“I mean I just found out that he…he’s gone like,” I glance at my clock, “like four hours ago.”
His face tightens. “No one called you?”
“No, no one called me because I have no one to call me.”
“You’re not making any sense. What do you mean?”
I sit down dramatically on my bed, feeling every bit the petulant child. “I mean I have no one who thinks enough about me to call me and tell me that…one of my oldest friends died.” I wish he were only one of my oldest friends. I wish I didn’t feel the sharp pain thinking about every other role he’d played in life as of late. No, that’s no true. To take that pain away, I’d have to give up all the joy he’d brought to my life.
“Well, to be honest, we just found out a few days ago. It was kept real quiet for some reason. I’m sorry you didn’t know sooner. I would’ve called you if I’d known.”
“Do you know any details?”
“Not really. Only that he crashed near his parents’ place and died instantly, which is a good thing if you’re gonna go. He’d been buried a week before I’d even heard.”
I close my eyes and nod my head. He’d heard it too, so it had to be true. Is there some measure of consolation in the fact that he hadn’t suffered? “I’m gonna get some sleep now, OK?”
“I’m sorry about your friend. You gonna be OK?” I nod my head at him as fresh tears stream down my face. “OK. Let me know if you need anything. Night.”
I lie down and roll over on my bed and face the wall. I don’t even know what to do with all this. I close my eyes and run over our plans in my head. I weep gently as I think of all that we won’t experience. We were going to have our marriage counseling classes with Father Patty and get married in a private ceremony at the end of the summer before we left for New York. I was still waiting on my acceptance, but we’d pretty much decided we wanted to go there no matter what. Sometime before all of that we were going to let our family in our plans.
I jerk abruptly with a sudden thought. I throw my covers off and spring from my bed. I dig through my purse and find my little box. My hands shake as I slide our ring onto my finger. I’d taken it off before I’d gotten here so my parents wouldn’t question it. I wish more than anything, well almost anything, I’d never removed it. He’d put it there.
…………………………………………………………….
The next month is a blur. Time marched on somehow; but, for me, it felt frozen. I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Other than the mindless summer work, I didn’t do much of anything. I sat in front of the TV. I sat on the porch. I walked around our property. I saw Michael in everything around me, so it was hard to focus on anything for a length of time. I couldn’t journal. I couldn’t write. When I tried, all I wanted to do was write Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael until his name covered one page and then the one after that.
I’m not ready to go to our church yet, so I attend Mass near my parents’ house. I pray every single day that God will help me see a way out of this. In fact, my faith is what is helping my heart heal. I just wish it would communicate with my head a little more because I still just don’t get it. I’ve prayed so much that I don’t even need my little pamphlet on how to pray my rosary anymore.
I know I need time to grieve, but I know I need to move on. How can I do that, though, when I spend all of my time reliving every single moment I had with Michael, when I spend every moment I’m alone listening to our songs, when I stare at my little secret shrine to him? It’s amazing our six months together generated so few physical reminders. I’m sure he has tons more as he was the more productive out of the two of us, but my attempt at getting into his apartment was thwarted when his landlord told me that someone had long ago cleaned his place out.
I know that I need to put our plans into action, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that. I know that I will. If not for myself, for Michael. I could never disappoint him by giving up on everything, which is what my baser instincts tell me to do right now.
Of course, all of this must be hidden away from those around me because what would I say? Yeah, so I finally opened myself up again, and you’ll never believe it. It was to a boy I’d loved almost my whole life, but then he died. That doesn’t even compute for me. How would I make someone else understand it? So I try to pretend like everything’s OK. I can tell that I’m not doing a very good job by the odd looks my family gives me. When I catch those, I’ll automatically be overly enthusiastic about something, which is not me either and only invites more strange looks.
My mom constantly asks me why I’m not spending my summer hanging out with Ginny or doing other crap people my age should be doing. It’s then I realize I don’t any people my age. I’m sure they are people out there like me who’ve lived shit lives and feel older than anyone else around them. I know they are people who have loved and lost just like I have, but I don’t know any of them or how they get on with their lives. So I just make up different answers. They’re so lame that I don’t even remember which ones I’ve used. I have spoken to Ginny twice since that night. I was so tempted to tell her everything, but part of me feels like I deserve to suffer in abject silence.
This thought hits home with me. I’m handling this much like my first self-imposed mental exile. That wasn’t me anymore, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do to change that right this moment.
I’m sitting on the couch one afternoon pondering my favorite Michael memory when Jerome plops down beside me. It takes me a minute to realize that he’s waving something in my face. “Oh, hey. What’s that?” I ask, feigning enthusiasm.
“Hey now. Calm down,” he replies dryly. My feigning really does need some work.
“I don’t know, but it’s thick and it’s from NYU.”
“Really?!” That almost sounded like real enthusiasm. “Hey, you can’t say anything to mom. I applied there, though.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured that part out. You gonna open it or not?” He waggles it over my head playfully.
