Nothing but Life

by Brent van Staalduinen

  “I’m fine.”

  She folds her arms and turns a quarter turn away from me. Closing herself off. Regret in her body language. Inviting this idiot was a bad, bad idea.

  What the hell, Dills? I want to ask myself. I’ve snapped at and interrupted her, which are the rudest things. But my gut is running the show now. My mind is merely a horrified spectator. And guess what gets added next? Replaying my departure, reliving the guilt and worry about leaving Mom to go to the hospital on her own. And I get even angrier at Mia, if you can believe it. Like she’s to blame for all of it. My gut opens my mouth, ready to deliver the next perfect, biting remark, and —

  “Mia, who is this boy?”

  My mouth snaps shut. Her mother has come over to where we’re standing. Her accent is strong, but her voice is flat. The tone says, He looks like trouble and if he speaks to you like that again, I will kill him where he stands. Up close, she is incredibly tall. Like professional volleyball player tall. Mia’s father arrives after a moment, wiping his hands on his apron, which is black and decorated with the words DON’T LIKE MY COOKING? LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS. He isn’t tall. But he looks strong enough to protect a daughter’s honour by tearing questionable guys apart with his bare hands. A single hot bead of sweat trickles down my back, between my shoulder blades.

  “Mom, Dad, this is Wendell Sims. My friend from school.”

  “We did not know he was coming,” her mother says.

  “I invited him.” Mia glances at me as she says it. Is there regret in the look?

  “Wendell, it is kind of you to come, but this is a family dinner.”

  Mia’s father hasn’t said a thing. But his eyes have moved to my shoes. No, wait, not my shoes. The ankle monitor. Shit. I don’t think about it at all anymore, apart from when I need to wash around it in the shower. LoJack is the perfect name. Low Jack. Gritty and dishonest, like the kind of person who’d wear it. With shorts. To a birthday party.

  “Mom, you’re embarrassing me.”

  “Please ask him to leave. Wendell, it was nice to meet you.”

  That tone definitely tells me it wouldn’t matter if I returned the courtesy. So I don’t. I just nod.

  “Dills, stay.”

  There’s as much defiance against her parents in her invitation as there is desire for me to be a part of her celebration. I did that. My crappy temper making all this discomfort possible. Without another word, her mother and father turn away and move back to the party. I feel small. And mad. And wrecked. But mostly small.

  These days I find myself measuring everything against a piece of metal I keep in the drawer next to the box cutter. I told you about that hospital hallway. The waiting and the blood and the crying and all the things damaged kids can’t do for each other. But right after they sat me down, I saw a dark object lying against that smart little curve they put at the base of hospital walls to make sure there are no corners to gather germs. It looked out of place and dirty, so I got myself off the floor and walked over to it. It was small, about the size of a frozen kernel of corn, but heavy for its size, jagged and dense. I put it in my pocket and found it later that day when Mom took me home and let me go up to my room. Rubbing against the cloth in my pocket had shined it up a little. Dark, with flecks of copper. Bullet fragment. I should’ve given it to the police, but I didn’t. I take it out sometimes. Wonder about its travels. Who it might have gone through or fallen out of. It’s my new small and huge and every other size.

  “You didn’t tell your parents about me,” I say.

  “What would I tell them?”

  “Something. Anything.”

  “Like what? Do you know what we are?”

  No. Yes. Maybe, is what I think. What I say is “I should go.”

  “Please stay.”

  She puts her hand on my shoulder. Her body language opening up to me again, like a door of some kind, even though I’m being such an idiot. The hardness gone from her face, her hand warm through my fancy shirt. The best kind of low heat. She looks over at her family, her eyes moving between the kids, the teens, and the circled adults waiting to eat. Her eyes don’t rest on anyone. I realize that she doesn’t belong in any of the groups. That we can be strangers in our own families. That she’s asking me to be her comfortable. If I’m the threatening outsider, she’s the threatening insider, the daughter and niece and cousin no one can talk to. Maybe she’s too strong.

