All We Can Do Is Wait

by Richard Lawson

  Perhaps sensing Alexa’s unsteadiness, Scott took a few steps toward her, gave her a sympathetic sigh.

  “All this and still nothing. I mean—not nothing,” he caught himself, looking off at one of the weeping families.

  Was it good news, or bad? Were they crying from joy and relief—this big couple and their little wild-haired beanpole of a kid—or had some other child been crushed to death and they’d just found out? “This is so confusing . . .” Alexa heard herself muttering, feeling stupid the second she said it.

  Scott reached out a hand, sort of swiped at her shoulder, a clumsy offer of comfort, but still appreciated.

  “Yeah. It is. It really fucking is.” He laughed, the swear surprising him maybe, and ran his hands through his hair, which looked a little unwashed.

  Alexa looked at Scott, his broad nose and dimpled chin, and she couldn’t help finding him attractive, droopy and worried as he looked just then. A sharp pang of guilt stabbed through her. How dare she be thinking about a boy right now, let alone a boy who was waiting to hear if his girlfriend, whom he really seemed to really love, was alive or dead?

  Scott, maybe oblivious to Alexa’s staring, maybe not, took another step toward her, so they were standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the hospital roil in front of them. Scott nudged her with his elbow and nodded at Jason, who was looking into the middle distance, expression blank and eyes unblinking.

  “So, uh, what’s his deal, your brother?”

  Alexa laughed, a dark little sound that she didn’t like. “If I knew what Jason’s deal was, my life would be a lot easier right now. In general, it would be easier.”

  “Is he stoned or something?”

  “I don’t know. I asked, he said no.”

  “Is that, like, a problem for him?”

  A sudden flood of tears filled Alexa’s eyes. She was so tired of talking about her brother, of worrying about her brother, of trying to build the world around his anger and sullenness. She was tired of all of it. Especially now, when she considered the possibility that it might just be the two of them from here on out.

  Would Jason ever do the same for her, try to shape his life around her, around her whims, her needs, her moodiness and self-absorption? No, probably not. Certainly not when he found out that she was the reason her parents were on the bridge. He’d blame her. It would finally be the excuse he needed to disappear from her life altogether. He’d finish school, maybe, and then he’d be gone. And Alexa would be stuck wishing he’d come back, maybe even begging him to come back to her, for the rest of her sad, guilty life.

  “A lot of things are a problem for Jason,” she said, wiping her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm herself, to tamp down her emotions so she could focus.

  “Sucks,” Scott said. “I mean, it’s so selfish. To be like that.”

  Alexa flinched, recoiled a little from Scott. “I mean, you don’t know my brother,” she snapped.

  Scott’s face paled a shade. “No, no, I know, of course not, I’m sorry, of course not.”

  “It’s just . . .” Alexa trailed off. She turned to look at her brother, skinny and floppy haired, looking half like a kid, half like someone about to be a man, and she felt a longing for him, or for some old version of him, him on the Cape. She saw a flash of her brother, sitting on the porch, framed by purple sky, arms wrapped around his knees, laughing at something she or Kyle had said. He was still in there somewhere, that Jason. He had to be.

  “It was my fault,” she said quietly. To Scott, to herself. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. “My parents. Today. It was my fault.”

  Scott started to speak, probably to say something about how of course it wasn’t her fault, but before he could, Alexa turned and walked away, finding a chair to sit in, crumpling up, feeling entirely alone, wanting to disappear into whatever hole the bridge had left, the one that had swallowed up her whole future in one hungry gulp. She wanted to dive in and chase after it, even if all it led to was blackness and nothing.

  Chapter Seven

  Jason

  THE FIRST TIME he kissed Kyle, Jason had felt like he was both lifting off the earth and sinking into it. It happened quickly and slowly, unexpected and yet like all of life, or at least all those first early days of the summer, had been leading toward it.

