The Grief of Others

by Leah Hager Cohen

  The clock behind the cash register said three-fifty. The rain had stopped and the sun come out, its brisk light slicing sideways through the air.Through the plate glass they saw things snapping in a freshly risen wind.

  Baptiste could now head home. He was not allowed to go straight home from school because his grandmother, with whom he lived, worked as an aide at the hospital and didn’t get home until four, and she had a fear of someone with a knife breaking into the apartment when Baptiste was home alone.This was the explanation Baptiste had given when he and Paul were first beginning to confide little things in each other, and although Paul found both the rule and the specificity of the concern bizarre, he had never voiced that opinion. In truth, he was a little awed by the dignity with which his friend honored his grandmother’s wishes. Paul had met Mrs. Lecompte only a handful of times, and his impression was of wearily maintained formality. She spoke little in Paul’s presence, although Baptiste said her English was good. She had an imposingly straight back and a heavy, mineral countenance.

  Ever since Paul first learned of Mrs. Lecompte’s prohibition on Baptiste’s arriving home before four o’clock, he’d fallen into the habit of keeping Baptiste company after school on days they didn’t have practice. Baptiste had at first seemed leery of such omnipresent companionship, then tolerant, and eventually content with it.The boys would walk down the hill from the middle school together, cutting through the old apple orchard and across the thruway overpass into town. Some afternoons Baptiste came over to the Ryries’ house; some days they walked down to the public library and got their homework done; some days they kicked around the shops and wound up by the river, chucking rocks into the water. Lately they’d begun frequenting the Skylark, at least whenever they had enough cash between them to order a piece of pie or plate of fries. They were thirteen, and the experience of patronizing a restaurant without an adult was novel enough to constitute a small thrill in itself.

  “How much you got?” asked Paul. “I got one-eighty.” He was thinking maybe they could split a plate of scrambled eggs, the fries being nearly gone, but when Baptiste counted up his money they were short. “Oh well. I guess we better be going, anyway.”

  “Yeah.”

  Baptiste, whose aptitude for math was understood by both to exceed Paul’s, figured the tip. They deposited a small pile of bills and coins and left, slinging their backpacks over their shoulders as they stepped out into the brisk and newly sunstruck afternoon. Puddles glimmered everywhere. Leftover drops shook and sprayed from the Skylark’s awning, the scalloped edge of which was flapping madly in the wind.

  “Want to come over?” Paul issued the invitation halfheartedly, not because it was insincere, but because he knew what Baptiste’s answer would be.

  “Can’t. My Grann.”

  “A’ight. See you.”

  “See you.”

  They went their opposite ways on Main Street, Paul downhill, Baptiste up. Baptiste and his Grann lived in four rooms on the first floor of a house on Elysian Avenue. The apartment was north-facing, spartan and dim. Paul got asked in only rarely. He’d been surprised the first time he saw Baptiste’s room, two full walls of which were papered with pictures cut from newspapers (a lot from sports, but a fair number from the travel section, too: a Kyoto temple ringed by mist, a Thai beach at sunset, an okapi eating leaves off a tree in Zaire). Not only which pictures had been selected, but also the way the images had been arranged, what their art teacher would call the composition, had been arresting. From across the room, the whole thing made a colorful abstract, a work of art in itself, apart from what the individual pictures showed as you moved in and examined them more closely. There was a sense of exuberance in the project that had surprised Paul, a capacity for investment that was nowhere evident in the Baptiste he knew at school.

  The air was astringent after the rain and thin-feeling, as if it had just been pruned. Paul’s jacket was still wet from the downpour; he and Baptiste had been caught smack in the middle of it as they walked to the Skylark. He felt a bit penitent now about having eaten all those fries (just yesterday a girl in his class had called him “Chub” to his face), and at the same time wistful about the eggs. He would have put ketchup on them, and salt on the hash browns that would have come alongside.

  Baptiste, though equally slow in track events, was not hampered by extra girth. Although he could hold up his end just fine when it came to scarfing a plate of fries, he was pretty much a pipe cleaner. Paul didn’t quite get how Baptiste could be so slow—the thought had once come into his head that what weighed his friend down was something along the lines of sorrow, but immediately he’d chided himself, embarrassed at what seemed to him the girlishness of this speculation.

