Barbara liked to throw parties. She was good at it, her hosting skills honed by years of practice, countless gatherings that brought her to this point, where things just ran on their own, like a well-oiled machine that she could manipulate and set into motion with precise, deliberate, and yet seemingly-effortless execution. The key to hosting a good party, according to Barbara, was never letting the guests see the work put into it. She felt that parties, given their nature and essence, demanded a light touch, a host who didn’t bog things down with heavy formality or rigid schedules. Her touch was so light that she even skipped one of her own celebrations in a now-infamous oversight (or so she claimed at the time), missing the date by a week and vacationing in Monte Carlo the night of the event. Guests assumed it was part of the theme (a ‘Grand Guignol’ that they believed Barbara orchestrated and was simply acting as a missing hostess), even when they had to break in, setting off the alarm and already pouring their own drinks when the first cops arrived in confusion. When someone finally reached Barbara, she spoke to the police and the party went on without her.

Now, as her parties ran themselves, she was simply another guest, perhaps slightly more decked out in an Azzedine Alaia column dress, zig-zagging its bold pattern over her still-shapely-at-55 figure, but still only there to have fun and enjoy herself. It was getting harder to do that. When one’s life has been full of rich twists, exotic locales, and extremes of elation and heartbreak, it’s difficult to find a happy medium, and then a moment of happiness within it. She always thought the next party would be the one – the one we would all remember – a party we would talk about for years.

On this night, at her summer party, we are assembled as usual. There are a handful of new faces, and some favorites in absentia, and that always made things interesting. The beauty was that one was never quite like another, due mostly to this changing of the guard. It kept things fresh, and unpredictable. Yet it was not usually the newcomers who caused trouble. Barbara kept a few close friends who did that well enough on their own, and hidden demons that she freed from their cages on certain nights when a darker sparkle was needed. That was her big secret – that she had these things bubbling beneath the facade. You understood that, if you spent any significant time with her. It was a sense of storied turmoil, a vicious patch of the past, something that went deep enough to excuse the glitter and the frilliness of her party persona. She glided through the guests, smiling and laughing and seemingly having the time of her life, but every once in a while you could catch her, if you looked hard and long enough, standing off slightly by herself, or maybe just on the edge of a little circle of people, and her smile was frozen as her eyes searched the rest of the room, sensing if a light needed dimming, or another batch of ice needed chipping. Then she was gone, the problem had been rectified, and suddenly the music was a little louder.

Tonight, she wears a favorite perfume by Creed. She’s managed to hold onto it for all these years because she only wears it on special occasions. What made this evening so special? She herself pretended not to know, but even if she did, she would keep it to herself. That’s the other thing about Barbara: she always acted like she held the one secret you most wanted to discover. She didn’t hold it maliciously out of reach, rather she dangled it seductively in front of you, but close to her heart, like the diamond pendant nestled just above her decolletage.

The bartender was good, but she’d had better, and she was keeping her eye on him just in case. She wasn’t a stickler about such matters, for the most part, but she didn’t hesitate to step in and make the perfect bone-dry martini if one of her friends had a drop too much vermouth. He was young, lingered a little too long with the pretty ladies, and let the gentlemen fend for themselves. If there’s one thing that Barbara despised in a bartender, it was favoritism – even when she was the recipient. That’s the other thing that you had to like about her: she wasn’t swayed by empty niceties. Polite, yes, and nobody accepted a compliment as graciously as she did, but try her patience with one too many fawning episodes and she’d turn on you with a cutting dismissal. It wasn’t so much an outright attack as it was a removal of her focus and smile, and it had the effect of turning your world suddenly colder, like a cloud passing overhead as the wind kicked up.

“If they insist that you refill their glass instead of accepting a new one, you must at least provide new fruit,” she said with a smile, quietly enough so no one noticed. The young man nodded vigorously, with a little too much exuberance. She was not impressed. She turned the bracelet around on her wrist. This would not be the party to remember. That took some of the pressure off, and made for a fine affair, but it would not be the elusive party she had been chasing for years. It happened that way sometimes, the instant she could tell, early on, and then dismiss the rest of the evening. It freed her up, and those nights were often some of the most fun – the ones that don’t promise much, but somehow deliver, as if by taking them out of the running she imbued them with a challenge they rose to meet. This might be one of those surprising parties. She held onto the capability of surprise. It was one of her more irresistible charms.

The door to the backyard terrace was open. Silk curtains fluttered in the breeze. A boozy group of friends laughed loudly in a dim corner lit only by candles and shrouded by a trio of potted palms.

On any other night, at any other party, she would have thrilled at the sight. Nothing gave her more merriment than seeing friends in the throes of hearty laughter. She was always generous that way. It made the less-worthy aspects of her character forgivable, much in the same way her parties did. Proper hospitality masks a variety of drawbacks.

She’d known enough not to have all her fun in her youth, but once you started enjoying life it was difficult to stop, and much more difficult to keep it going. It felt like she’d been coasting on this happiness for some time, and the thrills no longer thrilled her in the same way. New guests and fresh faces could only compensate so much for the lost loves that tugged at her heart.

Back inside, the party is sweeping to its crescendo. It should have been the most exciting part of the night, the moment when everything is in full-swing. It lasts but fifteen or twenty minutes, and then begins to break slowly down. She still gets a little high from it, the joy of being social, of being part of something and, somehow and in a different way, of being loved. For we all did love her, even if we did not know it then.

Tonight, though, she does not become part of it, choosing instead to watch from a distant vantage point. Near the top of the stairs, she pauses. Looking over her shoulder, she surveys the night she has created, the life she has made for herself, and she wants to cry. She pulls her dress over her heels and walks out of sight, down the long hallway that leads to her bedroom. In it, a bedside table throws its soft fringed light over the space. A dressing gown has pooled at the foot of the bed; ripples of Japanese silk, in the palest shade of turquoise and the faintest pattern of cherry blossoms, roll over one another. Barbara thinks back to the start of summer, back to when it all began – the hope of a new season. Every year she holds out for the same miracle. Every year she thinks it will be better. Every year she gives herself another chance.

This will be the last party, she almost says aloud, her lips barely moving along with the words. It is done. The dull roar from below carries up the stairs, along the hall, and into this room. It is subdued, quiet enough so she can make out the ticking of the clock.

When the last guest departs, and her husband has gone to bed, she lingers in the front doorway. It is her favorite moment of the night.

——————————————————–

{See also 1:13, 2:13, 3:13, 4:13, 5:13, 6:13 & 7:13.}

The first time Jeremiah Miller spoke to Terry Naughton was on the last day of their sophomore year of high school.

“Hey,” Jeremiah called, separating himself from the pack of boys that headed in the other direction. “Wait up.”

Terry thought he was talking to someone else and kept on walking.

“Hey Terry! Hold up!”

Terry stopped and turned around to see Jeremiah bounding up the hill, backpack swaying in his immediate wake, gaze focused on the grassy ground before him. He was out of breath when he finally reached him.

The field that separated their neighborhood from the high school was high with grass, already sending up a first wave of seed. It came up to the bottom of Terry’s shorts. Jeremiah was much taller, had at least half a foot on him. Even from a distance, they made an unlikely pair.

Jeremiah had a mane of feathered hair, parted haphazardly down the middle in what was then the style. Terry’s was slightly shorter, slightly curlier, more difficult to manage. Jeremiah carried himself more confidently, more casually; Terry was more measured, more exact. Jeremiah had an impish, crooked smile that broke out at every opportunity, and just as many inopportune moments. Terry hardly ever smiled. Even when he laughed he didn’t usually smile.

Jeremiah wore jeans, and short-sleeved striped shirts, button-ups with collars. Terry was more careful about his appearance, or so he thought. He wouldn’t come to school with sneakers caked in mud, even if he had taken a short-cut through the field. He wouldn’t wipe the mustard in the corner of his mouth off on the palm of his hand then transfer it to the knee of his jeans.

