All We Can Do Is Wait

by Richard Lawson

  Still, knowing this could be Alexa’s last night at Grey’s, Nate put Kyle and Laurie on with her, figuring they’d have fun, be a good team as they’d been all summer. Courtney and Davey’s parents were out of the house that night, off in Woods Hole at some huge end-of-summer bash, and so the twins were having a party of their own.

  The last few hours of work were fraught with anticipation. Kyle had the earlier shift, so he’d clock out and head up to the party ahead of them, and Alexa would catch a ride with Laurie after they closed down. Though, toward the end of his shift, Kyle started saying maybe he didn’t want to go after all.

  “You’ve been in a weird mood all weekend,” Alexa said, when they were out back, tossing foul-smelling bags of old food and trash into the even worse-smelling dumpster. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” Kyle shrugged. “I’m fine. I’m not in a mood. I just . . .”

  Alexa frowned. “What, Kyle?”

  “I just had a little . . . bumpiness, with a boy. And I feel like I screwed things up, and he definitely screwed things up, and I want to fix them. I want to fix the things.”

  Alexa was surprised, a little hurt, even. “A boy? I didn’t know you were dating anyone.”

  Kyle sighed. “I am. Or, I was? I don’t know. I hope I am.”

  “Who is he? Is he anyone I know?”

  He laughed, a tiny, almost imperceptible bit of breath. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, what happened?” Alexa pressed.

  “Look, I don’t really want to talk about it. I’m sorry. It’s fine, I’m gonna be fine. He’s going to be fine. We’re going to be fine. It’s all fine.”

  “O.K. It’s fine.”

  “It is. And with that, I’m off. I’ll see you and Laurie there?”

  “Yes! Can’t wait.”

  “Should be a scene. Have you ever met Davey’s home friends?”

  “No . . .”

  “They’re awful. But in a fun way? And cute! So, maybe . . .” He gave Alexa a little wink-wink elbow nudge, and she laughed and swatted him off. “O.K., my love, see you there.”

  Alexa gave him a hug. “I’ll see you there.” She walked back toward the store, but then heard Kyle calling her name. She turned around but could only barely make him out in the dark.

  “Hey, Alexa! I was wrong. It’s not going to be fine. It’s going to be great.” And then he was gone.

  She and Laurie had another three hours of work, serving the last customers, an unsurprisingly long line of people wanting to cram in one last ice cream. Then the arduous cleanup, the restocking of things, counting the cash and matching it with all the receipts, entering it all on the computer in Nate’s office.

  But eventually, finally, they were done. Alexa was waiting out back for Laurie, who always took too long to leave, when she heard a kind of shriek or a wail coming from inside the store. Alexa ran back in, calling Laurie’s name, thinking she might have seen a rat or something else that scared her. She found Laurie in the break room, one hand over her mouth, phone in the other hand, pressed to her ear. She was crying. Alexa looked at Laurie, and maybe it only felt like it now, with the hindsight of a year, but Alexa could swear she knew right then that something had happened to Kyle.

  • • •

  Alexa shook the memory out of her head. She couldn’t mope now. Skyler’s news, her happy news, had been a strange, unexpected shock, and it had sent Alexa reeling. Because Alexa had, for a second, as the little doctor with the round glasses walked toward her, let herself think that the news was for her—and that, despite the grave faces, the news was good. Less than a second, even. But it was enough to pry open some fissure in her, letting all the panic and horror of the day flood in. It sent Alexa staggering, retreating to a chair to think dark thoughts, pulled her back to Kyle’s death, to the heavy grief of the past year, to her anger at Jason.

  But all that was wasted energy, Alexa knew. She needed to be active, to take care of things that could be taken care of here in all this chaos. She’d find Mary Oakes, or some more helpful doctor, and she’d demand something, some kind of answer. A timeline, a theory, whatever. Someone had to know where her parents were by now. It had been hours, and as Alexa looked around the waiting room, she saw that there was only a handful of people left. Little groups huddling together, a few lone people looking frayed and shell-shocked. These are the people who are going to get the worst news, she thought, knowing that meant she was one of those people. So. What could she do? How could she keep her world from spinning entirely out of control?

