There is no more hiding or pretending. It’s coming for me. It’s getting hard to eat. Sores sprouting inside my mouth. My joints ache, my legs. The pain emanates from my bones, my skin, my blood. I don’t think I can even shoot much longer—holding the camera, even just setting it up on a tripod, takes too much out of me. There is so much more footage I wish I had gotten. Don’t have any of my father. Not much of my mother either. She doesn’t like to talk about the past. Most of it is just me, maybe too much.
Once you get sick, it’s impossible to remember what it felt like in the Before. My body only knows what it feels now. I’ve spent the last few days just lying in bed. I can’t sleep. Some days I flicker in and out of dreams. Remembering New York. Random things flash in my mind. A drag queen, kissing me. Shawn, on a dark stage, stepping into a spotlight. Masses of people trying to make it in a city that never sleeps. I can’t wake up or I’m more awake than ever. I’ve thought about killing myself, but I don’t know how—I don’t have any pills, and maybe I’m too scared, too alive, too sad. I miss Shawn.
Last night changed everything. Last night showed me what I need to do, the only option.
I was on the couch, falling in and out of sleep, in and out of dreams. Then, a loud noise, like a crack of thunder, jolted me awake. Tires squealing. Sadie barking. Footsteps, doors opening, frightened voices. I hurried upstairs.
My father was running to the front door, holding his deer rifle, a look of pure panic on his face. My mother and Jess huddled together on the upstairs landing, my mother chanting, It’s okay. Now Sadie was whining, pawing at the door. My father told us all to be quiet, to stay still. He cracked the door open, looked out. It’s fine, he says. Nobody’s here.
I followed him out to the front yard, and my mother and sister came outside too, all of us standing on the lawn in our pajamas in the dark. Across the street, the O’Malleys’ light was on. They didn’t open their door to come out.
Still holding his gun, my father walked over to his broken-down Chevy, its tail pointed toward the garage. He circled around to the front of the truck. My mother asked what was wrong. For a moment I couldn’t get my breath.
Be careful, my father says. There might be glass.
Under the moonlight, I could see what he was looking at: a perfectly round bullet hole through the front windshield, a web of cracks blooming out from its center.
Someone shot it, I said, feeling a need to state the obvious.
My mother wanted to call the cops, but my father said not to bother. It’s just stupid kids, he said. It would be worse to involve the police, and what can they do anyway?
The only way for my family to get their lives back is for me to go.
It’s time.
I’ve packed, I’m ready. A few pairs of underwear, some clothes, toothbrush. My camera, of course. I don’t need much. I’ll come back for the tapes, maybe, or write a letter to make sure they get in Annie’s hands. She can edit out if I said anything too mean or too personal. Or maybe not. I also shot short videos that are like letters. Goodbyes. All the things I can’t say. One for Annie, one for Jess. One for Mamaw. One for my mother. One for my father. Those, I can’t ever watch. But I spent the day reviewing a lot of what I’ve filmed since I’ve been here, all this documentation. Everything that ever was. What will be left? Who will watch? Maybe my family, or maybe strangers. Glimpses of a life. A death. Maybe one day, people will want to know. Maybe, you.
We live our lives not realizing which moments are special or which are ordinary—what will we remember, what memories will we try to grab onto, to hold close? All of these moments that make up a life.
I wish I could believe the way my grandmother does. Even Shawn, who did not believe in God, claimed to feel the energy of the dead. I want to see his ghost. I want him to talk to me. I want to tell him I’m sorry. Forgive me.
One more look back—no, everything will turn to salt. My chest burns. My bones hurt.
Infected waters. Infected blood.
I lost my lover. My friends.
I could have swam to the bottom. Could have drowned in the Hudson.
But I came back here. Why? Why does anyone go home? You come back to be seen, to be accepted, and to be loved.
Time to sign off, my friends.
Ciao.
All the Young Dudes
Sharon
I stop outside his door, listening, wishing for the sound of a record playing, his voice, his cough, anything. The pain loops around my heart, tightens. What I should have said, or done.
