A Breath Too Late

by Rocky Callen

  No, this was before you. So there were no mysterious falls. Or bumped foreheads. Or accidents. Which were really all code for Father Hurt Us Again. This time it was just us and a dog’s bite. I got ten stitches and when we came home, the growling mess of a dog, the dog I still loved even though it hurt me, was sent to a no-kill shelter.

  When I looked at you standing on our front porch, I saw those sad-puppy eyes that I had snuggled on a car ride. You looked at Momma as if you could hardly believe she was real. You looked at me the same way. And you knelt down to cup my cheeks in your hands and told me that I was beautiful just like her, but even while you said it, you looked sad.

  I still wanted to keep you.

  I didn’t know then that you’d bite too.

  8

  August,

  The memory releases me from its grip. I inhale, breathing in the details, the familiarity of the moment without it settling properly in its place. Like a single piece of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  I need all of the pieces. How else will I be complete? How else will I be able to find my way?

  Momma is still upstairs in the bathroom. I am still staring out our front door. Father is still in the driveway.

  But it isn’t until I look past my father, toward where his gaze is fixed near the sidewalk, that I see you. He’s twirling his keys around his finger and looks like he is debating which direction to step in. I’m down the stairs and in the yard in a heartbeat. I want to put the entire population of our town between you, but there is just me and I am just air.

  Father steps in your direction. “You’re Ellie’s friend, right?” His stride is lazy, his voice is soft.

  August, you are standing on the sidewalk and your chest is heaving in breaths as you are clenching and unclenching your fists. “Yes,” you say, quiet. Then louder, “Yes, I am.”

  Father nods, face solemn. Concerned.

  I swallow. This feels like a trap.

  “Sorry, young man. This is a shock to all of us. You should see Ellie’s mother. Poor thing is devastated.”

  You don’t say anything at first. Then carefully you say, “I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Walker.”

  Another slow and solemn nod. Father’s hair is slicked back with sweat. He has a strong jaw, a crooked nose, and eyes as dark as the night sky. I used to be afraid of the dark, as if I thought I would see his eyes in it.

  According to the ladies in town, Father was handsome. He was charming. He smiled and winked and pulled everyone under his spell, under his lies. No one knew what happened in our house on Sunset Street.

  No one could believe that the man who spent his life building things out in the construction yard could come home to break things. But he did. And he did it with a smile.

  Father looks like he is about to turn toward the house, but steps in August’s direction again as if remembering something.

  “She was out with you, wasn’t she? The night before last? A couple nights before it happened?”

  I blink. We had been together? Recently? The confusion tugs at me in different directions. I can’t even remember two days ago.

  You look startled. Uneasy. You shift from foot to foot.

  “Ah, maybe it wasn’t you, then. She came home and cried her eyes out. Poor thing. Some are just built that way, you know.” Father sighed. “Hmm, I wonder if…” Then he waved it off as if whatever idea had popped into his head was ridiculous, and turned toward the house.

  “Wonder if what?” You take a step forward, suddenly alert.

  “Oh, you know, if whatever happened that night made her…” Father’s voice trails off. He doesn’t need to finish the thought. The shock that settles onto your face is telling enough. I had been with you. It is plain on your face, but I can’t remember it.

  “I guess we will never know,” Father says as he turns toward the house.

  The edge of his lip curls up in a cruel smirk. I am the only one who sees it.

  My father doesn’t only deal pain out in bruises. He knows just the words to say to make you feel unsteady. Like you’re falling.

  But what happened two nights ago? I had never gone out before. I went to sleep every night with my door locked and a pillow braced over my head so I couldn’t hear the groans down the hall.

  I look at you. Your eyes are wet and you are shaking.

  Your eyes are so big that I think your tears could drown the world.

  I remember the day that you, August Matthews, came into my life.

  * * *

  It was the first day of kindergarten. You were kind of funny-looking when I first met you. I remember thinking that your head was a size too big for your body and your eyes were as big as the saucer dishes that we used to put milk in for the stray cats in our neighborhood.

  Before I started school, I was comfortable being with Momma all the time, and now I was one bobbing head in a sea of others. I was one of the smaller ones and I found myself looking up all the time. I looked at everyone and wondered who would share their crayons with me. I scanned my eyes around the room, trying to pick out who I thought would be nice and who I should avoid. Your face appeared out of nowhere and you stood too close.

  “Hi! I am August Matthews.” You weren’t that much taller than me. “I like your backpack.”

  It was a Power Rangers backpack. I didn’t want the girly pink one. I liked the Red Ranger because he seemed the strongest.

  A bigger kid knocked into me and I fell down. It hurt my palms and I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I felt a little hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I am okay.”

  You helped me up. “You are so clumsy, Jeffrey! You can’t push people! I will tell on you to Ms. Lindsay!” you said as you puffed out your chest and glared at the boy with a shock of yellow hair and a scowl on his face. He was bigger than both of us, but still you glared at him with your saucer eyes. I felt scared of him, but the way you stood, seemingly unafraid, made me stand straighter too. The older boy rolled his eyes and started to march toward the school’s front doors.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  You seemed confused for a second when you looked at my backpack. “Do you have everything for class?” You must have noticed how flat it was. I hadn’t bought any of the supplies. “I’ll be okay. I just need crayons.”

