Nothing but Life

by Brent van Staalduinen

  “Viv,” Mom says.

  “— pretty cool, if you think about it.”

  “Vivian So-Eun Sims.”

  Hearing her Korean given name, which Gramma Jan insisted she keep on her adoption papers, snaps Aunt Viv back to the present. She shakes her head like she’s clearing it of radar jamming and moves back to my bedside. She folds her arms and her face regains its composure, which in her case means the hard stare returns and is directed right back at Sean. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with the jarring shift. He fiddles with his phone, suddenly preoccupied by some dirt trapped at the edge of its protective case, before putting it back in his pocket.

  “Sean?” my mother asks. “What’s going on?”

  “Wendell’s ankle monitor is linked to a specific geographical location. It alerted me when he left the park area.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s sensitive, especially during work hours.”

  Aunt Viv frowns. “He can’t leave our neighbourhood?”

  “Of course he can. He’s not wearing a shock collar, yeah?” Sean looks at the three of us in turn, his expression brightening a little, but his attempt at humour falls flat. “Right. Well. In off hours, there’s some leeway programmed in. If the monitor moves to, say, a grocery store or school or church, we don’t worry. But if Wendell suddenly dashes across town in the middle of the day, it’ll trigger.”

  “This is a hospital, Sean,” Mom says. “Wouldn’t you assume he’d been hurt?”

  “I didn’t think about it much, to be honest.”

  “Your concern is heartwarming.”

  He shrugs. “People go to hospitals for all kinds of reasons.”

  “You should’ve told us,” Mom says.

  “It’s common sense. Plus, we went over this at the field house on day one, didn’t we, Wendell? You should know better than to desert your post on a workday.”

  “Desert his what?”

  My post, Mom, I want to say. The park. That place where I’m supposed to stay. I can imagine Jesse narrowing his eyes if he was here to hear this. One, you have a job to do. Two, people are depending on you to stick it out. You don’t leave in the middle. Clear as mud?

  Mom leans forward. “So what are you saying, Sean? Spit it out.”

  “I have to report this to the court. They’ll probably look at the circumstances and excuse the breach, but that’s up to the judge.”

  Sean’s face has grown harder, too. I hate that. I hate that what I do makes people angry.

  “His grandmother is upstairs in the heart ward and you’re worried about … about …”

  “Breaching, apparently,” Aunt Viv offers.

  Sean ignores Aunt Viv. “I don’t think you appreciate how serious this is, Mrs. Sims. He has to meet the conditions of his sentencing.”

  “First, don’t call me ‘missus.’ Call me Victoria or nothing at all. Second, I understand that you’re processing data and ticking boxes on a thousand bureaucratic forms, but this was a family emergency.”

  “I have a job to do, Mrs. … Victoria.”

  “And third, if you think I don’t get what my kid’s been through —”

  “He still has to meet the conditions of his sentencing, even if he was at Windsor.”

  Mom slaps the edge of my bed. “He wasn’t just at Windsor! Reporters were at the school. Parents were at the school. Hell, most of the other kids were at the fucking school. Dills was —”

  Mom stops herself from saying in the library. Just a few of our many words to choose from, but they always generate a frenzy of strong opinions and horror and expressions of sympathy. I can’t say them. Thinking them is enough. Knowing what they mean is enough.

  Mom and Sean and Aunt Viv have all gone quiet. Silence is a strange sort of space, isn’t it? You want to fill it. Sean has been knocked into a not-knowing-what-tosay variety of silence. Aunt Viv has retreated into a kind that the loved ones of survivors go into, where there are no words. Mom is looking at me, her silence a mix of the helplessness parents feel and the hope that I’ll fill the void. Parents want their kids to say the words, sometimes.

  I don’t, though. Words can be too easy.

