Waiting

by Carol Lynch Williams

  When the lotion has soaked into my thirsty skin, I dress. Then I pack a bag. I’m having a sleepover tonight.

  The front door closes and I hear Mom and Daddy—both home now (was Mom all along? Was he? Did they walk in together?)—voices low.

  “Screw them,” I say. My hands shake as I put a set of jammies and tomorrow’s school clothes and a hairbrush and toothbrush and makeup in a bag. Underwear, different bra, schoolbooks. “What else do I need?”

  Something for breakfast.

  Attention.

  My parents.

  Zach back.

  Two boys kissing me at once.

  Rachel’s voice talking in my ear.

  My brother, alive.

  Someone at home talking to me.

  My legs shake as I walk, down the hall to the family room. Mom sits in her chair, Zach’s baby book closed on her knees. Daddy looks up from the newspaper.

  “Wild Thing,” he says when he sees me. He gives me a sort-of smile. My heart leaps a bit, and I touch my hair.

  He hasn’t called me that in a forever. He folds the paper, sets it aside. “We were talking about pizza for dinner tonight.”

  I see Daddy not looking at my mother. So I do look. She stares out curtained windows. Her hands are fists. She hates me so much.

  “Your mother isn’t hungry, though, so it’ll just be us.”

  Dinner with my daddy.

  He stands, not waiting to hear my answer, sees the bag in my hands. “Were you going somewhere?”

  “I thought”—I have to clear my throat to pull out the words—“I thought I’d have a sleepover somewhere.”

  “Whose house?”

  I can hear the clock on the mantel. Smell my mother’s Shalimar. Feel the dryness of the bag in my hand. The weight of my books. My feet on the terrazzo floor. The way she looks away. I feel it all at once. “I hadn’t decided.”

  Daddy comes to me, hesitates, runs his hand down his face like he is trying to change the shape. “Not tonight, Wild Thing.” His voice is low. “It’s you and me tonight.

  Dinner and a movie.”

  Tears spring to my eyes. “Really?”

  This could be a dream.

  A trick.

  “Really,” Daddy says, and he starts to come to life.

  So I don’t spend the night away.

  I’m with Daddy. And while we don’t talk about anything, words come out of our mouths. And when it’s all said and done, he hugs me good night, in the darkness of the foyer.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  He’s not so tall and my head is next to his. “No,” I say. “I wanted to hug.”

  “No, I mean about the other things.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  And when I head off to bed, it feels like I shed a second skin.

  Choose.

  What?

  Who?

  School has more colors the next day.

  I’m more alive.

  I refuse to think anything but good thoughts, and when Taylor comes to the door to get me, not even beeping, I link my arm with his.

  “Hey,” he says, and his face is surprised.

  “Hey, what?” Can Mom see us from her bedroom? Don’t think that. You don’t care. I do. You don’t. I get in the car, sit in the seat my brother sat in for so many years (Think only of yourself today, no Zacheus Lee Castle. Only London Marie Castle.), watch Taylor walk around the front of the car.

  The morning sun slides at him sideways, and it seems his hair is blonder than usual. He looks at me through the glass and I can see I’ve made him nervous, and for some reason, that is so hot I can’t stand it. He’s not even shut the door when I crawl over the emergency brake to kiss him.

  It’s a long, happy kiss. One that makes me lose my breath.

  “Wow. Okay. Thanks,” he says when I pull away. His hand is on my waist, under my shirt a bit.

  No more Jesse, maybe, I think as I look toward the house then give the blind windows the finger just in case Mom’s home.

  School has a different thought for me.

  I don’t share classes with Taylor, and during lunch, Lili chatting ninety miles per hour, three boys, and one girl come up to the table where Lauren has plopped down too. She doesn’t share a lunch with Jesse.

  “So when I get home, I see all the sand. I knew you two went to the beach.” Lili doesn’t stop talking.

  “Is that where he was?” Lauren says. She looks a bit unhappy between the eyebrows.

  “I couldn’t do school,” I say. One of the guys looks at me, and I recognize him from football. In fact, Zach was on the team with all three of these fellows. The redhead has a barracuda shaved into his buzz cut.

  “It’s been a while now,” one guy says, and I realize he’s talking to me.

