Before You Go

by James Preller

  Becka squeezed his hand and her good heart cracked, the way ice on a winter pond spiderwebs when you step on it, when you can almost feel yourself plunge into the frozen water. Yes, Jude’s sister, Lily. A depth of sadness she never knew. Nothing ever in her world had touched that kind of sorrow. The loss of a sister. It felt foreign, exotic—a feeling she had never felt. Yet it excited her, this physical nearness to something so sad and important as the death of a child. So she waited for the words to shower down like blue rain, his voice like a doomed poem dropping from the sky.

  “It was my fault,” Jude said. And he said it without emotion, flat as the horizon, four ordinary words like soldiers in a line. It was my fault. He glanced sideways at her to see if she understood, then looked up and away, as if confessing to the summer sky above. “She died because of me.”

  “Jude.”

  “No, it’s true—let me talk, okay? I want to tell you. In my family, you see, there was always this idea that if we didn’t say the words, if we didn’t say it out loud, maybe it wasn’t real. Just, you know, nobody move, nobody talk, and nobody gets hurt. We were, like, all sitting in a blackout—no lights, no candles, total darkness, and we pretended it was somehow okay. Lil was dead. And we just went on living in that darkness, bumping into each other, apologizing constantly, falling down, getting hurt, saying ‘sorry’ and ‘excuse me’ and ‘don’t worry, it’s fine.’ Saying ‘please, forgive me,’ and ‘accidents happen.’”

  His voice sounded urgent and bitter now, not like him at all. Jude was opening a cellar door for her, inviting her down the creaky stairs into some dark place of his soul. It frightened Becka. She released his hand, her entire body tense and listening.

  Jude continued, “That’s all we kept saying: ‘It was an accident, no one’s fault—these things happen for a reason.’ God, I hated that one. Happen for a reason. What total bullshit.”

  “I don’t understand,” Becka said. “You said—you told me yourself—she drowned.”

  “That part’s true,” Jude said. “I was there. I was supposed to be watching her—but my mom was gone for so long, and it was so hot that day, must have been ninety-five degrees. Lily loved the water—we had a pool in our backyard. She spent hours splashing around in her orange floaties.”

  Becka listened now to his breathing, the way the words came out in spurts and declarations. He was still next to her, here at the beach, and at the same time impossibly distant, a chasm she could not cross. Above, the stars were pinpricks of pale yellow lights on a velvet cloth, and she longed to be that light shining down for him.

  “That was my job: ‘Watch Little Lil till I get back,’ my mom said. And she went off in the car. I didn’t know where. I still to this day don’t know for sure where exactly she went; I can only guess what was so important. All I know was she left me alone with Lily, and it was my job to take care of my sister.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nine,” Jude said. “Lily had just turned four.”

  “Nine years old? She left you alone, watching your sister by yourself?”

  “I did it plenty of times,” Jude said defensively, his voice jagged now, ragged and uneven. Worn out already.

  Becka half turned, propped on her left elbow. She brushed the hair from his face, saw the sharp sickle of moon reflected in his eyes.

  He shook his head, shivered a signal: Don’t.

  Becka looked at his eyes—they were fixed on some distant elsewhere of the imagination, as if watching something that existed only in memory.

  “I was in a recliner by one end of the pool,” he said. “It was hot, and I was bored and tired. I had this handheld video game, and I was determined to reach the next level. Lily was paddling around in this rubber duck inner tube, you know, those rings that go around your waist?”

  “Yes, I know,” Becka said, her voice a hush, a shush. She wanted to kiss him now, cover his mouth to keep the words from pouring forth. And at the same time, she knew what he needed from her, and so she listened.

  “It was so weird, because I didn’t even notice at first. I never heard a sound. I never saw her slip through.…” His voice snagged on the memory, caught like an animal in a snare.

  She heard him swallow, breathe deep, determined to continue. “And I can picture it so clearly.” He lifted up his hand like a sleepwalker moving down a darkened hallway, and let it drop to his side. Empty.

  She reached for his hand and squeezed. “You don’t have to—.”

  “I want to,” he answered.

