Every Moment After

by Joseph Moldover

  I told him I did, and he gave me a few pieces of butterscotch that I’m pretty sure he was supposed to be saving for a hypoglycemic episode.

  “When this happens to me,” Matt said, “my mom says that I don’t have to handle it all at once. She says that I only have to get through one breath at a time.”

  I tried that for the walk down the hall to the stage, taking one breath after another, Matt still holding my hand. Then I peeked out, saw the audience, and froze. “There are so many people,” I whispered to him.

  “Yeah,” Matt whispered back. “But, you know something, Cole? Screw all of ’em.” He laughed. Matt had an impressive mouth, even back then. I laughed too, took another breath, and then we both walked out there together.

  I haven’t thought about that concert in years. “Now, Cole,” Mrs. Maiden says, “I want to say this as well. My heart broke for you when we lost your father. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, and he was a great loss, but my heart broke especially for you, because you’ve had to bear so much and it was just so, so unfair.”

  I nod and take a sip of my tea (even though I hate green tea, which is all we have), just to have something to do with my hands. Mom dabs at her eyes, and I hope she doesn’t start crying.

  “Cole,” Mrs. Maiden continues, “I would like for you to have something. This is something that belonged to Kendra.” She reaches into her purse and brings out a small, plain box, sliding it across the table. I open it. Inside, there is a brass pen, the decorative kind you can get at a kiosk at the mall. Kendra is engraved in script on the side. I take it out.

  “I know you’re a writer, Cole. Kendra was a writer too.” She laughs. “Well, she was trying to be. My mother gave her this pen when she started first grade so that she could be a ‘serious student,’ and Kendra loved it. She kept it at home so that she wouldn’t lose it, and she kept a little journal. She was precocious with her spelling, although many of her entries still needed to be in picture form. She always used this pen, though. She sat at her desk right after school, before she had a snack even, and made her entries. Here; this is a photocopy of one she made about you.”

  Mrs. Maiden takes a folded piece of paper from her purse and smooths it on the table, sliding it over to me. Mom cranes her neck to look. It’s a picture of two stick figures with big hands and happy faces, with a circle in between them that’s probably supposed to be a ball, and a tree and a sun in the background. At the bottom it says, me and Cole plaing bal.

  The three of us sit and look at it for a long moment, the only sound that of Stephen manipulating the Transformers on the other side of the room. When I finally look up, Mrs. Maiden is smiling at me.

  “I’d like for you to keep it, Cole. And I’d like for you to have the pen, as well.” Mom starts to say something, but Mrs. Maiden shakes her head. “Now, now, it’s not such a big thing. I’m making the rounds, as I say, and I’m giving small tokens to many of Kendra’s friends and classmates. It means something to me. I’d much rather see these things go on in the world, and be used and have life, rather than have them sit in a box under the basement stairs. Life goes on, Samantha. That has always been my solace. Seeing these children grow up, beautiful and strong. Seeing Cole become a man. It’s the hope of the world, and I want a small part of Kendra to be in it.”

  I have no idea what to say to that. I look down at the pen in my hand and feel its weight. Mom is crying now. We sit in silence for another long moment.

  Different parents dealt with losing their kids in different ways. A lot left town; a few stayed but sank out of sight. Some got weird. Susie Edwards’s mom, for example. For a few years after it happened, she still celebrated Susie’s birthday and would have all of us over, and for some reason our parents would bring us. We’d play for a little bit—​even though no one wanted to—​and then we’d go out to a fountain she’d had installed in their yard, and she would have a cake and would have us all sing “Happy Birthday,” and she’d be all happy, the sort of “happy” you are when you’re trying too hard, when you’re making yourself be, and she’d blow out the candles herself and lay the cake down by the fountain. Like she was making some sort of an offering. She’d say something about how Susie was watching from heaven and that Susie loved all of us and she was glad we were there celebrating her special day. And then we’d be expected to eat the cake and we’d all go home.

