The Grief of Others

by Leah Hager Cohen

  Gordie leaped off the path onto the crescent of sand and tore out across the rocks. He had a light body, a wiry build, and managed the uneven surface nimbly; even so, he almost lost his footing twice. At the end of the spit, he squatted beside Ebie and thrust out an arm. The girl’s face was white, stunned, bluelipped. She did not take his hand, but tried to heave herself up on her own, scrambling with her feet against the submerged part of the rock. He thought she had it, but in the end she slipped back, this time going all the way under. Gordie plunged his arm into the water and grabbed the hood of her parka. He pulled her above the surface and she spluttered and blinked, appearing, even through her chattering, rather affronted by this intervention. But Gordie got a two-handed grip under her arms and hoisted her out.

  She stood bent, shivering and dripping on the rocks. She looked to be eight or nine, he thought—he was no good at telling, really—and had on heavy work boots, jeans, and the oversized parka, which must have weighed a ton. She looked at him with light brown eyes he found disconcerting; she did not appear aloof, exactly, so much as unduly composed.

  “Is someone here with you?”

  She shook her head. Gordie looked around rather stupidly, as though she might be mistaken, but there was no one else in the pelting rain, only the two of them and the dog.

  “Well—God, I’m sorry about this. Look, my jacket’s a little drier than yours—you’re obviously freezing—please.” He slipped off the woolen lumberjack shirt and made a fairly hapless movement, as if miming tugging at the sleeve of her parka. He supposed he ought not actually undress a strange child. “You should take that off,” he urged, “and we’ll get you—well, a little—warmer.” She fumbled at her zipper, but her fingers were stiff with cold; it wouldn’t budge. She surprised Gordie by extending both arms, wrists turned skyward, in a gesture that clearly meant do it for me. So he unzipped her, conscious of Ebie wagging and whining softly beside him, and eased the parka off her shoulders. It slid from her slight frame and sunk to the rocks, leaded with water. Ebie took a step toward the girl and licked her palm.

  “You’re a bumbling oaf,” Gordie informed the dog, draping his woolen shirt over the girl’s shoulders.The pattern was a large plaid of green, red, and black. “I really am sorry,” he repeated.

  “W-w-what for?”

  He leaned back and squinted at her. She had her hand on Ebie’s neck, her fingers buried deep in Newfie fur. “Well, because she’s my dog. Not that she meant to knock you in. I think she was trying to herd you away from the water. It’s her lifeguard instinct. But she’s a bit of a clod. Really, I’m to blame. Look, my God, you’re freezing. Do you live around here? We should bring you home. My name’s Gordie Joiner. Can I give you a ride? Or call someone?” As he spoke he scooped up her sodden parka and attempted to usher her back over the spit to land. She let herself be brought along. With one hand hovering lightly on her shoulder, steering, he could feel her shivering violently through the jacket. They went slowly, under the press of rain, so as not to lose their footing. Once on the little slice of beach, Ebie gave herself a mighty shake, firing droplets three hundred and sixty degrees, and the girl surprised Gordie again by laughing at this.

  “Look. Let me take you home, yeah? I’m parked in the lot.”

  The girl shook her head.

  “You just—you really need to get warm. I know you don’t know me,” he repeated.

  “’S-s-s-s not that.” Her teeth were going like mad; it was an effort to make out her words. “B-b-b-b-biked.”

  Gordie looked around for the bicycle.

  “Th-there.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the lot.

  “No problem. I’ve got a station wagon.”

  They climbed up the bank to the path, using the knobbly tree roots as grips. Gordie whistled for the dog, who clambered along belatedly and then, with an air of saving face, barged out in front at a trot, as though she’d suddenly remembered she was supposed to be guiding this tour. They made their way back without talking.

  Gordie was nearly certain of what he had witnessed: the girl had been flinging ashes into the river. He tried to unhook the act from its most obvious, funereal interpretation. There could, after all, be other reasons a person might toss ashes. Though none came to mind.

