Words and Their Meanings (20 page)

47

Have you rolled your eyes enough, young lady? I
'
d like to tell you a story about your parents. I
'
m still mad as hell at your father. Don
'
t mistake this as an explanation for his behavior. It isn
'
t. There is no excuse for what he did. But we are human. We are fragile creatures made of fragile parts. It
'
s miraculous, when you think about it: like magnets, we bump together and push apart, trying to find connection. We all want to feel slices of joy.

Your dad has been through a great deal in his life. He lost his parents when he was only 21. The accident was gruesome. He had to switch gears from grieving to responsibility within minutes. He became a father for his brother. He married your mom. Out of love. Don
'
t get any ideas from that first crane. Your parents were very much in love. She cared for her boys with everything she had, Tess did (does). Your Gran thought it was a statement against her
—
the way your mom took to domesticity with such a fervor. I told your Gran not everything in life was symbolic. Boy! I slept on the couch for two weeks for that remark.

I
'
m writing small now because I
'
ll run out of paper and I haven
'
t even started yet. Your mom took on a lot of sadness for your dad and Joe. She sponged it up best she could, but it was never enough. When you were a year old, on the day before the anniversary of his parents
'
deaths, your dad left the house to go for a drive very early in the morning. The details of what happened during the next ten or so hours are sketchy, but the evening ended with your father in the county drunk tank. Something about him getting caught on top of the roof of a bar that was once a firehouse, waving what appeared to be his boxer shorts and yelling to anyone and everyone who
'
d listen that life is short and to make every second count. That
'
s why your mom got your family out of town every year after that, maybe figuring if he wanted to get half-naked and pontificate about the brevity of existence, remote cabins were better podiums than downtown bar rooftops. The truth is, she tried to put Band-Aids on wounds too deep to heal. When Joe died, your dad broke. That
'
s the best way to describe it. I think he did what he did (though I think the baby part was an accident) to put walls between himself and his family. He
'
s told me as much. He
'
s lost his anchors, his parents. He
'
s lost his brother, whom he raised like a son. There is no denying the fact that one day, you and Bea and your mom will die too. Most people can keep this knowledge buried. But your dad has seen too much. He knows there
'
s no guarantee he
'
ll go first. I think he believed he could lessen the blow. That he could detach.

It was wrong. But human.

48

I
don't wait before grabbing the last crane. I can't stop even though there isn't enough room in my head for all these secrets. All these truths. Gramps's words crash into each other. I crawl over to the corner, as if putting my back against the wall will steady me. Will make all of this slow down.

The writing is shorter in this last crane. I picture Gramps bent over the page, scribbling away at my kitchen table, looking
up when I w
alked into the room.

There
'
s no easy way to say this, except to remind you to go back and read crane number two a whole bunch of times. Brace yourself, kiddo. This crane will mean the most to you. And it will hurt. I know how much you loved Joe. How much you looked up to him and thought he could do no wrong. And he loved you too. Sometimes, we think we know what
'
s best for the people we love. Sometimes, we're wrong.

I
'
ll just come out with it: Joe botched your finalist packet for the summer residency you wanted to go to so badly. Remember how you asked him to read the story over to make sure it was perfect? Remember how he said not to change a thing? You never read the document again before sending it, did you? I know you didn
'
t, because he changed it. He took out a few bits, rearranged paragraphs, made it so your words were less focused. He thought success was coming too easy for you. He worried you were in over your head and you needed to grow up some more before having that kind of pressure. He said if you
'
d really wanted to get in, you would have checked that story again, line by line, before emailing it.

But then the rejection came. And you were so broken up about it. Joe came to me, told me everything. He still thought he did the right thing. I told him the fact that you didn
'
t review the story, may have been more a sign of trust in him than a lack of motivation. This got him thinking. He said he was going to fess up as soon as he figured out a way to explain. But then, he got sick. A summer residency didn
'
t seem important anymore. I
'
m not telling you this to get you writing again. I
'
m telling you so you can grieve for Joe knowing the whole truth. In the long run, you need to understand that people
—
even the best people
—
are always more and less than we imagine. It
'
s okay to be mad at him, Anna. It doesn
'
t mean you love him less. We all

It stops mid-sentence. I'd walked in the room. He never finished the letter. I'm screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming, but Nat's not rushing in to see what's wrong. Maybe I'm not screaming out loud. Maybe I'm shriveled in the corner, staring straight ahead, understanding coffin yoga on a whole new level. I'm trapped. Trapped inside truth inside of truth inside of truth.