  Maybe it had been there, this inevitability, since they first met. Jason had gone to pick his sister up at Grey’s, since Linda didn’t like Alexa riding her bike home alone at night, and Alexa hadn’t yet started getting rides from her coworkers. Jason got there early, or Alexa was running late, he couldn’t remember which. What he remembered is that he’d been standing by the car, fiddling on his phone, when he heard a soft and friendly “Hey.”

  Jason looked up from his phone and there was a boy about his age, tall and willowy, with a fount of loose curls. Jason had been attracted to guys before, of course, usually from a distance, but this was something different. He was immediately, intensely drawn to this boy, whoever he was. “Uh, hey” was all he could stammer back.

  “You’re the brother? Jason?” the boy asked, giving him a sideways smile.

  “Um. Yes. Yeah. Jason. Hey. Who . . .”

  “I’m Kyle,” the boy said, extending his hand for Jason to shake. Insanely, Jason had a quick mental flash of him kissing Kyle’s hand like they did in olden days. But he instead gave it a perhaps overly enthusiastic shake and burbled out something about how it was nice to meet him.

  “How come you don’t work here too?” Kyle asked. “We have a few sibling duos, you know.”

  Jason wasn’t sure how to answer politely. How did you say “Because scooping ice cream all summer sounds like abject hell” in a way that isn’t offensive to someone who was spending all summer scooping ice cream? So instead he said something dumb, “Uhh . . . I don’t know. I guess I didn’t even, um, think about it?”

  “Ah,” Kyle said, that sideways grin getting bigger. “So what are you doing then?”

  Nothing. That was the truth, wasn’t it? Jason really wasn’t doing much of anything, besides lying around, watching TV, jerking off, complaining. But he couldn’t say any of that, of course. So he just said, “Oh, you know, lotsa random stuff. I might, uh, teach myself to sail again?” He just made that up on the spot, but it actually didn’t sound so bad.

  Kyle laughed a little—but not meanly. “Sounds nice. I’d love to learn how to sail. Get in a boat and get the hell out of here . . .”

  “I mean, I could—” Jason started to say, but then he saw his sister striding across the little parking lot toward them.

  “Hey!” Alexa said. “Jason, don’t bother Kyle.”

  Kyle shook his head. “I think I was bothering him. Anyway, I gotta run. I forgot to feed Laurie’s cat and have to do it before she gets back or she’ll kill me. Or I’ll kill the cat. But I’ll see you tomorrow. And Jason,” Kyle said, turning to him and giving him another mysterious smile, “happy sailing!”

  Jason drove all the way home in a daze, Kyle’s lilting way of speaking—the music in his voice, its slight girlishness—echoing in Jason’s ears.

  A week or so passed, and the feeling mostly abated. Jason almost forgot about it. But then Alexa texted him to say that she was bringing Kyle over to hang out.

  Though he didn’t usually spend much time with his sister, Jason was determined that night to be near Kyle, to figure out who he was. Kyle wasn’t exactly the type of guy that Jason had been furtively attracted to before—he wasn’t some jock closet case, in other words. But something about him, like he was from another time, maybe the past or maybe the future, was entrancing to Jason.

  So when Kyle came over, a simple “Oh, hey, Jason” when he walked into the kitchen, Jason stayed, listening to Kyle and Alexa talk about all these places they wanted to go, wishing he could participate but realizing he’d never really actually let himself think about the
future, or where he wanted to travel, or what he wanted to do. The more he spent time with them, that night and many others that summer, the more Jason felt limited around Kyle—and around his sister, he realized.

  She suddenly seemed so cool, so grown-up and worldly. When had that happened? Maybe she’d always been like that. Seeing Alexa like that on those evenings, often out on the porch in the perfect nighttime air, made the magic of Kyle—surely he was magic—somehow more potent. He’d cast some spell on Alexa, and on Jason, and now suddenly they liked each other, they got along, they had fun together.

  On their fifth night of hanging out, Jason said he was going to go smoke a joint, and Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Would you mind if I joined you?”

  Jason’s insides did acrobatics, but he tried to play it as cool as possible. “Sure, that’s cool. Alexa, you wanna come?” Please say no, please say no, please say no.

  “No thanks, it’ll just make me go to sleep.”

