The Moment Before

by Suzy Vitello

  “Wasn’t your dad some big deal baseball player or something?”

  “Minors. But, yeah, he’s got an arm.”

  “That really sucks. I’m sorry. I mean really, I apologize if I kept you out too long and that contributed to any of this…”

  The trees outside are fluffy with white and pink, and that’s exactly how my insides feel right now. Sore feet, sore eye and cheek, all of that is melting away. I’m sort of lightheaded, and I want to tell Connor Christopher that he’s more beautiful than David. More holy than the apostles that float around on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I want to sketch him. Paint him. Kiss him. Dad hitting me, the horribleness of that, it dissolves into the possibility of feeling Connor’s lips pressing on mine. And then, just like that, I move my swollen, bruise-filled face toward him, and push my lips—the top one, then the bottom one—up against his.

  My eyes are closed, but when I open them, I see his surprised and bulging eyes staring back. Though I haven’t done a lot of kissing, I’ve done enough to know that in order for a kiss to really work, both parties need to participate. And Connor, he’s not cooperating. His lips don’t pucker, they don’t push back. But they don’t back away, either. Until they do. Finally. And he says, “Brady. Whoa. I was caught off guard there.”

  I’m sitting on a stool at the counter of the boy accused of killing my sister, wearing my grandmother’s housecoat, and I’ve just made a pass at him. One that, it looks like, he’s refusing. In all the world of awkward circumstances, there can’t be any that top this. The Beastie Boys are screaming … you don’t stop.

  I wish.

  “Not that I wouldn’t be interested…” Connor tries.

  I sigh, stab the shades back in place, straighten up. “I get it. You don’t feel that way about me. No worries.”

  “Brady, honestly, I don’t know what it is I feel for you. But it is something.”

  Now he’s just toying with me. I can’t take it. “I’m out of here,” I say, swinging my legs off the stool, grabbing my backpack.

  He reaches for my arm and I jerk it out of his grip. “Don’t go,” he says, with a question mark at the end of it.

  “Look. I’m an idiot. And I’m tired of being an idiot.”

  But really, why I need to get out of Connor’s house immediately is I’m about to sob. To scream and cry like that toddler on the swing earlier. I’m tired of being an idiot but more than that, I’m tired of being me. Connor calls my name a few times, the sound of his voice behind me like salt on my blistered feet.

  fourteen

  By the time I round the corner where I’d almost taken Sabine’s car over the edge, my eyes are so brimmed with tears, I can’t see. I’m sneezing like crazy—either the pollen or the sting in my sinuses from holding back crying. Don’t know. But what I do know is that if I start weeping now, I’ll never stop. The weight of everything is a cloudburst inside me. The sadness. The relentless sadness. My sister. Dad. Everything crash-landing.

  I miss her so much. It feels like a canyon opening inside me, as though an Exacto knife is separating organs from tissue. This must be what people feel before hurling themselves over the Vista Bridge. The two suicides at Greenmeadow this year, one was a jumper and the other, pills and alcohol. What goes through a brain on its way out? And Sabine. Did she know she was going to die in that second before her neck snapped in two? Who was she thinking about when she landed, chin first on the gym floor? What last words did she want to say amid the gasps and disbelief, the still recording camera phones? She died cheering, my sister. Encouraging her team to victory. Never give up, that’s who she was. She died raising cheer.

  Brady Brooder. The remaining Wilson girl. The half-empty sister. I feel like I’m treading water, not knowing where to go next. The rest of the world, they’re getting on with it—Martha and Nick. And Mom, scheming a new life for herself. Every step I take on my sore feet seems aimless, pointless, wrong.

  I continue down the hill in the direction of home. There will be consequences for missing the session at Dr. Stern’s, but I don’t care. I have a paper due on As I Lay Dying, and I have yet to start it. I flunked another trig test. Maybe I, too, will end up at BALC, or on track for a GED. Birds are singing all around me, oblivious that the world is a festering ball of shit headed for doom. The sun breaks through the leaden cloud, like it often does in late afternoon. Why didn’t Connor kiss me back?