When Brian told us he was moving to New York, we didn’t believe he’d really go. Who went there, except for people on TV or in the movies? He’d been working at the IGA, stocking shelves, bagging groceries, saving money. Enough for a bus ticket. The first few weeks, months, he was gone, I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was my son out on the streets. Travis kept telling me, It’ll be all right, he’ll come back home.
This time, Brian didn’t warn us. He went in the middle of the night. In the morning, I found a note, stuck underneath the butter dish, and my knees buckled.
Still, I wasn’t surprised. The disgusting graffiti. Me losing my job—I knew it was coming. Patients told Dave they didn’t feel safe around me, and he suggested I take some time off “until things settle down.” I’ll never go back. Like Lettie, I won’t forget who was on our side. All of it was taking a toll on my son, but I didn’t know how to fix things, how to make them better, how to reassure him. The last straw was the gunshot through Travis’s windshield.
I’m sorry I brought this on you, he wrote.
I called Annie, but no, she promised, he wasn’t in New York. He was still in Ohio. Staying with a friend, she said. That’s all she would tell me—said she didn’t know his name, or where he lived. She was lying. What friends does my son have?
“Tell me where he is,” I demanded.
“He’s fine, Sharon. I promise you, he’s okay.”
Lettie, who’s watched too many made-for-TV movies, said we should file a missing person’s report. Before we could, Brian called.
He spoke softly but firmly. “Don’t worry, I’m just staying here for a little bit, until things calm down. Don’t look for me.” He added, “I’m fine, please, believe me.”
The receiver burned in my hand. “Come back home,” I said.
I listened to his even breaths, but I was too late. “Bye, Mom,” then the brutal beeping dial tone assaulting my ear. He was gone. Again.
“Maybe we should think about moving,” I say, though I’m not sure I mean it. We can’t leave, not without Brian. But if he comes back? I’m thinking about fresh starts, about wiping the slate clean.
Travis looks up. “What?”
“I’m worried about Jess,” I say.
Although I spoke to the principal and he assured me that he and the teachers would make Jess feel welcome, I know they can’t, or won’t, stop every kid from saying something stupid and mean. Jess hasn’t said anything about school, or about Brian leaving. She won’t talk to me. She hides under those headphones, pretending she can’t hear me, or leaves the house, running, her legs taking her away from us.
“We can’t just run away. Anyway, things are getting better,” Travis says.
He truly believes things will turn around. Yesterday, he finally succeeded in getting rid of the graffiti on the garage door. The first time he tried painting over it, the red paint just bled through. Various cleaners didn’t work. But this most recent coat of paint took care of it. “Good as new,” Travis said, pleased. Clean slate.
“Listen,” he says now, “I talked to Wayne. He’s having a get together over at his house this weekend. He wants us to come.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He does this every Labor Day.”
“So everything’s okay now?” I ask. “Between you and Wayne?”
Travis turns back to the TV. A player stands at the plate, bat pulled back in anticipation, knees bent, waiting. “He’s my brot
her,” he says.
The player swings and the ball flies through the air. I don’t state the obvious: Yes, and Brian is your son. The words pierce my tongue like thin hooks, holding it still. After someone shot at our house, Travis said everything would be okay. He didn’t believe anyone truly wanted to kill us. And he was right—not us, but Brian. They came to kill my son.
Travis would never say this aloud, but he’s convinced himself that Brian is better off wherever he is, that he’s getting the care he needs, that he did this for himself, not for us. He’s telling himself an easier kind of story. Maybe Travis shouldn’t have painted over the garage door at all—then every day we would have to look at that hideous word and remember what they think of us, what they think of our son. I don’t want to start over, I realize. I just want Brian to come back.
Jess looks worried. “You’re not coming?”
“No, I’m going to get some stuff done around the house.” I make sure I smile. “You have fun, okay?”
“Let’s go, kiddo,” Travis says, his hand on her shoulder.
