Close Encounters

by Jen Michalski

  “What are those?” She asked, pointing.

  “I’ve been building a bridge,” he explained, his hands in his pockets. Ava noted the carved firmness of his frame, the muscles in his forearm. “I’ve always been interested in them.”

  “How will it look when it’s done?” She asked.

  “Come out in a few days and I’ll show you.” He smiled. “There’s a dry, deep creek bed about a quarter mile behind our house. I’ve been building a bridge to go over it.”

  “Cool,” Ava answered. Inside he took some cokes from the fridge and a box of cookies from the cabinet. She followed him upstairs to the attic room, where miniature models of different bridges lay strewn about. “God, Gavin, I had no idea you were so talented.”

  “Let’s keep it our secret.” He pulled two chairs up to an old drafting table. “So is there anything you’ve been having trouble with?”

  “No, not really. It makes so much more sense now.” Ava traced her finger on the cool wood. “So do you have sketchbooks and stuff?”

  “Some. They’re not very interesting. They’re not like a diary or something.”

  “But they’re your diaries,” she poked.

  “You really want to see them?” He looked at her. Gavin had the eyes of a woman—soft brown pools that settled on Ava like a warm compress. He pulled out a box from under his bed and handed her the drafting book on top. She flipped through the pages of strict lines and angles and equations and saw a vulnerability in Gavin’s mind as soft as if his heart were beating, pulpy, in her hand. He dreamt passionately of numbers, of solutions, of bridging things together. She handed the book back to Gavin and they sat quietly for a few minutes. Gavin stood up suddenly to the voice of an older woman, calling him, presumably his mother.

  “Do you mind staying here for a minute?” Gavin asked Ava

  “I can just leave.” Ava stood up. “It’s getting late.”

  She followed him down the darkened staircase. The soft glow of the living room light filtered into the kitchen, along with the sounds of someone moaning softly. Gavin took her lightly by the elbow and guided her to the door.

  “Can you find your way around front OK?” He asked. She nodded, and they parted, the bloated silence pierced by the cool, dark evening air. Outside by her car she watched the window, following vague shapes of shadows stretch and compress along the wall behind it. We need you down here. From the distance, she could see the wooden triangles Gavin had erected in the back yard, solitary, massive forms waiting to unite. Ava plucked out one of her shiny, hoop earrings and dropped it in the grass beside her car. Then, she drove home.

  That night she dreamed of bridges, soft pink structures filled with tendrils that expanded and recessed, pulsating. For a brief moment the structure was one organism before separating into two, hardening into lines and shapes and firm, unrelenting materials, back to ideas and longings in minds and hearts.

  When Ava returned a few afternoons later, Gavin’s truck was not at the house, although an older Volvo station wagon, presumably his mother’s, was. She parked on the shoulder and pondered whether to wait. A curtain flickered in the front window, and before Ava could turn the key in the ignition, Gavin’s mother appeared on the porch, a hesitant wave from her hand.

  “Hi, are you looking for Gavin?” His mother asked as they met in the middle. Freckled hands and ankles poked out from her large, worn denim shirt, possibly Gavin’s or her husband’s, and an equally faded pair of jeans. Her auburn hair fell in strands outside of a loose ponytail. “I’m Gavin’s mother. Sarah. I’m sorry we didn’t get introduced the other night. Teenagers can be so…absent minded.”

  “I’m Ava.” She extended her hand. “Gavin’s tutoring me in physics.”

  “He is? He never told me.” Sarah looked surprised, taking a moment to ponder the full spectrum of his omissions. “Well, Gavin loves physics. Why don’t you come in, Ava? He should be home from work soon. I just made some popcorn for us.”

  “Umm… I just dropped by…because I think I lost an earring here the other night.”

  Well, why don’t you come in, Ava?” Sarah touched Ava’s elbow. She was as warm and welcoming as Gavin had been cold and aloof. “Gavin can look when he gets home. It’ll be nice for us to have company.”

  Ava followed Sarah into the house through the front. The living room was bright and sunny, and she wondered why Gavin didn’t want her entering this way, until she saw her, the emaciated girl in the wheelchair by the fireplace. She was about Ava and Gavin’s age, maybe slightly older. Her eyes followed Ava as she took a seat on the sofa, but did not speak.