  Your saucer eyes lit up again. “Oh!” You pulled your backpack off your shoulder and unzipped it. “You can have some of mine. I have extra. I like to color.”

  You were smiling, and so, as the teachers shuffled us into different lines, I opened my backpack and stuffed the box of crayons inside. I saw the front and my jaw dropped. “They have sparkles in them!”

  You laughed. “Draw a unicorn!” you shouted, as the lines were pulling us apart.

  “I don’t know how!” I shouted back.

  “Then I’ll draw you one!”

  And the next day, when we saw each other before getting sorted into our different classes, you handed me a drawing of a beautiful unicorn and rainbow, complete with shimmery crayon. I squealed with delight and you laughed. You laughed a lot.

  You laughed wholeheartedly and loud.

  And I liked it.

  * * *

  You aren’t laughing now. You are hunched over and look too old and too young all at the same time. Father doesn’t see as you clench and unclench your fists with his back turned. When he slams our front door shut, you stand up tall, all six-feet and one-inch of you, and run.

  You run so fast. Faster than I remember when we were kids. Your feet pound the pavement and your messenger bag is flying off your shoulder. It is a long run to your house, but I am right there beside you, pretending that we are ten years old and racing to our own hiding place in the woods where we would build worlds and rule them.

  Your home is blue like the sky and you have shutters that are red like blood. I remember telling you that once and you didn’t like it very much. You fly up your steps and fling open your front door. It is just as beautiful as I remember it in
side. Crisp, beige paint on the walls with perfect white crown-molding. Hardwood floors that look like they are cloaked in honey.

  Your mother sets her cup on the table and looks up at you from the kitchen. She is older than my momma. Wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She’s not wearing doll makeup. There aren’t bruises on her skin. She’s older, but she isn’t used up.

  Her eyes are wide with concern. “August, what’s wrong, baby?”

  You stare at her from the doorway, chest heaving in breaths, huge, heavy breaths.

  “She’s … She’s … dead.”

  Your mom squints her eyes as if it can help her hear. Your voice is so soft.

  “She’s dead,” you say louder, angrier.

  She stands up suddenly and is walking toward you, worry in her eyes. “Who? Who is dead? What are you talking about?”

  “Ellie.” I see it in the tremble of your lip and the way you swallow hard. The tension bunches your shoulders; the tears are caught somewhere in your eyes, but you won’t let them out.

  I don’t think I have ever seen you cry.

  I don’t think I want to.

  I don’t think I can.

  I start to back away, to run from the wave of emotion that I feel is about to crash against the Matthews’ house, and as I step over the threshold, it happens.

  Your mom gathers you into her arms and you bury your head in her shoulder. It is strange to see someone so large needing to collapse on someone so small. I turn to run, but I hear your muffled shaky voice, “She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.”

  The tide has washed me in and I can’t leave.

  I don’t know how long you cling to your mom, but I know she isn’t the one to let go.

  * * *

  Now you are in the middle of your room, sitting in one of those rotating chairs, and you swing slowly around, over and over again. I have never been in your room. It almost feels wrong to be here now.…

  You stop turning finally. I am sitting on your bed. The blankets look soft. Your walls are plastered with posters. Posters of bands, T-shirts, and sketches. I remember you used to invite me to concerts. I remember always saying no.

  I don’t notice the two small photos that are tacked up between the glossy designed posters until you stand up to touch them.

  One is a picture of the inside of the red barn bridge. Our red barn bridge. The one below it is me. Not me from years ago when we played in our little cove of trees and when you carried a Walmart disposable camera around. But me, from one year ago. I don’t know how or when you took it, but you did.

  I was sitting at a picnic table. It was a school day; we were released early. I hadn’t wanted to go home yet so I went to the park. How did I not see you there? Watching? Following? Why didn’t you say anything?

  I had taken out my notebook and started to scribble in the corners in my strange way. I didn’t like to write on the ruled lines until the words came, the right words. I curled my script down margins and used arrows to point at good ideas. I must’ve found a good one, because there in the picture I sat, pencil in hand, staring at the page, and I was smiling.

  I don’t know what it was that I thought or read. I don’t know how I didn’t hold on to it and treasure it, because looking at the photo, my eyes alight with something like satisfaction, my lips quirked up so much that my eyes were almost squinty, I was …

  I can’t say the word or think it without my stomach twisting.

  Beautiful.

  Maybe it was how you took the picture, how the light hit my face in a brilliant golden way, how my freckles somehow made my face look happier.

  I don’t know what magic you used to make it so. I wish I had seen the picture before. I wish I had known what I could look like. What I could be.

  I wish I had known what you saw when you looked at me.

  Your eyes are red. You trace your fingers over the photograph. Reverence, sweetness.

  I know what those fingers feel like.

