All We Can Do Is Wait

by Richard Lawson

  Afterward, Alexa helped her mom with the dishes, Kyle and Jason off on “a walk” (this meant smoking a joint on the beach, and everyone, including Linda, probably, knew it). Alexa, feeling more emboldened that summer than she ever had before, asked her mother what that look had been about.

  Linda feigned ignorance. “What was what about?”

  “That look you gave me. While Kyle was talking about Hamilton.”

  Linda sighed, rested the platter she was washing in the sink.

  “It’s just . . . He’s a nice boy, Alexa. You know that. Your father and I think he’s wonderful. I just hope you’re not . . . investing too much in him,” Linda said, a little pointedly, handing Alexa the platter to dry.

  “What do you mean?” Alexa asked, thinking she knew exactly what her mother meant.

  “I just wouldn’t want to see you wasting your time on something that isn’t going to go anywhere.”

  “What, should I be studying all summer instead of having fun? Did you have this same conversation with Jason?”

  Linda flinched. “That’s not what I’m saying and you know it, Alexandra. It’s just that Kyle, he’s—”

  “He’s my friend, Mom. That’s what Kyle is.”

  Linda shrugged. Returned to the dishes. “I’m just trying to talk to you, Alexa. You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  Kyle had told Alexa that he was gay shortly after they met, though Alexa had already guessed. There was, well, the way he was. But also, the younger employees at Grey’s talked, and someone there knew Kyle’s ex-boyfriend, Donnie, who went to UMass Dartmouth. From what Alexa could gather, and what little Kyle told her about him, Donnie was a bad guy, mean and manipulative. Alexa, of course, didn’t care that Kyle was gay. What bothered her was her mother’s assumption, and maybe other people’s assumption, that she was some sad girl pining after her gay bestie, like one of those girls who dated famous gay YouTubers before they came out, and then just had to try to gracefully step aside while the gay guys basked in all the attention. Alexa didn’t see herself as one of those girls. She didn’t like Kyle that way.

  She liked him because they had fun together. Because Alexa could imagine herself visiting Kyle in New York in the future. On trips back from Africa or Indonesia or wherever she was living, building houses or digging wells. Alexa knew that however long it had been since they’d seen each other, she and Kyle would find their old rapport in an instant, that they’d share stories and ideas, and the same easy warmth of that summer would fill whatever room they were in.

  • • •

  But then a hospital phone rang and Alexa was jolted back into the present.

  When she’d heard about the accident just a few hours earlier, she hadn’t gotten a call. She’d been at school, waiting in the guidance office with Ms. Reeve and the head of the upper school, Ms. Cline. Alexa’s parents were due there at 2:00 to talk about Alexa’s “uncharacteristic” (Ms. Cline’s word) grade slippage over the last term. When the meeting had been scheduled, Linda was exasperated, saying to Alexa, “Don’t we have enough of this with your brother?” This was different, though. Alexa was pulling A minuses and B pluses, instead of straight As. She wasn’t flunking or fucking up, she’d just lost focus, she’d lost some drive. She’d also opted not to run cross-country that fall, to everyone’s disappointment.

  They knew she’d had a hard year. They said that taking some time to process was natural, healthy. But maybe now it was time for Alexa to reapply herself, to get her junior year started right, so she could confidently apply to her long list of supposed dream schools. (At the top of the list: Amherst, Penn, Princeton, Georgetown. Bowdoin was her safety.)

  Something in Alexa was fundamentally different, though. All the idle talk with Kyle that summer, about leaving after graduation, going off to do something that mattered in the world, had solidified into a determination, just not one she’d shared with her parents yet. And so this meeting was to be Alexa’s grand reveal, a coming out of her own, when her parents, and Ms. Cline, and Ms. Reeve, would see that she wasn’t screwing up. That she was in fact pursuing something even nobler than college. She was going to help people. They’d understand that, once she told them.

  But tunnel traffic was bad, so Alexa’s parents decided to go a little out of the way and take the Tobin Bridge to get to Alexa’s school. Linda texted her that they would still be on time, they were almost at the bridge.

