“Very much intact. Agnes did a fine edit job. You should be pleased all around. Two covers. Not shabby at all, dove.”
“Wait, it’s on the cover of James too?”
“You haven’t seen them?”
“No, I’ve been kind of hiding from it. I don’t even go online anymore. I read hardcover books and watch TV shows from the nineties. I’m a downright mess, Susie.”
“You should stop that—the hiding from it part. I certainly approve of nineties TV and good old literature, but you should also pick up a few copies of the magazines. Keep them in your smile file and be proud. There’s a lot there to be proud of. A lot.” She slows the cutting of her steak. “Actually, that’s part of the reason I wanted to meet.”
“To tell me to start a smile file?”
“You and that cheek,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me. “Love that your sense of snark is still floating on the surface.”
“Sorry about that. I’m trying to curb the dickery these days.”
“Curb nothing. It’s what makes and keeps you interesting. I’m serious.”
“Thanks for saying that, but I’m still pushing sincerity to the front burner and letting all the snide shit cool off in the back. Anyway . . . why did you want to meet?”
Susie puts her fork down mid-bite and pushes the plate to the side. SDW loves her some grass-fed red meat, so this has to be important. She actually looks a little sheepish, and glances beside her before leaning in a little to the center of the table.
“I told you I read your story and that it woke me out of my sleep, but I was waiting to see if my gut was right before telling you what I did next. But it’s my gut and I can build houses on my gut.”
“Okay, so you’re the one who sent the piece to Agnes, not Nik?”
“No. Nik sent it to Agnes, from what I heard. I sent it to my two editor friends—book editors.” Her grin stretches. “And they both got back to me in under an hour, because they loved your story, loved you, and they want you. You have two of the Big Five battling for you!”
“Big . . . Fi . . .” My mouth is still full of half-chewed tomato and I haven’t swallowed since Susie started talking all hushed and wily.
“They want you. They want to offer you a book deal—a major one.” Susie nods and takes a sluggish sip from her sweating water glass. “I’d say a bidding war’s about to begin for your book, my dear.”
“Wha—are you—they want me to write—is this for real? Are you for real?”
“I am. It is. It’s all very real. And to add a little button to that grand news . . . you’re also looking at your new literary agent. If you’ll have me.”
“Susie . . . you can’t play around here. Are you being serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Oh, good Christ! This is . . .” I cover my face with the cloth napkin from my lap. “Dammit, Susie. I told you I didn’t want to cry in front of you, and here I am about to toss this napkin over my head and cow-bawl like it’s an Italian funeral.”
I hear Susie’s giggle, then sniffles. She reaches up and lowers the napkin to look at me and lightly squeezes my hand. We’re both wet, snotty messes, grinning like fools. She squeezes my hand again.
“It’s real and you deserve it,” she says. “So no more talk about disappointments and hiding away.”
“But . . . I mean, what book? If anything, Fatima should be writing a book.”
She breaks her hold to dab away some of her tears, leaving a complete Rorschach test on her white napkin. “Actually, it’s an extension of Fatima’s story . . . but from you. Shame, guilt, and absolution.”
“What do you mean, from me? Am I ghostwriting this thing?”
Susie’s face slides from elated to edgy, uneasy. I’ve seen the look before, but never on her. She doesn’t wear it well and I’m waiting for the ugly-ass left shoe to drop right on my head.
“What is it? Just say it. My back is broad these days.” I toss my napkin on the side of the table, right in my plate of mushy risotto. Whatever tears and smears I have will remain, and the waiter, the couple sitting beside us, and everyone in this low-light, cramped dinner box will just deal.
“I want you to know that I will always have your best interests at the top of my list, even if you decide to find another agent. You’re not a writer or a client—you’re a friend.”
“Just tell me, Susie. Really.”
“There was something there in what you wrote, behind the words, settled into the white spaces, which was so gut-deep that I could almost reach in and touch it. It was something wounded and sorrowful and it had nothing to do with Fatima’s tragic ordeal. Not directly. This thing, it was coming from you and it was asking to be heard. Begging to be heard, finally, and I was wide open to it. I was ready to grab anything I could to help lift this wretched heap from your back. It was from you, not her. And then you told me about your brothers, the accident. All the dots came together and I saw the shape of it. My God. You’re not even thirty, carrying that and for ten years. I could not begin to imagine . . . until I read your Fatima story.”
“That’s what this book is, digging up my dead brothers?”
“No. No, that’s not—Best, this book is about you. I told the one editor a little about you, and surviving the ice accident—”
“That’s not your story to tell. I told you that—the little piece of it—in confidence, when I was freaking and basically flattened out in that crazy hotel room. Why would you tell some random editor any of that?”
“First, she’s not random. She’s a friend, like you, and I’ve known her for close to twenty years. We grew up together in this industry. I trust her. You can trust her too. And you can trust me. I want you to get it off your chest, Best. You need to, honey. This book is how you can do it. It’s creating life out of death.”