  Her family. She should call them. Her aunt Ginny in Connecticut. Maybe Ginny and her second husband, Henry, could drive up. Wouldn’t Alexa and Jason need some adults around? She wondered if Ginny already knew, but then, how would she know? Someone would have to call her. Alexa would.

  She’d also have to track down her mother’s brother, Paul, who lived in London and didn’t speak to the family anymore. There had been some big fight, years ago, back when Jason was a baby, and Linda only occasionally mentioned her brother, little memories from the house in Wellfleet from when they’d been kids. “Paul used to . . .” Like he was dead. But he wasn’t. He was just across the ocean, living with his partner—Nikhil, Alexa remembered, from a Christmas card the Elsings had received one year, a photo of a tall thin man, her uncle, standing with a handsome younger man, Indian or Pakistani maybe, the Tower Bridge proud and gray behind them. Alexa would find them and they’d get on a plane and then there would be at least some semblance of family around them.

  She’d need to tell school, too. Of course, they knew something. They’d seen her tear out of the building earlier that day. It was so strange that it had all been the same day. That just hours before, Alexa had been living a relatively normal life—a sad one, but still, mostly normal. And now here she was, thinking about calling another country to tell a family member she’d never spoken to that . . . what? Her parents were dead? She didn’t know that for sure, there was still some bit of hope left. Maybe she should wait. Maybe it was hasty to call anyone when there wasn’t any concrete news.

  But the idea of waiting more made Alexa feel crazy. She needed to do something, to feel some sense of movement, of progress, even if it was toward a scary future.

  She got her phone out, checking Twitter and e-mail for updates. To her surprise, there were already some victims named, with photos. A thirty-year-old mother of two from Saugus. A retired piano teacher and her husband. A whole family from Maine. The Boston Globe said the death toll was at thirty-two. How many people had Alexa seen brought into the hospital? A few dozen? More? She couldn’t remember, it had been such a blur. She should have counted.

  She read more. There were some high school students, from Newton, who were missing. Alexa realized that must be Scott’s girlfriend and her friends. There was no news beyond that, that they were missing and thought to have been on the bridge when it snapped and crumbled. Alexa had seen the semi photo, the one Scott had shown her, and now, on Twitter, there were more pictures, posted by friends, saying “Pray for Aimee,” all showing a smiling blonde, sometimes in costume from a play, one on the beach, another of a big group at a restaurant. Scott wasn’t in any of them, but maybe he was the kind of guy who didn’t like to pose for pictures.

  Alexa felt nosy, peering in on this missing girl’s life, so she closed Twitter. Poor Aimee. Poor Scott. She turned and saw him, fiddling with the strings of his hoodie, lost in thought. She went over to him, touched his shoulder. He looked up, smiled, his cheeks making big, friendly creases when he did.

  “Hey!”

  “Hey. You doing O.K.?”

  Scott nodded. “Yeah . . . just thinking.”

  “Have you heard from Aimee’s parents?”

  “Uh, no, they’re . . . on their way, I guess. I think they work kinda far away, so it takes a while to get downtown.”

  Ale
xa nodded, wanting to help Scott in some way, to distract him or comfort him—so she could distract and, maybe, comfort herself too.

  “You want to go for a walk?”

  Scott looked confused. “Where? Like outside?”

  Alexa shrugged. “No, like, just around the hospital, I guess. I think there’s a chapel somewhere. We could go find that.”

  Scott hesitated. “Oh, I’m not, like, religious or anything. I mean, my parents are Catholic, but only on Christmas and Easter, really.”

  “I’m not either. We don’t have to pray there or anything. It’s just a change of scenery.”

  So they went, asking one of the nurses where the chapel was. She nodded seriously, saying, “Of course,” and pointed them in the right direction. They had to go up a few floors, the elevator slow and creaking. Standing next to them, in a surreal contrast to the despair and grimness of the waiting room, was a pregnant woman, hand on her belly, looking serene and optimistic as she watched the floors pass.