He knew Jeremiah did all these things, because he liked to watch him. Ever since the new kid moved into the neighborhood two years ago, Terry had studied his neighbor. They never spoke, but they saw each other. Jeremiah would always nod and give out one of his smiles. Terry acted uninterested. Polite but distant.

For a new kid in a rather small school, Jeremiah had assimilated quickly into the popular crowd. His height gave him an almost-regal bearing, but no one would begrudge him a little glory, especially since hubris wasn’t part of the way he carried himself. Even the teachers seemed instantly smitten. Terry noticed this with a tinge of jealousy, but mostly awe. He could learn from him. This was the first step in assessing the value of another human being.

Despite the proximity of their homes, the two boys had never hung out together. Terry preferred to stay inside, watching the tail end of the soap operas, while Jeremiah usually practiced basketball with the other kids. From most appearances, the two boys were as different as could be.

Now, on this last day of school, when the summer sprawled out before them and they had nothing to do but be giddy together, Jeremiah walked beside Terry, and Terry felt the first discomfiture over how much he knew about this boy, and how little he seemed to matter to him. The only thing that relaxed his countenance, and then only briefly, was the belief that his watchful gaze had gone unnoticed. Jeremiah did not let that delusion linger.

“So, you like to stare a lot,” he said, slowing his pace a little. Terry quickened his. It wasn’t accusatory, it wasn’t teasing ~ it was, at least in tone, almost a plea. He smiled an unforced smile and continued, “I saw you staring sometimes and I always wondered what you were thinking about.”

Terry felt his voice waver when he answered. “What do you mean? What was I staring at?” Yet as ashamed and embarrassed as he felt, he also realized for the first time that Jeremiah had noticed him after all, and the smiles he assumed were his default for those who didn’t matter may have been meant for him.

“I thought it was just me,” Jeremiah explained, “But then I noticed you liked to study everything around you. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything bad by it, just thought it was cool to be so…” he paused, before finishing the thought, “observant.”

The enormity of a simple statement by someone we like a lot cannot be underestimated, especially when it borders on a compliment. Terry looked up at Jeremiah, losing his carefully-choreographed cadence and, not noticing the rock hidden among the tall grass, dashed his shin against its unyielding surface and went roughly down.

In his haste to appear all right, he scrambled to his feet too quickly and promptly fell again. He expected Jeremiah to laugh at him, but instead he rushed to his side, grabbing his arm and helping him up.

“Hey, you’re all right,” he intoned, and it wasn’t just the way he said it that moved Terry, it was the look that he gave him. Jeremiah looked him straight in the eye, and it was more of a declaration than anything else, a defiant statement that willed Terry up again, restoring what had been on the verge of being lost. This was a look of concern, an expression of care. If he didn’t love Jeremiah before that (and he probably did), he couldn’t deny it now. Someone had looked at him. Moreover, someone had seen him. Terry – for the first time – felt as if he finally existed. They stayed there, a second longer than most would have done. It was a second that solidified something, a second that marked the covenant of that summer.

“What the hell is a rock doing there anyway?” Jeremiah laughed. They walked though the rest of the field, and when they reached Terry’s house, Jeremiah simply said, “I’ll see you around!” and kept walking the few blocks to his home. He didn’t believe him, but the next day Jeremiah stopped by, rang the doorbell, and invited himself in.

Terry was in boxer shorts and an oversize t-shirt, his hair still rumpled from the night before, sleep crinkling the corners of his eyes. Jeremiah plopped down on the sofa as if he’d done it all his life, as if he were Terry’s brother. Unaccustomed to such familiarity, Terry hung back in the doorway. The clock which hung in the hall chimed nine times, then the house went silent.

“Well, get your clothes on, let’s go somewhere!” Jeremiah boomed.

That was how it went: a suggestion, a command, a simple declarative statement from Jeremiah, and Terry’s agreeable and grateful acquiescence. Friendships – even great life-long friendships – have been founded on more tenuous arrangements. But not once did Jeremiah feel he had the upper hand, and if he appeared the stronger, more-decisive one between them, he knew it was only a bluff. Terry didn’t dare suspect as much, but he never felt completely inferior either. There was competition between friends, he realized, only it wasn’t the kind that he’d had with other boys and girls. The end result wasn’t to get the better of the other. Their only goal was to be better for each other. It thrilled him, their burgeoning friendship, and he became instantly protective of it.

For those first days, when everything was new between them, it might have made sense to explore things more, to ask basic questions, to give a perfunctory run-down of all that came before. They didn’t do that. Jeremiah showed up or didn’t show up, they hung out or they didn’t, and no one had any expectations or disappointments in the beginning. It’s quite easy to maintain a friendship when no claims are made, when the rest of the world doesn’t encroach.

On some days they went fishing in the creek behind Jeremiah’s house. They never caught anything, other than a few crayfish by hand, but Terry understood that the fish weren’t the point. It was enough to simply be there, away from people, out of the walls of their houses, far from the incessant drone and flickering light of the television. And more, to be with each other.

At first Terry doubted it, constantly waiting for the time when Jeremiah found him out, realized he was nothing special, nothing exciting, and stopped coming by. But that didn’t happen, and the summer bonded them with its heat and light, and days spent without parental interference.

Gradually, as the season ripened into all its lush glory, Terry let his guard down. Far from being repelled or shrinking away from each quirk or uncanny trait, Jeremiah seemed to embrace them, finding merit in Terry’s obsession with daytime television, or the way he chose his outfits in advance of each day. The hesitancy he sensed in others when he started to reveal himself was not in evidence with Jeremiah. It was a new kind of friendship, and a fast one. That didn’t always translate to one that lasted, so he allowed himself an emotional safeguard: believing that this was a fleeting thing. Secretly, if he admitted it in the deep hidden darkness of a murky summer night, he wished for it to go on forever. Then, in the morning, if Jeremiah was late to arrive, the agitation Terry felt signaled that things were already out of his control, and no mental tricks would save him from anguish the day that he stopped coming. For now, he did his best to savor the days as they arrived, each one granting the possibility of eternal happiness or instant destruction.

Jeremiah would come over and Terry would tell him excitedly about the latest on ‘All My Children’. At first Jeremiah made the motions of listening, amused and somewhat exacerbated by the importance Terry placed on these fictional characters, and the way he got lost in the stories like they were happening to him, like he actually knew these people. And then, before Jeremiah could help it, he got into it, even positing possible future plot twists in a bid for who knew best where things were headed in Pine Valley.

While Terry was introducing Jeremiah to the wonder of Susan Lucci, Jeremiah was bringing Terry out into another pine valley – the one in their backyards. Having come from somewhere “out West” (Terry never did manage to get anything more out of him than that), Jeremiah missed being outdoors in the winters of New England, so the summer found him, with the current soap intermission the day’s only exception, outside until the fall arrived. Even on rainy days Terry would see Jeremiah walking or running in a hooded sweatshirt. He allowed himself the indulgence that Jeremiah wasn’t just interested in being outside, but being near him. It was incredulous, but stranger and wilder things were imagined by boys far more dangerous.

Aside from their mostly-fruitless forays into fishing, Jeremiah coaxed Terry out of the air conditioning and into the shaded groves of the trees behind their homes. They walked – usually in the first cool flush of morning, dew still on the grass that led to the edge of the forest – ducking into the moss-lined paths that ran eventually to a deep ravine. They only went so far once, as if each knew that this was something special, not daring to try to recapture such a moment for fear or ruining the magic of that first time. They knew something momentous was afoot when they reached that impasse, coming as it did near the very end of that summer.

Looking down into the opening, they were struck with the sudden gaping bit of light that poured into the monotonous stretch of pines and maples. The steep metamorphic outcropping lifted them over this little valley. Pebbles dribbled over the edge, lost in a free fall and barely echoing upon impact. Jeremiah sat on the very end of the rock, dangling his legs precariously, daring the pull of gravity and defying the sheepish protestations of Terry. There they waited, for what, neither of them could comprehend.