  He studied the girl surreptitiously. How old was she? He’d have thought seven or eight from size alone, but her bearing was decidedly older. Her hair was plastered wetly to her head. His dad’s plaid jacket hung to her knees: a clown suit on her, within which she remained inscrutable. Anyway, it was the middle of a day on a Friday—why wouldn’t she be in school? He considered whether she might be a runaway, an orphan, perhaps. He wanted to ask her about those ashes.

  At the lot she showed him the bike propped against a tree, and Gordie hoisted it toward his dad’s station wagon, one of only two cars that remained, the weather having chased most visitors away.The other vehicle was a brown Buick. With a glance he could just make out, past its streaming windows, an elderly couple eating sandwiches. They looked cozy, dry, unhurried. The sight brought him up short, riddled him with feeling. He didn’t know what to do about it, besides look away and open up the back of his dad’s station wagon. The middle seat was already folded down flat, with a dirty fleece blanket spread across. He stowed the bike, arranging it horizontally on top of the blanket. Ebie whined, gave a short bark. “Hush,” said Gordie. “You’ll have to squeeze.”

  She whined again.

  “Go on, get in.”

  “Why can’t she ride up front?” asked the girl, her longest utterance by far.

  “Oh, she’ll be all right. You go ahead and get in.” But only after Gordie had coaxed Ebie in next to the bike did the girl comply.

  “So what’s your name?” he asked once he’d sat, turned on the ignition, and blasted the heat. The car still smelled of cigarettes. He did not mind this for himself—the smell had used to bother him, but these past few months he’d come to like it, even to hope it might linger forever—but for the first time, because of the girl, he was sorry about it, self-conscious.

  She drew a breath and paused. She still looked tiny, wan, half drowned, but color was beginning to come back into her lips and cheeks. She also still looked, for one so small and sodden, uncannily poised. But in the protracted silence, he began to wonder if she felt unsafe with him, now that they were in the car with the doors closed and the cigarette smell.

  “Or, I mean, of course you don’t have to tell me. I know I’m a strange . . . a stranger.” He’d been about to say “strange man,” but it sounded ridiculous, a phrase from a police blotter. “All I really need to know is how to bring you home.”

  “No,” said the girl, regarding him thoughtfully. “It’s not that you’re dangerous. I was just thinking what name to tell you.”

  Gordie was a little deflated by her cool assessment. He covered his embarrassment with an attempt at wit. “You have an assortment?”

  She sighed. “I have a nickname and a real name.”

  “Got it.”

  “Biscuit and Elizabeth,” she explained.

  “Right. Well, like I said, I’m Gordie.” He jerked a thumb toward the back. “And that’s Ebie.”

  They both turned toward the dog, who responded to the sudden attention by jutting her face forward, open-mouthed. A great hammock of saliva hung from her upper lip.

  “You’re very big,” Biscuit told her. Ebie responded to this statement by closing her enormous mouth for several seconds. Then she resumed panting. “I live on Depew,” Biscuit told Gordie, turning. “You know Depew? Across from the park.”

  Gordie nodded and pointed the station wagon up the hill. “Your parents know you’re out here, Elizabeth?” As soon as he heard himself say it, he knew it was wrong—both the assumption that she had parents (he of all people ought to know better), as well as the way it made him sound like a truant officer.

  But she replied simply, “Yes.”

  “So”—he cleared his throat again—“sor
ry, but—I have to ask: What were you doing out on the rocks?” He offered an apologetic grimace.

  “Oh.” She shook her head, just a little toss, and turned to look out the passenger window. “Nothing.”

  “It didn’t look like nothing.”

  “Nothing much.” This was barely audible.

  Still he pressed. “To be honest, it looked like”—he coughed—“like you were scattering ashes.Was it . . . ? Do you know what I mean? I mean, you seem . . . well, for one thing, awfully young.”

  “I’m not,” she said flatly.

  “Okay.You’re youngish, though.” By shifting the focus to her age he was, he knew, yielding to her, allowing them to move beyond the subject of the ashes, and Gordie was disappointed by this, his own inability to press on, his curiosity unsated. He resisted the impulse to tell her about his own loss. “I mean,” he said, another attempt at humor, “you are a kid and all?”

