Brock thought, Fuck, I hope you’re not taking me diving again. I might have a heart attack this time.
Hunter’s mind was silent. If he dug deeply enough, Brock could’ve uncovered more random thoughts, but he didn’t feel compelled to do so. He simply enjoyed the silence. Together.
When Hunter arrived at the top of the cliff, he sat on the diving rock with his feet hanging over the edge. He stared down at the water and then up at the sky. Hunter simply sat there and thought. It took a moment for Brock to realize, but Hunter wasn’t thinking at Brock or for Brock, he was just sitting there thinking, letting his thoughts come to him. Letting his mind wander.
It dawned on him: Hunter was giving himself to Brock. He was letting Brock see inside; Hunter was letting Brock see him. See how his mind worked. How he went from thought to thought, each one leading to another so, within a span of four or five thoughts, his mind ended up in a completely different place than where it started. His current thoughts had absolutely nothing to do with his original thoughts. He was letting Brock inside.
Fears, insecurities, all the negatives that unfortunately took precedent most of the time. Even for Hunter. He was no different: he was as scared, as lonely, as lost as the rest. Despite being his best friend since they were kids, there was only so much Brock could know about Hunter. Sure, he knew Hunter’s idiosyncrasies and Hunter knew his. However, what he was experiencing was different; it was actually hearing Hunter’s mind and hearing him; it was experiencing Hunter’s mind float along like a calligraphy of clouds, which swiftly drifted across the sky.
Hunter thought about Brock. He remembered how things were way back when. He remembered how he and Brock first met. It seemed so strange how different one’s memory could be from another’s. Hunter remembered things differently than Brock. Hunter’s memory recalled images in his mind differently than how Brock’s memory formed them. Not because they possessed different perspectives, they literally remembered things differently. Colors, shapes of things, sizes, certain memories that would get mixed up with others. It made Brock wonder: What was it really like back then? What really happened? How did things really look?
Hunter thought about that day. That day. The day of the accident. As much as Hunter wanted to be able, he really couldn’t remember anything until Brock was already in the water. Hunter wasn’t paying attention when Brock dived off the cliff. He was busy flirting with some girl. Some stupid fucking girl whose name he couldn’t even remember.
In the lab, Brock chuckled to himself with his eyes closed. Hunter didn’t know exactly which part he was at, but he knew pretty much what was going on. It was definitely one of the more serene parts of the day. Probably up on the cliff still. Or on the way up.
The way Hunter remembered it, people started making a commotion because Brock didn’t come up out of the water. Brock’s body was hovering ominously along the bottom. Hunter remembered diving down with a couple of other guys to pull Brock up and drag him to shore. Hunter remembered one of the guys shouting at someone to go call 911.
Brock watched Hunter’s memory of that day play out, kind of like watching a movie. It was interesting, and although he didn’t think he’d ever have the heart to tell Hunter, he knew Hunter wasn’t one of the boys who pulled him out of the water. Hunter stayed in the water; he didn’t even dive down to pull him up. Hunter was frozen, in shock, unable to move. Brock remembered it because as they dragged him to shore, he could see Hunter out there, standing in the water, his mouth hanging open, gawking at Brock. He was frozen out there in the water, staring at Brock’s body like he already knew what happened. Like he knew the extent of the damage.
Hunter’s mind drifted through the years: the different operations, the different experiments, the different times they shared together. Their friendship. All the good times and the jokes. Combined, they gave an overall sense of their friendship. An impression of what it meant to be “Hunter and Brock.”
Then, things shifted. Things became less visual, less narrative like a movie and then became blurrier and more emotive. They were Hunter’s feelings about their relationship. Then, it shifted more. There was ambiguity percolating. There was something beneath the surface. It started to make Brock uncomfortable, and he winced.
In the lab, Hunter knew which part Brock arrived at, so he braced himself. He stared intently at his friend.
Hunter’s ambiguous feelings slowly bubbled to the surface. His feelings about Brock. What happened to Brock. What Brock’s life was like. Conflicted feelings. Feelings he knew Brock could see in the faces of people around him every day. Feelings people had about Brock that separated him from them and made Brock feel different. Feelings in others that made Brock insecure, ostracized, uncomfortable. Pity. Feelings of pity.
“Open your eyes and look at me,” Hunter said out loud while he sat on the cliff and stared out into the blue sky.
No, Brock thought. He clinched his eyes tightly and, in the lab, Hunter saw the grimace on his face.
From the cliff, Hunter sent his second request out into the air.
“Brock, open your eyes. Please open them and look at me, because I know you haven’t opened them yet. I know you.”
In the lab, Brock clinched harder, grimaced more and, although he knew Hunter couldn’t hear him, thought back, Don’t you fucking dare go all ‘Good Will Hunting’ on me. You fucking asshole. Don’t you fucking dare. Fuck you. I hate you. You fucking fag.
Hunter grabbed Brock’s arm and spoke directly to his friend. “Look at me.”
Brock opened his eyes and glared at Hunter. Brock looked annoyed and his eyes were filled with rage.
