by JA Huss
“I am glad to see your face,” he says. “And whether soon or even sooner than that... I will see it again.” And then he releases my grip and begins to head off.
“Wait,” I say, stepping in front to stop him. “Where are you going?”
He grins. “I am happy to see you. But it is not me you are here for now.”
“What do you mean?”
Still grinning, he says, “I will see you the next time I see you.” He puts his hand over his heart and bows to me. “As Salaam Alaykum. My brother.”
And then he places his palm on the side of my face, pats me, and as he walks away, I turn to see him follow where the others went. Somewhere off into the sprawling jungle. Behind one of the waterfalls and out of sight.
It’s not him I am here for.
I take a massive breath and blow it out. Yep. Yep. I get it. I know.
I know.
And when I turn back around...
“’Sup, T?”
I draw all the strength I have and say...
“Hey, Scotty.”
Wow. He’s so grown. Strong. So much older than the last time I saw him. He still has the same red hair and freckles that made him look like some nineteen-fifties version of what they used to call an “all-American boy,” but it no longer makes him look boyish and cute. Instead, it comes across as rugged and resolved.
I saw pictures of him in those years after I left, but it’s not the same as seeing him now. In my memories of him, he’s always been little Scotty. The Scotty I knew from childhood. The Scotty I knew from high school. Not the man that Scotty became.
But the man is here now. Standing right the hell in front of me.
He saunters up and lands inches from my face. There’s a smirk of knowing confidence in his eyes. He tilts his neck to one side. Then the other. Then he squares off and looks dead into me.
“So,” he says. “You’re banging my sister?”
“Wha—? Scotty—it’s not—”
And then he starts laughing. “I’m fucking with you, bro!” He grabs me and pulls me into a bear hug. My arms dangle at my sides for a moment before I remember to raise them and hug him back.
“Dude,” he says, pulling back and grabbing my shoulders. “Look at you. You look so much better without that crazy beard. You never should’ve let that thing get so out of hand. You won’t do that again, right?”
“Probably not, but... Wait. How did you know about my beard?”
“I’ve been watching you, bud.”
“Whatayou—? You have?”
“Yeah. Of course I have. All the time.”
The very, very first thought I now have is Oh, God, does he mean like ALL the time?
“No, man,” he says, before I even have a chance to say anything. Which is weird. “No, I, like, turn the channel when you and Maddie...y’know. I watch hoops or whatever.”
“Scotty, I just... I...” And suddenly, I have a terrible feeling. “Is Maddie here now?”
“Maddie? Oh, no. No way. No, not her time yet.”
“Oh. OK. Good,” I say, dropping my head just a bit. Both in relief and in sadness.
“Hey.” He bends his head to find my eyes. “Dude, don’t be bummed. You don’t have to stay if you don’t wanna.”
That’s what Nadir said too. What does that mean?
“It means...” he starts. Which is, again, weird, because I didn’t ask the question aloud. “You don’t have to ask it aloud,” he says.
OK. Fine. I quit.
“It means,” he says again, “that you’re not done yet either. Not if you don’t want to be. It’s really no more complicated than that. Up to you.”
“Wait. Are you saying that I get to choose when I die?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. I mean at some point it’s just gonna happen, but for you, after everything I’ve done to get you and Maddie together? I would consider it a personal favor if you’d go and actually be with her.”
A cold chill runs through me because this all sounds startlingly familiar to the shit I heard when I died the last time. But there’s no danger of Scotty reading my thoughts at this moment, because there are none. Just a baffled, slack-jawed look on my face and an empty space in my skull where my brain used to be. I think. Or don’t. Whatever.
“Wait. What do you mean, after what you did to get me and Maddie together? I thought...” And then I remember what James Franco told me after the debacle with my apartment fire. He said, “People see me how they wanna.”
So I ask the suddenly obvious question. “Scotty? Are you God?”
“Um... Well. Yeah. I am.”
I’m glad I’m dead, because otherwise I would have a heart attack.
“And so are you,” he goes on. “And so is Nadir, and Pete, and Carolina, and Jeff, and those guys over there, and that chick with the hat, and they who welcomed you, and Maddie, and.... All of us, man. We all are.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“All of us. All the people and plants and animals and everything. That’s what God is, dude. We’re all accountable, each to the other. That’s God. So yeah, I mean... I’m God too.”
And I thought my mind was blown the last time.
“So James Franco isn’t here?”
He draws his chin back into his neck in seeming confusion. “James Franco? Why the fuck would James Franco be here?”
“I—He wouldn’t. No reason. You’re the one responsible for me and Maddie being together?”
“Well, kind of. I mean, you and Maddie are the ones actually responsible, but I did my best to make sure you got there. I mean... I dunno. Call it ‘guardian angel,’ call it ‘mortal protector,’ call it ‘good friend,’ call it whatever you want. I’ve just been trying to get you and Maddie together for a long time. Ever since I made the choice to cash in my own chips. But you made it really, really hard. So, all I’m saying is that now that you’ve finally hooked up, it would mean a lot to me, personally, if you’d just go back and do right by her. That’s it.”
