by Amy Lane
Trust me, Ethan. That thing is ALWAYS a big surprise.
I got you a present, you know. I forgot to give it to you the other night.
Jonah stared at the text curiously. Ethan’s Christmas decorations in the family apartment were the only things that kept it from being unutterably dreary. Jonah kept expecting Amelia to wake up and say Merry Christmas, because she’d always been the first one under the tree, and God help them all if she didn’t have the books she’d asked for. It was the one time she’d cooked, because she was allowed some of her favorite foods, even if she suffered for them later, and he had this one memory of her, twelve years old, tousled blonde hair, gray eyes, in pajamas that had pink rainbows on them, walking barefoot in the kitchen and starting applesauce pancakes before anybody else was up. She’d been so happy….
Jonah? Jonah?
I have to tell her boyfriend that she passed away.
Oh God. Here, give me his phone number. I can do it.
And suddenly Jonah was crying. Two days, they’d fought tears and worked through tears and dealt with tears, but they’d never actually given in to tears. It was such a simple thing.
FWDing now. Thank you. I’ve got to go, but thank you.
Love you.
Oh God. Me too.
The couch sank and his mom was there, and she wasn’t in control any more than he was.
“I should make pancakes,” she said, her face wet, swimming, her lips wobbling, and her voice thick and broken.
“With applesauce. Mommy, she liked them with applesauce and chocolate chips and—”
They fell apart, and his dad joined them, kneeling in front of them. Their bodies shook and they cried ugly, loud sobs between great gulps of air with bursts of snorting through their sinuses just so they could cry some more. Jonah couldn’t have stopped crying any more than he could have stopped grieving—or breathing—and for a moment, in his parents’ arms, he got to be a little kid, and to mourn his sister with the whole of his heart.
Later he would look at the Starfighter collectible and think that Ethan’s real Christmas present to him was this moment right here, when his family could grieve together cleanly, for the very real, very imperfect girl they had loved.
JONAH had been to a couple of funerals before, and he hated them. His grandfather, for instance, had been a pretty awesome guy. He’d loved fart jokes and old eighties movies where there was always (in his words) “a completely unnecessary boob shot just for old geezers like me!” When Jonah had come out to his grandfather in high school, the old guy had said, “So you like dick? Well, you’ve got one. That’s handy. Does this mean you won’t watch the baseball game with me anymore?”
“No, grandpa—but it does mean I might be looking at their asses.”
“Who doesn’t? Their pants are damned tight.”
And that had been it.
So he’d been this really amazing man—but for his funeral? Some guy Jonah had never met stood up and talked about God and Jesus and how Grandpa had known the path to heaven.
Grandpa had known the path to the refrigerator for a beer and the path to Raley Field for a ball game, and he’d known how to swear like a sailor when the fucking cut-off man missed his motherfucking play because the cocksucker could never get away with that fucking bullshit in the big leagues. (In a way, Tommy reminded Jonah a lot of Grandpa, which could explain why Jonah had warmed up to the guy.)
Grandpa hadn’t given a fuck about the path to God. If God didn’t want to sit on the couch and drink a beer and watch a ball game, Grandpa had no time for that sort of asshole.
So Jonah had a lot of confused images in his head about Grandpa on his old green couch with a Michelob Light, and the big guy with the halo holding one of his own, watching the Giants kick ass for once—but he wasn’t so excited about whoever always ended up talking about God and Jesus at the podium when someone he didn’t know had passed away, no matter how holy the person’s intentions.
He begged his parents not to have one of those people speak at the funeral.
“We have to, Jonah,” his mother told him, her face pale, her graying blonde hair wisping around her face. “We don’t go to church, but all my family does, and some of Daddy’s—I think we need to have a pastor or something there.”
“But Melly… she didn’t find the way to Jesus!” Jonah protested. “She… she thinks heaven is paved with books!”
“Well, maybe it is,” Mom said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Jonah handed her a Kleenex—she always seemed to forget. “It’s one day, Jonah. It’s one day that the whole rest of the world gets to see. We’re living the real grief here—let the stupid world have its one lousy day.”
