One Sweet Day

by Elle Tyler

  We drove to my house in silence.

  We walked inside in silence.

  Every step burned. Every breath was a fight to lock in words and fear.

  I pulled the cord to the attic, and she climbed. I closed it behind us, and we sat on the floor, staring at one another, not speaking the one word that would divide and conquer.

  “Why are we here?” she asked.

  “I wanted to stand still for a while, Everly Anne. This is the place I can do that for you. This is me standing still.”

  “But this attic makes you sad,” she whispered, moving to my side. She rested her head in my lap, allowing me to strum my fingers through her long blonde hair. “I don’t want to be sad tonight, Callum Andrew.”

  “I’m not sad, topolina. You know why?”

  “Don’t say because you know you’ll see me again. Don’t even tease me with those words.”

  My fingers massaged her head. “I was going to say I’m not sad in Julep’s attic because you offer me comfort.”

  “Comfort.” She sighed.

  “This is where I have always been the most clueless, Everly Anne. I never talked to anyone about my mom before you came along. My family fell apart so quickly, and I had no place that offered me comfort. After my father married Marta, she tried to soothe me with religion, but I was too bruised to believe. She convinced my dad I needed to talk to someone, so I was forced to go talk to a therapist. But I couldn’t talk about how I felt, because I had a father with a reputation that needed protecting. I didn’t want to hurt him by talking about how much he drank or how angry he was. So I only made jokes and allowed Tatum and Nick to play along and act as if everything was fine, but in reality I had faded away. I focused so hard on school, believing that would spark some bit of happiness back into my father or even in myself, but all I was doing was keeping myself busy so I didn’t have time to think about how hurt I felt. But then you came along, and you sat quietly and listened, and I had no idea how much I needed that—how much I needed your comfort—until that day.”

  She smiled up at me, still lying in my lap. “I haven’t always been quiet about your feelings.”

  I brushed her cheek with my fingers. “When I needed you, you listened, Everly Anne. Why is that so hard for people to do? Why can’t we be quiet for thirty seconds and try to hear the hurt in another person without trying to figure out a way to heal them?” I stared into her eyes. “Have I comforted you, Everly Anne? Or have I tried to fix too much without listening?”

  She sat up and slid into my lap, crisscrossing her legs behind my back. “I am comforted by you, Callum Andrew.” She kissed me tenderly. “I am loved and comforted by you.”

  I smoothed my hands across her hair and held her forehead to mine. “I don’t want to leave.”

  “Do you really have to go?”

  “You know I do, topolina.” I kissed her. “You know I do.”

  So low, she asked, “What if I die before I see you again? What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook her head. “No. You have to know. You have to have a plan.”

  “What do you want me to do, Everly? Tell me what you’d like and I’ll do it, topolina.”

  She gripped my shirt, pressing her face into my neck as she desperately whispered, “Do you remember the swing in Montauk? I want you to come back to the beach and put me on that boat and send me out into the ocean that allowed us one free day to live as butterflies. I want you to send a hundred red balloons up into the sky every Fourth of July and make everyone who sees them wonder what the story behind them is all about. Let me live on inside of a made-up story, Callum Andrew. Whatever way I die, it won’t ever be as good as what someone will make up about the balloons.” She clung to me. “Would you do that for me?”

  I hugged her back just as tightly. “For you, topolina, I would sink just to swim.”

  “Don’t leave,” she returned. “I will die if you leave.”

  “No you won’t. I will see you on your twenty-first birthday, and you will meet me wearing a pretty, short dress, and you’ll be smiling, and your eyes will be bright.”

  ***

  Before she left my house that night, she wrote inside of my notebook, one last time.

  I’ve never feared death before. I’ve always been willing to die. Sometimes I even welcomed it, wishing for this all to be over and to finally find peace in an endless sleep. But when I look at you, I see possibility, and I start to do what I know better than to do—I wonder. And worst... I hope. Because I know all too well we are just a sky full of stars destined to burn out. I know better than to hope for time that won’t be granted. I should know better than to believe I could carry you into my dreams.

