by David Arnold
I squeeze Mom’s hand tighter, let the tears come. “Mom.”
She smiles and cries. “You think you have so much time to work on the map, to make it just right. And then one day you wake up to find your perfect, lovely child is already there, right in the thick of the maze. You were so diligent, kept watch every night, and you don’t know when or how it happened, but it did. Your kid is in the maze without a map, and there’s nothing you can do but watch.”
“I love you, Mom,” and I think about a conversation that never happened, in the middle of an eighties explosion, where I told my sister that survival was about finding the right friends, and it occurs to me that in a way I was reporting back something I’d learned from the maze—in a way, I was showing up for my sister. And maybe that’s something I can do for her more often.
Mom blows her nose into a napkin. “Forgiveness isn’t a miracle, Noah. It’s not magic. But yes, you should forgive Val. And while you’re at it, you should forgive yourself.”
“What if I can’t?”
Mom’s smile is a rainbow after a hard storm. “Yeah, I remember that decoy.”
94 → affectionate roots
We reach Jasper, and Mom turns into a small cemetery with a gravel driveway. She navigates between rows of cracked gravestones overgrown with weeds and dried grass, and eventually pulls over the car, cracks the windows for Fluff, shuts off the engine, and opens her door.
“Follow me.” She doesn’t wait, just gets out and starts walking, and when I finally catch up, she stops between two headstones.
“Mom, what are we doing here?”
She points to the ground.
AND FINALLY → PART EIGHT
THE NEW YORK YEARS
Autumn 1946. At the age of eighteen Henry traded the wilds of her childhood farm life outside Boston for a different kind of wilderness: New York City. It is believed that this move was forever a point of contention between Mila Henry and her father, that Hank Henry resented his daughter for abandoning him as her mother had those many years ago (see: “FAMILY & EARLY LIFE”). And when, the following year, Hank Henry fell to his death from the roof of his barn, many speculated that perhaps he hadn’t fallen, that perhaps he’d jumped, that the bitter realities of growing old alone—of losing first his wife in childbirth, and then that very child to faraway aspirations—were simply too much for the man.
Whatever the case, her father’s death did nothing to quell Mila Henry’s writing career. In 1949 she published Babies on Bombs to some acclaim, though its harsh rendering of wartime violence, and a particular subplot involving a widow who abandons her only child, made the book far too divisive to be a commercial success. Around this time, Henry had met and married writer Thomas Huston, and together they had one son, Jonathan. Later, Henry would say of having children, “It’s rather like getting smacked in the head by your most favorite hammer.”
Both Mila Henry and Thomas Huston lived and wrote from their home in Chelsea, but the daily task of raising their son fell to Henry, as Huston commonly referred to child-rearing as “woman’s work.”
And so Mila Henry did that work, and while doing it, managed to pen what most critics believe to be her finest achievement: June First, July Second, Augustus Third. Upon its publication, the New York Times called it “a revolution on the page, a creation that will breathe long after its creator has taken her last.” This proved quite prophetic, as June First has become one of the most successful, widely read books of its time. Seemingly overnight, Mila Henry became a household name.
Thomas Huston was never published.
—Excerpt from bonus materials of Mila Henry’s This Is Not a Memoir: A Memoir (Collector’s Edition)
95 → my immortal tree
Mila Henry’s headstone is significantly shorter than those around it, as if through the years it has gradually, but determinedly, sunk into the ground.
My first thought: this is a joke. But the look on Mom’s face indicates otherwise. My second thought: it’s a different Mila Henry. This actually sticks for a second. There must be other Mila Henrys, maybe dozens or more if you count the ones who’ve already died. Also, there’s no way the Mila Henry, my Mila Henry is buried in Podunk, Indiana, without my knowledge.
And then I see the inscription under her dates of birth and death: HERE’S TO THE SILENCE BETWEEN THEM.
“It was your father’s idea,” says Mom. “Coming here. Killed him he had to work today.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, which doesn’t really begin to cover the extent of it.
Mom points to a headstone just next to Mila Henry’s.
“She never lived here,” says Mom. “Mila, I mean. But I’m guessing you knew that already.”
How many hours have I spent combing the Internet for articles of her past, her own favorite writers and muses, her tragedies and successes and relationships? Enough to piece together a map of her life, one that excluded most, if not all, of the Midwest, and one that most certainly excluded Jasper, Indiana.
“Mila’s maternal grandparents were from Jasper.” Mom points to more headstones down the row with other last names, people I’ve never heard of, so many names through so many years, none of those names remembered, but all of them integral to a name that would never be forgotten, as if they were the affectionate roots of some immortal tree. “When Mila’s mother died giving birth to her, Mila’s grandmother insisted her daughter be buried here.”
