by Meg Haston
But what really happened had nothing to do with Buck or booze or junior year. What really happened is this: For those few moments on the dock, I stopped showing Wil I loved him. I didn’t stop loving him. I still haven’t. But Wil Hines is not the kind of guy who appreciates that difference.
Since that night last year, there have been a million times I’ve wished that Wil wasn’t the type of person who lived his life by such absolutes. That he could understand a moment of weakness and forgive it. But he’s not. He doesn’t see the grays.
Maybe if he had the kind of dad who bailed without a word, like mine; if he had the kind of dad who cheated, bailed, came back, and bailed again, like Micah’s . . . maybe then he’d understand that life is never black-and-white. That most of us have learned to tread in the gray.
A footfall jerks me awake. I flop onto my back and open my eyes. The shadows in my room are all wrong. I check the clock by my bedside table. 4:43 A.M.
“Bridget.”
I sit up. My mother is a foggy ghost at the edge of my bed, repeating my name. “Bridget. Bridget. Wake up. Bridget.”
“God. Mom. Are you okay?” I fumble for my lamp and twist the switch. Mom never uses my full name. Kid or Offspring. B or Honeybee. Bridge. Never Bridget. “I thought you were working a double shift.”
The lamplight shows her in contrasts: messy auburn bob and crescent shadows beneath tired eyes. “Oh, honey.”
I sit up. “Where’s Micah? Are you okay?”
“No. I’m—we’re fine.” She kicks off her work pumps. Tears polka-dot her blouse. “I have something to tell you. Something bad, baby.”
“Whatever it is, say it, Mom. It’s okay.” My mother is the kind of mom who let Micah and me believe in the tooth fairy for so long that once we found out, it was a million times worse than if she’d just told the truth. “I can take it.”
She reaches for me. She presses one of my hands between hers.
“Wilson Hines is dead,” she says. The words are frantic and dry: hundreds of moths escaping the black cave of her throat.
“What?” I almost laugh. It seems too absurd to be real. “No. Mom. I just saw him.”
“Honeybee,” she whispers, and then I know it’s true.
I shake my head. I close my eyes and see yellow tulips. My mouth tastes like rust.
“It was a break-in. They think it’s related to that string of burglaries that’s been on the news.”
I blink for a minute. The words sound strange, like gibberish.
“When?” I breathe.
“Couple of hours ago.”
I bend over and stare at the spinning floor. I’m going to be sick.
“Wil,” I croak. “Henney.”
“Wil and his mom are both fine. Not fine.” Mom’s features collapse. “I think they were there, but . . . they didn’t get hurt or anything. I can’t—” Her face twists like crumpled paper and she slides into bed with me. I stroke her hair while she cries. I’m cold, like Wilson and I are standing in front of the flower refrigerator again.
Fix it, Brooklyn.
Wil had a dad this morning and now he doesn’t, and in some small way, I know what that’s like.
“I have to go,” I tell Mom, kicking off the covers. “I have to see Wil.”
The drive to Wil’s house passes in a blur. Someone has ripped the black sky open with bare hands, releasing the rain. I barely register the streetlamps bleeding gold on the rain-slicked pavement or the garish neon of the car dealerships that line Atlantic, and then I am tearing down his street. At the end of Wil’s block, red and blue lights flash between the raindrops.
There are cruisers and news vans barricading the street. I go as far as I can and throw the truck into park. Wil’s house is three down, at the corner, and all the lights are on. Yellow crime tape spans the perimeter of the yard, taut around the palm trees.
It is too loud. Neighbors are inching close, yelling questions to the cops. Their voices are high and thin. They press their children against their bodies. The cops hold an unwavering line at the crime tape, murmuring into their radios. At least three reporters are testing opening lines (“—a horrific scene tonight, Bill, on this quiet residential street.” “Neighbors say Wilson Hines was a local boat builder who cared deeply for his wife and teenage son.” “—shattered the glass door and entered the house.” “—latest victim in a recent string of break-ins that have been escalating in violence.”). I recognize the one closest to me, the brunette from Channel 12.