The pines whistled softly here. The air moved queasily up and down. This was a place where rain and snow would float in mid-air before settling somewhere else, a spot rife with strange phenomena – the province of the unexplained, the untold, the unwitnessed. Ferns gently waved their fronds in the breeze, dappled sunlight flickered on the forest floor, and far below the murmuring sound of water as it passed beneath them.

It would be the only time in his life when Terry shared the sublime with another person. He’d only brushed such a sacred spot two or three times altogether, but always alone, and it was less fulfilling that way. They stayed there for a while, the sun slowly crawling across the sky, the water the sole noise in the background – distant, buffering, like a set of chimes that eventually becomes part of the aural landscape, no longer foreign or imposed.

They sat side by side, their knees idly touching off and on, the hair of Jeremiah’s leg thicker but softer than Terry’s. Each brush was a frisson in his heart. He stood first.

“No, not yet,” Jeremiah said quietly. Terry sat back down. If he was never loved in his lifetime (and he would be), he would not have missed it because of this moment. He smiled, and a thin film of salty water made the forest go hazy before he blinked it away.

It was strange the way they could be quiet together, as they were for most of the walk back that day. Strange in that it felt so comfortable. Jeremiah usually worked to fill the silence, with his exuberance, his earnest charm, his willingness to laugh. He didn’t do that with Terry. The breaking of branches and the rustle of dead leaves were the only accents of sound, broken by a few scant bird calls. When they reached the edge of the manicured lawn, Terry was the one who said, “See you around.”

That night, a storm moved in from the North. The thunder woke both boys. Each looked out their windows at the same unsettled sky and the pounding sheets of torrential rain. Each thought of the sun-filled ravine. Each wondered about the other.

In the morning, the storm continued. The phone call came between thunder-claps. Terry was sitting by the window, enthralled by the might of the summer storm in spite of all his consternation. The rain had not let up, upsetting him more than usual, as he figured Jeremiah wouldn’t be over. Yet the phone was the reassurance that he would come. Not only that, but that he needed to see him, even in the rain.

Jeremiah was not one to use words like ‘need’. His way of operating was according to whims and wishes, wants and desires, ease and comfort. To hear him say that he needed to talk to Terry was something new. To need something lent an uneasy dependence that rubbed against everything Jeremiah so valiantly wanted to be. It thrilled Terry, and he stood by the side of the window, furtively watching for the familiar gait to round the corner.

Jeremiah did not rush in the rain as he usually did. He walked with his head down, taking slow deliberate steps. He stood in the doorway, soaked and surprisingly out of breath. For the first time, he didn’t seem tall, didn’t tower over everything. He looked defeated, but defiant, with flashes of anger and flecks of the despondent. His hair was matted and wet, his hands dripping with water.

“What happened?” Terry asked.

He said nothing. It was what he did when asked about family or where he had come from or anything that might give some clue as to who he was before that summer. Terry directed him upstairs to his room, “First door on the right, and I’ll find a towel and one of my Dad’s t-shirts.” Jeremiah trudged up the stairs, arms folded in cold or fatigue.

Terry called up to him and said he’d be right there, as he searched for a towel in the laundry pile that waited to be folded. Carrying a blue one in his hand, he took the stairs two at a time, rushing into the room and blurting out a quick, “Do you want to talk…” before what he saw cut him off. Jeremiah was shirtless, sitting on the floor, in the midst of Terry’s childhood bedroom.

He hadn’t had time to clean. Clothes, the outfits he had tried on the night before, were strewn about the floor. And then the yearbook, the one that couldn’t quite bring himself to ask Jeremiah to sign. The one that now had all the pages of Jeremiah marked by scraps of paper, and the damning silly drawings entwining their names, surrounded by ridiculous hearts, wrapped in inky tendrils, and a multitude of love letters half-started, some crumpled roughly, some folded, some torn, some soft with the hours of consternation and concentration. Terry had taken it out from under the bed when his parents left that morning. In just a few days he had created a silly teenage shrine to a boy who had no idea how he felt. Even in his wildest wishes, he hadn’t dared to think of anything coming of it. He knew better, and yet the heart was not to be quelled.

Jeremiah looked at Terry, eyes wild with terror, and stood up quickly, the book falling onto its spine on the thick carpet, landing with a muffled thud. Scraps of bookmarks fell out like fluttering surrender flags. The cache of letters jutted out, jagged corners and odd angles lending the book a vicious predatory aspect. Terry let the towel drop to the floor, a mixture of panic, relief, and resignation. The thunder rumbled in the distance. The storm was finally moving away. Jeremiah charged deliberately at Terry.

When Terry would tell future lovers about this, and he would only tell a select few, he always left out how he felt when he first saw Jeremiah coming toward him. He usually painted it in a romantic light or, if he was feeling guilty, downplayed it into an inevitable moment of destiny. When really what he had felt then, when he watched Jeremiah approaching, was a sickening sense of dread: he thought he was going to hit him. The wildness in his eyes, the heaviness of his breath, the intent in his stride – all would form the inexorable binding of desire with danger, pleasure with impending hurt, exhilaration with annihilation. Within that instant was the cataclysmic prophecy of all that would follow, all that he would strive for and against in the remainder of his life.

Jeremiah did end up hitting him, but not in that way. His upper body ended up colliding with Terry’s as he grabbed his head and kissed him roughly on the mouth. Terry was pushed back against the door-frame, stunned but somehow managing to kiss him back. Their hands fumbled, Terry’s sliding wildly over Jeremiah’s cool, damp skin. Jeremiah groped handfuls of loose clothing, the sleep-mussed hair on Terry’s head, and finally the small of his back, beneath the baggy t-shirt. When at last he pulled away, he looked at Terry, let his head drop a little, then grabbed his shirt and ran downstairs. The front door slammed.

There were only three more days before school started again.

Jeremiah did not stop by on any of them. Terry was simultaneously ecstatic and despondent. He wanted to go over to Jeremiah’s house, went so far as to start up the street at least three times, but never did. The weather was idyllic, filled with sun and a cool breeze, and the kind of blue sky that only September affords. Terry did not go out much beyond those aborted attempts, choosing to stay inside, checking the phone for a dial tone, pretending not to watch out the window, pretending he was not waiting. His heart leapt at the sound of the mailman, his senses attuned to the occasional car that rattled up the street, and then the inevitable let-down, the slow return to silence, to solitude.

On the last day before school, Terry awoke to the birds calling, and the light flooding into his room. It looked to be glorious out, as sunny as the first day of summer break had been, even if the sun was a little lower in the sky, and the fields were more brown than green. He stayed in bed, no longer thinking that Jeremiah was sick or dead, instead slipping into denial, into the most far-fetched fantasies – where he would laugh demonic laughter in the place of hours spent sobbing.

Terry grasped at what might be salvaged, wondering wildly if he would be inaugurated into the popular crowd, or at least into the periphery of Jeremiah’s life. They had never spoken of what school would be like. It was an unsaid rule of theirs. When things veered toward talk of the future, one or both quickly changed the subject, as if afraid to break the spell, afraid to allow the reality of the world to encroach on that summer. Now, Terry found himself wishing he’d asked those questions. Even if he were told no, that he would not be part of Jeremiah’s life at school, at least he would know. He might be able to hate him then. Instead, there was nothing.

The morning of that first day of school was overcast. A cloak of fog surrounded Terry as he walked, head-down, into the warmly-lit doors of his junior year. He didn’t wait long for his first encounter with Jeremiah. It was in the hallway after third period. The boys passed each other by the long row of windows that lined the center courtyard. Jeremiah nodded, then quickly passed by. That would be all that passed between them, that day, and all the days that followed.

