The Beginning of After

by Jennifer Castle

  “Don’t worry, buddy,” I said into the scruff of Masher’s neck. “He’ll be back.”

  That night I opened up a fresh email and clicked on the TO field. I typed D, then A. Before I could type the V, my email program filled in the rest of David’s email address, like it had been waiting for me to get up the nerve all afternoon to write to him. If only it could tell me what the hell to say, the first time I’d written to him as myself and not as a dog.

  It took me what seemed like a year, but I finally came up with something that didn’t sound too angry, or too stupid, even after I read it ten times.

  David—

  I’m not even sure if you’re checking email, but in case you are . . .

  I’m sorry you had to leave again so quickly. I’m sorry you couldn’t wait until I got home to say good-bye.

  Good luck with the band and safe travels and all that. Keep in touch if you can.

  We’ll all be here if you need us—your dog, your stuff, and yours truly,

  Laurel

  I counted to three and hit send, and as soon as I did, I felt like I could breathe again.

  Then I remembered that David had planned to visit his father, but never got the chance. He wouldn’t have let me come with him. But now he was gone and had absolutely no say in the matter.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Peach, peach, and more peach.

  Light peach on the walls. Dark peach carpet. Even the lights in long rows on the ceiling shone a yellow-pink, peachy keen glow.

  Maybe it was all supposed to distract you from the smell, which I think could have made me throw up if I took too deep a whiff. That was the smell of medicine and bad food and unwashed bedsheets and indoor recycled air. It was the smell of hopelessness and attempted dignity, and of life in limbo.

  “Can I help you?” asked the woman at the third-floor reception desk. She was actually wearing a peach-colored nurse’s tunic.

  “I’m here to see Gabriel Kaufman,” I said.

  “Oh, yes!” said the nurse, her face brightening. “You called earlier.” She opened an appointment book and I glimpsed my name, scribbled in the middle of a page. I got the feeling this was a part of the Palisades Oaks Rehabilitation Center that didn’t get many visitors.

  “Is it okay to bring these?” I asked, lifting up the bouquet of flowers I’d brought. Nana had insisted we stop to buy them before getting on the highway. I went along with it because she’d been so quiet and helpful after I told her what I wanted to do. She’d offered to drive and wrote a note getting me out of school and work for the day, and made sure she got excellent directions from David’s grandparents. And here the flowers gave me something to do with my hands.

  Now Nana was shopping at some nearby mall—she couldn’t stand these places, she’d seen too many of her friends die in them—and I was alone in the Peach Palace.

  “Of course, sweetie. They smell lovely. He’ll like them, I’m sure.”

  The nurse got up and motioned for me to follow her, down another long hallway. At the very end I could see a huge picture window with sunlight streaming in, and I had a sudden urge to take off running, running, until I could crash through the glass headfirst into freedom.

  “Here we are,” she said. She knocked twice on a door that was slightly ajar, paused, then opened it all the way. “I’ll leave you two alone, but please let me know if you need anything. I’ll be back in a few minutes with a vase and some water.”

  I peeked slowly around the door and first saw furniture—a dark wooden dresser, an overstuffed flowered armchair. Then a bright window draped in gauzy white curtains, the sun coming through so strong I almost had to look away from it. Next, a machine that whirred and beeped quietly but intensely, and the rising and falling chest of Mr. Kaufman, moving to the beat of what I realized was his respirator.

  I came all the way into the room and looked at the carved wooden headboard of his bed, his navy blue pajamas with white piping, his closed, frozen eyes. The wedding band on his left hand and the framed photograph of himself, Mrs. Kaufman, and David peering down on him from the nightstand. I recognized it as their holiday card photo from two years ago, posed on a ski slope somewhere, all three of them making the kind of face that could either be a smile or just squinting into the sun.

  I stood over him for a minute, watching this robotlike sleep he was in—the respirator even made it sound like he was snoring—and reminded myself of why I hated him. This jerk, I thought. This jerk who had all that scotch at seder and killed my parents. Killed my little brother, just a kid who still liked making fart noises with various parts of his arms. Ruined my life. Not to mention what he did to his own wife and son.

  You got what you deserved, and now you’re basically broccoli.

  There was a knock on the door again, and the nurse came back in with the vase. She placed it on the nightstand behind the photograph and smiled at me as I handed her the flowers.

  “You said he’ll like them,” I asked. “Can he smell?”

  “That depends who you ask,” she said as she lowered the flowers into the water. “A doctor might tell you no, Mr. Kaufman can’t smell anything because he’s in a vegetative state.” She glanced up at Mr. Kaufman’s face. “But if you ask me, he looks better when there’s something new in the room. Something pretty or that smells good. I noticed it once when his mother came in wearing a very strong perfume.”

  The nurse moved to leave and I almost stopped her. But she was out the door fast and I was once again alone with the sleeping man and the loud machine. I’d lost the thread of that anger and now just felt nervous, so I sat down in the armchair and started saying the first things that came to mind.

  “Hi, Mr. Kaufman,” I said. “It’s me, Laurel Meisner.”

