Forever Autumn

by Christopher Scott Wagoner

  Crawley seemed to sense his turmoil, giving his hand a quick squeeze before exiting the car. Things had been different since the night they spent in the hotel room. He no longer felt like her tagalong, but like a full partner in the relationship. That she was more experienced, had more money, and was more attractive than he was seemed irrelevant. Seizing hold of his newfound confidence, he steeled himself for what was likely to be an unpleasant conversation.

  He slipped his hand into hers, and their fingers intertwined. Crawley had suggested they only tell Autumn they wanted to catch up with her, maybe take her to lunch. Saving the big guns, so to speak, until they were in the restaurant. Phil was honestly worried what Autumn would do, even in public, if they sprang the true reason for their visit on her in an ambush. Crawley had insisted that Autumn would not speak to them otherwise, and he had relented, figuring that she knew more of the female mind than he did.

  His hand was shaking a bit as he knocked on the glass storm door. In a few moments it opened a crack, and Jonathon’s face appeared. After a few seconds, his gaze widened and a smile split his face. Eagerly, he shook both of their hands.

  “Ellie and Phil! I guess you guys came to see Autumn.”

  “Yeah,” said Phil, clearing his throat, “we, uh, we’re probably not expected…”

  “I’ll go rouse her. Come on in!”

  They followed Jonathon into the cozy interior. A college basketball game was on the big-screen TV, and the smell of something wonderful roasting wafted out of the kitchen. Jonathon bustled out of sight for a moment, and then returned with Autumn.

  The caustic young woman did not seem to be herself. Apparently, her brush with death had taken its toll, as she had not bothered to put on makeup of any kind. Her hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, and she wore black sweats and an oversized shirt that probably had belonged to Steve at one point. Dark circles lurked beneath her eyes, which were dull and listless. She glared at the two of them, and Phil suddenly felt very much the intruder.

  “Did Steve put you up to this?” she asked in a voice thick with sleep.

  “No,” said Phil, shaking his head nervously.

  “No, he didn’t,” said Crawley. “He doesn’t even know we’re here. We wanted to check on you, see how you’re doing.”

  Autumn relaxed just a bit, but still eyed them warily.

  “Moping around the house,” said Jonathon as he puttered about in the kitchen, “that’s what she’s been up to.”

  Autumn rolled her eyes. “Dad, I had major surgery barely a month ago.”

  “I got a hole in my back too, remember? I feel fine, and I was back on the links two Sundays later. Why don’t you just admit that—”

  “Dad,” said Autumn, glaring at the man until he held up his hands, palms outward.

  “Uh,” said Phil, “we were wondering if you’d want to grab a bite to eat?”

  “Well, my dad’s cooking,” said Autumn, glancing toward the kitchen.

  “Won’t be done for hours, kiddo,” said Jonathon, smiling widely. “You kids have fun.”

  “But,” said Autumn, eyes casting about the living room, “but—”

  “Autumn, Eleanor is too nice a girl to bring it up, but I will. You’re walking around because of her generosity. Now stop being rude and go with your friends. Do you some good to get out of the house for a change.”

  “Fine,” said Autumn, stalking off into her bedroom. Phil expected to have to wait a long time, but she returned a moment later with her black leather purse.

  Sullenly, she stood before them, tapping her foot. “Well? We going or what?”

  A short time later, they were sitting in a Denny’s, watching Autumn destroy a plate of chili fries. Phil picked at his grilled cheese sandwich, while Crawley had ordered only a salad, which still largely occupied her plate. They kept the conversation light at first, asking about her recovery.

  “I actually feel pretty good,” she said around a mouthful of greasy fare. “My back stopped hurting a week ago, and I went for a walk with Brad this morning. You should see him in his Spandex and headband. You’d die.”

  “Sounds like you’re reconnecting with your father rather well,” said Phil.

  “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m still pissed at him, kind of, and I guess I always will be, but he’s been pretty cool. Hasn’t even bitched once about me not having a job.”