“Yeah, fine,” Jonah said, for once not up to arguing with his mother. She was right. One day. In the long run, what did one day have to do with it?
He and his parents sat in the pew while the pastor talked, and none of it had to do with Amelia. The path to righteousness? Amelia hadn’t wanted righteousness. She’d wanted to be left alone. He imagined her curled on the couch with a book while Grandpa Pete drank a beer and yelled at the television set, and every now and then offered her some trail mix.
That was Melly’s path to righteousness.
And the hymns should have been Death Cab for Cutie or the Postal Service or Heather Dale or Dar Williams or Mumford & Sons or something his sister had listened to and said at one point, “Hey, that’s cool!” because not once had she heard “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and thought that was what led to her heart.
The pastor asked the audience if anyone wanted to say a few words, and Jonah closed his eyes and said his first prayer. Please, God, please—if I hear one more person say she’s in a better place right now, I’ll scream and run out of here and beat something to a pulp with my bare fucking hands.
He was so immersed in his own head that he hardly heard what the first person was saying.
Wait. Singing.
“I am just a poor boy though my story’s seldom told….”
Oh God. Jonah stood up and remembered that he swore he’d be there, and there he was. He had a good voice, but not for singing. That didn’t stop him from trying, though, wading through “The Boxer” with all that cocky nerve Jonah had seen in him from the very beginning.
The congregation of the little chapel was shocked, and Jonah didn’t blame them. His families—they didn’t do things like this. They didn’t sing badly just because it was something the deceased had loved.
He paused for a breath at the chorus, and Jonah loved him so much in that moment that he had no other choice.
“Lie la lie!” he sang at the top of his lungs, and he saw Ethan’s grateful grin. “Lie la lie lie lie la lie—”
“Lie la lie!” And oh God. That was Dylan in the back of the church, wearing a button-down shirt and rumpled slacks and looking like a kid who’d taken three buses just to get to Orangevale.
Jonah closed his eyes and let Ethan lead through the end of the song as the boxer left, leaving only a memory in his place.
And his parents stood up and sang through the end. He closed his eyes then, as the final sounds of voices faded from the chapel, and he silently dared anyone to come up and clutter that clean moment of the people who’d actually known his sister with the polite white noise of what people were supposed to feel.
No one did.
It was raining outside, so the number of well-wishers had dwindled as Jonah, with his parents by his side, carried the small casket of ashes outside to that little bank vault of ashes across the way.
Jonah could only be grateful. Ethan followed, and so did Dylan, who was clutching hands with Amelia’s two best friends from school.
He figured that was good too, and when they’d interred the ashes in her little slot, he didn’t feel obligated to another soul to continue to stand up and be strong. Ethan joined him in the little corridor, their good dress shoes echoing hollowly as they walked silently out.
They got out into the rain an
d Ethan paused to fumble for an umbrella. He put a solid, heavy arm around Jonah’s shoulder, and Jonah smiled at him gratefully.
“We forgot,” he said seriously. “It just… I mean, finding my frickin’ suit!”
Ethan shrugged. “Bought one,” he said apologetically, and Jonah’s eyes widened as he realized that Ethan looked like a badass mafia king in a perfectly creased black wool suit.
Jonah started laughing. “Jesus, Ethan—that’s like… like….”
“The fricking Godfather!” Dylan said, coming up alongside them in the rain, and Jonah smiled gratefully at him.
“Thank you so much for coming,” he said, and he found himself mauled in a teenager’s hug, all elbows and shoulders and knees, and he responded with as much strength as he could.
“Thanks for not letting it get awful,” Dylan muttered, looking at Ethan. “If I had to hear one more goddamned—”
“Right?” Ethan asked, and Jonah suddenly loved him—hell, loved them both—with pretty much most of his soul. “I’m sorry, Jonah—I mean, I know that’s what people do, but that was so not your sister!”