Back on the cliff, Hunter kept speaking to Brock. Hunter delivered the words to the open air, as though he were speaking up into the heavens.
“I have no way of knowing if you’re looking at me right now. All I can do is hope you are. And I know you’re mad. You’ll get over it. What I want to tell you …what I want to say is that I love you. I want to tell you that I am sorry for what happened to you, my friend. I always have been. I am so sorry for what happened to you. You did not deserve it, and you should have had a different life. You deserve a different life. I know we can’t change what happened. No one can change what happened, and all I ever wanted to do was make your life better. Give you the life you deserve. You are such a good person. You deserve a better life than I do. Cause let’s be honest, I’m kind of a piece of shit.”
In the lab, Brock laughed through snotty but light tears. Hunter knew what caused that laugh. What he said back on the cliff was true. Hunter could be a piece of shit most of the time, and Brock was such a good guy—all the time.
Sitting on the cliff, his legs dangling over the side, Hunter continued. “And I know you don’t ever want anyone to pity you.”
Brock couldn’t hold back the heavy tears anymore. They poured down his face and then so did Hunter’s.
“And out of everyone in the world, you know that I have too much respect for you to pity you. I could never pity you. But I am sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry for it every day. Every time I look at you, I’m sorry for it. And, my friend, what I want to say to you is that, in your fear and hatred of ever being pitied, you shut people out. You deny me, you deny your best friends, and the people who love you—you deny us—the ability to feel or express genuine sorrow for you. To feel sorrow for my friend. My best friend. Sorrow for your loss and the pain you were forced to endure all these years. Just like how we can’t love someone without their permission, we can’t feel sorrow for them either. I need your permission to feel my sorrow and to let it out. To let it go. It eats me up on the inside and the reason I can’t let it out is because I don’t want to hurt you or push you away.”
Brock witnessed, in the lab, the excruciating pain on his friend’s face, and could feel, back on the cliff, the burning, deep, old pain in his friend’s heart. He could witness and feel both at the same time. It was too much. Brock understood. He was never able to step outside of h
imself enough to see how his own insecurities affected the people closest to him. How his own fears hurt the people who cared for him the most. He never sensed how his weakness could form poisonous scabs inside the people closest to him.
Brock cried because he was afraid. What he was scared of most at that moment was what he was about to see happen to his friend.
Sitting on the cliff, tears were already streaming down Hunter’s face. He looked down at the water below as they dripped off his cheeks.
“I just need your permission, Brock. I need to let it go. It’s something I’ve always needed.”
In the lab, Brock closed his eyes and hesitated. He took a deep breath and, as he bit his trembling lip, nodded in quick bursts, with his eyes still closed. He said “yes” to his friend and hoped it would rip that scab off Hunter, so he could heal. He kept rapidly nodding his head, because he wanted to get it over with.
Brock finally opened his eyes.
With that permission, Hunter released a long, single wail. It was so loud and so old it sounded as if it erupted from every cell in his body and came from a time before he and Brock were born. Hunter wept heavily and shook his head again and again. Still shaking back and forth, his head fell forward and he hunched over. Hunter’s forehead landed on Brock’s chest, where he cried more.
“I’m so sorry … I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what happened. I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I wish it had been me. It should have been me. I hate those stupid rocks. I hate those stupid fucking rocks.”
He hugged his friend’s body and roared out deep, rhythmic sobs. Hunter unleashed pain he carried with him for longer than he could remember. Pain piled on top of other agonizing childhood trauma he carried with him, all of which he disguised and defended by using carefully crafted wit and charm. Even if only for a moment, Hunter liberated himself from the sorrow that he was afraid would hurt his friend if he ever suspected Hunter felt it.
Ken had no idea what was happening, but he couldn’t take it. Whatever was transpiring between those two men was so profound and reached back so far that Ken felt like an intruder. No one who wasn’t directly involved or affected should witness that kind of personal, private display and he couldn’t handle it. He felt like he was violating them. He quietly left the lab and made sure the two men would not notice or be disturbed.
Hunter sat in the lab with his head on his friend and cried, just as he’d cried hours before on the cliff, except deeper, louder, and more unhinged. He cried to the point of exhaustion. It felt like he underwent an exorcism and as it subsided, he felt guilty. Guilty that he turned what was supposed to be an amazingly wonderful experience with his friend into something selfishly cathartic. He lifted his head and looked at Brock, who was still looking down at him.
Brock grunted and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
There was nothing Hunter could say except, after wiping his snotty nose with his sleeve as if they were fourteen again, “Thank you too, bud.”
Brock closed his eyes, more out of exhaustion than anything. Hunter was still seated on the cliff, and he stared off into the sky. He waited until he ran out of tears. He must’ve sat there for twenty minutes. He didn’t know what would transpire between him and Brock back in the lab when that particular moment arrived. Besides, he needed some time to collect himself.
Twenty minutes felt like time enough. He took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth.
“Hope everything is ok on your end. We need to get moving, though. People to do and things to see.”
