What Remains

by Helene Dunbar

  “I saw you in the doorway at rehearsal. Why didn’t you come in?” he asks when I don’t reply.

  I pull away. I can’t stand still. My mind is reeling with regret. After over a year I was almost considering doing something instead of hanging back like a scared little kid. I was seconds away from talking to Ally instead of just sitting back, but as usual I waited too long and now I’m screwed.

  “Ally. Are she and Justin together?” My words come out breathy like I’ve been running sprints.

  He shrugs. It’s obvious he has no idea what has me so worked up. “What? I don’t think so. I’ve seen him hanging around, but he doesn’t exactly seem like her type.”

  My thoughts are cycling, jumping from one horrible thought to another and I’m not sure which one to address first.

  “Why don’t they lock me up?” I ask him. After all, that’s what they do with people who kill their friends. I don’t get it. Do they think I’m going to die so it won’t matter anyhow?”

  Now Spencer looks completely confused. “For what?”

  “God, Spencer, I killed Lizzie. I could have killed you too.”

  Spencer shakes his head like he can’t believe I’ve brought it up again. His voice is almost a monotone as he repeats the mantra I’ve heard from him over and over since the accident. “You didn’t kill anybody. That driver … ”

  “Wasn’t paying attention. I get it,” I scream at him. My voice bounces off the walls and I’m surprised at how good it feels to yell, and to not care if I’m being nice or saying what I’m supposed to say. “Everybody needs to stop fucking using that as some sort of excuse. We could have left five minutes later. I could have insisted that she put her seat belt back on. I could have let you drive.” I’m spinning out of control, but I can’t seem to stop. This anger, this explosive rage, isn’t Lizzie either. It’s all me.

  Spencer grabs me by the arms and his face is something I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen, not even onstage. He’s seriously angry. I can only hope that he’s angry at me because he finally understands that this is all my fault; but really, I’m not sure what he’s thinking.

  “Do you think I’m lying to you?” he hisses.

  “What?” I yank my arm and try to pull out of his grasp but he’s stronger than I’ve given him credit for and he doesn’t let go.

  “Do you think I’m just saying all of this to make you feel better? I mean, because it was just some girl who died, right? Someone who didn’t matter to me at all?”

  His anger, his sarcasm, shocks the hell out of me because it’s so unlike him. I feel like one of those bullets that shatter into a million pieces when it hits a target, only Spencer is the closest thing to me and he keeps getting hit with the shrapnel. Whatever guilt I’m already wrestling with boils over and I can feel hot tears burst out from some dam inside me and come streaming down my face.

  Rain delay.

  Lizzie is still such a smart-ass. But her words force me to take a breath.

  “Yeats, I didn’t mean it like that. I just … I should have done something, you know? It should have been me,” I say. This time I do pull away and smack the nearest one of those damned cubes as hard as I can. I barely feel it. My jumbled emotions are too strong for me to pay attention to anything else.

  “Don’t do that, Cal. Don’t you dare do that,” Spencer says from across the room. He and I have never fought about anything. This is uncharted territory for us and I don’t like it.

  “Do what?” I swipe at the tears that keep falling down my face.

  “Say that it should have been you. I’ve already lost one best friend; I can’t lose you, too. There was nothing … ” Now that he’s stalked over to me, I can see tears hanging in the corner of his eyes too. “There was nothing you could have done.” He takes a deep breath and then admits, “I know that you’ve had other things on your mind. I know this all sucks, but it’s hard for me too. To know that a part of her is inside you. It’s like I’m talking to both of you at once.”

  His words hit me like a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball to the chest. They push me back until I’m sitting and for a second I can’t breathe. Not once with everything that’s gone on have I really stopped to think about how this was affecting him. I thought about Lizzie. I thought about myself. Hell, I even thought about how this would affect the team. But not once did I give any thought to how it would affect my best friend to have lost Lizzie, who was one of his best friends, who he slept with, and to have her heart inside me.

