by Will Walton
“Not since I gave birth,” Mother said.
“And how long ago,” I asked, to prove that Mother and I were neither that old, “was that?”
“Years,” Mother answered, tiredly. “How many years, Saint Francis? I can’t …” But Mother never forgot before.
“Six months,” Saint Francis answered. “She is only six months old. A whole life ahead of her. Just tell me when, sweetheart … You’ve done only good here, brought nothing but goodness and light and love into this world.”
“And when I go, it doesn’t go?” she asked.
“Oh, heavens no,” Saint Francis said.
(I hissed at him. He was making it happen.)
“And it is true about the feast?” Mother asked. “And I can eat meat?”
“Yes, it is true.”
“And true about my loved ones holding me? Holding more than just the memory of me?”
“Yes …”
“Because you know, just like I know, that memory is fallible. And there is something else, something after?”
“Well, obviously,” Saint Francis said.
“And it is true we reconnect in time?”
“You cannot reconnect when you have never been apart.”
“I can, I can,” Mother said.
And I said, “Mother, you can,” and it was horrible, and it was hard, and I wept—I am still weeping.
I am still weeping, even as the boy comes up and crouches down next to Mother.
Saint Francis is holding me, keeping me still. I am invisible in St. Francis’s arms. “Ready now?” Saint Francis asks me. “I can let you go.”
“I can, I can,” I weep, and am let go, and am crying as I circle the body of my mother and investigate—Can you hear me?
“It is more than hearing,” Saint Francis says.
But I am not ears right now, not hearing. I need to be left alone. And he obliges me—he’s gone.
The boy waits until I am done checking on Mother. Then he scoops me up.
Months passed before I could run. When the summer hit, I was running every day.
I put on gym shorts and sometimes no shirt and hit the road. One morning Mom woke up and said, “I feel like singing.” And so she went to church. She went with Gia. I didn’t go, and Luca stayed with me, thinking we’d give them both some time.
Gia called after church and said they were staying for Sunday school, but could Luca pick up something for lunch. He left to go grab us all something and I stayed home:
It comes out of nowhere, except that I am reading beside the window. I put the book down. It hits me.
I miss you. I wish you were here.
I let it hit me, and it hits me hard.
I’m not scared of the feeling. It has shown up, and I am facing it. I let everything happen, and I am facing it.
I let everything happen as it’s supposed to.
I lean forward and brace my head against the windowsill. It is cool against my brow line.
Like a hand testing for fever.
A thing a parent does.
A reminder: I’m here, I’m here.
At the corner of the sill, the thin fold where shadow meets wall
I whisper—
I know you are. I can feel you. I put on gym shorts. I put on “Afterlife.” I go running to it, nonstop. For a long time, I go—
I think, a high (a runner’s).
I think, Hi!
I think, Heaven.
I don’t turn around. If I don’t turn around, if I don’t see them (if I don’t not see them), then how will I know they’re not (and even if I did, and didn’t see them) there.
Pal, Mom, Luca, Gia, Ms. Poss.
Even Sia, the singer, because why not? Even Sia, the cat. Even her mother cat. Even Anne, Sylvia, John Berryman,
Allen G., and the others.
Even if they all file in toward the back
of the “pack,”
of the “heap,”
of the “family,”
my family
ongoing,
they’re
there,
there,
there.
Turn the page for a look at Will Walton’s heart-warming debut, Anything Could Happen!
Let me tell you about the first time I knew for sure I was in love with Matt Gooby.
We were in church. Reverend Greene was winding down her annual September 11th sermon, saying, “Hold fast to that which is good,” her blond bouffant wobbling as she leaned toward the congregation with a pleading sincerity. “Our eternal home,” she said, “is really only just half a step away from any of us. And the moment when it comes time to take that half step—we can’t know when, obviously—but chances are it might not be pretty. Chances are the timing won’t feel right. And, folks”—I loved that she addressed us all like that—“I’m just trying to be straight with you, but the time to hold fast to that which is good is now. It wasn’t yesterday. It’s not nine years from now. It’s not when we retire. Or when we graduate. It is now. That which is good is now.”
