After the Leaves Fall

by Nicole Baart

  “Pray to Jesus,” one woman advised me as she clung to my arms and blinked back tears. “He’ll carry you through this.”

  I nodded faintly and tried to look grateful as the latest Green Day song played in my head. I just couldn’t stand any more tears.

  Unfortunately, church was the worst, and I began to dread going to Fellowship Community. It seemed that if I wasn’t on the verge of weeping, some people thought I was a callous and unfeeling little girl who didn’t fully grasp the loss of her father. On the other hand, if a song did touch me or I found myself unwillingly emotional, somebody would approach me and righteously explain that if I only had more faith in God, I would be able to accept that my father was in a better place.

  A man my father had worked with before I was born cornered me after church one Sunday and laid his hands on me to pray for healing. I guess he was trying to heal my broken heart—to my own deep consternation I had cried when we sang the doxology, and a number of people noticed. His prayer was bold and punctuated with amens, and his hands were so heavy on my head that I actually slumped against the wall.

  “How do you feel?” he asked expectantly when the final amen had hung meaningfully in the air for a few breaths.

  I stopped myself from saying thankful that his arms were finally at his side instead of weighing down my head. But I didn’t want to insult him, so I thought for a moment and tried to probe myself to see if anything felt different. Nothing did.

  “I feel fine,” I answered when I could come up with nothing else to say.

  “Has the Lord taken away your pain?”

  It was easy to answer that one. “No,” I said, and I imagined that the rest of my life would probably be filled with a myriad of different answers to that question. For now. A little. Maybe. I feel better but not whole. …

  He stared at me with a bewildered look on his face. Finally he raised a finger as if to scold me and said, “Then you don’t have enough faith.” And he walked away.

  Thomas was the only one who understood—or at least didn’t plague me with misplaced good intentions—and his even, uncomplicated acceptance of however I was feeling allowed me to experience a freedom with him that I felt nowhere else. He’d let me rage and cry or laugh and be caustic, and then he’d pretend that nothing at all had happened and act like life was perfectly normal and sane.

  I spent innumerable hours on the couch in his basement, spread out beneath an array of road signs that he somehow convinced his parents he’d achieved by innocent means. There was a yield sign, a street sign lettered Bottom Drive—Thomas thought it was funny—and my favorite, the fire-engine red stop sign that had spent the night in our grove.

  “I’d get another one for you if it would make you happy, Julia,” Thomas would say with a phony smile as he motioned to the collection. “It’s just that I’m past all that foolishness.” He winked because I knew better than anyone that Thomas would never be completely past his endearing foolishness.

  “You’re so mature,” I’d groan.

  Then Maggie, Thomas’s youngest sister, would bound down the stairs, launch herself onto the couch where I was still lying, and demand that we turn the channel so she could watch Dora the Explorer.

  We learned a lot of Spanish that way.

  Thomas always complained about his younger siblings—Simon, the closest in age to Thomas, was six years his junior, and the rest of the Walker clan spread out at one- or two-year intervals all the way down to the baby, four-year-old Maggie—but I adored them and kept coming to the Walker house partly because they were there. I had never had a brother or sister, and there was something so comforting about a preschooler cuddled up on the couch beside me that I felt like this was the home I was meant to be a part of; somehow I’d gotten switched out along the way. They treated me like family, and although I went home to eat every meal with Grandma, I was worked into the fabric of their lives with complete acceptance.

  Sometimes on Friday nights Thomas would have impromptu parties, and a bunch of people from his class would come over to hang out and trash-talk the latest PlayStation game. I was two grades behind Thomas, and no senior in their right mind hung out with sophomores, but because of who Thomas was—and in part because of who I was— nobody seemed to mind. I became a pet of sorts, but a very protected pet because everyone knew that to Thomas I could do no wrong and to insult me in any way was to wound Thomas deeply.

  For my part, I didn’t necessarily know which way was up or down on any given day, and Thomas was the savior who kept me afloat. I was vacant, waiting to be filled, and Thomas offered me a place to rest in the meantime.

  Thomas also offered me Brandon. Or offered me to Brandon. I never really understood which.

  The night I met Brandon, Thomas’s basement was full of people, and I sat curled in a corner of the couch, watching the action from a safe vantage point. Thomas didn’t usually invite this many people over, and we were draped on every available piece of furniture and flowing over onto the floor and even the basement steps, where two girls sat head to head, giggling.

  The topic of conversation among most of the groups seemed to be graduation in the spring and what everyone planned to do after they achieved their freedom. Coldplay was on in the background, and it gave the room a feeling of dreamy contemplation. I felt like I was caught in a scene from a movie—the moment of epiphany when the main character finally realizes whatever it is she needs to realize. The moment when everything makes sense at long last, and it is both poignant and bittersweet because it is altogether different from what was hoped for. I felt like I was on the verge of the moment that would make everything clear. But my mind was blank.

  “Bored?” Thomas asked me, sitting on the arm of the couch and offering me a bottle of Coke from the antique pop machine his parents kept in the basement.

  I shook my head but didn’t have anything witty to say.