  In the cramped guidance office, twenty awkward minutes went by. Alexa smiled at Ms. Cline and Ms. Reeve as they made small talk about some trip to Maine that Ms. Cline had taken that August.

  “It’s a beautiful island, Vinalhaven. Alexa, have you ever been?”

  Alexa shook her head no. “We go to the Cape in the summer. Or we used to. I didn’t go much this past summer.”

  Ms. Reeve nodded knowingly, frowning with concern. “No, of course not. Of course not.”

  Ms. Cline, choosing to breeze through this darker moment, said, “Well, you really should go. It’s very peaceful. Not much to do there, and really too cold for swimming, but I got a lot of reading done, and we made wonderful food every night.”

  “It sounds nice,” Alexa said weakly.

  Ms. Cline beamed. “It is. It really is. There’s this one—”

  She was interrupted by her phone making a little trill, and then Ms. Reeve’s phone went off too. Then Alexa’s. She wasn’t sure if she should answer her phone in front of faculty, but it could be from her mother, so she reached for her phone, but was stopped by a gasp.

  “Oh! Oh my goodness,” Ms. Reeve yelped. “There’s been an accident. The Tobin Bridge. The news is saying there’s been a collapse? That it collapsed?”

  Alexa felt a plunge in her throat, stretching down to her stomach.

  Ms. Cline and Ms. Reeve seemed to realize what this might mean at the same time, both turning to Alexa with looks of wild, uncomprehending worry on their faces.

  “What do you mean, it collapsed?” Alexa stammered. “The whole bridge?”

  Ms. Reeve looked back at her phone, adjusting her glasses as if that might make the news change.

  “When?” Alexa implored, reaching for her phone in her pocket.

  “Just now, I think . . .” Ms. Cline murmured. “Just now.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alexa said. But, somehow, she did. Alexa knew then, with some kind of supernatural sureness, that her parents’ car had been one of the ones caught in the collapse, buried under a pile of concrete or, worse, twirling down to the bottom of the Mystic River. Alexa abruptly stood up and bolted out of the office. She heard Ms. Reeve and Ms. Cline both call out to her, but she didn’t care. She tore down the hallway toward her locker. She needed to get her things and leave.

  But leave for where? She stopped in the hallway, frantic and running on some strange energy, and opened Twitter on her phone. Her feed was mostly breaking news and speculation about the collapse, pictures of the Tobin Bridge, or what used to be the Tobin Bridge, making her stomach churn. She saw one tweet, from Channel 7, that mentioned “victims” and “Boston General.” That was all she needed. Boston General wasn’t all that far.

  She ran the rest of the way to her locker, calling Jason as she went. He finally answered on about the millionth ring, sounding tired and out-of-it as ever, and certainly surprised to see his sister calling him in the middle of a school day. Or, really, calling him at all.

  What she didn’t tell Jason when she finally got him on the phone, what she couldn’t tell him, now at the hospital, because he was Jason being Jason, and because he had stormed off, was that this was her fault. That her parents never would have been on that bridge if she hadn’t been messing up at school, if she had just been the dutiful daughter for one more year, if she had just waited to figure her life out until it really belonged to her. But now she’d probably gotten two people—not just two people, her parents—killed
, and she had no one to turn to.

  The night before they left for the Cape that summer, Alexa knocked on Jason’s bedroom door. He grunted an “It’s open,” and Alexa walked in, finding her brother standing in a sea of clutter, a mostly empty bag sitting on his bed.

  “How’s the packing going?”

  Jason gestured to everything around him. “Great.”

  “Cool.” There was a strained pause, not uncommon in interactions Alexa had with her brother. “So . . . I can’t believe we’re actually going. I mean, the whole summer.”

  He shrugged, threw up his hands. “Yup. Pretty much sucks.”

  “What are you going to do?” Alexa asked, leaning on the door frame, arms crossed over her chest.

  Jason sighed. “I don’t know, Alexa. Nothing? Sit around. Go to the beach. Whatever.”

