The Beginning of After

by Jennifer Castle

  Etta came down when they called up to Mr. Kaufman’s floor. She had been crying more—I could tell from the dried mascara streaks—but she smiled a bit as she walked off the elevator.

  “David’s out in the garden,” she said, then added, “it went well.”

  “So how is he? Gabriel, I mean,” asked Nana.

  Etta shrugged. “He’s alert. His mind is a little foggy, and he can’t remember much. Everything’s in bits and pieces, but the doctors say that’s normal. Hopefully as time goes on the pieces will get bigger and, you know, come together.”

  “And physically?” Nana wasn’t shy about this stuff. It was not unfamiliar territory to her.

  Etta’s face darkened a bit. “They’re still doing tests, but they don’t think he’ll ever walk again. Right now he has some use of his arms and hands; they say that’s a good sign.” The sun hit her in the face, and maybe it inspired her, because she said, “But you never know with Gabe. He’s a tough nut. He could surprise them all.”

  We just nodded. Etta smiled a bit at me and said, “They tell me you came to see him back in October.” I nodded again. “Do you want to see him now?”

  Nana looked at me sideways, her lips pressed tightly shut like she had to make a real effort not to speak for me. Several long moments passed.

  Finally, I asked, “You said David’s in the garden?”

  “Yes, he started going on about the smell and he needed some air.”

  “I’ll go find him,” I said, and walked away from Etta and Nana. The situation was bizarre enough so that it was a valid answer to the Seeing Mr. Kaufman question. It all fit somehow, in its weird, peach-colored way. The truth was, it didn’t feel right to go upstairs without going through David first. I’d bristled at his permission before, but now I wanted it.

  I went down a long hallway, following a sign marked THE OAKS GARDEN, and pushed open the door at the end of it. I found myself stepping out onto a big patio, surrounded by bare bushes and leafless potted trees, the dusty flagstones edged with pockmarked slush piles.

  In the middle of the patio was a fountain, all angels and urns, and sitting on the edge of it was David, smoking a cigarette.

  He saw me and lowered his cigarette hand to the ground like he was trying to hide it. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi,” I answered, and went to sit next to him. We hadn’t talked much since he’d arrived at my house with his enormous backpack. It was like email and real speaking were two different languages, and we were both fluent in one and sucky at the other. But I had already figured out how I was going to break the ice.

  “It smells totally gross in there,” I said.

  David exhaled, smoky. “Yeah, right? What is that?”

  “I think it’s a combination of a bunch of really disgusting things you don’t want to think about.”

  He snorted a bit, then raised the cigarette to his lips.

  “Can I have a puff?” I asked.

  “Of this?” He looked genuinely surprised, and I was glad. “You don’t smoke.”

  “I’ve done it before. With Meg and Mary Dill one night last year.” The three of us had shared one, and we’d all been completely lame at it, but suddenly it seemed like the thing to do.

  “Sure,” said David, handing me the cigarette. “But just for the record, you don’t have a puff, you have a drag. If you’re going to pick up bad habits, you should get the lingo right.”

  “Drag. Got it.” I took it from him and put my mouth on it, and said a silent prayer that I wouldn’t cough my guts out. But I breathed the smoke into my lungs and held it for a second, then blew it out. It tasted horrible but felt funny, in a good way. Like I was someone else for a second. I handed the cigarette back to him and asked, “How was it?”

  “Unbelievably weird.”

  “I bet.”

  “My dad and I . . . we were never—”

  “I know.”

  “It was easier before he woke up. Not necessarily better. Just easier.”

  “Right.”

  David took a final puff—I mean drag—and threw the cigarette butt in the fountain. We both looked at it for a moment, floating on the water. He sighed and fished it out, then walked it over to a nearby garbage can.

  “So, what happens next?” It was my chicken question. I didn’t have to bring up details like whether he was going to stay. He could fill in the blanks he wanted to, and I was sure I’d be happy with that.

  “I guess I have to stick around for a bit. The doc said it’s good for him to see me.”

  “But you’d rather not,” I pressed.

  David looked hard at me, and seemed to make a decision. It’s okay, it’s her. She knows. After a few seconds, he said, “I don’t know what I want. I just want to get on with my life. I thought I had that figured out, but now . . . I mean, am I going to have to take care of him? If he’s in a wheelchair? Is that what I’m going to be about?”

  I just shrugged. I had been waiting for my window of opportunity.

  “Does he remember what happened the night of the accident?” I tried to make my curiosity sound casual instead of raging.

  A shadow flickered across David’s face. “No. At least, not yet.” He looked sadly at me. “No answers for you there, Laurel. If that’s what you’re waiting for.”

  Was it? Maybe not, after all. Because I still wanted to go upstairs.

  “Do you mind if I see him anyway?”

  David paused, and his features tensed for a moment. “My grandmother says you already did . . . right after I told you I didn’t want you to.”

  “He’s awake now,” I said firmly but gently, resisting the urge to apologize.

  “Yeah, but he’s really out of it. He barely knows who people are.”

  “I’ll just stay for a minute. It’s just that . . . I’m here. I don’t think I’ll be back.” Then I took a deep breath, inhaling the strength to fight for what I knew I deserved. “Don’t you think I have a right?”

