Early Departures

by Justin A. Reynolds

  33

  And of course, we all see what Whit’s doing.

  That she’s pushing us to heal.

  But that doesn’t mean I gotta like the salve.

  Soon as I realized where we were headed, I started shaking my head. “Whit, I don’t know about this.” I said this over and over, until I lost count.

  At one point she reached across the seat and squeezed my hand. “It’s time,” she said. “It’s been time.”

  Autumn leans forward in the back seat, palms my shoulders in a show of support.

  I spot the sign first. Elytown Greenhouse Emporium. We pull into the drive and I can’t look.

  I squeeze my eyes tight, like a belt that’s skipped a notch.

  “Jamal,” she says softly.

  But nope. Can’t do it. I’m sorry. I can’t.

  “I come back here . . . a lot actually,” she says. “I sit in that parking lot across the street and wait until they close, wait for the last car to pull out. And then I walk right over. Must’ve come here half a dozen times before I realized there’s a small gate in the back that’s always unlocked. Takes you right to the trees. I walk through them, around. All types of trees. Every type. And I remember the four of us moving up and down these aisles. You leading the way, because it was your day. Mom and Dad, they were extra corny that day. Dad kept nuzzling Mom with his new beard.”

  I laugh, but I don’t open my eyes. “Mom hated that beard.”

  “It was pretty terrible. But like in this gloriously awesome way.”

  “Yeah. It’s hard to tell, looking at us, but our parents were kinda cool.”

  She shushes me. “You can’t say that out loud. They’ll arrest you for that.”

  I smile. “God, can you imagine how big their heads would’ve gotten had we actually told them that? That we thought they were cool?”

  “I don’t know that I thought so back then. I mean, I loved them, but they had their things too. They’re only perfect in our heads.”

  I nod. “True.” I open my eyes. And my head is buzzy and for a few seconds everything is a blurry technicolor. It’s strange, how every time I remember that day, when I see this greenhouse vividly in my head, it seems so huge. Looming. But in reality, the lot’s maybe large enough for ten vehicles, and the greenhouse is the size of a three-car garage. “You still come here?”

  Whit bites her lip, maybe to stop it from trembling. “I do.”

  “Often?”

  She nods.

  “Makes you feel closer to them? In your own way? Makes them feel alive?”

  She nods again.

  “A fortress for your heart.”

  The greenhouse only has seven saplings.

  “We could go to other nurseries,” Autumn suggests.

  Whit agrees. “Combined I bet you we get to twenty-five.”

  But I shake my head. “For this, I think it’s less important how many trees and more important that all the trees only come from here.”

  “Fair,” Whit says.

  And we load the seven into the car, a perfect fit.

  As the car rolls to the edge of the driveway, Q and Autumn busy watching clips on her phone, I’m increasingly desperate for any distraction.

  Whit studiously glances left, then right, waiting for traffic to clear, the street seemingly infinite in either direction.

  “So,” I clear my throat. “How’s Angeles’s finals going? Any news yet?”

  And yes, I do care about his tests, but mostly I conjure Angeles to redirect my brain, to wash away Dad’s voice: Our love is at an al-pine high! Our love is at an al-pine high!

  “He says everything’s a lot harder than he thought it’d be, that he’s probably gonna fail the quarter and get a job selling used cars, asks me if I’ll still love him. Which, in Angeles talk means finals are going great,” she says, grinning.

  But then it clicks for Whit, and she quickly turns us around, cuts the car across the lot. And despite it leading us onto another street, essentially forcing us to drive in a circle and easily adding ten minutes to our trip, we use another exit.

  We can’t use that exit.

  Because not everything should be as it was.

  Because every trip should build in time for detours.

  We swing by Q’s to pick up his mom, and to grab shovels and rakes and other gardening equipment.

  And then the five of us make the drive my family never got to finish.

  It’s odd.

  How a road you’ve never traveled feels cursed?

  How sometimes it’s the things that don’t happen that haunt us hardest.