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “What will you do after graduation?” I finally asked, wondering what life would be like when he was gone. It was hard for me to see past tomorrow, but I had the vague feeling that a day without Thomas in it was something I simply couldn’t take.

  He looked bemused when he answered, “I don’t know. Will you miss me if I go?”

  I rolled my eyes, and he brushed a strand of hair from my forehead as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Have you ever met Brandon?” he asked absently.

  When I looked up at Thomas, he was gazing across the room at a guy who frequented his house. I had never talked to Brandon before, but once he sat next to me on the couch while we watched The Empire Strikes Back—Thomas loved campy movies and owned every eighties classic from The Breakfast Club to Sixteen Candles, for which I teased him incessantly. He subjected us to corny classics, and we provided sarcastic feedback. It could get pretty ugly, but I remembered that Brandon hadn’t joined in the teasing that night and in fact seemed completely drawn in by the movie. I recalled wondering what his story was.

  Brandon was skinny like skeletons are skinny, but he had a striking face and big, brooding eyes. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily attracted to him, but I wasn’t repelled either, and there was something about his look that made me feel simultaneously sorry for him and a little afraid of him. His baggy clothes and direct gaze seemed a contradiction in terms, and I couldn’t deny that at the very least I found him intriguing.

  “He’s such a great guy,” Thomas said, searching my face. “I know he looks kind of goth, but he has an absolute heart of gold.” He paused. “He thinks you’re … well, he didn’t actually use the word cute, but I think that’s what he meant.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Boys had never really entered the picture before. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them; I was just preoccupied. And now it was impossible for me to imagine a boy coming into my life with any intention other than rescuing the damsel in distress. I had no desire to be the object of pity—or the object of any delusional hero fantasy, for that matter.r />
  But Thomas would think I was being too serious if I offered my psychological evaluation of Brandon’s motives. He was expecting a normal response from a normal girl. What exactly did normal girls say when they found out a boy was interested in them?

  “That’s nice,” I eventually said because it was the most normal thing I could think to say.

  “That’s nice?” Thomas laughed. “Julia, you can do better than that.” He gave me a significant look. “He’s interested in you. Would you at least like to meet him?”

  “Are you setting me up?” I asked, and my stomach did a flip-flop that I couldn’t interpret. “Do you think that’s appropriate?”

  Thomas’s eyebrows knit together as he regarded me. “What do you mean? Do you think that because your father died, you shouldn’t date? It’s not like you need his permission.”

  “I know that,” I said quickly. “But isn’t there a mourning period or something? It hasn’t even been four months.”

  Thomas pulled me into an affectionate headlock and whispered in my ear, “He’d want you to be happy. Stop moping.”

  “Okay,” I said softly.

  He let me go. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

  Turned out, Brandon wasn’t about to try to rescue me, and I got the impression early on that maybe I was the one who should be saving him instead.

  I don’t know if boyfriend is really the right word to describe what Brandon was to me, but he was the first boy I kissed, so I suppose that title would fit the bill in most people’s minds. I always imagined my first kiss would be this sweet, intimate memory that I would think back on fondly for the rest of my life, but kissing Brandon—or rather, having Brandon kiss me—on a gravel road half a mile from my house wasn’t exactly a memory I treasured.

  It should have been memorable. It was a gorgeous night. The black sky was filled with snow, and the flakes were falling so slow and heavy that you could single out one diminutive snowflake, watch it drift from above your head, and follow it until it landed in your outstretched hand. Six spires shone silver against the dark sleeve of my coat, and try as I could to find one that matched any other I had seen before, I failed. The moon was full and glimmering brilliantly off the snow already collected in the fields, and Brandon and I were wandering down the middle of a gravel road and talking earnestly. It was simply beautiful and would have been the stuff storybooks are made of if not for the topic of conversation.

  Brandon was a Chernobyl baby. Or at least that’s what he claimed. I knew for a fact that he was adopted from Russia, but I couldn’t help thinking that if his mother had been affected by the fallout at Chernobyl, there would have to be something obviously wrong with him—I half expected him to glow in the dark. But then again, maybe the scars were deeper than that. Could nuclear radiation cause emotional damage?

  I think because my parents were both gone, Brandon felt some sort of connection to me. Never mind the fact that his adoptive parents—the only parents he had known from two years old on—were the sweetest, kindest, dearest people you could ever meet. Brandon was hardly an orphan. But he was disturbed and lonely, and I couldn’t help imagining this skinny little baby in some orphanage being ignored twenty-three hours every day and how those solitary weeks and months and years must have shaped the almost man who now walked beside me. I don’t know if Brandon trusted anybody, even though he had been given no reason I could see to distrust anyone this side of the Atlantic.

  Brandon’s adoptive parents went to the same church we attended, and when Brandon turned sixteen, they allowed him to decide if he would continue to join them there or not. He opted for not. He said he had issues with a God who could let such awful things happen, but he loved talking about his faith or lack thereof.