  “I want to,” I say. “But I think you need to work on your parents a bit.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe I can meet them again sometime when my friend is gone.” I lift my foot a bit.

  Her eyes go down to the ankle monitor. “Oh my god, I totally forgot!”

  “Me, too. But your parents won’t.”

  “We don’t need their permission.”

  “I do, Mia.”

  “Why?”

  Because I don’t need another question mark in my life, Mia. Another day at odds with another set of parents, or step-parents, or whatever. Though I don’t say that. I glance over at her folks, who’ve been reabsorbed into the adult group. Studiously not looking over at us. Parents are people you want to be loyal to. And you want to have the favour returned.

  “Look,” I say, “maybe it’s too much right now.”

  “Wait. What’s too much? We’re hanging out.”

  “I’m just so … I just have …”

  “You sound like you’re about to make a lame excuse, Dills.”

  “No, it is a lot. This stupid LoJack. The sentence. New grade in the fall. Pat. Gramma Jan.”

  “What’s going on with your grandma? Will she get to come home soon?”

  I almost tell her. I want to. But, as if on the most awkward sort of cue, my rash lights up again, hotter and itchier than ever. Blots the evening out with the overwhelming urge to scratch and the need not to. And a fresh bloom of anger at the frame my life has been set into lights up, too. The urge to scream at the crappiness of it all. Like really scream at it, raise my sweating face to the sky and yell and shout and scream until my voice obliterates itself.

  “No,” I say. Mostly to myself. Knowing how little such an outburst would accomplish.

  “No what?”

  Mia’s voice is now as flat and suspicious as her mother’s. I read that as the final signal. Affirmation of every speck of not-worthy-and-not-ready in me. “Nothing. I’m going to go.”

  And I do. I turn away and walk back across the park and into the empty house. To a text on my iPod from Mom, telling me that she’ll be staying overnight again. That I should stay put and that Aunt Viv will be home a little later. As though I’d dash across the city right then. She says that Gramma Jan needs to rest so I shouldn’t call, that she’ll tell me everything in the morning. That I shouldn’t worry.

  That last one does it.

  “Oh, come on!” I yell, pounding my fists against the kitchen counter, hard, listening to the impact moving through the woodwork of the house.

  Don’t worry.

  Right.

  Telling someone not to worry is like spraying fuel vapour over a campfire while telling the flames they don’t have to grow.

  DIGGING

  I suppose you could get used to an empty house in the morning. But not by choice. You look for the people you love. When they’ve always been part of your routines, like Mom, or have become part of them, like Gramma Jan and Aunt Viv, and they’re not there, you notice. It feels weird to see every door ajar, every curtain and blind open, every bed unslept in. Everything exactly where you left it the night before. No caring person to reset the house after you go to bed.

  I refresh my email on my iPod. Nothing from Mia. The world could’ve ended as I slept. The Rapture, Ethan would’ve called it. Sheep and goats and all the sinners having to stay on earth. His family was one of those that prays while doing everyday things and uses the word blessings a lot, that ends every discussion with “Praise Jesus.” Ethan was obsessed with this retro series of books called Left
Behind, where the Rapture comes and the survivors have to figure out how to survive. I bet he made those the most-read books in the school library. Anyhow.

  I eat and get ready for the day in silence. I think about turning on some music loud to keep me company, but that seems crazy. Crazier than trusting myself alone with my worry and guilt about how I left things with Mia.

  Before I leave, I wind and set Gene’s watch and open the weather app on my iPod. Going to be a scorcher today. Heat alert in effect. Good. Not good for working, obviously, but good for my lunch break and after work. Coming home to a cool house is a rare kind of heaven. Gramma Jan has this thing against air conditioning unless the weather people declare that it is actually hot. The rest of the time, we open windows and use fans to push the hot air around. I turn on the AC. The appearance of the snowflake icons on the thermostat momentarily displaces my worry.

  It’s so warm there’s no morning dew on the grass. The park is dry and still. Bracing itself against the heat. Nothing moves or makes noise, not even the sparrows, who are always moving, always flashing around in fidgety little flocks. A good day to be under cover. There’s a path into the woods out past the soccer fields that I haven’t gotten to yet. I smear sunscreen everywhere as I walk toward the trailhead.