  What?

  “Since Zach died. I never got to say I was sorry, London. I liked your brother. Everyone did. He was a good tight end.”

  Redhead nods and the third guy just eats.

  But the girl, she’s a cheerleader, she says, “I heard you cut him down. That you heard him trying to kick free of the rope.”

  Take a breath.

  “What?”

  “I heard that you’re the one who tried to save him. That you could hear him kicking at the walls and stuff. Is that true?”

  I can’t swallow.

  Lili’s gone quiet and Lauren scoots her chair back. The room has gone black and white and my ears ring like someone slapped me hard. It takes less than ten seconds for this girl I don’t know to tell my brother’s life story. I mean, his death story.

  Everyone’s looking at me except Lili, who spears lettuce leaves over and over.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I heard you brought him back to life with CPR but there was too much damage and so you had to pull the plug.”

  Umm.

  “Shut up!” Lauren says. She screams it. “Shut up! Shut up!”

  This girl’s spoken the truth about the most important seconds of my life. I look around the room. Man, my head hurts.

  “I’d better go,” I say. And Lili says, “London.” The lunchroom has quieted, some kids watch us.

  “You’re an idiot,” Lauren says. She’s still screaming. “He was someone’s brother and son and my friend.” Her voice cracks and I see she liked my brother a lot. A way lot. But I look at it all like I’m seeing through the lens of a camera. I’m seeing it all at a distance. Floating above it.

  Where’s Jesse? I think. Or Taylor? If I could get away from here.

  You always run.

  I always run. It’s easiest that way.

  Find someone to hide with.

  Look the other direction.

  Wish he hadn’t hanged himself.

  I’m running.

  To Taylor’s class.

  Someone’s screaming Zach’s name and it could be me, but maybe it’s Lili or Lauren, who follow behind. “It’s true,” I say when one of them touches me. “It’s true. We couldn’t save him. And we tried. We both tried.” The bell rings and the hall fills with people. Taylor will be out of the class in a moment and I’ll go home. Now. Now. Now.

  “I heard him,” I say. My voice is shrill, but it’s coming out of me like water from a broken fountain. “I heard him kicking and I didn’t go that second. I thought he was mad. They’d been fighting. She’d been on his back.” A big guy knocks into me. My books spill to the floor. Lili goes for them.

  “But I waited. I waited a few seconds.”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Lauren says. “We don’t care.” She’s crying. She must have really liked Zach to cry in the hall like this.

  The thought comes that she must really like me, too.

  Still.

  My mouth won’t stop. There’s hurt dammed up inside me, maybe behind the words. “And I didn’t get there in

  time!” A couple of people turn, stare. “I didn’t get there in time. I didn’t save him. And Mom held him under his arms. Tried to keep him off his neck and
I cut the rope.”

  Taylor’s there all the sudden. “London!” His hands are on me.

  “But we couldn’t get it off in time. We tried. But we couldn’t. And then we did and . . .” This part of the story is a scream. “And now she won’t talk to me!”

  A teacher is in the hall. And another. There’s Jesse. He’s running toward us and I shove my way through the crowd, people grabbing at me. And maybe I am the woman caught in adultery. Or the woman with an issue of blood. If I could get to Jesus—I mean Jesse—if I could get to them both, I would be fine.

  I put my hands on his face. “Take me home,” I say.

  And he does.

  Here’s the deal.

  I’m sleep-talking. Like, my eyes are closed and my mouth is going.

  In the parking lot Taylor said, “Take her. Save her. Get her home.”

  He sounded so sad.

  (Did he know about me kissing Jesse? Would he care?)

  And Lauren was crying and Lili said, “I think she needs a doctor.”

  But all I need is to sleep-talk.

  “She hasn’t spoken to me in almost a year,” I say to Jesse. My head’s in his lap. My knees are bent on the seat. The buckle from the seat belt jabs at my hip but I don’t care. I deserve pain. One of Jesse’s hands is tangled in my hair.

  “I wish you had known my Zachy.”

  “She had an abortion.”

  “We did our best. I swear to all that’s holy, we did our best.”

  The van bounces to a stop.

  Outside I can hear a mockingbird call.

