“So you know.”
“I know the bare details. I want to know more. Will you tell me?”
So Tillie slowly starts talking, realizing that not talking to Dr. Brown didn’t do her much good, really. And the thing about Carolyn—she has a first name, this lady—is that she has expressions. Like when Tillie tells the woman about Amir ghosting her, her face falls, and her eyes get red at just the same time Tillie’s eyes get moist talking about thinking that she finally wasn’t alone, only to find out she was more alone than ever before.
Something about the woman’s investment in her story gets Tillie to talk. More than she’s talked to Dr. Brown for sure. More than to Molly and Amir for the hour they were at lunch. More than to her mom, even at Tillie’s most talkative. She opens up about feeling like a visitor in her own house, and the way her heart felt crushed the moment she walked in on her dad, reclining in his chair at work.
And she cries, which is not a very Tillie thing to do. She lets the tears out and Carolyn’s eyes water, too, and they sit across from each other and have a good sob. For Tillie, it feels different inside. Like she’s not so afraid that the ache will kill her if she acknowledges that it’s there. All her life, it’s like she signed some agreement. Don’t feel sad. We chose you and gave you a good life. Be happy always.
She says this to Carolyn, and Carolyn’s eyes light up.
“Wow,” she says. “That has to be almost impossible.”
Tillie nods. “Pretty stupid, huh?”
“No! Not stupid at all. I had some of the same messages growing up. Made some of the same agreements. Do you know that I came here, Tillie? I was a patient here? And then, after it helped me, I decided I would come back and be a counselor here to help people like I was helped.”
Tillie feels a warmth pass through her midsection. For the very first time in her life, someone has climbed down into the abyss with her. Her mom did in her own way, but there was always this feeling that her mom was going to drown in it, and that wasn’t good, either. With Carolyn, who’s been where she is, and her reactive face, Tillie feels like she has a partner down here, like someone is holding her hand, and when she mentions the poem she read, Carolyn asks if she has it memorized, and would she perform it. Tillie says yes, and the performance is different from the one at the talent show because she’s not saying, Here, here’s my pain, see the pain I’m in. She’s sharing it, like saying, Here, experience this, and Carolyn does, and when she’s done, and when Carolyn applauds after, Tillie gets that it’s not bullshit. This woman really does care.
“So will there ever come a time when I’ll be normal?” Tillie asks.
Carolyn laughs and says, “I sincerely hope not.”
Michael decides some fresh air might help him. So he wanders to Central Park and heads south toward the Bethesda Fountain.
Aaron loved it there. The buskers with their music and dancing. Maybe he imagined himself there. Michael doesn’t know. All he knows is every time they went there, Aaron would have this moment when his entire chemistry changed. Michael knows that feeling. He gets it at work, when a patient has a breakthrough.
He stands alone, listening to an improvisational musician, a guy with a ponytail who adds recorded loops of various instruments to a drum loop, and then his voice. Standing there, Michael feels the palpable absence like a pain in his rib, like someone has surgically removed part of him, and he holds his breath to stop from screaming out at the agony of the precise, pointless, surgical removal of his son from this universe.
Where he would have so enjoyed being, right at this very moment.
“So, Tillie’s off at Homestead?”
Winnie nods.
“And where does that leave you?”
And for the first time, Winnie breaks down. She just lets go. She drops her face into her hands and she cries like a baby.
Marie France waits. When Winnie’s no longer shaking, she says, “I’m pretty sure my marriage is over.”
“Ah,” Marie France says.
“He couldn’t just … comfort her. He knew. He knew what she’d been through and he was physically unable, or mentally, or whatever. And then another business trip. Out of nowhere. Imagine that.”
Marie France nods.
“A Fifth Avenue hotel staycation, complete with minibar, it would appear. He lies but he doesn’t cover his lies and in some ways that’s great and in some ways it’s a little insulting. Like I don’t matter enough for him to try harder.”
“Maybe he’s just so sick it doesn’t matter,” Marie France offers.
Winnie shrugs and wipes her eyes. Marie France doesn’t say anything. She just offers Winnie a placid expression.
“Let’s just breathe a little. Shall we?”
So the two women sit across from each other and share the air of the room. And Winnie thinks good thoughts. For her daughters. For herself. Because this—this is not going to be easy.
Carolyn lets Tillie check her phone one last time before taking it away, giving her five minutes with it. No phones at Homestead.
There’s one text.
The text reads: Hey.
The number is a 917 one. She doesn’t know who it is, though. Her mom is her only texter, generally.
Tillie texts back: who is this?
This is about as surprising a question as Tillie can remember. Molly and weird do not go together too often.
Tillie has to put the phone down. She wonders: Is her mom paying Molly? Is this another prank? Will this show up on some other video?
But she knows in her heart that it isn’t a prank. And oddly enough, the day had been fun, in a way. In a This is nearly very possibly going to be the last day of your life sort of way. In an edge of the universe sort of way.
She lets the phone sit for a moment.
?? Molly texts.
Molly texts back three smiley faces.
Tillie cracks up, and she smiles, and the smile is real.
I would definitely consider that, yes, Tillie texts.