I take a second. This should be an easy choice. Of course I want to go back and be with Maddie. Of course I do. And yet I have to ask, “What’s it like here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is there really like no suffering and is it morning all the time like Nadir said, or...?”
He shrugs. “Up to you, man. That’s all just a reflection of you. But it seems like things must going OK right now because, I mean... You made this.” He gestures all around him. “Nice work.”
“What? I did? How did I?”
“Because you’re God, man. You can do anything. And you don’t have to be here to do it. You can make all of this on earth, if you want. I mean, maybe not the towering obelisks. There are probably building codes and stuff, but you get what I’m saying. There’s no point in waiting to find Heaven. It’s all already there. You just have to seize it.”
I just stare at him now, because what he’s saying seems...
Well, it seems...
Obvious.
“‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,’” I mumble to myself.
“What? What is that?” he asks. “Oh, is that from that Nelson Mandela speech?”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t actually Mandela. It was Marianne Williamson.”
“No. Pretty sure it was Mandela.”
“Nope. It wasn’t. Maddie told me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. I’ll have to ask Mandela why people think it was him.”
There’s a lot that I want to say, so I just launch in. “Scotty, I—”
“Stop,” he says, putting up his hand. “You don’t have to say it, man. You said everything at my grave. We’re good.” He takes me around the back of the neck and presses his forehead to mine. “We’re good.”
I just stand there for a moment, feeling the touch of my long-lost best friend one more time. Something I thought I’d nev
er get again. And then, after an endless-seeming while, I say, “Can I ask you something?”
“Why did I want it to be you with Maddie?”
I nod. Our heads are still touching, so it causes both of our necks to move in unison.
“Because,” he says, “there’s no one else it could have been.” Then he slaps me on the shoulder and says, “Gotta go.”
“No. Wait! What? Why? Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure. But I’ll find out when I get there. Kind of how it works here.”
“I mean I’ll go back and all, especially if that’s what you want, because, I mean, it’s absolutely what I want, but... Can’t we just hang for a little while?”
His lips press together tightly, and he shakes his head. “Can’t, man. Gotta run. Besides, until you get back, I wanna keep eyes on Maddie. Know what I mean? I have a feeling she’s freaking out right now. Besides, it’s not really me you’re here for.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“I’ll see you again, man. OK? I will. Promise.” He smiles, turns, and also heads off in the direction that Jeff, Pete, Carolina, and Nadir went.
And quite suddenly I also now realize that everyone else is gone too. All the other people who were here who looked like me, all the people who were here who looked like them, everyone. I’m just standing alone, ankle-deep in water, looking out over a seemingly endless horizon at the most indescribably placid universe I’ve ever seen, with somehow quiet waterfalls cascading all around.
And then, out of nowhere, I hear the soft splash of feet moving through the water behind me.
And at the same time, I catch a whiff of cinnamon.
Turning slowly, I can already feel the pressure building behind my eyes. My breathing turns sharp and shallow and I feel like I might hyperventilate. As my shoulder shifts into the direction of the approaching footsteps, I can feel my body starting to vibrate with energy. And when I make it all the way around, I cannot continue standing.
My legs give out from under me slowly, muscle by muscle, like someone shutting off the lights in an office building floor by floor, and I fall to my knees in the pool, my shoulders beginning to shudder and my head to shake. And through the tears streaming down my cheeks like the waterfalls spilling around me, I see her.
Mom.
She’s wearing the same clothes she was wearing the day she collapsed in the kitchen. A soft, yellow sweater that beams like the sun and falls off one of her always tan shoulders. A pair of faded jeans that she has rolled up around her calves to keep them from getting them wet. A simple gold chain that I gave her for her birthday the year before. Bought with money that I had been saving for months, any time I could get my hands on some.
Her dark hair hangs down around her neck, and her eyes – my eyes – are as deep and blue as the oceans that surround us. She’s so beautiful. And it makes my heart hurt to realize this, because I almost forgot.
She is thirty-eight years old.
She comes to where I am kneeling down and stands over me. My chin is buried in my chest because I’m afraid to look up. I can’t stop crying. She rubs my hair, and I cry harder.
“Shhh. Shhh.” I hear her voice. Not in my memory, or in my imagining, but here, now, in my actual presence, for the first time in seventeen years. “Tyler... Tyler, honey. Look at me.”
She kneels down as well. I see her knees landing in front of mine and resting in the water. She takes my chin in her hands and raises my head upright so that she can see me. She smiles the smile of a mother who hates to see her child in pain but knows that the pain can be cleaned away by a mother’s loving touch.
She puts her palms on my tear-drenched cheeks and commences wiping the tears away, which just makes me cry more. I’m sniffling and sobbing, my shoulders heaving up and down, and she just keeps wiping my face and whispering, “Shhh. Shhh.”
After some moments of this, my tears begin to slow, and my breathing starts to level out. She’s still wiping my face and rubbing her hands across the front of my hair. The smile is still there, and when I reach up to place my hands over hers, I jolt at the sensation of touching her, and she laughs.
“Hey, buddy,” she says.