  “I guess it’s a long commute from here to Manhattan,” said Phil.

  Autumn nodded, squinting her eyes a bit as if she were in pain.

  “What’s wrong?” Crawley asked.

  “Nothing. I may have eaten too fast is all.” She stared down at her plate and pushed the cheesy slop around with her fork. Without looking up, and keeping her tone quite casual, she asked, “So, how’s Steve?”

  “How do you think?” asked Crawley, who had been largely silent throughout the meal. “You broke his heart. He’s devastated.”

  Autumn gritted her teeth, and the fork scraped sharply across the crockery plate. “He’s a big boy. He’ll be all right.”

  “So you don’t care?” asked Crawley. “You don’t care about him at all?”

  Autumn dropped her fork on the plate and glared at her. “No. I don’t. Steve’s a nice guy, but he’s just not my type.”

  “Oh, bullshit!” said Crawley, standing up and putting her hands on the table. She loomed over Autumn, seeming much more imposing than her tiny frame would suggest. “When you were talking about him on New Year’s Eve, you were practically glowing! You guys could hardly keep your hands off of each other, and you spent a lot of time staring at each other without saying a word! If you weren’t in love then, I don’t know what it looks like!”

  “Uh, Ellie,” said Phil, tugging on her belt loop, “maybe you should sit down.”

  Several of the other patrons had turned to see the outburst, and were quietly whispering to each other now. Crawley seemed a bit abashed, sitting down quickly. For a moment, Phil thought that her words, though harsh, had been well-timed. Autumn’s eyes fluttered rapidly, and her mouth twisted downward. A second later her face was crossed by a vile sneer.

  “Are you done? I guess because you helped pay for my operation, I owe you—”

  “You don’t owe me,” said Crawley, closing her eyes and shaking her head.

  “But you don’t get to tell me how to live my life. What makes you think you can judge me, or my decisions? Playing with spiders in your daddy’s basement and slaying orcs on a computer screen make you a damn expert on life? You’re such a know it all. I don’t know how Phil puts up with you.”

  Crawley’s nostrils flared, and her dark eyes narrowed.

  Phil felt his ire rising, and glared at Autumn with his fist clenched atop the table. “Don’t talk to her like that. You’re not even mad at her. You’re just mad at yourself.”

  “Oh,” said Autumn mockingly, catching him with her fierce gaze, “look at little Phillip, getting up on his hind legs and sassing me. Too bad you can’t rise to the occasion in the bedroom like that, huh Philsy?”

  Not so long ago, such a comment would have devastated Phil, but the recent changes in his relationship with Crawley gave him the confidence to merely grin.

  “He does just fine,” said Crawley, and he was grateful for her support even though he really didn’t need it. “No one has ever worked harder to give me what I want.”

  “Well, look at that,” said Autumn, and she did not seem displeased. “So you guys worked things out in the end. That’s actually pretty cool.”

  She sighed, staring into the hands she folded in her lap. “Look, I know you mean well, that you’re looking out for Steve, and maybe me too, but…” Autumn glanced out the window, watching traffic as it idly rolled past. “Even if I did have feelings for Steve, that would mean that I should stay away from him. This thing with my kidney, it could be just the beginning. I might get sick again, and what do you think that will do to him?”

  “So, you’re a martyr now?” Crawley
asked, though much of the bluster seemed to have flown from her as well.

  “It’s not like that. The fact of the matter is, Steve needs a girl who’s going to be nice, and sweet, and…presentable to decent folk.”

  She laughed, tracing a line up and down her inked forearms.

  “Steve needs you,” said Crawley, shaking her head. She dug in her purse and took out a hundred dollar bill and left it on the table. “C’mon, Phil, we’re wasting our time here.”

  Phil rose to his feet, but did not follow Crawley as she exited the restaurant. Instead, he rummaged around in his back pocket and took out a thin newspaper. It was one of the hyperbolic scandal rags that were a staple of the newsstands, ironically one of the few print mediums that still sold well. It boasted a picture of Steve’s mug shot, his face bruised and bloody from the tussle with the transvestite. The headline emblazoned across the top read Son of Deathslayer Pounds Transvestite Hard. He tossed it on the table in front of Autumn.