Jonah nodded. “Thank you,” he said, his voice choking. “God, thank you both for singing. Man, if I could have thought of a damned thing, I would have—”
Ethan shrugged. “Yeah. Well, you know.” Like it was no big deal.
Jonah grabbed his hand and brought it to his lips, and suddenly, the only two people in the world were him and Ethan.
And then his parents invaded their space.
“Dylan,” his mom said with some genuine affection. He’d visited one more time before Amelia had passed away, and Jonah was glad for that too, no matter how hard it had to have been on the kid. “And Ethan!” She didn’t sound one bit less affectionate, and suddenly Jonah understood the term “counting your blessings.” He was sad, and he was hurt, but he was blessed. He would try to never forget that.
“Hey,” Seth said, looking sad and worn, but still with just enough of a smile at his lips to be Jonah’s father. “Is anybody starving? We’ve got half a zillion casseroles at the apartment, but seriously. I want a steak. Does anyone else want a frickin’ steak?”
“Hell yes!” Jonah burst out at the same time his mother said, “Oh, Seth, could we?”
Which was how Jonah’s family, Dylan and Ethan included, ended up going out for a steak dinner at three o’clock in the afternoon after his sister’s funeral.
They talked about Amelia’s favorite books, and her favorite music, and her favorite television shows, and how she could sit and read for hours and the funny things she’d said to her teachers.
Not once did they talk about her path to righteousness, or heaven.
Jonah was pretty sure Melly wouldn’t want to hang around heaven until her family got there anyway.
Step 6—reinventing yourself
in five easy months
IF IT hadn’t been for the fact that he knew Jonah was mourning and in pain, Christmas morning would have been really fucking awesome.
Dex and Kane had gotten home at bumfuck in the morning and kicked him out of their bed and onto the couch on Christmas Eve, which sounded bad but was actually a relief. Ethan wasn’t alone in the house anymore (or, well, not that he had been before, with all of the freshly stationary critters in the guest room), and they were really cool about having to change the sheets before they went to bed. (Hell, he’d gone to sleep naked in them again, because Jonah’s virginity was still there like come-scented fabric softener. He couldn’t blame them for thinking a change was imperative.)
So Ethan woke up on Christmas morning to Kane freaking out about the animal enclosures, jumping up and down like a little kid, while Dex made pancakes in the kitchen.
It was awesome. Even when Ethan was a child, his mother had insisted on everyone being up and dressed before opening presents. As adults, they’d done it after breakfast. Kane running into the reptile room and shouting like a madman was really sort of amazing at its finest.
And then Dex… oh God.
Ethan had been standing there, watching them look at each other like a couple, a family, and Dex had pulled him into a hug.
He’d needed that hug.
His texts with Jonah had hurt beyond pain, because here was someone who’d had the family Ethan didn’t have, but it had been broken irreparably, through no fault of their own. Ethan had needed to know families could be fixed, or reforged, or made out of the available materials, because….
Well, because on Christmas Eve he’d texted his sisters and gotten nothing back. And he’d texted his father and gotten nothing back. And he didn’t even want to try to text his mother, because that was worse than no family at all.
So he’d gotten to be there when Dex opened his present and saw that it was rings, and that the couple he’d seen months ago was really truly real. And Dex had looked at him sitting on the outside and said, “Hey—help Kane move some of the critters and you can move out of your awful apartment and in with us.”
And, tada! Family.
Ethan hadn’t wanted to tell Jonah that. Not when Jonah was looking at a Christmas morning without his sister.
Amelia was going to leave a hole.
Ethan couldn’t deny that. He’d only known her for a couple of months, but he’d loved her. She was quirky and sarcastic and funny and kind. She’d loved that Ponyo thing, the fish out of water, who had fallen in love with a boy and tried to destroy the world to be with him. In a way, she reminded him of Belladonna, because she would do the exact opposite of whatever people told her, just because they told her to, but deep down, she was just getting them to admit they loved her like she was. The only difference was that Belladonna loved musical theater and Amelia had loved pop instead, and so she wasn’t all that interested.