  I paused, like I expected him to answer. Just one of those things you do because you’re trained to do it.

  “I saw David. He was planning on visiting you, but he got a job opportunity and had to leave really fast.”

  I considered adding, Actually, your son ran away from something. I hope it wasn’t me.

  What would David have told his father, if he’d come?

  “Your parents sold the house. I hear it’s a young couple with a baby. It’s a great house for a family who’s just starting fresh. I think there are some other babies in the neighborhood, so that’ll be good, like a whole new generation of kids.”

  I thought of David and Toby and me, of Megan and her sister Mary, Kevin McNaughton, and the Henninger twins, who now went to some private Catholic school and nobody ever saw anymore. A whole crop of children on two little streets, getting big and moving on. We grew into ourselves and away from simply being neighbors who all liked lawn sprinklers and swing sets.

  I was stuck again for something to say. Just talk! He can’t hear you anyway!

  “Did you know that for a while, the police were looking for another car? They thought maybe there was someone else involved.”

  Now I could grab hold of my anger again, more sure of my strength.

  “Too bad you can’t tell them. Because they couldn’t find anything, and now they officially blame you. You were drinking that night; we all saw it.”

  We did all see it, but nobody thought to mention that perhaps he shouldn’t get behind the wheel. God, how many drunk-driving videos had I seen? And where were my parents in all this? Didn’t they have the guts to say something to big-shot Mr. Kaufman, the guy my dad would never admit he admired?

  It had been so easy to think about blame when I wasn’t sitting across from the very fingers that had been curled around the steering wheel when the car went off the road. The foot that had been on the gas pedal and the brake. Those eyes that had seen the world spinning past the windshield, and the ears that had heard the shouts and cries my family might have made as they died.

  But it was like looking at a frog laid out for dissection in biology class. Everything I knew about what was in front of me was just truth and facts, with nothing behind them. All my fu
ry didn’t make a difference. We were both still in the same place, unchanged.

  Except that now I felt a little lighter, unburdened, by having said these things to him. I got up and pulled my chair a little closer to Mr. Kaufman’s bed, then folded myself back into it, cross-legged and ready to stay for a while.

  “David kissed me,” I said to him. Hearing the words out loud, feeling the breath it took to form them, made it official now; it had happened.

  Mr. Kaufman’s machine whirred and dinged, like a Hmmm, tell me more, so I did. I told him about Nana wanting to go home but not letting herself, and the secrets Meg and I were keeping from each other now, and the Andie Stokes crowd. I told him about Joe and the way I sometimes caught him looking at me, like it stung. I talked about my job at Ashland and how it made me feel like I was not wasting the lucky draw of being alive, like I was finding something in myself that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. And then I told him about how Dad always envied him a little for his fancy car and his well-kept yard and expensive cigars.

  Then that reminded me of Mom and the cigarettes she kept hidden in two different spots in the house, so I told Mr. Kaufman about how I’d caught her once, and instead of giving me a lecture about “Do as I say, not as I do,” she just said, “Laurel, I hope you find something like this, a little self-destructive habit you can turn to every once in a while, when you’re tired of being good. It will keep you sane.”

  I told him about the band Toby wanted to start someday. It was going to be called the Dangling Participles, and they were only going to play songs about grammar and spelling.

  It wasn’t until I noticed the light turning a different shade that I realized how much time had passed. I turned to the window and saw that the sun was setting behind the hills, and took out my cell phone to call Nana.

  “Did you get the job done?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I replied.

  “Then I’m waiting downstairs to take you home.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  We live in troubled times, to be sure.

  What the hell was that? It had just come out, and now that it was on my computer screen it only made me want to slap myself.

  I’d come home straight from school on Wednesday to work on my essay, the clock counting down the final thirty-six hours until I had to submit my application to Yale. Really, I had backed myself further into a corner by deciding I wouldn’t mention my family in any way.

  The weekend with David, the afternoon with Mr. Kaufman. I couldn’t process any of it into something I could write about.

  Nana kept coming into the den with a can of Pledge and a rag, pretending to dust, but I knew she was checking up on me. She’d already found out that straight-up asking “How’s it going?” did not get a good response.

  The blank computer screen was taunting me, the blinking cursor daring me to think up something meaningful and honest.

  Suddenly, there was a noise from upstairs.

  Bump. Clang.

  A low screech, and then a loud bark.

  In about two seconds I ran from the den, my heart pounding, afraid of what I’d find.

  Sure enough, Toby’s door was open. Masher crouched on the floor with his tail thumping, only his body visible because he’d jammed his head underneath the bed. Bits of fur floated through the air.

  “Masher!” I yelled. Another screech and now a hiss from under the bed. He barked in response, and it wasn’t his usual bark. This one was from the gut, all primal.

  I clapped my hands twice and called his name again, with no results. Then I dropped to the ground and reached under the bed until I felt his collar, and tugged hard. He whined, and I knew I was probably hurting him.

  After dragging Masher out of the room, I shut the door, making sure the doorknob clicked.

  “Bad dog!” I shouted.

  “Forget to close the door all the way?” called Nana from downstairs, like she’d been waiting for that exact thing to happen.