  “Ava, this is Gavin’s sister, Leslie. Leslie, this is Gavin’s friend Ava.”

  “Hi,” Ava smiled weakly from her seat. Leslie blinked, the expression on her face unchanging, her body limp, animated by sporadic movements of her arms. Gavin’s mother, returning from the kitchen with a tray of sodas and popcorn.

  “Leslie loves popcorn,” Gavin’s mother explained, setting up Leslie’s drink and bowl on a small table by the wheelchair. “So are you and Gavin in classes together, Ava?”

  “Most,” Ava answered, taking a sip of her soda. “He’s one of the smarter boys.”

  “Yes, we’ve never had to worry about Gavin’s grades, have we, Leslie?” Gavin’s mother flexed a straw into Leslie’s soda can and held it to her lips until Leslie slowly grasped the can on her own. “It’s his life we never hear about. Ever since we moved here from California…I thought it’d be better for us, for Leslie. I just hope Gavin’s happy.”

  “He’s a nice guy,” Ava answered vaguely.

  “I’m glad he has a friend like you, Ava,” Sarah smiled, before turning her attention to her daughter, dabbing a little coke from the corner of her chin. “We ask a lot of him here, so please make sure he has fun sometimes.”

  Ava heard the shot of combustion that was Gavin’s truck in the driveway and stood up involuntarily, her heart racing. When he appeared at the front door she sat down again, knees wavering.

  “Ava, what are you doing here?” Gavin asked, his body tense. He looked at his mother.

  “Gavin, where are your manners?” Sarah turned away from Leslie. “Ava was just visiting us.”

  Gavin went into the kitchen without responding.

  “He never acts like this.” Sarah shook her head, standing up and following. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  Alone with Leslie, Ava wondered what she should do. She stood up and took a step toward her, wondering whether Leslie she would signal something one way or another. Ava sat down near her and tentatively picked up a piece of popcorn, waiting for some indication. When Leslie turned her head slightly toward Ava, garbled some sort of request, she gingerly pushed a piece onto her tongue as Leslie moved her arm to help guide it in.

  “I’m sorry.” Ava stood up, her cheeks flushed, as Gavin and his mother suddenly re-entered the room. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to look for my earring outside. I remember having it when I left…so maybe it fell in the grass or something.”

  “I’ll help you.” Gavin stood by the door. Outside she tried to casually make her way to the area in which she had secretly deposited it.

  “Gavin, I didn’t mean to come inside,” Ava apologized as he bent over and scanned the grass. “Your mother was on the porch, and…”

  “You can’t tell anyone about Leslie,” he warned. “Not a word.”

  “I wouldn’t say anything, Gavin.”

  “Of course you would,” he accused. “I don’t need it, Ava. We don’t need it. We just want to be left alone.” “Your mother doesn’t think so.”

  “Well, I want to be left alone.” He shook his head. He turned from where he was crouched with an object, holding it out to Ava.

  “I’m sorry,” Ava said, looking at the hoop now in her palm.

  “You don’t understand, Ava,” he said. “You have no idea.”

  “Can I…see the bridge?” she asked. He looked at her for a moment be
fore walking toward the back of the house. Ava decided it was an invitation and followed. They walked through into a thick stretch of woods, Ava a few paces behind Gavin, the ground becoming rockier and covered with exposed roots. Eventually they came to a clearing where an ordinary, wooden bridge, the honey blond boards gleaming against the grey, dusty soil and rocks. Ava’s first instinct was to run on it, to feel the creaky but firm planks under her feet, but Gavin grabbed her arm as she attempted to pass him.

  “No, don’t,” he warned. “It’s not stable. The joists underneath—I didn’t make them wide enough. The whole thing will probably collapse.”

  “Oh,” she answered, tepidly making her way to the edge. About twenty feet below the rivet of a dried-up stream snaked through, full of dull rocks jutting out of the ground like impacted teeth. “Gavin…I don’t mean…what happened to Leslie?”