  Scott and Alexa got off on the third floor, walked down a few strangely quiet hallways, and there it was, an unremarkable door with a sign saying “Chapel.” Inside, the room was decorated in stained glass, the lights far dimmer than the hallway, a few rows of chairs set up. There was no cross or Star of David or any particular iconography. Just a sense of hush and peace and solemnity. It actually was calming, Alexa realized, to be in a place specifically designed for comfort and reflection.

  There was only one other person in the chapel, an older man sitting in the second row of chairs, bent over, head down, possibly praying, possibly asleep. Scott and Alexa found two chairs toward the back, sat down, and stared at the big round blue stained glass window at the front of the room. They sat there without talking for a minute, some respectable observance of silence that the place seemed owed.

  Alexa couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in any kind of church. Maybe the Quaker-style meetings at her school counted, though they were held in the assembly hall, not some sacred space. Her parents had never taken her, except when there were weddings, though oftentimes in Theo and Linda’s circle, those weddings were outdoors at country clubs or on private estates with sprawling views of some body of water. Only a couple of funerals. Churches had been rare in Alexa’s life, and she realized now that they did hold some kind of soothing power, like they were a confirmation that the stakes of the world are really high and really scary, in a way that the drab fluorescent and linoleum of downstairs did not.

  She let out a sigh and crossed her arms. “You know what I’m most scared of?” she said to Scott, who turned in his chair and looked at her seriously, his round brown eyes kind and expectant.

  “No, what?”

  “That I’m going to have to figure out who I am a lot sooner than normal. If they’re gone, I mean. Like . . . I’m supposed to get a few more years before I have to do that, right? To be young and screw things up and try lots of different things. In college, or wherever. Maybe not college. Somewhere else. But now . . . I mean, if you don’t have parents to, like, bounce off of, what do you do? Maybe you just have to get your shit together and be a grown-up. Just like that. I mean, it’s not like Jason will. So, one of us has to.”

  “Why won’t Jason?”

  “Because he won’t. Because that’s not who he is. Last summer . . . Last summer, my friend died? His friend too. They were friends.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too. But when he died . . . Jason just, like, shut down. Like the light went out, and he was gone. We’d gotten close again, I thought, over the summer. Something was different. It was good. But then Kyle died, and . . . I guess I was wrong. I was wrong. So today? I mean, I didn’t really expect anything of him. But it makes me think about how if my parents are, y’know . . . I might just have me. I might be it.”

  Scott nodded. Alexa felt dumb, burdening the moment with this selfish stuff about her future, when Scott’s girlfriend could be dead, with no future waiting for her whatsoever.

  “Sorry,” she started to say, but Scott interrupted.

  “No, no, I’m sorry. I get it. I was just . . . I know what you mean. I guess for me I never really thought I’d have any of that time to figure myself out or whatever. My life feels sorta planned already. Stay in Boston for college. Work at my parents’ store. Take over the store when they retire. And that’s that. My family doesn’t really get out. They’ve all stayed around here. I have cousins who live in Maryland, but it’s this, like, big deal that they moved, and everyone kind of hates them for it.”

  Scott sat back in his chair, pulled his hood up. “With Aimee, at least it was like I was leaving my life for a little bit, every time I was with her. I knew she’d go away to college and stuff, and that we were young and probably wouldn’t be together forever . . . It’s just weird, y’know? To feel like someone’s outgrowing you, and that they were always going to.”

  Alexa wasn’t sure what to say, thinking how sad it was for Aimee, for her parents, for Scott, to have everything cut so short. Maybe cut short. If she was dead. She might not be. It was still possible that she was fine, only missing.

  Alexa would never say this to Scott, of course, but something about his story, the simplicity and tragic romance of a dead girlfriend, of a great love cut short, made her feel jealous. It was so complicated with her parents. The feeling was, of course, compounded by the fact of Kyle, this inspiring—and, yes, magical—being she had known (“It’s like you think I’m an actual fairy,” he’d said to her once) until he was swiftly taken away. Maybe Kyle was like Aimee in that way: short-lived, a bright star burned out quickly.