  “Fuck, Yeats. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I say over and over. I can’t seem to find any other words, but I’ve offered too many apologies for any of them to carry any weight. I rest my head in my hands and wish that I could disappear or turn back the clock.

  Spencer sighs and sits down on the cube next to me. His shoulder presses against mine and I can feel him pulling himself together before he starts to talk again. “You know … Lizzie and I … ” he begins and I know what he’s about to say. For a second I think about letting him wrestle with the words and have to say them. It would serve him right and the part of me deep inside that is Lizzie wants him to have to articulate it, but ultimately, the part that is me can’t stand the look of loss that crosses his face.

  “I know,” I blurt out, wondering why it seemed so important to both of them to confess to me, when neither of them said anything at the time. “She told me.”

  He looks surprised, but nods as if he’s thinking, “Of course she did. How could I have thought otherwise?”

  “She didn’t tell me any details, not even about when it happened.” I’m fishing and I know that it isn’t any of my business and I’m not even sure why I care. What difference does it really make anymore? But of course Spencer can hear the curiosity in my voice.

  “It was after the Bacchus cast party right before Thanksgiving. Remember she came with you, but you had a test the next day and left early so I said I’d drive her home?”

  I do remember that night. And so does Lizzie because I feel … something … pulse inside me as he speaks.

  “I hate closing nights,” Spencer continues, but I know this. The only time he ever seems depressed and down is after a show ends. And I get it. It’s pretty much how I’ve always felt at the end of a baseball season. “But I was really wired that night for some reason. And Lizzie was in rare form. I don’t think I stopped laughing the whole time.”

  We both sit there wrapped in our own memories of Lizzie and my brain is buzzing like I just had a six pack of cola injected into my veins.

  Then Spencer sighs again. “Her mom and the loser were both out when I got her home and took her up to her room. Simon spiked the punch and she’d had a bit. She wasn’t drunk or anything, I just wanted to make sure that she fell asleep upstairs and away from them, you know? That she remembered to lock the door behind her.

  “She was wearing one of those lacy dresses that she loved and the window was open and the full moon was shining in and through the fabric. It framed her like she was backlit. And we were happy and laughing. It had been a really, really good night. It made me feel good to see her that relaxed. She was so ethereal in that moment.”

  I look at him and his unshed tears are making his eyes shine in the dim light. But he doesn’t look sad, he looks wistful. Not at all like he’s confessing something that he regrets or is embarrassed by.

  Then he laughs a little. “It was kind of a perfect storm of Lizzie.”

  So that’s what it was, I hear in my head.

  Honestly, I know what he’s talking about because as harsh and rough around the edges as she could be, Lizzie was also beautiful in a willowy, damaged type of way that we were each attracted to for our own reasons, and in our own ways.

  “And then … honestly, I don’t even know which of us started it. One minute we were just standing there and the next … it just kind of happened,” he says and blushes. “It
felt really, really right at the time.”

  He looks up at me like a puppy dropping a ball at its owner’s feet and looking for approval.

  “But you’re gay,” I say stupidly and instantly regret it.

  Spencer cocks his head and stares at me like I’ve lost my mind for stating something so obvious, because ever since we were eleven and he forced me to watch his dad’s DVD of some British production of Hamlet from the ’80s, it’s been clear that it was Hamlet who got him worked up and not Ophelia.

  “Sorry,” I squeak out.

  “Look, I don’t expect you to understand. I’m not even sure that I do. Not really. But it was just Lizzie and I love her.” He stops and a million things cross his face at once. “Loved her. Love her. Fuck. It just wasn’t … ”

  “Yeah, I know,” I chime in. Neither Lizzie nor I need to hear this explanation. I can feel her reacting, though. I’m not hearing her voice, but there is something … feelings that are rushing through me that aren’t mine. Love. Lust. Frustration. A whole lot of frustration. Remembering.