  In the days after, during what Mom called “the media storm,” news outlets tended to alphabetize the names. Scrolled them like stock tickers. I always knew when Ethan’s name and picture would come up. He was my best friend, and his last name began with a G, so his was always the fourth. The fourth photo and name listed or slideshowed across all those screens. The same school picture from last year because he was sick on picture day this year. Grade nine and his new braces. Silver hardware and army green for the backings. Mom always looked away when it happened, like when we went shopping or got my hair cut or bought a drink from places where the TVs were always on.

  I didn’t. In the picture, though he’s smiling and clean and polite, which wasn’t like the everyday Ethan I knew, he was still so much more him than the Ethan I had to leave on the floor in the library. People can die without faces.

  I watch Sean and Mom and Aunt Viv fill the space, but I’m not listening. Mom will tell me the important stuff later.

  BELIEVED

  The next day, I wake up to a quiet house, which is unusual — I live with three early risers who are always up long before me. But it’s a strange morning, all right. Gramma Jan is at the hospital for her tests. Mom’s nowhere to be seen. Probably sleeping. Aunt Viv is the only one around, sitting at the kitchen table behind a laptop. Her oatmeal — her breakfast always consists of coffee and a single pack of plain instant oatmeal — congealing and cold beside her as she manipulates the keys.

  “Hey, kid,” she says when I walk in and begin to assemble my breakfast of Mini-Wheats and OJ. Doesn’t look up, though.

  “What’re you doing?”

  She types a long string of code or something, gives a satisfied grunt, and looks up. “Checking out the tech your friend Sean uses to keep tabs on you.”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “Just an expression.”

  “In fact, I’d say he might be more your friend than mine. You two were pretty tight yesterday.”

  A dismissive wave. “Professional interest.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “The tech got me, is all.”

  “Find anything out?”

  “Always.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She points at the computer. “You can find pretty much anything if you have the right keystrokes.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t hack him.”

  She smiles, a glint in her eye from the laptop screen, sky blue. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a hack.”

  “What would you call it? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know, do I?”

  “No.”

  “Make sure you don’t —”

  “Don’t worry, Dills. I know how serious this is for you. I’d never jeopardize that.”

  And I believe her. She has this way of moving through life like it’s hers for the taking. Mom told me once that Aunt Viv was top of her class, that she’d been courted by all the tech giants. A bunch of high-six-figure salaries dangled in front of her like golden apples. But she went out on her own. Makes her own hours, chooses her own clients. Mom says she’s rich as hell, but you’d never know it by looking at her. Clothes from the same stores everyone shops at. A nicely detailed but small Toyota hybrid in silver, the beige of car paint. Still lives with Gramma Jan in this quiet little neighbourhood. Sleeps in the bedroom she grew up in. Like she doesn’t need anything beyond the basics. I like that. You have to respect the lines between need and want.

  “Okay, Doc,” I say.

  She grunts again, reaches over, right into my cereal bowl, and throws a soggy Mini-Wheat at me. She has at least two PhDs, but never talks about them. Hates the prestige factor. It’s fun to bug her.

  “How’s the head?” she asks.

  “Fine. No pain.”

  “Good. Your bandage fell off.”

&nb
sp; I raise a hand to the tight place. I can feel the roughness of the knots and clipped thread. No pain, though. “How does it look?”

  “Like you cut your forehead on the side of a bed.”

  “Really? I should —”

  “It looks fine, Dills. Relax.”

  I reach for the first-aid box, take it to the bathroom, and check myself out in the mirror. She’s right. There’s some bruising. But no blood — the wound is clean. I stick a plastic bandage over it and go back to the kitchen.

  “You blacked out pretty good yesterday,” Aunt Viv says as she spoons coffee beans into the grinder. Her back is to me as she works.

  “I guess I did.”