  “Steve’s not going to be just fine,” he said, turning on his heel and storming out while Autumn stared flabbergasted at the tabloid in front of her.

  Steve walked out of the principal’s office, the slight swelling on his face the only remaining evidence of his scuffle. He was wearing a suit and tie, for all the good it had done him. In his hand was a stack of papers, crumpled up in his fist. Ruefully he jammed them in his back pocket and walked down the hallway with shoulders slumped.

  “Hey,” said one of the sixth graders as he passed through the sparsely populated hallway, “here comes Pimp Strong!”

  “Pimp Strong, Pimp Strong,” they chanted as he walked past. He hung his head in shame and moved more quickly down the hall. He stopped before his classroom, his home away from home for the past six years. He stood with his hand on the knob for a long time without opening it. A sound from down the hall startled him. The janitor was beginning his rounds. Steve sighed and entered the room for the last time.

  Using a large cardboard box, he gathered the supplies he had bought with his own money. Down came the plastic-covered hearts, the irony of which was not lost on him. Shelves were emptied of lesson plan books and coloring sheet masters, all plopped unceremoniously in the box.

  He came to his desk last, shaking his head sadly at the object. He cleaned out his office supplies, adding them to the pile in the box. He came across a stack of glossy photos held together by a rubber band. The top photo featured Steve and his first group of children.

  Sitting down on the yellow table, he undid the band and thumbed through the photos. Though he was a little sad to be leaving, it could not compare with the massive gulf in his chest. Life without Autumn seemed hollow and meaningless. Not for the first time, he briefly considered suicide, but the thought of what such an act would do to his family forced the idea back into the darker corners of his mind.

  The door to his classroom opened. Steve assumed it was the janitor and did not look up.

  “I’ll be out of here in ten minutes,” he said, still perusing the photos.

  The sound of heels on the tiled floor made him glance up. The photos slipped from his nerveless fingers and tumbled to the floor as Autumn approached. She looked healthy, and beautiful as ever. She had done her hair in pigtails, held near her scalp with glass skull-shaped bands. She wore light red lipstick and blush, and her eye shadow was as dramatic as if she was prepared for a night out. A leather coat that he had bought for her months prior was worn over a faded Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt, which hung over the belt line of a leather mini skirt. Fishnet stockings with holes ripped in them for aesthetic purposes covered her legs, disappearing into black patent leather boots with a towering heel. She seemed embarrassed, her eyes not able to meet his as she approached.

  What’s she doing here? he thought. Seeing her ripped open wounds that had only just begun to scab over, and his initial shock was being fast replaced with a cold ire.

  Autumn stopped a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” Steve strove to keep his face and tone neutral. “I’ll have your stuff gathered up tomorrow. I’m kind of busy right—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, walking over to sit next to him on the table. She fingered the Band-Aid across his nose, tsking.

  “Ow.”

  “That transvestite kicked your ass.”

  “Yeah, well, you should see the other…guy? Girl? What does one call them?”

  She chuckled, then became morose, looking at the box on the table. “Did you get fired?”

  “Yeah. I thought they’d let me stay until the end of the year, but…well, the union is making sure I get paid till August, so that’s something. They know I’ve had a tough time of it.”

  Autumn folded under his accusing gaze, dropping her eyes to the painted table. When she spoke, her mouth twitched in a sneer. “How can they fire you for something you did when you weren’t on the clock?”

  “I signed a contract that said I wouldn’t do anything to bring the image of the school down.” He grinned without mirth. “I guess I kind of did just that.”

  “It’s still not fair. You were a great teacher. And you’re a good man.”

  He turned his face away from her, and his shoulders shook with mirthless laughter. “Just not good enough for you.”

  Autumn sighed, stared at her hands folded in her lap. “You’re too good for me. I don’t deserve a man like you.”