  We scour the preserve for the perfect spot.

  Settle on a clearing encircled by spruce and evergreen.

  Everyone sort of stands back while Whit and I argue over who should break ground first. But in the end, Whit wins, and after I double-glance her way to make sure it’s really okay, I stab the shovel into the grassy soil.

  And I hold it there a minute, half the shovel face beneath ground.

  I wait for a sign, any indication that this is wrong, wait for Mom and Dad to materialize and voice their displeasure. But that doesn’t happen, and all I feel is a happy-sadness.

  Two years ago, I couldn’t wait to be here. We’d had a program at school about protecting the environment, and every student was given a sapling to take home.

  That same evening, I sunk my shovel at the back of our lawn, Dad looking on.

  “Hole needs to be bigger,” he’d said.

  And I’d made it bigger.

  “Still not big enough,” he’d said. I kept digging.

  We went on that way another few rounds until Dad bust out laughing. “I better stop you before you get to China.”

  Mom coming out to see what was taking so long and then telling Dad he was wrong for that. “Boy’s too gullible,” Dad said.

  “He gets it from you,” Mom said.

  “Please, that’s from your family.”

  Mom pointed near Dad’s shoes. “Dre, you dropped your pocket.”

  Dad glancing down, Mom and I cracking up.

  He’d spent the rest of that day trying to trick us. Happy when he’d finally fooled an unsuspecting Whit.

  That night, at dinner, I announced my Carpet Denim.

  “Did you know every day nearly two hundred thousand acres of forest are cut down? Well, I want to put a few trees back into the ground.”

  If that stupid assembly had never happened, if I’d never brought home that tree, if . . .

  If.

  If.

  A game that never ends.

  Whit digs the next hole and her tears drop into the hole ahead of the sapling.

  We sculpt and pat the earth around each small tree.

  And there’s an eagle gliding back and forth across the horizon and Ms. B says it means this work will be blessed. I don’t push her for what blessed means, because it’s not what matters. Two years later, there is finally dirt beneath my fingernails, there are new trees in the ground.

  Whit and I each plant two, and Q, Autumn, and Ms. B each plant one too.

  When the final tree’s earthed, Whit walks back to the car, returns with two metallic vases filled with our parents’ ashes. I nod my approval.

  “Yeah?” she verifies. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  We stand there in silence, until Whit reaches for my hand. Squeezes my fingers, just as a plane buzzes overhead. I reach for the tree closest to me. Rub one of its waxy leaves between my fingers.

  And I say, “Mom, Dad, our love for you is at an al-pine high.”

  And then everyone’s hugging and crying and generally all in our feelings until suddenly Whit’s all hold up hold up hold up.

  And we stop in our tracks and wait for her to say whatever she needs to say.

  Except it turns out she doesn’t want to say anything.

  Well, not exactly.

  “There is one more thing our trees need to be complete,” she says, reaching i
nto a large garbage bag, which I’d wondered why it was there, but then naturally assumed it was for . . . garbage.

  But what Whit pulls out of that trash bag is garbage.

  And also it’s gold.

  And I know my face is all kinds of bewildered. Astounded. “How in the world did you get that?”

  Whit shrugs, smiles. “When I saw it had been ripped down from the tree, it didn’t take me long to piece together the who.”

  “You found it in the trash bin.”

  “After searching around the woods for an hour and thinking it was lost forever, yeah. But then a couple of days later I’m walking out the cans to the street for trash day—your job, by the way—when surprise, surprise, guess what’s sitting inside, upside down?”

  Whit holds the plaque out to me and I feel more tears.

  Whit points to the shovel at my feet. “I’m thinking we just kind of prop it up and slightly bury the bottom of it rather than screw it into the poor trees, whaddya think?”

  And the tears just keep coming, they just keep rolling, as we dig a small trench, wedge the plaque inside.

  And I don’t know, whereas it was the dumbest idea before, it makes sense now.

  It makes sense here.

  JADA & ANDRE ANDERSON.

