My voice came out louder than I’d hoped, but Daniel didn’t flinch.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I’m asking.”
We moved down the hill where the lake was quiet. There were no people on the path. And for a second, I felt that summer vacation sense of being alone and unsupervised in a daytime world. But I couldn’t help thinking about my last time here.
“Tess?” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just zoning.”
The calm lake appeared before us, divided in half. One side was dazzling white with reflected sunlight. The other half had the darkened aura of an abandoned bog.
“It’s not a distraction,” I said finally.
Daniel turned toward me.
“I am perfectly capable of distracting myself in other ways I’ll have you know. For example: I enjoy books and recreational drugs and flirting with hot cowboys. So, I resent the implication that I would do this just to pass the time.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then why?”
“Well, because my dad needs help. That’s one reason. He’s not going to make it otherwise, and he’s at a point in his life where he might not have many more chances. He’s that much of a screwup.”
“And?” said Daniel.
“And . . . I’m actually good at it,” I said. “I can plan somebody’s death party like a pro, and it feels good to not suck at something. I know you and Jonah were computer geniuses or whatever, but I’ve never really found my thing.”
I looked at the water, clotted with patches of bright green algae.
“Is that it?” said Daniel.
I was heading toward the dock. I felt my heart rate increase as I grew closer and saw the sign cautioning against swimming.
“No,” I said.
I imagined the feel of the slimy stuff on my bare arms, the way it had adhered to me like a second skin when I made it to the surface. I closed my eyes. The sunlight flickered orange and yellow beneath my lids.
“I’m also doing it because I’m terrified,” I said.
Daniel watched me a moment.
“Of what?” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “Everything. But mostly my impermanence.”
His eyes searched my face.
“Some people are comforted by that,” I said. “Not me. I like existing. At least most of the time. I like having a body. I want to keep it. But someday I won’t have it anymore. That’s unsettling.”
I looked at the chipped railing on the dock.
“And I’m scared of being buried underground where worms and bugs will digest my remains. I know I won’t be conscious, but still. It doesn’t sound pleasant. Does that sound pleasant to you? I’m scared of being burned into a pile of oxidized matter. I’m scared of rotting and decaying.”
I was building up steam now.
“I’m scared that I don’t matter, even a little bit, and that no one matters and nothing matters. I’m scared that it all matters and I’m fucking it up. I’m scared I’m living my short short life wrong in every possible way. I’m scared I’ve already made so many mistakes and I don’t have enough time to fix them. I’m scared I won’t die with the slightest amount of dignity, like on the toilet or watching Bravo. I’m scared no one will care when I do. I’m scared that the only person I ever loved wasn’t real. I’m scared I will never get over him. And I’m scared I’m making the same mistake again.”
Daniel took this in. He took a step toward me. I didn’t want to look him in the eyes. I didn’t know what might happen. So I walked past him out onto the dock.
“I live with all of this like lots of people do,” I said, “and sometimes, I can keep it away. But when someone dies, there’s a rupture in all that, right? And all those fears come pouring back in at once. Maybe a good funeral can help people face it.”
I looked down into the muddy water, hoping maybe I could see my dearly departed laptop down there shimmering like a tiny futuristic shipwreck. But, of course, I could only see down a couple of feet.
“Maybe a good funeral can help people find enough order to keep going. At least it shows you that you’re not alone. I wish I’d had that. But I didn’t. So maybe I can help my dad give it to other people.”
We were quiet for a moment after this. I looked deeper into the water.
“Tess,” said Daniel.
He was by my side now.
“No more questions,” I said. “That’s all I have to say.”
“Tess,” he said again.
I turned to him. His brown eyes were wide.
“We need to plan a funeral,” he said.
I just stood there a moment.
“For Jonah.”
I pushed some blowing hair from my face.
“I think it might help us,” he said.
I took another step toward him, and he put his arms around me. He held me tight. But it was okay. It felt good. I held him back. I don’t know what it meant, but it was good just to cling for a moment. Like we were two parts of the same broken thing.
Me: This is it, Jonah: the person you left me with.
28
My dad came home later that evening, and I watched him stand out in the backyard, smoking a cigarette. He had supposedly quit a year ago, and so far the only times I’d seen him cheat were when he was stressed about something. But his face looked calm now in the orange light of dusk.
Which brought up another possibility. He’d probably been with Grace. He’d probably been with her all afternoon and all those other mornings when he disappeared with no excuse. And yes, he had probably been with Grace in the Biblical sense (insert very loud dry heave). When he walked inside, he held the scorched filter of his cigarette under the tap before tossing it in the trash.
“Your fly’s unzipped,” I said, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Jesus, Tess!” he said. “What are you doing? Keeping watch?”
He looked down.
“My fly is fine.”
