The Beginning of After

by Jennifer Castle

  I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I wasn’t looking forward to anything that day. Sitting on the neighbors’ couches with eggnog and a smile didn’t seem any better or worse than lying in bed at home or getting my eyes poked out with hot needles. I had planned on checking out, on being there but not being there, but as I walked into the Mitas’ living room I found myself making mental notes to share with David.

  Later, back at home, I wrote this email to him:

  Hi David—

  I had a Blew Christmas. How about you?

  Here’s what I learned from the three different dinners I just attended in our neighborhood:

  Mrs. Mita is tiny, sure, but she can eat her weight in shrimp cocktail. She put it out for her guests, then wouldn’t let anyone get near it!

  Alex Jeffrey spends most of his time in college completely high.

  There’s a whole third floor of the Girardis’ house that I had no idea existed.

  Nobody’s sure if that old guy Mr. Hirsch actually still lives in his house anymore. He hasn’t been seen in months.

  It’s been an educational holiday over here.

  Laurel

  When I woke up the next morning, David had already sent me a reply:

  ate chicken and waffles for christmas, then saw two movies. it was the best day i’ve had in a long time.

  david

  p.s. it’s “your” neighborhood, not mine anymore.

  I read the last line over and over again, as it went from sounding pissy and then arrogant to just plain sad. The sad version of it was still glowing on the computer screen when the phone call came from Etta, David’s grandmother.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  He’s awake,” said Etta. “Just this morning.” Her voice was tight but breathy, and for two seconds I had no idea what she was talking about. She took my silence as an okay to keep talking. “He’s been showing signs for several days, but they said not to get our hopes up, so I stayed in Florida. My husband, Jack, has had pneumonia and can’t even travel to see our son.”

  “Mr. Kaufman,” I said dumbly. Finally figuring it out.

  “Yes, honey! Awake!” Her voice stumbled now. “He’s only halfway there, if you know what I mean. But we’ll take it.”

  “Has anyone seen him yet?”

  “No, there hasn’t been anyone. Laurel, I need your help. I need to reach David. Do you know where he is?”

  “Where he is?” I echoed, thinking about David eating chicken and waffles somewhere in the Midwest.

  “I thought you might know, since he stayed with you that time. I tried some of his friends, but they haven’t heard from him.”

  Etta started to break down, and I heard her sniffle.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said. “I can help you.”

  David—

  Your dad is awake. Please call your grandmother ASAP.

  Laurel

  I had thought about adding “It’s amazing” or “Let me know what happens,” but it felt like none of my business anymore. I had been asked to relay a message, so I did that. I had no rights to anything else.

  After I sent the email, I stayed near the computer. Maybe he was still online somewhere and would get it right away, then write back. I refreshed my in-box every minute or so, but there was nothing. Finally, Nana came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders.

  “It’s a miracle,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. A Christmas miracle. Too bad he’s Jewish.”

  “I know it’s hard, sweetie, but all we can do is wait to hear more.”

  David was getting his father back. Who knew what version of that father it would be, but still. He was alive. It made my stomach churn.

  “Maybe he’ll remember what happened,” I said.

  “Maybe. But I’m not sure that information is going to help anyone.”

  I closed out my email, promising myself not to check it again until the next day. I was going to be busy until then, and maybe busy beyond that, if I planned carefully. I didn’t have to think about David traveling toward us. I didn’t have to think about Mr. Kaufman being awake and David having his father back, and I didn’t have to think about how that made me feel.

  I found my phone and sent a text to Joe.

  city 2mrw? goin stir craZ alrdy.

  His reply—yes! call l8r to talk—came back within seconds.

  “You’ve got to be frigging kidding me,” said Meg when I called her in Philadelphia. “Was that supposed to happen?”

  “Who knows,” I said. “But it did.” I was at work, walking three of the six dogs who were boarding for the holidays. It was frigidly cold but we were moving fast, and I could feel my body warming up.

  “You think he’s going to be pissed that they sold his house?” asked Meg.

  I laughed a little. “Probably. But he was in pretty bad shape. I don’t think he’s going to be hitting the golf course anytime soon.”

  I sent a mental thank-you to Meg for forcing me to be shallow again, for bringing me up out of the deep, deep seriousness of it all.

  “Keep me posted,” she said. “I’m stuck here until tomorrow, then we drive back.”

  “How’s your mom?”

  “Would you believe me if I said she actually seems happier? I mean, of course it’s Christmas and she’s been dipping into the spiced rum, but I think the whole thing is a relief. It’s been coming for so long.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. All I could think was, And you couldn’t tell me, even before the accident. Why couldn’t you tell me? But I didn’t feel like going further with it. It only took me backward, and today I was all about forward motion.

  “I’m glad, Meg. I’m so totally glad.” I paused. “I’m going to the city with Joe tomorrow.”

  I could almost hear her smile. “Car or train?”

  “Train.”

  “Niiiiice. Romantic.”