  “Maybe it’ll be good for you,” Alexa offered tentatively.

  His head jerked up and he glared at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Here we go, Alexa thought. “Nothing! Just that, like, I dunno. You seem so miserable here all the time.”

  “Well, so do you.”

  Alexa was surprised. Most days she wasn’t sure Jason even noticed that she existed, let alone had any insight into her emotional state. “I’m not miserable,” she said, more meekly than she meant it to come out. There was another pause while her brother stuffed some seemingly random items of clothing into his bag. Alexa hesitantly continued, “Maybe we could, I dunno, hang out or something. When we’re there.”

  Jason looked up at his sister again, a hint of surprise in his eyes that quickly dimmed into another hard stare. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  Which wasn’t a no, exactly, but Alexa knew that, barring some miracle, it was unlikely she and Jason would have some kind of bonding time on the Cape together.

  “You’re gonna have to hang out with somebody, Jason. We’re there for three months.”

  “Alexa, why not worry about your little job or whatever and let me figure my shit out myself, O.K.?”

  “Do you even have the first idea how to figure your shit out, Jason? What even is your shit?” Alexa snapped back, not wanting to get in another fight with her brother but also so frustrated with his moodiness, his dismissiveness, the way he was always cutting through her hope and optimism with snideness and ridicule. This time, though, Jason didn’t take the bait. He just sighed again, looked around his room, and said, “I can’t find any shorts.”

  Alexa stayed leaning against the doorway until she was sure the conversation was over. Jason was back to ignoring her, caught up again in his own gloom and fog.

  In the hospital, Alexa longed for the Jason who had emerged so soon after that little spat, something about the Cape that summer turning Jason into someone so sharp and fun and brotherly for a few months. He had been so present. It really was something like a miracle.

  The two of them even went for evening swims together on a few days when Alexa had worked a morning shift. Most of the other swimmers already gone home for the day. They had the water to themselves, and they swam out further than they might have if the other wasn’t there. The water was bracing, but Alexa liked it, feeling her body cool down after a hot day, just as the sun was beginning to set. Jason would lie on his back, staring up at the sky, bobbing along like a bit of seaweed. There was something dreamy and childlike about it, her brother floating on the waves. Alexa watched him and wondered what he was thinking.

  After their swim, they’d often sit up in the high dunes to dry off, like they used to when they were little. Most times Alexa would just babble on about work, joking about how Amelia, a kind, scrawny fifteen-year-old who manned the prize booth at the arcade, had a big crush on Jason. Amelia had seen Alexa’s brother all of once, when he picked up Alexa, begrudgingly, to drive her home. But Alexa had heard whispers since, and she and Kyle would laugh, imagining Amelia trying, in vain, to find Jason on Instagram or Facebook or anything so she could stalk him. She wouldn’t have any luck; Jason wasn’t on any of them.

  But one evening, after a particularly invigorating swim in chilly, post-rainstorm water, Alexa leaned back on her towel and turned toward her brother, who was poking at the sand with a stick.

  “Are you O.K.?” she asked him.

  He seemed startled out of some deep thought. “Huh?” he said, dropping the stick. “Oh, I was just . . . digging, I guess.”

  Alexa laughed. “No, I don’t mean with the stick. I mean, like, in life. Are you O.K.?”

  Jason held her gaze for a moment, something he hadn’t done in some time, before looking away. “Uh, yeah. I mean, the new school’s good. It’s better than the other ones.”

  She nodded. “Right, right. But I mean, otherwise? Beyond school? I don’t even know what you’re doing half the time. Like, if you’re with friends, or if you’re dating someone, or . . .”

  Jason let her trail off. He shrugged. “I’m with friends sometimes. I don’t know. Everyone’s so boring, you know?”

  Boston Alexa would agree with him. But Cape Alexa, quietly having the summer of her life, didn’t agree. “I guess. But not all of them. Kyle’s not boring.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But you’d tell me, right?” Alexa asked, trying to get her brother to look at her again. “If something was wrong?”