“But you checked!” I said. “You checked because you’re guilty! Guilty of having gross sex!”
He ran his hands through his hair.
“Don’t say sex,” he said.
“Sex,” I said. “Screwing. Porking! Doing the nasty!”
He stood there in the light of the kitchen, looking mildly ashamed.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
Then, before he could say anything else, I said: “If you want to spend your time with a traitorous floozy, that’s your business. But I’m not happy about it.”
“Floozy?” he said.
“She pretended to care about me to get in your pants. I think that’s pretty obvious at this point.”
“Tess,” he said. “That’s not true. She’s a divorcee and we have a lot in common.”
“Yeah, like you’re both selfish assholes.”
I could see him getting angrier. Hell hath no fury like a middle-aged man scolded.
“Hey!” he said. “Can you cut me some slack please?”
“You should print that on a T-shirt,” I said.
He shook his head. His face was red.
“I thought she was going to be my friend,” I said.
He walked over to the counter and got himself a glass of water. He took a long drink, and his anger seemed to fade a little.
“Huh,” he said. “I thought you hated her.”
“So did I,” I said.
When he was done with his water, his shoulders slumped, and he just stood there looking at the sink full of dishes.
“Why are you even staying here if living with me is so miserable?” he said.
He sat down at the table. His question hung between us.
“That’s a fair question,” I said.
He waited for me to go on
. And though it would have been easy to get up and walk away again, I found that my feet didn’t want to do that. It was getting exhausting, all this evading.
“I lost someone,” I said.
I took a breath. My father just watched.
“Somebody I think I loved.”
I tried not to look at him.
“I feel stupid saying that because we barely knew each other as it turns out. But it’s true. I loved him. Or maybe the idea of him. Anyway, he made things better for a while. And last year I needed that. For some reason, I couldn’t do it myself.”
My dad was looking me in the eyes now.
“Tess,” he said.
“When I heard he was dead, I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t be at school. I really just wanted to disappear for a while. But when it came time to leave, I just came here. And I think now it’s because you don’t pretend.”
My father looked at me now.
“Pretend?”
“That death isn’t part of things. I don’t understand all the reasons you do what you do, maybe it’s mostly for the money, but you deal with dying the best you can. I think maybe I knew that. So I came here. Even though we aren’t that close anymore. Does that answer your question?”
He scratched his face, under his ear.
“God, Tess. I could have been more help if I had known what was going on,” he said. “I wouldn’t have . . .”
“I understand that,” I said. “But I couldn’t talk about it.”
He closed his mouth. I expected more anger about my secret. He had probably been through hell trying to find out what was wrong with me. But now that I’d told him, he seemed relieved more than anything else. Finally, he reached out and slung an arm around me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I love you and I’m sorry.”
I leaned against his shoulder. He spoke softly:
“I thought maybe you were just here because you knew I didn’t have the guts to kick you out,” he said.
I spoke into his shoulder. “That might be another reason.”
He smiled and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt.
“There is one thing you can do for me now,” I said. “If you really want to help.”
I leaned back against his arm.
“What’s that?”
“Give me my share of the money from Mamie’s funeral.”
“Okay.” He sighed. “There wasn’t too much left. But why now?”
“I have to buy a plane ticket to Syracuse.”
29
Daniel came downstairs and we explained everything as best we could.
We told my dad about Jonah, what he meant to both of us, and our desire to create a meaningful ceremony for him. I repeated what I’d told Daniel about the importance of funerals, and what I’d learned by working with him.
All the while, my father sat at the table, watching the two of us speak, sweeping his hair behind his ears and waiting for it to come untucked. His eyes shifted back and forth between us. Finally, when we were done with our pitch, he sat up straight and clasped his hands in front of him.
“Tess,” he said, “I’m really glad you shared this with me. Thank you for doing that. But you do realize I would have to be a crazy person to let you travel across the country on your own, don’t you?”
“No,” I said. “Actually I don’t realize that.”
“She wouldn’t be alone,” said Daniel.
My dad silenced him with a long stare.
“You dropped out of high school,” he said to me. “And it wasn’t that long ago that you seemed on the verge of a breakdown. Also, you’d be going there with an older guy who I don’t really even know. No offense, Daniel, but sleeping on my couch is one thing. Taking my daughter to New York is another.”
“To be fair,” I said, “I don’t know Daniel that well, either. He’s kind of a cipher.”
“Not helping,” said my father.
Daniel looked down at the floor.
“I understand your reasoning for all of this,” Dad said. “And I think it’s beautiful that you want to put together this kind of tribute. But, it sounds like you don’t have a plan yet. You don’t have an itinerary, or even a sense of what you want to do when you get to his hometown. Tess, how could I, in good conscience, send you on your way with a stranger and absolutely nothing in place? What the hell kind of father would I be?”