  “Does this mean we’re officially dating now?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “I’ll hold you to that. Will call you for a debriefing tomorrow night.”

  Joe called me early the next morning. We were supposed to meet at the station for the 10:46 train to Grand Central.

  “Laurel, I think we’re going to have to reschedule our trip. I have the flu. I’m so pissed.”

  His voice was froggy, and it didn’t sound like he was faking. I believed the pissed part.

  “That’s a huge bummer,” I said.

  “It is. I was really looking forward to it.”

  “Me too.”

  “But there’s another week of break, and the decorations will be up until then. I’ll call you as soon as I’m better. It shouldn’t be more than a few days.”

  “Okay. I’ll be around.” Another of our awkward pauses. “Get well soon.”

  “Thanks, Hallmark.”

  After we hung up, I went back to bed, staring at the City with Joe outfit I’d picked and laid out the night before: jeans, boots, black turtleneck sweater. And all I could think was, should I check my email now or wait until the clock hits nine?

  Screw it, I thought. I’ll go check email now.

  I tiptoed into the den, not wanting Nana to hear me and know what I was doing.

  But there was nothing in my in-box.

  The next two days passed slowly. I finished the rest of my applications—to NYU, Columbia, Cornell, and Smith—and submitted them with time to spare. Meg came back. We made one giant ice cream sundae at her house to celebrate her telling her dad that she thought he was an emotional shut-in with no idea how to love somebody, and she was glad she didn’t have to see him anymore.

  “It was the best silence on the other end of a phone call I’ve ever heard,” said Meg, licking chocolate syrup off her spoon.

  I let my spoon clink against hers in quiet solidarity as we dug for ice cream, and I knew she thought the fact that we were both dad-less, me for good and her for all intents and purposes for the time being, would bring us closer. I wasn’t
planning to correct her. There would always be a difference in our losses.

  “I think I’m going to go back to the Palisades Oaks,” I said.

  “Why?” Meg frowned.

  “Nobody’s calling us, and I feel like I need to be there. If David doesn’t go see him, somebody else besides Etta should go.”

  “Laurel, you’re just the neighbors’ daughter. . . .”

  “Whose family he may have killed,” I added, and that shut her down. I reached out and put my hand on her spooning elbow. “I just want to talk to him.”

  Now if only I could convince Nana.

  When I got home, I was all prepared for the big talk, the arguments and the pleading. I was so focused on it that I almost didn’t notice the thing in the hallway until I tripped on it.

  A gigantic backpack.

  The kitchen smelled of spaghetti sauce cooking, but instead of following that smell, I tracked the sound of the TV from the den. It wasn’t like anything I’d heard in a long time.

  I stood in the doorway and saw the video game on the screen, listened to the whoops and blips and dings of it. The gaming chair rocked a bit, with Masher lying along one side.

  I actually gulped, and then said, “Hi, David.”

  He swiveled Toby’s chair toward me and smiled a crooked smile. He’d gotten a haircut.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Halfway across the Tappan Zee Bridge, I looked out onto the Hudson River and saw a single boat, putt-putting away from a dock with a trail of frothy water behind it. A fishing boat, maybe. And I thought about how I’d love to be on that boat, even if it was wickedly cold and my eyes watered from the wind. To be on that boat, instead of here in the Volvo with Nana driving two miles an hour and David in the backseat, quiet and grumpy.

  “It’s such a clear day,” said Nana, her eyes locked onto the curve of the bridge as it unrolled ahead of us. She was saying these kinds of things (“Traffic is nice and light,” and “This is my favorite radio station”) to fill the silence. She didn’t seem to understand that silence was the only normal thing about our drive to the Palisades Oaks. I needed all the normal I could get at the moment.

  “Yeah, you can almost see down to Manhattan,” I said anyway, then glanced in the side-view mirror, where I could see David’s face pressed against the window behind me. His eyes were closed and he was wearing earphones, and I thought of how I’d woken up early that morning and tiptoed into the den to check on him. To make sure he was still there. And then to watch him sleep for a minute, wondering where he’d been and how he’d gotten to us. He hadn’t said and we hadn’t asked.

  David didn’t seem excited to see his father. He appeared mostly confused, and a little nervous. And just really, really tired, like he hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest in weeks. Although he clearly had no trouble on our couch, or now, in the backseat of our car. I got the sense that if we hadn’t decided to drive him to New Jersey ourselves, he would have stayed in the den, sleeping and playing video games and wrestling with Masher, and never going to see his dad.

  My phone beeped with a text from Joe:

  feelN btr, city 2mrw?

  It would have been impossible to communicate to Joe the complicated scenario of our trip. No words could do it, especially not in the form of a text message. I didn’t reply.

  “Did you see how Masher wanted to come with us this morning?” I asked Nana, loudly enough so that David, if he was actually awake and not faking sleep like I suspected, could hear. “He thought David was leaving again.”

  Nana just nodded, then said, “We should go out for an early lunch while David’s with his dad. What are you in the mood for?”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw David open his eyes for just a moment.