  David stared at the fountain for a moment and then, without looking at me, said, “Go. Just promise me you won’t ask him about the accident.”

  I nodded and slipped silently away from him, out of the garden.

  The room hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been there, except for the quiet.

  Mr. Kaufman lay in the same bed, wearing the same navy pajamas, but he was breathing on his own. I realized how comforting the sound of the respirator had been, the steady rhythm something known and predictable in a totally messed-up scenario.

  His eyes were closed, and I felt a combination of relief and disappointment. In theory, I’d wanted to see him awake. I’d wanted to talk to him and have him talk back. But the thought of that had also terrified me.

  What would he think when he saw me? What would he say? Would he apologize? I’d tried to come up with something for me to say but couldn’t.

  If he’s sleeping, I shouldn’t wake him. . . . Maybe I can come back.

  But as I’d said to David, I knew I wouldn’t be back. It was now or never. I moved the armchair slowly, so it squeaked loudly against the floor.

  Mr. Kaufman’s eyelids fluttered open and locked onto the ceiling. I froze for a moment, watching them. His gaze traveled to the window and downward, finally landing on me.

  We locked eyes for a long moment. I tried to make my face mirror his, expressionless and calm. But my heart pounded.

  “Know . . . you,” he said, his voice raspy but with a trace of his old strength behind it.

  “Yes,” was all I said.

  “Dina?”

  I slowly shook my head.

  “Not. Dina. D . . . D . . .”

  My mother. He was trying to remember my mother’s name.

  “Deborah,” I said.

  “How . . . are you?”

  He thinks I’m her. The thought of it almost knocked me off balance. Keep it together.

  “It’s Laurel, Deborah’s daughter.”

  His eyes scanned me up and down, then flickered with
recognition.

  “Look . . . like her,” he said. There was something in the way he said it that made me wonder what Mr. Kaufman thought of my mother. Did he think she was beautiful? Did he have a little crush?

  Seeing him struggle with speech, with reality, I knew I shouldn’t be there. Like David had said, he wasn’t going to give me any answers. But I couldn’t move from where I stood.

  And then he frowned, a familiar frown I’d seen him make so often in the past.

  “Who . . . why . . .”

  I leaned in like I was offering to help him find his words.

  “Why . . . you . . . here?”

  The question came out weak and shaky but landed with a booming thud in the space between us.

  Why am I here?

  Why isn’t it my mother? Why is it me, alive, and the others dead?

  It was a gigantic question, a question I’d been hoping to find the answer to since April.

  I looked at Mr. Kaufman and now, the casually puzzled expression on his face gave the question an entirely new meaning.

  He wanted to know why I was here, visiting him.

  Without thinking, I said, “I’m here because of my parents and Toby.”

  Another puzzled frown from Mr. Kaufman. Then I remembered David’s vague request. Don’t ask him about the accident.

  What did he remember? Or more to the point, what had they told him?

  “Do you know what happened?” I asked, my voice rising into a high octave. I knew I was breaking the rules but couldn’t stop.

  He swallowed hard and said, using extra syllables, “A-cc-i-den-t.”

  “Do you remember who was in the car with you?”

  His face crumpled, like someone balling up a brown paper bag.

  “Bet-sy.”

  I took a quick breath, which felt hot as fire. My whole body was shaking. “Do you remember who else?”

  Mr. Kaufman looked at me with surprise and a little bit of hurt, like I’d slapped him. He moved his head slightly from one side to another in his version of no, not breaking our gaze.

  All movement in the room froze, the blinking lights on the IV machine and the soft billowing of curtains from the heating vent.

  He doesn’t know.

  To him, my family was alive. He existed in that world, still. A world that I would have given anything to have back. Why should he get to stay there, when he was the one who tossed the rest of us out?

  When I opened my mouth again, it felt like slow motion.

  “My parents and my brother. Deborah and Michael, and Toby.” I had to push the names into the stalled air. “They were there too. And they’re dead now. Too.”

  There was a pause where nothing happened. Mr. Kaufman’s face did not change, and I wondered if he’d heard me.

  Then, his mouth opened into a wide, hollow O.

  Out of it came a sigh filled with pure agony. A dusty, terrible gush that reminded me of Pandora’s box.

  He started to cough, almost gagging on his own breath, before the other sound came. Sobbing. Like a child’s sobbing. Soft and utterly broken.

  I backed up against the wall in horror. Oh my God, Laurel. What have you done?

  Footsteps down the hallway, fast with the little squeak of rubber-soled shoes.

  “What’s going on?” barked a nurse as she exploded into the room.

  I stammered in denial. “We were just talking . . . he got upset.”

  The nurse rushed to Mr. Kaufman’s bedside, and I turned and ran.

  In the hallway I saw the door marked STAIRWAY and crashed through it, taking the steps quickly as if someone were chasing me. Putting as much distance as possible between myself and the sound that came out of Mr. Kaufman’s mouth.

  I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I kept saying to myself. That wasn’t supposed to happen. A gust of regret and cringing shame pushed me faster down the stairs.