Everyone was dead quiet then. Just a few creaks coming up from the saggy wooden pews. I tried not to look around because I got the sense that maybe some people were crying.
“So take the hand of the person next to you.” Reverend Greene smiled. “And grip down. Go on, grip down on them hard—it won’t hurt ’em!”
A couple of chuckles throughout the sanctuary, the tension slightly cut. Mom, on my right, grabbed my hand so hard my knuckles shot off a popping sound. Then she leaned in close and whispered, “I love you so much, my Tretch.” When she pulled back there was some wet left on my face, and I just thought, Good grief, Mom, don’t cry, and shrugged my shoulder to my cheek to brush it off, planning to make a face at Matt or roll my eyes while I did. Something to show him that I was, you know, over it.
But when I glanced over at him I saw that his eyes were shut so tight, like he was determined not to open them. And his left hand was gripping the edge of the pew so hard. Hold fast, I thought, and then, Hold fast because life is fast, which seemed like a logical conclusion.
That’s when he slid his right hand along the edge of the seat, found mine, and squeezed. It sent this gentle buzzing feeling right up the back of my neck, and with it not a complete thought yet, but the essence of a thought, the kind that gets lost between bigger, louder thoughts. The kind of thought that’s barely louder than a feeling itself.
His thumb slid into the pocket of my hand. Or maybe it clamped down over my throat, square over the Adam’s apple. Or maybe it plunged straight into my chest. I don’t know. Reverend Greene was inviting us now to close our eyes for a moment and meditate, and like that was the cue, Mom’s hand let go, and all around me was the dull sound of hands dropping or being dropped.
Matt’s hand did not let go.
I closed my eyes. I felt everyone else on one side of me—my mom, my dad, and my brother. And on the other side—Matt, whose smile with the gap in it made me want to hug not just him but his entire world close to me, who somehow in that moment made me believe that bringing both his and my worlds together could happen, like there wouldn’t be any struggle involved.
You’re in love, Tretch—the thought came to me as Reverend Greene called the meditation to an end, saying, “Oh Lord God, please help us to hold fast to that which is good—which is everything—in this lifetime.” When she said, “Amen,” I let go of his hand. Physically, I mean, I let go of his hand.
The rest of me held on.
Now it’s over three months later, nearing the end of December.
I’m still holding. On to what, I’m not entirely sure.
Today in school, during last-period math, a note gets passed around.
It says Tretch Farm + Matt Gooby inside a little heart.
Matt and I just kind of shrug it off. The joke is old. It doesn’t really matter to us, not even when we hear snickering, not even when
Mrs. Cook intercepts the note from Spencer Finch’s clenched hand at the front of the classroom.
Mrs. Cook asks me to stay behind after class. She doesn’t ask Matt because, like most everyone, she assumes Matt is gay because he has two gay dads. (He isn’t.) She also believes I’m some hero for being his friend, I think.
“Now, Tretch,” she says. She has on these weird puffed sleeves under a pair of corduroy overalls. “I know how something like this must feel.” She scratches a red spot on her arm. “But I think this kind of joking has gone on long enough.”
You’re right, I think. It has.
“You’re a good kid who doesn’t deserve to have these kind of”—she moves the scratching to her chin—“accusations being hurled at you.” She sends spit flying with her enunciation of “accusations,” and I’m hit.
“I know it must upset you,” she says.
Well, not that badly, I think, wiping my face.
“And it must upset your parents.”
It would, I guess, if they knew.
“So I’d be willing to get to the bottom of this if you wanted.” She holds up the note and I recognize the handwriting immediately. There’s no need to get to the bottom of anything.
“Bobby Handel,” I say. “That’s Bobby Handel’s handwriting.”
Mrs. Cook’s eyes get big. Her nostrils flare.