I can’t stop staring at Mila Henry’s name on the stone. And what an odd thing to be so physically near her now. After all these years of feeling close, to now be close.
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask. It sounds accusatory; I don’t mean it to be.
“Your father and I wanted to get you away from things, even for a few hours. We figured it was time you met your hero. But also”—she looks up at the country spread wide in every direction, the symmetrical rows of headstones and flags, fields and fences and scattered oaks, and beyond that a horizon, a beautiful and vast American nothing—“there’s something about her being buried here that I like. Not that she cared one way or the other about Jasper, Indiana. But I think she wanted to be near family.”
Mom’s earlier words of forgiveness are all the more potent over the grave of someone who never could quite grasp those two words—I’m sorry—except in the only way she knew how: a story on the page.
I’m sorry, Nathan. I’m just so sorry.
I knew her parents’ names were Martha and Hank, I just never knew Hank was a nickname for Nathaniel. Looking at her parents’ shared headstone, I have to wonder: Did Mila Henry feel guilty about leaving her father? Did she wish she’d stayed? Did she spend the rest of her life blaming herself for what happened to him?
“It’s not your fault,” I say aloud.
And standing over the bones of my favorite writer, my immortal tree, I feel its roots beneath my feet, pulsing and even now alive, lifting this short and fractured headstone from soil to sky, and in that blinding blue firmament a thousand forgotten names join in the single, unending chorus of Mila Henry.
“I’d like to be the one to say it’s not your fault.”
* * *
The ride home is quiet. I look out the window and think how sad it is that the only things we know are those things the keepers of history choose to tell us. They could give a shit about heroes once they’re dead and used up, apparently. And while this is disappointing, I can’t deny the intimacy I felt at Henry’s gravesite knowing it wasn’t a memorial in some brochure, or even a very public place.
People ruin everything if you let them.
I close my eyes, lean my head against the window, and think of the inscription on Mila Henry’s headstone—Here’s to the silence between them—and I wonder if there is value to be found in other unfilled spaces too. Maybe all the things I’d done while Under, all the conversations and actions, all the life I’d once t
hought stolen, maybe those things were the words, and now I’d found the silence. Maybe I could take those phantom months, stack them on my desk, and label the pile First Draft, knowing it’s not my best work, but that’s okay. There’s always revision.
* * *
I’m jolted awake by the ringing of Mom’s phone. She checks the caller ID. “Your dad,” she says, and then answers. “Hey. Yeah, we’re making good time. Probably home around midnight.”
Something about falling asleep while it’s bright outside, and then waking up when it’s dark is so completely disorienting.
“Okay,” says Mom into the phone.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
“Okay, and?”
Two missed calls from Val, and a text.
Val: He’s awake
96 → our best lives
I hadn’t expected to see Alan the night we got back from Jasper (though not for lack of trying), but I’d fully expected to see him first thing Friday morning. As it turned out, even though the doctors had confirmed there were no significant brain or spinal injuries, had successfully weaned him off meds, gotten him off the ventilator and breathing on his own—even though he was awake—I was not allowed to do what my heart and soul wanted to do, which was burst into his room with cake and flowers, pick him up and spin him around by his waist, laughing and crying and singing selected tunes from Hamilton at the top of my lungs.
“So when can I see him?”
“Probably tomorrow,” says Mom. “They’ll be done with the tests, and he should be fairly lucid. But these meds he’s been on have amnesic properties, so we don’t know what he’ll remember. And he may be a little loopy.”
Dad says, “Which one is Hamilton again?”
Mom points to Dad. “For example.”
* * *
Next day, Val tackle-hugs me the second I walk into Alan’s room. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers in my ear, and I think about the growth of a grudge, how it had already started to burrow in, and how much further it could have gone had I let it run its course. “It’s okay,” I say, and I hug her back, “you were trying to help,” and like Mom said, it’s not a miracle. It’s not magic. But it is good.
“You guys have just been waiting for me to slip into a coma so you could start dating again, huh?” Alan smiles weakly from his bed, face flushed, the kind of groggy you can see. He shakes his head, all, “Uncool, yo. Uncool,” and even though his voice is raspy, I’ve maybe never heard anything so clean and beautiful in my life.
I walk over and can’t help smiling at the absence of lifesaving apparatus. “Feeling pretty good, are we? Well rested?” I look at a fake watch on my wrist. “Had a pretty solid nap there.”
“You know I’m naked under all these blankets,” says Alan.
“You know I’m straight under all these clothes.” I kiss a bicep. “Maybe someday, though. Play your cards right, who knows.”
And my hand, which had been on the side of his bed, is now in his, and Alan says, “I missed you,” and I start crying.
“I missed you too.”