  “I’m ten,” she said, in a tone that might as easily have implied contradiction as concession.

  After that a small coolness descended upon them and they rode most of the rest of the way in silence.

  The rain made a din.The wipers eked out their steady lullaby. Ebie was redolent, the specter of every skunk she’d ever chased summoned up by the wetness of her fur plus the waft of the heater. The trees along Broadway arched heavily over the street. Gordie began to feel almost drowsy, under an enchantment made up of rhythms and textures as old as childhood. He thought for some reason of his dad coddling eggs. That was something Gordie had always loved to watch, though he never cared to partake of eggs cooked in this fashion. But he’d loved watching his dad butter the insides of the porcelain cup, crack the eggs one-handed, give a few twists of the pepper mill, sprinkle salt with his fingers, screw on the metal top and immerse the lot in a pan of simmering water to cook, “gentle-like, mind you,” for exactly seven minutes.

  The girl Elizabeth spoke. “The next left.”

  “Got it.”

  The house she pointed out, in the middle of the second block, sat just as she’d said, smack across from the small green park. Gordie was glad to see a vehicle in the driveway if it meant someone was home, although the fact that said vehicle was a beat-up pickup gave him a moment’s pause; he associated such trucks with guys with big guts and short tempers. “I’ll get your bike,” he told her, pulling up by the curb. “You go on ahead.”

  “Don’t worry. It wasn’t your fault,” she said kindly, and for an instant he thought she’d read his mind, but she wasn’t talking to him. “Good-bye, girl,” she said, offering her cheek, which Ebie swiped with her tongue.Then she patted the dog’s glossy crown and slid out.

  Gordie wrestled out the bike and carried it, along with the sopping parka, onto the ample porch. The girl, having left the warm station wagon for the damp and the wind, stood hunched and shivering again. “Is it open?” asked Gordie. “Or do you ring the bell?” Whether she shivered or shrugged he could not tell, but as she didn’t move to let herself in, he reached out and pressed the button.

  The man who came to the door was indeed large, and darkly bearded as well, but he looked more disconcerted than angry and when he spoke his voice was mild, even faintly musical. “Well! Biscuit. What happened to you?”

  “I found her at the Hook,” Gordie announced. “It’s my fault she’s all wet.”

  “Your fault?” The man peered confusedly at the pouring rain. “Please, come in.”

  Gordie looked at the girl, thinking she’d take up the tale, but she remained both silent and unbudging. “She fell in the water, but it was my dog—my dog basically knocked her in.”

  “The water? Both of you, please come inside.”

  Now the girl melted sideways past her father into the front hall and Gordie followed, despite protesting, “I don’t want to drip on your rug. Yes, the river. My dog kind of shoved her, accidentally.”

  “The river!” Light dawned. The man stared at his daughter, seeming at last to absorb just how thoroughly drenched she was: much more so than Gordie, or than anyone who’d simply been out in the rain. “Biscuit, are you all right? You fell in the Hudson? Where?”

  “The Hook,” she said, and arched her back and stuck out both arms in such a way that Gordie’s dad’s wet lumberjack shirt slid to the floor. Her father picked it up and spread it on top of the radiator, and then took a big fleece jacket (from the look of it, his) from the coatrack beside them and wrapped it around her, rubbing her back and arms as Gordie detailed more plainly the course of recent events.

  “I’m grateful you were there,” said the father, when Gordie had more or less summed things up.

  “Oh, no,” Gordie demurred, and tried to clarify that if he and his dog hadn’t been there in the first place the girl would have needed no rescue. But then she spoke up, for the first time in Gordie’s presence betraying a hint of garrulity, insisting that she hadn’t needed a rescue in any case, since she’d known how to swim since she was four.

  Nevertheless, the father looked at Gordie with heavy gratitude. “John Ryrie,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Gordie Joiner.”

  The man’s grip was fantastic.

