by Jeff Zentner
“Is Pierce coming?” Jesmyn asks.
“Oh…yeah. He was out running some errands. He should be here in a few minutes.”
“What about Adair?” I ask tentatively. “Is she coming?”
Melissa sighs and pauses. “Adair is…tricky.”
Gee, you think?
“We invited her. She declined. She spent the night at a friend’s house,” Melissa continues. “That’s where she is now. She’s not ready for any of this. It’s different with twins. Pierce and I never completely understood the bond they had. How could we?”
“Will today make things tough with her?” Jesmyn asks.
Melissa turns away from us and wipes the already-pristine mottled granite countertop. “It’s funny, actually. She was adamant that we go, even though she didn’t want to. But we decided not to scatter Eli’s ashes like we were planning on doing. Not without Adair. We’ll do that another time.”
Why did Adair want her parents to do this? This should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. “We can call this off if you want,” I say.
“No,” Melissa says quietly but firmly. “I want to do it. It’s good to confront feelings. You both know Eli in ways we didn’t, Adair included.” She picks up a mason jar full of brightly colored sand. “We’re going to scatter this at the falls instead. This is one of the first things Eli ever made for me in preschool. It contains his creative energy. That’ll be our ceremony.”
The atmosphere is taut. Eli’s family weren’t cuddly types even before. So we eat, and Jesmyn and I occasionally swap supportive glances.
Five minutes or so later, we hear the front door open, and Pierce walks in, dressed for the outdoors. He also looks haggard. Bone weary. Whittled away, especially in the face. “Hello, everybody,” he says. Even though I don’t have Jesmyn’s synesthesia, his voice sounds gray to me.
“Hi,” Jesmyn and I murmur almost in unison.
Pierce walks over and gives Melissa a peck on the cheek. She gives him a narrow smile. More pressing her lips together than raising the corners.
“Help yourself,” Melissa says.
“I’m fine,” Pierce says.
“Thank y’all for doing this,” Jesmyn says. “It’s good to see you again. I missed you.”
Melissa gives her a warmer smile. “We missed you too. We loved having you around.”
“So,” Jesmyn says, “I’m not sure how this works, but I can tell you exactly how Eli and I met if you’re interested.”
“We’d love to hear,” Pierce says. “We have a vague idea, but only from Eli. Not from you.”
Jesmyn takes a sip of orange juice and wipes her mouth. “I noticed Eli on the very first day at Tennessee Teens Rock Camp. They had us all sitting on the auditorium stage. The counselors were trying to teach us ‘punk rock aerobics,’ but I kept getting distracted looking at him. He was right across from me. I thought he had beautiful hair. All long and dark and curly. He reminded me of Jon Snow from Game of Thrones.”
“I was so afraid of him getting my hair,” Melissa says, “and of course he did. It was endless drama combing it out when he was little.”
Jesmyn continues. “But I don’t dwell because I’m there to make music, not find a boyfriend. Anyway, they assign us our bands, and of course—”
“You guys are in the same band,” Pierce says. “That’s all Eli told us.”
“I’m like ‘Whatever,’ because guitarists are usually the worst. Fine, he’s hot, but who cares? So we start working on our song for the showcase, and suddenly he comes over to me with this idea. He and I will play this ascending and descending guitar-keyboard line, and he’ll harmonize with me. We work it out and try it. It’s this warm red-orange-pink.”
“Carver, you know about Jesmyn’s synesthesia?” Melissa asks.
I nod, weirdly hurt that Eli’s mom found out so much sooner than me. It’s dumb because she’s Eli’s mom and a damn brain surgeon, but…
“I loved seeing that color, so I kept making Eli run that part with me again and again. And I never felt like he was hitting on me. He was a perfect gentleman. If anything, I pursued him. By the end of that week, we were inseparable. You should have seen how I freaked out when I found out we were going to the same school.”
