The Most Important Thing

by Avi

  I refused to believe what happened.

  He was coming home to get me. He never got here. Was it my fault? No. Uncle Carl said it was the truck driver’s fault.

  I stepped out of my room. The visitors had mostly gone. In the kitchen, there were untouched plastic bowls of stale-looking food and cups of cold tea, tea-bag tabs dangling like windless flags.

  I went to the living room. Aunt Joyce and Mom were sitting side by side on the couch, Aunt Joyce holding Mom’s hands. Mom’s face was swollen, splotchy red from crying. Uncle Carl, sitting in a chair across the way, had his hands hanging limply between his legs. His head was tilted back, eyes closed. No one was talking.

  I went to Mary’s room. She was lying on her bed, facedown in her Love Pink pillow, her right hand hanging above the floor, clutching her cell phone.

  “You okay?” I called.

  She didn’t answer, or look at me, just lifted the hand holding her cell phone as if waving good-bye. Next moment, her ringtone went off: laughter. “Oh, my God,” she groaned, and turned it off fast, then pressed her face back into the Pink pillow. I heard her sob.

  I went into the bathroom. Not bothering to click on the light, I turned on the tap, cupped my hands, gathered water, bent over, and sloshed my face. Then I stood, face sopping, and stared bleary-eyed into the mirror over the sink. Not only did I see my image, but right behind me, I saw Dad’s face.

  It was hazy, out of focus, a kind of shaped mist. Even so, there was enough of that shape, his shape, for me to recognize that it was him.

  I whirled around. Of course, he wasn’t there. All the same, I stood there, staring, shuddering. I swung slowly back to the mirror and looked at my own image again, but really looking for Dad. I didn’t see him.

  I concocted the easiest explanation: I was upset, worn out, and thinking only about Dad. If you can’t believe someone is gone, you’re going to see him, right?

  Still shaken, I went back to the living room, leaned on the doorframe — to steady myself — and looked in. Mom, Aunt Joyce, and Uncle Carl were still there, slumped, red-eyed, puffy-faced.

  I said, “Is there going to be a funeral?”

  Mom said, “We’ll hold a memorial service. Your dad has lots of friends.”

  I noticed that she said has, not had.

  Aunt Joyce said, “He’s being cremated.”

  “Why?”

  Uncle Carl blew out some breath and said, “I guess it’s something your dad talked about years ago.”

  For a few moments no one spoke until Mom said, “The cremation will take a few days.” More silence. She gestured vaguely. “Mrs. Oates made ham sandwiches.”

  I said, “We were going camping.”

  After a moment, Mom said, “I know.”

  I began to back away.

  “Luke!” Mom called.

  I stopped.

  “He loved you so much.”

  When I just stood there, she said, “I’ll be taking a sleeping pill.”

  “Why?”

  Aunt Joyce said, “She won’t sleep otherwise.”

  “Okay,” I murmured. As I headed down the hall toward my room, eyes stinging from tears that kept coming, I saw a rectangular glow at the far end of the hall. I stopped and stared. It was Dad’s shape again, like what I had seen in the hall when I first came home.

  “Dad?” I whispered.

  The glow faded away.

  I waited for it to come back. When it didn’t, I lay on my bed, the lights off, staring up.

  “You’re dazed,” I said out loud, as if I were another person, and I was giving myself reasons for what I had seen. “You don’t believe he’s gone. Of course you’d see him.” Then I added, “But you don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Then I remembered something: the first time I had seen that glow was before I knew Dad had died. Except, by that time, he had died. Uncomfortable, I tried to sort it out. Make sense of things. When I couldn’t, I tried to stop thinking.

  Uncle Carl appeared at the door to my room. “I’m going home,” he said. “Your aunt Joyce is going to stay with your mom. Call me if anyone, including you, needs anything. Anything.” He came forward, put his hand on my head, and ruffled my hair. “Your dad was a great guy,” he murmured. “Be back tomorrow.” He left.

