Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

Lawrence sighed.

  It was a big sigh.

  Naomi would say later that it sounded like the ocean.

  Elodee would say no, it felt like an earthquake, shaking the whole house.

  Lawrence didn’t say anything else. His sigh told them to leave him alone, to forget about him, to stop trying. Naomi and Elodee leaned against each other and stayed outside his door for half an hour, then an hour, then two, hoping he’d smell the cookies or the rose or their eagerness and love and come out and join them.

  He didn’t.

  They ate a quiet family dinner without Lawrence. It didn’t feel the same as a family dinner with Lawrence. There were no hamburgers, and they were not outside. They ate leftover pizza inside at the kitchen counter while Mom and Dad took turns getting up to talk quietly on the phone with a doctor.

  “Maybe it will be better tomorrow,” Naomi said.

  But it wasn’t.

  Because tomorrow Lawrence was gone.

  Mom picked Elodee and Naomi up from school early and told them in the parking lot. She meant to wait until they got home, but when she saw them she began to cry, and the words came out all on their own.

  “Your brother took too many of his pills and he got sick and we weren’t able to make him better. He went up to live with the angels.”

  “Angels?” Elodee asked. She didn’t know much about angels. No one had ever told her much about angels.

  “I want him to live here, though,” Naomi said.

  “All our memories of him will live with us,” Mom said, her voice all strangled and strange. “And where he is, he’ll be safe now. And happy.”

  “He used to be happy with us!” Elodee cried. She threw her backpack across the parking lot. The sound wasn’t nearly loud enough for what she felt.

  Everything stopped that day, the day that Lawrence forgot that he loved the world.

  39

  The Stories Inside

  By the time the recording ends, there’s not a whisper in the crowd. Even Josiah and Christine have their heads bowed. Like the tale of Lawrence, like this piece of my past—this piece of my present, this piece of my heart—is sacred.

  Betsy and her moms have joined us downstairs, and they lean against the walls. Naomi has joined me and Veena and the box of my memories. Mr. and Ms. Butra are standing by Mom and Dad, and about a dozen other residents have huddled around us, reaching arms to our shoulders, offering looks that are between smiles and frowns.

  The silence is long. No one wants to be the first to break it. Some of the residents have tears on their faces. Others look frightened. A few look like they want to escape back upstairs, like memories might be contagious. Like heartbreak might be contagious too.

  And maybe it is, because of all the crying and the way people aren’t just hugging us, but they’re hugging each other.

  “Tell us more about Lawrence,” Baxter says. I hadn’t noticed him there, with Maggie and Victor, watching and waiting and finally being brave enough to be the first one to speak. I hadn’t known Baxter could be brave. I had been feeling like I was the only brave one, all by myself. But now there’s brave Veena and brave Baxter, and even Naomi being brave in her own way. She stays right by me. She doesn’t close the box with all the buttons containing all my other stories. In fact, she holds her own box and opens it up, staring at the stories inside.

  I close my eyes. Now that the one story of Lawrence has been told, others come rushing back at me. It feels like they’ve been there all along, hiding somewhere dark and dusty and sad, and now they’re thrilled to be back on the surface of things.

  All they’ve ever wanted was to be told.

  Naomi, Veena, Ms. Butra, Mom, Dad, and I step outside the little room and into the Hallway of Past Heartaches, where at least fifty people are gathered. I am not the only one ready to tell more stories. Many families have found their own boxes and are nervously tapping their fingertips on the buttons inside, playing with the idea of pressing them.

  Ms. Butra is the first to do it, and I hear her voice from many, many years ago ring out. They called me names, her voice says. I missed my home and they told me to go back there.

  I can’t hear her story, though, because so many other buttons are pushed. I think I can pick out Ms. Applebet’s voice, talking about hiding in a closet when her father was angry, and a man from our street, Roshan Dweck, finding cruel words written on his home in spray paint one afternoon. I thought we were neighbors, the voice says.