  NEVER FORGET.

  And that’s how we came to finish my nearly two-year-old Carpet Denim.

  With five people who in the last four days have had enough arguments to fuel a small war. And yet, here we are, somehow finding a way to band together. To put the past behind us.

  Because sometimes the best family are the people you choose in spite of the bad stuff.

  Five people who didn’t always see eye to eye but loved each other regardless, scattering our two beloved parents among seven new trees in one lucky-to-have-them nature preserve.

  32

  “We should get an early dinner,” Whit says before we’re even out of the nature preserve.

  Q votes Chinese food, but Ms. B overrules him, says nobody wants to be around him post–Chinese food, which, truth.

  I toss out Italian and everyone agrees, pasta’s it.

  “But homemade noodles,” Ms. B insists.

  So we hit up the grocery store, then lug our haul into our house, Ms. B immediately asking Whit where we keep our pots and pans.

  “Go deep,” I say, and Q pretends to run a go route into the living room and I deliver the bag of garlic right on time, hitting his hands in perfect stride.

  “Okay,” Ms. B says. “If you two drop any food, or break anything, you’ll be handwashing every pot and pan after dinner.”

  “Welp. So much for that,” Q says.

  “Fun while it lasted,” I chime.

  Ms. B rolls up her sleeves and puts in serious work, whips together a batch of her killer spaghetti, homemade sauce with ingredients she won’t let us see her add, the four of us taking turns trying to ambush her, or distract her, but all our efforts are for naught and Ms. B’s recipe stays secret.

  She doesn’t even crack when Q, Autumn, and I offer up our garlic-bread-seasoning recipe in exchange for her sauce recipe—she actually kind of offends us, the way she turns her nose up, as if we somehow aren’t offering items of equal value, but whatever, her loss.

  Our recipe’s basically an entire loaf of sliced Italian white bread that we olive-oil-drizzle and then embellish with a carefully curated seasoning blend, sprinkled liberally.

  And by curated, I mean, we take turns shaking shit on we think looks cool or adds a unique flourish of color.

  Except Q’s last addition has even me perplexed—me, the person who adorned a few pieces with a dash of cinnamon, you know, for an unexpected boom, before the other slices were expeditiously removed from my reach.

  “Bro, star anise? What the heck is anise?”

  “Opposite of a nephew,” Q replies.

  “Duh,” Autumn adds.

  And yeah, it’s officially a thing now: double-team Jamal when possible.

  31

  We’re asking Whit and Ms. B for their bread-seasoning preferences when the color drains from Q’s face and his eyes go droopy and he complains of dizziness.

  Autumn doesn’t fully grasp the situation, because she has no idea Q’s dead, but she does appreciate that something’s really wrong.

  “Sip your water slowly,” Ms. B tells him, and I remember she’s a nurse, but then I also remember the kind of nurse she is, and I wonder if all nursing translates the same.

  I suppose, at the very least, assessing someone, checking their vitals, their level of consciousness, would.

  Ms. B stands up from the table just as Q draws the water to his lips—his hand trembling.

  “Q, what’s happening?” I hear myself say. “Q, are you okay?”

  But now Q’s entire body’s convulsing and before Ms. B or I can make it to him, the glass drops from his grasp, a mosaic of clear-blue glass scattering beneath the table.

  “Noooo,” Ms. B calls out.

  But it’s too late.

  I’m too late.

  She’s too late.

  Q’s pupils shrink to nearly a pinpoint, drool rappelling from both corners of his mouth, until his neck snaps forward and his entire face crashes into his plate, noodles leaping, sauce squirting like blood capsules.

  We stop Autumn from calling 911 even though I think all of us wonder if that’s the right move, if that’s actually in Q’s best interests.

  Instead, Ms. B frantically dials Mr. Oklahoma, immediately launching into Q’s pertinent health info as soon as he answers.

  I can just faintly hear Mr. O’s reply: we’re already en route.