  Jason looked her in the eye, gave her the faintest smile. “Sure thing, little sister.” This was meant to nudge her back into place, into her role. Alexa figured they were done talking—probably the most, and most sincerely, they’d spoken uninterrupted for three years. But then Jason surprised her.

  “Are you O.K.?”

  The question took her aback. “How do you mean?”

  “Like, school and shit. Is getting As stressful?”

  “Of course it’s stressful.”

  “But do you like it? Is it good stressful?”

  Alexa realized she wasn’t sure how to answer that. Or maybe she was, it was just hard to say out loud. So instead of saying “Yes, I hate it, I’m going crazy, I never want to take an exam ever again and I mean it,” she aped her brother and gave a little shrug. “I dunno.”

  Jason nodded sagely. “Yeah. Yeah.” He fell silent then, and it was clear that they were done talking. Which Alexa was fine with. It had been some time—in fact, had it ever happened?—since someone hadn’t just assumed she was on top of the world. Of course, her mother gave her shit about studying more and practicing more, but it was never about whether the studying and the practicing were inherently good things for Alexa. And the thing with Kyle, the subtle hints about him, and about Alexa’s perceived naivety—that wasn’t really Alexa’s mother being concerned for Alexa. It was more of a worry about a potential future embarrassment, an unpleasantness that could disrupt Linda’s carefully ordered existence.

  But Jason really seemed to be asking, to have seen past the goody-two-shoes airs he often sniped at her about and recognized some change in her, some restlessness. She felt connected to Jason then, there in the dunes. Maybe they were joined in that restlessness. Maybe that is what bonded the Elsing children together.

  Alexa leaned back on her elbows and took in the breeze and the sound of the ocean. Jason laid out his towel and leaned back too. Alexa began recounting, once again, all she’d heard about Amelia’s undying love for Jason, while they watched the sky turn orange, then deep blue, the wind hissing through the beach grass, the crickets chirping awake.

  • • •

  Now it was all beeps and rings and tense voices. Alexa looked around the waiting room, didn’t see Jason anywhere. Mary Oakes was still in her corner, looking perturbed. Alexa watched as a teenage boy in a hoodie and sweats—she hadn’t noticed him before—tentatively walked up to Mary Oakes to ask her something. She shook her head and the boy looked deflated. He nodded, turned, and walked off. Alexa stood up, walked quickly to intercept him. Up clo
se he looked tired too, his brown eyes watery, dark hair mussed at odd angles.

  “Hey, sorry to bother you, did she tell you anything new?”

  The boy looked surprised that someone was talking to him.

  “Huh? Oh—no. No, she just said that things are taking longer than they thought because, I dunno, it’s dangerous for the rescue workers or something. There are still pieces falling. . . like, from the bridge? So it’s taking time.”

  “O.K. Thanks.”

  The boy went to sit down and, impulsively, Alexa sat down next to him.

  “Can I ask who you’re waiting to hear about?”

  The boy nodded. “Yeah, of course. Um, my girlfriend, Aimee. She was going to Salem, so they were . . .”

  “Right. My parents were there too.”

  “Your parents? Oh man. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. It’s O.K. They’re going to be O.K.”

  The boy looked at her like he wanted very much to believe her but didn’t. He sighed. They sat in silence for a moment before he spoke again.

  “Where do you go? To school, I mean.”

  “Northrup?”

  “Oh. Wow. Cool. Yeah. That’s a really good school.”

  “It’s all right. Where do you go?”

  “North. Newton North. In, um, Newton. Obviously.”

  Alexa laughed, and immediately hoped it didn’t sound mean.

  “That’s a really good school too.”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders. “It’s fine. It’s really big. I always thought it would be nice to go to a school like Northrup. But, like, a boys’ one. Or one that allows boys. Y’know.”

  He sat back and was looking at her now, a kind and worried face. Alexa realized he might be there alone too. “I’m Alexa,” she said, putting her hand up as if to wave. He smiled, a little crinkle. “Scott,” he said, waving too.