“The kind you’ve been the last two years,” I said.
He didn’t blink.
“That’s not who I am anymore,” he said.
I slumped against the wall of the kitchen and felt the old wallpaper stick against my bare arms. I looked at Daniel, who seemed to be biting his lip.
“So where does that leave us?” I asked. “Everything is just shot down?”
My father looked surprised for a moment. He cocked his head.
“Of course not,” he said. “I’m sorry. I guess I haven’t been clear.”
“What are you saying then?” asked Daniel.
A little smile passed across my father’s lips.
“I’m saying, if you want to go, I’m going to have to come with you.”
30
Over the next few days, we put together the very beginnings of a plan. The more we talked about it, the more we agreed that we needed a better understanding of Jonah. If we were going to plan something with significance, we had to find out who he really was. Who he was when he wasn’t with us. So Daniel and I decided that we’d go to Jonah’s mom’s house and see what she could tell us about him.
The problem, of course, was that she had been more than a tad icy to Daniel when he first tried to reach out. She hadn’t allowed him to come to the small, non-funeral she had, and she’d seemed reluctant to speak to him for very long on the phone. If we called her again, Daniel seemed to think, we could probably expect more of the same. So this time, we decided, we would just show up on her doorstep and hope she let us in.
We didn’t share every detail with my dad.
What we told him was that we had an appointment with Marian, Jonah’s mother. That she was expecting us. And that we were just getting her blessing before we continued with our funeral plan. When we flew into the city of Syracuse, it was too early to check into our cheap hotel, so Dad found a spot in the bar while Daniel and I lugged our bags onto the bus to a neighborhood called Eastwood.
It was deemed “the village in the city,” and as we entered it, we passed a strip of small businesses. A cigar shop, a dentist office, a restored movie theater with a terra-cotta facade. Jonah’s mom’s street was a little bland, but there were window boxes in most of the windows and well-groomed yards out front.
The house was a green split level with mint growing wild near the porch. Daniel and I walked up the long cement driveway and stood on the stoop for a moment. It was a Saturday, but the house looked dark inside.
“Maybe she works weekends,” said Daniel.
“Maybe you’re being a chickenshit” I said, and rang the doorbell.
There was no movement, and the house stayed just as dark.
“We should come back later,” he said.
Ignoring him, I stepped down from the porch and walked along the side of the house. The homes were close together, and the sun barely found its way in between Jonah’s house and the one next door. I shuffled over the rough cement until I reached a backyard.
It was half asphalt and half raised-bed garden. But the garden was completely overgrown with weeds. They were six, seven feet tall, standing guard around any vegetables that might be trapped inside. Also, the weeds, we noticed after a moment, were moving.
I unlocked the gate and stepped onto the asphalt. There was a pole for a basketball hoop on one side, but the rim was gone, leaving only the off-white backboard.
“Hello?” I said.
The we
eds stopped moving for a moment. Then they rustled again and a hand emerged, clutching a dirty spade. It was followed by the body of a short, pretty woman in a purple bandanna. Even covered in dirt and sweat, the resemblance to Jonah was immediate. His tangled blond hair spilled out the back of her scarf, and when she looked directly at me it was with those same gray-blue eyes. She wiped her brow with a gardening glove but only smeared the dirt around further.
“I’m sorry, guys,” she said. “I can’t donate to the marching band this year.”
We just stared at her.
“There have been some financial setbacks. I hope you kids have a good time on your trip, though.”
She set down her small shovel, picked up a hoe, and turned back toward the forest of her garden without giving us a second look.
“Wait,” said Daniel. “Miss. I’m . . .”
She turned around.
“What?” she said.
Daniel went silent. Marian’s face was already pained, like the slightest human interaction was grating on her. I opened my mouth.
“We don’t play in the marching band,” I said. “In fact, I kind of hate marching bands. Does anyone really like them?”
Daniel gave me a get-to-the-point look.
“We’re friends of Jonah’s,” I said. “We came to talk to you about him.”
For a split second, her grimace disappeared, and I wasn’t sure if she heard me right. But then she closed her eyes for a moment and vanished into the garden. I heard the hoe hit the ground and watched as a few of the giant weeds started to tremble.
“I’m not really in the mood for visitors today, guys,” she said from inside. “I’ll give you the web address for his foundation, though. Feel free to add a message to the message board. That would be really nice.”
We both stood there for a second, staring into the weeds. They were brown stalks, dry looking, with little tufts of seeds at the top. They looked like they were left over from last year. I didn’t want to leave this yard—and I knew I shouldn’t—but I also wasn’t sure what to do next. How aggressive could you really be with a grieving parent? We couldn’t force her to talk about things if she didn’t want to.
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