West of You
A Novel of Forgiveness
Christina Metcalf
Ember Lane Books
Copyright © 2020 Christina Metcalf
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ASIN: B088TVT5W2
Cover design by: C. Evan Metcalf
Printed in the United States of America
To anyone who has ever felt like they’ve lost their way. You’re not lost. You’re just not there yet. Keep going.
***
And to Barton who kept the door open even when it meant shoving his hand into it.
To Grayson whose smile lights up a room and whose video game playing makes it difficult to work.
To Hayden who has always enjoyed adult conversations a little too much.
To Kendall and Big H, our story together is just beginning.
And to all those people who said, “writing is no way to make a living.” You were right but sometimes you have to do it anyway.
And....
For Katie. I wish you had stuck around. There were so many more adventures to be had.
AUTHOR NOTE
This book is not a memoire. It is a work of fiction and not in a veiled "wink, wink" kind of way.
There was no road trip, bad choices, ex's pregnant girlfriend, moms who didn't stick around, needy boyfriends, or trains. But the book was born of profound grief and emptiness.
My best friend Katie chose to end her life just shy of her 45th birthday. So I know how "Sara" felt. Like her, I spent a long time seesawing between anger and guilt. "Sara" is not me. Although we share a similar taste in music and a love of Mountain Dew and Big Macs. "M" is not Katie. I will never know why Katie ended her life. M's answer isn't hers.
If you have considered taking your own life, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
Suicide simply transfers your pain to those who love you and they will carry that pain forever.
Blaze of me
My best friend “M” arrived in the mail today. As soon as I saw the return address from Texas on the envelope, I knew this wasn’t some fun tchotchke from Amazon. After 27 years of friendship, it’s definitely the weirdest entrance she’s ever made.
When you’ve been friends with someone since early adulthood and well into middle age, chances are you’ve seen a lot of different sides of them but none had prepared me for this one. When you see your friend reduced to a few ounces of ash in a Ziploc baggie, it changes you.
I don’t have all of her, just some.
I tossed her envelope on the table and watched her for a while. I felt cold and dizzy and for the second time since her passing, I felt her there but shrugged her off. I wasn’t ready for her to be here yet. I stared at her manilla self in much the same way I look at the birds that crash into my front window, their necks twisted in an unnatural shape away from their bodies. You take one look and know they’re gone. Looking at her in that envelope, it’s hard to deny anything else.
Still, I wish I had seen her dead. This just feels like a bad joke like she’s going to call me and tell me she’s angry for how disrespectfully I’m treating her remains.
I thought briefly about opening the bag and adding water. Maybe I could regenerate her. But truth be told, she was more of a vodka drinker than a water one. Plus, I don't know what part of her I have. Not all of it, or her. I could have her lower intestine or her t-shirt for all I know. I don’t know what she was incinerated in but probably not a t-shirt. I thought about inquiring but then figured it probably didn’t matter.
So I stared at her and she at me. Or at least, if I have her eyes, I imagined she was staring at me; looking at me with anticipation of one last hurrah. But there is nothing about my life that is exciting. What can I show her? Carpool? Homework? Little League? But...those would be things totally foreign to her.
I don’t think M ever found her place in this world. It wasn’t for lack of trying, at least at first. Everyone loved her. Said she was hysterical. Looking at her envelope, I can tell you, she’s not all that funny now. Nor is her journal. But that’s a story for later.
I picked her up and carried her envelope to a picture I found recently. It was a birthday gift. She had hand-copied a poem for me half a lifetime ago. Ironically, it’s entitled “Guardian Angel.” I tucked her baggie behind the photo as if she’s contraband or an illegal narcotic. I hoped my kids wouldn’t find her and decide she belonged at the bottom of a bong. Chances were good they wouldn’t. I don’t think it’s cool to take other people’s drugs without asking but I’m not entirely sure about user etiquette. Plus, my son was still a little too young. It’s not like he’s a child star.
I went to bed and told M I didn’t want to see her. Not now.
I’m just too angry.
Everyone gets a nickname
M’s guy Luke called me the next day to ensure that she had arrived safely. I said she did. I asked him what part he sent me. He didn’t laugh.
Instead, he asked me if I knew why. Why would she have done something like this? Didn’t she love him? He sobbed. I couldn’t understand where his anger was. She left us. She gave us all a one-finger salute and exited stage right without as much as a note. And all he could do was breathe heavily into the phone and apologize.
I made up an excuse about baseball practice and got off the phone before I realized it was only 10:30 on a Monday. For a moment, I could feel her judging gaze from behind the picture.
“Be nice,” she would’ve said. “I really like this one.”