  I’m promised an ending without colors or sun rays. It has always been dark, and even though you carry light within your giving heart, I will always be the girl trapped in this body, who cannot follow where your light shines.

  I know I shouldn’t ever think of you. You know you shouldn’t have ever thought of me.

  HEART IN A HEADLOCK

  27.

  IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAKE all of the words someone once told you and still find them living where that person no longer exists? Barefoot in Red Pine, Georgia, I searched for a girl with long blonde hair. I walked along the train tracks she swore she rode as a child. My palms ghosted over wildflowers that grew around my new, too-quiet, too-loud house. I listened for her in the night. I searched the stars. After a while, I thought goodbye had finally made a home inside my chest, that the pain had replaced my longing and this was what happened when you lost someone you loved, but the truth was agony and love are companions. It’s what lets you know that love was real. It’s what lets you know love still exists—no matter the cost, no matter the divide. There are some connections that can’t be severed by time.

  ***

  Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Those were the words that greeted me on the other end of the line. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. No one can help. Sorry. No one can transfer you to her room. Sorry. No one has seen her. Sorry. Dr. Brighton won’t allow anyone to... Yeah. Sorry.

  ***

  I really didn’t give a damn what color the couch was. I followed Marta around a furniture store for nearly two hours, bouncing on this couch, that couch. Suede or leather, dear? I didn’t give a wild fuck. Let it be made out of lead and upholstered in poison oak. I was trapped by the motto, “Give me liberty or give me death!” That’s how I felt, trying to do something as mundane as picking out a couch amidst heartache.

  “I think this nice suede couch with a few throw pillows would be perfect.” She smiled, so I smiled. “What about dishes? Do you have plates? If you entertain, you will need at least eight settings, as a start.”

  “Marta.” I tried not to groan. “I am pulling seventy-, sometimes eighty-hour work weeks. Do you think I have time for tea parties?”

  “Not tea parties. Heavens no, darling.” Her eyes mocked me. “But perhaps when the sweet girl you love comes to live with you, she’d like to have a place to sit and dishes to cook you some food and serve that food to you with? Yes? Maybe?”

  It only made the pain worse. I wanted it to be unbearable, to make it more real. The pain was all I had left. Liberty or death. No one was freeing me of my agony is this furniture store. Not even myself. I said her name. “Everly Anne won’t be cooking for me. I sincerely doubt she has ever even been near a stove in her life. She couldn’t even play grill assistant in Montauk.”

  Marta bit her lip and turned on her heel.

  “What?” I demanded.

  She shrugged and tried to go back to picking out a couch. I stepped in front of her. “What?”

  “I happen to know,” she said nonchalantly, “that Everly is a very good cook. Matter of fact, she is an excellent biscuit maker. Super fluffy.”

  She laughed at my expression, but I was not amused. “What the fuck do you mean she makes good biscuits? How in the ever loving Christ would you know that about my girlfriend?”

>   “Callum” she warned, “that mouth of yours.”

  “I’m tired.” I sat on the couch she wanted me to buy. “And I’m extra-cranky.”

  “Clearly.” She sat beside me. “And... miss Everly?”

  “No, I don’t miss Everly,” I groaned. “I’m dying a slow and painful death without Everly.”

  Quietly she replied, “She isn’t faring much better.”

  I glanced over at her. “How do you know?”

  “You asked me to be a mother to her.” She shrugged. “A good mother knows these things about her daughter.”

  “But how are you seeing her? I can’t even get someone to pass her the fuckin’ phone. I’m sorry. I know. My mouth.”

  She patted my knee. “Remember what I told you about her father? About how maybe his actions were a cry for help? Well, I went to him and asked if I could help in any way.”

  “And he let you? We’re talking about Timothy Brighton? Timothy Brighton, who forced me to live in Georgia and not see his daughter for—what could be—the last year of her life? That guy?”

  “Well.” She smiled. “I brought him brownies. Did you ever go to his door with brownies?”