And now Val is with us, and this sterilized room in the pediatric ICU is as good as my room at home: we climb into bed, Val on one side of Alan, me on the other, the equation of our triangle in full form—one plus one plus one equals one—and for a while we lie there, content in the shape of us.
* * *
Val and I watch Gilmore Girls on her phone while Alan falls in and out of sleep between us. Since I was last here, it’s like someone tried to see how many flowers they could fit in one room.
“Titi Rosie,” says Val, answering my roving gaze. “She doesn’t bring flowers, she brings the florist.”
“So she made it in okay?”
“Yeah, she’s currently holding down the fort at home. And by holding down the fort, I mean cooking enough food to feed the tri-county area.”
Alan stirs like he might wake up, but then doesn’t.
“Are your parents at home too?” I ask quietly.
“Yes. They left when they found out you were coming.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I mean, look at us.”
“Right.”
“Oh, also.” Val points to one of the many bouquets on the table next to the bed. “Guess who those are from?”
“Who?”
“Tyler.”
“Tyler . . . Walker?”
“Nope.”
“Not Massey.”
She nods, explains how apparently Tyler Massey’s family had spent the summer somewhere in England, where he had an awakening. “Word has it, he’s been going around school, apologizing to everyone for being a douchebag. Anyway, he found out what happened to Alan, sent those over.”
“That’s nice.”
“Maybe more than nice. Read the note.”
I pull the little white card off the vase, read Massey’s chicken scratch:
Very sorry for the way I treated you. If you can forgive me, I’d love to take you to a movie sometime. Xoxo—TM
“Holy shiznit,” I say. “He xoxo’d him.”
“Crazy, right?”
“Monumental, more like.”
I’m this close to a joke about Tyler’s burgeoning film career, and how this news may or may not shed light on his latest effort, The Vagina Dialogues—when I realize The Vagina Dialogues only ever existed in my head.
“What’s funny?” asks Val.
I hadn’t realized I was laughing. “Nothing,” I say. “Just glad, I guess.”
“Speaking of monumental”—Val points to my shirt and pants—“what happened to Navy Bowie?”
This morning, for the first time in a while, I reached for my Bowie tee and found myself thinking, Not today. And so, in keeping with the personal revision idea, I dug to the bottom of my bin and found my only non–Navy Bowie articles of clothing that still fit: an old gray V-neck, some black pants with a tan stripe down the side, and a pair of white high-top Chucks.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I say. “Figured it was time for a change. What do you think?”
“In a word?” says Val. “Funereal.”
Out of nowhere, Alan says, “I was going to say zoological. But funereal is better.”
“I didn’t know you were awake,” Val says.
“I am sneaky,” says Alan. “Like a jackrabbit.”
“You’re on drugs.”
“Like a jackrabbit on drugs. But good drugs, yo. Noah, I’m gonna ask the nurse to get you some of this goodness for your back.”
I can’t tell if Alan is really with us or not, but given the fact that he could fall back asleep at any moment, and I may or may not be able to talk to him again today, I figure now is as good a time as any. “So, about my back.”
“Ah.” Val pauses the episode on her phone, sits up in bed, and turns to face me. “Is this it?”
“Is this what?”
“The apology,” says Alan. “Better make it a good one.”
“Wait.” Now I sit up, and they’re both looking at me, trying to act hard-core, but unable to ward off mild amusement. “How long have you guys known?” I ask.
“Seriously?” says Val. “Since, like, the beginning, dude.”
Alan says, “You’re literally the worst liar, No.”
“In the history of lying liars,” says Val. “The literal worst.”
“Um, okay.”
Val crosses her arms, raises her eyebrows. “Well?”
“What.”
“Yo. Just because the lie didn’t land,” says Alan, “doesn’t mean you weren’t out there tossing it around on the daily.”
“Right. Okay.” I clear my throat. “I am truly sorry I lied about my back.”
Alan nods at Val, who says, “Apology accepted.” She slides down in bed and is about to push play again, but I stop her.
>
“Wait. You guys are my best friends,” I say. “You’re not everyone else to me. To me, you’re you guys, and I’m sorry for betraying that. Also, Alan, before you fall asleep—”
“Jackrabbits don’t need sleep.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry I left the party, sorry I was a dick at the party, and I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate you the way I should have. Both of you. I’m really sorry, and I hope you guys accept my apology.”
Alan puts a hand on mine. “Already forgotten, yo.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean, like, I literally forgot about it. Like I don’t remember any of that.”
“Oh.”
“They said this might happen,” says Val, “with his meds and shit.”
“Right.”
In the ensuing silence, I stare at the screen on Val’s phone, willing her to push play. Because even if Alan doesn’t remember those things—including and especially the look on his face when I told him to stay in the kitchen with his friends and get high—I always will.