It Looks Like This

by Rafi Mittlefehldt

  She says, Listen to me, Mike.

  I stop moving.

  She says, Listen to me.

  I look up. She’s leaning forward a bit, looking right at me.

  She says, You did nothing wrong. Ever, in any of this.

  I blink.

  She says, Do you understand? Sean’s death is . . .

  She stops. She looks down at her lap, lips pressed.

  She looks back up at me.

  She says, Sean’s death is on his parents. Not on you.

  I blink a few more times. My hand is shaking a bit.

  She says, And what you’ve been through, all that bullshit shame and that — that despicable place they sent you, that is on your parents. Okay?

  I can feel the first tears, white-hot and silent, burning.

  She says, Mike, listen, at some point you have to tell them this yourself. It sucks and it’s unfair, but people like your parents will keep shaming you until you stand up for yourself. There’s only so much the rest of us can do.

  I don’t say anything.

  She sighs. Then she says, But that’s for tomorrow. For tonight, I just . . . I need you to understand that you have done nothing wrong.

  I try to keep from crying. There’s another flash in my mind, my thumb covering the N on my keyboard.

  She says, Do you understand?

  My hand is shaking harder. Mrs. Pilsner looks almost angry.

  She says, Mike. Do you understand?

  And she reaches out her hand and puts it over mine to stop it shaking.

  I lose control and start crying harder. I nod.

  She smiles for the first time. It’s small but there.

  She says. Okay. I’ll heat up some spaghetti.

  I sleep three hours.

  It’s still more than I expected.

  At six in the morning there’s a crack in the door to Ronald’s room, light spilling in from the hallway around his mom’s silhouette.

  She whispers, Hon, it’s time to get up.

  I sit up in bed and blink a few times, letting my eyes and my brain adjust. Ronald is still totally asleep, stuffed in a sleeping bag on the carpet next to me. He let me have the bed.

  I swing my legs over the side and get up.

  Mrs. Pilsner waits until I’m done eating breakfast before she calls my parents. She says she wants to make sure I have time to eat, but I know there’s more.

  She takes the phone into her bedroom but I can still hear her voice, not quite a shout but something more than a calm conversation.

  When she comes back out, holding the phone against her shoulder, the sweatshirt puffy and soft, she reaches out a hand, stops, then runs it through my hair. Her fingers are warm.

  She says, I tried, baby, but they wanted to come get you right away. I can’t blame them.

  She turns and puts the phone in the cradle. As she walks back into her bedroom, she adds,

  For that.

  Ronald is next to me at the kitchen table. He hasn’t said anything and I haven’t looked at him and I don’t know if I want to.

  But then he says, Hey.

  His voice is croaky and deep and he clears his throat.

  He says, Are you coming back to school now?

  I say to the table, I dunno. Maybe.

  He lets that hang for a bit.

  The clock on the wall ticks a few seconds.

  He says, I’m sorry, dude.

  It comes out so quiet I’m not sure I heard it. I look up.

  For the first time I see the cut above his right eye. It’s nearly healed.

  Ronald’s looking at me with the same weird expression he had last night, and suddenly I realize what it is. Because I saw it in his mom’s face. They have the same crease in their brows.

  I don’t know what to say.

  So I say, What happened to your eye?

  He says, Victor.

  I blink. I haven’t heard the name in a long time and it takes me by surprise.

  Then he says, I hit him first.

  The serious face breaks just barely, enough for a bit of a smile.

  Ronald raises his right fist.

  He says, Knucks.

  I stare at him, not understanding. Or maybe I do understand but pretend not to because it’s such a dumb thing to say.

  He says, Come on, dude. Knucks. We’re bros, right?

  Serious again.

  I smile, slowly, for the first time in weeks, and then I fist-bump Ronald.

  I step outside with Ronald’s mom.

  Mom and Dad are standing near the car, but they don’t move. The engine is running.

  I stare at them for a few seconds before I realize they’re not looking at me; they’re looking next to me. At Ronald’s mom.

  I turn my head slowly to look at her too. She’s glaring at them, not hiding it.

  I watch her for almost a minute, then turn back to my parents.

  Dad’s expression is almost as angry.

  But Mom’s is harder to read.

  They don’t say anything in the car on the way home.

  Dad is angry, dangerous angry, I can tell by his silence.

  Mom is crying so quietly into the arm of her cardigan.

  I’m not thinking about either of them. I’m thinking about the house on Hyacinth Court, the red-brick house with the mound of weeds and shrubs and the blue Ford Bronco in the driveway.

  Dad tells me to go to my room as soon as we get in. It comes out short and clipped, and I know he so badly wants to say more.

  I turn to go without hesitating but then he stops me.

  I look back around at him and his mouth is working. He’s tapping his foot. It looks like he can’t help unloading after all.

  It comes in waves. The words start flowing together. I don’t listen to any of it.

  In the middle of a sentence, I just turn around again and walk up the stairs.

  Dad’s voice trails away but he’s too surprised to react, and before he can I close the door to my room, shutting him and Mom and everything out.

  There’s a light knock.