  All the air deflated from my chest. Marta nudged my arm with her shoulder. “Hey, boy. It’ll all be okay. You grew up strong, remember?”

  “Go back to the biscuit making part,” I said. “I want to hear about Everly Anne making biscuits.”

  Marta smiled. “She is a little thinker, isn’t she? Watching her in the kitchen, it’s almost like she’s dreamed of all the things she was never able to do but planned them out in her head in a way that she could, if ever given the chance.”

  “So you know about CIPA,” I replied.

  “Yes, Andrew told me. Actually,” she said with a sigh, “I guess he’s been telling me for years, but I never knew what he meant.”

  “The girl in his dream.” I nodded. “Yeah, it was Everly.”

  “I thought it was Julep. I never imagined him ever dreaming of someone else.”

  I breathed for a moment. “He doesn’t dream of anyone else. It’s all the same nightmare. You can’t escape pain, even if you’re born lacking the ability to feel it, the shit still finds you. Even in your sleep.”

  Marta was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry that you’re hurting, Callum. I’m sorry that I have never been able to that mend that hurt... in either of you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I understand it now. The pain, the happiness, it’s all a partnership.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  We sat silent as people walked by us, picking out furniture. I searched again, trying to find Everly Anne inside of the store. Was she in the poster bed? The oak? The cherry? The suede couch I was sitting on? What would she want?

  I rubbed my face in frustration. “I need to talk to her.”

  Marta glanced over. “You can’t.”

  “If you can make biscuits with her, surely you can hand her a cell phone.”

  “And if Everly goes home to her father after talking to you on that cell phone, what will she bring home with her, Callum? If her father looks at her face and doesn’t see that blank stare looking back at him that he has grown familiar with, what will a man like Timothy Brighton wonder?”

  “I have to do something,” I said. “I can’t sit here for a year and simply wait.”

  Marta nodded and then stood. “Buy a couch. Buy her a ring. Make her a home. Give her somewhere to go when the year is over. This is all something.”

  I lay down on the couch and exhaled. “This... This is an ugly fuckin’ couch.”

  Marta laughed with a heavy sigh.

  “Yeah, boy. It sure is.”

  ***

  Behind the curtain of bed number thirty-four was a case of head-meet-desk. And a smoking, heavily-tattooed man.

  “Brother.” I pulled the cigarette from his mouth. “You can’t smoke in the hospital. There are these little things called oxygen tanks that make the hospital go big boom.”

  Nick laughed until he grimaced. “Just stitch my damn arm, Nurse Trovatto.”

  I pulled the curtain closed. “Let me guess, Little Lady—you were playing with the big boy toys again?”

  “This,” he said, smiling, “is insuring that I get swapped from driving the ambulance on the ground to the ambulance in the sky.”

  “Nick,” I began, as I pulled a kit to suture the gash on his left arm, “if you can’t handle four wheels on the ground, I doubt they’re gonna trust you with no wheels in the sky.”

  “No,” he argued, “you see, I had my first patient pick up tonight. When we landed to airlift him, the medics on the ground still hadn’t pulled him from the car. But then Sergeant Petros showed up and saved the day. As fucking usual.”

  “And the two-inch gash I’m working on?”

  “We’ll talk about your love life later, Cal. Right now, let’s focus on me being a hero.”

  “Prick,” I replied, pulling a little tighter on the needle than needed.

  “I didn’t really think I’d like this shit, you know? But I have to admit, after a night like tonight, I could get comfortable here. I could see myself doing this for real.”

  I laughed. “That’s the evil drug that keeps you coming back, Nick. You get one good night that means something and three-hundred-sixty-four others that beat you down in every way imaginable, only leaving you burdened, bruised, and questioning your life. Like, for instance, why didn’t I take my father’s money and become a lifeguard?”

  I wrapped his arm and tossed the kit into the trash. He patted my work and then said, “You doing all right down here? And don’t give me the bull, Callum. Are you all right?”

  “I’m here,” I said. “I’m here.”

