14.
It was still early when he decided he couldn’t wait at the house any longer. He couldn’t remember sleeping. In anticipation of his escape he’d made a production of getting up in the middle of the night and taking the cold medicine out of the bathroom cabinet. He left it out on the counter, a ring of red still puddled in the measuring cap—hopefully a convincing excuse for why he wasn’t getting up for his run. Before he left he rolled up a spare sheet and arranged it like a body under his bedclothes, because they wouldn’t do it in the movies so often if it didn’t work now and then. It should have felt silly and childish, as if he were sneaking out to break curfew, but whenever he tried to laugh he couldn’t.
He imagined the fury and the panic and the vain search for a note, the desperate arguments over whether or not to call the police. He might be anywhere by now, they would say, but he knew his mother would know—his father had primed the canvas. He wondered how long they would wait for him before they gave up hope and covered the mirrors.
He stood outside the house for a long time, knapsack over his shoulder, watching for the blaze of a light or a fluttering curtain. But there was only the buzzing porch lamp and the green glow of Laurie’s nightlight behind her blinds. No one felt him there. No one came to stop him. He didn’t linger.
For nearly an hour he waited alone at the meeting place, under the canopy and out of sight of passing cars. Now and then a flash of red passed beneath the streetlights and hope cut through him like lightning before fading away.
It was four minutes to six when one of the glimmers of red slowed at the crossing. Julian was only ever early when he was afraid. The Chevrolet swung into the lot and idled on the cracked asphalt. Past the glare of the headlights Julian was a gray shadow behind the windshield, barely visible, not yet tangible. Paul straightened, shouldered his knapsack, and walked toward the lights.
At first all they could do was stare at each other. It was the longest they’d been apart since summer, and there was no accepting the reality of him. Even when Paul kissed him, it felt like a dying dream.
“What happened to your arm, Pablo?”
Julian was sick again, his usual winter bronchitis; when he rested his forehead against Paul’s there was a menthol glint to his breath. He took Paul’s hand and pushed up his sleeve, following the gauze along the length of his forearm. For a moment Paul bit his tongue and endured it, then let go of Julian’s hand and covered the bandage again.
“I burned it.” He tried to smile, but Julian’s face still fell. “It’s all right. I’m not going to do it again.”
“You’d better not.” Julian affected an imperious carelessness Paul couldn’t believe he’d ever found convincing. “It has to be better from now on,” he said. “We have to start from scratch. You’re not going to try to make me hate you as much as you do, not anymore. You’re going to let me take care of you, even if you can’t stand to do it yourself. Promise me.”
He couldn’t lie, not directly, because Julian could always tell. But Paul could see his desperation for comfort, and he knew the answer was true. “It will be better, Julian,” he said.
Paul drove. They followed the rural route, north through sleeping farmland and the gentle waves of foothills. Even as the early light crested the horizon, the mist was slow to lift. They didn’t speak much, but it was a grateful and reverent quiet. For the first time in months there was something like peace between them. It was a blessing to find that peace again, in the moments before they preserved it forever under glass.
Julian lit his last cigarette and crumpled the empty pack into the glove box. When he rested his head on the window frame the gesture laid bare the left side of his throat, the shifting muscle when he swallowed and the soft beat of his pulse.
“Can I try that?”
Julian looked at him with a weary, skeptical smile. “I’m giving it up,” he said. “My lungs are enough of a mess already.”
“I know,” said Paul. “I just want to see what it’s like.”
Julian paused, then braced his forearm across Paul’s shoulder and held the cigarette to his lips. Paul knew he would be sick if he took the smoke all the way in, so he held it in his mouth, the way Julian had when they first met. It was bitter as burnt coffee, unpleasantly cloying, but he released the breath with a slow grace he’d never been capable of before.
“I know,” Julian said. He kissed Paul’s temple, very lightly, then leaned back and rolled the cigarette along the edge of the window to scatter the ashes. “People talk themselves into the strangest things when they want to look impressive.”