“We’ll be back with more on this developing tragedy, tonight at eleven. Back to you in the studio.” She stares wide-eyed and solemn at the camera, until the light goes down. I worm my way through the crowd. Before long, I am pressed against the police tape at the edge of Wil’s yard.
A lanky blond cop hooks his thumbs through his belt loops and says: “I’m gonna need you to stay back, ma’am.” He can’t be much older than I am.
“But—he’s my—” There is no way to explain us to a stranger.
The police tape warns me: DO NOT CROSS.
I step back on wobbly legs and let myself cry, hard, because it’s raining and everyone here has a wet face.
I find Wil’s bedroom window, fix my gaze until Wil’s shadow appears, just for a second. I want to sprint across the lawn and dive into the house. I want to hold him so tightly neither one of us can breathe.
But I do none of those things, because I don’t get to be that person for Wil anymore. We aren’t us. So I stand in the crowd with everyone else, alone under the grieving sky.
BRIDGE
Spring, Senior Year
I lose count of how many days have passed since Wilson was murdered.
Since Wilson was murdered. The words are cold salt water filling my lungs. I haven’t even said them out loud. I turn off the news every time it comes on. I can’t stand to hear the story again: how Henney went downstairs for a drink of water and interrupted the burglar. How Wilson saved her, but couldn’t save himself. How Wil woke to his mother’s screams after the killer had vanished through the shattered glass door.
I tell Mom I don’t want to talk about it. I shrug Micah off when he leans against me on the couch and hands me the remote. The only person in the world I want to talk to about this is Wil, and I feel guilty for even having the thought. If I can’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time, if it’s hard to catch a breath when I open my eyes and remember, if I feel blank, I can’t imagine how Wil must feel. I lost the man who felt like a dad to me. Wil lost the real thing.
I’ve almost called him a million times. I’ve driven by his block every day after school, and every time there is one less cop car, one less officer, one less gawking neighbor. The crime scene tape is still wrapped around the yard, but it sags and the yellow has faded. On the news, they talk about the “hunt for a killer,” but the segments don’t last long. New, terrible things happen every day, and there’s only so much time between commercials.
On the morning of the funeral, I am full of hot sadness that boils up to the top, threatening to spill over. Mom is short-staffed at work, so she stands on the front stoop with Micah and me and gives us too-long hugs when Leigh pulls up to the curb.
At the church, I sit between Micah and Leigh in a middle pew. The benches are a worn-down wood and the high ceiling looks exactly like an upside-down boat, which I think Wilson would like. We don’t talk about the police cruisers parked out front or the two detectives standing in the back, guns and badges clipped to their belts.
Leigh slips her fingers through mine. I can feel her heartbeat through her palm, and I try not to think about how fragile we are.
“You okay?” Leigh murmurs. “Sorry. Stupid question.”
“Yeah.” My heart is racing and I’m clammy, sweating in a black wool dress that I dug out of Mom’s closet, along with a pair of hand-me-down pumps that gap on the sides. The dress is wrong—the fit, the itchy winter fabric, the occasion—but it’s all I could find. Micah’s shirt and tie are a little
too big. They belonged to his dad, maybe. His hair is slicked back. He’s been quiet this morning. Sweet.
Micah leans into me. “I’ve never been to a funeral before.”
“Me neither.” I loop my arm through his and rest my head on his shoulder. He tolerates my affection for about a minute before he inches down the pew.
The church fills quickly, and it feels like the entire senior class is here. Ana shows up in a gauzy black dress. The tip of her nose is red and her eyes are glassy. She’s beautiful, I think without meaning to. By the time the organ music starts, there are people standing around the perimeter of the church, spilling down the steps and into the street. The entire congregation turns around at the same time to watch Wil and Henney enter the church and stand in front of the arched doorway. Hundreds of people trying not to see the purplish marks creeping around Henney’s collar on either side of her neck. Someone’s hands made those marks. Someone who is watching television right now, or drinking coffee. My stomach surges.
