What You Left Behind

by Jessica Verdi

  Joni hasn’t been able to come over all week because we’ve both been really busy with work and homework. But I’ve seen her at work almost every day, and we’re almost back to normal—joking, laughing, talking. No touching. Not yet.

  Anyway, it’s probably weird that I’ve been looking forward to the memorial—something else for my future therapist to analyze—but it’s really kept me going. It will be nice to have all the people who are important to me in one place to remember Meg. ’Cause that happens, like, never. Or maybe I’m just looking forward to introducing Joni to my mother.

  Sunday morning arrives, and I put on my favorite jeans and a button-down shirt. I wash my hair too. Now that Hope isn’t crying quite so much, I have a little more time to work with in the shower. I’m never going to take little things, like having time to use conditioner, for granted ever again.

  Joni borrows Elijah’s car and meets me at my house.

  I’m sitting on the stoop when she rolls up. She looks amazing. Bright red dress that’s tight around the top and then flares out at her waist and black cowboy boots. Her nose ring is a black stone. I stand as she walks over and have to stop myself from pulling her into my arms and kissing the top of her head.

  “Hey,” she says, smiling.

  “You look really beautiful.”

  She looks down at her dress. “You sure? I wasn’t sure if the red would be appropriate or not. I have another dress in the car in case—”

  “It’s perfect.”

  Joni rocks back on her heels, her hands on her hips. “Thanks. You look nice too.” She reaches up tentatively and brushes a thumb across my eyebrow scar, the corner of her mouth quirking up. Then her face becomes serious. “Are you sure you want me to come today?”

  “Of course I do. Why?”

  “I don’t know, because I didn’t know Meg? It’s only going to be people who knew her and loved her. I don’t know if they’d appreciate me being there.”

  I take both her hands and look her in the eye. “I really want you to be there. Besides, everyone already knows you’re coming.”

  She gives me a nervous smile. “Okay.”

  “Come on.” I nod toward the house.

  She follows me inside, and we find my mother in the living room, dancing around to Sia’s “Chandelier” with Hope in her arms. Mom stops when she sees us and holds a hand out to Joni. “You must be Joni. I’m Deanna.”

  Joni shakes her hand. “Great song,” she says.

  Mom laughs. “Oh yeah, we’re going to get along just fine.”

  • • •

  Mom, Joni, Hope, and I meet Alan and Mabel at the turnoff to the one-lane road that leads to the dirt road, and they follow us in their car as we drive farther and farther into the woods until we reach the point where we have to go on foot. The beach at this time of year—bare and chilly, the water uninviting—reminds me of the last time I was here with Meg. We huddled together under a blanket, watching the water as if we weren’t on a deadline. I can’t believe that was nearly a whole year ago.

  Mom squeezes my hand. “This is really beautiful, bud,” she whispers.

  I nod. Now that we’re here, the anticipation has disappeared, leaving only nerves and a slightly sick-to-my-stomach feeling in its place.

  I get the candles out of my bag, and Mom helps me put them in the sand and make it look all pretty. Then Mabel removes a shoe box from the shopping bag she brought with her. Inside the box is a gallon-size Ziploc bag. And inside the bag are the ashes. Mabel holds it out to me, like she’s actually expecting me to take it, like it’s nothing. “I left the box where it was on the windowsill,” she explains. “My parents will never look inside.”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asks. “Your parents don’t know you took them? Oh, I don’t know how I feel about—”

  “It’s okay,” Mabel says. She sounds really sure of herself. “I left some behind. For them to scatter themselves, if—when—they ever decide to.”

  She’s still waiting for me to take the bag, but I can’t move. That’s Meg in there. All that’s left of her are millions of tiny gray flakes, one indistinguishable from the next, like the stuff that comes out of our vacuum when we empty the canister.

  My gut lurches, and I force my feet to move. I barely make it to the edge of the woods before I throw up. I stay there, heaving, until there’s nothing left to come out. I feel a hand on my back. “It’s okay, Ryden,” Mom says quietly. “We don’t have to do this if you’re having second thoughts.”

  I right myself and wipe my mouth with the tissue she’s holding out to me. “No. Let’s do it.” Everyone is waiting over on the beach, looking solemn. The bag of ashes is sitting on the sand now. Mabel is holding Hope.

  I clear my throat and walk slowly back. “Sorry, guys.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Alan says, staring at the bag of ashes. “I feel like doing the same thing.”

  “Okay, well…” I say. “I guess we should start. Who, uh…who would like to say something?”

  One by one, we talk about Meg. The good stuff: the stuff we loved about her, the stuff we’ll miss most about her. There are lots of tears.

  Mabel goes first. She talks about birthdays and Christmases and family vacations and how she feels like she doesn’t have a family anymore now that Meg’s gone. Mom says how she didn’t know Meg long but she’s so honored to have been part of her life. And she thanks her for her amazing granddaughter. Alan talks as if Meg’s there with us and tells her the entire plot of the most recent Korean import he saw. It’s what he doesn’t say that’s the most clear though—he misses talking to his best friend about random everyday stuff. Joni doesn’t say anything but places her hand on my arm to let me know she’s there, and that’s all I need.