  “She was in a car accident, she and my Dad.” Gavin arched and slung a palm-sized rock across the gap. “She was a freshman in college—this was a couple of years ago. Our Dad went to pick her up for winter break. On the way home a car came over the median and hit them. Our Dad died, and Leslie, well, you saw her.”

  “Do…will she ever get better?”

  “She’s dead,” Gavin answered, scavenging for another rock. “She’s gone. My sister is gone. And my Mom, she acts like nothing is freaking wrong with her, that it’s OK that she’s dead in that freaking chair.”

  “Is that why you moved here? Because of Leslie?”

  “Yeah, so Mom can live in denial. Or something.” Gavin sat at the edge of the ravine, lightly kicking at one of the two by fours comprising the underside of the bridge. “I got accepted into MIT, you know, but I’m considering just going to state and staying here so I can help my mom out with Leslie.”

  “I’m sure your mom can get help,” Ava offered. “I mean, home nursing and stuff.”

  “I know. I just don’t want to abandon them, go have my own life while they’re here stuck, you know?”

  “I’m sorry, Gavin.” She sat beside Gavin on the ledge and watched a pebble, dislodged by her shoe, plunge and ricochet off the rocks below.

  “Why do you think the river dried up?” She asked after awhile.

  “Don’t know.” He shrugged. “Why does anything happen?”

  They flicked rocks over the edge in silence. Ava thought of Leslie, back in the house, her bowl of popcorn untouched until someone decided to help feed her, and was overwhelmed by tears. Gavin put his arm around her awkwardly, and Ava kissed the spot where his long, ropy neck met this arched shoulder before standing up and hurrying back.

  As Gavin passed, Ava ducked her head in her locker, looking for a book she already had placed in her backpack. She thought of him—or Leslie—constantly, yet at school, where he had begun to slowly make eye contact with her and talk to her between classes, she could not stand to see him. The weight in her throat, her stomach, when she caught a glimpse of him sitting at his desk, eating lunch on the bleachers, grew heavier and heavier the more she avoided him. Lenny and the rest of varsity still teased him and, on the surface, things were as they had always been. Ava began shopping for prom dresses. She was carrying an A in physics. Her annual pool party was coming up next weekend. She did not know why she felt so unhappy.

  “Are you worried about the final?” Gavin asked her during their Tuesday session. “I could come over an extra day or two if you needed. It’d be nice to study with someone.”

  “Um, yeah, I might.” Ava nodded, standing up. “Would you like some more coke?”

  “No thanks,” he shook his head, fumbling around in his pockets and pulling out a pair of earrings. “Listen, I thought you might like these. They really go with your eyes, I think.”

  “Wow, Gavin. They’re beautiful.” Ava examined the little peridot gemstones.

  “They’re Leslie’s. Well, they were going to be. I had gotten them for her for Christmas, before the accident. I put them away and forgot about them. Anyway, she’s not going to wear them now.”

  “I can’t take these.” Ava shook her head. “They were for Leslie.”

  “I want you to have them, Ava. They’re not going to do her any good now.”

  “Thank you.” Ava touched his hand lightly. He took it in his own, trapping her with his eyes. Would anyone see the earrings, she wondered, or would she stash them away in her jewelry box, deep in a drawer?

  “Do you…want to go out sometime? A burger?” He asked.

  “Um, Gavin, I’m dating Lenny,” she answered, pushing the posts of the earrings deep into her palm.

  “It doesn’t have to be like that,” he explained, his hand still on hers. “Just dinner.”

  “But you want it to be.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Gavin, stop.” She felt the weight press firmer in her stomach and the ensuing nausea. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Are you ashamed of me?”

  “No, Gavin…”

  “You’re ashamed to be seen with me, aren’t you?”

  “You’re one to talk,” she accused.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t want anyone to know about Leslie.”

  “That’s different. Leslie can’t defend herself.” He stood up.

  “So, you’re just going to leave?”

  “Yes—why should I stay?”

  “Fine.” She followed him out into the hall, where Ava’s mother had just entered.

  “Hi, Gavin,” her mother beamed, taking off her coat. “How have you been?”

  “I’m well,” Gavin answered, not looking at Ava. “And you?”