  I’m here. Please come see me.

  Please come see me. The please is new. Not for Jesse — he’s the politest person — but it’s the first time he’s said it out here. He says that please might be the most important word. “So many people don’t say it these days,” he once said to me. “Like politeness is a weakness or something. But people appreciate when you make the effort. You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.” He even uses it when he asks for the time: “May I have the time, please?” It sounds so formal. He’ll ask someone at the store or gas station even though he wears his old army watch everywhere and he carries a phone. Creating chances to say please to strangers or something. It’s weird. But kind of cool.

  The trail is wide. Packed hard and well used. Not a lot of garbage, maybe the occasional beer can or snack wrapper. I cover a lot of ground, following the path up and down, toward and away from the marsh, in and out of small ravines and valleys. It’s hot and I’m already sweaty, but it’s kind of nice to walk for a change.

  “Wendell? Can you hear me, mate?”

  Sean’s voice somewhere behind me, dulled by the heat and the trees but still killing the calm. I slow down but stay quiet. He’ll find me on his own — there’s only one path, and his GPS will get him here. I don’t feel the need to contribute to the noise. I round a bend and find myself at one of the park’s scenic lookouts, a wooden platform hanging out over the marsh. Usually these spots are cleaner than the paths, but today I see a jumble of small plastic things, bright against the weathered grey of the platform’s pressure-treated lumber. Green. Red. Blue. Yellow. Spent shotgun shells. Scattered all over the lookout, like someone stood right here and shot them all off in one session. For fun. Who does that?

  I kneel and pick them up by hand, dropping them into my garbage bag one by one. They landed on the platform, so they’re clean. There’s the sharp smell of burnt gunpowder. The shooting smell is strong. Like a ton of gunpowder gets packed inside before the shooter blasts them out of his gun and destroys whatever he’s pointing at. Not like .22-calibre rounds. They’re small. They smell sharp, too, but lighter. Less volume. Jesse has a larger-calibre hunting rifle but also owns a .22 that he uses to shoot beer cans. “Plinking,” he calls it. “To keep the hand-eye coordination fresh.” One of his army buddies, who moved to Canada and bought a huge plot of land south of Windsor, lets Jesse shoot whenever he wants. I went down with him a few times, long before he took me hunting and got in so much trouble. He’ll line up a bunch of cans on a rail and lie down a ways away. Prone is the most stable shooting position. He’s so good at shooting, too. He’ll tuck the rifle into his shoulder and slow down his breathing and snap! snap! snap! he’ll knock the cans over one by one with almost no hesitation between them. He can shoot all day. And he does, sometimes.

  “There you are.”

  Sean rounds the final bend, breathing hard. He’s holding his phone. As I stand to face him, I can see a pulsing blue dot in the middle of the screen. That’s me, I bet.

  To my surprise, Aunt Viv appears right behind him. “Hey, kid,” she says.

  “You’re really in deep this time,” Sean says.

  “But you said I could clean the trails.”

  “Not in deep like that,” Aunt Viv says, laughing. “He meant deep in. Far back in the woods.”

  “What she said,” Sean says, smiling at her. “You’re fine, Wendell. This is a regular check-in.”

  “Okay,” I say. “But what are you doing here, Aunt Viv?”

  “I asked Sean to find you, and he said he was coming out today anyhow. Gramma Jan’s being discharged today.”

  “Yeah, Mom told me.”

  Her eyebrows rise. “I didn’t know that. I was on my way out when she got to the hospital, so —”

  “On your way out? But you didn’t come home.”

  “Oh. That. Well …”

  And insert awkward pause. So much weirdness happening all at once. Someone using Cootes Paradise as a shooting gallery. Sean in the woods looking like an urban alien. Aunt Viv following him out here. Aunt Viv choosing to follow anyone. Aunt Viv asking for help. If she can hack into his system, surely she can find me out here on her own. Her laughter at Sean’s mixed-up words. His smile.