  But I can’t even concentrate on what else he says, what else Ms. B relays, my eyes glued on my friend, my hand resting on his back. Autumn picking noodles from his hair, his face, because I think we just want to be useful and how do you do that when you don’t have anything of real value to add, other than concern, other than hopes and hastily heaven-sent prayers, even though you seem to only pray when shit sucks, when you’re all out of options.

  I don’t even know how much time passes before the men in black come streaming through our front door, this time adorned in stethoscopes and other, more-complicated-appearing medical instruments.

  Autumn whispers in my ear. “Who are these people? They’re not paramedics.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t think they are.”

  They remove Q’s shirt, attaching a series of circular sticky pieces to his chest and stomach—leads, Ms. B calls them. These leads are connected to a battery-pack-looking thing, and that’s plugged into a large tablet, operated by one of the nonparamedic women, who taps feverishly on the display screen, shakes her head, and then taps more.

  Meanwhile, the others administer oxygen, check Q’s blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure, respirations per minute. They check his blood gases, whatever those are. And a bunch of other labs, whose results instantly feed back to the large tablet.

  “He’s stabilizing,” the woman says matter-of-factly to her coworkers. And they continue their work until finally she announces stabilization achieved, and they quickly detach and remove their equipment, reshirt Q, then slide-board him onto a gurney.

  “Excuse me,” Ms. B says. “Where are you taking my son?”

  The nonparamedics cast each other looks like who’s talking to this upset lady, one-two-three not it.

  The woman asks Ms. B to follow her into the hall, and I hear their voices but not words. A few minutes later, Dr. Iverson shows up with Mr. Oklahoma, joining Ms. B and the woman in the hall.

  That’s when voices spike.

  Especially Ms. B’s.

  But then, after a while, she returns to the kitchen, stoops over her son, kisses his forehead. Strokes his temples, his wrist and fingers.

  Then it’s one-two-three-lift and we watch as they carry Q out and down our front walk. We follow them, watch Q slide into the back of a black van. The van plain and new.

  “Where are they taki
ng him?” I ask Ms. B.

  But Dr. Iverson says, “We need to run a few tests we’re unable to perform here in the field. Don’t worry. Q’s fine.”

  Mr. Oklahoma nods his agreement. “Nothing to be concerned over. Quincy is a fighter.” The second person this week to say that.

  And then as swiftly as they came, the three men and one women re-van and pull away. Meanwhile, Mr. Oklahoma opens Dr. Iverson’s car door, then walks to the driver’s side, looks back at the four of us over the top of the car.

  He waves like he’s not sure he should.

  Then they’re gone too.

  We stand there, silent, unsure what to do.

  And then Autumn turns to us. “So, what the hell’s going on?”

  We take turns lying to her.

  It looked worse than it was, our company line, which is only slightly better than hahaha, that was a joke! They’re gonna bring him back any minute now, hahaha.

  But Autumn knows me. My lying face, my half-truth face, my squeaky lying voice.

  “Something just happened, and I seem to be the only one who doesn’t know what,” she says, her eyes sweeping across our faces for a crack in our unified front.

  But we don’t cave.

  And then Ms. B’s climbing into her car, ignoring the stop sign, skidding around the corner.

  “You gonna tell me the truth?” Autumn asks.

  And I know this is it.

  A make-or-break moment.

  We both feel it.

  But I can’t. It’s not my truth to tell. And I tell her that.

  And Whit tries to convince her to stay, but she can’t peel out of our driveway fast enough. I wave my arms for her attention, yell through the driver’s side glass that I’ll call her later, but she rolls down her window, so I can see her face when she says it, so I can see she really means it.

  “Don’t bother,” she shouts, her eyes welling up. “Save your breath and lie to someone else.”

  And then, she, like everyone before her, is gone.

  Because, sooner than later, everyone leaves this house.

  30

  Later that night Whit’s phone rings and she sets it on the couch between us, Ms. B’s voice kindling-crackly, and I can’t tell if it’s the speakerphone or that she’s been crying.