This story is an icepick slipping slowly between my ribs. But in a different way than the stories about Blake were. I fixate on my plate as if the answer to some mystery is written in the crumbs there. I’m afraid to look up, because I don’t want anyone to ask me what I’m feeling. I wouldn’t be able to say.
We eat for the next few minutes, bits of rigid small talk bobbing to the surface and sinking again. By the time Pierce suggests we head out, I’m almost hoping Jesmyn has another story of her pursuing Eli, since her first, while making me uncomfortable, seemed to relieve the tension otherwise.
We wrap up the pastries. We’re almost out the door when Pierce stops us.
“Wait.” His voice sounds even more leaden; rain clouds verging on deluge. “We’re about to take part of Eli from his house for the last time. This is the house we raised him in. The day we brought him and Adair home from the hospital as newborns…” He pauses and coughs, collecting himself. He tries to start again but falters. Finally, he clears his throat and says, “Melissa was feeding Adair. So I sat out on the porch with Eli and let the wind touch his face for the first time. I saw him hear the trees moving, rustling for the first time. That’s quite a thing: to see a human being first feel the wind. He opened his eyes just once, squinting up at me. I wondered how many more of the things of this world I would show him.”
I hadn’t considered this difference between Blake’s goodbye day and Eli’s: Eli’s parents have baby stories.
We step out onto the porch, where the breeze has picked up, tugging at our hair.
Pierce pauses. “Everyone, the plan was to scatter the sand at the falls, but could we do a little part here?”
We all nod. Melissa has been stoic. As a surgeon who deals with death and dying every day, I guess she doesn’t have much room for sentimentality. But tears stream down her cheeks.
Pierce opens the jar, reaches in, and pulls out a pinch of sand. Then he returns that small bit of Eli’s spirit to the wind that once touched his face.
Jesmyn and I sit in the backseat of Melissa’s Volvo SUV. Melissa’s driving. Pierce sits beside her, cradling the jar on his lap and staring at it. The trees whip past on the interstate. Here and there, one is aflame in red, yellow, or orange finery. But for the most part, they remain a faded, weary green, the memory of summer still on them.
I catch Jesmyn’s eye out of the corner of mine. She puts her hand at my side and gives a thumbs-up and raises her eyebrows. I put my hand at her side and make a “so-so” motion. Then I give her the thumbs-up and raised eyebrows. She reciprocates the “so-so.”
We drive in silence. There truly is something worse than small talk.
“We loved this day trip,” Melissa says finally. “It was one of the rare occasions when Eli would really let his guard down and tell us stuff.”
“Maybe it’s the historian in me,” Pierce says, “but I can’t help but contemplate the singular moments—the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings—leading to unforeseen consequences. We all decided on one of these drives that Eli should go to Nashville Arts along with Adair.”
Oh, shit. This is not a good direction for the conversation. I stare straight ahead, afraid to even move, adrenaline singing in my veins. Jesmyn steals a quick sidelong glance.
Melissa’s voice has a testy edge. “Well, the consequence of that was that Eli had a wonderful education and made some great friends.”
“Look, Mel, can you not be so defensive? I’m merely making an observation.”
“Well, I detect judgment in your ‘observation.’ ”
That makes two of us.
“You’re wrong.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I’m not assigning a moral value to anything. I’m stating a mat
ter of historical fact: if Eli had not gone to NAA, he never would have been riding in a car with Mars and Blake.”
For a fleeting moment, I ponder how much injury I would sustain if I were to fling open my door and roll out onto the highway.
“You may not acknowledge that there are any matters of moral judgment bound up in ‘fact,’ but there are. Even making that observation is a moral judgment. Anyway, can we not do this”—Melissa wags her finger between her and Pierce—“in front of our guests?”
I’m shrinking in my seat. Jesmyn surreptitiously slides her foot next to mine and taps it. I’m here, the tap says. I’m by your side.
Pierce glances back at us. “Does anyone mind if we celebrate Eli’s life today by being emotionally honest and open with each other? Does anybody in this car find it’s healthy to bottle things up? Anybody think we’d be doing Eli’s legacy a service by doing that?”