All of a sudden Nat's in front of me, shaking me, saying my name over and over and over. I can't answer. I've screamed myself hoarse inside.

When Nat reaches for the crane in my hand, however, I spring.

“Don't you touch that!”

She stumbles backward.

“Anna!”

“NO!” I cry. I know I look like a caged animal. I can't help it. “You can't read these. They're mine!”

Nat grabs me. She yanks me up and drags me to the car. The lights stay on in Gramps's office.

“Stop it!” I cry, struggling to break free.

“I swear to God I will stick you in the trunk if you try to run.” She's seething and choking back tears.

She
pushes my stomach against the seat and slams the passenger door. I start to open it, but holding the handle makes me think of the metal on Gramps's machines, which makes me think o
f Gran and Mom and Dad and Joe and I can't do this anymore.

Nat gets in and stares at me.

“What the hell was that about?”

I can't find words to answer. I can't find words at all.

“You think this isn't mine to grieve too. Fine. I get that. But you can't lock it all up. Do you have any idea how lucky you—”

“Lucky? Lucky? Are you kidding me?”

“Yes, lucky. You get to grieve. Don't you see? You get to show the whole world your pain and we're all here to hold you up and … ” her whole face trembles.

“I feel like I have nothing left,” I say to myself more than Nat. “Joe. Gramps. My dad and his baby. All those words in the cranes, what they mean, what—never mind. And when I opened myself up for one second … Mateo … ”

“Mateo is going to New York! He's not dead! The only reason you don't have him is because you pushed him away!”

She revs Dolores's engine and slams into reverse.

“I can't face them right now, Nat. I can't.”

“Well, you have to, because I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done.”

So we're back to where she's slamming everything again, including words.

All the new stories in my head are swerving around each other, trying to connect. When we turn the corner onto one of the four-lane roads spanning the length of the township and city, I beg Nat to keep going, straight across the bridge.

I need to see him, I tell her. She doesn't need to ask who I mean. She bites her lip hard and shakes her head no again and again, but she keeps driving into city limits. I watch the water pass beneath us and remember how much I want to forget.

49

I
expect the gothic gates of Forest Grove Cemetery to be rusted and tired. I expect the grass to be overgrown and weedy, the road to be split and uneven. In reality, it looks better than St. Patrick's, only four blocks from my house. Dark green ivy sprawls along the stone walls, huge pots of red geraniums dot the drive. The lawn is shorn short, making each headstone stand even taller. These graves have not been forgotten.

We take several wrong turns as I try to remember the directions to our family plot.

“Maybe left here,” I say, pointing to an obelisk.

Instead, Nat turns right.

“I said left—” I start to argue, except suddenly the large birch tree, the one we've always used to locate my grandparents' graves, is in front of us. “Oh. Okay. We're here. You can stay in the car. I'll only be a few minutes.”

Nat's whole face is ticking. She opens her mouth. Shuts it with a snap. The seat belt makes a little zippy noise as she leans her head against the gray leather steering wheel and then back against her headrest. Outside, a squirrel runs in circles.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Say your piece.”

There are forty-three seconds of silence.

“Have you ever asked Mateo about the scar on his face?”

I blink.

“What?”

“The scar. Do you know why it's there?”

I try to pull an answer from thin air, but the truth is, I don't have a clue.

“I'll take that as a no.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

She glares, as if I am the most idiotic person on the planet.

“When Mateo was eight, a group of kids in his neighborhood were playing with a box of firecrackers they found in someone's garage. They took a big glass container—the kind you'd store like five pounds of rice or popcorn kernels inside—and stuffed it with firecrackers, then lit it and ran away. Except the thing didn't explode, and Mateo and some kid named Arnie went to take a look. When they got up to it, it blew up. Mateo got a shard in his chin. The other kid lost one of his eyes. He's never gone to watch fireworks since. Until he went for you.”

I told myself I maybe loved Mateo, but I didn't even know this story. And she did.

“How did you find out?”

“I asked him.”

We stare at the rows of headstones. My head hurts. My knuckles hurt.

“Well, good for you. You like knowing everybody's secrets, right?” I can't hide my annoyance.

“This is the worst part of being your friend.”