  It isn’t like the scene is playing in front of me, movie-like. Instead it’s in the back of my head clicking through reel-by-reel like an old film, one that I can’t really watch but I can feel as the emotions fly through it.

  I blink my eyes, but that doesn’t make it go away. I’m glad that they had their moment but I don’t really want to share it. I just want to make the buzzing stop and get Lizzie’s desperate yearning for Spencer out of me. It’s like a weight that’s pulling me down to someplace I don’t think I can visit.

  I kind of get that Spencer is telling me all this because it’s important to him. And I get that he needs to tell me this story and that, while maybe I didn’t need to hear it before, I do now. I need to make it okay for him. He needs Lizzie to … I don’t know. I can’t sort that part out. Forgive him? I’m not sure how to ask him. Or if he even knows the answer.

  There are questions swirling through my head that Lizzie wants answers to, but those are ones I refuse to ask. She had her chance and there are places I simply won’t go. Places I won’t ask him to go.

  I want her to back off, but I know that isn’t going to happen. This is the strongest I’ve felt her since the accident. My skin feels like I’m in an electric storm—all the hair on my arms is standing straight up. I have to do something—and quickly—to change the course of the conversation and I know just how to do it.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but … ” I start and then stop. The time is finally right to confront Spencer about what’s been bothering me ever since Lizzie first told me about them being together. I’m not as bugged out as I used to be, but it still feels like something that needs to be said.

  “You don’t think it was kind of stupid and selfish or anything, do you?”

  “What?” Spencer’s eyes narrow and I have to look away before I can continue.

  “Come on, Yeats, really? What planet were you on when you thought that having sex with Lizzie was a good idea?” I feel a sharp jab deep inside my head, like an ice pick is trying to bore its way out.

  “It wasn’t like I planned it ahead of time,” he says sadly.

  “Yeah? Well maybe you should have.”

  Suddenly I’m owning this anger that I’ve tried to hold in. My head feels like it’s going to split in two.

  “I … ” For once Spencer Yeats is speechless and I feel like a dick for being the one to make him that way.

  “You knew how she felt about you,” I say, realizing that I said almost the same thing to Lizzie.

  “I know,” he says and his voice cracks. It’s a defeated sound, one I’ve never heard from him. “I didn’t do it to hurt her. I mean, it wasn’t about the sex. And she was the one who … I just didn’t stop her.”

  His voice echoes inside my head. And then: Cal Ryan, I swear to God that if you make Spencer feel bad about sleeping with me I will haunt your every fucking thought for the rest of your life.

  Because I have no doubt that she means it, and because hurting Spencer really is the last thing I want to do, I force, “I’m sorry” out of my lips. Again.

  Spencer runs his hands through his mop of hair, which springs back into place automatically. “I miss her so much,” he says, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

  Lizzie’s heart skips a beat and for a minute I wonder if I’m going to have to call 911, but no, it’s just her, I guess. “She knows that.” I bite my cheek, afraid that I’ve given too much away. Thankfully Spencer is too distracted to notice.

  “I wish … ” he starts and it rips me up inside to see the pain that crosses his face. I’ve known Spencer for so many years that sometimes looking at him is like looking at myself in the mirror. I know every expression and what it means and whether it’s really him or a role he’s thrown himself into even for just a sentence.

  But that means the pain on his face is real and it’s killing me, shredding me inside. I want to take that pain away but I don’t know how.

  “I wish … ” he starts again and I’m praying in my head that he finishes the sentence because I want to know what he wants and what I can do. Inside me Lizzie’s heart beats too hard, like she’s waiting as well. Both of us are waiting to know the same thing: how do we make it better for him?

  “I wish it would have been different,” he says. “I wish I could have loved her the way she wanted. The way that she needed me to. Maybe I should have tried harder.”