Maybe it is the right thing—let things get back to normal. Even Lettie is going to Wayne’s cookout. To keep the peace, she told me. A few of Lettie’s old friends, the ones who turned their backs on her, have been trying to make amends. With them, Lettie doesn’t budge. When Edna Davis came over with a green bean casserole, a peace offering, Lettie refused it. “Some things you can’t forget,” she said, but family is different. Or maybe it’s not.
After my father moved back to Columbus, he preached for a few years, and then retired to live out the rest of his life in that cramped, dark duplex. In the beginning, I visited every couple of months, then less as time went on. The kids didn’t enjoy going. There was nothing for them to do, and they preferred Lettie over him. They didn’t know him.
I didn’t either. Without my mother to care for or a sermon to prepare, he was a stranger. He sat in that recliner, watching the news and game shows and westerns. Pictures of my beautiful mother all over the house. I had no idea what to say to him.
He died from a heart attack when Brian was a sophomore. Jess, a toddler, didn’t go to the funeral, but Brian wore a tie and stood solemnly between me and Travis. The funeral was small and dismal. Church members in Columbus, and his sister, a shriveled raisin who I’d only ever seen a handful of times, stood in the back. My father left all his belongings to me. It wasn’t much. I sold the duplex and almost everything in it. I kept his Bible, photographs, and my mother’s thin gold necklace.
I went back to Chester with my husband and son, and closed the lid on that part of my life. I belonged to the Jacksons now, and I knew they would always be there. For so long I’d dreamed of the perfect life, and now I had it. I tried to forget my mother’s sadness and my father’s futile preoccupation with making her happy, and I held my family close, believing, foolishly, that we were protected from the strange, lonely grief that had taken such a heavy toll on my parents.
Where is my son?
I’ve driven all over Chester and Madison, searching. I wonder if Lettie has had any dreams or seen any signs, but I’m afraid to ask. The nights are rough—I toss and turn, and when I do close my eyes, I see him, not a dream, but actually him: standing there and glaring, arms crossed. I’m scared I’ve lost him forever.
I pick up a dust rag and wander the rooms, but there is nothing to do. The house is clean. The grass mowed. The garage door painted. Here I am, and my son is not. Across town, my family holds its annual cookout. The women congregate in the kitchen cooking and gossiping, and the men drink beer and tell the same old stories over the fire pit. Nieces and nephews, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, they’ll all be there. No one will mention Brian, and, I realize, that’s what I’m most scared of, that everything will be the same after all.
Jess
I dreaded going back to school, but at least it gets me away from our sad house, where every day my mother cries. No one sits with me at lunch, and when I’m walking down the hall, I hear kids cough “AIDS” or “faggot” behind me, then laugh. They make a big deal of me drinking at the water fountain, and one day in the bathroom I overheard a group of girls talking about my brother and how they heard he went to church and smeared his germs all over the pew, trying to give everyone AIDS. I don’t tell any of this to my parents. When my mother asks how school went, I say “Fine.” Mrs. Lansky, my English teacher, asked in a pitying voice, “Is everything okay?” I told her it’s fine. Everything is fine, fine, fine.
Sometimes I see Josh Clay—Mr. Clay, now, the guidance counselor—in the hallways. He wears pleated pants and button-down shirts, and he high fives the students he likes. He wants me to come by his office to talk. “Tell me if anyone is mean to you—that won’t be tolerated,” he says. But I won’t go to see him, not unless they make me. When he says hi, I keep walking, head down, my Trapper Keeper pressed to my chest. I like it best when I’m invisible, a ghost sliding through the hallways.
We don’t go to church anymore, but one evening Reverend Clay came over to the house, and he and my father talked on the front porch as if they were friends. My mother busied herself in the kitchen and would not come out.
No one in the family comes by and we hardly ever see the neighbors, except one day Deb Dennison brought over store-bought doughnuts, and she and my mother talked for a few minutes on the porch. I don’t know what they said. The doughnuts were stale.
Sometimes I miss Nick, and I think about how we should be living on the coast right now, watching whales migrate. He called a few times right after he left, but it’s weird on the phone—we don’t know what to say to each other. We go to different schools, we like different music. We don’t talk about my brother. We don’t talk about running away. A childish fantasy, a different life.
