Things I'm Seeing Without You

by Peter Bognanni

  So, I was surprised when Daniel took a step forward. Instead of heading back through the gate the way I expected him to, he walked over to the garden and grabbed a pair of dirty leather gloves sitting in the yard. Then he put them on, flexed his hands, and just started yanking on one of the weeds.

  I watched his muscles strain and, though it had never occurred to me before, he was strong for his size. He struggled with the weed for a minute, grunting a little. Then he gave it one last yank and up it came, roots heavy with dark soil. He broke the stalk in half and then moved on to the next one. Oddly enough, Marian didn’t comment. She just kept working.

  I watched for a minute or so, then started to help. With the two of us pulling, it was a little easier, and the second weed came up quickly. We moved on to a third. Then a fourth. Then, somehow, an hour passed without a single word being spoken. Marian worked in another part of the garden, tilling a patch of already weeded soil. Beneath some of the weeds we pulled up were some asparagus and what looked like the beginning of a zucchini plant.

  As the sun got hotter, Daniel took off his T-shirt and put it over his head like a turban. I rolled up the sleeves of my V-neck until I could feel the heat on the tops of my shoulders. I’m not sure how long we were out there, but eventually when we had half the garden weeded, and the sun was too much to bear, Daniel and I sat down in a small patch of shade nearby.

  Marian ducked into the house and reappeared with a pitcher of lemonade. It was full of ice, and sweating on the sides, and it was the best lemonade I’ve ever had. I chugged my first glass, but then tried to savor the second. We sat there and drank until the pitcher was empty. Then, finally, Marian spoke.

  “This was our project together,” she said. “Me and Jonah’s.”

  Daniel and I both watched her.

  “In high school he read this book about urban homesteading. The previous owners had a garden here. I was always too busy. But when Jonah got interested in something, he did not do it halfway. In weeks, he was trading seeds with people in the neighborhood. And guess who got conscripted to help? I did most of the planting actually. He made plans on his computer. This intricate blueprint with all the spacing mapped out.”

  She smiled, but her eyes seemed to strain against it.

  “He stopped asking about it after I took him to college, though. That was the first sign, I think, that things were going wrong again. I kept the garden up at first, so it would look good when he got home, but then when he didn’t seem to care, I let it go.”

  Her gaze lingered on the plot of dirt and scrubby vegetables. Then it gradually turned back to me. She studied my face for a moment.

  “You’re Tess,” she said.

  “How did you know that?”

  “He told me about you. He didn’t talk about girls very often, but he mentioned you. I knew it was you the moment you showed up. You’re just as pretty as he said.”

  I felt my face turning red.

  “And you’re Daniel,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Where did you guys come from?” she asked.

  “Minnesota,” I said. “And outside Chicago.”

  If she thought anything of these places, she didn’t say. She just took one last drink from her lemonade and swirled the ice around in her glass.

  “And you came here because you’re not sure you really knew him,” she said. “Is that it?”

  We were both silent.

  “Well,” she said. “You’ll have to join the club.”

  She got up then to go inside. Daniel and I followed, and instead of shooing us away, she held the door open as we walked in. The inside of the house was cluttered, but not messy. There were books about fad diets and self-help stacked haphazardly on the shelves. It smelled like scented candles, something citrusy. It was all perfectly nice, but the living room felt spare to me for some reason. Eventually I realized it was because there were no family pictures.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Marian said after a moment. “I’m not sure I knew him completely, either. I still couldn’t tell you how things got so bad. He had the support of his family—his grandparents and me. He had counseling. He had medication. I made sure he saw someone at school. I checked in as much as I could. In the end, I think it was his own sense of shame more than anything else.”

  “Shame?” I said.

  “He felt like he was deficient ever since he got his diagnosis of depression and anxiety in the eighth grade. He used to lie to his friends when he missed school. He’d say he had other conditions. Mono. Asthma. The flu. He wanted to be cured. Just having a good day or a good week wasn’t enough. He was so hard on himself. Instead of learning to embrace who he was, he tried to be another person entirely. Someone flawless. If he was feeling less than perfect, he wouldn’t let anyone see him. His friends at school only knew him as this smart, funny guy. They didn’t know anything else.”

  “Neither did I,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “It probably made him happy,” said Marian. “To be his best self with you. To be who he wanted to be online like that.”

  She closed her eyes. And it seemed like she was about to cry. Daniel sensed this and I watched his body tighten up.

  “What can you tell us about Sicily?” he asked quickly.

  “What?” she said.

  “I found this notebook. He wrote in it that he wanted to go to Italy. To Sicily specifically. It seemed like it was important to him. But maybe it was just a random thought or something. I don’t know.”

  “Syracuse,” Marian said.

  “What?” Daniel said.

  “I forgot all about that,” she said. “Syracuse. That’s where he wanted to go.”