At lunch, he never returned Terry’s furtive stares. The smiles he’d elicited all last year – and all of the summer – had vanished in the sea of faces around them. The consternation he felt was dismissed as the back-to-school blues by the small group of friends he had. They tried to pry it out of him, but it only made him resent them. He looked around at his classmates with disdain and disgust. He tried to summon the same antipathy for Jeremiah, but every time he tried to get angry at him he felt his heart ache, and instead of wanting to hurt him, he wanted to cry. By the end of that first day, he knew where he stood.

Still, when the last bell rang, he waited for Jeremiah at the edge of the field. He kept his back to the school, hoping to hear that familiar, “Hey, wait up” that had haunted him every night since the last day of school. He did not turn around. The wind rolled over the field, the grass still high, but dry now, less supple. The sky grew gray. It would rain soon. He took a few steps forward, then waited again. A few more steps, and another pause. He struggled to remember the path they took just a few months ago. He walked in the same direction, and did not stop until he found the rock that he had tripped on. The soil around it had been disturbed, and the grass was trampled. The rock had been moved and replaced, and now rested slightly higher than the surrounding ground, as if in memoriam for something or someone. Terry slid his backpack off his shoulder and crouched beside the rock. Closing his eyes, he remembered Jeremiah’s hand reaching down to him. Only then did he turn around and see the emptiness of the field. He was not coming.

The wind swirled around him. The air turned cooler. He put his hands on the rock. The warmth of the summer was gone. He felt the smooth surface, then saw the corner of a plastic bag, the kind that held the sandwiches that Jeremiah brought for lunch. Terry shifted the rock and pulled the bag out, and then the folded letter.

 

“Dear T – I’ve never written a letter to anyone before. Most guys just don’t do that sort of thing. I’m only doing it now because I’m pretty sure you’ll never see it, but if by some chance you do, I want to let you know that I’m sorry for what I have to do.

You used to say you wanted to know how to be popular, how to be strong, how to be more like me. Well it turns out you were more like me than I was, more comfortable with who you were than I’ll ever be. Don’t let anyone change that about you. No matter what they say, and no matter what I may say, never change that. You’re a cool guy. You’re going to do something important. This letter may be the most important thing I ever do, and this summer may be the most important summer I’ll ever have, and I’m glad I got to spend it with you. Only you will know what that means. You’re a good guy. A better man than I could be. I want to thank you for that. If we hadn’t met, I think I would still be looking for you. And maybe this is a trick of the summer, something that’s just meant to leave us longing for more. But I will always come back to this, I will always keep this close to me, no matter who else comes along, no matter how profound the rest of my life might be.

You probably won’t ever find this letter. I don’t know if I want you to. But someone, sometime should know. The world should know, that once there was love here.”

 

For the next two years of high school, Jeremiah never said more than a few words to Terry. When the last day of high school was done, Terry didn’t wait for anyone when he walked home, and he didn’t bother to look back. They never saw or spoke to one another again, and they never would. Terry thought it odd that he couldn’t remember the last words they said, the last exchange they shared. It would have been some innocuous thing in the hallway, a quick “Hey” while passing between classes, no more.

A couple of decades later, long after college and a year abroad, after jobs and boyfriends and a rather rich life, Terry finally joined FaceBook on the insistence of friends. Jeremiah was the first person he looked up. Not because he didn’t know anything about him. From family he had heard that Jeremiah had gone to school out West, from whence he came, and was married and had two kids. That didn’t surprise him. The photos he could see didn’t surprise him much either. There was Jeremiah, smiling in each one, laughing with his mouth open, giddy with the simple joys of life, among family, among friends, among strangers, and always somehow at ease, at home. That feeling of being comfortable in his own skin, no matter what, had proved elusive for Terry, and as much as he had tried to be like Jeremiah, most especially in that way, he never quite managed to match it. At his best, though, he appeared to have it down.

Terry seemed just as popular, just as happy, and his FaceBook photos showed much the same as far as smiles and laughter and an adoring group of friends and family. Taken side-by-side, it would have been a challenge to anyone who didn’t know them, and to most who did, as to who had turned out the happier.

He scrolled through the photographs, pausing and inspecting every bit of Jeremiah before moving on to the next. Towards the bottom of the albums, those repositories of memories with names like ‘Winter Break Cancun’, ‘Disney Cruise’, ‘Randall’s First Day of School’ or ‘Anniversary Surprise in Europe’, Terry found one labeled simply ‘Summer 1977’, and in it was a single photograph. It looked like an actual instamatic camera shot that had been scanned in digitally, holding onto its queasy 70’s tint of warm ambers and muted magentas on the edges.

It showed a field. Terry recognized it instantly as the field that led from school to their childhood neighborhood.

At the bottom of the photo were four letters, written in Jeremiah’s unmistakable scrawl and almost faded beyond the point of recognition. To anyone else, it would have likely gone unnoticed. Terry saw it only after he wiped away the first tears: ‘For T.’

The terrifying question remained: what if being loved isn’t enough?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

{See also 1:13, 2:13, 3:13, 4:13, 5:13, & 6:13.}

There was only one thing that Grandpa grew in his garden, and that was tomatoes. He dismissed the silly ladies who bothered with roses and flowers. He smirked at the acres of corn fields that reached to the sky just across the street. He even turned his nose up at the pumpkin patch where his grandchildren roamed in the fall. The one thing he did not dismiss was a proper patch of tomatoes, so when the first vine-ripened fruit of the season was stolen from his garden, it was a major event.

It had just started showing its signature red that week, after slivers of salmon and peach had erased the green, and he thought it could use one more day in the sun. On the following morning he rose, a proud man, slipping on his suspenders – red, in honor of what was to come – and, hurrying downstairs, ignored the cries for proffered coffee. When he reached the garden he was initially confused, thinking he had misjudged or misremembered where it had been. But he was certain – the third row, after the third fence rail – and upon closer inspection he found the stem that once held his magnificent fruit. A clean cut had severed tomato from plant, and a lesser-trained eye would have been altogether indifferent. The howl that resulted rattled even mother, who rarely showed signs of surprise at any of Grandpa’s idiosyncrasies, especially when it came to the garden.

He sat down with us kids later that day and explained the situation. There were a few usual suspects – rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and groundhogs – and then the more unlikely culprits – skunks, raccoons, dogs, and mischievous neighborhood kids. Until they were proven innocent, everyone in Grandpa’s eyes was guilty. His looks stung too, even if you had an alibi in summer camp, even if you weren’t within a fifty mile radius for the entire week of the incident.

From that day on, he sat on the back porch, eyes always on the tomato patch, from the break of dawn until the last firefly glowed its final exhaustive blink. He caught a few dogs sniffing around, grumpily disbanded a couple of roving bands of kids, and watched how the sun passed over his backyard, but there was no sign of the thief who had taken the first tomato.

He did expect that such treachery had taken place in the night, when the nocturnal animals did most of their damage. He’d heard stories of entire vegetable plots that were decimated by a single rabbit or woodchuck in one night, terrifying tales of gardens stripped of all meaningful vegetation, with nothing left but a few broken stalks, too tough to chew but damned if they didn’t try.

A little after noon one day, he took his straw hat off and slowed the rocking of his chair. Abigail had brought him a lemonade, and it sat sweating on the table beside him.

“Any luck?” she asked.

He contemplated her presence, shadowy and dark after he had been staring out into the sunlit yard all morning. “Nooo,” he slowly drawled, lingering and leaving a question at the very end. “But I am almost sure it happened at night. Not much happening here during the day. Charlie and Joan’s kids ran through, told them to leave us be, serious work to do and can’t have kids running through the place.”

Abigail sighed but said no more. She was always the most mature among us kids, the one who could talk to adults and have them listen. On this day she offered no more. The screen door clapped loudly against the house as she disappeared inside. The faint scuffling of her slipper-clad feet faded into the afternoon as Grandpa continued his vigil.