  “I certainly had a nice time,” Sean says.

  “Sean,” Aunt Viv says, drawing out the word long enough to glare at him. “We talked about this.”

  “Well, I did enjoy myself, Vivian. And it’s pretty clear Wendell’s figured it out, yeah?”

  Aunt Viv makes a low growling sound and rolls her eyes. Probably because he called her by her proper first name. “Fine,” she says.

  Sean turns to me again. “But she did ask if you’d be allowed to break early today, so you can be there when your gran comes home. That’s what she was going to tell you.”

  “Both of you had to be here for that?”

  “Well, no, but her Prius wouldn’t start this morning, so I had to give her a ride home.”

  “Sean!”

  Aunt Viv looks like she could punch him. TMI, clearly. And I get it. It feels sloppy, how goofy he’s being around her. What happened to “Let’s keep this professional, yeah?”

  “Does Gramma Jan know about all of this?” I ask. “She hates it when we make a big deal out of anything.”

  Aunt Viv nods. “She asked if you could be there.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “She’ll tell you herself. She insisted.”

  “That’s more like her, but come on, you can —”

  “Be home for eleven.”

  “Aunt Viv —”

  “Stop, Dills. Just be there.”

  And with that she turns and walks back up the path, disappearing around the bend.

  “Sean, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, mate. She didn’t tell me, either.”

  He looks at his phone and swipes something away from the screen. Puts the phone in its pouch and looks at me long and hard. “Actually, this wasn’t a regular check-in. I have to tell you something. Two things, actually.”

  “Okay.”

  “I spoke to the judge about your breach the other day. At the hospital. She’s waived any further escalation, so you’re off the hook.”

  “Well, that’s good. Mom’ll be happy.”

  “You should be, too.”

  “Oh. I am.”

  “You sure? You don’t look it.”

  “I haven’t had time … I, uh, haven’t thought about it much.”

  Sean gives me a look, like he can’t believe I haven’t been obsessing about it.

  I ask, “And the other thing?”

  “Right. It’s about that reporter. From the trial.”

  “Walters.”
/>
  “She’s been poking around the office and the courts. Bugging me about you.”

  “I’ve seen her a couple of times. She knows that something’s different about my case.”

  “So she says.”

  “Would you ever —”

  “Not a chance, Wendell. We don’t talk about our cases with reporters. The court, too — they’re locked as tight as we are. Still,” A pause, thoughtful. “I don’t think she’s going away. I wanted to warn you to be careful and not say anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  “When reporters start chewing on something …”

  “Yeah.”

  Sean glances down and sees the shell that’s still in my hand. This one is yellow. I drop it in the bag. He looks around the platform at the shells I haven’t gotten to yet. Back at me. Sighs. It looks like he wants to say something about them, but he doesn’t. Maybe there’s a rule somewhere he’s trying to interpret on the fly. They’re spent, so there’s no danger. Or maybe it’s about guns and guys like me who live through the unimaginable. I kneel again to grab the next shell, this one signal red. And the next. Blue. Green. Another yellow.

  Sean says, “You’re all right?”

  “All of this is weird, but I’m getting used to it.”

  “Protect yourself, yeah?”

  “I will. Will you tell Aunt Viv?”

  He shakes his head. “I have to tell your mum, of course, and I’ll have to write it up in my own reports, but no one else. Confidentiality.”

  “Good.”

  “Right, then.”

  And he jogs away back up the path, awkward, looking like he’s trying to put a spring in his step. Trying to catch Aunt Viv. He seems so certain about the security of my information, but Aunt Viv can slice through it and barely break a sweat. I trust him, but what about everyone else in the system? My story is different. My life is a scoop. My family is news.

  I look at my watch. One hour to go.

  COMPLICATED

  I’m here. Come see me, Dills. Please.

  As I work my way up and down the marsh paths for the remainder of the morning, Jesse calls to me often. As though the woods have provided some extra privacy. Safety to talk to me. Just for today, maybe.