  “I’ve got it under control!” I called back.

  I turned to Masher, who looked at me with irritation. I’d denied him some basic dog right.

  “You can’t just do that!” I yelled, swatting his muzzle lightly with the back of my hand. “This is not your house!” I took another breath and blurted out, “You’re here because your owner is a crazy loser who doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life!”

  Now he seemed bemused, like he knew better and I should too.

  Did David teach you that look, or the other way around?

  I grabbed Masher’s collar again and pulled him into the bathroom, which I knew he hated. The toilet ran nonstop, and he always barked at the sound of it. I closed the door and went to check on the cats.

  None of them were hurt, but Lucky seemed nervous. I lay down on Toby’s bed and she hopped up onto the end of it, looking at me quizzically from above my toes.

  “I know,” I said to her. “I know.”

  Her eyes narrowed into smiling slits, and I realized she hadn’t been nervous for herself or her kittens. She’d been nervous for me, what with all my yelling.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said. She stepped onto my leg and walked up the length of my body, not losing her balance for an instant, and poked her head into my armpit.

  I stayed there for a while, petting her, and then it came to me.

  I would write my essay about the cats and Dr. B and Eve and the different ways something could be hurt and healed, and what I’d learned from that. I didn’t have to mention my family outright, but they would be there, between the lines. So I went downstairs and sat at the computer.

  Lucky the cat is blinking at me with trusting yellow eyes.

  The rest of it came out so fast, I had a draft before dinner.

  Almost as if he’d known what had happened with Masher, that night David answered my email.

  laurel

  thank you for writing. it’s good to know that you don’t hate me, at least not yet.

  i’m in richmond, virginia. the band's got a ton of fans here.

  this city has a lot of statues of confederate generals, which means i must really be in the south.

  keep in touch,

  david

  Keep in touch.

  I suddenly realized how annoying that expression was. Like, Now it’s your job to stay in contact with me. It said, I’m really just too lazy.

  I started to write back, to keep in touch, but decided I’d be lazy as well.

  On Thursday morning I woke up early, did a final pass on my essay, and submitted my application to Yale online with more than twelve hours to spare. Hopefully somewhere my father was saying, That’s my girl.

  I gave myself a few minutes to feel relieved and proud, then for the tenth time, reread the text Joe had sent me.

  sry i mizd u at d dance, hope ur ok.

  It had been days and I still hadn’t seen him. I could have done the safe thing and texted him back, but I wanted to talk in real time, live. No backspace key.

  I’d visited Mr. Kaufman. I’d finished my college application. I felt kind of invincible.

  “Laurel!” Joe said when I called, sounding surprised in a good way.

  “Thanks for your message. I’m sorry I missed you that night.”

  “Me too,” he said. Then silence. He got stuck so easily with me now.

  God, Joe! Talk to me! I’m just Laurel!

  “I’ve done a couple of sketches,” I continued. “I’d like to show them to you so I know if I’m on the right track.”

  “I’m sure you are, but yeah, let’s get together.” He paused, but I didn’t jump in. I’d done my part and it was his turn. “After school today? Are you working this afternoon? I don’t have to be at the theater until four thirty, and I usually go to the coffee place to do some homework first.”

  “I usually show up at four, but I can be a little late. I’ll see you then!” And I hung up, trying not to think of David in the woods, but of Joe. Joe at the dance, dressed like a glor
ious freak as two different superheroes. In pieces of whatever costumes he could put together at the last minute because he’d decided to come looking for me.

  I arrived at the coffee place before Joe and got my chai, then picked a sunny table in the front corner. My sketch pad was tiny compared to his; I preferred to draw out my scenery small first, so I could decide what the important elements were, then let it grow in my head to the point where I had to move to the large canvas.

  When Joe walked in, we smiled easily at each other, and I just thought, Yes.

  Here was someone who was talented and smart, sweet and sensitive. Undamaged. Normal.

  I showed him a few of the sketches I’d done over the weekend, and he held up his caricatures next to them to see how well they fit. Two of them looked pretty cool. One was a little off, so I made some notes about how to fix that.

  Joe glanced at the clock, so I said, “Do you need to get some homework done? I can take off.”

  “I’ll do it on my break,” he answered quickly, shaking his head. “Here, I’ll walk you over to the vet’s.”

  On our way down the sidewalk that would lead us to Ashland, Joe was quiet, and the comfortable feeling between us was gone. When we reached the hospital parking lot, he stopped and turned to me.

  “Listen, Meg told me that you left the Halloween dance with David Kaufman. She seemed pretty upset about that.”

  Well, yes. Clearly. So upset that she felt the need to tell Joe out of spite.

  “Was that okay?” Joe continued. “I mean, it’s none of my business. But the last time he showed up at a party, things did not—”

  “Go well?” I interrupted him, raising one eyebrow. “No, they didn’t.”

  Joe laughed nervously.

  “Things are fine now,” I said, and shrugged. “We’re taking care of his dog, some of his stuff. As a favor.” Using the word we made it seem more neighborly, less complicated.