“I’ll give him a nickname. Cry baby, maybe.” I would’ve rubbed my chin for effect as if I was considering hundreds of witty ideas all at once.
“Don't you dare.” she’d threaten.
“Can’t stop me.”
And she couldn’t.
✽✽✽
It’s hard to read pencil scrawl with your eyes closed but when I woke up from an apparent nap on the couch, her journal was on my lap opened to an entry marked Tuesday.
M had kept one since before I had met her. She recorded only the day (Monday-Sunday) and had volumes of journals on her shelf. She organized them by “phases” of her life. This last one had been aptly titled “Swipe Right.” There was no way to figure out what year it had begun (other than post Tinder) or which Tuesday I was reading. All I knew was that it wasn’t her last one. I still had half a journal left of entries.
But my brain had picked this one:
TUESDAY
Everyone I hate gets a nickname.
This was not news. Every time she was through with a boyfriend, she stopped using his name. You knew once she went from Ted or Adam to Festival or Smiling Clown, it was over. Sometimes she even told the guy his new name. Few of them realized the death knell it was. But M’s gorgeous smile and the way she dipped her chin and raised her eyes made most guys forget she was even talking.
There was s a Walking Dead marathon on and I spent the grizzly kill scenes thinking about M’s final resting place. I wished for a moment that she could’ve elected zombie form. Even if she wouldn’t have been much of a conversationalist, I would’ve given anything to be able to discuss her death with her. Even if all she had to add was “HHHHH” and “RRRRK.”
I gazed at my phone. The red number 12 lays across my voicemail icon. I consider clearing it out but then reconsidered. At least if it was full no one could leave
any more messages.
The Player to Be Named Later texted me as if he knew I was staring at my phone.
Get out and do something today. Even if you don’t feel like it. You need to.
What did he know about it and what I needed?
My son, Henry, walked in the house that afternoon and asked me what happened to people when we died, like he had been waiting since fourth period to ask. No “hi” or “how are you?” pleasantry. Just the question.
I wanted to tell him we become dust and then show him M in all her glory but I figured I’ll mess up enough parenting when he’s a teenager. So I gave him some malarkey about what I think is the after life and I create a brilliant world that sounds like a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. All the candy you can eat and pretty colors in the sky. I said more than that but it’s a little exhausting to remember it all.
He seemed happy with that. Maddie, his sister, didn’t seem as convinced. I thought I saw her roll her eyes but she was wearing headphones so I couldn’t tell if she was just getting into her “jam.”
She’s almost as old as I was when I met M. While I still feel like that 18-year-old in some ways, the person sitting next to me seems so much older than I was when I went off to college. At 16, Maddie knows more of what to expect in life, like she somehow received a glimpse into her future and knows how it will all play out. At her age, my biggest worry was whether I should stuff my bra when going out on a date.
I envied the decisions she had yet to make. The ones that would shape her life, My life felt so fixed. Like it was all behind me. My major decision these days was red or white wine.
I’m a liar.
I don’t drink white wine.
Luke called again. I guess he figured baseball practice was bound to be over if it started at 10:30 in the morning. Then again, maybe he had lost track of days like me. I stared at the phone willing it to make a decision on its own about whether I should answer it or not.
“Mo-om!” Maddie whined. It sounded like a whine but with the volume of a yell. She was good at that these days. It reminded me of how I addressed her when she was a toddler but without the furry.
“Pick it up for God’s sake!”
I looked at her like I couldn’t quite comprehend the language she was speaking. I could tell from the way she squinted her eyes that this tactic was as effective on her at bringing her annoyance to the forefront as it was on me when she did it.
She huffed like the wolf in the story I read her as a child and grabbed at my phone. The wild-eyed look she gave me made me think my phone was not long for this world. If she was waiting on a response from me, she would be disappointed. Perhaps if she took something meaningful...like my corkscrew.
She slid the phone across the counter at me with a quick shot I hadn’t seen her use since our air hockey table broke when the dog might’ve jumped on it or I might’ve toppled over onto it. In most cases such an accident would’ve just yielded a bad hip bruise and a couple of choice words for the deity but this table had been a cheapy I had picked up at a discount store. $29.99 well spent but they really should build those things better. I mean, who hasn’t fallen into one? I couldn't have been the first person to ever do that. Seems like that sort of testing should be part of the manufacturing process.
I caught the phone before it scored by going off the edge. I still got it.
A small voice from the other end of the phone/puck seemed unaware of the goal I just blocked.
“Hello, hello.” It was trying to make contact.
I pressed the speaker.
“You’re on the air.” I announced much the same way I had on W-TON, our college radio station in 1992.
“What can I play for you?” I asked the caller, winking at the kids.