  And though Becka wished he wouldn’t go on, wouldn’t speak more of it, she asked him, “Please, it’s all right, you can tell me,” because she knew he must, just as it was her necessity to bear witness to this confession. He was the mouth, the soft lips to her ears, whispering the horrible truths.

  “I saw that duck floating in the pool, Beck—it was blue and yellow—and it didn’t register at first. I watched it float past, an inflatable duck in the water, and it took me a moment before I realized Lily had slipped through. I just watched it like a dream as it drifted past, merrily along.”

  Becka waited, spoke nothing.

  He finally said, “Then it hit me. Lily. I stood up, searched the water, and I saw her on the bottom of the pool.”

  There it was, he’d said it. Rockets didn’t explode, the world’s roof didn’t cave in upon him. There were still stars twinkling in the night, little souls in yellow dresses, and Becka still by his side.

  A flickering light reflected off his wet cheek. She dabbed it with her thumb, brought it to her lips. “When you cry,” she said, “I taste salt.”

  NINETEEN

  Corey and Jude just goofing around. They hadn’t seen a lot of each other the past week. Jude had been busy with work and with Becka, while Corey—somewhat spectacularly—had gone on a couple of quasi dates with Daphne. The days just flew; July arrived full blast, furnace blowing: Life was good, better than ever.

  Tonight Corey was over at Jude’s house, hanging in the basement, gaming, eating junk, shooting the breeze.

  “Where’s the party at again?” Corey asked.

  “Gilgo Beach,” Jude answered for the third time.

  “And whose house is it?”

  “Are you my mother?” Jude cracked.

  “Just answer the question, Jude.”

  “Ivan Kozlov—he works at West End Two with me. You met him at the softball game,” Jude explained.

  “Kind of a nervous guy with high-maintenance facial hair? I think he plucks his eyebrows.”

  “That’s him,” Jude replied. “Ivan’s parents are divorced, father supposedly has this amazing house on the water, way out on Ocean Parkway into Suffolk County. Anyway, his father is away for the weekend, and Ivan decided to commandeer the house for the night. Says he’s invited everyone he knows.”

  “Berto going?”

  “Yeah, he’s meeting us there.”

  “Sounds good,” Corey said. He picked through some magazines on the table, settling on a TV Guide.

  Jude checked the time. Daphne and Becka were picking them up in Daphne’s car. It turned out that Daphne was a catch in more ways than one. She didn’t drink, smoke, or curse, so far as Jude could tell. That is, she was the perfect designated driver for a Saturday night. For all her waifish, bee-stung-lipped beauty, Daphne turned out to be a total brainiac, with ambition to become a veterinarian. Who knew?

  “Did you know they showed movies on the Weather Channel?” Corey asked, incredulous.

  “No, I did not know that,” Jude replied. He was distracted by a video game, versing some kid in Taiwan.

  “Well, I guess they do,” Corey said, shaking his head. “There’s a whole article about it. That’s, like, so lame.”

  Jude had just died on a planet with two moons. Shot through the heart. “What movies are they showing?” he asked.

  “I don’t know—let me see.” Corey riffled through the TV listings. “Okay, okay, fine. The Perfect Storm—I get that. March
of the Penguins? What’s the March of the Penguins?”

  “That’s a pretty good movie, actually,” Jude said. “It’s about—”

  “Don’t tell me; let me guess,” Corey interrupted. “Penguins, marching, right?”

  “Corey Man, you’re good.”

  Corey continued to scan the paper. “But, I mean, obviously, there’s not that many weather-centered movies out there. Once you show, I don’t know, um—what’s another weather movie?”

  “There’s that one where they chase the tornados—with all the flying cows everywhere.”

  “Right, right, um, Twister!” Corey remembered, laughing. “And there was that other movie, when there’s, like, a huge flood and New York City freezes over? They get trapped in the library and have to burn books to keep warm?”

  “The Day After Tomorrow,” Jude said.

  Corey laughed. “We could totally do their programming for them. We’d put on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on Saturday mornings for the kids. Ice Age would work, all the sequels. But after a while, I mean, look at this, on Friday night they are showing Misery.”

  “The Stephen King flick? I liked that movie.”

  “Yeah, but Jude, we’re talking the Weather Channel. That whole movie is indoors, practically.”