It’s weird to question something appearing as true, but humans do it all the time. We say, “Really?” Or, “No way!” Or, “Are you serious?” Almost as a reflex. It usually doesn’t mean that we don’t believe. It more means that we want to express astonishment. But right now, in this moment, when I say, “Mom?” It’s a real goddamn question.
“Yep,” she says with a shrug in her voice. “It’s me. Hi.”
I reach out and touch her face, carefully. I let my fingertips trace the contours of her cheeks and the shape of her nose. I let them spread across her forehead and gently close her eyelids. They land on her lips and her chin. And then...
She goes, “Boo!”
And I stumble backwards and land on my ass in the water.
She starts laughing, hard, and rushes over to me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, baby,” she says, still laughing, “I know I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t resist.”
Yep. That’s my mom.
She helps me up to my feet, and we stand there just staring at each other. I forgot how tall she is. She’s the one I get my height from. But the last time I saw her, I only came up to about her chest. Now, I’m a good four or five inches above her.
“You got so big,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. That happens.”
She smiles and says, “I guess it does.”
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I say.
“Why?” she asks.
“Because... Because I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Well, baby,” she says, reaching for my hands, “it’s what’s happening right now, so you may as well choose to believe it.” And she winks.
I look down at our interlocked fingers. “I’ve missed you,” I sigh out.
“Really?” she says. “Because it doesn’t feel like you’ve missed me at all.”
I snap my head up, mortified. “What? Why? Why do you say that?”
“Because you think about me all the time. I feel it. I’m always there. I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“But... But that’s not what I mean. I—”
She presses our hands together and says, “I know what you mean. I’m just talking about what is.” And she looks at me with her head tilted in a total Barbara Hudson Morgan way. “You get what I’m saying, right?”
I let out a breath and nod. “Yeah. I do.”
“I know you do. You’re smarter than you like to let on.” She smirks again, and I laugh.
“Am I?”
“You know you are. But I’m proud of you that you don’t go around showing off about it. You’ve got so many other gifts that if people knew you were smarter than them too, they’d really be annoyed with you.”
“You mean as opposed to the just regular level of annoyance I inspire now?”
“Exactly,” she says. And we both laugh.
When the laughter dies down, the gentle lapping of water all around us is all I can hear.
“It’s beautiful here,” I say.
She nods and looks around. “Yeah. You did a good job.”
“Is this really all me?”
“Yep,” she says, “it sure is.” Then, after a moment of continuing to listen to the water, “How’s Maddie?”
I can’t stop the smile from spreading. “She’s good,” I say over my dippy grin.
“Yeah?” she says, grinning too. “You love her, huh?”
“Like, more than I thought it was possible to ever love anything or anyone. Which is to say, at all. But, like, way more even than that.”
She chuckles. “Good.”
After another beat, I ask, “Mom?”
And instead of saying, “What?” she answers the question still in my head. “Because I felt about him the way you feel about Maddie, baby.”
“You did? Reall
y? How?”
“Because. He wasn’t always the way he is. You remember.” The look on her face is a sad one, which makes me sad.
“Yeah. Yeah. I do.” This is painful and feels like it’s ruining the moment. I wish I hadn’t brought it up.
“No. It’s OK for you to wonder about it,” she says. “I’d be concerned if you didn’t.”
I nod and let out a huff or air.
“Hey,” she says. “Think about this: I loved your father more than anything or anyone. And he felt the same way about me. Honestly, babe, we were just like you and Maddie. Well... not just like. You guys have one hell of a story to tell your kids one day.” She winks. “But we felt exactly as strongly as you do. Now think about something happening to Maddie.”
“Mom...”
“I know, it’s gross, but do it.” She’s right. It is gross. But I do. “Now imagine what that would feel like.”
I take this in.
I get it. I get what she’s saying. If anything happened to Maddie now and she was taken from me, there’s no telling what I might do. Woe be to the earth, because Tyler Hudson Morgan would...
Wait. No. He wouldn’t. I mean, no, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t go on some rampage and just hurt myself and the world. Not anymore. Not again. Because that’s not what Maddie would want. That wouldn’t be kind. That wouldn’t be honoring her. That wouldn’t be honoring myself. I wouldn’t...
Her smile widens, and she says, “And that’s why you’re my favorite son.”
“But wait,” I say. “But Dad...”
“He doesn’t have the advantages you do, honey. Not here”—she points at my head—“and not here.” And she points at my heart. “You’re way ahead of him. And what you did earlier? The way you were with him? Thank you, babe. Thank you. He needs it.”
I shrug. I’m kicking myself for injecting this into our reunion when there’s so much else I’d rather be talking about.
“Your dad will get there. He will. Eventually. I don’t know if it helps you to know that, but it’s true.”
I shrug again. I totally feel thirteen again.
She takes my face in her hands once more. “Tyler, look at me.” I do. “I’m sorry that you had to go through what you went through. It killed me to watch it all happening. Well, not exactly killed, but you know...” I smile, in spite of myself. “And it may not make any sense to you now, but everything that has happened to you happened exactly as it was supposed to.”