  When it’s my turn to talk, I pull the pink notebook— Ryden—out of my bag. Here’s what I figure: anything I say in my own words won’t do Meg justice, won’t even begin to articulate what she meant to me, what we went through together. Alan, Mabel, and Joni haven’t read the pink notebook yet. What better way to say good-bye than to read her last words aloud?

  I take Hope out of Mabel’s arms and hitch her on my hip while I hold the notebook in my other hand and begin to read.

  I take a deep breath. “Dear Ryden…”

  • • •

  The only thing left to do is let her ashes go. The six of us stare at the bag for a ridiculously long time, each waiting for someone else to make the first move. The candles have mostly flickered out, and it’s getting cold. Hope is fussing in my arms. She’s probably hungry. I smooth a hand over her hair. Time to get this show on the road.

  They’re just ashes. It’s nothing to be afraid of. I pick up the bag and wordlessly walk to the waterline. I close my eyes, rest my head against Hope’s, breathing in the combination of her baby smell and the fresh lake air, and then look up at the sky. “We’ll miss you forever,” I whisper and open the bag, holding it out to the wind.

  In less than a minute, all the ashes are gone, carried away on the breeze, on their way to becoming part of the sand or soil or a bird’s nest or the waves, working their way into the earth until they’re nothing but a memory.

  Chapter 37

  Joni finally kisses me a couple of weeks later, at work one Thursday night. She does it right in the middle of the freezer section, as we’re stocking boxes of rice-crust pizza. I reach back for her to pass me another handful of pizza boxes, but she grabs my wrist instead. I turn, and her lips collide with mine. I don’t waste a single second. I kick the freezer door shut and pull her to me. Her kiss is even better than I remembered. She walks me back until I’m pressed against the cold door, but the heat between the two of us is enough to keep me warm.

  How the hell did I get so lucky? I don’t deserve her. But if she wants to be with me—and right now it seems she does—I’m sure as hell not going to say no.

 
When we part, the world zooms back into focus. I look around quickly. No managers or coworkers in sight. Excellent.

  “Let me drive you home tonight?” I murmur against Joni’s ear. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Will there be more kissing?” she asks, grinning.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” I say with a wink.

  • • •

  “What are you doing Thanksgiving weekend?” I ask Joni as we drive toward Clinton.

  “The usual dinner stuff on Thursday. I already put my Tofurky order in at work. Why?”

  “Well, you know how Meg found my father’s address and stuff?” We haven’t really talked about the pink journal since I read from it at the memorial, but I know she hasn’t forgotten.

  “Yeah.”

  “I was thinking about taking a trip down to New Jersey. To…I don’t know…see.”

  She looks at me. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Why, bad idea?”

  “No, I think it’s great, if that’s what you want to do.”

  “So will you go with me? We could leave the Friday after Thanksgiving and be back by Sunday.”

  She places her hand on top of mine, resting on the gearshift. “Absolutely.”

  • • •

  “Are you going to call him first?” Mom asks as she helps me load my and Hope’s bags into the car. She’s been completely supportive of my decision to go meet Michael, but I can tell there’s a part of her that’s worried. Whether it’s worry that I’ll find some spark I’ve been missing in my relationship with her, or that Michael won’t be as receptive to me as I hope he will, or that even if he is, I won’t get the answers I’m looking for, I can’t tell.

  “I don’t think so. I’d rather say whatever I need to say in one shot, instead of splitting it up between phone conversations and stuff.”

  She closes the trunk. “What is it that you’re going to say?”

  “I haven’t really gotten that far yet.”

  She pulls me into a hug and holds me tighter than usual. “Good luck, Ryden. Call me if you need anything. Drive safely. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  “And I love you, little monster,” she says, nuzzling her nose against Hope’s. “Have fun, you guys.”

  I swing by Joni’s, load her and her bag into the car, and hit the highway. I hand her my phone. “You’re in charge of the GPS,” I tell her. “I already input the address into the system, but let me know when there are turns coming up. It’s almost a six-hour drive, so we’ll have to stop for diaper-change breaks. And you can have control of the radio if you want. I don’t really care what we listen to. No hip-hop though.”

  She flips to the same pop/rock station my mom always listens to and starts singing along with a Katy Perry song. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have relinquished control of the radio quite so easily.

  A while later, when we lose the station, instead of searching for another, Joni turns it off.

  “What are you going to say when you meet him?” she asks.

  That’s the Question of the Day. “I don’t know.” I’d hoped all the driving would help me come up with something. So far, it hasn’t.

  “Okay,” she says. “Why do you want to meet him?”

  The answer hits my lips automatically. “I feel like I won’t ever truly know how to be a dad until I meet mine.”

  “But you’re—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to say that I’m already a good dad and he won’t be able to tell me anything I don’t already know.”

  “Yep, that’s pretty much exactly what I was going to say.”

  We drive in silence for a long time after that.

  Well, sort of silence.