  Jude gave up on the video game, dead again. This time his head got crushed by an alien with a moon rock. Corey was too much of a distraction. He tossed the headset onto the floor. “It starts with a snowstorm, remember? That’s when he gets into the car accident.”

  “Yeah, but that’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think?” Corey countered. “What are they going to put on next? The Godfather—because it rains in the movie?”

  “When you think about it—and for the record, I wish I wasn’t—there’s weather in every movie,” Jude said.

  Somebody flicked the lights off and on from the top of the stairs. Jude’s father called down, “Jude, there’s a couple of attractive young women here to see you. I told them they probably had the wrong house.”

  Oh, God, parents. Could they be any worse?

  Becka and Daphne waited just inside the front door, looking around the room with curiosity. In that setting, the friends awkwardly said “Hey” all around and in every combination—Jude to Becka, Daphne to Jude, Corey to Daphne, endlessly—until Jude pushed open the front door and led them outside.

  “Hey, before you go,” Jude’s father called after them, “where are you headed tonight?”

  “A party,” Jude answered. “Some kid from work.”

  “Not too late, I hope,” his father said. “You know the rules, Jude. Be safe. Looks like rain tonight, slippery roads.”

  They walked to the car, the four of them together, Daphne jangling keys, Becka half bouncing with eagerness. Jude glanced sideways at Corey and claimed, “Shotgun.”

  Corey gave his friend a stunned, hurt look. “Really?”

  Jude laughed. “Just busting. Becka and I’ll take the back. You can ride shotgun tonight, Corey Man.”

  TWENTY

  Two cars on a narrow road.

  Music plays from inside, mixed with young voices, laughter.

  An animal crosses from shadows into light … a car drifts into the approaching lane … Daphne jerks the steering wheel … bones shatter … Becka staggers out from the backseat, battered head in bloodied hands … in the back, Jude groans, bleeding … and Corey, on the front passenger side … he’s already gone.

  Uncrash the car.

  Push pause.

  Hit refresh.

  Delete the forever ever after.

  PART TWO: AFTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  Jude, adrift. The days a monotonous drizzle, gray as slate. Food without taste, sun without heat. The days’ events tumbled like laundry in a drying machine, a jumble of impressions and memory, mingled with bleached-out reality like faded photographs: the flickering glare of the television screen, the scrape of cutlery across awkward dinners, clumsiness of spilt drinks and hurried apology, dark hallways and closed doors, clouds and sleet and whispered urgencies, the guttering flames of church-lit candles.

  Corey was gone.

  Could it be? Could such a thing have happened? Hadn’t they just been joking around together, hitting golf balls into the void, playing video games, watching dumb movies, and laughing, laughing?

  Jude felt drained, tired all the time. And yet he couldn’t rest at night, took naps in the day. Falling asleep in a chair, head in his hands at the dinner table. Listless. None of the pieces of his life fit together; it was all scraps and fragments, shards of shattered mirror reflecting up from the ground in grotesque disorder. Who am I? Jude wondered. And why? He thought of Corey and of Lily. On some mornings, too many mornings, Jude found himself hunched in the shower, his eyes leaking tears, leaking life. He felt hollowed out, carved up like a jack-o’-lantern.

  Jude remembered:

  They had taken him away in an ambulance. But first, Corey. They rushed Corey’s body the hell out of there, and Jude, banged up and broken, head fogged and clanging, sat and watched the vehicle whirrr away, red lights spinning. It hurt to breathe, and he wondered if it was worth the effort. Three splintered ribs will do that to a guy. And life too will fill a body with air and heartache. Too much, too much to think about. So he filtered it out, processed what he could, blanked out the rest.

