“What I’m saying is,” he adds, grabbing for a roll of duct tape and sitting on the roll of carpet he’s just finished with, “you should’ve done something bigger. Skywriting a big ol’I’m sorryover her placeor something.”
Charlie takes the tape from him, picks at the corner until she frees a new length. “Disagree. Big gestures are empty. You’ve got to do the simple things.” She’s smiling as she helps Ahmed tape up the carpet, and I guess that’s got to do with her and Autumn, with the way they’ve been fixing things between them over the last month. These days Charlie carries around a pocket-sized schedule Autumn made for her, one that’s got blocked-out times for video calls, a small box-chart where Charlie can cross off the days until their next visit. It’s not like I’m trying to look closely at it, but there’s a lot of pink hearts on the thing.
I try notto be jealous.
“Doing all right over there, Pop?” I ask, looking to where my father’s stood from his place pulling staples from the hardwood. I can see he’s thinking about making an escapeto the kitchen.
“Your friends talk a lot,” he says, as if he thinks he’s being quiet enough that the people less than ten feet away fromhim won’t hear.
“Rude,” says Charlie, but she laughs as she watches him retreat, and he waves a hand behind him. Despite his complaints, it seems maybe like my pop likes the noise, at least for a little while, or maybe—maybe—he just likes being around me.
Three times since that night he told me, in his own way, to get my shit together, we’ve gone to one of those group meetings my mother told me about. We sit in the back, not much talking from the O’Leary contingent, but no one seems to mind. The first time, I’d barely been able to sit still, shifting in my seat, crossing and uncrossing my arms, rolling my shoulders, restless with listening to others in the room being so open, so raw and tearful and sometimes angry. At one point, during that first meeting, I’d looked over at Pop, eager to commiserate, eager for a sharedHow are these people doing thislook, but he’d been perfectly still. Not comfortable, I guess—I don’t think anyone would be comfortable with grief like this. But he sure as shit wasn’thiding from it.
So Iwasn’t, either.
It was the third meeting that gave me the idea to go to Zoe. I’d been tired, coming off a night shift, only time for a quick shower and change before I’d picked up Pop to go. We’d come in late, and I didn’t mind a bit, skipping the Styrofoam-cup coffee and awkward small talk that preceded the first two I’d attended.
There’d been a woman there, maybe in her forties, tall and calm looking, dressed in a navy pantsuit and heels like the ones I’d seen Zoe wear—thin, sharp like a weapon, almost scarily tall. When she’d raised her hand to share, she’d done it as though she’d been preparing for it, and maybe she had. She’d lost her daughter two years ago—seventeen, a car wreck, one late Friday night. Not even a year later, she and her husband had divorced, like lots of couples who lose kids. That was okay, she’d said, maybe not okay but understandable, because things hadn’t been all that great even before. But the problem was, some guy at her work asked her out last week, and she’d said yes. Then she’d lost it, had spent an hour sobbing in a bathroom stall before finally taking the rest of the day off. “I said yes before I even thought about it,” she’d said.“I forgot that I’m not a woman who goes on dates. I haven’t gone on dates for eighteen years.”
“Are you going to go?” one of the other group members had asked, and without thinking about it I’d sent him a sharp look for his curiosity. Jesus, it was sointrusive.All of this was so intrusive.
But no one else seemed to think so, not even her. She’d only shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Should I?” and then it seemed like everyone had an opinion:It all depends if you’re ready; It’s too soon if it makes you have that response; Sometimes you have to get out there; I’ll bet your ex hasn’t waited to start dating; Do you feel like you’d be betraying your daughter’s memory?And I’d been near enough to shouting at everyone, to asking them what business it was of theirs, before it’d hit me like a brick over the head: she’smakingit their business. She was brave—that’s what I realized while I watched her listen back, while I listened to her give tentative answers that she wasn’t sure about. Sometimes she’d say one thing, and then walk it back, a big mess of jumbled thoughts that wasn’t at all like how she looked. She was brave, figuring out how to live her life, in all this shitty aftermath. Figuring out how to see what was still left around her.
And I was such afucking coward.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I’d stood from my seat, not thinking, and the guy at the front of the room, the one who runs these things, had looked at me and said, “Did you want to share something today?”
“Next time,” I’d said, and looked down at Pop, who was already putting his arms back into his coat. Ididwant to share something, but only with her, first.
I’d dropped Pop off back at home, had tried to prepare myself, on the way to Legal Aid, for seeing her in the flesh again. Ihadseen her, once, since that day at the campground, but only by accident. I’d opened the camera app on my phone to snap a photo of the serial number on a box of latex gloves I needed to reorder for the squad inventory, and there she’d been, a freeze-frame of her stern face at the end of that video, the one she’d taken at my house the morning she’d fainted in my driveway. My finger had hovered over the screen, desperate to see her mouth move, to hear her say my name.
But I didn’t do it. I’d closed the app, had torn off the corner of the box of gloves instead and marched it back to the office with me, my phone burning a hole in my pocket. Her face burning a hole in my heart.
So maybe I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. Maybe I should’ve thought it through. Not skywriting, but damn. A little polish wouldn’t have hurt. Fuck, my t-shirt had been inside out, I’d realized, once I’d gotten back into the truck, my hands shaking. I’d probably looked like a hobo.
“Maybe you ought to call her again,” says Ahmed, interrupting my thoughts.
A part of me bristles, an old habit dying hard. But I’m trying to remember that woman, letting everyone weigh in on her possible date. “I told her I don’t expect anything from her,” I say. “I meant it.”
There’s a beat of silence, probably while Charlie and Ahmed exchange one of their looks about me, but it’s an easy silence, and we each go back to our tasks, Ahmed and Charlie starting to work on cutting up a new section, me taking up the staple removal my dad abandoned. I take deep breaths while I work, try to let loose the tension that’s so heavy in my gut. This might be it. This might be the life I have from now on, and I’ve got to get right with that. It’s a good life, building a team with Ahmed and Charlie. Making things right with my family. Figuring out what to do with Aaron’s money, something that I’ve accepted willtake some time.
It’ll never be as good as it could have been, if I’d managed to keep her, but I’ve got to live with that. With what I did to her, and with what we did to each other, starting outthe way we did.
After a while, my mom wanders in, looking over our progress, her gaze lingering on me longer, faint but obvious concern in her eyes. “How about a break? I could make you guys something.”
I almost laugh as I stand, brushing carpet fibers off my knees. It would have annoyed me a week ago, this caring enthusiasm, but now I take it for what it is. She’s just enjoying this, people in this house, and I expect it’s something she missed long before Aaron died. Once he’d gotten sick, really sick, my parents had stopped socializing much, had stopped opening their door to neighbors and friends who had always, always come around a lot when we were growing up. Right now, she’s acting like it’s snack time during a playdate, and I guess that’s all right for as longas she’s here.
“Oh,” I hear her say, a little confused, and when I look up at her, she’s watching out the open front door, the one we’ve been tossing rolls of carpet outof all morning.
I hear a car door slam, and I think my heart stops for a beat. I look at my mom first, because I’m too chickenshit to look out the door, to get disappointed. Just for a second, I want to live in the reality that it’sher out there.
Mom turns her face to me, gives me a steady look. “Aiden,” she says, her face serious and kind. “There is nothing from me you need to worry about.”It’s her,I’m thinking, and the thought is pounding so loud that I almost don’t hear what she says next. The truth is, it wouldn’t matter even if I didn’t hear her. I’m almost halfway out the door already.
But I’m still glad I catch it. “If you love her,” she says, “I’m sure I’lllove her too.”
* * * *
I almost don’t believe it at first, really seeingher out there.