  Etta was waiting for us in the lobby of the Palisades Oaks, a paperback romance in one hand. She burst into tears when David lumbered through the automatic sliding glass doors, then stumbled toward him and wrapped her arms tight around his bony, tense shoulders. I noticed how those shoulders stayed hard and unyielding even after she finally let him go.

  “Thank you,” she said to Nana and me. “Gabe’s really anxious to see him.”

  A pained look flashed across David’s face.

  “Laurel and I are going to have some lunch,” said Nana. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  The grandmothers nodded to each other, and Nana put her hand on my back to usher me outside. On our way out, I turned and glanced back at David, who was watching me. I couldn’t fight the feeling that we were delivering him to an unhappy fate.

  “What happens next?” I asked Nana once we were seated at a Denny’s a half mile down the road. My cell phone had beeped again with another message from Joe, but I didn’t open it. It didn’t seem right to bring Joe into this day.

  “I don’t know, sweetie. That’s not up to us. And it doesn’t really affect us either.” She put on her glasses to look at the menu. “Unless, of course, David keeps dropping by like he did last night. Then I’ll have to make a lot more spaghetti.” She glanced sideways at me and winked, and I had to laugh a little.

  After we ordered, Nana took a sip of her tea, then put it down and looked at me.

  “Laurel, have you decided what to do about Yale?”

  She’d had this approach planned. We were in a situation where I couldn’t easily avoid the question.

  “No,” I answered, which was the simple truth.

  “When do you need to make up your mind?”

  “Not until May first. I’m going to wait until I hear from the other schools.”

  Nana nodded, and took another sip of tea. “I’m not going to push you, honey. I just want to know you’re thinking about it. It’s a big decision.”

  I looked at her, at the makeup that was already caking in the creases of her face even though it was only lunchtime. She seemed tired. Not physically so much as mentally, like she’d been doing way more thinking than she wanted to. I could relate to that.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” I found myself saying, and she raised her eyebrows for me to continue. “I’ll think harder about Yale if you go on your trip back home in the next few weeks.”

  Now Nana frowned, but playfully. “That doesn’t seem fair. You know I was planning on going anyway.”

  “Yeah, but you would have found some excuse to postpone it again.”

  She looked hurt and exposed for a moment, her eyes wide and unblinking. But then she said, “You’re probably right.”

  “Nana, I’m okay to stay on my own. I want you to do what you need to do. Because you need to do it.”

  She just nodded, tearing up.

  “Besides, Meg can always stay over if I need her to. Or who knows, maybe David will still be our houseguest.”

  I said that part as casually as I could. I didn’t want her to think I wanted that, because I didn’t even know if I wanted that.

  Nana dabbed at her eyes with her napkin and said, “You like having him around.”

  I shrugged. “We have a lot in common. And he’s nice.”

  She looked like she was going to say something else, something horrifying along the lines of I hope there’s no hanky-panky going on! Or But what about your Joe? I silently pleaded with my grandmother not to go there.

  Fortunately, she didn’t. Instead she said, “Suzie called me before she went on vacation and said you don’t seem to be enjoying your sessions anymore.”

  Nana must have come to Denny’s with a list.

  “That implies I ever enjoyed them in the first place,” I said, stirring my diet soda with a straw so the ice clinked.

  “Don’t be a smarty-pants,” said Nana. “Suzie may not have been a barrel of laughs, but you often came home looking a little happier. Maybe not happier. More . . . comfortable. At peace. Has she helped you?”

  I thought of the moments in Suzie’s office when she’d say something, and I’d repeat it in my head, and stash it away in a mental file cab
inet where I could find it easily in the future. I pictured her staring at the window and thinking of what to ask me next, and never looking bored with my answers. Thanks to her I was now on Volume Two of my journal, filled with long ramblings and short random thoughts, with sketches and doodles, with collages made from magazines. When a notion got stuck half-formed in my head, I knew how to coax it all the way out so I could get a good look.

  “Yes, she’s helped me,” I said, realizing for the first time that it was true. “But lately, it feels like we’re going in circles. We keep rehashing the same things over and over. Maybe I just need a break.”

  Nana nodded. “Perhaps you could just call her when you need her.”

  “I can do that?”

  “Laurel, of course you can do that. You can do anything you want.”

  “Thank you,” I said, my nose tickling and my eyes burning. I was not afraid to let a few tears come.

  “You don’t need to thank me, sweetie.”

  “I mean . . . thank you. For everything, Nana. Thank you for everything.”

  And then Nana looked at me with such love. The kind of look that feels embarrassing, and unnecessary, and maybe like it would be better spent on someone else because how could I possibly deserve it? I’d gotten this look from my grandmother occasionally before the accident, and a lot more since. I’d always glanced away and let it hit the side of my face, to avoid looking back at her.

  But this time I didn’t do that. This time I did look back at her, with my own version of it.

  Almost two hours later, we went back to the Palisades Oaks. I honestly think we set the record for the slowest eating of a Denny’s meal in history.