  I tried to stay awake, as if by going to sleep, I was abandoning Dad. Too tired, I began to drift off. As I did, I saw that shape — Dad’s shape — just inside the doorway to my room.

  The thought Does he want me to do something? came to me. Unable to reason it out, I fell asleep.

  When I woke, I had no idea what time it was. I checked the window in my room and saw dull light. I looked at my small clock. Green numbers read 6:42. I lay still and listened. There was nothing to hear but nothing. I speculated where my sister was, my mom. My aunt.

  Barefoot, I padded to my sister’s room and looked in. She was sprawled out in her day clothing, facedown, entangled in sheets and blankets, as if she couldn’t stay still, even in sleep.

  When I looked into my parents’ room, I saw Mom asleep. Aunt Joyce was in the bed, too, also asleep.

  I saw Dad’s image again, but this time it was a framed photograph of Mom and him when much younger. It was propped up on a little table next to her side of the bed. The picture had probably been the last thing Mom looked at before she slept. The photo was next to a little drug container. The sleeping pills, I guessed.

  In the kitchen, the food that had been on the table the night before was there, still untouched.

  I sat down on the living-room sofa, and stared at the turned-off TV directly across the room. On the bottom edge of the TV frame was a dot of red light. It was pulsing, like a tiny heartbeat. The TV glass stayed black, at least until Dad’s face appeared. Only, again, not his face exactly, but a whitish smudge. Even so, it was shaped like his mostly-bald head — even bumps on either side, his big ears. I thought how well I knew his shape, his size, though I don’t recall ever having thought about it before. You know what you know when you can’t know it anymore.

  As I stared at his face — his sort-of face — on the TV screen, I was simultaneously telling myself that I was not seeing him. Except, how could I not see him? I could have picked out his shadow from a million shadows. Besides, the truth is, it made no sense to me that he had just . . . vanished. Even as I had that thought, the face on the TV screen went away.

  I thought of Dad’s last words to me: I really want to get to the lake.

  I asked myself what he would have said to me if he had known what was going to happen. I couldn’t imagine. Then I asked myself what, if I had known, would have been my last words to him. I tried, but couldn’t think what I’d say. Not knowing made me feel worse than ever.

  I continued to sit there staring at the black, blank TV screen, wishing Dad would come back once more so I could say something. If I knew what to say.

  The weekend went by in a dismal, heavy haze. I felt as if I were made of cardboard. All kinds of people dropped by — relatives, friends, and some of Dad’s work people. Mary’s friends. Some of my friends, too. One with his parents. To my surprise, Mr. Tarkington, my middle-school principal, showed up, just to say how sorry he was.

  They brought flowers, food, and cards with printed thoughts or prayers. They walked and talked slowly, nobody loud, eyes cautious, as if not wanting you to know that they were curious how we were taking things. When they hugged me — they always did — it was as if they wanted to prove that they shared my grief. They couldn’t. Tragic is such an empty word.

  I don’t want to suggest that they didn’t mean what they felt or said. I know they did. It’s just that, as the weekend went on, all those faces began to look alike, their words endlessly the same. They made me keep thinking, if I had words — last words — for Dad, what would they be? I had no idea. But asking that question plunged me into loneliness. And whenever I took those plunges, I’d see him. Never distinct. Just that recognizable splotch of murk.

  It occurred to me: m
aybe it wasn’t me bringing him. Maybe it was him coming to me. It made me think he had not fully departed. That he wanted me to say or do something.

  Sunday morning I said to my sister, “Do you ever see Dad?”

  She gave me an odd look. “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think a lot about him,” she said. “Why? Do you see him?”

  “Of course not,” I said, backing off. I didn’t want to say what was happening.

  By Sunday night, it was Mom, Mary, and me in the apartment. Aunt Joyce had gone home to her family. The three of us had dinner with the two-day-old food people had brought. It was the first time it was just us, without Dad. Automatically, we sat down in our regular seats, which made it so clear that he was not there. The thought Will anyone ever sit in his chair? hit me like a blindside tackle.