  There’s Mr. Fountain’s voice, which sounds the way mine sounded, speaking of Lawrence. I think I pick out that he had a brother, too, and that his brother also died. I hear Mom and Dad telling their own stories of the day Lawrence died and Mr. Butra telling a happy story about expecting a new baby.

  We walk through the Hallway of Past Heartaches, and there are heart-joys too. Snow days and birthday parties and weddings and new jobs and laughing so hard your stomach hurts. If I listened I could hear about hospitals and loneliness too. People deciding to get divorced. Secrets being kept. Delicious Thanksgiving dinners and afternoons lost doing nothing but staring at the ocean.

  When Naomi finally presses another of her buttons, more memories of Lawrence come back to me—him making crepes every day for a month, Lawrence fostering a puppy one week until our parents found a home for him. Lawrence yelling at Mom and Dad to leave him alone. Lawrence abandoning his special cake halfway through, and the sad, gooey mess in a bowl on the counter that Naomi cleaned after a few days because Mom and Dad seemed too sad to do it themselves.

  Lawrence as he was—sometimes lifting us up on his shoulders or chasing us around the front yard, sometimes hiding under the covers.

  I loved every version of him. My big brother.

  I still do.

  Naomi, Veena, and I hold hands and walk farther down the hallway, pausing to listen to some stories, hugging people who seem like they might need it, laughing along with ones who need that.

  We pass Betsy and her moms. They are gathered around Betsy’s tall mom’s box of stories. She is hovering a finger over a button and looks afraid to press it. But her wife and Betsy both tell her she can do it, it’s okay, it will be okay.

  When she presses it, I know her story is a sad one too. Once upon a time there was a girl named Sabrina. She loved her parents. But they only loved some parts of her. When they found out about the other parts, they sent her away, her recorded voice says. Betsy sees us and we know it’s okay to stay and listen. So we do.

  We listen even though it’s hard.

  And when the listening is done, Betsy and her moms walk through the hallway right behind us.

  There is so much to listen to. So many things to learn about so many people.

  The stories are hard to hear and fun to hear and scary to hear and strange to hear. We are messy, listening to them. People cry and hide their faces and make new noises they’ve never made before and laugh louder than ever before too.

  And also. They hold each other. Some by the hands, like Naomi and I start to do, and some around the waists or shoulders. Some are in tight hugs and some in loose, gentle ones. Some are leaning their heads together, making pretty triangle shapes between their faces.

  They make new shapes. Ones I haven’t seen before in Eventown.

  “No one really touched anyone else here,” I say to Naomi. “Look.” And she does. She looks out at the crowd, at everyone who’s been angry with us and disappointed in us and also sad for us and listening to us. We’ve seen them shake hands and kiss cheeks before. But we’ve never seen them hug. We’ve never seen them wipe tears from one another’s faces or cradle each other or smooth down strands of hair, rub backs, rock someone who isn’t a baby back and forth, back and forth.

  “They all love each other,” I say to Mom and Dad. “I hadn’t noticed before.”

  “It was hard to see,” Dad says. “Love has a lot to do with imperfections. And Eventown doesn’t have many of those.” We draw closer together as a family. We know a lot about i
mperfections.

  A man comes down from upstairs and looks at what is happening in the hallway. He points at me. “Look what you’ve done,” he says. “It was her, wasn’t it? It was that family. You ruined us!”

  I can hear more shouts from upstairs. Maybe they are angry, agreeing with the man. Or maybe some of them want to come down and join us and our memories.

  Because Eventown doesn’t look ruined. Not even the crying, messy, aching people around us. They don’t look ruined at all. The man doesn’t stop his yelling. But Dad doesn’t apologize and neither do the rest of us. I think I’ve seen the man before around town, wearing his fedora, riding a bike. But I see him differently now. I wonder if he was born here or somewhere out there, where hard things happen. I think I see in the wrinkles on his forehead and the crack in his voice that he has stories too. That he came here to get away from them. That all those stories are locked in a pretty wooden box right here, a few feet away, and he’s afraid of them.