  The walk home from the Skylark was only four blocks, but it seemed long to Paul, today and every day. The straps of his backpack dug into his shoulders through his wet jacket and the wind brought tears to his eyes. His feet slapped heavily in their Doc Martens. He did not like his body or the way it felt to move it: like drudgery, like a slightly disgraceful chore.

  He hadn’t passed more than a few shops when he heard his name belted out: “Ryrie!”

  He shouldn’t turn his head. He turned his head. It was Stephen Boyd, hanging out in front of Turiello’s, his jeans hanging eight inches off his waist, his jacket on the sidewalk. He gave a laugh that meant nothing to Paul and jerked his head in greeting. “How’s it hanging?”

  “Hey,” said Paul, nodding back. He’d stopped, a mistake; it would look as though he expected more conversation. He should have said hi and kept walking.

  But Stephen, ruddy-cheeked and scruffy-haired, smiled as if to commend him, as though he’d said something incomparably witty. It was true—that was the thing of it—asshole that he was, that Paul knew him to be, Stephen had an irresistible smile, mischievous and oddly flattering; it seemed to convey that anyone who could elicit such a smile must be of special worth. It confused Paul for a moment, made him think the bluff greeting had been in earnest. Maybe it was. Who was to say his time of social hell wasn’t coming to an end, a natural conclusion as unpredictable as its inception had been, back at the start of sixth grade?

  “Where’d your friend go?” asked Stephen, a not unreasonable question. Paul figured he must have noticed him and Baptiste parting ways up the block.Yet he hesitated.

  Stephen raised his brows encouragingly. Remnants of smile lingered on. He had ridiculous amounts of charm—even teachers seemed uncertain, at times, about whether Stephen was cracking wise or speaking in earnest. His boxers—the exposed two-inch swath of them—were striped blue and green. Some of the boys hanging out by the door of the pizza place sauntered over; Paul hadn’t noticed they were with Stephen. Two were eighth-graders.

  “Where is he?” he repeated, amiably enough, as though Paul had already replied but Stephen hadn’t quite caught his answer.

  When Paul went to speak his voice rattled phlegmatically; he should have cleared his throat first. “Home.” He wanted to stab himself for that—for answering, obeying. He could not help it; there was no clever retort, or if there was, he couldn’t think of it. Anyway, it was a simple fact, hardly incriminating; why not answer directly? Only the way they all stood around, clumped and grinning, made it into something else.

  “That’s too bad,” Stephen said. Again, low chuckles, from his cronies this time. Not overtly nasty. Almost, those chuckles could be read as affectionate, sympathetic. Then, “Dude, he’s blushing,” one of the older boys said, and the laughter turned grosser, and the tone of the whole preceding exchange turned unambiguous. Paul hurried away, having the guts to give them the finger, but holding it tucked against his chest so they couldn’t quite see. The worst of it was that he really could feel the blush.

  “You see him checking out Boyd’s shorts, man?” one of them rasped behind him, and there were hoots.

  It had been this way, more or less, for almost the past two years. He had no idea why. He’d been liked well enough in elem
entary school. Of course, it hadn’t helped that his best friend, Alexi, had moved to Florida at the end of fifth grade. But it wasn’t as if Alexi had been his only friend. In fifth grade, fifteen kids had attended his birthday party, brought him gifts in colored paper, played capture the flag with his mother’s dish towels, sung to him. By the following autumn most of these same kids, if they did not actually abuse him outright, would greet him in the hallways abstractedly if at all. And not one rose to his defense when other kids, those who had never been his friends, targeted him with their teasing.

  “You’re smart, and you’re sensitive,” his mother said when he confessed through tears, the second month of sixth grade, what was happening—though whether she offered it as explanation or compensation, he couldn’t tell. “Rise above it, if you can,” his father said. “Think how insecure they must be, to feel they have to tease others. You could think in terms of feeling sorry for them.”

  He practiced being sorry for them the rest of the way home. He thought the words I’m sorry for you and I pity you, but what he meant was I’m sorry for your mother having to look at your shitass face every day and I pity you for being such a sorry fucking scumbag. His thoughts were bullets shot from a gun. Hollow-point, armor-piercing. By the time he reached his block, Paul had killed Stephen Boyd and his cronies several times over. He felt, if not better, at least a few yards removed from the epicenter of hatred and shame. He also felt—how could this be?—hungry again, empty in the gut.