  I know the knock, it’s the same way she does it every time, so I don’t ask who it is, I just open it.

  Toby says, Hey.

  Softer than her normal voice.

  Then she rushes forward and hugs me. She holds tight.

  She whispers, I’m so sorry.

  And pulls back again. She lets her arms drop at her side.

  I don’t say anything, just look at her.

  Toby says, I’m so glad you’re back.

  She looks at me for a while. Then turns and walks toward her room.

  I watch her until she’s inside, yellow light all around her.

  She closes her door, and I close mine.

  Dad has gone back to talking as little as possible. Lunch on Saturday is silent.

  Mom shoots quick glances at one or the other of us between bites, like she’s wishing she could somehow fix what’s broken.

  I don’t really care, though, and maybe that’s what’s so broken.

  When I’m done I carry my dishes to the sink and go upstairs. I know Mom watches me go, I can feel it. I know Dad makes sure not to watch me, I can feel that too.

  Back in my room. Sitting on the bed. Christmas vacation all over again.

  Only not really. The window stays empty, no one left to wait outside. I don’t look at it.

  In my room I can feel something that’s not really happy or even that okay, but at least isn’t the empty dread I feel everywhere else. It lets me feel like everything is still controlled and contained.

  My computer’s sitting on my desk, monitor blank but not off, humming, waiting for me. I ignore it. When I look at it, all I think about is that last message I sent to Sean. So I don’t look at it.

  I don’t leave my room until dinner, where all four of us act the same way we did at lunch. But I don’t care.

  I don’t care.

  Sunday morning feels exactly like Saturday morning.

  I wake
up on my own, sunlight pouring in.

  It looks like this:

  Old foggy light fixture. Two black smudges from lightbulb heat. Tiny specks, the shadows of dead dried-up bugs.

  Four fake-wood fan blades stretching out, inch of dust at the tips, some strands dangling, about to drift away.

  Metal beaded string hanging straight down, too high for me to reach anyway.

  Ceiling. White, rough.

  Perfect straight lines where it hits the walls.

  All in that order.

  That’s kind of what I see every morning.

  Mom and Dad are dressed up at breakfast. This morning is church. Dad in his suit as usual, Mom in a mostly black dress, which is unusual for her but still okay for church.

  Dad didn’t invite me and I’m not going to ask.

  Even if he told me to go, I’d say no.

  But he’s not going to do that because there are friends of his there, lots of them, elders and deacons and the pastor. Everyone who by now has to know where I’ve been, why I’m back. Why Sean is —

  I grip my spoon tight, tight, making the thought go away, breathing in deep through my nose and then out. I breathe carefully. After a second or two I’m back to normal.

  My grip relaxes. Eyes flick to Toby and hers flick down, but I know she saw.

  But she doesn’t say anything and Mom and Dad don’t notice and breakfast is as quiet as all of yesterday.

  Toby isn’t dressed, so even before they say a quick good-bye I know she’s not going with them.

  I’m still sitting at the kitchen table. Toby’s standing at the entrance to the kitchen, watching Mom and Dad leave.

  I breathe out but the breath back in doesn’t come easy.

  It’s being outside my room. I want to get back.

  Past Toby I can just see the tail of Dad’s overcoat brushing the tile before the front door closes and he’s shut out.

  Before I can even stand up, Toby turns sharply around and looks at me.

  She says, They’re going to Sean’s funeral after church.

  She says it rushed and strong and a little defiant, like she’s daring the words not to come out but they don’t even put up a fight. Her eyes are bright, satisfied.

  I look back at her, letting what she said register.

  Then I say, How do you know?

  She says, They told me they’d be home late and they told me why. They told me I couldn’t tell you.

  That satisfied, defiant voice again.

  I say, They?

  She says, He.

  My breaths are coming quicker now. The numb feeling is gone, or at least held back, replaced now by something much better, something that makes my heart beat fast.

  I say, What time? Did they say?

  She says, Just right after church.

  I think this through quickly:

  Service starts at nine o’clock. Over by ten. Chatting for about fifteen minutes but maybe they won’t do that. Ten-minute drive to Forest Park Cemetery.

  So to be safe, just a few minutes after ten o’clock.

  Right now it’s eight forty. Dad always likes to leave early.

  Suddenly I have a lot of energy. The last thing I want is to be holed up in my room.

  I stand up and run to the closet, grabbing my jacket. The cemetery is the most important thing in the world now and I’m hurrying, not able to stop myself but not wanting to anyway.

  I mumble a quick thank-you to Toby and open the front door wide and love the sound it makes when it slams behind me.

  She watches me go but doesn’t say anything because I’m being driven by this new in-charge feeling, and she knows it because she feels the same thing every day.

  It’s finally cold, not just chilly but sharp cold.

  I mean the walk from the InnerPeace camp felt cold but only because I was outside for a long time. Now it’s actual cold.

  I love it. I tilt my head back, I take it in. It makes everything feel more real.

  The cold outside and the energy inside both make me want to walk fast, but I’m already going to get there early.

  Forest Park Cemetery is the only cemetery in town. The only place for Sean to go.

  I try to walk slow.