  “You mean here?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I mean Syracuse in Sicily. Siracusa.”

  I looked at Daniel. He was stone-faced.

  “It’s a city in Sicily. He saw it once on a travel show. I was in the other room, working on our taxes. He had been talking to me from the living room about computer science classes he wanted to take in college. Then he just went silent. I asked him a couple of questions that went unanswered until finally I got up from the table and came into the room and he was just staring at the TV.”

  “Look,” he said. “Another Syracuse.”

  “And we both watched the host walk through the beautiful ancient streets of the city’s historic district. Jonah looked mesmerized. At one point he said something so quiet I almost didn’t hear him.”

  “What did you say, sweetie?” I asked.

  “That’s where I live,” he said.

  “That’s where you want to live?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “That’s where I live right now. The other me.”

  “What other you?” I asked him.

  “The . . . one who’s not depressed. He lives in the other Syracuse. And he walks those streets in that bright sun everyday. I’m sure of it.”

  “I told him there was no other him. That he was the perfect version. But I could see that he wasn’t listening. That he had kind of stuck on this idea. That there was this alternate city with an alternate him in it. I never heard him talk about going there, though.”

  “It was a place he wanted to go when he felt better,” said Daniel. “That’s how it seemed.”

  Now Marian really did start crying, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to watch. I got up after a minute or two and got her a glass of water. She drank half of it and smiled at me through her tears.

  “Where are you two staying tonight?” she asked.

  “At a hotel,” I said. “Near the university.”

  “We should probably get back,” Daniel said.

  She took another drink of water and then put a hand on my arm.

  “I’d like you to stay here,” she said. “Just for a night.
Would you do that?”

  31

  So we did. We were a little uneasy about the whole thing, but we agreed because how could we really say no? Marian made us spaghetti with some of the basil we’d uncovered in the garden. We ate. We drank tumblers of diet soda. She pulled some old Popsicles out of the freezer, and we politely licked the frost off of them. She didn’t mention Jonah again. Instead, she asked us mom questions about ourselves.

  I lied and said I was still at Quaker school, and Daniel talked about college. It didn’t seem right to tell her that our lives had been so shaken by the death of her son. That we had both dropped out of life in different ways because of it. Maybe a part of her wanted to hear that life couldn’t go on without him, but I was too afraid it would compound her pain.

  At some point, I called my confused father and told him where we were staying. Then it was time for bed. This time around I was the one on the couch. Which meant Daniel was in Jonah’s room. All night Marian hadn’t once invited us in there, but then when the time came to sleep, she just casually told Daniel it was his room for the night. I could tell he was a little freaked out, but he didn’t let on to Marian. He just disappeared down the hall and shut the door.

  I got a text message only a minute or two later.

  Not sure how to feel about this . . .

  I wrote back quickly:

  What’s it like in there?

  A few seconds passed.

  It’s like being inside his head as a child, I guess. It still feels like a boy’s room.

  Are you sleeping in his bed?

  On the floor.

  Which made sense to me. The bed might be too much, even for me.

  What do you see?

  I thought about telling him to take pictures, to do a panoramic shot of the whole room, but I resisted and left my message as it was.

  You want me to list things?

  Exactly.

  I typed again:

  Please. List things.

  There was a significant pause. I assumed it was because he was writing a longer text, taking his time to catalog every single item in the room. But when his next text came back, it was short. And all it said was:

  Things I’m seeing without you:

  I shut my eyes for a second. I had thought, stupidly, that I only ever played this game with Jonah. Never with Daniel. But of course, he knew about it, too.

  Model airplanes.

  Those were the first words. They stuck there, alone for a moment in their own text bubble. But they were soon followed by others.

  I don’t know my planes well enough. My dad would know. They look like they’re from one of the World Wars. They’re hanging from dental floss over the bed. Maybe in some kind of dogfight. All I can see are the undersides.

  I watched my phone and waited for the next update.

  Quotes on the wall. Written in cursive. Probably his handwriting. I remember seeing it on Post-its around our dorm room. It’s too dim to read them now. But here’s one over his desk by the light. “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

  I interrupted for just a moment.

  Mark Twain.

  Daniel kept going.

  Trophies and certificates from Quiz Bowl competitions. There’s a shelf built especially for them. Most of them first place. State competitions. Some individual. He won a lot. More than I’ve ever won for anything. He’s in the paper, too, shaking the governor’s hand.

  A pause and then:

  High school dance photos. He looks so young. He has braces in most of them. Red and blue rubber bands. The girls look nice. Sweet. He’s in one by himself, early on, pretending to hold an invisible date. He has a hand on the small of her back, and another on her waist. He has a serious look on his face. Like he’s in love. The dance is called the Spring Fling.

  Daniel was typing fast now, the messages popping up one after the other, and I was hesitant to interrupt him again. I wanted to know about every detail of the room. I wanted him to tell me every last thing he saw. But I slipped in one response. I couldn’t help it.