While he jogged down the hill, he put on his shirt and checked his pocket watch. At the bottom of the hill, he climbed into the car, turned on the music, and drove off. Hunter’s thoughts stayed relatively quiet during the ride.
In the silence, Brock began to notice some things the events of the day overshadowed before. He noticed how Hunter’s mind had a different feel to it than his own. It felt less restricted. It felt bigger, but not bigger in the sense that it held more intelligence; it seemed bigger in the sense that there was more room to breathe, like it was more expansive. He told himself to talk to Hunter about it after the Veil. He knew that was the kind of thing Hunter would be interested in, although Brock knew it was going to be close to impossible to explain.
Suddenly, they were parking. He wasn’t sure when, but at some point Brock stopped paying attention to what Hunter was doing and started paying attention to what was going on inside of Hunter. He had a lot going on in there.
They were at Brock’s parents’ house. Hunter got out of the car, went around to the trunk, took out a black duffle bag, and made his way up to the front door.
Hunter quickly rapped on the door a couple of times and then opened it.
“Hellooooo…” he announced himself.
From another room came the voice of Brock’s mom, “Hey Hunt, that you?”
“Sure is!” he shouted back and dropped his bag near the front door.
Brock’s mom appeared from around a corner and entered the foyer where Hunter was still standing. It was strange for Brock to see his mother from that view. To see his mom through another person’s eyes. She was shorter and she looked different. Hunter saw her differently than Brock. He saw her face differently, and the look of her face made him feel differently than it made Brock feel, which also had the effect of making her look different. It was interesting. That word again—interesting.
“Elizabeth Elizabeth,” Hunter smiled and gave Brock’s mom a hug.
“Oh, Hunter,” she replied and playfully slapped him on the shoulder with a rag. He always called her that. Her name, after marrying her husband, became Elizabeth Olivia Elsbeth, but since Elsbeth was a German variation of the name Elizabeth, she thought it best to go by Olivia instead. Lest her name literally be, “Elizabeth Elizabeth.”
“Hey mom,” he smiled. He always called her mom and she always allowed it. She knew all too well the tumultuous relationship Hunter endured with his parents all his life, and she couldn’t say she was very fond of the Kennerlys herself. Besides, he was Brock’s brother in almost every sense of the word. She hugged him back and he held her tightly before he suddenly scooped her up and swung her around in the air.
In the lab, Brock gasped; he smiled wide and open-mouthed. He couldn’t remember the last time he hugged his mother. He literally could not remember it. As a fourteen-year-old, the last thing he wanted was anything to do with his parents and any remnants of being affectionate with his mom were pushed out of his mind, so that he could focus on being a teenager.
Throughout his adult years, Brock experienced limited physical contact or displays of affection with anyone and everyone. The feeling of holding his mother in his arms immediately shocked him and gave him goose bumps again. He never imagined how starved for affection he truly was—especially from the most important woman in his life. After moving to the west coast to be closer to Hunter, he remained in daily contact with his mom. Brock loved to write so, using the computer attached to his chair, he sent her messages throughout the day, every single day. As a result of the accident or not, Brock Elsbeth was the consummate Mama’s Boy, something for which he was unabashed and unapologetic.
“Oh Hunter!” she yelped and whacked his shoulder with the rag again. “You put me down!” she demanded.
They laughed together and he set her down gently. He grabbed the bag he left by the door and flung it over a shoulder.
“Where’s dad?” he asked.
“Where do you think? Already in the basement. As soon as I told him you were planning on coming over and could help with the water heater, he headed down there and started getting things ready. Then, not only did he decide to go buy a whole new one this morning, he lugged it inside himself.”
“Oh lord.” Hunter shook his head. “He’s going to give himself a stroke.”
“You know how he is.” She shook her head along with him.
Hunter put his arm around Brock’s mother and gently kissed the top of
her head. Brock could smell his mother’s hair and her perfume. His mother’s scent was one of his favorite things in the world. Once, after moving to California, he came across a woman who was wearing the same perfume as his mother’s, and he had to fight back tears when his nose caught her scent.
He began to tear up in the lab after smelling his mother through Hunter’s nose and after experiencing for himself how lovingly Hunter felt toward his mother. It was genuine, familial love and Brock was surprised by how similar it was to his own, as though they truly were brothers. He opened his damp eyes and smiled at his brother who was already smiling back. He shut his eyes quickly so he wouldn’t miss anything.
Hunter tossed the bag onto Brock’s bed and unzipped it but didn’t open it. He reached inside and fumbled around until Brock could feel him grab a few small, hard objects. Hunter pulled them out and Brock saw they were little bottles of alcohol, like his father collected. Hunter shoved them in a pocket and reached inside to grab a few more before he zipped up the bag.
He walked down the hallway and crept into the den. He opened Brock’s dad’s wet bar mini-fridge and used the new bottles to replace the ones he downed several nights prior. Even if he already noticed some of the bottles were taken, they both knew how dad felt about stuff like that. To dad, it was a sign of respect for one to return things to the state in which one found them. Elijah Elsbeth was all about respect and that attitude always seemed to instill respect in the majority of the people around him.
Veil Page 23