  Before eating, Mom got the three of us to hold hands. As we did, she said, “We miss him terribly but this family will go on. I have my work. You have yours — school. Dad had a good life-insurance policy. I don’t want you to worry about that. We’re here. It’s he who has departed.”

  Except I knew he hadn’t gone, not fully. Like I said before, he liked things wrapped up and done right. Which made me sure he wanted something fixed. But what?

  Monday — my choice — I went to school. People knew what had happened. Tons of people came up to me and muttered, “Too bad,” or some such. Teachers as well as kids. Even the school office people. I did not see Dad.

  It was only when I got home, walking toward our apartment, that I saw that blob of rectangular mist at the end of the hall, exactly the way I’d seen it the previous Friday.

  “What is it?” I said. “Tell me what you want me to say or do.”

  No answer.

  Five days after Dad’s death, when I got home from school, I was surprised to find Mom there. She had gone back to work, but there she was, in the kitchen, leaning against the fridge, as if to keep away from the table. I followed her gaze. On the table was what looked like a glass jar. Frosty white — you couldn’t see through the glass — about a foot tall, with a round lid and a knob on top.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Very softly, she said, “Dad was cremated.” She gestured to the jar. “His ashes. Uncle Carl brought them.”

  Startled, I gawked at it. Not that I said anything. I couldn’t.

  Mom said, “I want you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “It didn’t occur to me that — that we would get . . . that.” She was finding it hard to talk. “I don’t want it,” she went on. “Don’t want to even see it. Call Uncle Carl, and get him to dispose of it. I didn’t know how to tell him when he came. I don’t want to think of your father like that.” She put a hand over her eyes. “I’m sorry. Am I being awful? Can you take it away?”

  What else could I say but “Okay”?

  Surprised by how heavy the jar was, I carried it into my room. The jar was indented in the middle, so you could hold it easily. Once in my room, I looked around, trying to decide what to do with the jar. At the same time I was thinking, I am holding what’s left of Dad, aware of how freaky the moment was. It became even stranger when I saw my father — his shadow, his spirit, his whatever — standing there.

  I said, “Please tell me what you want me to do.”

  No answer, of course, but as I looked around I saw the knapsack. Mom absolutely would not look there. I’d keep the jar there until I called Uncle Carl.

  I sat on my bed, back leaning against the headboard. From time to time, my eyes went to the knapsack. I thought about what my mom had said, about not wanting to have anything to do with the ashes. I understood. But now it was me who had to do something about them.

  Once again, I said, as if Dad were there, “What do you want me to do? To say?”

  That’s when I recollected two things. The first was what Dad had told me that last time we had gone to the lake: I can’t think of any other place I would rather be.

  The second were the last words he had said to me, as I left for school the day he died: I really want to get to the lake.

  Soon as I thought of those words, I knew what he was trying to tell me. What he had told me. I looked at the mist that was Dad’s ghost, spirit, and said, “Thanks for coming and reminding me what you said.”

  I called Uncle Carl.

  “I need you to do something for me, something big.”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “I want to visit that place Dad and I camped. Where we were going that next day.” Uncle Carl was nice enough not to ask why, and I wasn’t going to tell him what I was going to do.

  Which is why on Saturday morning, I was sitting in his car, heading west on the Massachusetts Turnpike. The knapsack was on my lap.

  “You can throw that in the backseat,” Uncle Carl said, having no idea what was in it.

  I said, “I’ll hold it.”

  He said, “Did you tell your mom where we were going?”

  “She didn’t ask.”

  “What gave you the idea to do this?”

  “Just wanted to visit the place Dad and I were about to go.”

  “Got it.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Dad’s misty shadow was in the backseat.

  For most of the drive, my uncle and I didn’t talk much. Just a little this and that. Uncle Carl played jazz, John Coltrane. I liked it. The right mood. The farther west we drove, the grayer the sky.

