by Jandy Nelson
It does.
“That garden is wild, never seen flowers like that, thought some of those roses might chop off my head and put me in a vase.” He shakes his head in amazement and his hair falls too adorably into his eyes. “It’s like Eden or something.”
“Better be careful in Eden, all that temptation.” The thunder of Big’s God voice surprises me – he’s been my partner in muteness lately, much to Gram’s displeasure. “Smelling Gram’s flowers has been known to cause all sorts of maladies of the heart.”
“Really?” Joe says. “Like what?”
“Many things. For instance, the scent of her roses causes a mad love to flourish.” At that, Joe’s gaze ever so subtlety shifts to me – whoa, or did I imagine it? Because now his eyes are back on Big, who’s still talking. “I believe this to be the case from personal experience and five marriages.” He grins at Joe. “Name’s Big, by the way, I’m Lennie’s uncle. Guess you’re new around here or you’d already know all this.”
What he would know is that Big is the town lothario. Rumors have it that at lunchtime women from all over pack a picnic and set out to find which tree that arborist is in, hoping for an invitation to lunch with him in his barrel high in the canopy. The stories go that shortly after they dine, their clothes flutter down like leaves.
I watch Joe taking in my uncle’s gigantism, his wacked-out mustache. He must like what he sees, because his smile immediately brightens the room a few shades.
“Yup, we moved here just a couple months ago from the city, before that we were in Paris—” Hmm. He must not have read the warning on the door about saying the word Paris within a mile radius of Gram. It’s too late. She’s already off on a Francophiliac rhapsody, but Joe seems to share her fanaticism.
He laments, “Man, if only we still lived—”
“Now, now,” she interrupts, wagging her finger like she’s scolding him. Oh no. Her hands have found her hips. Here it comes: she singsongs, “If only I had wheels on my ass, I’d be a trolley cart.” A Gram standard to forestall wallowing. I’m appalled, but Joe cracks up.
Gram’s in love. I don’t blame her. She’s taken him by the hand and is now escorting him on a docent walk through the house, showing off her willowy women, with whom he seems duly and truly impressed, from the exclamations he’s making, in French, I might add. This leaves Big to resume his scavenging for bugs and me to replace fantasies of my spoon with Joe Fontaine’s mouth. I can hear them in the living room, know they are standing in front of The Half Mom because everyone who comes in the house has the same reaction to it.
“It’s so haunting,” Joe says.
“Hmm, yes … that’s my daughter, Paige. Lennie and Bailey’s mom, she’s been away for a long, long time…” I’m shocked. Gram hardly ever talks about Mom voluntarily. “One day I’ll finish this painting, it’s not done…” Gram has always said she’ll finish it when Mom comes back and can pose for her.
“Come now, let’s eat.” I can hear the heartache in Gram’s voice through three walls. Mom’s absence has grown way more pronounced for her since Bailey’s death. I keep catching her and Big staring at The Half Mom with a fresh, almost desperate kind of longing. It’s become more pronounced for me too.
Mom was what Bails and I did together before bed when we’d imagine where she was and what she was doing. I don’t know how to think about Mom without her.
I’m jotting down a poem on the sole of my shoe when they come back in.
“Run out of paper?” Joe asks.
I put my foot down. Ugh. What’s your major, Lennie? Oh yeah: Dorkology.
Joe sits down at the table, all limbs and graceful motion, an octopus.
We are staring at him again, still not certain what to make of the stranger in our midst. The stranger, however, appears quite comfortable with us.
“What’s up with the plant?” He points to the despairing Lennie houseplant in the middle of the table. It looks like it has leprosy. We all go silent, because what do we say about my doppelgänger houseplant?
“It’s Lennie, it’s dying, and frankly, we don’t know what to do about it,” Big booms with finality. It’s as if the room itself takes a long awkward breath, and then at the same moment Gram, Big and I lose it – Big slapping the table and barking laughter like a drunk seal, Gram leaning back against the counter wheezing and gasping for breath, and me doubled over trying to breathe in between my own uncontrolled gasping and snorting, all of us lost in a fit of hysterics the likes of which we haven’t had in months.