“What is it, Amir? What did you want to tell me that was so important that it was worth taking me out of my morning routine? You know I need my morning time. It’s important. So what? Tell me. What’s going on?”
Amir takes the deepest breath of his life.
Then another one.
“Nothing, Mom. It’s nothing.”
Later, Tillie sits in another room with a similar view but more chairs. The sun is going down, so she watches the peach sunset over the blue-gray mountains, and the room begins to fill. With other teens. With some adults. Some she saw during lunch, when she sat alone at a table in the cafeteria until two older ladies joined her, which was sweet and a little awkward. Some she’s never seen before. The facilitator, John, is a tall, lanky white guy with a shaved head who looks like he’s maybe a few years out of college.
He goes over the ground rules—one person talking at a time, tell the truth, speak your mind, use “I” statements—and then he asks Tillie to introduce herself.
“I’m Tillie Stanley. I’m seventeen. I’m from New York. I guess … that’s it?”
He smiles and shakes his head. “That’s a start. Who are you, Tillie Stanley?”
A few smartass answers come to her. She thinks about saying she likes taking long walks on the beach and men who aren’t afraid to feel. But instead, she thinks of Carolyn and her supportive eyes, and she sees the eyes of these people, all of whom are here for whatever reason, too, like her, and she decides to tell the delicate truth.
“I’m Tillie Stanley. I live in New York City, on the thirty-third floor of a fancy building with a view overlooking Central Park. My parents are white. They adopted me at birth. I’ve never met my birth parents, but I know my mom is from Korea. I sometimes feel like my family is sorry they adopted me because I have a sister who is ten, and my parents adopted me because they couldn’t have kids themselves, so, surprise! My sister is blond and pretty and sweet, and I am none of those things, so.
“I ge
t sad. I think it’s in my blood. I’m intense. Anyway, the way I feel things isn’t normal, I don’t think. And I don’t know. I guess the thing about being Asian with white parents is that quite frankly it’s exhausting having to be aware, every single minute of my life, of my differences from them.”
Tillie stops talking. John says, “Thank you.” And he looks around the room and says, “Does anybody here have feedback for Tillie?”
She wasn’t expecting this, and her heart flips and she shifts in her seat. She is so not prepared for a critique right now.
And older man with a scruffy beard and a scratchy voice to match says, “I like you right away, Tillie. You’re honest and real. I’m intense, too.”
“Thank you, Richie,” John says. “Anyone else?”
A teenage girl whose skin is gray and who has bandages on both wrists tentatively raises her hand.
“I’m glad—” She stops talking and tucks her chin to her chest.
Tillie leans forward. Like she can sense the girl’s pain, and she wants the girl to know it’s okay, it’s okay. And in that moment, Tillie realizes something. That she’s good. She’s one of the good ones. She wants good things for people. And that. That feels like something to hold on to, so she files it away.
“—I’m glad you’re part of the group,” the girl says, a near whisper.
Tillie promises herself to seek the girl out in the cafeteria and sit with her sometime. Maybe tomorrow at breakfast.
“Me too,” Tillie says.
CHAPTER 4B: APRIL 21
Aaron’s funeral takes place on Sunday. They do it at Riverside Memorial Chapel, and thank god for Morris, who’s done everything. Like Michael would do for him if the situation were reversed, for certain. That and a kidney.
Michael and Erica go together. It’s weird and it’s not weird for Michael to spend time with his ex. He’s looking forward to her going back to the Cape, and he’s scared about what being alone will feel like.
Classmates of Aaron’s show up. A whole slew of them, most of whom Michael does not recognize because his frame of reference is plays and talent shows. Aaron didn’t have friends over much in the last year, and truthfully Michael never thought to push him on that, figured that it was being a junior, and the end of playdates and all that.
But the kids are there, and he sees some of them hugging and some tears, and he is so, so grateful, because it tells him that someone cares, and there’s Kelly Jameson, who Michael recognizes as Aaron’s girlfriend from the play, and, man, was she good. Aaron was high school good. This girl? She was famous good.
He recognizes Sarah Palmer. She used to come over right around the time Aaron came out, and they’d sit and play music on Spotify and talk and laugh, and Michael liked her.
She is the one who comes over to Michael. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” she says.
“Thank you, Sarah,” Michael says.
“Everyone liked Aaron.”
“That’s … good to know.”
Conversation exhausted, she awkwardly bows her head and walks away, and Michael wonders: Did they? Like his son? If so, why was he always so alone?
His warrior brothers are all there. Of course. They stand as one, a posse of men, Michael’s protectors, his support. And they sit with him and Erica, and he’s glad they’re there, so glad, like they’re a limb of his body, and when he sees the group of them, in jackets and ties, which is not what he is used to seeing them in, a part of him returns and he can breathe a bit.
The service begins with a playing of “Walking Alone.” Aaron’s last song. Because that’s absolutely what Aaron would have wanted.