His heart had been racing since they left the city behind, but he pretended it was because of the smoke. When they passed the first road sign for the forest preserve, he let one hand slip from the steering wheel, and he held it to his throat until his pulse steadied. He was afraid, but it wasn’t from cowardice. They were nearing the only perfect and absolute thing they were capable of finding.
When they reached the little town just outside the park entrance, Paul drove through without stopping. Breath by breath, he made himself light.
“Is it all right if we stop in here for a little while? Just to stretch our legs.”
There was no suspicion in Julian’s eyes. In the end, there wasn’t any difference between trusting someone and underestimating them. “Tricking me into going hiking at a time like this,” Julian said, already acquiescing. “My lungs are full of wool, but I’m all right if we don’t walk too far.”
“Not far,” Paul answered. It shouldn’t have been so difficult to return Julian’s smile.
It was usually summer when he came here. He’d come with his father, then alone, and it was familiar as a recurring dream. The footpath was carpeted now with dead leaves and frost, but he remembered the woods chattering with birdsong, path fringed with bright ferns, wildflowers alongside the creek like smears of blue pastel.
They kept close, speaking very little, hands clasped tight. In the bleak quiet Paul could hear Julian’s every breath. He was dressed more casually than usual, as if to blend into a crowd. Corduroy trousers, tennis shoes, soft brown sweater under his wool winter coat. Not quite warm enough, not suited to the trail. But he didn’t look unhappy. Paul hoped he really wasn’t.
(He tried, without knowing why, to remember what Charlie Stepanek had been wearing. But the memory had left him, if he’d ever had it at all. It hadn’t seemed important.)
Paul didn’t let himself think too far ahead. He knew better. Julian understood him, and he would read the truth on his face before Paul was ready for him to know it.
The ravine was marked on trail maps, but from the path it was barely visible. Past the brush of a soft incline it plunged deep into the earth. As a child Paul had strayed from the path to get a look at it, trying to prove to himself that he shouldn’t be afraid, and he’d nearly reached the edge before he could see it at all. A sheer, unforgiving drop, down to crumbling boulders and a dying creek. Afterward he memorized the bend in the trail alongside it, and whenever he drew near it, he felt the pull of the void. At one time the fear had been enough to make him reluctant to return. But he was braver now, not least because of Julian.
Even for winter the woods were still. Paul let go of Julian’s hand and walked a few paces ahead. He took off his gloves, and he brushed his fingertips one by one over the fragile gray things that would survive around them. The rough belly of an oak, the bristling hair of a low pine, the silvery foam and fragile fingers of lichens. In the chill and the living quiet, he wasn’t afraid anymore. After a lifetime of yearning and trying not to yearn, he imagined the relief of surrendering.
Julian wasn’t far behind him—cold-chafed, still so thin, but as magnetic and as heartbreaking as he’d been the first time their eyes met. Paul could feel himself smiling. Never in his life had he felt so safe.
“Come and see,” he said, and he reached for Julian’s hand.
Julian didn’t move.
He knew.
They could see each other clearly, and the knowledge was absolute and irreversible. He knew, and he didn’t understand, and it was agony to see what it did to him. Paul wanted to cut the comprehension from his own body and graft it into his, because without it he was suffering.
“Julian.” Paul took a cautious step toward him, as if he were approaching a wounded animal. “Julian, wait, let me—”
But he ran.
Paul couldn’t avoid seeing the parallels. City dwellers in the wrong sort of shoes, unused to ragged terrain and the maze of trees. The pursuit didn’t last long this time, either. Stepanek’s drug-numbed feet had skidded on a blanket of wet pine needles; for Julian, it was a root across the path. Even a momentary fall was enough, because Paul was always faster. He’d been doing this all his life. Only now did he see the cruelty of the imbalance. Julian turned and sat up on the path, but he couldn’t get to his feet before Paul reached him. When Paul moved forward, he scrambled back.
