Goodbye Days

by Jeff Zentner

  Georgia’s a sophomore biology major at the University of Tennessee, with plans to go to medical school. She’s probably loving this on some level.

  “No answer,” Georgia mutters. “Hey, Mom, this is Georgia. I’m at St. Thomas ER with Carver. He had some sort of…episode after the funeral. He’s doing okay now. Call me.”

  I slump in my chair and stare forward.

  Georgia finds my eyes. “Why are you so weird about opening up to Mom and Dad when you’re vulnerable?”

  “I don’t know. It’s embarrassing.”

  “They want to be a part of your life. So many kids would kill to have our parents.”

  “Can we not talk about this now? I feel shitty enough.” She’s right, but I can’t deal with yet another kind of guilt.

  “Well, we might be waiting awhile.”

  “Let’s find something else to talk about.”

  “All I’m saying is that when we’re down, we need the people who love us.”

  “Got it.”

  “Got it,” Georgia says, mimicking my voice.

  I’m feeling better now, less like I’m facing imminent death or confinement to some dread-filled limbo. Only exhaustion mixed with shapeless anxiety. Which I guess is my new normal. Too spent to experience much embarrassment, though, which is a relief.

  It’s several minutes before a nurse comes to talk to me about my symptoms and take my blood pressure. They run an EKG. A little while after that, the doctor comes to see us. She gives off a reassuringly chipper go-ahead-try-to-shock-me aplomb even though she doesn’t look much older than Georgia. It’s weird to imagine Georgia wearing scrubs and treating people in a few years. She’ll probably try to guilt-trip all her patients.

  “Hello, Carver. Dr. Stefani Craig. Nice to meet you. Sorry you’re not doing well. Tell me what’s going on.”

  I describe what happened. Dr. Craig nods. “You paint quite the picture.” She clicks her pen, looking over my chart. “Have you been under any extraordinary stress lately?”

  “You mean besides my three best friends dying in a car accident last week?”

  She stops clicking her pen and freezes, her brisk confidence abruptly vanishing. “My God. The texting accident? I read about that in the Tennessean. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine.”

  “I was at a funeral a few hours ago.”

  She winces and sighs. “Well. The timing, the symptoms, your EKG: it’s a textbook panic attack. I had a roommate in med school who got them around finals. They’re common among people who’ve experienced a traumatic event. Or three. Normally, they happen a little later and at more unexpected times, but you may be wired differently.”

  “So—”

  “So physically you’re a healthy seventeen-year-old. You’re not going to die from this. You may never even have another panic attack as long as you live. But you’ve had psychological trauma and it’s important to work through it. There are medications, but I’d prefer any such prescription come from a mental health professional. You have insurance. I’d look into who takes your plan and see someone. That’s my official recommendation.”

  “We have someone,” Georgia said.

  I look over at Georgia. She mouths, “Later.”

  “Great,” Dr. Craig says, extending her hand. “Anyway, you’re good to go. Carver, all the best. Again, I’m so sorry for your loss. What a difficult thing to deal with, especially at your age.”

  Especially at my age. I bet this is something I’m going to be hearing a lot in the days to come. I shake her hand. “Thanks.”

  She hurries off to deal with people who are actually hurt and not merely crazy. I wonder if I would have preferred that there be something physically wrong with me. Something you could heal with a cast. Stitch up. Excise. My mind is all that makes me special. I can’t afford to lose it.

  We sign some more paperwork and leave. Georgia’s phone rings as we’re walking out in the parking lot. I listen to her side of the conversation. “Hey….No, he’s fine. It was a panic attack. Said they’re normal during stressful—Right….Yeah….No, don’t. We’re literally leaving this minute. We’ll talk when y’all get home….Just— I know….I know….Yeah, I’m gonna talk to him. No, I said I’ll talk to him. Okay. Okay. Love you. Have a safe flight and don’t stress. We’ll see you at the airport. Okay. Hang on.”

  “Is that Mom?”

  “Telemarketer. I swear, these guys.”

  “Hilarious.”

  Georgia hands me her phone. “Here. She wants to talk to you.”