  The tinny sound of the grinder’s blades smashing through the coffee beans fills the kitchen for a few seconds. She pours the freshly ground beans into a basket filter and drops it into the top of the coffee maker. Reaches over to the sink, fills the carafe about halfway, and dumps the water into the coffee maker before hitting the power switch. The machine chugs and hisses. She watches every drip, not wanting to take the coffee before it’s ready. A Jesse thing, something about the proper grind and saturation and timing that he learned in the army. Whenever we’d visit Hamilton, he’d get up first and make coffee for everyone. He’d block the machine if anyone tried to take a mug before it was done. “It’ll be worth the wait, troops. Promise,” he’d say. Somehow the habit crept its way into our family. Aunt Viv, Mom, and Gramma Jan observing the ritual. They don’t realize. I do.

  “Do you know what you said before you fell?”

  “I said something?”

  “You did. ‘No, Jesse!’ Clear as anything.”

  The inflection she puts into the words is startling. It sounds like pleading. Like I was pleading. Begging.

  “We all heard you, Dills. No one talked about it — I suppose we all figured it was being in the hospital that did it — but I wanted to ask.”

  “I don’t remember saying anything.”

  “The way you said it —”

  And I suddenly know why she’s asking. She’s imagining what the tone in my voice was saying. Like I was afraid of Jesse. That he could hurt me somehow. In all the ways people fear grown-ups can hurt us.

  “Aunt Viv, no, he never —”

  “Because you can tell us if anything happened. You know that, right?”

  What an odd moment. The hacker aunt I’ve never lived with asking me if my stepfather abused me. The questions my own mother never asked about my step-father. The stepfather who, despite a footlocker full of flaws, would never do anything to hurt me. Yet the same stepfather who could march into a school and start shooting. We still don’t understand his flaws. And we’re afraid of them. Afraid enough to assume. Like Aunt Viv is doing right now, her controlled face a wash of emotions all fighting to take over. He could never do that, I want to say. With all of myself I want to defend Jesse, but I’ve never seen Aunt Viv wrestling so hard with herself, either. What do you do when the could-have-beens are eclipsed by what actually happened?

  I guess you begin with what’s in front of you. By offering other things. “He talks to me.”

  “What do you mean? Who talks to you?”

  “Jesse.”

  Aunt Viv tilts her head. “Jesse talks to you.”

  What seems so clear to me is clearly not so for her. I must sound crazy. “Yes. No. In my head, I think. I mean, I can hear him. When I’m working.”

  “You’ve always talked to yourself, Dills.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s calling me. I don’t know how else to say it.”

  She exhales, unfolds her arms, and pushes herself away from the counter. Opens the cupboard with a jerky, rushed movement. Grabs a mug. I can tell she’s still not able to hold on to what I’ve told her. And who can blame her? Even I’m starting to hear myself, to hear the crazy in the words.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I must’ve hit my head a bit too hard.”

  “No, keep going.”

  “Can you not say anything to Mom? She won’t like that I —”

  “Dills. Keep. Going.”

  Her eyes have cleared and she’s leaning toward me. The body language suggests a change in my favour. But I wait an instant. Not daring to hope too much.

  “I believe you,” she says, finally.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Okay, then. Her words have settled me. I hear myself telling her everything, the whats, whens, wheres, hows. Telling her that Jesse’s voice is a real thing I can almost feel, how it’s different from memory or imagination. At the end, I sit back in my chair and watch her as she sips her coffee. She drinks it black. “Full strength,” she likes to say. Jesse drinks his the same way. “One, it’s easier when you’re pressed for time,” he once said. “No muss, no fuss. Two, what’s the point otherwise? Coffee has to be strong. For the blood. For the brain.” Aunt Viv puts down her mug. She’s having trouble with the whys.

  “So, he wants you to go back.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about what he did. And now he’s talking to you, which is hard to fathom.”

  “You don’t believe me after all.”

  “I think I do. But I’m worried about what it means for you, in terms of your healing.”

  “Healing?”

  “I’m not going to talk about moving on or anything — God knows you’ve heard enough of that — but accepting what happened.”

  “I don’t hate him, Aunt Viv.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Everyone expects me to. They don’t say it, but they do.”

  “People think hate is the answer for what they don’t understand. It’s not. But no one can ask him, which makes it worse.”