He wondered whether it was an underground job. There was an entire system of tunnels just beneath the earth, the elaborate maze of entrances and hallways dug surreptitiously by chipmunks and moles and voles that could suddenly collapse and deaden an entire row of vegetables, causing them to go mysteriously limp in a day, dead and without nourishment upon the unseen severing of their roots. He’d also heard tales of such animals appearing out of nowhere, wrestling a tomato from the vine, and disappearing underground in a few seconds flat. That could have been the covert operation that successfully tore his treasure from its ripening home.

He walked slowly around the garden, carefully examining where an intruder might have made his or her entry. The fence, about head-level, had been assembled by his own hands, using a large roll of chicken wire that had been collecting dust and spider-webs in the garage, on the stairs right above the ratty rugs that he hadn’t gotten around to cleaning. (Abigail had once presented him with a rug-beater to use on them. His look was such that she half-expected him to use it on her before she managed to scamper away. The rugs remained on their dirty perch.)

He ran his hand lightly over the hairy stems and leaves, inhaling their sharp fragrance. Was such a scent as intoxicating to the thief as it was to him? How could it be? This was the scent of summer, the scent of his childhood. Even in the arid drought of his youth, they managed a few tomatoes. And then a thief would have been unfathomable, or killed on sight. He felt the same today. His age had given him perspective, but his anger had not been dulled.

A few feet down from the scene of the crime, he looked at the pea-like cream-colored flowers dangling from a patch of pole beans, winding around the cross-hatching of the fence. He crouched down on his haunches, furtively peering through the thick wall of leaves. Through dappled pin-holes of light, like keyholes into a garden room, he saw movement on the other side of an enormous stand of squash. Reeling back, he lost his balance and fell on his butt, quickly righting himself with a deft roll to his right. On his feet almost instantly, he caught a flash of dark gray fur, mottled and almost leopard-like, and thought he saw the impossible outstretched web of a featherless wing, before losing his sight in the sun. The faint but powerful beating of displaced air, made by something that couldn’t feasibly be that big, did not betray the location of where what that had been had gone. Grandpa stood there, bewildered, but giddy with the sense of wonder. That the world could still surprise him was of unfathomable solace. He was still here. He was still alive. And the wilderness of that… thing, was all that he had never seen, come into his backyard, come into the end of his days.

He never did catch the culprit that summer, nor were any more tomatoes taken. A few years later he would tell me that story. He didn’t tell anyone then. I remember the stories and whispers that summer of some flying cat creature, a large rodent with wings, some small griffin, but dismissed them as the wild imaginings of kids with an empty summer. My bet was on it being some overgrown bird, or rabies-ridden bat, and it didn’t seem likely the latter was responsible for the tomato theft anyway. For that summer, though, it occupied my Grandfather. We all thought it was the principle of the thing, not realizing he had some something so other-worldly in mind (if that is, in fact, what he saw). And maybe it was just the first sign of his deterioration, insidiously slow at first, then gaining in rapidity, until the end was as unexpected as it was inevitable.

For him, seeing that creature, whatever it had been, was a pact with his remaining days ~ a covenant with the mysteries of the world ~ some rainbow that held the promise that there was always more to know, more to see. In time, he grew thankful for the stolen tomato, and we grew thankful, too. The remaining harvest was rich – bushels of the red fruit, boiled and canned, in sauces and sun-dried sheets – handed out to neighbors, shared with family, or sold to farm-stands. Most of them were enjoyed by the three of us in the simplest of ways: Abigail and Grandpa and I sitting on the porch, cutting up thick juicy slices that didn’t even need the dash of salt that he offered to us but never used himself.

We looked out at the bright garden from the shade of the porch, as tomato juice dripped from our chins. Grandpa, at first so irritable and suspicious, smiled at us a little – the most he ever smiled at anyone – and continued to do so as the season progressed. We would catch him looking up into the sky, thinking he was trying to figure out the weather to come, when all that time he was looking for was what he had only once seen, a clue to the universe, presented as a mystery, possibly conjured by his mind, and powerful regardless. The summer waned, as all summers do, and by the time the first frost wilted the tomato vines Grandpa had already given up on seeing that strange beast again.

Still, I see him there, waiting and watching, as if he was learning to slow the summer, to stop the sudden march of time, to retrieve his lost tomato and reattach it to the barren vine. His hands grew dark in the dirt and in the sun, his lined-face stoic and somehow expectant. The capacity of a human being. The short stay of a summer. The stolen tomato. Everything we did not know then, embraced and gently rocked, like a fever-stricken child, hot and damp and shivering in the night.

———————————————————————————————————

{See also 1:13, 2:13, 3:13, 4:13, & 5:13}

Within the Sound, along the shore, he felt cradled. He went there first – before unloading the truck, before unlocking the house – and he went there last – after the end of a romance, after the death of a friend. In the Sound he had his craved-for quiet. The boats didn’t bother him, the rustling of the trees was not disruptive. The rain rocked him gently; it was not very heavy here. He sat on the shore in rubber boots and a well-worn canvas coat, his hood stiff against the wind. In his pockets he clenched his fists slightly – the only sign that not all of him was calm. He told himself it was to keep his fingers warm, alternating his thumb from the inside to the outside of his hand.

Water lapped gently upon the shore stones – a hypnotic, undulating rhythm, enough to quell the cries of his unborn babies. Dead roots stood between the sea and the forest, bleached by the sand and sun. On dry days a crystalline coating of powdered salt covered the smooth wood, catching bits of a bright gray sky in the East. He remembered licking a piece of driftwood once, tasting of salty seaweed, then spitting out a bit of gritty sand. That was in the summer, when she was still here and he was hungry for more of life and more of what she could never give.

She had stayed the longest, lasting through the moody idiosyncrasies, the unapproachable silence of days, weeks with nothing said. An uneasy but accustomed averting of the eyes – what was he afraid to see in her? After six years she finally left. He came home and found her packing. He nodded solemnly, and at that moment she wanted to hit him, even if he was right, even if there was nothing to say.

No one could erase the emptiness or make him full again. He was always honest about that, with himself and with them, all of them. Most took it as a challenge, willingly suspending rational thought, dreamily succumbing to the unattainable and wanting it all the more. He did tell them, at the beginning, and they pretended to listen. He reminded them, not only directly, but in actions: forgotten gestures, apathetic absences, the casual dismissal of something whose importance he simply couldn’t grasp. Only the last one gave him the slightest pause. She was different. Even if she wasn’t.

He waited for the day to warm, for the fog to dissipate, but the opposite occurred. Rolling in with the waves was a cold front, and more rain. He pulled his body further into itself. His fingers remained clenched around his thumbs. His head scrunched down into his neck, as much like a turtle as he could muster. He even felt his nuts retract, trying to return to their origin of warmth. It struck him that that was the goal of his life, to return to the womb. All the women he’d been with had merely been vessels, passage-ways through which he struggled to win back the safety and protection lost upon his birth. Maybe that’s why he never minded when they took another from him, dangling the threat of it all like something he might mind. It was something he probably should mind, so he let the assumptions of hurt and loss work to heal them. Allow them the pleasure of his pain, that’s all he could offer. This last time, though, he could not pretend. That may have been what hurt her most of all.

He was always trying to find his way back to a time before death touched him. That’s why he sought out the Sound, with its unmitigated fury, its sense of time immemorial, the idea of having come before humans. On days when it was empty, when the boats weren’t sailing through and the beachcombers were chased away by the weather, he was drawn there. He imagined himself as the first and the last inhabitant. It never upset him. He didn’t feel lonely. They never understood that. No one understood that. He smiled.

Seagulls called to each other overhead, rushing into the wind, their feathers oblivious to the rain. Looking up, he squinted into the wet sky, trying to follow their flight. Perhaps it was time to move again. By now he knew it wouldn’t solve anything, but it was still something to do, at the very least a distraction. He could return to the East Coast. He’d never gone back before, and didn’t know how that would be. It wouldn’t be the same, but maybe that’s what he needed.