The word “friend” hangs between us, cold and alone. For the first time, I wonder if Nat and I will ever share a lunch table again. If we'll make it through this.

“You don't get it,” she continues. “You never will. You get to wear your grief however you want. You get to be Patti Smith. You get to ditch your words. You get to write verses on your arm for the whole world to know exactly how you feel. And you don't appreciate how alive it makes you. Sometimes I wish for one second—just one tiny second—you and I could switch places.”

I won't give her the benefit of my tears. I yank the door open and jump out, falling over my own feet as I make my way to his grave
. Switch places. I've never heard such a selfish thing. Drama whore. That's what she is.

I'm glad my back is to Nat as I walk toward Joe. I don't want her to see my face twist in pain and fear and an ache so black and
deep and endless I possibly have an entire universe lost in the pit of my stomach. I've never been a
big fan of graveyards. Rows of coffins with rotting corpses doesn't seem that comforting. Yet the minute I see the curved granite slab with Joseph Daniel O'Mally on it, a warmth rises within me. I kneel down, trace the letters of his name, the wor
ds “Beloved Son, Brother, Uncle” and the dates. His beginning. His ending.

“Why?” I ask him, quiet at first, then louder and more shrill, until I'm wailing. “Why? Why? Why did you do it? How could you? Why didn't you just tell me? Why didn't you say it before I gave you those germs?”

I pound one fist against the granite and yelp with a pain so sharp I'm knocked onto my butt. Wiping my eyes with my palm, I take in the whole plot. There are daisies and sprigs of mint in a ball jar. Mom. A laminated drawing of what could be a pig, a pink person, or a cloud is pushed into the ground with a stick. Bea. Beside the grave is a piece of paper, held down with a rock. I groan when I read it.

There's not a day that goes by without thoughts of you. I miss you. And I believe in heaven now, because it's nice to think we'll meet again. Opiate of the masses, indeed. ~L.E.D.

L.E.D.

Laura Elizabeth Donnaly.

Sameera's best friend.

I hold the paper carefully in my hand, like it might explode. Could Nat have been right all
along?

I get up and move toward my grandparents' graves, behind Joe's. I need a minute. The sheer amount of horrific information I've swallowed today is enough to open a sinkhole. In the shadow, leaning against the back of Joe's headstone, I see it.

A plant. A prehistoric-looking plant. With purple and orange wings for petals. A plant called Bird of Paradise. It has a paper crane-like flower.

A paper crane flower.

A paper crane. There's a card sticking out of it, but I think I know who it's from before I even read the words. I've only seen a plant like this one other place. And I only know one person in the world sappy enough to quote the most lovelorn line from
Les Miserables
on a handmade card meant to sit beside a grave.

How she cried for him. How she could barely say his name for months after he was gone. How she kept that plant on her dresser. How she looked shocked when I pulled the bracelet from under his bed. It was hers. It was her.

I turn. Nat stands with a few headstones between us crying. Hard.

Nat.

Joe.

No.

No.

No.

“Anna,” she says. Everything is there, in the way she says my name. “Anna … ”

I hold up my hand to silence her. He never told me. She never told me. The lies. The betrayal. They shared this. They kept each other's secret.

They were together.

“Please, please let me explain—”

“No!”
I scream the word loud enough to scare a crow out of the birch tree. He caws his disapproval. “You don't get to say anything! All this time. All this time I was searching for the person he wrote that le
tter to—”

“Letter? You said it was a receipt.” She hiccups after the word “receipt.”

“That's what I meant!” I stomp the ground. “All this time you let me go on and on like a fool. Did you just want to laugh? Enjoy the last hoorah on your inside joke?”

Nat's slumped against the ground. She clutches her stomach. Sobs. “That receipt. It couldn't have been me. We never went to a…he had someone else.”

“How?” I ask. She doesn't answer, so I ask again. And again.

“How did it happen?”

Nat shrugs. She won't meet my eyes.

“One day, I came to pick you up,” she says finally, staring at the tree behind me. “It was his spring break, so he was home. You were still out, I don't remember where. Joe was sitting on the front porch. I sat next to him. We talked like always. But then our knees bumped and we sort of left them there, touching.”

The two people I thought I knew best in this world.

“I'm going to be sick.”