  My mom sounds distraught. She puts me on speaker with my dad. I summon all my strength to tell them I’m okay; that I’m going to be okay. I tell them I’ll see them soon.

  Georgia unlocks her car and we get in. It’s dark out, but the car is still warm and it comforts me like a blanket.

  I recline in my seat with my eyes closed, further sapped by the effort of trying to seem as fine as possible for my parents. “Sorry to make you bring me here for nothing.”

  Georgia puts her key in the ignition and starts to turn it but stops. “It wasn’t nothing. You had a panic attack. You didn’t know if you were having a heart attack or what.”

  “I want this day to be over. I want this life to be over.”

  “Carver.”

  “I’m not going to kill myself. Chill. I just wish I could go to sleep and wake up when I’m eighty.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I really do.”

  “We need to discuss what the doctor said. About talking to someone. And you don’t talk to Mom and Dad. You’re Mr. Secret Agent High School Boy with them.”

  “I’ll talk to you.”

  Georgia starts the car and backs out. “That won’t work. First off, UT starts in a couple of weeks, so I won’t be here.”

  “We can talk on the phone.”

  “…Second, I don’t have the training to deal with this stuff. Dude, this is serious. Therapists are the real deal.”

  “Mmmmm.” I lean my head on the window and stare out.

  “Remember when I hit that rough patch senior year? After Austin and I broke up?”

  “You seemed depressed.”

  “I was. And I was having eating issues. I went to see a therapist named Dr. Mendez, and he was way cool and helpful.”

  “You never mentioned that.”

  “I didn’t want to advertise it.”

  “I don’t want him to tell me I’m crazy.”

  “So you’d rather be crazy. Look, he won’t tell you that. Plus they won’t even let you be a writer if you’ve never needed to be in therapy.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I’m here for you, Carver, but you need to see Dr. Mendez.”

  “I said I’d think about it.”

  I don’t say anything more on the short drive home. Instead, I reflect on frailty. Mine. Life’s.

  I want to live unburdened again.

  My parents look wan and battered when Georgia and I pull up to the airport. I guess it makes for a nice symmetry with my hollow, vacant-eyed appearance. The muscles of my face feel like they forgot how to form a smile. But I try anyway as I get out and make as if to help my parents load their suitcases in the car, mumbling, “Hey, Mom and Dad.” My dad catches my wrist and pulls me to him. So hard it would seem rough if I didn’t know better. He hugs me like I’ve just been pulled from rubble.

  “If we had lost you. If we ever lost you,” he whispers in a hoarse, tear-clogged voice.

  That he can talk at all means he’s doing better than my mom, who hugs me from behind—they’ve got me in a sandwich—sobbing. I can feel both of their tears, warm on my face and dribbling down my neck. And if I’m being honest, a good amount of those tears are my own.

  “Missed you,” I say.

  We hug like that until an airport police car pulls up behind our car and tells us over his PA that we need to move.

  I sit between my mom and dad in the backseat while Georgia chauffeurs us. Except for my mom asking m
e how I’m doing, and my responding, “Not great,” we don’t speak on the ride home. Instead, my mom pulls my head down to her shoulder and strokes my hair.

  Where are you guys? Text me back.

  I awake with a wild gasp, my pulse galloping. My sheets are drenched with sweat, my face tight with the salt of dream tears. I used to love crying in dreams for some reason—the release of it, maybe, crying in that savage way that you won’t let yourself do when you’re conscious. Waking up with your eyes wet like puddles after a midnight thunderstorm. That was when I wasn’t crying for anything in particular.

  I guess guilt doesn’t sleep. It only eats.

  I sit at my desk, staring at a blank document on my laptop screen. I’m supposed to be working on my college admission essay, something I’ve procrastinated about all summer, until exactly one week after the last of my three best friends’ funerals. Maybe not the most solid idea.

  I wish I had to work today. I was employed part-time, shelving books at a huge used-book/CD/DVD/record/video-game/all-sorts-of-other-stuff warehouse near my house called McKay’s. I’ve worked there the last few summers, but I usually quit a couple of weeks before school starts. I regret doing that this year.