One good thing has happened. The track coach, Ms. Sizemore, saw me running through town this summer, and asked me to join the cross country team. I missed out on the summer training, but she said it’s okay since I was training on my own—I just didn’t know it at the time. It’s the first time our high school has had a team. My teammates, all upperclassmen, mostly ignore me. It doesn’t bother me. It’s not like softball where you have to work together. We run through town and the woods by the school and along the Buckeye. When I’m running, my thoughts are clearer than when I’m at school or at home. Sometimes I think about Brian and wonder where he is and if he’s okay. Sorrow pushes out through my hot breath. My muscles burn with the truth. I miss my brother. I think about how one of the last things I ever said to him was that I wished he’d never come back.
On my walk home, a green hatchback, with windows rolled down and blasting John Cougar Mellencamp, pulls up to the curb. I keep my head down, annoyed at myself for not wearing my Walkman. The headphones block out taunts and threats, and make me feel invisible. Without them, I’m a target.
“Jess, hey Jess.”
A girl’s voice. I look up. Angie Ray leans out the window, and Brett Wilson, the one who embarrassed my brother at the pool, sits behind the wheel, wearing sunglasses with orange reflective glass. In the backseat, Brandy White cuddles up to Mike Kirby and pretends not to see me.
“Is your brother dead yet?” Angie calls over the music. Their laughter tumbles out of the car. I see their open mouths, their joy. I keep walking. The skies are blue, the sun shining. Don’t cry, don’t cry.
“Are you gay?” Angie yells.
Then one of the guys, I don’t know which: “Don’t come back to school, faggot weirdo!”
Brett guns the engine and they take off, their laughter echoing all through me.
I get my Walkman out of my bag and slip the headphones over my burning ears and push play. I want to blame Brian for everything, but it’s not that easy. What did he do that was wrong? I walk over the bridge and look down. Things could have gone differently. Now it’s too late. The Buckeye looks muddy and still, like it’s frozen in time, but I know it’s moving. It runs from here into the Ohio River, which even
tually spills into the Mississippi, which goes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico where there are over twenty-five species of whales and dolphins. I turn up the volume and Bowie sings in my ear. Love, you’re not alone.
A couple of days later, when I get home from practice, my parents are still at work or out somewhere. I let Sadie out the back door, and pour a glass of OJ. Even when they’re home, the house is weirdly quiet. Since Brian left, it’s like we’re nervous about making any noise, like we don’t want anyone, even ourselves, to know we’re still here.
I go downstairs and turn on the TV to distract myself, but all I can think about is practice. I couldn’t find my rhythm today, and had a hard time breathing. Coach said not to worry, everybody has bad days. But I know who to blame—today, after the bell rang for lunch, Josh Clay stopped me in the hallway. “Jessie,” he said. “I need to talk to you. Can you come after school?”
“I can’t, I have practice.”
He saw the brown lunch sack in my hand. “I brought mine too. Let’s have lunch together.” He smiled, showing me his big white teeth. “We can eat in my office.”
I didn’t want to go, but he put his hand on my shoulder and guided me down the hallway. I saw a few kids glance at us. His hand felt too heavy and soft at the same time. When we got to his office, he opened the door. I just stood there.
“Am I in trouble or something?”
Josh’s face wrinkled in concern. “No, of course not. It’s just, well, we haven’t really got a chance to talk, since everything—”
“I have some homework to do,” I say. “For English class. I gotta go.”
“Jessie,” he said. As he stood in front of me, he moved his hand from my shoulder to my chin, cupping it and tilting my face up. He held his eyes on me. “Listen, someone told me that some of the older students were bothering you. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing happened.”
His eyes, which looked lighter than I remembered, studied my face. I hated how his hand felt under my chin, like he was holding me still, a dog hooked to a leash. He said he’d been worried about me. “I heard that Brian left,” he said. He didn’t look sorry, but like he wanted me to tell him it wasn’t his fault.
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