I catch a glimpse of Melissa rolling her eyes in the rearview mirror. “It would be perfectly all right—and respectful of Eli’s legacy—if we celebrated his life and didn’t try to unearth the cause or causes of his death. We’re not trying to figure out who built Stonehenge here.”
So. Yeah. This is turning out to be pretty different from Blake’s goodbye day. Being around fighting adults sucks. Being around your dead friend’s fighting parents sucks worse than that. Being around your dead friend’s parents possibly fighting about how you maybe killed your dead friend sucks worst of all.
Pierce starts to respond.
“The first time Eli and I kissed?” Jesmyn interjects suddenly, before he can reply. Everyone shuts up. I’m relieved while simultaneously suspecting this story will make me squirmy.
“…was after the Rock Camp showcase. We were all hanging out backstage and people were leaving. It was packed, but for some reason, by the time I went to the green room to load out my keyboard, the only person in there was Eli. He was getting his guitar and amp. And we told each other good job and somehow we kept standing closer and closer together. It was making me so nervous, but I loved it. How being onstage feels. And then we just…kissed. I don’t remember who initiated it. Maybe we both did. It was a quick kiss because we heard someone coming. But I remember giggling all day for no reason. My parents probably thought I was high.”
This story is indeed making me profoundly uneasy. I’m not sure why. It’s not quite like guilt or grief. It’s even rawer and redder than either.
But it seems to have the opposite effect on Pierce and Melissa. Pierce’s face brightens slightly. Melissa laughs. “I remember that day because of exactly that. Eli was so giggly and goofy that we thought some of the kids had smoked up after the show. Remember that, Pierce?”
“In the car, we didn’t even have to fight over the music. That was rare. I didn’t think he was high on anything; I thought he was euphoric from performing.”
Jesmyn has a wistful, faraway expression. She seems to be staring at the jar. “I’ve never kissed someone I’ve only known for a week. Ever. Probably never will again.”
“I could tell what you two had was special,” Melissa says. “You seemed to have an amazing chemistry and friendship.”
“We loved being together right up until—we weren’t.”
I feel like I’m bleeding. Maybe healing is like surgery, where you have to open new wounds to repair old ones. I hope this is all for something.
The conversation dwindles and dies. We pull into a rest stop to use the restroom and stretch our legs, even though we’ve been driving for only an hour.
Pierce stands outside the SUV, still holding the jar to his chest.
I watch him staring blearily into the distance, and I realize there’s something else different about this goodbye day. I don’t want to confess, the way I did with Nana Betsy. Even though I sense from Pierce that he wants me to. Even though I can tell he also carries some of Adair’s desire to hear me confess.
Pierce takes over driving and Melissa holds Eli’s jar. I keep considering what I can contribute. What revelation I can offer. I’m coming up blank. My mind is void and my thoughts won’t take shape for me to hold.
Pierce keeps shifting in his seat as if he wants to say something. “Every time I drive now, those last moments haunt me.”
Melissa makes a little noise of disgust. “Pierce.”
“I imagine what Eli saw in the split second before the trailer of that truck grew in his field of vision until it was all he saw.”
“Please don’t be morbid. Not today.”
Pierce gives a bitter, sardonic chuckle. “Yeah, because our son, Eli, who didn’t own a piece of clothing that wasn’t black, and who started asking for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a bedtime story at age four, would be so offended by my morbidity.”
“I’m not talking about Eli.”
“Sorry, isn’t that who this day is about?”
Melissa shakes her head and raises her hands in an I-just-can’t gesture.
I’m going full Dr. Mendez on this. “It’s okay,” I say. “We—I can handle it if talking about it helps. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m all right too,” Jesmyn says.
Pierce catches my eyes in the rearview mirror and gives me a firm nod. Then he throws Melissa a triumphant look.
She stares forward and ignores it. “Say what you need to then.” Her tone is frigid.