Ethan suddenly wanted more than anything for Amelia to have had time to be interested in musical theater.
Christmas night, when Jonah had needed to bail on the text convo, Ethan was sitting on the corner of Tommy and Chase’s couch, watching an epic video game championship between Digger and Bobby. Bobby spent the morning with his girlfriend and then drove back from Truckee just to have dinner with Chase and Tommy, and Ethan thought regretfully about that relationship. He didn’t see good things there—but it wasn’t his place to say anything. Bobby lost the game and Kane took next, and Bobby came to sit next to Ethan, a beer in his underage hand.
“You have a good Christmas?” he asked.
Ethan smiled slightly. “Yeah. It was good. Dex and Kane got home early. Our morning was real nice.”
Bobby leered. “Yeah, I’ll just bet!”
Ethan frowned at him, annoyed. “Oh my God—no! No! I’m their roommate! Jesus!”
“I’m sorry.” For a moment, the kid studied his beer. “It’s just that… I don’t know. I went back home, had sex with my girlfriend, and… it was just, missing something, I guess. Isn’t that weird? I never thought I’d be missing something, but….” He shrugged and took a sip of his beer. “The weird thing is, I thought that if I did gay porn, I wouldn’t be cheating on her as much.”
Ethan sighed. “Kid, I’ve got a boyfriend, and I’m not sleeping with you. But if I put my arm out, do you want to snuggle in for a hug?”
Bobby’s eyes were limpid and shiny. “God. Yeah. Yeah.” He snuggled back into Ethan’s chest, and Ethan draped an arm over his shoulder. Bobby was a lot bulkier than Jonah and a lot bolder with his body space. For a sudden, disorienting moment, Ethan felt a terrible shaft of guilt. It’s a hug. That’s all it is. I haven’t promised to quit the business. Hugs are still simple, and they’re still good. Bobby was oblivious, and Ethan turned his attention back to a kid who needed an ear.
“I came back early, just lied to her, told her I was working tomorrow just to… it was so complicated. I just… her touch made me cringe.”
Ethan wrapped his other arm around Bobby’s shoulder and dropped a kiss in his hair, thinking he was like a little kid who just caught his parents shoving a
dollar under his pillow and taking his tooth back. The world was not at all like he’d planned it, and he had to deal with magic and power and the confusion of all he’d known before.
“Bobby?”
“Yeah?”
“You ever thought about talking to Chase?”
Bobby shook his head. “Naw. Man, that shit… I mean… it hurts me to talk….”
Ethan remembered the gray-bearded little man with the thinning hair pulled into the graying ponytail, and the world’s ugliest handmade vest. “You know, we have medical coverage for Chase’s shrink. He’s not a bad guy. You want to talk to him?”
“A shrink?”
Ethan half laughed. “Don’t knock them, man. I wouldn’t have gotten through high school without my shrink.”
Bobby managed a quirky, half-sardonic lift of his eyebrow. His long baby face wasn’t meant for cynicism, really, but that eyebrow, that did it. “And yet you still ended up in porn.”
Ethan gave a bitter half laugh. “Hey—I blame that shiz on my mother!”
Bobby laughed with him, and they settled down and watched Kane destroy Digger in the latest version of Call of Duty.
“Man, that guy’s a maniac,” Bobby said, watching Kane jump up and down and howl when he won.
“Yeah. He’s the gentlest person I know,” Ethan said, thinking that might even include Jonah, who had a surprise streak of sarcasm and toughness.
Bobby turned in his arms, looking sad and scared. “Ethan, man—I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
Ethan scraped his hair back from his face and kissed his forehead. “Kid, my boyfriend’s little sister just died. If I was part of his family at all, I’d be there sobbing my heart out with them, but I didn’t let myself be because of the porn. Now, I’m gonna try to fix that, because damn, I wish I could be there, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: nothing fucks with things worse than sex. Nothing. You want to come over to Dex’s, sleep on the couch, be a part of the family, that’s a good thing. But I’m not your one and done, not tonight. Is that fair?”