  That’s me.

  This seemed to throw off his rhythm. It put a halt to his listing.

  Who?

  The missing girl in the picture.

  I wrote again:

  The one who isn’t there.

  Now his rhythm was definitely off. The streaming sentences of description came to a stop, and the screen remained unchanged. I wondered for a moment if I’d shut it down completely, but another reply came eventually.

  I wish sometimes I could pretend again.

  Pretend what?

  That I’m him. It was easier that way. Easier than being me. And maybe you’d be happier.

  It’s not the right kind of happiness.

  A few seconds passed. Then he responded:

  I was hoping I’d know him completely after coming here. That I would get all the answers and it would all finally make sense.

  He wrote again:

  I thought I would solve the mystery. But there aren’t any real clues here. Just airplanes.

  I leaned my head against the armrest of the couch. It was hard against my neck. I wrote without thinking much. I just let the words unfold from my fingertips.

  We’re not going to plan a funeral here, are we?

  No.

  I could feel my palms starting to sweat.

  I have an idea that I can’t get out of my head. I don’t even want to say it.

  His response came quickly.

  Say it.

  You already know what it is, don’t you?

  I think I do.

  But it’s crazy, right? It’s not going to happen.

  Why not?

  There was a pause as I collected my thoughts for a moment.

  If we’re on the same page here, and I’m not sure that we are, I don’t know what to tell my dad. How will we convince him?

  It seemed like a long time before his next message arrived, but it was probably only twenty seconds or so.

  I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t.

  My head was starting to feel light.

  We just leave him?

  We just leave him.

  I could feel my heart beating so fast in my chest.

  Do you have a passport?

  This time his response was fast. And after it arrived, I had a hard time getting to sleep. Instead I just sat there looking at it, trying to decide what to do. It read:

  Yes. And I brought yours.

  32

  As it turned out, Daniel had never stopped thinking about Sicily. Ever since he saw that note on Jonah’s desk, it had been coming back to him again and again. And now that he’d heard Marian’s explanation, going there seemed like the only choice left. I wasn’t so sure. It seemed right in some ways, but extreme in others. What exactly would we do or find there? But after rattling off my worries for a half hour the next morning, Daniel silenced them with two sentences.

  “It’s the life he should have had,” he said. “I think we should see it.”

  An hour later, I used my emergency credit card to book two tickets to Palermo. The tickets were almost three thousand dollars, which is more than I have ever spent on anything in my life. The parental fallout from this was going to be swift and harsh. I would likely be paying these off for the next five years. But when the “buy” button came up on my phone, I tapped it with a shaky finger and before I could blink, the transaction was complete.

  Then I took a deep breath and texted my dad. I told him that I needed another half day to talk to Marian. And then, while he thought I was soul-searching with a grieving mother, Daniel and I took a cab to the airport and boarded the first leg of our international flight. Just like that.

  I expected to get stopped. I expected security to flag me and send me home. But I was a well-dressed middle-class girl with someone who appeared to be my boyfriend, and nobody cared. Daniel
was a little more worried, so we worked out a story beforehand. Anyone who asked, we told the same thing. We were college freshmen, going to Italy for a summer language immersion program. Ciao, bella!

  I didn’t text my dad again until we got to our first stopover in Toronto. By then he must have been worried for a few hours. I wrote:

  I am completely aware that you will never forgive me for this. And I know Mom will probably try to have you arrested. But this was the only way I could imagine to release myself from everything I’ve been feeling. I had to do it without you. I’ll call you from Sicily.

  It wasn’t until I was safely on my third flight that I remembered the small container I had smuggled on board in my carry-on. It was wedged between the last of my clean underwear and some granola bars, but it was still there: a small plastic bowl with a powdered version of Jonah inside. The ashes were grayish white with tiny hard bits here and there.

  Our plan hadn’t exactly come as a surprise to Marian that morning, but she didn’t say anything for a few seconds after we told her. Eventually though, she got off the couch and brought us a small scoop of Jonah’s ashes. She put them in a Tupperware container with a blue lid.

  After she handed them to me, I held them tight, unwilling to stuff them in the duffel bag Daniel had brought with him. She didn’t say anything right away. She just walked us outside and back down the sidewalk. Her eyes were cocooned in the eye makeup she’d never washed off from the night before. Her smile when she spoke was brief and tight-lipped. All she said was: “Say hi if you see him.”

  Then she gave us both a long hug and disappeared back into her dark house.

  Now I was all alone in an aisle seat, 39,000 feet above the earth, with the mineral fragments of a boy I once loved in my hands. Daniel was up ten rows with a sleeping mask on. We couldn’t get seats together. I had planned on dozing my way across the Atlantic—this final leg of our flight was at night—but, of course, I couldn’t sleep.