Maddie snatched her phone from the counter and typed furiously. I guessed it wasn’t a song request. Henry looked at me the way he used to look at his closet every night before going to bed.
“Sara?” Luke’s Texas drawl was unmistakable and I knew without her having told me that it was one of the things M first noticed about him. I’d let that man read me a bedtime story any day. That’s not meant to be romantical.
“That’s my name.” I was about to add “don’t wear it out” but Henry’s stare was starting to creep me out a little, kind of like when you drive by an accident and they’re covering someone with a sheet. You want to see more and yet you’re horrified at the same time. It doesn’t feel good when you realize your ten-year-old is looking at you the same way.
“Have you read her diary?” Luke asked.
“I read Tuesday.” I was suddenly reminded of that scene in Grease when Danny Zucko tries to play it cool with Sandy but he was probably really all tied up inside, worried everyone would see his interest. It was like that but I had no interest. I hadn’t had any in precisely 31 days.
“What’s up caller? Bush or Clinton?”
“I just want to make a request.” I recognized her pinched east coast accent and standard issue annoyed tone.
“Bush or Clinton. Gotta pick one.”
“The Green Party.”
“Nope. Bush or Clinton.”
“Pretty sure they’re going to take you off the airwaves with these stupid questions.”
“Nope, I’m locked in...all night long.” I reminded her.
“They can pull the plug without accessing the control booth, you know.”
I looked around. The station was dead and I was fairly certain she was the only one listening.
“Bush or Clinton.” I pressed.
“Clinton. He has better hair.” She acquiesced but I knew she didn’t believe it. She said it to annoy me because it echoed the thoughts about why people vote the way they do, not out of conviction to some ideal but attachment to something silly, a smile, charm, or hair.
“There you have it ladies and gentlemen. The future has spoken. Clinton takes an early lead in our student straw poll. Anything to add caller?”
“Can you just play Adam Ant and remind everyone about the wet t-shirt contest tomorrow at TKE?”
“Not a school sanctioned event ladies and gentlemen but if you have something to show off, have at it tomorrow starting at 10. And for you caller...a fitting song.” I laughed and hit the key for “Goody Two Shoes.”
M always placated me. And she won that contest the next day, even without being officially enrolled, even without getting doused like the other contestants. She always came out on top. She was the kind of girl who could win the lottery without ever buying a ticket. And she was right about Clinton too.
Luke cleared his throat reminding me I was no longer in 1992. I wondered how old he had been at that time. 10 maybe?
“How’ve ya been?” he asked.
“You mean since this morning?”
I flicked a crumb off the counter and Maddie mouthed the word “stop.”
“Ya. Is that when we last talked?”
I nodded as if he could hear me through the phone.
“Did you read her journal?” he asked slower this time.
“Didn’t I tell you that already?”
“Did you?” he said it so quickly it sounded like one word.
“No one knew her better than you, Sara. I know that. I want to pretend that’s not true but…”
I cut him off. “Obviously not, Luke. Did I see this coming? Hell, no I didn’t.”
Maddie gave me an annoyed mother look and shot a quick glance at Henry. He was busy saving the planet from his gaming chair across the room.
“I probably knew her second best, would ya say?”
Normally I would’ve thought this was a rhetorical question but the higher pitch at the end made me think he needed reassurance.
“Sure.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
I couldn’t think of anyone else. Certainly not her brother and all the other guys in her life were long gone. She had never really been close to a lot of women probably because
it was so hard not to be jealous of her.
“I was thinkin’, maybe between the two of us we could figure it out.” he suggested.
“What?”
“Why…”
I knew what the rest of the sentence was “why she killed herself” but I also knew why it caught in his throat like it did.
“Probably.” my numb heart scorched by anger with her burned a little less for a moment. Not for her but for him. Did she realize how badly she would break this manly tough guy? If she couldn’t live for herself, couldn’t she have lived for him. As soon as I thought those silly words, my eyes burned and I turned away from Maddie’s gaze.
I looked out the window at the five uncompleted DIY project I’d started...the trellis, the raised garden, the koi pond, the half-painted fence and the swingset that was more likely to be completed for my grandchildren than my children who were already too old to play on it. In all fairness though, that was a Mike project along with the platform he built three feet off the ground in the dead oak in the back corner. I think he thought it could be a tree house.
“Would you…” Luke hesitated. “...come out here?”
I wanted a cigarette.
I turned around and looked at the kids. Henry was still pressing controller buttons quicker than I had ever seen him do anything and even Maddie had lost interest in what I was doing. I looked back at the garden of unfinished projects. If I called it that then it was a finished project by being unfinished. My philosophy degree was finally paying off. I wished I could tell Luke to put M on so I could share that witticism with her.
West of You Page 1