“Aunt Gooch! Aunt Gooch!” Gram is shrieking in between peals of laugher. Aunt Gooch is the name Bailey and I gave to Gram’s laugh because it would arrive without notice like a crazy relative who shows up at the door with pink hair, a suitcase full of balloons, and no intention of leaving.
Gram gasps, “Oh my, oh my, I thought she was gone for good.”
Joe seems to be taking the outburst quite well. He’s leaned back in his chair, is balancing on its two back legs; he looks entertained, like he’s watching, well, like he’s watching three heartbroken people lose their marbles. I finally settle enough to explain to Joe, amidst tears and residual giggles, the story of the plant. If he hadn’t already thought he’d gained entry to the local loony bin, he was sure to now. To my amazement, he doesn’t make an excuse and fly out the door, but takes the predicament quite seriously, like he actually cares about the fate of the plain, sickly plant that will not revive.
After breakfast, Joe and I go onto the porch, which is still eerily cloaked in morning fog. The moment the screen door closes behind us, he says, “One song,” as if no time has elapsed since we were in the tree.
I walk over to the railing, lean against it, and cross my arms in front of my chest. “You play. I’ll listen.”
“I don’t get it,” he says. “What the deal?”
“The deal is I don’t want to.”
“But why? Your pick, I don’t care what.”
“I told you, I don’t—”
He starts to laugh. “God, I feel like I’m pressuring you to have sex or something.” Every ounce of blood in a ten-mile radius rushes to my cheeks. “C’mon. I know you want to…” he jokes, raising his eyebrows like a total dork. What I want is to hide under the porch, but his giant loopy grin makes me laugh. “Bet you like Mozart,” he says, squatting to open his case. “All clarinettists do. Or maybe you’re a Bach’s Sacred Music devotee?” He squints up at me. “Nah, don’t seem like one of those.” He takes the guitar out, then sits on the edge of the coffee table, swinging it over his knee. “I’ve got it. No clarinet player with blood in her veins can resist Gypsy jazz.” He plays a few sizzling chords. “Am I right? Or … I know!” He starts beating a rhythm on his guitar with his hand, his foot pounding the floor. “Dixieland!”
The guy’s life-drunk, I think, makes Candide look like a sourpuss. Does he even know that death exists?
“So, whose idea was it?” I ask him.
He stops finger-drumming. “What idea?”
“That we play together. You said—”
“Oh, that. Marguerite St Denis is an old friend of the family – the one I blame actually for my exile up here. She might’ve mentioned something about how Lennie Walker joue de la clarinette comme un rêve.” He twirls his hand in the air like Marguerite. “Elle joue à ravir, de merveille.”
I feel a rush of something, everything, panic, pride, guilt, nausea – it’s so strong I have to hold on to the railing. I wonder what else she told him.
“Quelle catastrophe,” he continues. “You see, I thought I was her only student who played like a dream.” I must look confused, because he explains, “In France. She taught at the conservatory, most summers.”
As I take in the fact that my Marguerite is also Joe’s Marguerite, I see Big barreling past the window, back at it, broom over head, looking for creatures to resurrect. Joe doesn’t seem to notice, probably a good thing. He adds, “I’m joking, about me, clarinet’s never been my thing.”
“Not what I heard,” I say. “Heard you were fabulous.”
“Rachel doesn’t have much of an ear,” he replies matter-of-factly, without insult. Her name falls too easily from his lips, like he says it all the time, probably right before he kisses her. I feel my face flush again. I look down, start examining my shoes. What’s with me? I mean really. He just wants to play music together like normal musicians do.