  I don’t know when that stopped; maybe someone finally said something to her. It was ridiculous. No one’s watching anyone from heaven.

  The silence is broken by Stephen yelling “Kaboom!” at the top of his lungs. We all jump as Transformers scatter, and Mrs. Maiden bursts out laughing. “There it is!” she cries, and although I don’t what “it” is, I laugh too, and so does Mom, and then we sit and drink tea together. Mom and Mrs. Maiden talk about old times, and after a few minutes, I thank Mrs. Maiden again and tell them I’m meeting someone for lunch, and I excuse myself from the table.

  I take the pen up to my room and put it in my desk drawer along with the photocopy of the journal entry. I change my shirt, change it again, and then go back to the plain blue T-shirt I’d been wearing to begin with. I look in the mirror and try to smooth my hair down, which is hopeless. I breathe against my hand, but I don’t smell anything. I go into the bathroom and re-brush my teeth anyway, thinking about Matt’s phantom odor and wondering if I just have a weak sense of smell. Finally, I take some of Dad’s old after-shave from behind the mirror, dab a little bit of it onto my neck, and go back downstairs. I’m going to be early, but I can’t sit around here. I say goodbye to Mom and Mrs. Maiden and Stephen, telling him that he’s welcome to take any of the Transformers he wants and hoping that he doesn’t take any of my old favorites. Then I head to my car, starting out on what is, horribly and ridiculously and depressingly, my first date.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, I’m sitting at the counter in the diner, drinking a soda. I’m sure that Viola is the sort of person to be punctual, while I’m the sort of person to show up early. So I get to sit here, and sweat, and study the latest piece of wallpaper.

  I’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember. Dad brought me when I was a kid lots of Saturday mornings. I don’t know where Mom was; probably working. I think that was when she would have been finishing her dissertation. We always sat at the counter, and he let me order the pancakes from the adult menu rather than from the kids’, even though I could never finish them. He’d pour the maple syrup for me from that glass container, the one with the metal button you have to push with your thumb to let the syrup out. I remember him leaning over me, his arm around my shoulder, pouring from the far side. His smell, soap and Old Spice, and the syrup pooling on an enormous stack of pancakes. When he finally stopped pouring, he’d plant a kiss on top of my head and put the syrup down, and then we’d eat.

  The wallpaper wasn’t there in my memories, though I suppose it must have started to appear when I was a kid. Piece by piece, over the years, the bills have covered the wall behind the counter, and then they’ve come out into the seating area. They’re in the men’s room, so you’re staring at one while standing at the john and at another when you’re at the sink, and they’re even on the inside of the stall doors. I squint at the one directly across from where I’m sitting, taped to the tile just to the left of the little window where the cook puts the food. HR 2579, it reads, and just below that: A BILL TO REQUIRE BACKGROUND CHECKS FOR SOME INDIVIDUALS PURCHASING SEMIAUTOMATIC FIREARMS. It’s an old one, one of the first, I think. There’s another one above it, a Senate resolution, and House bills on either side, both of them about background checks.

  Some people really don’t like it. I’ve heard them talking for years, around town, at Finn’s. People who are pro-gun, of course, but other people too. They say it’s gotten out of hand. They say it’s been going on too long. That it makes it too hard to come in here. The woman who owns the place, Kathy, doesn’t seem to care, though. She just keeps on putting them up, and I gue
ss enough people keep coming in that she stays in business.

  I finish the soda and crunch on the ice at the bottom of the cup.

  “Hi, Cole.”

  I swivel around on my stool. She’s right on time. She’s wearing khaki shorts and sandals and a sleeveless T-shirt, and her hair is down. I literally cannot believe that she’s here to see me. Don’t say anything stupid, I think. Please don’t say anything stupid.

  “Cheers,” I say.

  She blinks, and then she laughs. “Cheers,” she says, “though we usually say that when we’re saying goodbye.”

  “Right,” I say. “Of course.”