  “It’s raining outside!” he says. “It’s chaos! My wife is crying. My kids are upset. Nothing’s how it’s supposed to be. Nothing’s in order.”

  Naomi takes a big, brave breath. “Love is messy,” she says. And maybe the man hears her and maybe he doesn’t—Naomi’s voice, even at its loudest, is quiet, and the rain is still drizzling outside and someone else’s story is playing.

  No one’s smiling right now, listening to a sad story about losing a job, but we’re all together. It doesn’t look sunny and beautiful and perfect. It’s so much better than that.

  Dad sees it too. So does Naomi. And Mom, still crying over Lawrence, still hanging on to Dad’s arm like it will save her from the way she feels; she sees it, too, I swear.

  Love, in the way we take care of each other when we’re hurting.

  Love, in a town covered in vines and thorns and roses and color.

  Love, strongest in the worst, scariest, most painful moments.

  Love, even better when the sky is gray and your heart is breaking.

  40

  Twins on the Outside

  “We won’t forget you,” Mom says to the vine-covered house. We are standing outside it, the four of us. Our car is back, packed to the brim with everything we need to move back to Juniper.

  “We’ll have a lot of stories to tell about this place,” I say, and Mom squeezes me tight. More tightly than she’s squeezed me since Lawrence died. I think for a long time Mom thought loving too hard would just make her sadder. And maybe some days it does, but it makes her happier, too, I think.

  It’s weird, how you can be happier and sadder at the same time.

  I said that late at night, too, the evening after we listened to the stories at the Welcoming Center.

  “You’re both happy and sad right now?” Dad asked. I nodded.

  “Mad too,” I whispered, because I was so tired of all the things I hadn’t said. “At you.”

  “And at Mom,” Naomi said. I was surprised to hear her chime in. But relieved too. I wouldn’t be saying everything alone or feeling everything alone.

  Or remembering everything alone.

  We talked for hours that night. Long enough for me to make three different kinds of hot chocolate and long enough to move from crying to laughing to yelling and back to crying again. Long enough to tell one hundred stories about Lawrence.

  At first, Mom’s mouth puckered over his name, like it didn’t taste right.

  At first, Dad had to clear his throat five times before every story, like it was stuck somewhere in his chest or belly.

  But long, long past our bedtimes, his name got easier to say. The memories came fast and eager; we couldn’t tell them quickly enough. For hours we only told the good stories, the ones where Lawrence laughed and teased and frosted perfect cakes and invented new kinds of tacos and had garden dirt under his fingernails and a gleam in his eye.

  But eventually, we told the harder stories. The sad ones. The confusing ones. The stories where Lawrence was unhappy and quiet and telling us to leave him alone.

  We choked a little over the worst parts.

  But.

  The stories were easier to hear when Mom told them than when I told them to myself alone in my head. The stories were easier to bear when Dad breathed them out than when I was trying and failing at forgetting them.

  I could curl into Dad’s side.

  I could watch Mom’s face and see she was still there, she was still Mom, even when it hurt.

  I could tell half of a story and Naomi could tell the other half, and it was better to unwind it all together.

  “If we’d been better at talking like this with Lawrence—” Dad said in a moment of quiet. He didn’t need to finish the sentence. We all knew the end. Mom put a hand on his arm. She shook her head.

  “We did our best,” she said. “And he did his best. And it’s not anyone’s fault.”

  And that much I knew was true. That we all did our best. Mom never complained about the messes in the kitchen, and Dad asked Lawrence a billion questions about flowers and plants, and when Lawrence wanted to be alone we sometimes tried letting him be alone and we sometimes tried making him be with us, and we worried and wondered and waited and wished.

  There’s an ache in all of us, I think, where we wish we’d talked more about how hard it all was. And the ache will make us talk more now about the things that hurt or confuse or twist us up inside.

  But an ache isn’t the same thing as guilt. An ache doesn’t mean we were bad sisters or parents or people.