  In my head is my mother screaming that I should have done more. I should have done more.

  Busted that door down.

  He’s dead because I didn’t do more.

  “Do you believe in Jesus?”

  Jesse looks at me so brown-eyed it hurts. He nods. “I do,” he says.

  I sit up.

  “I think you look like him.”

  Jesse looks startled. He almost smiles. Clears his throat. “I don’t think so,” he says.

  I take a deep breath. “Would you care if I called you Jesus?”

  “What?” He grips the steering wheel with one hand. His other has slipped from my hair to the seat.

  “I’m being weird,” I say. “I know that.” But I can’t stop. Panic is caught in my throat. I shouldn’t have talked about anything that happened. Why did I do that at school? It wasn’t my fault. It’s been a sort-of secret that everyone knows but that I never speak of. It was that cheerleader. “If you let me, I would be sitting next to Jesus right this very second.” My heart’s beating too fast.

  “Jesse’s good.” He looks a little freaked out.

  I just stare at Jesse and he looks back and then, after a moment, he kisses me. I put my hands to his face and I wonder if Jesus is okay with me kissing two guys and that my mom doesn’t talk to me and that my brother is dead. It’s a long kiss, a kiss where I want to get closer to Jesse but I can’t because we’re in the van and there’s a steering wheel.

  “We should go inside,” I say.

  He doesn’t say anything, just follows me. Mom’s gone, and I’m relieved because I don’t have to fake anything or be anything or pretend like she cares. I just want to sit with this boy, sit next to this Jesus-looking boy, and kiss him and let him slide his hands through my hair, and I want to touch his neck, put both my hands around it—feel the pulse of his life beneath my fingers.

  In the house, I remember it all over again.

  Mom screaming. Daddy reaching for her, but she slaps his hands away, and I want to slap her and Daddy and Zacheus for doing this to himself to us.

  “He’s gone,” Daddy says. We’re in Zach’s hospital room.

  “We have to let him go.” Daddy’s voice is near the wheels of the bed, next to that shiny floor.

  “No, he isn’t!” Mom screams. “We got to him in time.

  We did!”

  She points at me—at me—like I’m the one who did it.

  Like I’m the one who put something around my neck and choked off my own air.

  What did my brother think, locking the door like that?

  What did he think? That I could bust doors down, that I could lift him as much as he weighed and the shoe marks on the walls and I tried.

  I tried to help him.

  We both did.

  The room is sterile and white and I love my brother, lying on the bed, I love my mother and father and my brother. My best friend.

  I don’t say anything, though. I watch my mother and when she lets out that final wail I move to her.

  “Mommy,” I say, but she is so angry—so angry.

  “You!” she says. “You could have saved him. You were there.”

  I blink. Stop. Wait. “We were both there.”

  “But you were first.”

  I want to say, I tried. I want to say, I tried, Mom. The nurse comes in the room, asks Mom to quiet down, and I think Mom might shoot that woman’s eyes out.

  Daddy is after Mom now, his arms tight, pinning her but she struggles she gets free and she’s at me, the nurse watching, my mother pointing, her nail so polished, so shiny, I can almost smell the color.

  “You!” she says, and slaps me so hard that I stagger to stay on my feet and at first I feel nothing but the sound and then there’s the burn.

  Daddy raises his voice and the whole family is coming apart at the seams like a fabric that should have held together but couldn’t all because of one choice.

  I touch my face, it’s burning now, and then I run to the waiting room because I can’t go farther than that.

  Run as fast as I can out of there

  out of there

  out of there

  And wait.

  Because he’s gone for good and we have to let him go a broken family.

  I remember this all in the foyer, walking down the hall through the dining room to the living room.

  “Let’s kiss in here, Jesse,” I say.

  “I should go back to school,” he says, but he’s sliding his arms around me and pulling me close, and I think of Taylor in the waiting room, see that he’s been crying, then press my mouth to Jesse and try to erase everything anything all of it every bit of my brother’s death—something I can’t do with Taylor.

  If my mother were to see me now.

  What would she think?

  My hands on him, his on me.

  Cleave unto your spouse, I think, and I laugh midkiss, my palms under Jesse’s shirt. His skin is so smooth. He’s so warm.