  The truth of that shocks me, because here in your room, I can’t remember. I can’t remember when you would’ve touched me or why, but when I look at your hands, I know they are gentle. I know that even though they are precise with a pen, they are hesitant on skin.

  I swallow hard and wish I could feel them now.

  Your slender fingers pause and curl around the edges of the photo. Your jaw clenches and rage flickers across your face. You crumple the photo in your palm. You turn around and fling it against the opposite wall. I stand bolt upright and stare at the place where it falls on the ground. I don’t see when you pick up your chair, but I hear it as it slams against the drywall. I flinch at the crashing sound. I cover my ears as if it could rupture my eardrums. Your guitar is in your hands and you swing it like a bat and it pounds and pounds and pounds into your headboard and then your desk and then the wall.

  Nothing is safe. I look over your room, filled with drawings, trinkets, family photos, and I want to save them all. You have snow globes from all over the world and I lunge to cover them, but I am just air and the guitar smashes into them. Your face, it isn’t yours. It is someone else’s. Someone who is hard and cruel, broken and merciless and …

  Did I ruin you? The thought slams into me.

  “August!” I yell your name, aching and desperate for you to stop. But you don’t hear me. Of course you don’t.

  You let go of the guitar. Your mom is calling your name and you run to lock the door. You nearly trip over the fallen objects. Switching the lock on, you rest your head on the door and your palm splays beside it. You are shaking. Gritting your teeth, tears find their way out of your scrunched-up eyes. You are turning red and I am afraid you will explode.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” You are crying and shaking and I want to take the hurt away.

  You pound the wall with your fist. Turning around, your back is up against the door.

  Your mom is pounding on it from the other side, yelling your name.

  You don’t respond. Your apologies turn into questions. “Why?” You say it over and over again, as if in prayer, as if there is someone who could tell you.

  Whywhywhywhy. The question reverberates down to my bones like an accusation. I should know. I want to cup your cheeks and tell you the truth. The truth I don’t know, but wish I could remember.

  Still, I know in my hollow bones it was never your fault. My August boy of sunshine, lightning bugs, and birthdays.

  You finally stop speaking and shuffle onto your knees and crawl to the spot where the crumbled photograph lies on the ground.

  You pick it up and fervently uncrumple it and nestle it in your cut, bloody hands.

  “Why?” you ask again. “Why?” Your fingers are featherlight again, stroking my cheek as if you could push the wisps of my hair behind my ear. As if I am there.

  You finally whisper my name and it is the saddest word in the world.

  9

  Momma,

  I stay with August until he falls asleep amid his wreckage, until his momma finally pries open his bedroom door. Her eyes are red and she sharply inhales when she sees her son asleep among shards of glass. She doesn’t wake him. Her heels crunch over the brokenness and she slides down the wall beside him in her knee-length pencil skirt. I don’t know if the glass cuts her, because the tears are streaming down her face even before she hits the ground. August doesn’t wake. Grief seems like a heavy and exhausting burden to bear. Mrs. Matthews just holds August close and then closer, as if she is afraid that if she lets him go, he would disappear.

  That’s when I leave.

  Tears in the wake behind me.

  I don’t run home. I walk. I am in no rush. I thought I was lonely when I was alive, but being dead is pretty damn lonely.

  I look at my bare feet. I miss my inked-up Converse shoes. They had quotes from my favorite authors Sharpied all over them. I remember finding them in a thrift store bin when I was twelve. They were too big for me at the time, but I already knew I wanted to be a w
riter. So anytime I read a line that took my breath away or stumbled on a quote that made me believe in big and wonderful things, I would write them on my shoes. These shoes will carry me through this ugly world, I had thought. And when I was fifteen and the shoes were still a bit too big but fit well enough, I started to wear them every day.

  I am back in my room. I wish I could sleep, tuck the questions away, but time feels disjointed and too long. The moon is ripe and full in the sky. There is so much missing in my mind. So much that I feel is swimming just under the surface.

  I don’t look at the chair or metal bowl of ash in the corner. Looking haunts me. I stare out the window trying to remember. Father is snoring in the next room. I toss the memories that came to me back and forth. Is the only way forward, the only way out of this limbo, to look back? But for what purpose?

  I sit and think. Analyze. So far, the memories have been chronological, and each came to me in the present while watching the person at the center of that experience. If the memories continued that way, maybe I just need to keep probing, keep pushing until all of them spill out in order. Like a tether to the truth that I could follow. Maybe once I know, I can move on.

  I hear a sound and realize it is you. Momma, your whimpers are choked and smothered by a pillow. August was held by his mother when he cried, but there is no one here to hold you.

  I remember smothering my tears with a pillow too. I go to you. I see the tangles in your hair and I want to brush my fingers through them. I want to clean up your grief because it makes me uncomfortable, it makes me feel worse. I want to scrub you clean. Head to toe. I want to shove all your tears into a corner and lock them up so I can look at you without my chest aching.

  But then I think of how you looked like someone who didn’t quite fit in the small space of her kitchen, in the cramped sliver of her life, and I wonder if I was one of the people who pushed you there. I sit back on my heels.