Beneath him, the stone stayed cold. Sand drifted around his sneakers. If he stayed still long enough he would become part of the landscape. His skin would tighten in the wind and sun, his clothing would erode in the rain, and his body would soon be buried by the sea. He pictured himself enmeshed with the driftwood and seaweed, caught in such a primitive dream-catcher, tumbling along with the tide. Still his body fought against it, shivering in the cold, impelling him to move, to stand, to walk away from the undertow.

Is that what it felt like? Is that what all his losses were? Was it simply like being sucked out to sea, violently or not-so-violently culled from warm darkness into cold darkness? He couldn’t remember what it was like growing inside his mother. No one could. The earliest he could muster was three or four years of age: the fallen dresser he had tried to climb, the stairs growing smaller and dimmer as someone carried him to bed, a dilapidated paper honeycomb Easter bunny he held onto longer than anyone could understand. He wondered if he would have minded being taken out of life earlier, before cognizance. And then he wondered about after. And now.

For someone who seemed to care so much for others – for those he did not even know – he seemed so reckless with himself, and his supposed loved ones. A number of them said that. How could he explain that he shouldn’t have to doubt those he loved? How to make them realize it was a testament to them, without sounding like a complete prick, like the very thing they were accusing him of being?

This was why he came here, to think things out. He allowed the thoughts to come and go, presenting themselves as problematic, turning them over in his head, and then letting them pass. He didn’t solve them, not in any concrete way, not usually, but he faced them, confronted them, and sent them on their way. It was his own form of meditation, and it always worked, leaving his head clear. Once that happened he stayed to enjoy the empty bliss. Until today.

He thought of her expression as she came in to pick up her final bag. The sad, crumpled tote sagged on the floor by the front door, its worn handles limp at its side. He remembered seeing that bad on a sunny beach, in another part of the world, and another part of his life. It came back to him then, the laughter and the happiness – for he had to have been happy then, hadn’t he? He had to have been happy once. He hoped she was, and that she would be again. It was the closest he came to love, perhaps. She didn’t speak. For every inch of his silent retreat, she had fought back with words. For her final defeat, she looked at him, lowered her head, and walked quietly out, not quite closing the door behind her. Those few seconds of silence stung more than all the years of yelling.

Behind him, a vast stand of evergreens drooped with water. The sea approached. A salty spray, driven by wind, coated his face with a blanket of pinpricks. The thought of leaving returned to him as a boat came vaguely into view. He rocked back a bit, lifting his feet from their sandy trappings. Another thought: she had left the door open a crack. He didn’t realize it at the time. He must have shut it after she left, or maybe it was still ajar, wavering in the wind. The thought of an empty house was more frightening than the solitude of the Sound. He would stay there a little longer.

{See also 1:13, 2:13, 3:13, 4:13…)

When the body of Jody Bartuk freed itself in a late winter thaw, I was the first one who saw it. I didn’t scream, even though it was only the second time I had seen a dead body. My father was up on the bank by the car. Glancing guiltily up at him, I waved. It was my own moment and for some reason I didn’t want to share it.

The woman – it was a woman – had a dark dress on, with a collar of what once must have been white lace. I remember the small bald spot on the back of her head, made apparent by the parting of her hair in the icy water. Tiny waves broke on the pale beach of that spot of skin, and the bobbing of her head gave the unsettling impression that she still struggled. That’s when Daddy came down and got me. I was in mid-air kicking my feet when he saw her and put me down.

“Janie, go to the car and wait for Daddy.” It was his serious voice so I didn’t wait before hurrying up the slope. Near the car, I turned around and saw my father talking on the phone. He clicked it shut then grabbed a large stick and tried to pull the body closer to shore. It didn’t move much, surrounded by ice, and it wasn’t going anywhere so he let it be.

“Janie, are you okay up there?” he called.

“Yeah,” I shouted. I wanted to come down and look closer, but Daddy would be mad. He stood near the river, his hands on his hips, his head moving side to side and looking, searching for something. I looked around too. The wind picked up and, though I could still see him, I felt alone and scared.

“Daddy? I’m cold. Can we go home now?” I yelled.

“In a little while, Janie. Get in the car and I’ll be up in a minute.” It was never a minute. I hopped into the back seat and picked through my books.

It was mid-March, but winter lingered that year. The ice still hadn’t completely broken up. Jagged little mountains of it, littered with dirt and debris, jammed into the river bank. Where Jody Bartuk’s body once froze and freed itself was again ice. No one could tell that the spot had just released a dead woman.

I didn’t dream during that spring or summer. Only in the fall, with its chill and clarity, did they come to me – late at night, deep in the folds of sleep, barely to be remembered…

“Jody.”

She froze.

“How did you know my name? Do I know…”

The gun came out of the black night and landed on the side of her head. She fell and screamed.

“Shut up or I’ll kill you. I will.”

The gun felt harder than she imagined it would, stuck against her back as she stumbled further from the road. His voice sounded nervous and shaky, without the viciousness of a villain. Evil was never what you thought it would be. Everything she had been warned about was happening, and none of the advice seemed practical or possible, and the gun was too hard anyway…

Daddy rushed into the room and switched on the desk lamp as I pulled the matted hair away from my damp forehead. He held me tight and let out a sigh. He knew trouble in the night too. He also knew he couldn’t hold onto me forever. I think I understood that before he did.

“Was it a nightmare?” he asked when my breathing slowed. I nodded. “What was it about?”

I lied. “A monster.” It wasn’t the first lie a daughter told her father, and it wasn’t the first lie I told him. It wouldn’t do to burden him now. The dreams continued, to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep. He thought I was growing afraid of the dark. It was easier than having to explain those dreams, the visitations from a woman I had never met, but who felt so familiar, and the way I saw life so much more vividly then. Daddy wouldn’t understand that. He would worry. Even then I knew it fell to me to protect him from that. It was all I could give to him. The dreams remained mine. Their vividness grew more real, the details coalescing into tangible memories. These memories stayed with me, burning themselves upon my formative youth. I was almost convinced it had been I who was killed that night.

“Lay down there,” he hissed nervously, angry agitation surfacing above his fear. “No, there.” And then her simple compliance, without objection. Had she thought it would be easier that way? Had she bargained this body for that life? What might she have done differently if she knew he was going to kill her anyway? What would any of us have done differently?

He pulled her skirt down. The rush of cold. The icy leaves. The hardness of the gun again. She thought he might be so hard, but found herself violated by something softer. That’s when she knew he would kill her. Men did things like that. They shamed themselves, then blamed others for it. Maybe that’s why she didn’t bother to fight. She did wonder that, at the end.

His heavy breathing, and then his crying. His spent self, his shuddering sobs, and then his frightening, hot anger.

“You did this! You!” he screamed. And then the gun shot. She turned away to look at the silhouettes of the naked trees rising above them. She didn’t want to leave looking at his face.

I thought Christmas might ease the dreams. I’d been good that year, even as I wondered if such self-awareness negated the goodness. A truly selfless act was so difficult to pull off, but I was trying. Daddy held me closer during the holidays. I couldn’t tell why – there were too many reasons – and I let him because he seemed to need it more than me.

My Christmases had become quiet days, and I listened to the animated retellings of schoolmate’s holidays with a distant disinterest. I never understood the noisiness of their lives. It seemed better to go on in silence.

The anniversary of that late winter discovery both thrilled and frightened me. In it was the hope of some magical eradication – a new start to rid myself of these messy dreams. When you’re a kid, those demarcations mean something – they hold an enchantment that may or may not exist, but it all depends on believing.

As the date neared, I checked in my diary, thumbing back to that moment, trying to re-create and honor what had transpired. If it was done correctly, properly, if I gave her what she wanted, it might be okay. It might make her go away.