  “Busy! Ava, did you invite Gavin to the pool party next week?”

  “I…was just about to, Mom,” Ava answered uneasily. “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “It’s this Saturday, one-o’clock. Please try to come,” her mother added.

  “Thanks for the invitation, but I’ve already got plans,” he answered. “Goodnight.”

  Ava followed Gavin out to his truck and watched as he pitched his backpack through the open passenger window.

  “Gavin, please come Saturday,” she pleaded.

  “Why? You weren’t going to invite me.”

  “I was…you’re the one who left.”

  “Whatever.” He shook his head.

  “You could bring Leslie, too.”

  “Ava, stop it—no one wants me there and, frankly, I don’t want to come.”

  “That’s not true. I want you to come.” Ava looked at Leslie’s earrings, still in her palm. “If you come…I’ll break up with Lenny afterward.”

  “You’re going to break up with Lenny if I come,” he repeated back to her. She nodded. He leaned against his truck, arms folded, waiting to call her bluff.

  “The bridge,” she said, pushing the posts of the peridot earrings through her spongy lobes. “Are you going to finish it?”

  “Maybe,” he answered. “They look very nice. The earrings.”

  “I want to be the first one to walk across it,” she continued. “OK? Promise?”

  “OK, promise,” he smiled. “And you?”

  “Promise,” she answered.

  “I’d better get home.” He leaned over and kissed her. Beneath the heavy coat of his sadness, she began to feel the stirring of Gavin’s hopes, his dreams angling from underneath like refractions of light. She and Gavin smiled little, toothy smiles, secret smiles, before he departed.

  It was two o’clock Saturday afternoon, and Ava was uncertain whether Gavin would show. They had passed like heavy vessels in the hall, balloons of water needing only the slightest prick before exploding, but they somehow remained contained, strangers. The past few days, she began to feel she would burst.

  Gavin. She said his name over and over to herself. It sounded like gravity, like giving, like grace. They had spent Thursday evening together, with Leslie, she and Gavin sanding the last girders for the bridge in the back yard while Leslie watched from her wheelchair
. Ava marveled how gentle, how patient Gavin was with Leslie, lifting her out of the chair and settling her in the soft grass, tickling her nose with a buttercup until she laughed, exercising her arms and legs in a slow, circular motion as she remained on her back, kicking and flailing now and again.

  He seemed so grown-up and Ava was just a girl, a stupid, silly girl, but she wanted to be a woman, so later that evening, she helped Sara bathe and wash Leslie for bed. Ava felt horrified by the somewhat-useless, bony appendages that hung from Leslie’s body, and she shuddered at how easy it would be for someone to slam into her car on the way home from Gavin’s that night or anywhere else, how simply the future she had always taken for granted would end, a flapping reel of broken film on the projector.

  “Ava, can you get me a towel?” Lenny emerged from the pool and slung a wet hand around her waist. She broke from his grasp and sifted through a bunch of beach towels hanging on the deck rail. Normally she would have enjoyed the most important event of the social calendar, aside from prom, but she instead was irritated. Irritated that Gavin had not come but also relieved that he hadn’t.

  “Thanks, babe,” Lenny kissed her cheek. She absorbed the angular lines of his face, which had the strength of a man’s but not yet the fullness. At some point it had been handsome to her. Not marriage or future handsome, but a present handsome. The dumb handsomeness of youth, the handsomeness that is high school optimism, not yet clouded by the uncertainties, maturity, and perspective. “What’s wrong?”

  Ava felt the splash of water from a human cannonball wet her calf. Friends of her clique gathered in corners, laughing and readjusting their bikini straps or swimsuit waists for maximum exposure. They were so young, so fearless inasmuch as most of them never met fear or tragedy, only hearing of its existence through movies or the occasional assigned novel for AP reading. As it should be, Ava had always thought, and wondered whether Leslie had thrown her own pool party at eighteen, if Gavin, then fifteen, had assumed his rites of passage would mirror his sister’s.

  “Nothing,” she answered, shaking her head.

  “You’ve been weird.” Lenny shoved some chips in his mouth and looked for his varsity teammates, who were taking turns snapping each other with their beach towels.