I grab for it and he jerks it farther out of my reach quickly. My momentum is such that we both tumble to floor. I laugh hard from the impact and silliness of it, but laughter soon turns into sobs. He slaps me in the face with the packet. “Stop it,” he commands me.
“I know,” I murmur as I dry my face. It’s like my brother knows that something’s eating it’s way through me; but, thankfully, he doesn’t probe. “OK. I’m good. Give it here,” I demand.
He hands it to me and I rip it open. A couple of brochures fall out as I focus on the cover letter. I hold it up over our heads, and our heads knock as we maneuver to read it. I laugh a little more. Hey! I didn’t have a complete meltdown that time, I muse. This is both good and bad news.
“‘We are pleased to inform you of your acceptance to New York University’s prestigious College of Arts,’” I read aloud.
“Wow. That’s cool. New York.”
I sit up and shake my head. He sits up with me, watching my face. “You’re not going.”
“What? I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. You’re an idiot if you don’t go.”
“How can I? How can I do this on my own I mean? In theory it sounded great, but I’m not so sure now.”
“What’s changed?”
Every-freaking-thing, but I can’t tell him that. Maybe one day but not today. “I guess I was just feeling particularly brave when I applied. I don’t know how I feel now.”
He turns to look at the wall and says nothing for a minute. I move to get up off the floor, but his words stop me. “What if I went with you?”
“Huh? You wanna go to New York? With me?” My voice rises with every question.
“I gotta get out of here, Nay. I don’t know…I just…I gotta go. I never considered New York, but if you’ll be there we can lean on each other. And it’s about to get real crowded around here with Weldon and his new family moving in.”
Our
parents had agreed to let Weldon and Mariah move in here. They’re gonna help with the baby while they finish school. Of course, they had to agree to get married. So it would be crowded. Nevertheless, I can’t picture Jerome living in New York but if that’s what he wanted, I will not stand in his way. “I think it would be very cool. I wouldn’t be as apprehensive if you were there with me.”
“There’s a shut down crew that I know of that works out of New York, so I wouldn’t be in your hair too much.”
“Let’s do it,” I tell him. I could do this.
“Alright then,” he replies on a smile.
………………………………………………………
As summer starts hedging towards an end, my outlook is much better. In only a couple weeks, it would be time to put this place behind me for a little while. My world is starting to feel real again. Like when he first passed, it felt so artificial. Part of me thinks it wasn’t real. Like he’s still out there somewhere, but we just can’t be together. Like before, only this time is more permanent. It doesn’t suck any less, but it makes the pain more palatable when I imagine it that way.
My motivating factor—I want to make him proud. He had such great faith, and I was fortunate enough to be included in that if only for a little while. So I can and will do this. I will live my very best life even though it can’t be with him.
I’m in my room organizing things to bring, things to leave behind when a knock at my door breaks me from my reverie. I’m kind of relieved to have the distraction, so I bound to the door quickly. I throw it open, and a handsome young man greets me. He’s unexpected. The only people that ever come around here are old horse-traders and old farmers. Keyword there is old.
I blink my eyes a couple of times and prompt him, “Yes?”
He stares at me for what feels like a full minute. “Hey. My name is Jamie Jones. Um…You, uh, we’ve never met, but I’m Mike’s brother.”
I feel my whole world shift. I knew he had one out there, but I’d never even seen him. I think we exchanged pleasantries a couple of times over the phone when Michael lived with him back in ninth grade, though. I finally remember that I should say something. “Um…Hi, I…Do you want to come in?” I finally manage a coherent utterance.
“Yeah, yeah. That’d be great.” He smiles a little, looking slightly relieved.
I watch him walk in, and I’m just utterly and completely stunned. He has dirty blond hair similar to mine, and it’s cut real short. He’s very tall and broad compared to Michael. He carries himself nothing like him either. Maybe he’s just nervous.
Then, the questions start bombarding me. First, how did he know about me? Second, why did he come to see me? Third, how is that he looks the exact opposite of Michael? I don’t want to formulate my other question into actual words. I have to talk myself down to keep myself from badgering him.
I guide him to the living room. I want to ply him with my questions but don’t want to overwhelm him. Fortunately, he makes it a little easier on me.
“I know you’re wondering what I’m doing here. I hope that it’s OK that I’m here.” I nod my head fervently. Anything. I’ll take any little piece of Michael. “Oh, good. Well, when I cleaned Mike’s place up a couple of months ago, I kinda just put it all in boxes and stared at it for a while. When I finally got the gumption to look through his things,” he pauses to release a shaky breath, “I quickly realized that he had a lot of secrets. And a great many of them had to do with you.”
I just nod my head. I’m not sure what he knows, what he wants to know, or what I should tell him.
“One thing was very clear. He sure loved you.”
I close my eyes and revel in that for a moment. I finally open them. “I love him too. I can’t believe…”
“I know. Me either. He was my little brother, ya know?” I give him a tentative smile.
“He really looked up to you, loved you.” I tell him. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I wish we’d met before…”
“Yeah, me too. I had to do some detective work to figure out who you were and where you were. You weren’t easy to find.”