Wil is holding his mother so tightly there is no room for air between them. It’s a strange sight. I can’t remember Henney ever reaching for Wil’s hand or stroking his hair or kissing him good night. Henney has always felt like the exact opposite of my own mother. Where my mom is constantly hugging Micah and me, letting her thoughts and feelings roll off her tongue, Henney is quiet. Full of unsaid things. In all the years I’ve spent in the workshop, Henney never joined us. Every once in a while, she’d stand outside with a tray of gritty lemonade. But she never came inside. She never grabbed a piece of sandpaper.
But I think tragedy can change people chemically. It can soften them or harden them, and maybe Henney has become a different version of herself.
Wil guides his mom down the aisle. He’s an echo of his dad: tall and broad with nut-brown hair that curls a little around the temples. When he passes the detectives, his gaze stays fixed straight ahead, but the color leaks from his face and neck. He tucks Henney into the front pew and settles in next to her.
The priest begins the service. When Leigh squeezes my hand, tears pop from the corners of my eyes. I hear the sermon, ebbing and flowing like a steady wave, as I break Wil down into familiar pieces: the slope where his neck meets his shoulder; the long twiggy scar on his finger from freshman year. His dad really chewed him out for that one, even with me thinking, He’s bleeding, though; we should do something. This is what happens when you’ve been looking at—no, seeing—someone for as long as I’ve been seeing Wil Hines. You don’t see them as some seamless whole person, the way the rest of the world does. You see them broken down into the millions of essential atoms that make them Not Everyone Else.
After a final amen, Wil gets up and goes to the lectern at the front. He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and blinks several times.
“I wanted to read part of this poem for my dad and say some words.” Wil clears his throat. His voice is dry and brittle, like dead leaves. “Under the wide and starry sky / Dig the grave and let me lie.”
I hold my breath. Watch Wil lean over the lectern, watch him grip the edges so hard his knuckles turn white. His jagged breath echoes through the church. Henney bleats a low, awful sound that knots my insides. Wil looks up, his eyes staring blankly at the back of the room and rakes his hands through his hair, like he’s trying to claw the sadness from his brain.
In the quiet, every little noise is amplified. All the uncomfortable noises we emit because silence itself is terrifying: the coughs and sniffs and the creak of wood under shifting live bodies.
“I’m sorry,” Wil whispers into the microphone. “I can’t—”
The priest gets up and guides Wil back to his seat, murmuring soft words. Then the priest says to us, “At this time, prayers for or recollections of the departed are welcome, either silently or aloud.”
Somebody stands up and starts talking about how Wilson once built him a beautiful dinghy out of eastern red cedar so that he could spread his wife’s ashes on the Intracoastal. When the man returned, Wilson refused payment.
I gather story after story. They are precious now.
When the service ends, the church aisle fills. Everyone acknowledges one another with weird, tight smiles. Death is too close here and we jostle past one another, trying to outrun it in heels and dress shoes that pinch.
“Are you—” Leigh starts.
“I don’t know.” I search the crowd for Wil.
“I’ll take Micah home. Call you later.” Leigh kisses me on the cheek and steers my brother into the current of mourners and out the door.
On the church steps, Wil and Henney greet the flood with vacant stares. The same two detectives stand on the curb near a police cruiser: a tall black woman with cropped hair, and a pudgy white guy in a wrinkled shirt and jacket that doesn’t quite fit. They are granite-faced. Every so often, Wil glances over at them, then at his mom.
Leave them alone. I glare at the cops. Just for a few hours.
The adults leaving the church stop to hug Henney or give Wil a pat on the shoulder. The kids from school leave a wide berth. They pretend to be in deep, sober conversations with friends. Only Ana stops to give Wil a hug. She stands on tiptoe and sobs into his suit. After a moment, he nudges her back to her best friend, Thea Tritt, who is wearing a dress that’s too short for church.