  “Tatum keeps asking me about transferring. She’s worried about you.”

  “Because she will worry less if she sees me moping around the hospital every day?”

  He smiled. “That is exactly what I said.”

  “That and something about pizza.” I laughed.

  “Have you had good pizza since you moved from New York, Callum? Yeah, didn’t think so. No pussy, no pizza, a shit job, no family. Why did you leave, brother? Are you just a masochist or something?”

  “Or something,” I said.

  “Well, you better still come home for the Fourth every year. Girl or not, love or not, we have traditions in our lives that cannot be put on the backburner or forgotten. Understand?”

  “I copy, Sergeant. I copy.”

  He hopped down from the bed and saluted me. “’Til next time, Doc.”

  “Don’t make two-inch gashes a habit.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. “I could say the same.”

  But I didn’t laugh. Nick smacked my shoulder. “I’ll see you on the Fourth, Cal.”

  “Hey,” I called, “will you do something for me?”

  “Name it, brother.”

  “I need a good conspiracy behind red balloons in the sky on the Fourth.”

  He stepped closer, all playfulness wiped from his expression. “What the hell did you hear?”

  I had to laugh. “No... it’s...” I had to sit. “It’s Everly. She wants a story made up about her death.”

  “Faking her death?” he exclaimed. “Oh, hell yes. I am all in.”

  “I’m not faking her death,” I said. “After she dies—really dies—she wants me to do something for her in Montauk, and I need a story, but I’m not very good with that kind of stuff.”

  He rubbed the scruff on his chin, nodding. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.” I looked to my shoes.

  “Hey.” I looked up, and he put his fist to his chest. “No one is dying on Pilot Petros’s watch.”

  I laughed despite myself. “Only an idiot would allow you to fly a helicopter.”

  “One thing I’ve learned being on this job, brother...” He pushed the curtain open, revealing the busy happenings of a full ER on a Friday night in Atlanta. “...The world i
s fucking full of them.”

  ***

  I had given Everly Anne many numbers in our time together, but the most important number I had in her absence was an address to a cabin in the middle of an overgrown field. Hidden away in the Call Room on endless third shifts, I had searched for her in between emergencies, trying to find the links to her past, the people she’d lost touch with because of Brighton’s moving her to New York. Surprisingly, it wasn’t very hard. Her father’s name turned up headlines of his accomplishments. I followed the trail until I ended up at the house of an old woman named Pearl.

  I knocked on her front door and then stepped away, looking around, wondering if she even lived there anymore. Rustling sounded from around the back of the house, and I cautiously wandered my way over, calling for the name on my paper.

  “Oh!” A salt-n-pepper-haired woman placed her hand on her chest as she saw me. “I didn’t hear anyone.”

  “I knocked.”

  “I’ve been picking my tomatoes all morning. Come, come.” She waved me over to a long line of vines and kept on picking, tossing bright red tomatoes in her basket as I looked at my paper.

  “I’m looking for a man named Wiley? He had a daughter named Merriam?”

  She paused for a moment. “Yes, well, Wiley was my brother. I’m in charge of the house now.”

  “I know his—well—your cousin. Everly.”

  She looked up to me, wide-eyed. “She’s still alive?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She lives in New York.”

  The woman slumped to her knees, wiping her dirty hand on a paisley apron. “Well, I guess that man knew what he was doing after all.”

  “Timothy Brighton?” I guessed.

  Her eyes turned hard. “Yes. That man.”

  I smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not much of a fan of him, myself.”

  “Who could be? I mean...” She sighed. “He used to be a kind man. He used to be downright charming. Yes, I said it. Charming. But that was all... before.”

  “Before Everly’s mom died,” I nodded. “Your niece.”

  “I never much got along with Merriam. She was a very headstrong young lady and an even harder-headed woman.” She waved her hand at me, scooting further down the vines as she started picking tomatoes again. “But I am sorry for everything that happened to her. It was a damn tragedy, after all they had gone through to get married. I’m sorry—who the heck are you again?”