up and down the rows. “You know a guy named Brady Burton?” I ask. Some shrug, some try to help, some act like they don’t hear me, some are so stoned they actually don’t. “Brady, Brady Burton,” I keep saying. “Blond hair. Yeah, same age as me. About my height. A little heavy.”
I ask a woman dressed in a long woven skirt and a T-shirt like the ones she’s selling: bright purple, with stars and planets on it. She leans toward me when I say Brady’s name. Her long silver earrings jangle. She points toward a stand of trees, and I see him playing Frisbee with a bunch of grubby little boys.
I have to look twice to make sure it’s really him. He’s much thinner than he was a year ago. Really thin. He’s wearing filthy jeans, a ratty T-shirt. His hair is long, pulled back in a ponytail. I watch him pedal backward, the Frisbee hovering just above him. In one fluid move, he catches it and sends it spinning. I remember him, fat and sweaty in his Little League uniform years ago, the biggest klutz on the field, always glancing anxiously toward the bleachers where his father sat. He’s so graceful now. I almost wish Mr. Burton could see him.
“Hey, Brady,” I call.
He turns, his face lights up, and he starts running toward me. “Jax!” he says. “Oh, man!” He throws his arms around me.
We go to the Hardee’s where we used to go all the time, and get a back booth. I’m drinking iced tea; Brady’s wolfing down the three cheeseburgers and three orders of fries I bought him.
“No way,” he says, when I tell him what’s been going on with our various parents. “Layla married Oz? Your mom married the IU freak?”
“I’m telling you, it’s been a weird time.”
“Weirder than that?” he says.
“Well, my dad nearly died,” I say. “Is that weird enough for you?”
Brady stops chewing. “What?” he says. “Oz? What happened?”
“He fell off a rigging.”
“Jeez, is he okay?”
“Now,” I say. “But he broke practically every bone in his body. He was in the hospital a couple of months. Then I had to live over at his house all spring to take care of him.”
“God, that is a bummer,” Brady says, then he gives me this sly look. “Well, I guess he can’t be too bad off if he’s screwing my mom, though. The wild woman.”
“He was very bad off,” I say, sounding priggish, even to myself. “And that’s not all that happened while you were gone. Dad getting hurt, I mean.”
“Yeah, what else?”
His voice sounds so nonchalant, like there’s nothing in the world I could say that would matter to him, that I have to wait a second before I speak, until I stop wanting to tell him about Stephanie in the most hurtful, shocking way. Finally, I say it simply, the only way I know. “Steph. She killed herself, Brady. She’s gone.”
He just puts his burger down and stares at me.
“Graduation night,” I say. “God, I really felt awful when I found out. I mean, I’d been, well, seeing her, and—I guess if anyone’s to blame for what happened to her, I am. I knew she was messed up. I shouldn’t have dumped her the way I did. But—”
“You were doing Steph?” Brady says.
“You left,” I say. “That’s how it got started in the first place. The only reason it got started. Listen, I don’t mean to lay a guilt trip on you, but you really freaked her out taking off the way you did. That’s when she first started acting strange. Well, stranger than usual. It took me a while to figure it out—that you guys had been, you know—”
“I freaked her out?” he says. “Hey, what about me? I mean, I fuck the chick one time last summer. One time. And she starts acting like she’s my wife. Like I owe her all my time. She was a leech, man. She was goddamn suffocating me. She was driving me crazy.”
“She’s dead, Brady,” I say. “Jeez.”
But he just shrugs. “Well, it’s a clear case of bad karma,” he says. “Terminal karma. She knew it herself, you know? Steph was always telling me she had really bad karma.” He shakes his head and sighs and starts eating again. Silence falls between us for a while, and then he says, “It’s so cool with the Dead, you know? Steph would’ve liked it. It’s, like, real. No hassle. If you need something, it appears. And what do you need? I mean, really?”
He grins, picks up the last burger, and unwraps it. “Food appears, man. Witness. Clothes—fuck clothes. Music. Yeah, you need music. But with the Dead there’s music everywhere. No, Jax, need is not the problem. It’s want that wrecks people. If you don’t want anything … ”
He goes on about how great the Deadheads are. The way he talks, you’d think everyone in his life before he took up with them was a complete and total asshole.
“Aren’t you even sad?” I interrupt. “About Steph?”
He looks wounded. “Sure, I’m sad, Jax,” he says. “It’s a bummer, man. My point is, the truly sad thing is that she offed herself when she could’ve split, you know? Gotten a real life.” He segues back to himself: unlike Steph, he’s the kind of person who’s not afraid to take a chance on life. He starts giving me a blow-by-blow account of his adventures on the road. He pulls a notebook from the back pocket of his jeans. “My book’s in here,” he says. “My road, man.”
He hands it to me, and I open it, but the writing is so small and smudged that I can only make out an occasional word. I reach into my pack for the divorce notebook, hesitate with my hand on the cover, thinking why should I show it to him when he’s acting like such a jerk? But I still believe the way he’s behaving is an act. Maybe if he reads the notebook and sees that I’m not kidding about how bad the year was, he’ll calm down and start acting like he’s my friend. So I go ahead and take it out.
“I’ve been writing, too,” I say, and offer it to him. “I kept it up while you were gone. I figured you’d want to see it.”
“You’re too much, Jax.” He leafs through it. “I can’t believe you did this. All these people trapped in their stupid little dramas. You really ought to forget them.”
I remember all the nights I wrote in it, the house dark and silent around me, how I’d close my eyes sometimes and imagine the moment I’m living right now. Brady would catch up on the divorce data, then I’d say, “Flip it over.” He’d read the part of the book that was about my life, alone. I’d imagined this moment in a lot of ways, in a lot of places. But I never once imagined that Brady would h
and the notebook back to me without even seeing it.
That’s what he does, though. He hands it back to me and says, “You ought to cut loose, you know? Hit the road with me.”
“Can’t,” I say, making my voice light. “Sorry. Next week I leave for college.”
Brady rolls his eyes. “Oh, man, have you bought the program or what? Dude, next thing I know you’ll be on Wall Street.” He laughs, reaches across the booth, and yanks at the sleeve of my T-shirt, which fits tightly around my bicep. “Look at you, man. I see you’ve been working on the yuppie body for it—”
“Hey, fuck you,” I say, my hands tensing to fists.
He grins then and puts his hands up, open, as if to say, truce.
“Fuck you,” I say again. “I mean it.”
“Come on, Jax. Lighten up, I’m just kidding.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “You take off, you fuck me over, you fuck everybody over—”
“Fuck you over?” he says. “I decide to live my own life and that makes me an asshole?” He looks hurt, the way he used to when we were little kids, bickering, and I got the upper hand.
“We were supposed to live together this year, in case you’ve forgotten,” I say.
“Yeah, well, I was done dealing with the Jer. That asshole. Not to mention Steph. I told you, she was driving me crazy, man. So I was outta there. Nothing personal. It was the only way.”
“What about Layla?” I said. “What did she ever do to you that was so terrible? Jesus, you take off and don’t even write her a letter. I bet you’re not even going to see her while you’re here now, are you?”
“No way,” he says. “Are you crazy? I wouldn’t mind seeing Layla—plus, there’s some stuff I’d like to get. But I’m doing her a favor not going over there. I mean, if I go she’ll get all freaked out when I don’t stay. Why upset her?
Wish You Were Here Page 25