  My phone vibrates, and this time I just answer it. “This is Brady.”

  “Hi there, Brady. Rory Davis again. Is this a good time?”

  In the end, after my twenty-minute grilling session with the reporter, my stomach is a knot of panic. Judging by the tone of her questioning, this Rory Davis wants to stir things up in a big way. Leading the witness is how they put it on the lawyer shows when the defending attorney screams for a mistrial.

  “So, they told you you’d won, and you didn’t find out they’d changed their minds until the ceremony?”

  And,

  “I understand that that very afternoon you were speaking with the vice principal. And he mentioned nothing, even though they’d had a meeting an hour earlier where they decided to give the award to Miss Hornbuckle?”

  And,

  “How did it feel, having just lost your sister in the most horrific accident imaginable, and then, having yet another rug pulled out from under you?”

  The rug, pulled out from under me. My father, cracking me in the face. Connor’s lips, shrinking away from me in repulsion.

  I don’t know if I answered any of the reporter’s questions, but I do know I said more than I should have. With all the sobs, the curses, the nonsensical rant, I’m sure I sounded like a raving psycho. What would this Rory Davis make of my weepy, angry words? Did she get the story she wanted, this hungry reporter?

  I conjure various headlines. Crazy student loses prize, or Angry nutjob embarrasses family, self.

  But the whole thing is out of my hands now. Whatever will be, will be.

  When I check my phone, there are several missed calls and messages. My parents, no doubt, are frantic. I don’t want to worry them, but I also don’t think I can face them today. My father and his inevitable drunken sobbing. Mom and her demanding, know-it-all action items. So I make another call.

  “Nona?”

  “Nipote. Papi and I were just talkin’ about you.” Her voice moves away from the phone, and I hear it shouting at my near-deaf grandfather, “Papi, Papi, Brady is on the phone, pick up the extension.”

  We chit-chat about nothing for a while, and then I drop the bomb. “Can I come stay with you for a few days?”

  “With us? But what about school? Your Ma?”

  “It’s a little tense over there right now,” I tell them.

  “Are you in any trouble, bambino?” asks Nono.

  “Not exactly,” I tell them. “I’ll take the bus over, and we can talk about it.”

  The buses to North Portland are not what you’d call express service, and by the time the 44 makes its way to the University of Portland neighborhood where my grandparents have lived for fifty-three years, it’s well-past their supper hour.

  Their neat-as-a-pin pink aluminum-sided bungalow clashes with the red sky behind it. A new wheelchair ramp criss-crosses the front of their house, and I wince thinking about them needing to use it sooner or later. Nona and Nono are plan-ahead types. They shop for Christmas in January. Get their furnace serviced in May. The front door opens a crack while I’m still making my way up the front walk, which is lined with orderly tulips.

  Nona steps out on the stoop, her arms spread wide the minute or so it takes to reach her.

  “My duster,” she cries, as though I’d planned it, this reunion between my grandmother and her housecoat.

  But, as soon as she’s done hugging me, squeezing the non-bruised side of my face, she takes in a breath as though witnessing a homicide. “What happened to you?”

  I think about givi
ng her the steering wheel story, but then, I don’t. “I’ll tell you later. Meanwhile, have anything to eat? I’m starved.”

  All three of us are sitting at Nona and Nono’s little boomerang table—one they’ve had since the 60s. My grandmother pushes bowls of macaroni and sliced ham my way. Where does all of this food come from? Nono is growing thinner and balder. He’s practically nodding off at the table.

  “I was so mad when that girl got your prize, you know?” says Nona all fire and spit.

  “Forget it, Nona. Besides, that lady who spoke? She wants to give me an equal prize. And, she bought my drawing.” I don’t mention the forthcoming Portland Journal article.

  Nona jiggles Nono’s arm. “You hear this? Papi? Good news, eh?”

  My grandfather nods and half-opens his eyes, tweaks my cheek. And then, “What the hell happen to your face, Brady?”