  Because there’s been this quiet hum in my head ever since I laid eyes on Michael’s contact info, and the closer I get to him, the louder it’s becoming. The hum grows into a full-on chorus, a chorus of people I know. And all the things they’ve told me—all the advice I refused to listen to—are suddenly resounding in my brain in multipart harmony:

  Joni insisting I’m already doing an okay job at being a dad. I mean, the last few weeks have been better. Hope doesn’t seem to hate me lately. Could it have been my anger and guilt she was sensing and reacting to this whole time? Maybe I’ve been doing better, so she has too?

  And that thing Alan said. How I was obsessing so much over finding the journals, finding Michael, finding the mystical secret to fatherhood, that I was completely missing the point. That my quest to become a good dad was actually making me a bad one.

  And my mom, the way she looked at me like I’d lost my mind when I told her I thought Michael, someone who knew he had a kid on the way and left anyway, could help me figure out how to be a parent while my own mother couldn’t.

  I pull over onto the side of the highway, flip on my hazards, bring my head to the steering wheel, and squeeze my eyes tight, trying to think.

  “Hey, Joni?”

  “Yo.”

  “Can you Google something for me?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Michael Taylor, Edison, New Jersey. Do an image search.”

  I can feel Joni’s questioning stare burning a hole into the side of my face, but I don’t open my eyes.

  A few minutes later, she says, “Got it.”

  I lift my head and take the phone from her. There he is: a good-looking, late-thirtyish guy with olive skin, brown eyes, slicked-back black hair, and glasses. He looks familiar in the most unfamiliar way possible. I’ve never seen him before in my life, but I’ve seen pieces of him every day in the mirror. My nose is his nose, my smile is his smile.

  The photo is of a youth soccer team. The kids look like they’re about ten or so. Michael is wearing a pullover jacket that says Coach. He’s the coach of a fucking kids’ soccer team. Which means I probably got my athletic ability from him. And which means one of those kids is probably my half-brother.

  I stare at the photo, clicking the pieces together. Michael is a dad. He’s wearing a ring in the picture, so he’s probably a husband too. He’s a stand-up guy who coaches his kids’ sports teams. He’s clean-cut, well put together.

  He is, according to the look of this picture, a good person. He doesn’t quite resemble the long-haired, piano-playing, marathon-running guy from my imagination, but he’s not a drug addict or in prison or in some sort of creepy religious cult either. And he’s not dead.

  Which means he could have looked me up, could have put in the effort to get to know me. He just didn’t want to.

  I click off the screen and turn around. Hope’s snug in her car seat, a little baby who has no idea what’s going on. She looks at me.

  Suddenly the chorus reaches the climax of the damn operatic masterpiece, and they sing as loud as they can, right in my face.

  Hope’s eyes are no longer blue. I don’t know when they changed, but they’re a bright, stunning green. They’re not dark like Meg’s, like I thought they’d be. They’re like mine.

  Even though life has been really fucking hard lately and it’s going to be really fucking hard for the foreseeable future, and even though I’d go back and do it all differently if it meant Meg would still be alive and I’d get the chance to play soccer at UCLA…I love this baby. She’s more than just Meg’s legacy. She’s my daughter too.

  I’m her dad. I don’t need a face-to-face with my non-father to tell me how to begin. I’m already in it, even if the game started before I was warmed up and in position.

  One of these days, the “Da-da-da” is going to turn into her first word. So I should work on being ready for it.

  Because I’m all she has. It’s not her fault she was born into all this bullshit. I’m starting to get that it’s the ways
I’m different from Michael that are important. (Why the hell did it take me driving halfway to New Jersey to see it?) All I need to know is how not to be the guy he was when Mom was pregnant. And I’ve already done that.

  I shift back in my seat. Joni waits patiently, looking out the passenger-side window, trying to give me as much privacy as possible in this cramped car.

  An idea strikes me. An idea so awesome it might actually be the best idea I’ve ever had.

  Wordlessly, I hand her the phone and pull onto the road again. She flips the radio back on.

  When we approach the George Washington Bridge, Joni says, “Okay, you’re going to merge onto the lower level of the bridge, and after you cross over to New Jersey, you’re going to take I-95 South.”

  “What happens if I don’t get on the bridge?” I ask.

  “Uh…you’ll head into Manhattan.”

  I nod. “Got it.”

  The bridge exit approaches, and I drive right past it.

  “That was it, Ryden. That was our exit,” Joni says, pointing behind her. “What are you doing?”

  I shoot her a smile, the first since this long car trip started. “I’m taking you to Washington Square Park.”

  Her face jolts in confusion. “But what about your father?”

  “I think I know everything I need to know about him.”

  Several beats of silence go by as the traffic grows more congested and the buildings to our left grow taller. And then, all at once, Joni claps her hands, bouncing up and down in her seat. “Holy crap! I can’t wait to show you Washington Square Park! You’re going to love it. Hope’s going to love it too. It’s magical.”

  I laugh, thinking of Joni’s magic room, of a weekend in New York, and of all the possibilities of an unmapped future.

  I look straight ahead at the city coming into view and tell her the absolute, one hundred percent truth.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Acknowledgments

  This book took a long time to write, which means there were so many amazing people who helped me in various ways along the journey. Please bear with me while I throw some props their way.