He dragged her body deeper into the woods, out to the river. He weighed her down with stones. He was getting ready to leave this place. The body didn’t need to be hidden forever. He waded into the shallow water. His shoes fought with the mud, his skin crying out against the cold. She was already rigid. It always surprised him how quickly it happened. Even when he moved fast, it happened so soon.

Even dead, some fought back. She seemed to fight more now that she was gone than when she was alive. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work as well this time. The fight was an engagement, a connection more real than the dismissals to which he was accustomed. They couldn’t understand that.

The body wouldn’t go down. He started pounding on it, splashing the cold water upward. The anger flashed again. The coldness of the water bit at him. He found a large stick and pushed the stiffening load into the muck at the bottom of the river. At last it stuck. He didn’t care if it rose in the morning.

There was no such magic when it came to dreams – either in making them come true or stopping them altogether. The anniversary of when we first found Jody Bartuk passed, and my dreams continued. Daddy let me sleep with him on the nights they left me breathless and sweaty. We clung to each other in our shared grief, in our loneliness, not really knowing what we would do the next day.

Like so many things, those dreams didn’t come to an abrupt end. I couldn’t will them to stop, not any more than we can conjure a desired dream world. Slowly they tapered off. A few days of restful, uneventful sleep, and then a few fitful nights. Soon, the rest took over, and my sleep went uninterrupted. After another year, I barely dreamt of her at all. She resided instead in my memory, one of those I kept at first begrudgingly, but in the end willingly, as if she had been a major figure of my childhood, a ghost of a mother, taken too soon.

{See also 1:13, 2:13, & 3:13}

(Saturday)

A water ox swims in the distance. Come back, fool beast! Ponklong watches the ox wading up to its head in dirty water. A small group of tourists trundles by, swatting at flies. Manong Taloming will return soon. Ponklong doesn’t want to be found lounging.

The ox is stubborn and won’t come out of the water. On the stream bank, Ponklong waits. His feet are caked with mud. It crumbles and peels in the sun. In his hands he holds a worn stick, soft from oily fingers and dust. It is hot and there hasn’t been rain in the afternoon. People are starting to worry, but no one will say anything.

Ponklong misses the afternoon rain shower, the bit of relief it brought. Soon it will be the dry season, and the long, dull trudge through summer. He thinks of school and how he will miss it. There will only be the neighborhood kids left then, and maybe the occasional sighting of Luz on the street. He would try to say hello to her before the school year ended.

* * * * * * *

(Sunday)

He awakens to the cries of a man selling balut. Through the screen door he hears the little cart crackling along the dirt road. Ponklong pushes the night netting aside and looks across the room. Manong Taloming’s bed is empty.

The sun is high. It must be late. He will be in trouble for missing mass. Padding over the dark wooden floor boards, he trips on the karaoke cord and curses his sister.

‘Mayette, move this!”

There is no answer. He slides his feet into a pair of ratty flip-flops and pours a cup of stale coffee. It is cool and bitter, and he swallows each mouthful with a wince. It makes him feel grown up. The ashtray on the counter is filled with crumpled filters. He vaguely recalls the murmur of voices last night, the lonely scent of old smoke and faded visits.

In the backyard, Ponklong wanders along a decaying wooden fence. Maybe the mango is ripe. An old tree is propped up against a worn board, its branches reaching just over the fence. The mango he was waiting for is gone. He returns to the kitchen and looks half-heartedly for its remnants, any scrap of evidence relaying its fate, but the garbage and sink are empty. Someone could have stolen it at night. That had happened before.

The province was growing. Too many people passed through it now. Ponklong recognized fewer and fewer of them. He thought about Luz. She had smiled at him yesterday as they passed on the street. He was with Ronnie then and couldn’t smile back.

* * * * * * *

“You’re late,” Manong Taloming said as Ponklong arrived at the stream bank. He took up his station under the tree. The water ox was not in sight. “No one…” Taloming muttered, walking away. The van that took the tourists around was parked up by the street. Its white color was stained and dulled by dust, but it ran well. Ponklong got to drive it when Manong was busy and the tourists were antsy. He smiled at them then and they always gave him lots of coins. He could tell they found his broken English amusing. Sometimes he played it up, pointing and gesticulating when he knew the English words for certain things but didn’t feel like letting on. They seemed to like him more for it. A few extra coins.

Today the van was empty. No tourists were around. Probably better, in the midday heat anyway. There was no air conditioning and they always got mad at that. Ponklong kicked off his flip-flops and leaned back against the tree. The shadow grew as the afternoon passed.

Manong Taloming returned and Ponklong ran home without saying anything to him. The family was half-assembled for dinner. He pushed between his cousins and spooned some rice into his bowl. Taking his usual place at the end of a bench, he set the bowl on the edge of the table and looked across to his sister.

Her face was damp. It glistened under a bare fluorescent light bulb. Ponklong felt annoyed. He got up and spooned some soup over his rice. It was hot, and his Aunties were loud. There was nowhere to go. Children ran outside into the side yard, squealing and laughing. His sister chased after them. He sat down again and watched a fly circle his bowl.

Manong Pedring walked into the room, filled a plate and started to leave.

“Where’s Taloming?” he asked, then left before anyone answered. The kids outside spied him and followed him out.

“Where’s Manong Taloming?” Mayette repeated, a squirming child in her arms.

Ponklong shrugged. He left the rest of his rice and soup on the table and walked away. One of his cousins quickly scooped it up.

* * * * * * *

At night Ronnie came over and they walked into town. When they turned the corner Ronnie pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, lighting it with a dilapidated book of matches.

“Hurry, let’s see the movie.”

The boys ran through the street. Ponklong wondered if he would see Luz tonight. He followed Ronnie as they weaved through the crowds. A group had gathered outside the movie house. Ronnie squeezed through and saw the sign on the chain link fence: ‘NO MOVIE TONIGHT – PROJECTOR BROKEN.’ He came away from the throng and told Ponklong.

They moved down the street, following the sun as it dipped behind low buildings and peeked through alleys. It would be dusk soon enough and they were expected home if there was no movie. Ponklong looked over his shoulder at the dissipating crowd.

Ronnie kicked a rock ahead of them and Ponklong returned it. They kept it up for about a block.

“What now?”

“Pool?” Ronnie suggested. Ponklong shrugged. It wasn’t likely that they would encounter Luz playing pool. He thought they’d see her at the movie. Disappointed, he mumbled agreement and they made their way to the pool hall. At the door, Ronnie’s Uncle stopped them. He wore dark aviator glasses and the stump of a cigarette wobbled on his lips, perpetually stuck there. Ponklong couldn’t remember ever seeing him light one- they were just always there, smoldering at the edge of his mouth. He waved them in with a half-smile.

The cracking of a cue ball broke through murmured voices. Inside it was dim – the dark smoky province of grown-ups – and the mysterious actions behind the high bar took place beneath low lamplight. They would take their places here someday, and the thought was thrilling but tinged with dismay. Would it be a failure to stay, to go no further than this town?

The boys shuffled to the side as their eyes adjusted to the darkness. A pair of heavy-set men lumbered around the pool table, their outlines diffused by the thick smoke and flowing short-sleeved shirts. Ponklong felt at home with these men. They’d known him since he was a baby – friends of his Uncles – and they’d taken him under their somewhat-disinterested tutelage, begrudgingly touched by the boy whose father had left.

* * * * * * *

(Monday)

The scream of a rooster woke both of them. Manong Taloming stirred a little beneath the mosquito net, grumbling that it was too early. Ponklong slowly opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling through the white mesh. A tiny lizard scuttled into the corner. The sun was already cutting through the window. It looked to be hot today. He didn’t feel like getting up. He remembered Luz’s smile and forced himself to move. The floor was cool.

He pulled on his school clothes. The shirt was wrinkled but it was too late to do anything. Only the English teacher would notice it, and he didn’t care what she said.

“You’ll be late,” came the warning from Manong Taloming. Ponklong looked over at him, but his eyes were still closed.