  “I can’t even hate him when I think that he might’ve been coming for me.”

  “Ach, Dills, aside from thinking about all those dead kids, and that you might’ve —” Her voice breaks and she winces. There is real, physical pain there, pain I’ve never seen uncovered like this. She swallows, coughs, blinks away a sudden misting of her dark eyes. Tries again. “Thinking about Jesse hurting you is the toughest part for any of us. The wondering. Especially for your mom. You can understand that, right?”

  “Do you hate him?”

  “I hate what he did. The rest of it, who knows?”

  “Does Mom?”

  “Would you blame her if she did?”

  “He’s still Jesse.”

  “He is and he isn’t, if that makes sense.”

  “I miss him, Aunt Viv. I want to go.”

  “I know. But can I offer a suggestion?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Keep this to yourself. I’m glad you told me, but your mom might not …” She pauses. “Let’s say that she might not get it. Not that I want you to keep secrets from her, but we don’t talk about Jesse much these days.”

  “I get why, I do. But it still feels like a hole in our family.”

  Aunt Viv puts her mug down and nods. Thanks me for the talk, like we’ve worked out some everyday thing. There’s another awkward hug that she hangs on to for a few extra beats. Then she picks up her laptop and walks out of the kitchen, telling me as she goes to “get out there and pick up some trash.” Like she’s my coach. Like all that rot and garbage is the goal, rather than the struggle.

  DETAILS

  Mia finds me before lunch. I’ve been in the same spot for more than an hour. Near the soccer pitches, there’s an access road for the city maintenance fleet to use when they come for their weekly grass mowing and trimming. A dozen iron posts linked by rusted heavy chain line the road from the gate to the soccer field. Hard to know how old the posts and chain are, although they go far enough back to when iron and chain seemed appropriate for kids’ play areas.

  Only one of the hollow posts still has its original decorative ball screwed to the top. The rest are open to the sky, filled with what seems li
ke a century of garbage. Everything from crushed pop cans to chip bags to cigarette butts to tattered, unidentifiable pieces of clothing. Like a park history in layers of decaying trash. More rotten the farther down you go. The first post cleared out easy, so I thought I’d get the rest. Bad idea. Between the dirt and the rust and the fetid things, each grosser than the last, I’m filthy. And pissed for doing this to myself.

  “Serves you right for being so stubborn,” I tell myself as I dig into a post with my spike — which I’ve decided is a far cooler word than picker-upper — and lift another dripping, smelly piece of cloth into the sky. This one was black at some point, but is now a faded mess of grey and rust.

  A sudden voice behind me. “Stubborn? I’d say you’re being thorough, but —”

  “Shit!” My heart in my mouth. I fumble the cloth, which falls to the ground and flops open, revealing a cracked silkscreened skull and a single word. Misfits. An old band T-shirt. I turn.

  It’s Mia. Laughing. Hard. “But surely this wasn’t part of the deal.”

  I groan inwardly. I’m blushing to burst. Please let me not have squeaked out loud. Okay, universe? That’s not too much to ask, right?

  “Uh …”

  “Hi,” she says. Just like that.

  “Hi.”

  “What happened to your head?”

  “My head?”

  “You have some shiny new stitches.”

  “Oh, that.” I raise my spike-holding hand — it’s a tiny bit cleaner than the other one — to my forehead and feel the rough suture knots. I’ve sweated the bandage away again. I tell her I fainted and banged it against the hospital bed when I went to visit Gramma Jan. I explain it away as an aversion to hospitals and a reaction to how sick Gramma Jan looked. I finish with a dramatic statement about how worried I was and that I wasn’t prepared for what came next. Truth mixed with a strategic omission of truth. I’m getting pretty good at leaving things out of my stories.

  She nods at the poles and the mess at my feet. Makes a face. “So you’re stressed. I suppose it helps explain the reason you gave yourself this particular challenge. Which is totally gross, by the way.”

  “I didn’t think it would take so long. I did the first one, which was easy, and then kind of —”