“So, you didn’t know about me before the funeral?” I figured not, but I had to ask.
“No, I wish I would’ve, though.”
“Me too. I don’t even know where he’s buried.”
He expels a pent up breath and tells me, “He’s buried in a family plot about an hour from here where his dad and our mom grew up. I’ll write it down for you before I go.”
“Good. I’d like that. You know we’ve been friends since school, right?”
He blushes a little and replies sheepishly, “Yeah, I know a lot about you now. I’ve been reading his journals, including one that I’m guessing you started for him.”
Aah, my Christmas present. “Really? You have them. That’s wonderful. I bet you’ve gotten a lot of insight into his life.”
“I have. It’s been…very cool. To know he was that happy before…”
“I’m so happy he was happy,” I gush. I know he’s gone, but I try to focus on what we had before he left and how good it was for the oh-so-brief time we had together.
“I’d…uh…like to hear your take on things if you don’t mind,” he requests.
I launch into every detail I can. I’m so thrilled to be talking to someone about him, especially someone who loved him and knew him. Jamie really seems to enjoy hearing my story, so I hardly leave any details out. When I tell him we had planned to get married this summer, he wipes a few tears from his eyes. When I tell him he’d already named our children, he loses it for a few minutes. I rub his arm as I wait for his tears to subside. All too soon my time with him is up. He leaves me the information for the cemetery.
As he opens the door, a question flies out of me that I don’t even remember mentally posing. “Jamie, was Michael buried by a Catholic priest?”
He turns to look at me, shakes his head, and says with regret, “No, no, he wasn’t. His parents haven’t practiced in years. We didn’t even realize Mike was attending church or anything.” He wrinkles his forehead at me. “I keep noticing you call him Michael. Our mom’s the only other person who called him by his given name.”
I nod my head and my gears start turning. Michael was living a dual life for sure. I’m so glad that Jamie found his things and me. I hope he realizes all that Michael was, and that given more time, he would’ve reconciled these two distinct parts of himself. “I love his name, so I started out calling him by it. Then, Michael wouldn’t let me call him Mike. He liked that I was the only one who called him that.” I grin thinking about the few times I used his nickname. He would get so pissed.
“Hey, I’ll be right back,” he says. “I got something for you.”
“OK.” I watch him walk out to his truck and again marvel at how different Michael and his brother are from one another.
He bounds back up my steps with a rather large box. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to part with this stuff, but I know you’ll take care of it. I kept some things, of course. I think these things will mean a lot more to you, though.”
“Oh, Jamie,” I start and my voice cracks. He has no idea how I hate the fact that I have very few physical reminders of Michael. “Thank you, thank you so much. I’ll treasure them always.” I don’t know what’s in the box and I don’t care. The fact that they were Michael’s things is all I need to know.
“You want me to bring it in for you?”
“Oh, no, I’ll manage.” I grab the box and turn to open the door. He shuffles around me and pulls it open for me. “Jamie, thank you so much for coming here. You have no idea how much all of this meant to me.”
He smiles and I see a little of Michael in him when he does. Instant tears spring to my eyes. “I think I have an idea. Your visit did a lot for me too.”
“Jamie, I’m so sorry to ask but I have to know. What happened to Michael that night?”
; He runs his hands over his face before he replies tersely, “We don’t really know. One minute Michael was there, hanging out. The next he was gone. Everyone is messed up over it, but our mom, especially, is real tore up over it.”
“I’m so sorry for your family’s loss,” I tell him.
“Thanks. Well, you take care.”
“Thanks. You too. Bye, Jamie.”
“Bye bye, Lorraina.”
I make it back to my room without toppling my box over. I close the door and lock it even though no one will be home for quite some time. I steeple my hands under my chin and try to gather some strength. I think this will be good for me; however, it’s also going to hurt like hell.
Chapter Thirty
The Art of Memorializing
By the time I’m half way through the box, I have more questions than ever. Michael sketched some beautiful pictures of me. Most of them were of my face. A couple of them were nudes. You couldn’t really see anything, but it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that I’d posed for him that way. I blush as I think of Michael’s brother looking at them, but I have to say it’s astounding to see how Michael saw me. My flaws were still there: rounded belly, flared hips, chubby toes. However, he saw the beauty even in my imperfections and managed to convey that through his work.
I found several different poems that spoke of love and loss and described perfectly how I’ve been feeling all summer, but I wonder if he wrote them recently or if they were older. Were they inspired by me or by fear of us ending? I hope he didn’t feel this way about our future. Most of me leans towards thinking they are older poems.
The journals. These slay me. Over and over. They’re beautiful but haunting. I love reading about us from his perspective. It is absolutely incredible yet absolutely terrifying. I’ve never hurt so bad other than the night I found out he was gone. I sob for what seems like hours. One particular entry really cuts deep. The night that I sought him out at Mona’s. Our first night; it held so much promise. I can hear him thinking these thoughts in his sexy baritone. All that confidence with an underlying layer of vulnerability.
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