  But I can’t. I’m there just a little before nine thirty.

  And I wait.

  By nine forty-five I’m glad I left early. There’s a car, black, with little white flags attached to it, driving slowly into the park.

  I jump up from where I’ve been sitting, on the edge of the actual cemetery in between a couple bushes.

  Church must have let out early for the funeral.

  The car is creeping into the cemetery along the winding path. Then there’s another, right behind it. A procession. Which means —

  And there it is, the third car: black, too long, curtains in the windows. I guess it’s supposed to look elegant, but it just looks creepy and kind of gruesome.

  It makes me shudder, hard.

  But I watch.

  The cars stop in a little parking area or else on the curb of the wide lane, and people slowly climb out.

  Pastor Clark is in the first one, a shiny dark blue thing that looks like he washes it every day. He takes his time walking around, facing the cars behind him as others approach.

  Sean’s parents get out of the second one. Their arms are at their sides. His dad looks at his mom. She looks at the hearse.

  Even from this far away, I can see their sadness. For some reason it surprises me.

  Men in black climb out of the hearse, but they move differently than Pastor Clark or the Rossinis. More quickly, like they’re not affected by everything around them. Professionals. They open the back and are joined by a few others, who help them ease out a sleek mahogany coffin. I look away.

  In my head I count backward and forward, backward and forward, one two three four five four three two one two three four five. Up and down, staring at the dirt on my shoes.

  The bushes are just outside a low wrought-iron fence at the edge of the cemetery.

  Behind me a few steps is the sidewalk and then the road, but the bushes are big enough to hide most of me. If someone really looked from the road, they could probably spot me.

  No one looks.

  The funeral has been set up farther along, maybe a hundred feet from where the little parking spaces are. It’s a big crowd, bigger than my field of vision through the leaves.

  But I can see the middle of it, the coffin, the folding chairs right next to it where Sean’s parents must be, the portable podium where Pastor Clark is now speaking.

  His voice carries but the wind covers most of the words. I only catch a few of them:

  call

  dust

  Heaven

  Lord God

  loss

  young

  taken

  love

  love

  love

  Something about that word gets to me, and for a second I forget myself and stand up.

  When I do, I move past the leaves and can see the whole crowd, and there are Mom and Dad, sitting a couple rows back on the opposite side.

  I get back down really fast, quicker than I knew I could move. But in that bit of a second, I thought I saw Dad looking in my direction.

  I hold my breath. Wait. And then, very slowly. One leaf at a time. I peel just enough of them back so I can see the spot where they sit.

  Dad is facing Pastor Clark, all attention on the speaker.

  I breathe out slowly, a long, wheezy sigh that comes from the bottom of my lungs, and realize I’m a little disappointed.

  Pastor Clark is done for now. He steps aside as a very old black woman climbs up to speak.

  Her voice sounds like rustling leaves and I hear none of it.

  When she finishes, Pastor Clark says something quickly, an instruction, and everyone stands.

  The coffin starts sinking into the earth, and it takes everything in me to stop myself from getting up, from running over and stopping
it, from keeping Sean above the ground.

  Sean’s parents are the last to stand, but they alone move once they’re up. They walk slowly to the hole with the mahogany coffin. His mom holds out her hand in a fist and even from here I can see it shaking.

  She opens her hand and spills dirt onto the coffin and there’s a sound like a low, rising wail. It takes me a second to be sure it’s her making it, it just sounds so awful and different from any sound I knew a person could make. Some of the tension leaves my body.

  One by one, others come forward with their own clumps of dirt.

  I sit back down, closing my eyes. Just for a break.

  In my own dark I can still hear the rustling of movement, chairs being pushed aside, mutterings of consolation, the horrible sounds of Sean’s mother.

  Then footsteps, too close to be part of the funeral.

  I open my eyes and Dad is striding toward me, Mom behind, and I can feel the heat of his anger on me like a radiator.

  He’s still a few feet away when he hisses,

  What the hell are you doing here?

  like he can’t get to me quick enough.

  I say, I’m here for Sean’s funeral.

  The words are out before I know I’m thinking them and I’m surprised how strong my voice sounds.

  Dad is right up against the fence. He holds the top with both hands tight, really tight.

  He says, You need to get out of here. Now.

  I say, No.

  He says, Don’t you tell me no! Turn around and walk home now, before anyone sees you.

  Mom is looking back and forth at us. Her eyes are wild.

  I say, I’m staying.

  Dad says, Goddamnit, Mike,

  and his hands shake a little,

  Do you think Sean’s parents want to see you?

  Dad’s voice rises unsteadily like he can’t control it, like he’s trying to shout and not shout at the same time. Over his shoulder I can see a few people looking at us.

  He speaks through clenched teeth:

  Now get. Your ass. Home.

  A couple people are moving toward us, slowly, but I keep my eyes on Dad.

  I say, I’m going home after I see his grave.

  Dad breathes deeply through his nose, nostrils flaring.

  He says, If you don’t turn and walk away right now, buddy, you’ll be back at that camp again. For the rest of the school year.

  His voice is just above a whisper. I can’t remember when I’ve seen him this angry.