Then I hear, “I thought about you…”
I don’t dare look up for fear I imagined the words, the sweet tentative tone. But if I did, I’m imagining more of them. “I thought about how crazy sad you are, and…”
He’s stopped talking. And what? I lift my head to see that he’s examining my shoes too. “Okay,” he says, meeting my gaze. “I had this image of us holding hands, like up at The Great Meadow or somewhere, and then taking off into the air.”
Whoa – I wasn’t expecting that, but I like it. “A la St Joseph?”
He nods. “Got into the idea.”
“What kind of launch?” I ask. “Like rockets?”
“No way, an effortless take-off, Superman-style.” He raises one arm up and crosses his guitar with the other to demonstrate. “You know.”
I do know. I know I’m smiling just to look at him. I know that what he just said is making something unfurl inside. I know that all around the porch, a thick curtain of fog hides us from the world.
I want to tell him.
“It’s not that I don’t want to play with you,” I say quickly so I don’t lose my nerve. “It’s that, I don’t know, it’s different, playing is.” I force out the rest. “I didn’t want to play first chair, didn’t want to do the solos, didn’t want to do any of it. I blew it, the chair audition … on purpose.” It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud, to anyone, and the relief is the size of a planet. I go on. “I hate soloing, not that you’d understand that. It’s just so…” I’m waving my arm around, unable to find the words. But then I point my hand in the direction of Flying Man’s. “So like jumping from rock to rock in the river, but in this kind of thick fog, and you’re all alone, and every single step is…”
“Is what?”
I suddenly realize how ridiculous I must sound. I have no clue what I’m talking about, no clue. “It doesn’t matter,” I say.
He shrugs. “Tons of musicians are afraid to fall on their faces.”
I can hear the steady whoosh of the river as if the fog’s parted to let the sound through.
It’s not just performance anxiety though. That’s what Marguerite thought too. It’s why she thought I quit – You must work on the nerves, Lennie, the nerves – but it’s more than that, way more. When I play, it’s like I’m all shoved and crammed and scared inside myself, like a jack-in-the-box, except one without a spring. And it’s been like that for over a year now.
Joe bends down and starts flipping through the sheet music in his case; lots of it is handwritten. He says, “Let’s just try. Guitar and clarinet’s a cool duet, untapped.”
He’s certainly not taking my big admission too seriously. It’s like finally going to confession only to find out the priest has earplugs in.
I tell him, “Maybe sometime,” so he’ll drop it.
“Wow.” He grins. “Encouraging.”
And then it’s as if I’ve vanished. He’s bent over the strings, tuning his guitar with such passionate attention I almost feel like I should look away, but I can’t. In fact, I’m full on gawking, wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive, just like he is – and for a split second, I want to play with him. I want to disturb the birds.
Later, as he plays and plays, as all the fog burns away, I think, he’s right. That’s exactly it – I am crazy sad and, somewhere deep inside, all I want is to fly.
Grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us
Grief is a house that disappears
each time someone knocks at the door
or rings the bell
a house that blows into the air
at the slightest gust
that buries itself deep in the ground
while everyone is sleeping
Grief is a house where no on can protect you
where the younger sister
will grow older than the older one
where the doors
no longer let you in
or out
(Found under a stone in Gram’s garden)
As usual I can’t sleep and am sitting at Bailey’s desk, holding St Anthony, in a state of dread about packing up her things. Today, when I got home from lasagna duty at the deli, there were cardboard boxes opened by her desk. I’ve yet to crack a drawer. I can’t. Each time I touch the wooden knobs, I think about her never thumbing through her desk for a notebook, an address, a pen, and all the breath races out of my body with one thought: Bailey’s in that airless box—
No. I shove the image into a closet in my mind, kick the door shut. I close my eyes, take one, two, three breaths, and when I open them, I find myself staring again at the picture of Explorer Mom. I touch the brittle paper, feel the wax of the crayon as I glide my finger across the fading figure. Does her human counterpart have any idea one of her daughters has died at nineteen years old? Did she feel a cold wind or a hot flash or was she just eating breakfast or tying her shoe like it was any other ordinary moment in her extraordinary itinerant life?