My pause is so long, just me looking down into my lap. I know Susie’s hanging on the ends of my loud, heavy breath. When I do look up, she’s practically tilted, sloped toward my side of the table. “So, how would it go—just me exposed?”
“It’s a memoir in essays. It goes how you want it go or it doesn’t go at all.”
Susie’s expression shifts again; no longer are her eyes asking for pardon. The lull is back, filling in every inch of her face. I do trust her, but I’m still trembling in my seat. The rush of all of it . . . I can’t think straight. Everything’s coming at me lopsided. Although I’ve wanted this from almost the first day, I can’t say I thought it would ever come true.
“Susie, before anything can happen, before even thinking about the words next steps, I need to talk to my dad. My parents—I can’t peel things open on them. That’s reckless.”
“Of course. Of course, you talk to them.” She sits back in her chair at last. “You take a couple of days with this and get back to me. Just know that I’m on your side, no matter what, Best. I’m always going to be on your side.” Susie drains the bottle of sparking water into her glass and pounds the thing.
I barely get around the corner when it all goes to pieces. My head is throbbing or maybe that’s my heart lodged behind my eyes. I’m sobbing and my breath is choppy and I can feel the puke crawling up the back of my throat. I crumble where I stand, leaned up against the bus shelter, my bag a tiny mound at my feet. My iPhone is out and in my hand and before I realize it, I’m tapping out letters.
Meet me tonight. Please. Shit is falling apart. My place.
It’s sent and my phone is dialing home without a break. I need to get my father’s two cents on this.
“Mum, hi. Is Dad awake? . . . What—when? Okay, okay. I’m coming.” I jump into a sprint, the phone pressed to my ear. “I’m coming. Just wait for me. Tell him to wait. Please. Just tell him, I’m on my way!”
CHAPTER 28
Packing up my dad’s office, his room, his side of the house is hard. I don’t know where to start and my mother is no help. I can’t expect her to be. There is no try-to-be-strong setting on her. Not this time. She was a wreck on th
e phone, a wreck when I finally got to the hospital, a wreck when they asked to move his body out of the room—he had been in there, a white sheet up to his chin, for more hours than what’s normally allowed. She told them they needed to wait until I got there. I missed his last breath, but I still must be allowed to see him and say good-bye. That’s what she told them and what she told me more than twice. It was awful seeing her like that, unglued and heartbroken. She prayed and cried and prayed and cried. It was endless and unbearable and sad.
They showed me to a dim room just outside of the morgue. I kissed both his cheeks and just above his cold brow too. I leaned into his stillness, drowning out all the noises around us—the low whirl from the vents, the hiss from the overhead lights, my mother’s gurgles and moans—and I told him plainly what he already knew, that I love him. I left it at that. I was saying good-bye to his body, not his being. There were no tears from me this time. The nurses said I was in shock. But I know what that is: I’ve felt shock before and this wasn’t that.
I have been taking longer and longer breaks while trying to go through the things here in his office. Sometimes I’ll feel my nose running and taste the salt on my lips. That’s when I take a break, walk outside, sit on the front steps. Tyson thinks it’s too soon to be doing this, but what else am I supposed to do? The funeral was prearranged years ago. After my brothers died, my parents put their own home-going plans in writing and paid for all of it in full. Their plots are reserved, right next to Benjamin and Bryant.
His service is later this afternoon. I’ve been showered and dressed since five o’clock this morning, but still haven’t figured out what I’m going to say. My father did the eulogy for his sons. I don’t know how, but he did. I half-expect to find a folder in here with his own eulogy already written out, by him. The Gazette will run something—that’s them, though, their take on his life as a tireless crime reporter. Mine has to be different. It has to come from my foggy brain and cracked heart.
I think it’s time for another break.
She’s probably resting again. The pills definitely help. I move quietly anyway. As I reach the door, there’s a knock—a soft one. Another flower delivery, I’m sure. The flowers and plants and food baskets being sent here, it’s endless. I brush back the wetness and stray curls pressed against my cheek and ease the red door open. I cringe as it squeaks.
And there he is, filling in my doorway.
“Hey,” Grant says.
“Hey . . .”
We stare at each for what feels like a week before I pop the bubble. “What are you . . . how did—”
“Tyson told me.” He smiles. “I got your messages. I was coming to you. But when I got there you were gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t. It’s okay. I’m sorry about your dad.”
I put my index finger to my mouth—as if my mother can hear anything beyond her own anguish—and motion to the front steps. Grant follows, but doesn’t sit down. He’s waiting for me. He stretches out his open palm. I do my part and give him a soft five. He pulls me close and I fall into him, burying my face into his chest, digging my fingers into the back of his black suit jacket. I inhale him, his familiar fragrance, and listen as his heart pounds against my temple.
“Can’t believe you came.” I speak directly to his shirt pocket because there’s no way I’m looking up at him, at his face, into his eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I? A million times better, right?” Grant nestles me deeper into his open jacket and wraps his arms tight around my whole body. He kisses the very top of my head. “Anyway, someone’s got to help you off that wobbly piece of wood. Think I got that job on lock.”