  “Oh, is that why you left? Because I seem to recall you saying something about how you didn’t need me anymore.”

  Autumn glanced up at him once more. Her eyes were narrowed with anger, but her trembling lips and lack of response seemed to indicate it was directed more at herself than at him. “I’m sorry. I never should have said that. I just…I just wanted you to think I was the bad guy, so you could, you know, move on.”

  Steve crossed his arms over his chest, hot bile-ridden words wanting to flood out of his mouth and deluge the woman he loved more than life itself.

  “Oh, you wanted to be the bad guy? Well, mission accomplished!”

  Autumn looked away from him, staring out the window at the street. Her eyes grew moist, and she sniffled. Steve felt a pang of guilt in his breast, and softened his tone. “What you said to me…”

  Steve got up and paced away from her, running his thumbnail over the crinkling paper stapled to the bulletin board.

  “When you said—well, you were there, you remember—I’ve never been so, so devastated! Losing you was bad enough. Did you have to go and make me doubt that we ever had anything in the first place?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He turned back around at her wet sniffling and snatched a Kleenex box from a bookshelf.

  “Here.” Steve handed her the box and sat back down next to her. They sat in silence for a time as she dabbed at her nose and eyes.

  “I don’t…” said Steve after a time. “I don’t know if I can forgive you for that.”

  Autumn met his eyes. Her own were bloodshot and wavering. “You shouldn’t. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. Oh god, sugar, I’ve been an idiot, not to mention a world class bitch. Those things I said to you in the hospital…I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.”

  He glanced up at her, eyes wide. Then they narrowed into azure slits. When he spoke his tone was harsh. “Those words hurt. They hurt me worse than I’ve ever been hurt before. Do you know what the last couple of months have been like? I feel like I can’t breathe!”

  “I do know, because I feel the same way! I love you, Steve.”

  “And I love you! So why aren’t we together?”

  Autumn put her hand on his cheek, and despite his reservations he put his own atop of it.

  “I…when I was…when we thought it was the end…you looked so sad, so miserable. I didn’t want to have to put you through that again.”

  “Isn’t that my choice?” He put his hands on her shoulders and stared deeply into her eyes. “There’s no other woman for me. There never
could be, not ever.”

  They stared at each other for a long time, seemingly unable to speak or move. At length Autumn giggled, and patted his cheek. “I should be offended, you know. You wanted to beat me up in effigy, and you chose a transvestite hooker.”

  “I didn’t choose her!” Steve was laughing as well. “That he/she started shit with me because I wouldn’t be her trick!”

  “And you got your ass kicked.”

  “It was a big transvestite and knew how to fight! I bet she would have kicked your ass.”

  “Me? The master of the toe crusher stomp? That could totally be my finisher if I was a wrestler.”

  “Nah, you need something flashier, preferably one that makes the mat shake.”

  Autumn stopped laughing, bit her lower lip. Her soft brown eyes, which still enthralled him, were pleading. “Steve, will you take me back? Please? I promise I’ll never hurt you like that again.”

  Steve tried to hang on to his anger, his bitterness. As he gazed into her beautiful face, he decided that was a silly idea. Why not let the warmth that wanted so desperately into his heart spread?

  He reached up and tucked a stray hair behind her pierced ear, a soft smile playing at his lips.

  “Of course I’m going to take you back.”

  “Steve—” Autumn put a hand on his chest “—are you going to kiss me or what?”

  “Absodamnlutely,” he said, grinning. Their lips met, softly at first. Slowly, they melted into each other’s arms. He drank in her scent, her softness, felt the cool metal of her piercings on his face. For the first time in weeks, he felt a burden lift from his heart, leaving him feeling light as air.

  “You’ve lost weight,” she said as her hands caressed his broad back.

  “Haven’t had much of an appetite.” His voice was still haunted by the pain of losing her. He wrapped his arms around her more tightly, as if he were afraid she were going to vanish like so much dream stuff.