  “Of course.” She smiles. “Do you want to get a seat, or shall we sit at the counter?”

  Sitting at the counter, I can feel eyes on my back. It suddenly strikes me that the memories of sitting here with Dad must all be from before the shooting. When we started coming back here afterward, I wanted to sit only in the corner. “Let’s get a table.”

  Kathy brings us two menus, and we settle into a booth by a window. I can see Finn’s across the street. The façade looks especially worn down from this perspective. It looks like what it is: an old neighborhood grocery store that will probably be out of business in a few years. Viola takes the menu and looks at it, then looks at the Senate bill pasted to the wall beside the window. “Interesting décor.”

  I look at it too. It’s newer, though I did see it the last time I was in. It has to do with banning silencers and certain kinds of ammunition. “That’s right, you’ve never been here.” I look around. “This is how it’s decorated. Has been ever since. The first bill they introduced after it happened got voted down, and Kathy hung it up by the register to remind everyone. Then there were others, and she hung those up too. Everything having to do with anything about guns: background checks, automatic weapons, ammo, concealed carry, anything at all.”

  “She hangs up bills having to do with gun control?”

  “Just the ones that get voted down.”

  “What about the ones that pass?”

  “I don’t think there are any of those.”

  Kathy comes back with our drinks and gives us a few more minutes to decide what we want to eat.

  “Should I really get the seafood, do you think?” Viola asks.

  “No. You should definitely not get the seafood.”

  “So what do you recommend?”

  I study the menu. “The mozzarella sticks are good. So are the pancakes.”

  “Pancakes and mozzarella sticks?”

  I shrug.

  “Sounds delicious.” She closes her menu and puts it on the table. “How’s the store?”

  “Finn’s?” I shrug again. “Finn’s is Finn’s. It’s a job. How’s accounting-ing?”

  “Accountancy.”

  “Accountancy.”

  “It’s fine, I guess. Boring as hell. But it’s not supposed to be interesting.”

  “Does it pay well?”

  “No. Quite the opposite. It’s a volunteer position.”

  “For the résumé?”

  “That, and the connections. One of the men who owns the firm is friends with a business professor out at Berkeley. They went to high school together, or some such. It’s going to get me a lunch when I’m out there in the fall.”

  “So you’re working for free all summer for a lunch?”

  “Well, it’s the lunch, but then we stay in touch, you know? And I take some of his seminars, and then when I’m a junior, I might assist in one of his intro courses . . .”

  “Also for free?”

  She laughs. “Of course.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I wind up with a grad-school recommendation from him, which is worth a lot, particularly at the University of Chicago, which is his alma mater and is where I’m supposed to go.”

  “Wow.”

  She raises her eyebrows and nods as she neatly pulls her straw out of its paper wrapper without tearing it anywhere but at the very end. She drops it into her soda and takes a long drink.

  “It’s like a long line of dominoes,” I say. “One falls and hits another, and that hits another, and it goes on and on for years, and finally all your dreams have come true and you’re in grad school in Chicago.”

  “Good metaphor. You must be a poet.”

  “That was a simile.”

  “Dammit!” She wrinkles her nose and bangs her fists on the table.

  “Maybe that’s why you were just the salutatorian,” I say.

  “Too soon, Cole. Too soon.” She smiles. “You just can’t leave it alone, can you?”

  “It’s a problem I have.”

  “Leaving things alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looks out the window. “Damn salutatorian. Let me tell you something, Cole: That is the last time I am coming in second.”

  “You mean you’ve peaked? You’re on your way down to the middle of the pack with the rest of us mortals?”

  She laughs. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I know. You probably have your college valedictory address written already, telling all the Berkeley grads to grow up and stop playing Hacky Sack.”

  She squints at me. “It’s half written.”

  “You have time.”

  “You’re a writer; maybe you can help. Are your poems any good?”

  “For the most part, no. But some have been decent. I’ve actually published a few of them.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Nowhere you would have heard of. A couple of little online journals.”

  “I’ll google you!”