  His father’s truck was in the driveway. Paul registered the fact with a twinge of minor curiosity. It was not routine, yet neither was it bizarre. Depending on whether or not a show was going up soon, his father might get home from work in the afternoon or not until late at night. He went across the porch, pushed open the door, and shed his wet backpack and jacket in one motion, letting both lie where they landed on the tatty hall rug. “Dad?” he called, heaving off his boots.

  “Paul?” His father answered from the back of the house. “We’re in here.” Walking through the passageway, Paul detected multiple voices, and when he rounded the corner he saw that the kitchen was seriously populated. His father sat at the table. So did a wiry young man with red hair, wearing one of Paul’s father’s sweatshirts. It was far too big for this stranger; even rolled up, the sleeves fell past his knuckles. Cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the radiator, sat his sister, Biscuit. She wore her pilly lavender bathrobe and was eating a banana in that overly attentive way she had, while stroking the side of a vast black dog, which lay on the floor beside her with its chin on her thigh. Finally, leaning against the stove, both hands laced around the chunky, lumpy alphabet mug Paul had made in second grade, stood a young woman with dark hair cut spikily short and a spark of a smile between her pursed lips.

  “O-kay . . .” said Paul from the doorway, shaking the long bang that drove his mother crazy out of his eyes.

  “Come on into the room, Paul.” His father sounded so expansively casual that Paul knew he was tense. “You remember Jessica? I don’t know how old you were, the last time we were all together.”

  “Paul!” burst the woman at the stove, and it was too much. As if she’d thought the same thing, she tamped down the enthusiasm, following her initial utterance with only a low “Wow.”

  She was not as he remembered. She looked shorter, plainer, denser. All her thrilling miles of hair hacked off.

  There seemed to be a mass of cotton in his throat. “Uh, I think so,” Paul mumbled, casting an interrogatory glance at his father. “Jessica as in Jess?” As if he wasn’t sure.

  “Our sister,” Biscuit put in helpfully, although for her it must be brand-new; she had been too little to have any previous memory of Jess.

  “O-kay,” he said again. “Great. Hi.” He clasped his hands together audibly. It was a consciously comical gesture; he had recently discovered he had a knack for delivering a certain kind of stand-up, a flattened, staccato, affectless patter. It went over best with older audiences, his parents and their peers, and he’d begun to use it as a cover when he was feeling anxious or agitated. “So. Why’s Biscuit wearing a bathrobe, since when do we have a dog, who’s he?”—pointing at the red-haired fellow—“and by the way”—pointing at Jess—“that’s my mug.”

  Jess, to his consternation and delight, did not seem flustered but hoisted the mug in small salute and gave him a nod.

  Biscuit said, “The dog’s Gordie’s.”

  His father said, “Paul, my son.This is Gordie Joiner. He helped your sister out today.”

  The dude’s ears turned red. “Well, not exactly.”

  Then, overlapping:

  “Your sister skipped school—”

  “Actually, it was my dog—”

  “I can swim perfectly well—”

  “Gordie was kind enough—”

  “Newfs have this instinct—”

  “—like I would have learned anything I cared about.”

  The more confusedly their voices entwined the more stolid grew Paul’s silence. Jess, it was impossible not to notice, held herself equally still, so that through their very inaction, a commonality was forged. Paul stole a glance. She really looked completely different from the last time—the only time—he’d seen her. Then she’d been willowy, almost gangly, with hair to her waist. She’d worn braces on her teeth, been tan and freckled, towered above him. Now his father’s first child was his height or a hair shorter, and her skin moon-pale, and her figure filled out. She was solid-looking, the way a bird can seem plump without being fat. He forgot what their age difference was—ten years, eleven? She must be in her early twenties.

  His father and Biscuit and the scrawny red-haired dude finished up their story. Paul waited a beat and turned to his father. “What does all that have to do”—inclining his head toward the stove—“with her?”

  “Nothing,” his father admitted. “A coincidence. We’re having an unusual afternoon.”