  When I reached the ground floor, I pushed open the stairway door and tried to figure out where I was. I looked right and saw the peach glow of the lobby at the end of the hall. I looked left, and saw a big wooden door, different from all the other doors in the building.

  A small sign on it said CHAPEL.

  In seconds I was through it, and shut it behind me. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

  The room was only large enough to hold two wooden benches and a stone pedestal with some flowers on it, set in front of a stained-glass window. In the glass, a woman dressed in white knelt on a patchwork bed of grass and roses before a large black cross.

  I collapsed onto the rear bench, pushing the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, and screamed silently. Maybe that would be enough to make me feel human again before anyone came to find me.

  But I needed the sound that wanted to come out. In the past, this kind of thing always took me over, breaking free of some holding pen down in my gut and raging wild until I could tame it again.

  Here, now, I called it up. Let it loose, almost begging for the damage I knew it could do.

  I put my hands on the back of the bench in front of me and gripped hard, let my head drop as if my neck was finally tired of holding me up. Then, the low, guttural wails burst and the tears rushed. My right hand crunched into a fist and started banging on the wood.

  I want. I want. I want. It stuck in a single stubborn loop, like a toddler throwing a wicked temper tantrum.

  There was so much I wanted, but could never have. It came tumbling out of me, the smallest things first. My mom smiling at me, my dad putting his arm around my shoulders. My brother laughing at one of our inside jokes, like how he always let me know I had food on my chin by saying, “Hey, Laurel. Keepin’ it real!”

  Then the bigger ones. Like having three people in the world who would always know me and love me.

  I also wanted there to be a reason why I was here. If there couldn’t be a reason why my family died, maybe I could at least have that much.

  Or perhaps just a future that wasn’t so complicated, filled with holes and what-ifs, everything colored a few shades darker than normal.

  And then, finally, I just wanted to be Laurel. Not a tragedy. Not a survivor. Just me. Who would ever let me be that?

  Someone knocked on the chapel door, and I sucked in a sob.

  “Laurel?” David’s voice. Worried.

  “Yeah.”

  He opened the door and saw my face, covered in tears and snot, and the set of his mouth changed. Without a word, he let the door close and slid onto the bench, circling his arms around me in such a smooth motion I didn’t even see it happen. I just felt them, warm and sturdy and confident.

  David said nothing. He didn’t ask what was wrong or even say shhhhh the way some people do by instinct. He just tucked his chin over the top of my head as I curled into him. I was crying softly now, but easily. It was like a language that only he understood, because we were the same species.

  David saw me, my house, my life, as a refuge somehow. Here, in his arms, I realized he could offer the same to me.

  Finally, when my crying had disintegrated into just sniffles, I raised my face to his.

  “Is he okay? Your dad?”

  David looked at me tenderly, protectively. An expression I’d never seen on him before.

  “Yes. My grandma’s up there with him now.” He paused, and the expression faded. I knew what was coming. “What happened?”

  I didn’t want this to end yet, so in place of the truth I just said, “I’m sorry.”

  But it ruined the moment anyway. David leaned away from me to get a better look at my face, his brow furrowing.

  “For what?”

  I bit my lip hard. “I told him . . . about my parents and Toby.”

  Now he stood up, sliding out of my arms so that they fell, limp, against the wood of the bench.

  “WHAT?”

  “When I realized that he didn’t know yet, I lost it. . . .”

  David took a deep breath, steadying himself.

  “I ask
ed you not to mention the accident.”

  “He wanted to know why I was there. . . .” I knew it was a weak excuse.

  “The doctors told us not to talk to him about the accident yet. They wanted to wait until he was more stable. . . .” His voice rose with every word.

  “I was wrong, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You should be!”

  His scolding, indignant tone made me instantly furious. What was I thinking? He would never completely understand.

  “You would have done the same thing,” I said, trying to make my voice match the pitch of his. “Think about it, David. Just think about someone besides yourself for a change and imagine what it’s like for me.”

  David opened his mouth to say something in response, but froze.

  We were caught like that, staring each other down in a minuscule chapel, when Nana found us. The look on her face told me she had an idea of what had happened.

  “Laurel and David,” she said sternly. “I’d like to leave now before traffic picks up.”

  David forced a smile at her and nodded, then followed her out. I took one more look at the stained glass and then turned, trailing behind them.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Needless to say, the car ride home was more awful than the one that morning. This time, even Nana was too beaten down by the strain of the day to make small talk. It was a very long forty-five minutes of quiet, quiet, quiet with just the hum of the car and static-laced news radio.

  I felt a dull pain behind my eyes from all the crying, but it was a good hurt. Like someone had swept something away back there and suddenly, I could see again. As we crossed back over the Tappan Zee, the water looked clearer than it had that morning.

  My cell phone beeped one more time, now with a voice mail. Desperate for something to do, I listened to it.

  “Laurel, it’s Joe. I’m kind of worried about you, you haven’t answered my texts. Can you please just call me and let me know everything’s okay?”

  But there was no way I could call him back, even if I’d wanted to. I couldn’t even think about why I didn’t want to.

  Finally, we pulled into our driveway to find a red truck squatting in front of the house.