  “Well: I’m indebted. This one”—he looked at the girl—“has been something of a concern to us lately.” His voice seemed tinged with private rue, something like self-reproach. The father laid a broad hand on top of his daughter’s head. She caught Gordie’s eye then with a look of insolent amusement, and he was taken aback. It seemed to imply a connection, a complicity between them. Had they shared something, he and this child who had snubbed his attempts at conversation in the car? If so, what? An adventure? A secret? He felt hopelessly slow.

  “Um, Mr. Ryrie,” he said, and cleared his throat. He decided he would, he must, mention what he’d seen this Biscuit-Elizabeth-girl doing just prior to her plunge. By intervening in the first place, by delivering her home, he’d incurred a responsibility.

  “John,” the father corrected him.

  “John. I don’t know whether I should say . . . I asked in the car, but . . .” He cleared his throat again. “I just wondered if you knew—”

  But he broke off in mortification at the sudden arrival of Ebie, who came nosing-and-shouldering her massive way through the open front door. She circled the front hall rapidly, the ungainly sway of her hips and damp thwack of her tail making the space seem very cramped, and threaded among the humans, blithely disseminating her gamy perfume.

  Gordie tried to grasp her collar. “Ebie!—sorry—come, girl. Sorry. I don’t know why she’s—Ebie, no!” She ended up by Biscuit-Elizabeth, on whose foot she trod once before inserting herself decorously between girl and coatrack. There she sat, giving the distinct impression of hoping to go unnoticed.

  The girl’s hand floated to the dog’s neck, fingers twining deep into the fur.

  Gordie shrugged, let his hands fall to his sides. “She apparently likes your daughter.”

  “I see that.” John rubbed his cheek with two fingers. He looked at the dog. Ebie, apparently conscious of being under scrutiny, did not make eye contact with her observer but thrust her face slightly in his direction and thumped her tail. John laughed. “Well. Gordie, right? And Biscuit.You’re both soaked.” He gestured ironically, as if to acknowledge he’d stated the obvious. “Bis, go up and put on dry things. And if you”—he turned to Gordie—“could possibly spare the time, I’d like to offer you tea or . . . coffee, cocoa? A dry sweatshirt? And to hear what you were starting to say.”

  It was unsettling how glad the invitation made Gordie, how almost relieved he was to receive it.

  Before he could respond, however, the girl spoke up. “Who’s she?” Pointing a finger toward the doorway that led from the hall.

  A young woman leaned against the frame. She had short dark hair and wore a dark turtleneck and faded jeans. Her feet were bare, her arms folded across her chest. She was observing them all with a half-smile, a look of loosely reined amusement. Gordie had no idea
how long she’d been there. She alone in the room appeared wholly unconcerned, comfortable in her skin. He found himself interested in this, if slightly unsettled by it.

  4.

  Paul and Baptiste sat at the counter of the Skylark polishing off an order of fries, their backpacks slumped soggily at their feet. They’d known each other since Baptiste moved to Nyack in third grade, but had not formed a friendship until last year, when both happened to join cross-country, the only team that didn’t make cuts. They’d become at that time not so much best friends as each other’s only friend. What had begun as a vague affinity (based on their finding themselves, practice after practice, bringing up the rear together) developed into something more when they discovered they shared an appetite for comics and a talent for drawing. But what cemented their friendship was death. Paul had had to miss a few days of practice last spring while his mother was in the hospital. When he came back and told Baptiste why he’d been out, it became the occasion for Baptiste’s disclosure that he had lost a sibling, too. His little sister. Also his father. Back in Haiti. Last year.

  “Dude. At the same time?”

  Baptiste made the slightest movement with his shoulders; the shrug would have been seismographically undetectable. “Their bus,” he said, and took one hand out of his back pocket to show how it had tipped on its side.

  The boys had clocked many hours together last summer sprawled on the floor of Paul’s bedroom or out on the Ryries’ front porch, working on what was at first going to be a comic book and then morphed into a graphic novel, the heroes of which were kind of alter egos, the one a lean and princely boy who could change at will into a black panther; the other a hulking, trench-coated private eye who could make himself invisible. By the time they’d begun seventh grade, they’d completed sixtythree pages and had more or less woven together the two story lines in a mixture of pencil, blue ballpoint, and black India ink.