  “You think?” Paul knew his father would probably have welcomed some help juggling the company, but he did not feel it within him to offer any. He wasn’t sure why seeing Jess should make him angry, but he was aware of wanting to hit something. He flashed a sardonic smile. Then, in a manner he understood was rude, he crossed to a cupboard, leaving a trail of large damp sock prints on the floor, and got down an unopened package of Hydrox. He turned to face the room at large and executed a small bow. “A pleasure. Now if you’ll excuse me.” And strode through the doorway toward the front hall.

  “Hey, Paul . . . ?” His father’s voice sought after him.

  “Book report,” Paul yelled back, fraudulently. He grabbed his backpack and clomped up the stairs in the way his mother had spoken to him about many times. In his room he kicked the door shut, peeled off his wet cargo pants and socks, pulled on a pair of sweats, switched on his desk lamp, tore open the Hydrox, and inserted a cookie in his mouth, all in fluid progression.Then he sat very still, not chewing.

  Though he’d met his half sister just once, a long time ago, the memory was vivid. It had been summertime; he must have been just about to turn six. Biscuit (precocious in many things but not in toilet training) had been, at three, still in diapers. They’d spent two weeks together, his whole family and Jess, upstate where his mother’s parents had a cabin on Cabruda Lake. Jess had been a teenager then and accordingly remarkable to him, with her guitar, her braces, her friendship bracelets, her long, heavy hair.

  He’d felt rich on that holiday, rich with the sudden acquisition of her. He’d known, because his parents had told him, what “half sister” meant: Daddy is her father but her mother is another lady. Even so, he couldn’t fully dispel the impression he’d formed, upon first hearing the term, of a mythical being, half sister and half something else, the way a centaur or a mermaid was halfand-half. And half his, too, for that was what sister meant, only in this case the word seemed far more exotic and advantageous than in the case of his other sister, never mind that Biscuit was a hundred percent his: she cri
ed and stank and was liable to put his things in her mouth.

  This one played with him. She threw him like a torpedo through the water and taught him how to spit high in the air like a fountain. She showed him how to make food for the fairies she said lived in the woods, grinding pine needles and tree sap into a sticky porridge, which they set out on leaf-platters upon tablecloths of moss. She combed his hair, after swimming, into a Mohawk, and used some of her own mousse to make it stiff. She instructed him on how to dig fingernail X’s into the mosquito bites she couldn’t reach on her back. She sang along to folk songs she played on her guitar; other times, she let him strum it while she made chords. She teased him, too, as no one had ever done. She called him Paolo instead of Paul, said “Peeyew” and held her nose whenever he took off his shoes, and sang, with a pronounced, insistent twang, “Why don’t you love me like you used to do?” at random intervals to him during the course of the holiday. “How come you treat me like a worn-out shoe?” When he’d shrug in hapless embarrassment she’d say, “That’s cold, man.” Her teasing had the strange effect of making him feel both overwhelmed by the privilege and on the verge of tears.

  Her name was Jessica Safransky, impossible to resist chanting several times in a row, and Paul had chanted it a lot, during that holiday and in the weeks following, after they’d returned to their respective houses in different parts of the state. Jess had been only on loan, it turned out, from the Safranskys. That was the curious phrase his mother had used, as though Jess were a library book. During their time at Cabruda Lake Paul had given no thought to the provenance of her last name; it had seemed fitting that such a fantastic being should come bearing her own distinct appellation. Only afterward did its implications dawn on him. Weeks after the vacation he’d asked when they would see Jess again, and was by way of indirect answer given this piece of information: the Safranskys lived in a town far, far up the Hudson River, past Albany. Albany: even the word sounded distant, milky and cool as a train whistle. He’d envisioned a citadel on a hill, white flags rippling from the spires. But, wait—Safranskys, plural? Well, yes: Mr. Safransky was Jess’s father, having married Jess’s mother long ago. But wasn’t Daddy her father? Daddy, it was explained, had never been married to Jess’s mother. He had once been Jess’s father, it seemed, but now there was another who’d taken his place. And so. In this way Paul lost his early sureness about the world. Fathers could be interchanged; sisters could come in fractions. The easy manner with which his mother explained these things made them only more distressing.