Teardrops fill my sunny Sunday morning
And emptiness still fills my evenings, too
One more lonely night awake
Still in my bed
While thoughts of you
Burn through my head
Spending time on my own
Right now it’s all I can do
Taking walks all alone
Because I can’t be with you
The song hits hard. Michael tries to steady himself but he feels faint. Morris squeezes his shoulder. He thinks, Who? Who was he singing to? Who couldn’t he be with? It’s like a part of his life he’ll never be privy to, and he hates hates hates it.
While the rabbi speaks, Michael looks around and tries his best to see the funeral through his son’s eyes. Would this have been honoring to him? Would he have been pleased that people showed up and cried? Would he have adored the way they reacted to the song?
Would that have been enough to keep him here? Forever? Or just a little while?
And in that moment, Michael realizes exactly who the song was about, and it cuts him right down the center and he gasps, and he grips his head so it will all stay together.
The one who the song was about, who left him feeling empty? The one he couldn’t walk with?
The entire world.
All of it.
CHAPTER 1C: APRIL 17, 3:57 P.M.
It is a terrible ballet.
Like amateur dancers choreographed poorly by an uncaring god, they tilt out toward the blue unknown and lose their balance.
And falling, they—
Time’s up for conjecture. Casual musing. Forever.
Wind rushing through hair and popping eardrums and the girl turned upside down and she tries to reach her hand back to grasp but it’s far too late for that and her body breaks upon impact.
The boy, inverted to the world, a quick glimpse of New Jersey—what a final vision—the word fly, followed by the incomplete concept of—
CHAPTER 2C: APRIL 18
Michael wishes for wind.
A strong wind that might sweep down First Avenue and prevent him from entering the blue-brick building. One that might pick him up and carry him into yesterday, into before.
He stands under the sign that reads CITY OF NEW YORK, OFFICE OF CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER, wanting to disintegrate.
He won’t call Morris. There is nothing a person might say that could lessen—no. This pain, devouring him from the inside, is mandatory, unavoidable. How do you breathe when the most crucial part of your life evaporates in an instant?
A blond woman about his age exits the morgue, sobbing. Her whole being convulses. Her wails rise the hairs on the back of his neck.
He wants to help her. That is his instinct. But he can’t. He is the same. The very same. The worst is yet to come and he just wishes he were able to run away from this, but he can’t.
Michael closes his eyes as the woman passes by.
In the moment, Winnie barely registers the frozen man in front of the morgue. Later, after she pieces together that there were two jumpers that day, she will remember his presence and wonder.
Was that the father?
How did their children know each other? Why would they jump together?
But for the moment, all she and Michael share is complete devastation.
CHAPTER 3C: APRIL 30, THREE YEARS AFTER
Britt loves dances. They’re so old school it’s not even funny, but the boys from Allen-Stevenson are SO CUTE.
It’s her first Goddard Gaieties and she came with Carly and Sadie. She’s wearing her favorite Vera Bradley floral-pattern dress with the side windows, and Carly is extra in her white Laura Ashley—so normcore! Sadie is blasting a black bandage dress with a full zipper down the back, very tight and very short. Very 1991.
They dance in a circle, and then some boys start dancing nearby and suddenly they are a group of seven.
First it’s a Lizzo jam and they throw their hands in the air and sing along. Then the new Gucci Tran, which isn’t Britt’s favorite, but the boys go nuts, so it’s okay.
Then a familiar sound, something she hasn’t heard in a few years.
The bile rises up from her belly into her esophagus so fast that it stuns her. She takes off for the bathroom, arriving at an empty stall seconds before she detonates. The contents of her guts splat into the pristine toi
let.
She closes her eyes and tries to breathe. In, out. In, out. Dr. Fitzpatrick has taught her some things. This one works. Sometimes.
The sound of the door swinging open and someone holding it so it doesn’t slam shut. Britt senses Carly moments before she feels her hand on her sleeveless shoulder.
“You okay?”
Britt can’t speak yet. She nods silently.
“What was it this time?”
Britt takes ten more seconds to catch her breath and to feel the well of sadness bubble into her throat.
“That song,” she says. “My sister and I would …”
It’s all the stuff that was going on three years ago that triggers it. A song or walking past Maison Kayser, one of Tillie’s favorites, or a girl doing a monologue onstage or just about any TV show with an older sister. The EMDR has helped some, but clearly not enough.
Carly kisses her on the back and wraps her arms around Britt, who is glad she has a friend who will be with her when she vomits, or shakes uncontrollably, yet again.
She wonders if it will ever, ever go away.
CHAPTER 4C: SEPTEMBER 19, FOUR YEARS AFTER
It’s the first LGBTQIA+ social of the year at Kenyon, and Hal thinks, Maybe this time …
The thought makes him roll his eyes.
His love life has not exactly been on fire, his first two years in Ohio.
He came here from Boston because it’s a liberal campus with a strong LGBTQIA+ presence and a killer English department. He’s going to be a writer. Experimental fiction. And while he’s hardly the only quirky gay guy at Kenyon, finding the right match is close to impossible.
Someone who would get his satirical lyrics to pop songs, and the fact that he compiles a weekly Top 10 songs list, and has since he was eight.
Someone who doesn’t think it’s weird that he has a fishbowl in his dorm room.
Someone whose sense of humor doesn’t bore the crap out of him. Someone who says surprising things.
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