“I'm sorry,” she cries. “I'm sorry, Anna. He called me the next day, pretending to be looking for you, but then we stayed on the phone for hours, and it was late, and he asked if I'd ever ridden a bike down the middle of the street in the dead of night in the early springtime, and I said no, and before I knew it he was shining a headlamp up into my window, all bundled up and waving on that funny cruiser bike of his. And then—”

“Stop. Stop. I don't want to hear any more.”

I'm about to turn away when I remember Alex.

“In all of this sneaking around and secret little affair of yours, was this one of the times you broke up with Alex? Does he know? Do you care that you betrayed him? That you betrayed us both?”

“Please,” Nat sobs over and over again. She holds one hand up in front of her face, waves it frantically, as if she can make it all disappear. As if she can erase the truth.

“Why shouldn't I call him right now? Huh? Why?”

“Anna, no, please.”

“Give me a reason.”

“Anna, I never meant to … we never meant to … it just happened. And I do care about Alex. Deeply. That's why I couldn't tell him, when Joe and I—when we started to fall—and then we weren't together and he died and Alex is so good and loving and kind and why would I hurt him for something that can't ever exist?” She's pleading now.

“Stop it,” I snap, shaking my head. “You could cry a new G
reat Lake and it wouldn't make up for what you did. For what you kept doing by lying to us. Just stop. Save your drama.”

“What do you think I've been doing for the last year?” All of a sudden Nat's come alive again. She pulls herself up and marches within inches of my face. Thrusting her finger against my chest, she draws in a ragged breath. Her face is pinched with fury.

“You own all your grief. You get to feel it and mourn it and express it. What did I get to do? Bury mine. I'm an actress, a person who only knows how to do emotion big and bold and raw. But I can't. I've had to stuff it all inside and be there for you. I've held your secrets. I've taken your hurts. But who has been there for mine? The only person I could have ever told is there!”

She throws her hand toward Joe's grave. And then she spins away from me and screams at him.

“And you! You tell me all the things I want to hear. You make me understand what it means to love somebody. And then we—and you—you break it off like it meant nothing to you. Nothing! And I never get to ask you why. I never get closure. I walk around with a you-shaped hole that will never, ever mend. I hate you for that! I hate you for going to some motel with some other girl—for making me think we were real. How could you?”

She picks the plant up and hurls it against the stone. The pot breaks, dirt falling on both sides of the grave. I'm frozen. She's frozen. We aren't facing each other, but I can see her gasping for more, more, more air. Just like me.

She coughs, catching her breath.

Just like Joe.

Oh my God.

Just. Like. Joe.

“Nat. You were sick too. When I got the flu—you and I had it at the same time, didn't we? Did you … it could have been—” I can't finish. The thought knocks the wind right out of me.

Without turning around, she begins again, voice broken.

“I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you when we first … I wanted to tell you when he got sick, when you told me it was your fault, but how could that have been the right time,
with so much bad happening so fast, and I was heartbroken and couldn't tell my best friend. I couldn't cry about this guy who tore me into pieces because it was Joe and he'd insisted we keep it a secret from you until he could make up his mind and then he was gone and you almost died and then you were home and not all right and I was so scared I'd lose you too. The days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and months turned into a year, and by then a
ll the things
I didn't say stacked so high I was afraid—I just … and then you found that receipt and I broke into a million little pieces all over again. Every delusional thing I told myself about how Joe felt—it crumbled and I couldn't say a wor
d.

“Everyone got pieces of him. Sameera. Your family. Even the Sarahs. I don't even get his memory, Anna. I don't even get to
hold on to a sliver of his love. All I have, all I've ever had, is loss. So don't you see? I couldn't let Alex go too. I do love him. In a different way, but I do, and I couldn't see hurting him and losing him and having absolutely nothing left. I don't think I could have held it together, and I couldn't leave you
alone.”

There's nothing left to say. We both know it. She starts to walk away.

“I'll wait in the car,” she says, sniffling and wiping black streaks from her eyes across her cheeks.

I move into the birch's thin shadow. It covers half of Joe's grave, vintage light bathing the rest of the grass, green tips reaching toward the sun. The cemetery closes at dusk. I lay my head against the earth.

I want to hate her. I want to hate Joe. It all rises in me, the stain of lies and loss and hidden truths. But then I think about Gramps and how he folded paper the same way people fold into themselves. I think about how we are fragile. How we are all made of secrets and secret keepers. Every connection shapes us, and we then shape others, and it makes our stories rich and jagged and full of pain and full of love. And it
matters. All of it.