  I fell into the role of defender even though I wasn’t that defensive in the first place—if given the option, I would join Brandon in the “not” category. But it worked for us, and it kept Brandon talking as long as I wanted him to. Our theological and philosophical debates were the heart and soul of our relationship—if the limping excuse for a friendship we had could be considered a relationship at all.

  That snowy night, on the gravel road in the darkness, I tried to convince him that God was like a father.

  “If God is a father,” Brandon said, stopping at an intersection and standing in the middle of the four corners, “then I’m not interested.”

  “I’m not interested if He’s anything but,” I countered. “Besides, you love your dad. What are you talking about?”

  “I guess it depends on your definition of father,” Brandon said, and he took a step back from me. I always wondered why he did that. One minute he’d be holding my hand and the next he’d let go and put distance between us.

  “I have a good definition,” I said with a smile.

  “I have a good definition too—clear good, not happy good.” Brandon started ticking off on his fingers. “Controlling, manipulative, selfish, uninterested, uninvolved—”

  “Brandon, seriously, your dad is none of those things.”

  “I’m not talking about Norm,” he said irritably.

  “Well, I imagine God is a father exactly like Norm.” I paused and then added more quietly, “Or like my dad.”

  “Look, Julia, if God was like Norm, He wouldn’t let all this horrible stuff happen. Do you know what goes on in this world?” Brandon was getting worked up, and our conversations never went nicely after he got too emotionally involved.

  “I don’t think it’s like He wants those things to happen …,” I said slowly, trying to gauge how he would respond. “It’s just that sin—”

  “Oh, don’t give me that!” Brandon exploded. “The universal struggle between good and evil,” he mocked in a sickening, singsong voice. “You buy into that Star Wars nonsense?”

  I didn’t feel like fighting with him, and even more importantly, I couldn’t form the thoughts to articulately dispute him. I wasn’t in the mood. Instead I arched my eyebrows at him and tried to smile playfully, tried to defuse his anger before it ruined the snowy night. “Well, if you don’t like to think of God as a father, He is apparently much, much more,” I offered. “What does interest you?”

  Brandon opened his mouth to spit a retort back at me but thought better of it and stood in silence for a minute. I watched him wrestle with himself as he tried to find his way back to less somber ground. Finally he looked up at me with a faint smile.

  “You said you’re not interested in God as a father. What does interest you?” I repeated.

  “Buddhism.”

  “What do you know about Buddhism?” I laughed.

  “I don’t know—it’s trendy. Wouldn’t it be cool to say, ‘I’m a Buddhist’?”

  I just stood there and giggled at him. Brandon had tried before to convince me he was an atheist, but I didn’t believe it any more than I believed he now wanted to convert to Buddhism.

  “What do you believe in, Julia?” he asked, and his voice was very serious.

  I had to think about that one. After a moment I said, “I believe there’s a God.”

  “And … ?”

  “And …” The smile slipped off my face. “I don’t know.”

  In one motion, Brandon closed the distance between us and kissed me on the mouth. At first he didn’t touch me, but then he tangled his hands in my hair and kissed me as if it would save his life. As if I had answered his question with much more than an “I don’t know.”

  I wasn’t sure how to kiss him back, and I didn’t particularly want to. I didn’t understand why we were kissing at all. What did Buddhism have to do with my first kiss? But I closed my eyes, which seemed proper, and waited for him to be done. At some point, though, I became aware of the smell of his clothes and the feel of his body pressed lightly against the length of mine. I actually felt his lips, warm and insistent, and it flooded me with something so deep and overwhelming that I started to tremble.

  When Brandon finally backed away, he left his hands aroun
d my head and studied my face for what felt like forever. Then he let go and turned around to walk back the way we came. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t either, and for an eighth of a mile or so we just walked in silence. I was a step or two behind him, and he never glanced back at me.

  Still trembling, I stared at his feet, clad in chunky, black army boots, and watched them ruin the clean, smooth surface of the powdery snow blanketing the road. It was hard to know what to think and even harder to know how to act. A part of me wanted to feel his hand in mine since we had just shared something that in sixteen years I had never shared with anyone else. Another part of me never wanted to see him again because I was inexplicably, uncontrollably embarrassed.

  Before Grandma’s farm came into view, Brandon stopped and searched in his pocket for a second. To my utter surprise, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Do you mind if I smoke one before I go home?” he asked, and his voice was as flat and normal as if he had never kissed me at all. “I can’t smoke in my car—my parents will smell it.”

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said and looked at him closely because it was as if we were strangers.

  “Just to relax,” he explained. “Not that I’m addicted or anything. Not all of the time.” He seemed different to me, aloof, and I wrapped my arms around myself in confusion.

  “Okay,” I managed.

  Brandon carefully lit the cigarette. Looking past me, he took a long, hard drag and then, with perfect deliberation, as if it were something we shared all the time, he held out the cigarette to me.

  I don’t know why I did it, but I reached for the stick and held it gingerly while he lit another one for himself.

  Without saying a word, he looked at me and raised it slowly to his lips as if to say, This is how it’s done.

  I did the same and put the cigarette in my mouth but didn’t do anything with it. A cloud of smoke encircled my head, and in spite of everything I had been told, it wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. I just held my breath.