  But Alexa couldn’t really find anything literary in it, not really. All this shitty sadness and hurt that had consumed her life for the past year. She’d never imagined that she, of all people, would feel so stuck, so mired in the swamp of a life that had begun to feel so heavy, so full of painful and horrible things. And she was only seventeen. She realized how exhausted she was, how she felt so little of herself anymore.

  So much of her time was spent being sad about Kyle, or angry at Jason, or worrying about her parents, before the accident even. Where had she gone? She felt a little panicked, sitting there in the quiet chapel, trying to place herself, to locate the curious, ambitious, focused Alexa who had existed at some point, who had been real, she was sure of it. Her teachers seemed to have known her, this old Alexa. Her parents too. And Alexa had records of her, this person who was a person, who didn’t just react other to people. There were journals full of that Alexa, papers and plans and all kinds of things.

  And yet she felt mostly gone, as the present Alexa sat in the chapel, listening to Scott talk about his girlfriend, feeling jealous in ways she didn’t want to admit to herself.

  Scott was so cute—a little sloppy, a little crooked, but handsome, decent, and humble seeming. So unlike the boys that she and Jason knew, in their world, with their highborn snobbiness and their seen-it-all jadedness. Jason was one of them, wasn’t he? That’s all he was. He was just another one of those boys, Alexa thought, letting a laugh escape.

  “What?” Scott asked eagerly, maybe wanting to laugh at something in that moment too.

  Alexa shook her head. “Nothing, it’s nothing. I just . . . I don’t know. I sort of realized something. I had an epiphany.”

  Scott gestured toward the stained glass window. “Power of the chapel.”

  Alexa laughed again. It felt good, even if the laughter was followed by little needles of guilt. She looked at Scott, at the faint fuzz coming in on his lip and jawline, a scar near his right eye, deep and long. She pointed to it. “What’s that from?”

  Scott touched the scar, as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Oh. Soccer. Got elbowed by some asshole from Needham. Blood everywhere. It was gnarly.”

  Alexa reached out, ran her thumb along the line of it. “Must have hurt,” she said, feeling Scot
t lean into her hand. They looked at each other, the chapel lights dim, and Alexa let herself imagine that they were in some other world, some other dimension where nothing bad had happened and this could just be an exciting moment before a nice kiss. But there was no such place, or if there was, it was impossible to get to from where they were, power of the chapel or not. So she pulled her hand away and said, “Aimee’s lucky. You’re a really nice guy, Scott.”

  Scott, seeming to understand that the moment was over, the spell broken, sat back, nodded. “Uh, thanks. I’m the lucky one, really. She’s the best.”

  “And she’s going to be O.K.”

  “She’s gonna be fine.”

  Alexa heard people behind her and turned to see an older woman and a younger woman, a mother and daughter maybe, making their way into the chapel. They’d both been crying, from the looks of it, and the mother was leaning on her daughter for support. Alexa felt nosy again, like she was seeing something she shouldn’t. “Let’s go,” she said to Scott, feeling her anxiety welling up. “We should go back. There might be news.”

  They walked the hallways in silence, rode the slow elevator without speaking. They were almost back to the emergency waiting room when Scott said, “Alexa, wait.” She stopped, not sure what was about to happen. He looked her in the eyes, some mix of worry and determination on his face. He opened his mouth, started to say something, but then stopped. He sighed.

  “What is it, Scott?” Alexa asked.

  He shifted his weight. Shrugged. “Nothing. Never mind. It’s just . . . They’re going to be fine too,” he finally said. “Your parents.”

  Alexa nodded. She hadn’t liked it when Jason had assured her that everything was going to be O.K., and though she wasn’t mad at Scott, had no reason to be mad at him, she didn’t like his saying it either. It felt almost condescending, or patronizing. Still, for the first time all day, something in her agreed with the sentiment. She smiled at him. “Thank you, Scott. I know.”