I laugh, but it comes out like an uneven exhale. He kisses my head again, squeezes me.
“When my mother died and everybody tried to talk to me, tell me things, none of it made sense. None of it mattered. The grief, it was constant, bottomless. She was gone. That’s all I knew. And I missed her. People kept telling me and G that it was instant, that she felt nothing. But that didn’t change anything. She was still gone and we were supposed to keep going forward without her? That sounded as crazy as telling me that the earth was actually flat after all.” Grant pulled me in tighter under his chin. “I still can’t believe that she’s gone. I think about her every day. Literally, every day, at least once. But it’s mostly the golden parts, you know? Like how her face looked when she was concentrating on a sculpture. Focused and beautiful. Or how she would put ketchup on everything—a couple times we busted her taking nibbles of it straight raw from a spoon. I think about that and she’s with me again, in all the ways she’d want to be—all good things. I know that this, everything I’m saying right now, doesn’t even sound like any language you understand, but it will. It will. And one day it stops being so incredibly sad. You wake up and the world looks like it did before, the color comes back to things.”
I sink into him and breathe him in once more. “Thank you . . . for flying here, for being here and holding me up.” The bones in my back come together in time and I can finally look Grant in the eye. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
“C’mon. You’ve been doing it, for years, Best. I just wanna be with you while you do, hold your hand from here on.”
And like that, it came, my whole bitter grief, cracking through me like rolling thunder, burning a stinging path up my chest, my throat, my mouth, until I could do nothing but let it come, and then let it go.
Looking out at the smallish crowd in this oversized church, I recognize some faces: my mother’s chapel sisters, my father’s old newspaper comrades, a few neighbors from the old house. The others are starting to blur together, though, like one broad brushstroke of black and gray. I turn my focus to the right. The faces sharpen again; clarity. I spot Aunt Lucille, my mother’s sister-in-law from Ottawa. She’s sitting in the exact same seat, the same pew as ten years ago, only this time she’s with just one of her grown sons, Kenrick, who looks older now, haggard and balding. Kenrick meets my eyes and sends a deep nod—the kind that speaks whole sentences. I return one, trying to fill it with a similar sentiment. In front of Kenrick and his weeping mother is my weeping mother, sitting next to Grant. His arm is stretched along the top of the pew and my mother is resting back on it, resting back on him. He’s saying something to her, quiet near her ear, and it looks like it’s helping to steady the jerking in her shoulders.
Next to Grant is Tyson, followed by Lindee and New Mark, Kendra and Flavio, and right behind them, a mass of curly, auburn hair. Susie. She’s here. They’re all really here with me, for me.
I clear my throat and it echoes through the microphone. “Eulogies are supposed to be . . . I don’t really know. This is the first one I’ve had to do. I don’t know what they’re supposed to be. But I think I’m already failing at it. More like flailing and trying not to curse or something rude like that.” Muffled chuckles rise in a low wave. I think the pastor just laughed too. “I figured writing it down would help, but every time I started something, I was crossing it out before I could finish the sentence. Writers get used to staring at a blank page for a good chunk of the day, a good chunk of their careers, but this time I don’t think there are any words to fill the space that my father has left. So I think it’s better if I use some words that have already been perfectly strung together by someone else. There’s a poem I’d like to share. It’s by Derek Walcott, one of my father’s permanent favorites.”
I look at my mother. Her head is bobbing, but she stops long enough to smile right at me. “Dad knew this poem by heart and could recite it with such feeling and knowing, you’d think he cowrote the thing. The first time he read it aloud was at a small memorial for my brothers, Benjamin and Bryant, a few years ago. A little while after—okay, it was more like months later—I told my father that the poem was beautiful, but that the emotion behind it was about something else, it was about someone else, someone trying to mend a broken heart, trying to recover from the loss of a love. Dad didn
’t wait long before saying, ‘That’s exactly me. I’m exactly that someone else.’ Of course, I left it alone. It’s his favorite poem. Why try to force my analysis on him? But early this morning while trying to comb through some of my father’s things in his dusty office, wrestling with those awful filing cabinets, that’s when it clicked. And I get it now. Because now I’m exactly that someone else too.”
I don’t have what it takes to scan the room and connect with any of the faces watching me. I can only glance to my right at Grant. He’s holding my mother close. Her body is folding from the middle, and her head leans all the way over, resting on the stable wall of him. I push back from leaning on the lectern and take a step to the side of it. I need to feel solid beneath my own feet. When I close my eyes, I see my father sitting in front of the TV, right up against it. He’s fiddling with it, as he liked to do. But it’s how he’s sitting—kneeled, his scraggily legs tucked under him, resting his weight on his heels. It’s how he used to sit when we were all younger, when were all untroubled and free. The picture of him warms me, and without taking another breath, I begin:
“The poem by Derek Walcott, it’s called ‘Love After Love,’ and I want to dedicate it to one of my greatest loves, my mum.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
The Thunder Beneath Us Page 29