  It’s not that I love shelving books as much I love simply being surrounded by them. I need the not-interacting-with-anyone-ness of it. I need mindless repetition. I need the vanilla-dry-leaves-tobacco-air-conditioner-mold scent of it in my nose. Even though it reminds me of the Accident. That’s where I was when it happened. That’s why I wasn’t in the car.

  I start to text Jesmyn. We’ve been casually texting for the last week. She probably won’t respond. She mentioned that she’s teaching piano and practicing all day. I’d love to watch her play sometime.

  My mom interrupts me midtext. “Carver,” she calls. “Come here. Hurry. Judge Edwards is on TV.”

  A spasm of adrenaline seizes my chest. My bowels become a swirling vortex. This can’t possibly be good. I jump up, banging my knee, and run in on trembling legs. My mom, dad, and Georgia are gathered around the television, standing.

  Judge Edwards looks stern, wearing an expensive-looking gray pinstripe suit that fits him like he grew it and a blood-red tie. He’s speaking into a reporter’s microphone. “…And so, to send a message to the community and to young people about the perils of texting friends while driving, I would call upon the office of the district attorney to open an investigation into this matter and weigh criminal charges.”

  “Have you spoken personally with the district attorney?” the reporter asks.

  “No, ma’am, I have not. I do not believe that would be appropriate or transparent. I would not want to be seen as interfering with the district attorney’s prosecutorial discretion. I trust she will exercise that discretion appropriately to see that justice is done.”

  I want, quite frankly, to crap in my pants. My mom covers her mouth with both hands. My dad’s expression is stony. He folds his arms and runs his hand over his face. Georgia stares at the screen as if she wishes she could shoot streams of sulfuric acid from her tear ducts into the TV and inundate Judge Edwards, turning him into smoking goo.

  “If the district attorney declines to seek an indictment, or even if she does seek one, will you be pursuing civil action against the fourth juvenile involved in this incident?”

  “We are not, uh, foreclosing anything; not taking anything off the table. Our primary concern is and will always be the safety and well-being of our youth.” He nods firmly. That’s all, folks. Nothing left to see here.

  “Thank you, Judge Edwards. Phil, back to you.”

  “Thanks, Alaina. A tragic accident and a grieving father…Davidson County Metro officials have decided not to approve…”

  I tune out the anchor’s drone. I collapse onto the couch and hold my head in my hands. “Oh my God. Oh my God,” I murmur over and over. Everyone is mute. I can hear Georgia breathing through her nose. It’s not the sound you want to hear.

  She stabs her finger at the TV, voice quavering with rage. “Okay, that? That is utter fucking horseshit.” Her voice rings off the walls in the still room.

  “Georgia,” Mom says softly.

  Georgia’s eyes blaze. A lioness in a tank top and yoga pants. “No. Don’t Georgia me. That is total and complete nonsense. Does he not get it? Does he not grasp that it was his dumbshit son who caused this? And he wants Carver to go to jail?! No. I’m sorry. No.” She shakes her head in a way that would put cartoon dollar signs into a chiropractor’s eyes.

  We’re all still stunned. Unspeaking.

  Georgia looks at each of us in turn, seeking our eyes. Looking for our spirits. Our fight. “Carver, give me your phone. I’m calling His Honor’s honorable ass right this second, and I’m telling him to go ride a bike with no seat.”

  “Georgia,” my dad says.

  She extends her hand to me with a snap. “Give it to me.” She sounds close to tears.

  “I don’t have his number in my phone,” I say softly, dazed. “Only Mars’s cell phone.” And then I add in a whisper: “Obviously I have Mars’s cell phone.”

  “Georgia, calm down,” my dad says. “He is a judge. You call him and curse him out, you’ll go to jail.”

  “Then what?” she says. “What are we going to do?”

  Dad takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes. His hand trembles. “I don’t know. I—I don’t know.” He looks at my mom. “Lila, call your brother and see if he can recommend a good criminal lawyer in town.”

  The words “good criminal lawyer” are three knees to the ballsack in quick succession.