“Pablo.” His voice didn’t sound anything like his own, or else it was the first time it ever had. “I’m sorry about the dog, I’m sorry, it was all my fault—Pablo, please, you have to let me make it up to you, I’ll do whatever you want—”
Paul didn’t want to touch him, not until he could make him see. “I’m not—Julian, I’m not doing this to hurt you, it’s not a punishment—”
Julian had backed right up to a tree, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Paul long enough to find a new path. “We’ll start over.” He was despondent and furious and still grasping, hopelessly, for any reason to forgive. “We were going to start over, we were going to be all right, I was finally going to make you happy—I love you, I love you so much, I’ll do anything for you, please believe me, please give me a chance—”
“I believe you.” Paul reached down as if to help him to his feet, but Julian recoiled. “This is because I believe you—it’s both of us together, it was always going to be both of us—it’s too late to start over, we can’t survive together, and it was me, I know it was, I’m so sorry—this is the only way we can fix it, it’s the only way we won’t ever have to be apart—”
“We wouldn’t be apart or together or anything else, it isn’t being anything.” Julian tried to get up again, but the twisted ankle wasn’t ready to support his weight. “You know that, you can’t help but know that, you know damn well your father and his family aren’t together now, they’re just fucking dead—”
He wasn’t losing his temper, or at least that was what he told himself. He pretended there was no rage and shame pulsing through his nerves. The problem was that Julian didn’t understand—the problem was that Paul was terrified and stammering and couldn’t keep pace with an argument. He wasn’t brilliant enough to explain in a way that Julian could accept. He wasn’t lashing out; he was cutting their losses. He promised himself it was a mercy.
At first Paul took hold of him hesitantly for fear of hurting him, and it was a mistake. Julian nearly managed to break free. His elbow cracked a cobweb across the left lens of Paul’s glasses, and there was pain, there must have been pain, but there was no time to feel it. He caught Julian by the neck and pulled him back down, and when he tried to twist away again Paul pinned him to the ground with one knee at his chest. Under the weight of his body he could hear the force of the air knocked from Julian’s lungs.
Before he placed his other hand at Julian’s throat, Paul threw his glasses aside. It would be dishonest to keep hiding himself behind them.
“I just wanted you to trust me.” There was no hope or defiance left in Julian’s face. Seeing him like this was unbearable. “Pablo, please, I don’t want to die.”
Three minutes without air. Another minute after that, maybe two, to double back and find the edge of the ravine.
“I know,” he said. He shut his eyes tight and told himself to be brave.
For the first time he remembered Stepanek, every detail that he’d arrogantly given himself permission to forget. Blood gushing dark from the back of his head, jaw clenched, body in spasm. How for the first time Paul had felt indifferent to what either of them deserved. He realized that he’d murmured something soothing to Stepanek before he finished it—It’s all right it’s almost done it’ll be over soon. A gentle lie for the unhearing ears of this thing that was already no longer a man.
He imagined Julian’s body the same way, given over to fractured synapses before the final stillness. It was an abomination, and it always had been. For Stepanek it had been no justice. For Julian it would be no mercy.
When he opened his eyes, Julian’s were waiting to meet them. His fear was so absolute that Paul knew it would be there forever. There was something absent in his eyes; Paul couldn’t remember what they had looked like before. He’d never told Julian how beautiful they were, because he had thought it self-evident. He’d believed that of far too many things.
Paul leaned down and pressed his lips to Julian’s forehead. Julian made a strange sound, almost like a sob. For a long moment Paul held him there, still wanting only to breathe him in. Then he let go and allowed Julian to push him away.
Paul heard the uneven footfalls, back toward the countless roads to a world outside the two of them. But couldn’t force himself to watch. He tried to believe that the smell of him lingered. But there wasn’t much to it—just soap and cigarettes and bone-deep, aching familiarity.
He didn’t know afterward how long he lay there in the mud and dead leaves, alongside an absence he should never survive. He wanted anything but to have to withstand it. But he had yielded to every other monstrosity that would accompany him for the rest of his life, and he yielded to this. He promised himself that death would be better. But he survived, and he would go on surviving. It was as reflexive as breathing.