  Jason shrugged, knees knocking a little. “K.”

  He and Kyle walked down to the beach, passing the joint between them.

  “Your sister’s the best,” Kyle said.

  Jason nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, yeah, she is.”

  “She’s my favorite person at work.”

  They sat on the sand by the big white lifeguard chair, one person walking a dog off in the distance.

  “It’s fucking beautiful here,” Kyle said quietly, looking out over the beach.

  It felt stupid to admit to himself, but Jason realized he maybe hadn’t ever noticed that before. But Kyle was right. It was beautiful. Both the crispness and the wistful haze of it, the warmth and the wind. Or maybe he was just stoned. Or maybe he was just in love with Kyle.

  A week like that passed, the three kids hanging out most nights on the porch, Kyle and Jason going for little walks to get stoned, not saying much of anything, but always taking a moment to appreciate being on the beach. Usually it was dark, and they’d silently look up at the stars, gleaming and flickering millions of miles away.

  Things changed eventually. One early evening in mid-June, Alexa called from work and asked Linda if it was O.K. if Kyle—who tended to come by after Linda had gone to sleep or was back in Boston for some function—came over for dinner. Linda, perhaps thinking Alexa had a boyfriend, said yes, curious to see what proud summer son of Wellfleet her daughter had been spending so much time with.

  If Linda was disappointed when Kyle showed up, in his rolled cut-offs and billowy shirt (“It’s a blouse,” Jason had joked to him, a month or so later, the two of them whispering in Jason’s bedroom), she didn’t show it, welcoming him in with her trained society warmth.

  Theo was back in Boston—“a big meeting with the Hong Kong people,” Linda said—so it was just the four of them. “Why don’t you sit at the head of the table, Kyle,” Linda suggested. “You can be the man of the house tonight.”

  Kyle laughed, genuinely comfortable wherever he was, and seeming to see something, some charm or wit or elegance, in Linda that her own children had long been blind to. “I’d be delighted,” he said, and Linda clucked contentedly.

  Dinner was airy and fun. They ate corn salad and grilled swordfish, good Massachusetts food, as Theo often said. Kyle kept Linda occupied, asking her questions about her days at Barnard.

  “Though I’d probably rather live downtown instead of uptown when I move.”

  Linda waved a hand at him in agreement. “Well, that’s where the young people go. And there are so many fabulous galleries down there.” She took a sip of wine. “Do you like art, Kyle?” she asked.

  Instead of giving Linda a simple yes, the easy, accommodating answer many guests Kyle’s age, or any age, would have offered, Kyle actually thought about it for a second.

  “You know,” he said. “I don’t really know art all that well? But I think I will like it, when I learn more about it.”

  This just about sent Linda over the moon, as much as she ever went over the moon. “Well, I’d be happy to lend you whatever art books I have lying around here,” she said, referring to the huge, very expensive volumes she had littered on the coffee table and on the bookshelves in the living room. “So long as you take good care of them, and return them by Labor Day.”

  “I’d love that, Mrs. Elsing,” Kyle said, somehow not sounding like a brown-noser. Like he actually meant it.

  “And then of course you’ll have to visit Alexandra and us in Boston this fall,” Linda declared. “I’ll take you on a personal tour of the museum.”

  “That would be great, Mrs. Elsing. Thank you so much.”

  Linda sat back in her chair, beaming, pleased with herself, with everything.

  After dinner, Linda was in an uncharacteristically generous mood, saying she’d wash and dry the dishes herself. “You kids go out and enjoy the night, it’s so lovely out. Show Kyle the beach maybe.”

  Alexa rolled her eyes. “He’s seen the beach, Mom.”

  Linda waved her away. “But not our beach.” (Kyle had, of course.) She turned to the dishes, and the kids did what she asked, walking out to the porch, the nearby ocean roaring with all its mystery and allure.

  Jason had sneaked two more than the usual one Linda-approved glass of wine at dinner, so he was feeling buzzed and loose. He pulled the joint he’d rolled before dinner from the breast pocket of his shirt—one of Theo’s old blue striped oxfords—and held it up to Alexa and Kyle.