  An ache is just an ache: something that settles into your heart and reminds you that love is there even if the person you love isn’t.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mom said, and I think she meant for everything. For Lawrence. For Eventown. For the long silences and the way his name became a bad word. For the things we didn’t say and the things we were afraid to feel and the places we didn’t want to go.

  Naomi and I didn’t say it’s okay, because it’s not okay, exactly.

  It’s something else.

  It just is.

  “We were scared,” Dad said.

  And it was the truest thing I’d ever heard.

  And in that moment, I finally really got it.

  There’s a flaw in the Eventown system. Feelings cross all over each other. There can’t just be one gold button for joy and one for grief and one for fear. Sometimes you’re all of those things at once. Sometimes you’re scared of being sad, or sad about feeling happy. Sometimes you’re nervous about something you love or embarrassed by everything stirring around inside you.

  Sometimes you love the way a place has rosebushes and perfect sunsets but are scared of the way those things make you feel. Sometimes you wish you could forget, but you’re actually happier when you remember. Sometimes you are angry with your parents but hopeful that it won’t last forever.

  We all slept piled together in the living room that night. I don’t know when we fell asleep. I don’t know when talking turned to dreaming. But when we woke up, we knew we’d be going back to Juniper. Even though it felt scary. Even though it felt sad. Even though we were a little angry with Juniper and the things it took from us.

  Somehow, even with all those feelings, it was also home.

  Still, as we get ready to leave today, I know I’m going to miss the way the wind smells and the perfect ice cream cones and maybe even the anthem. I’m going to miss making perfect fried chicken, even though it will be more fun to make imperfect fried chicken.

  Dad notices the way I have scrunched my forehead at all the dozens of feelings buzzing around me at the same time.

  “We can visit,” Dad says.

  “But only for a few days at a time, right?” Naomi says.

  “A few days sounds right,” Mom says. “A few days is all you really need, I think.”

  Naomi walks toward the house and I go to follow her. She turns around and shakes her head.

  “I want to do it alone.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Sh
e doesn’t look so much like me after all. Her eyes are sadder and her back is much straighter. She’s got muscles where I don’t have anything and her hair is starting to curl at the ends. Mine doesn’t do that. “Let me say goodbye my own way.”

  I let her go into the house alone and I go into the backyard and the place where the Juniper rosebush used to be. I’m a little sad that I ruined it, a little sad that it can’t make the journey back with us. I wonder—I can’t help it—what Naomi’s doing in the house, and I feel a pinch of sadness not to be part of it, to have to be sad in my own way, in my own space and time.

  I find one single rose bloom near where the bush used to proudly stand. I’m not sure, I can’t be sure, if it’s from the Juniper bush or one of the Eventown ones. But it’s a full red bloom, brilliant and way too big. If I hang it in our bedroom, upside down, it will drain and dry and become something fragile but keepable. It’s not the same as a rosebud growing on a bush. The colors will shift and the texture will go papery and if I slam the door too hard or Naomi’s feet knock it over when she’s practicing a handstand it could go to pieces.

  But memory is like that, I guess. Not quite the same as it was when it was alive and happening. Delicate. Something you have to care for, tend to, love gently, and hang on to as hard as you can.

  I almost take one for Naomi too. But Naomi probably doesn’t need a dried rose to remember Eventown by. Naomi isn’t sad about the same things I am. We won’t miss the same things, or the same people.

  And the lonely part of me wants to miss the same things and know and love the same things. But the other part of me knows Naomi is right. We have to say goodbye in our own ways.

  Not just with Eventown.

  When Naomi comes back to the yard, she finds me with the bloom in my hands. “Pretty,” she says.

  “Your happiest memory,” I say. “I didn’t know all that.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Sometimes when you talked about Lawrence after he was gone, I felt like I didn’t know him at all. Like you were describing some person I’d never met.”

  “That’s how I felt hearing your memory. That’s not what I remember about him.”