I wait until the steps are almost empty. I force one heel in front of the other until we’re standing toe to toe. Wil’s dress shoes are so shiny I can see my hazy reflection.
“You had to buy new shoes for this,” I whisper.
“They’re his. He only ever wore them once.” Wil tugs at a piece of hair curling against his ear. I remember the softness of his hair. My fingertips burn with the memory of it.
“I loved him, you know,” I say quietly.
“Yeah.” When I look up, Wil’s eyes are wet and rimmed red. “He would be really glad you came, Golden Gate.” When he hugs me, he smells like varnish and sawdust.
After the service, I sit in my truck, taking in the heat with the windows rolled up, like I might be able to sweat these ugly feelings out of me. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to hear the sympathetic slide of Mom’s voice on the phone or watch Micah ditch me for his loser friends. What I really want is a drink, but I’ll settle for the next best thing. I jam my keys in the ignition and head for Minna’s.
I pull through the front gate of her assisted-living community and stop at the guard’s cottage. The usual security guard is there, balanced on the back legs of a metal folding chair. She’s watching a miniature television and eating granola straight out of the bag.
“Hey, Rita.” I pull up to the open door.
Rita bolts upright and the chair hits the floor. When she sees that it’s just me, she gives me a sheepish grin.
“Oops. Hey, Bridge.” She wrestles with the chair until it pops into place.
I smile. “Hey. Is Minna home?”
Rita rolls her eyes. Her bright red lipstick weeps beyond the borders of her mouth. “Three complaint calls about how the landscaping guy is ‘giving her the eye’ say she’s here. You look nice today. Big date or something?”
“Something.” I pull through the gate.
The housing complex is arranged in concentric circles. The outer few rungs are comprised of small homes, carbon-copied and dip-dyed in Florida colors, shrimp and aloe. Beyond the homes are the duplexes. They are slightly smaller, with garden patios in the back or a view of the man-made lake. All have staff weaving in and out—nurses to help with medication or cleaning ladies with chemical-loaded carts. In the center of the grounds is the hospital. The game works like this: The players start in the houses, then move their game piece closer to the center of the property as they get older. It’s like the worst possible game of Monopoly. Minna calls the hospital the Epicenter of Death.
I park in front of one of the duplexes. Minna’s door opens a crack before I even knock. A thin gold chain stretches between the door and the wall. She peers through the crack with
her strikingly green eye.
“Good. I thought you were the yard guy,” she says. “Guy’s a pervert.” The door slams and I hear the slide of metal on metal before it opens again. Minna looks like a seventy-five-year-old Mother Earth, with papery skin that’s folded into itself and long white hair that falls in rolling waves to her elbows.
“Sorry I didn’t call,” I say.
“The funeral,” she says, and pulls me inside. “I saw it on the news this morning. They had a reporter outside the damn church in the middle of the thing, if you can believe it. Girl was dressed like a stripper. Now sit,” she commands, guiding me to her velvet eggplant settee.
I lean into the cushions while Minna makes mint tea. Her apartment is small, with vaulted ceilings and sliding glass doors that look over what she calls “the fake lake.” The furniture is so old that it’s stylish again—dark wood, rich fabrics, curved lines. There are picture frames everywhere, all holding stock images of anonymous smiling couples. The walls used to be white, but before school started this year, she had me paint them a deep, almost-red pink. I don’t think the staff was too happy about it, but no one said anything. Don’t fuck with Miss Minna is practically the national anthem around here.
Minna sets two mugs next to the Scrabble board that has a permanent place on the coffee table, then settles into the tufted armchair across from me.
“Want to talk about it?” she asks.
“Not really.”
“Want to play Dirty Scrabble?”
I shrug.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She watches me while she divides the tiles. “How’s Wil?”