  “You have your cell phone?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you check the weather out there?”

  “Sure.” I did check, and then said, “Snow.”

  “A lot?”

  “Two, three inches.”

  “Okay.” He upped the car’s speed.

  I told him which turnpike exit to take, and how to go, passing through those two small towns. By then it was snowing.

  “There’s the road,” I said.

  He pulled off the regular road and eyed the narrow dirt road. The snow was coming steadily. “How far do we have to go in there?”

  “Not far,” I said. “But I want to walk in alone.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  He studied the snow. “How long will you take?”

  “Not long.”

  “Give you forty-five. If you don’t come back by then, I’m coming after you. We need to get home. Not good driving conditions. As it is, it’s going to be slow.”

  I got out of the car, grabbed the knapsack, slung it over my shoulder, and started down the dirt road.

  So different from summer. Then, everything lush green. Now, snow drifting down, slowly, steadily, each flake the ghost of a leaf. The silence frozen. My breath hanging before my face like a thin veil. The light soft, just enough to see that the world was gradually disappearing, everything living — fading, except me, with what remained of Dad on my back.

  I reached the little log cabin. It was small, dark, and deserted, its windows impenetrable. The roof, snow-covered, reminded me of a Christmas gingerbread house, but didn’t exactly shout, “Merry Christmas.”

  I walked down to the lake. With all that whiteness, the water looked like a massive, deep, black hole. Nothing was moving, except the snow and me. When I stepped onto the little dock and looked out, I watched snowflakes settle on the water only to become instantly absorbed, as if passing into another world.

  I sat down at the end of the rickety dock, feet dangling maybe a yard over the dark water. I pulled the knapsack around, set it on my lap, and opened it. Took out the white ash jar. Wrapping one arm around it, I worked to get the lid off. It took a while.

  For the first time, I looked into the jar.

  It was three-quarters full. The ashes were somewhat gray in color and granular, like the heavy salt you spread on winter sidewalks. To my relief there were no lumps, no things.

  I held the jar with two hands and then said, “This is what you wanted, right, Dad?”

&n
bsp; I didn’t expect any answer, and none came. I just knew I was right.

  Slowly, deliberately, I turned the jar over. In a steady stream, the gray ashes spilled down into the black lake. As the ashes struck the water, they turned white, white as the snow, and flowed out, only not like some vague cloud, but in the distinct shape of a human form — the form I knew so well. Dad — his head, body, legs, and feet. Slowly he, it, the something that he had become, moved away, like a swimmer heading toward the deepest part of the lake.

  Which is when I finally whispered my last words: “Love you, Dad.”

  I never saw him again. He had departed.

  It was about eight o’clock on a Sunday evening when Ryan Bennett’s mom, Halley, came into his small bedroom and said, “We need to have a serious discussion.”

  Ryan, eleven years old, was slouched in his soft chair, reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the ninth time. He lowered the book and said, “About what?”

  “Mostly about me. Where do you want to talk?”

  “Is it that serious?”

  “It’s that serious.”

  “Can you give me a hint?”

  “Ryan, I’d just like to sit down somewhere so we can talk. It’s really important.”

  He tried to read her thoughts. He couldn’t.

  “Okay,” he said, marking the place in his book and pulling himself out of his chair.

  Ryan followed his mom through their four-room apartment into what they called their living room. He sat on the couch. Halley sat in the chair with the frayed armrests across the way, by the lamp and bookcase. She, too, was a reader of novels, sometimes reading the books Ryan read so they could talk about them.

  For a moment, they just sat there, she looking at him, he looking at her. She was thirty-four years old, a dental hygienist, and liked to bike to keep fit. Weeknights she worked out for half an hour on a stationary bike. On weekends, weather permitting, she and Ryan rode together along the Schuylkill River. He loved the long conversations they had about all kinds of things.

  He could tell she was nervous from the way her top teeth — she had very white teeth — stuck out some and bit her lower lip.