“But don’t say anything,” I plead. “Please.”
“But, Tretch, I want to—”
“I know you want to help, Mrs. Cook. But, honestly, Bobby Handel’s dad and my dad—”
“Are business partners. I know.” She nods sympathetically.
“Right,” I say. “So I just try to keep the peace.”
“But, Tretch, the school has a zero tolerance policy for bullying.”
“I know, I know.” I hold up my hand. “But it’s not really bullying, Mrs. Cook. You know?”
Mrs. Cook puffs out her cheeks, mimicking her sleeves. Then she sighs. “I guess, if you say so.”
“Plus,” I say, “it’s winter break now. Nobody’s even gonna remember this little note fiasco when we get back.”
She nods, then smiles. “Well, tell your family I said have a merry Christmas, okay?”
“Sure thing, Mrs. Cook.”
“Oh, and your grandparents, too!”
“Oh, I will.” I stand up and pull the desk into place.
“Will you be seeing them over break? Your grandparents?”
I turn around again and force a big smile. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be sure to tell ’em for ya.” My backpack rests lightly against my shoulder, all my textbooks stowed in my locker for the break. I give Mrs. Cook a final wave, and I am outta there.
Matt is waiting on me in the hallway when I emerge. I pretend not to see and walk right into him, nudging him against the water fountain.
“Whoops, sorry,” I say, pressing a little closer before pulling away. Just because, in that moment, I can.
“Hey, hey, what’s the big idea?” He lands me a flat tire on the back of my sneaker, so I have to stop and readjust. “What’d the Cookster say? She ask you about the note?”
“Yeah. She wanted to do something about it. I told her no harm, no foul.”
“Bobby Handel write it?”
“Yessir.”
Matt cracks a smile. “Tretch Farm,” he says. “Sticking up for bullies since the playground days.”
“Like a champ.” I pump my fist in the air. We’re walking down the hallway toward the exit, past rusted lockers and piles of discarded papers. “Matt, in approximately nine steps we will be freed from this place for an entire winter break. How does that make you feel?”
“It makes me feel—” He takes one giant step forward and kneels in a runner’s pose. “Pyow!” He lights off in a dead sprint, barreling through the double doors of Warmouth High. As soon as he’s down the front steps, he turns around and gives the building the middle finger. Two middle fingers, actually.
“Matt!” I say.
“School’s out, baby!” he cries.
Mom always says, when she hears someone talking smack about the Goobys or about gay marriage being legalized and stuff, “What people do in the privacy of their own home doesn’t bother me.” But talking about the Goobys still makes her kind of uneasy, I can tell. That’s how I’ve been Matt Gooby’s best friend for a year and a half now without ever going over to his house.
As if staying away from Matt’s dads could stop me from being who I am.
I mean, it’s a little too late for that.
A lot of the time, I try to picture the worst thing that could happen, if the word got out about me. Like the whole town of Warmouth exploding in a bright red fiery flame caused by rioting civilians who’ve finally discovered my big gay secret. Or my family might implode—like a submarine when it gets too deep and the pressure’s too high.
I imagine telling them. I play the scene out in my mind. We’ll be in our living room, hardwood with the Chinese-print throw rug, the record player, the TV, and the coffee table (minus the glass vase I knocked over that time I was practicing my dance moves). Mom and Dad will be there, and Joe, too.
“Mom and Dad, I am—” I will say to them.
Then I’ll flake out. “—so hungry. Is there anything to eat?”
“Sure, Tretch. Check the fridge. I just bought some turkey.” Mom will be wearing her turtleneck, the color of darkened Pepto-Bismol, Dad his hunting jacket. I will look at its camo print and hear the sound of duck calls in my ear and feel guilty. Mom will be sitting on the couch, Dad in his easy chair. I won’t focus in on either of them, but instead on the blank spot on the coffee table where the glass vase once sat. Mom’s never noticed it missing. Dad neither. I’ve always thought that was weird.