  I take in a deep breath. From where I’m sitting, I can see the shrine of Sabine. A 5x7 next to a photo-electric candle, which also features my sister’s alive face. The obligatory Virgin statue, along with a stack of mass cards. Tell them, says the voice of my sister. Tell them what happened.

  “I guess it was my fault,” I start. “Smart-mouthing Dad. Let’s just say I had it coming.”

  My invalid grandfather slams a fist down on the Formica so hard you’d think there was a prosthesis involved. Some robot arm jutting from his feeble body. “He hit you?”

  Nona yells something in Italian. I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of curse.

  “Let’s not overreact,” I suggest, my voice as calm as I can make it given my heart is beating all crazy in my chest. The last thing they needed was an excuse to hate my father more than they do.

  “You are not going back to that house, Brady. Not until I speak with your mother,” Nono says, his mouth wet with spit.

  On the wall opposite the table, there hangs an oil painting of President John F. Kennedy in a skinny gold frame. One of Nona’s first efforts, copied from a photograph. This is who my grandparents are. Catholics and non-forgetters. The summer of Johnsaffair, they went from being lukewarm to my father all the way down to hate. There’s no going back with Nona and Nono. They know what they know.

  “We’re in counseling,” I say, in my best Dr. Stern voice. “We’re working through this stuff.”

  “You think a head shrinker will fix this?” Nona says, pointing to my bruise. “There’s only one way to handle it. Eye for eye.”

  “Nona. You better not do anything you’ll regret. Dad’s suffering, you know?”

  I’m thinking we need to change the subject. Nono seems to have nodded off again, and a small snore starts up from his place at the table. I redirect. “Let me take you to bingo, Nona. We can stop for lottery tickets.”

  That does the trick. Before long, I’ve cleared the table and rinsed the dishes. Nona has tucked my grandfather into bed, and put on a fresh face. Extra powder on her nose, her large mole now caked in beige. Arm in arm, in matching housecoats, we make our way to the Lincoln. My grandmother thinks I have a driver’s license and I don’t dissuade her from that idea.

  Nona is chatty while I navigate the giant-hooded car through the streets of North Portland. She tells me that I’m beautiful, and that some day I’ll have my pick of boys. She tells me the story that she always tells me. What a late bloomer she was, and how she didn’t meet Nono until after the war, when everyone had given her up for an old maid, and once she married, at age thirty-six, she prayed and prayed to Saint Agatha of Sicily that a baby would “find a way to my womb.”

  Nona had miscarriages. Four miscarriages. And finally, a pregnancy that went to term. Mom. Born when Nona was forty-three.

  “She died a virgin,” she says.

  I’m concentrating on staying in my lane, and slowing down at every intersection while a line of cars grows like a tail behind me, so I’m thinking she means Sabine. Who lost her virginity in the forest, drugged out on Ruffies, by the way. But once Nona starts in with the a life consecrated to God, I know she’s talking about poor old Saint Agatha. The patron saint of fertility and breast cancer and all sorts of women’s issues. I get the breast cancer part (Agatha’s boobs were chopped off because she just said no to sex with some dude named Quinctianus), but it seems weird to me that a saint famous for guarding her virginity would be who you pray to when you want to get knocked up.

  “Maybe that’s why your mother always had such a will. Like Agatha, you know?”

  There’s an impatient guy in an Iroc kissing the bumper of the Lincoln. I hate that.

  “She was beaten and tortured and laid on the hot coals. Everything bad. But she died a virgin,” Nona repeats, proudly.

  I’m thinking that if Nona ever found out that Sabine was not only without virginity at her death, but also with child, it would just about do her in.

  Finally, the chain-link fence of Holy Redeemer comes into view. I press down on the blinker stick, and the sports car guy behind me zooms around, leaving rubber on the road.

  “You’re a good, careful driver, Nipote,” my grandmother says, patting my arm as I make my way around the potholes of the poor old parish parking lot.

  While Nona’s happily installed in front of a six-pack of game sheets in Holy Redeemer’s parish hall, I make my way out to the stairwell to call Mom. She answers immediately.

  “Thank God,” she says. “I was this close to calling the police.”