  “I used a pseudonym.”

  “What was it?”

  I look into my glass as I take a drink. Kathy comes back, and we order two plates of pancakes and an order of mozzarella sticks to share.

  “So? Your name?” Viola asks after Kathy leaves.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you my pen name if you do something for me.”

  “What’s that?” She looks wary.

  “Do one pointless thing. One thing, just for fun, that doesn’t have any future purpose. Have you ever done anything pointless?”

  “Well, I am thinking about minoring in English.”

  “I thought you were going to minor in Asian studies.”

  “That too. Double minor.”

  “I’m not sure that counts. It should be something without a goal, that’s just good in itself. Like writing a poem. What’s the point of a poem?”

  “You know, I love poetry but I don’t think I’ve ever really met a poet before.”

  “There aren’t many of us left. So?”

  “Do it right now?”

  “No, but before I see you again.”

  “Having lunch with a friend doesn’t count?”

  I look out at the new flowers Kathy has planted in the window boxes. Aquilegia vulgaris. “No.”

  She looks at me for a long moment. “All right. Something pointless.” She holds out her hand, and I shake it.

  “C. Maxwell Johnson,” I say. “For Coleton Maxwell Johnson.”

  “Interesting.” She draws the word out and widens her green eyes. “Is your first name really Coleton?”

  “No, but I always wished it was. And Maxwell was the cat we had when I was a kid. And Mr. Johnson was my third-grade teacher, who told me I should be a writer.”

  “I like it. Who else knows about it?”

  “Just Matt. He says that ‘Max Johnson’ sounds like the name for a porn star.”

  She bursts into laughter. “It does! It really does!”

  I shake my head and close my eyes.

  “Oh, Cole, but I still like it. And now I know what to google!”

  “Now you know.”

  “Max Johnson.”

  “That’s me.”

  Kathy arrives with our plates of food. Viola picks up one of the mozzarella sticks and studies it.

  “Careful, it’s probably . . .”

  Too late
. She takes a bite, and her face turns red. She starts bouncing in her chair and fanning her mouth, then spits into her napkin and takes a drink.

  “. . . hot. They’re really hot when they come out.”

  “Oh, God,” she finally manages to gasp.

  “Sorry. I should have told you right away.”

  “I think the inside of my mouth is burned.”

  “Do you want more soda?” I look around for Kathy.

  “I’m so sorry; that was so disgusting of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She shakes her head as Kathy puts a glass of ice water in front of her. “Take it easy, hon.”

  “Thank you.” Viola takes a long drink while Kathy gives me a look before walking away. We both start in on our pancakes.

  “Are you going to the fireworks tomorrow?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head. “We’ve never really gotten into the habit of July the Fourth.”

  “I guess it would mean something different to you.”

  She frowns at me in mock ferocity. “We want you back,” she growls, making my stomach do something that is very likely indescribable in prose.

  “I have to be getting ready for Haiti, anyway,” she says. “Packing and all. And I’m trying to learn some French. Did you take French?”

  “No. German.”

  “Too bad. You could have tutored me.”

  Jesus Christ, I would give anything to know French right now.

  “So, can I ask you something?”

  I nod, my mouth full of pancake and syrup.

  “Do you think that would have made a difference?” She nods toward the wall.

  “The bill?”

  “Any of them.” She swivels a finger to encompass the entire diner. “Any of these laws. Do you think they would keep another lunatic from doing something awful?”

  The way she asks the question makes the idea seem silly.

  “I suppose I do,” I say. “I mean, something has to, right? We have to do something. Don’t you think?”

  She frowns into her glass as she drinks. “My father would say differently. He’s an ardent conservative. He’d say that people will kill each other no matter what; you can’t regulate it away. That Cain killed Abel with a rock. And he’d say that the shooters will have guns no matter what, so . . .” She looks at me and puts her fork down. “God, I’m sorry Cole. I’m such an ass. I shouldn’t be saying this to you, should I?”