“Tretch, is something wrong?” Mom will ask.
“Yes,” I’ll say. “There’s something I’m not telling you.”
“What, Tretch?” Dad will lean forward in his seat. “What is it?”
“I practice dance moves when you guys leave the house. I choreograph dances as a hobby.”
“Oh,” Dad will say. “So that’s all that thumping I hear coming from your room sometimes.”
“Once when I was practicing I knocked over the vase that used to sit right there on the coffee table.”
“Oh.” Mom will shrug. “We’ve noticed that was gone for a while.”
“We just assumed you or Joe got hard up for cash and sold the thing on eBay.” Dad will chuckle. “It didn’t mean a thing anyway, just a cheap wedding present.”
“I’m gay,” I’ll say.
They’ll stare blankly. And then I’ll hear a pop! And another. The walls will shake and then stop, and I’ll realize—we’re in the submarine, and the pressure has gotten too great. The walls are going to cave in and crush us. We are going to die. “What’s happening?” Joe cries. A window breaks: one, two, then three. “Save yourselves!” I shout to Mom and Dad and Joe, and they obey, jumping out the windows as the walls come straight at me.
Yes, I’ll think dramatically, it’s better this way.
But, truthfully, it wouldn’t happen like that.
Nope.
Truthfully, Mom, Dad, and Joe would willingly go down with me. They would go down with me any day. No matter what I do, or say, or whatever person I could be, or might be, or am. That’s what makes it so hard to tell them. That they’ll suffer it all for me. The sideways glances at church, at the grocery store and PTA meetings, the shoves in the locker room (“What you looking at, faggot?”), the insults that somehow fly right past me but I fear would peg each of them smack in the gut. They would quietly break friendships with everyone in town who spoke gay slurs, who were anti-gay, anti-Gooby. They might stop church altogether. They might feel the need to move. They would suffer it all and never breathe a complaint.
Because they love me.
“What you thinking about, Tretch?” Mom will ask me.
And I’ll say, “Nothing, Mom.”
Mean
while, I feel like all my thoughts are shooting out from my eye sockets like slides on a projector screen: Matt haloed by the sun coming in through our English class window; Matt’s dads dropping him off at school, and Matt introducing me; Matt reaching for my hand that day in church and keeping it there; Matt getting into the shower after gym class; Matt lying in my bed as I do homework at my desk, my heart feeling so full, sometimes so full I can’t sleep at night, sometimes so full it aches, like I’m being stepped on.
She can see them all.
Or maybe she can’t.
I mean, if it’s not all that obvious to Matt, then maybe it’s not all that obvious to anyone.
This book was written in memory of three people: my Nana (1944–2015), my Pop (1942–2013), and my Granddad (1932–2015).
To my aunts and uncles and cousins, to my brother and sister, to my Mom and Dad—I love y’all so much. I think that’s what drives me to write at all.
To David Levithan for your eyes, ears, heart—and for your fearless devotion to this book.
To Sabrina Orah Mark for shining a light in a dark tunnel.
To Peter Knapp for your patience, counsel, and good faith.
To Baily Crawford for your vision.
To Rachel Watkins and Sarah Baline and Caitlin Baker and Johanna Albrecht and Caleb Zane Huett and everyone at the Commonplace: Conversations with Poets and Other People podcast.
To Erin Lovett, of Four Eyes, for writing the song “St. Francis Loves All the Animals.”
To Sarah Cossart for seeing me—no, finding me—when I was 17.
To my cat Olive, who runs into the bedroom every morning and jumps onto my lap to wake me up.
To Tyler Goodson for every day.
To my Grandma, who gave me an important book of poetry when I graduated from high school. She left a note on the inside: “Don’t ever forget those who love you.”
I won’t forget, Grandma—I love you.
Thank you.
Will Walton is a bookselling, pop music fanatic who grew up on a farm. He’s a graduate of the University of Georgia, and currently lives in Athens, Georgia. His first novel, Anything Could Happen, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.