Gram told us our mom was an explorer because she didn’t know how else to explain to us that Mom had what generations of Walkers call the “restless gene.” According to Gram, this restlessness has always plagued our family, mostly the women. Those afflicted keep moving, they go from town to town, continent to continent, love to love – this is why, Gram explained, Mom had no idea who either of our fathers were, and so neither did we – until they wear themselves out and return home. Gram told us her Aunt Sylvie and a distant cousin, Virginia, also had the affliction, and after many years adventuring across the globe, they, like all the others before them, found their way back. It’s their destiny to leave, she told us, and their destiny to return, as well.
“Don’t boys get it?” I asked Gram when I was ten years old and “the condition” was becoming more understandable to me. We were walking to the river for a swim.
“Of course they do, sweet pea.” But then, she stopped in her tracks, took my hands in hers, and spoke in a rare solemn tone. “I don’t know if at your mature age you can understand this, Len, but this is the way it is: when men have it, no one seems to notice, they become astronauts or pilots or cartographers or criminals or poets. They don’t stay around long enough to know if they’ve fathered children or not. When women get it, well, it’s complicated, it’s just different.”
“How?” I asked. “How is it different?”
“Well, for instance, it’s not customary for a mother to not see her own girls for this many years, is it?”
She had a point there.
“Your mom was born like this, practically flew out of my womb and into the world. From day one, she was running, running, running.”
“Running away?”
“Nope, sweet pea, never away, know that.” She squeezed my hand. “She was always running toward.”
Toward what? I think, getting up from Bailey’s desk. What was my mother running toward then? What is she running toward now? What was Bailey? What am I?
I walk over to the window, open the curtain a crack and see Toby, sitting under the plum tree, under the bright stars, on the green grass, in the world. Lucy and Ethel are draped over his legs – it’s amazing how those dogs only come around when he does.
I know I should turn off the light, get into bed, and moon about Joe Fontaine, but that is not what I do.
I meet Toby under the tree and we duck into the woods to the river, wordlessly, as i
f we’ve had a plan to do this for days. Lucy and Ethel follow on our heels a few paces, then turn back around and go home after Toby has an indecipherable talk with them.
I’m leading a double life: Lennie Walker by day, Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter fame by night.
I tell myself, I will not kiss him, no matter what.
It’s a warm, windless night and the forest is still and lonely. We walk side by side in the quiet, listening to the fluted song of the thrush. Even in the moonlit stillness, Toby looks sun-drenched and windswept, like he’s on a sailboat.
“I know I shouldn’t have come, Len.”
“Probably not.”
“Was worried about you,” he says quietly.
“Thanks,” I say, and the cloak of being fine that I wear with everyone else slips right off my shoulders.
Sadness pulses out of us as we walk. I almost expect the trees to lower their branches when we pass, the stars to hand down some light. I breathe in the horsy scent of eucalyptus, the thick sugary pine, aware of each breath I take, how each one keeps me in the world a few seconds longer. I taste the sweetness of the summer air on my tongue and want to just gulp and gulp and gulp it into my body – this living, breathing, heart-beating body of mine.
“Toby?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you feel more alive since…” I’m afraid to ask this, like I’m revealing something shameful, but I want to know if he feels it too.
He doesn’t hesitate. “I feel more everything since.”
Yeah, I think, more everything. Like someone flipped on the switch of the world and everything is just on now, including me, and everything in me, bad and good, all cranking up to the max.
He grabs a twig off a branch, snaps it between his fingers. “I keep doing this stupid stuff at night on my board,” he says, “gnarly-ass tricks only show-off dip-shits do, and I’ve been doing it alone … and a couple times totally wasted.”
Toby is one of a handful of skaters in town who regularly and spectacularly defy gravity. If he thinks he’s putting himself in danger he’s going full-on kamikaze.