  When he was a kid, Jude had had his back molars pulled. The dentist’s assistant placed a mask over his face. She turned a knob, smiled, and called it “sweet air,” nitrous oxide, and soon they could yank and pull, and Jude didn’t care. Do as you please, good doctor. Yank away! Just keep that gas pumping. He awoke in bed with the sweet taste of blood on his tongue, cotton stuffed deep into his swollen mouth. They gave him something for the pain. Yes, he remembered, the fog lifting. Clarity sweeping it away. “Something to knock the edge off,” that’s how they put it. He slept a dreamless sleep of unremembering. And when he awoke, more pain.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The funeral struck Jude as surreal, a bizarre theater production directed by a madman. He felt like a stage prop in a cardboard crowd of mourners. Cue the grieving friend wrapped in black. Maybe it was because of all the familiar faces, students and teachers from school, all doing their best to act appropriately, actors playing out a pantomime of grief. The girls in tears, the boys standing droopily around, faces blotched with worry, dressed in ill-fitting jackets and borrowed neckties. Trying so hard to act grown-up. Their pretty young faces made horrible by grief. Jude looked away. He didn’t want to join his friends from school, talk to them, say all those hollow words that floated around the high-ceilinged church.

  “He was such a great guy.”

  “A terrible tragedy.”

  “It was meant to be.”

  Pop, pop, pop. The platitudes burst. The absolute fact of Corey’s death destroyed them all. There was nothing to say, nothing for Jude to believe. And most surprising of all, Jude felt little at all, as if his nerve endings had gone dead. Muffled, deflated. There was a wound in his heart, and his soul seeped out, like air from a balloon. He stayed near his parents, filed down the aisle together, sat walled in between them on the hard wooden pew, knelt and stood when signaled. Mostly, he waited for the whole sorry performance to conclude.

  It all seemed unreal. Despite the casket, the mourners, the fractured memory of that night on the road, Jude kept half expecting Corey to burst into the room, grinning and pointing, saying, “How good am I? How good am I?!”

  Ha-ha, Corey Man. You really fooled us this time.

  Minutes passed that felt like hours. And Corey didn’t show. More time, more waiting. Still no Corey.

  So this was it.

  Corey’s extended family filled the front three rows. Jude watched from behind, stared at the men’s knobby necks, the women in hats, veils. Corey’s parents stood tall in dignified grief, proud and full of grace, backs erect, heads held high: “Oh deliver us, Lord, from every evil.”

  Jude saw Becka ac
ross the pew and back, and other friends—Berto, Lee, Stallion—and was grateful when they hung back, did not move to console him. He couldn’t deal with those guys, not now, not Becka.…

  He watched it all with the eyes of a wounded bird that had fallen from its nest—Jude of darting eyes and busted wing. In this place, sanctified and sterilized, Jude’s unspooling thoughts did not linger on Corey but instead circled back to that other memory, Lily’s funeral, and the vision of her small body at the bottom of the pool. He remembered a blue-and-yellow rubber duck floating on the water, the mockery of its beaky grin. Jude gripped the pew’s backrest and watched as his knuckles turned white. The old priest with large drooping ears like a basset hound’s talked and tried to sooth the visitants, sought to explain, and asked, “If God is for us, who is against us?” God was not cruel, but loving. God was not indifferent, but compassionate, our savior and our strength. Not mine, Jude decided. He found no solace in the words, but instead felt resentment toward this empty ceremony. So up he rose and down he knelt.

  “Let us pray,” the priest said.

  “Lord, hear our prayers.”

  Jude soundlessly mouthed the words and responses. And in the end, he felt like a carved piece of oak, wooden as Pinocchio, dreaming of becoming a real boy. Swallowed by the whale, in the belly of the beast, lighting matches in the dark. His mind felt vague, his thoughts unsorted. Tears came when the music filled the great room, and Jude did not move to brush them away.

  He tasted salt.

  Salt water.

  And he wondered if Becka could taste them too.

  Jude remembered swimming with her in the ocean. The trick was to get past the breakers. The waves would roll in one after the other like charging cavalry, curl and crash in clouds of white foam, and if you got caught unawares, a wave could knock you off your feet, and you were rag-dolling in a rush of surf. But if you got past the breakers, swam under and through, then the ocean became peaceful, undulant as rolling hills. Jude and Becka did that together—they made it through, together—floated on their backs, faces to the sun, and felt the rise and fall of the ocean’s tidal hum. Jude remembered a line from a poem he had studied in school: “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” In Jude’s mind he reached out his hands and felt for Becka’s fingertips, up and down they floated in the bath of salt water. Strange to think of it as a sea of tears closing around them, heaving them up, easing them under. Ebb and flow. Inhale, exhale. He opened his eyes and she floated away.