  “Spence,” I say, reaching out to grab his arm. And then I stop. And he looks at me because I’ve never called him Spence. That was Lizzie’s name for him. “Yeats,” I say, but I’m backtracking and it’s too late. I’m not really in control of what’s happening. Of my mind. Of my body. Lizzie has always been stronger-willed than me and now less than a pound of her inside me is calling the shots. And even though I’ve done my best to keep him in the dark, I can see something in Spencer’s eyes that makes me think he knows Lizzie is here. That he’s speaking to her more than he is to me.

  But I keep talking anyhow because staying silent is like admitting something I’m not ready to confess. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t just choose things like that. Besides, I don’t think she cared,” I say and mean it. “I mean … she was happy to have whatever part of you she could.”

  He stands and I can see a hint of his mega-watt smile tinged with deep, deep sadness. “She said that to me, you know. After. Maybe it should have made me feel better, but it actually made me feel worse.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she really did love me that much. Or maybe because I loved her that much too.” He runs his hand through his hair again as I watch him try to sort out the words he’s looking for. “I wanted to stay there with her. In her bed. I wanted to stop and pretend it could really be that easy. That Lizzie and I were on a desert island somewhere and that her mom wasn’t going to be coming home from the bar half-smashed. And that I wasn’t … I mean, maybe, we could be together. Really together. Maybe that was all she really needed to turn things around.”

  He takes a deep breath and I let him continue, his words tripping over themselves while I get up and lean against a stack of the cubes and knot my hands together to try to keep my warring emotions, Lizzie’s emotions, contained.

  “When I kissed her the last time it physically hurt me to walk away. It’s the only time … ” Thankfully, he doesn’t finish his sentence because I’m not sure I can stand to hear the rest of it. “Anyhow, as I walked out of her room she said ‘thank you’ like I’d given her some gift or something. I almost turned around and went back to her. I fought with myself to leave. I’m still not sure if it was the right choice or not.”

  Something rages through me like a fire out of control. It’s the first thing besides anger to really reach me since the accident. I don’t know what it is, but it’s intense in a way that feels like it will kill me if I don’
t give into it. I’m literally drowning in Lizzie’s emotions and I feel so weak and tired and confused by what to do to help the two people I love most, that for a heartbeat I just give in. And the .857th of a second that it takes for her heart to beat is enough for Lizzie, who has probably been waiting for this chance ever since the accident.

  She raises my hands slowly, so slowly, like they’re moving towards a wild animal but it’s only Spencer and whatever else happens I know that he isn’t going to hurt either of us in any way.

  Inside, though, I’m shaking. I’m not sure if I should be trying to fight her or not. I’m dizzy and terrified of the feelings and electric jolts that are running through me.

  I watch as my hands loop around Spencer’s neck and pull him close to me and we’re eye-to-eye. He doesn’t look scared or even curious. He looks like he always does, like everything is okay and like everything will be okay. And I want to believe that. I need to believe that.

  I stand there waiting even though Lizzie wants to rush ahead. I still have a shred of control over things, but I’m stuck in time. I’m not helping her, not fighting her. My sheer terror has frozen all of my muscles and I feel like I did when I was in the hospital with that damned tube down my throat and no way to communicate.

  I expect Spencer to say something. To pull back. To crack a joke. But he doesn’t. I can see the calm lifting and falling of his chest as he breathes normally. He raises his arms and puts them around my waist. They feel strong and I can smell the familiar scent of the ridiculously expensive English shaving cream he insists on using.

  It feels like years go by as we stand like that. It feels like there’s time to choose what path this is going to take. Tentacles of possibilities snaking out in every different direction. But there is only one thing that Lizzie wants and she isn’t going to be detoured. And I wonder if maybe I owe her this. She’ll never grow up, never fall in love with anyone else, hell, she’ll never have sex again. She’ll never have the time to get her life sorted out and create more amazing paintings and get away from her awful family and pull it all together. And regardless of what anyone else says, it’s my fault. I was driving. I should have been able to save her. Instead she saved me and now I think that I owe her this one minute in time.