  Alexa shook her head, said she just wanted to sit, that she was tired from standing all day at work. “My dogs are barking!” she moaned.

  Kyle laughed—the best sound Jason had ever heard, he suddenly thought—and said, “O.K., but do you mind if I join your brother for a joint?”

  Alexa shrugged. “I don’t care. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  So the two boys walked down to the beach, the tide high, pulled toward the beach by the moon, beaming and perfectly round in the sky. Jason lit the joint, took a deep hit, passed it to Kyle and watched him put his lips on it. Jason’s stomach felt knotty as Kyle exhaled then passed it back. Their feet were in the water, lapping at their ankles.

  “Your mom’s so fun,” Kyle said, taking a step further into the water.

  Jason shrugged, took a hit. “She certainly thinks so.”

  Kyle laughed again, a sharp pierce that melted into a little song. “You’re funny, Jason,” he said, turning to face him. Jason held the joint out for Kyle and he approached and took it, their fingers brushing, a million shivers of electricity traveling up Jason’s arm. Something was different tonight.

  Kyle looked at him and smiled, and then, very simply, put one hand on Jason’s cheek, leaned in, and kissed him. Jason hesitated for a second and then kissed Kyle back, his hand on Kyle’s shoulder, his knees knocking, the whole world gone spinning and tingling around him.

  After a moment, Kyle pulled back. He smiled again, took a drag from the joint, almost burned down to the end. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the first night we met.”

  Jason was surprised. “Yeah, me too, I guess.”

  Kyle raised an eyebrow. “You guess?” he said, splashing some water in Jason’s direction.

  “I mean,” Jason stammered, “no, I know. I know. I just didn’t, like . . . know know. Until now.”

  Kyle leaned in close, gave Jason a peck. “Well, now you know know.” He turned and started walking up the beach, then looked back at Jason. “Come on, your sister is waiting.”

  • • •

  Jason could see Kyle receding up the beach, toward the glow of the house, could feel the riot of elation and stonedness and horniness that had flooded over him after that first kiss. Kyle disappearing in the tall grass, the waves rushing in and seeping away. Jason blinked, the light of the hospital pinging back into focus. Your sister is waiting. Jason turned around, toward the table, but didn’t see Alexa, only
that Morgan girl, hands hidden in her sleeves, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Hey,” Jason croaked at her, his voice sounding scratchy and tired. Morgan looked up, as if to say Me?

  “Have you seen my sister? The girl with the—”

  Morgan turned and pointed at a corner of the room, and Jason saw Alexa, curled up in a chair, face buried in her knees. She looked so small, so lost in this ugly, harshly lit place. Jason hated seeing her here, hated places like this. He knew it was a dumb thing to wonder, but why did it all have to look so clinical? All the inoffensive off-white walls, the sallow fluorescent lighting, the blond wood of the railings that were everywhere, for people too weak to stand on their own. Couldn’t a place like this be cheery and optimistic? Or, maybe more honestly, dark and stern and serious? Wouldn’t that be more truthful—a hospital painted in black, or a worried gray, dim lamplight in the hallways, somewhere entirely ready to be filled with ghosts, night after night after night?

  Jason felt a sudden protectiveness over his sister. He wasn’t used to seeing her like this, retreated and scared. Maybe this was an opportunity, for Jason to make up for all the times when he should have stepped up, should have been there for his sister. He could do something.

  The woman. The hospital woman. How long had it been since they’d brought in the first patients? Twenty, thirty minutes? She must know something. Jason was going to be useful.

  “Hey,” he said again to the tall girl, Morgan. “What’s the lady’s name again, the hospital lady?”

  Morgan took a few timid steps toward him. “Um, it’s Mary. She’s Patient Services.”

  Jason nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Can you come talk to her with me? I need to ask her about my parents, but I’m not really sure what to ask her. You know, like, specifically.”

  Morgan seemed to think this over for a second before giving a quick nod. “Yeah. She’s over there. You just have to . . . I’ll tell her I know you. She knows me.”