I’ve seen Pierce and Melissa sparring intellectually before. That was always part of the landscape over at Eli’s. But this seems more pointed and personal. I suddenly wish Dr. Mendez were actually here rather than my attempts to channel him. He’s the intellectual equal of both, and he could defuse things.
“I wonder if he had any awareness of what was happening, if his consciousness survived even for a few seconds. Or if one minute everything was bright and normal, and the next minute everything was black.”
“Well, (A) how would the answer to that change your life in any way, and (B) how the hell are these guys supposed to help you answer it?”
“I’m not asking a question, Mel, I’m simply stating that I wonder. Am I not allowed to express curiosity over something near anybody who can’t decisively banish said curiosity?”
Melissa starts to respond.
“Eli believed in God,” I blurt. Everyone shuts up instantly. We’ll be set if, between Jesmyn and me, we can keep remembering dramatic revelations every time Pierce and Melissa start to go at each other’s throats. Even Jesmyn looks expectant.
“Maybe,” I continue. “Sort of.”
Pierce looks flummoxed. “He never expressed that to us.”
“That could be because you derided religious people as idiots every chance you got,” Melissa says.
“That is absolutely unfair.”
I speak louder. “Once, I don’t remember what we were doing. Going to a movie or something. Eli and I were talking in the car. I don’t know how we got on the subject, but we started talking about God. And I knew you two were atheists, so I was surprised when Eli goes: ‘What if there’s a god who’s so much bigger and more powerful than anything that he builds universes like ships in bottles, and no matter how far you look or reach, you can’t see or touch outside the bottle? So you have no idea that God exists. You have no way of proving that God exists. But he’s there. Or maybe our whole universe is just a big computer program that God is running.’ So yeah. Maybe he believed in God.”
“Well, he was entertaining the possibility of the existence of a god. Which wouldn’t make him a theist, necessarily; it would make him an agnostic.” Pierce has a wounded, vexed expression. I can guess, from my experience revealing new information to Nana Betsy, what he’s probably thinking.
Melissa’s expression is similar to Pierce’s. “Carver’s point,” she says tersely, “if I understand him correctly, was that Eli didn’t necessarily share our belief system and he had constructed his own. I didn’t know that about him. Obviously neither did you.”
“I wish he had talked to us about it,” Pierce
says.
“I wish we had created an environment more conducive to that,” Melissa says.
Pierce shakes his head.
“I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault,” I say. “Eli had stuff that was his and his alone. Or that he talked about with only a couple people.”
“Eli and I never even really talked about God,” Jesmyn says. “But he loved to consider unknowable things. We’d been dating for about two weeks when he took me to Centennial Park. It was my first time there. We sat and held each other and looked at the skyline— Sorry, I hope I’m not making y’all uncomfortable talking about PDA.”
Pierce and Melissa shake their heads. I stare forward. It’s not even the PDA part that’s making me uncomfortable (why would it?)—it’s the unspecialness of when Jesmyn and I sat at the park, watching the city lights twinkle like a constellation of human stars. It’s knowing how much magic, of which I had no part, went on in the world between the people close to me.
She continues. “Anyway, Eli randomly asks me, ‘If you could learn the name of everyone who has ever loved you, would you want to?’ ”
We wait, but Jesmyn says no more.
“So?” Melissa says.
Jesmyn smiles wistfully. “I told him I didn’t know. I still don’t. The last thing you want is to find out that someone who you thought loves you never loved you.”
“What did he say?” Pierce asks.
“He wouldn’t say. I’d promised myself I’d drag the answer out of him someday.”
I couldn’t imagine doing this day without Jesmyn. But every time she talks about Eli, it’s like the right side of my heart has been tied to the bumper of a pickup truck. And every time Pierce and Melissa talk about him, it’s like the left side has been tied to another pickup. And they’re peeling out in opposite directions, ripping my heart down its center.
And of course, when none of them are speaking, I’m thinking about two other trucks. The eighteen-wheeler of prosecution headed my way. And the trailer that filled Eli’s field of vision in his last seconds alive on this Earth.