He walked along the shoulder of the highway. He couldn’t remember following the trail back, or finding his knapsack by the side of the road where Julian’s car had been. He returned to the town outside the park and its dingy Greyhound station, and he took the 12:37 back to Pittsburgh. It was only when he saw his reflection in the window that he noticed the pebble of shattered lens embedded in his check, glistening red like a pomegranate seed. He picked it out, then spat on his hand to wipe the blood from his face. None of the other passengers paid any attention. Bystanders never changed.
When he set his knapsack down by the door, he thought for a moment that the house was empty. But then Laurie was running down the stairs and his grandparents and his mother were hurrying out from the kitchen, and everyone was talking over each other so relentlessly that he couldn’t have understood them if he tried. Audrey was in the kitchen, holding her chin with her fingertips. The contents of his desk drawer were spread over the kitchen table. There was his journal, lying open next to the butter dish; there, the blurry smear of Julian’s handwriting on nautilus-shell stationery.
“What in god’s name,” he heard her say. He left them all behind and shut himself into the sunroom. They didn’t try to stop him. Their shadows clustered in the kitchen, barely moving, and the house became very quiet again.
Now and then he saw Laurie’s face on the other side of the French doors. Neither met each other’s eyes, and she watched him as if he were a rattlesnake trapped under a bowl. Beyond her Paul couldn’t see much without his glasses, and he didn’t try. There was movement in the kitchen, until there wasn’t. Where voices should have been, there was only the inaudible whisper of conspiracy.
He settled onto the couch and wrapped his arms around his chest. A few yards to his right lay the stretch of bare earth where the garden shed had been; the place of his father’s death sat with him like an old friend. Gradually his body remembered the gnaw of the burn in his forearm and the throbbing cut under his eye. He didn’t mind. He absorbed the pain into himself along with the rest of it.
The sky was growing dark. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he waited. He knew it wouldn’t be long.
15.
The world outside the sunroom had a
rrived at a decision. Soft voices in the living room, one-sided telephone conversations. They knew what they were going to do, and in the silence he could hear them summoning their nerve. The door clicked open. There was Audrey, all sharp edges, hands on her hips and hair pulled back. Their grandfather hung back in the shadows behind her. In the dim light his eyes were uncomprehending, and Paul made himself meet them.
“Your friend’s phone has been busy for hours.” Audrey’s voice trembled but didn’t break. “We’re going to go check on him. All three of us.”
Perhaps he should have argued—accused her of overreacting, asked what she feared he’d done. He didn’t. By now there wasn’t much point trying.
He hadn’t even taken off his boots. He shrugged back into his muddy coat and realized he hadn’t stopped shivering. Audrey stepped backward when he stood, bracing herself as if she might have to stop him from running; he looked away, for her sake rather than his own, lowering his gaze to fasten the buttons.
His mother and grandmother were waiting by the front door, arm in arm. His mother held his knapsack, still packed; she had probably checked to make sure he’d remembered a toothbrush. She looked unbearably small, but she didn’t need her mother’s arm to hold her steady. Paul had never seen her spine so straight.
“Where am I going?”
His mother didn’t answer the question. She looked straight at him, bright-eyed and brave. Something warm and overwhelming broke free inside his chest, far too late to matter.
“It’s for your own good, Paul,” she said quietly.
After his grandfather took the bag from her hand, Paul leaned down to kiss the top of his mother’s head. The gesture seemed to take her by surprise, and she made no move to embrace him in turn.
Audrey’s hand settled on one arm, his grandfather’s on the other. Paul squared his shoulders and stood up straight.
“I’m sorry, Ma.” He played the words back in his head, listening to the way his voice didn’t reach any farther into his chest than the very tops of his lungs. He knew his voice would sound this way from now on—the inside and the outside of him would never be allowed to touch.
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