  Mom returns to their bedroom for her phone, but not before I see tears welling from her eyes and tracing down her cheeks in shining trails.

  “I start school in three days,” I murmur. I’m as paralyzed as when I heard about the Accident. It’s like I’ve left my body and I’m watching myself receive the news. I try to take a deep breath. Please don’t have another panic attack. Not here. Not now. I hear my mom from her bedroom, talking to her brother Vance, a business lawyer in Memphis. She’s trying to sound casual and failing spectacularly.

  Georgia sits beside me. I can tell she’s consciously trying to be calm and soothing. She rubs my back. “Carver. Just—don’t worry. We’re here for you.”

  My dad embraces me. He smells of dryer sheets and black pepper. “Listen, pal. We’re—you’re going to be okay, all right? We’ll hire the best lawyer in Tennessee if we have to.”

  “I’ll drop out of college and work full-time to pay him,” Georgia says, her jaw set.

  “No, I will,” I murmur.

  “Nobody’s dropping out. We’ll handle this,” Dad says.

  “I’m telling y’all right now, straight up? If this remotely turns into a thing, I’m packing Carver’s ass in my trunk and driving him to Mexico. I do not give a shit.” Georgia becomes very country when she’s angry. Which is funny, because she’s a big-city girl, born and raised in Nashville.

  Mom returns. She’s struggling for composure. Her eyes are red and weepy. She sighs and speaks quietly to my dad. “Callum, I talked to Vance. He said he’d ask around to see who some of the best criminal lawyers in Nashville are. He said all we can do is wait.”

  “Wait. Oh, that’s nice. That’s going to be fun for Carver, his senior year of high school, while he’s applying to colleges and doing without his three best friends. Waiting for the ax to fall,” Georgia says. “This is such massive bullshit.”

  Leave it to Georgia to say exactly what I’m thinking. Well, all but the massive bullshit part. I wonder if I don’t deserve to atone with my freedom. If someone or something isn’t finally coming to collect some great debt I’ve incurred. Which would make this whole situation not massive bullshit at all, but normal-sized, small, or even nonexistent bullshit.

  My head spins. “I’ll be in my room.” I need to brood.

  My mom, dressed in her physical therapist’s scrubs, hugs me and kisses me on the cheek. “You’re not alone in this.
We’re standing by you.”

  “Carver, you want to go see a movie or something to take your mind off stuff?” Dad asks.

  “It won’t help. Thanks, though.”

  “I’ll be in the den, then, working on my syllabus,” Dad says. “If you change your mind.”

  “Emma’s dad is a lawyer,” Georgia says. “I’m going to call her.”

  I go to my room and sit on my bed. I text Jesmyn. Are you free? I need someone to talk to. While I definitely believe that spelling and grammar count, even in text messages, I’m not normally so formal. But it somehow felt weird to be any less so. Also, I’m already wishing I didn’t end that sentence with a preposition. Also, what if I offended her by saying “someone to talk to,” as if any warm body will do? Shit. Also, did it sound needy to say “I need someone to talk to”? I mean, of course it did. By definition it did.

  No response. Not surprising.

  I pace. That doesn’t help.

  I pray in my heart. But as I said, I’m only a casual believer, so while it helps me a little to have covered that base, it doesn’t help a lot.

  I drop and start doing pushups. I haven’t done a pushup since junior high PE class. My arms burn. I manage ten before I have to rest. Then I start in on some more. I don’t understand why I’m doing this. But it’s helping a little.

  “Carver?” Georgia’s voice from the doorway startles me midpushup. I wish I’d closed my door all the way.

  I jump up and clap the dust off my hands. “Hey.”

  “I talked to Emma and she’s going to talk to her dad.”

  “Cool.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Pushups.”

  “Why?”

  Sometimes you learn things the moment they come out of your mouth, like the information was hiding there, safe from your brain. “In…case I go to jail, I want to be able to protect myself.”

  Georgia shakes her head and her eyes fill with tears, but she says nothing. My heart is thudding. She hugs me. “I have to work in a little bit. Otherwise I’d hang with you all day.”