  “I’m staying with Nona and Nono for a while.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Sorry I missed therapy.”

  “Brady. Your father and I need to talk to you. There’s no excuse, of course, but he is devastated. Dev-astated, about the incident last night.”

  “You mean when he cracked me across the face?”

  “He’s staying elsewhere for a while. We all decided that until things cool down—”

  “Cool down? Between who and who?” I can’t bring myself to say what I want to say, which is, between you and your lover.

  “You need to come home, Brady.”

  “Too late, Mom. Nona and Nono saw the bruise. They know, and they won’t let me come home.”

  I hear Mom sigh in concert with a yelping Bingo from the adjoining room.

  And apparently, Mom hears that too. “Where are you?”

  “Look, Mom, there’s an article going to be in the paper tomorrow. Thought I’d give you a head’s up. It’s about the Cupworth Prize and they interviewed me. They might include stuff about, you know, the accident. I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t freak.”

  It’s silent on the phone, and then, “Why would you even think about talking to a reporter given everything that’s going on?”

  “Everything? What do you mean, everything?”

  She breathes a little heavily, like she’s tugging on a boot or something and then, “OK, fine. Stay with your grandparents for now. I’ll bring a bag with your clothes by. We’ll talk later in the week.”

  We hang up, and my device immediately rings again. It’s Connor. I press decline, turn off my phone, and join dozens of old ladies in the hall as the volunteer Knight of Columbus pulls out a little ball and calls G 18.

  fifteen

  Grieving sister wants answers is the above-the-fold headline in the Life & Lifestyles section of the paper the next morning. Smack in the middle, there’s a photo of Sabine and me, taken at the Raising Cheer event a few months back. It looks like we’re clinking pop bottles, all smiles and good times. Really, what was going on there? I was trying to grab a rum-loaded drink away from her. She was shit-faced, and later that night she puked her guts out. The granite countertops of Connor’s house shine brightly in the background—the same setting where just yesterday, he’d rejected my kiss. And under that photo, another one. Sabine, under a tarp on the Greenmeadow gymnasium floor.

  I grab the section of Portland Journal before my grandparents can see it and shove it in my ba
ckpack. This, they do not need. Nona is busy making eggs and bacon, wanting to send me off to school with some food in my belly. Nono is still in bed.

  “I gotta go, Nona,” I call over my shoulder. “I’ll grab a Starbucks on the way. Can’t be late for school.”

  “You want you can take the car, Brady,” she calls. “We’re not going nowhere today.”

  The thought of negotiating the Lincoln and its ginormous hood through the high school parking lot gives me chills. “Thanks, but that’s OK. I’m used to the bus.”

  “I’ll make sauce today,” she calls out after me. “We eat at five.”

  As soon as I’m out the door, I pull the section of paper from my backpack. From the blocks of ink, I pull out my crazy ramblings: She was my hero. So strong. So brave. Her neck snapped in half. Like a toothpick.

  And then: She was trying to win another trophy for her squad. Nobody stopped her. She wanted to do something no cheerleader had ever done.

  And then, next to the picture of my dead sister, under the sheet of plastic, a little call-out: She tried to hide it, but she was having boyfriend issues. Big ones.

  Rory Davis, that zealous reporter, named the boyfriend. Who couldn’t be reached for comment, by the way. Probably because he was outfitting his new car with a stereo system.

  What happened to the arts funding article? The entire Cupworth Prize issue was summarized at the end of the article, hidden on page eight, after all the gruesome statistics on how cheerleading is the most dangerous sport in high school. Clearly, Rory Davis saw a bigger story than the yawn-yawn of yet another school-funding piece.

  By the time the bus comes, I’m pretty convinced that if I go to school today, I’ll be shot on sight, so, when the 5 pulls up to the mall kiosk downtown, instead of riding toward Greenmeadow, I get off the bus. I get off with my backpack and the article about how sad and pissed off I am, and the $46 Mom put in my overnight kit plus the $29 Bingo winnings from Nona, and I’m thinking that’ll buy a lot of chocolate croissants and double skinny chai lattes.