Ronnie was waiting on the corner, furtively taking quick drags on a crumpled cigarette. “Come on,” he urged, walking ahead, “I want to get some juice. No breakfast today.” The boys hustled along, stopping quickly for Ronnie’s juice. Students were already filing into the main entrance when they reached the school. Ponklong searched for Luz, but he made his way to homeroom without seeing her.

He didn’t want to be in school today. Only the thought of a brush with Luz impelled him to pass through his classes. At lunch he met up with Ronnie and the two of them ambled outside, passing a dried stick of salty beef between them. Ponklong kept his eye out for Luz, mistaking others for her, seeing her face in other girls, and always feeling disappointment when they looked back. Maybe she was home again. He had heard that her mother was not well, and she spent some days taking care of her. His heart ached for that.

* * * * * * *

(Tuesday)

The next afternoon it rained. Not enough to dispel the drought, and most of it ran off the dusty crust of dirt anyway, but for an hour or two the temperature went down a few degrees, and the small storm sucked up a bit of the humidity then released it all at once. Ponklong ran outside when he heard the first rumble of thunder, waiting beside the mango tree for the gray sky to open up and pour down. When it only spit a quick sheet of water, he went back inside, dreading the agitation of Manong Taloming.

“This is bullshit,” Manong mumbled. “Too dry. The season is bullshit.” He ambled into the kitchen, a pair of well-worn flip-flops scraping on the dirty cement floor. Ponklong decided it would be better to leave. “Boy! Where are you going?” Manong yelled as the front door squeaked open.

“Going to see Ronnie.”

Taloming stood in the kitchen doorway, surveying his nephew, before letting him go. “Watch out for the buses,” he said gruffly. “Bullshit drivers don’t care who they hit. You watch out!” Ponklong let the door fall back with a crack.

He paused on the corner of his street, mindful of Manong’s warning. The buses were a constant threat now. They drove recklessly down the road, dust swirling in their wake. Most of the horns were broken, so there was no warning apart from the sickening roar as they bore down upon anyone in the way. They were different from the jeepneys, and their size meant they were harder to maneuver and control. Every few months someone got hit, and at least once a year one of them died.

Ronnie didn’t answer the door. Ponklong went back out through the broken gate, slowly meandering home, taking his time and looking down at the road ahead of him, making an occasional glance back over his shoulder. The day was hot again, and humid from the little bit of rain. Surely there were better places.

* * * * * * *

(Wednesday)

“Your friend won’t be going to school today,” Manong Taloming said as Ponklong untangled himself from the mosquito netting. “You know… Donnie.”

“Ronnie?” Ponkong asked absently.

“Yes. Saw his Uncle last night and he’s sick.”

Ponklong paused in putting his shoes on. He didn’t like doing to school without Ronnie, but he might be able to talk to Luz now. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to keep Luz a secret as much as he wanted to tell someone.

At school he sat beside Ronnie’s empty desk. Looking out the window, he watched the younger kids playing ball on their break. What would he say to Luz if he saw her? He allowed himself a thought of the future – a wish and a hope – and she was there. No one had taught him to think beyond the day. He was growing up.

* * * * * * *

Without Ronnie, Ponklong ate lunch alone, wandering the inner square, alternating between the shade of the building and the midday sun. The shifting of light alleviated his boredom, but almost made him miss Luz, seated in a shaded corner, and suddenly appearing, before his eyes had a chance to fully adjust. He stood in front of her and two other girls, blinking and unprepared. He tried to think of what to say, of what he had rehearsed, but all he remembered was the voiceless ache of want and longing, and a certain choking sensation that now gripped him. He couldn’t even smile. One of the other girls giggled. Luz looked down. In that single gesture, she did her best to absolve him of his embarrassment. When she raised her eyes again, he had gone.

* * * * * * *

That night he kept his torment to himself. According to Manon Taloming, Ronnie would be out of school again the next day. Ponklong wished he was sick too. He would try to fool Taloming the next morning. He couldn’t face Luz again. It was still slightly light outside as he restlessly, worriedly, turned in his bed. Mosquitoes hovered outside the netting. He wanted to cry because of everything he didn’t understand.

When Taloming shuffled in a few hours later, smelling of smoke and some salty brine, Ponklong was still awake. “Manong,” he began, “I don’t feel good.” He had showed his hand too soon.

“Go to sleep,” Taloming said in a raspy voice. “You’ll feel better in the morning.” Ponklong wouldn’t try again.

* * * * * * *

(Thursday)

In the first moment of consciousness – one that he would remember and instantly miss when it was over – Ponklong had forgotten what so worried him from the night before. Then the shame came flooding back into his face. He tried to pretend it wasn’t that bad, and maybe Luz hadn’t noticed. He really hadn’t done anything, but that was the problem.

Ronnie was not at the corner that morning. If he had been, Ponklong made up his mind he would tell him. He had to tell someone. As he walked to school alone, the sun rose in the sky. It looked to be another hot day. The coolness of the night had already dissipated. Ponklong felt sticky. He thought of the water ox. The ease of the beast. The way it slowly seemed to glide in the water. He wished for such a life. He had always found it easier to do as he was told. Not to fight back. Ronnie had that fight in him, ready to take on the world in his scrappy way. Ronnie would have spoken to Luz. He would have said something teasing or funny, and she would have laughed. A pang of unfounded jealousy disturbed even the abstract idea of it. Everything was confusing him. He chased a lone chicken on the street, kicking at the air behind its quick haunches. “Dumb bird,” he muttered.

* * * * * * *

As much as he felt foolish over his inability to talk to her, Ponklong still sought her out, watching for her in the hallway, staring out classroom windows for a glimpse of her hair. The morning stole slowly on, taking the relief of its shade with it. It would soon be lunch. Ponklong was torn over what to do. He finally decided if she was in the same place, he would be brave and simply say hello. It was agony. There was no other choice.

In the moments leading up to lunch, he felt a sudden clarity. It was settled then, and no matter what the outcome he had made up his mind. Sometimes it was the indecision that hurt the most; the possibility of it all bore down with greater heaviness than a definitive answer one way or the other. As the teacher dismissed them, in the midst of the noisy surge toward the door, he felt a certain peace. It was out of his hands now. If it was meant to be, it would be.

* * * * * * *

He didn’t look for her at first. He didn’t want to be seen looking like that. Even with his newly-felt sense of calm, a nervous dread and excitement threatened to overtake it, thrilling and tumultuous, and the simple notion of sharing the same space, the same air, the same sunlight, left him giddy and terrified. He had made his way around the square twice, furtively glancing in the direction of the corner where she had been yesterday. She was not there. He sat down beside the space she had occupied then. He would not see her that day.

* * * * * * *

At night, the sounds of the karaoke machine alerted Ponklong that it was almost the weekend again. He listened to the muffled words of his sister Mayette, drunkenly slurring some popular song written before he was born. He stayed in his room, not wanting to look at her, her shiny face or damp hair. He fell asleep to the loud laughter, the shouts, and the stumbling of his sister, wondering if Luz’s sister did the same thing. In the house without a father, he dared to entertain the dangerous idea of how things might be different.

* * * * * * *

(Friday)

It felt like even the chickens were quiet the morning he found out. No rising clarion. No unbridled bleating. The rooster remained silent. Manong Taloming was already up. Ponklong worried he might have overslept. The sun wasn’t that high though.

He rushed into the kitchen, stilled at once by the visage of his Uncle’s back, hunched over the table, as if in prayer. He had only ever called him ‘Manong’ – out of respect. Even if he was more or less the man who raised him, Manong Taloming would always be his Uncle, never his father. It could only have been him to deliver the news.

Luz was dead. A bus accident, Manong Taloming said. “You kids should be more careful,” he warned gruffly. It was how he showed love. He had waited until Ponklong was up, then told him before rising from the table and getting on with his day. This was not a place for sentiment. He was old enough. Ponklong would wear his best shirt and throw all his coins at the funeral procession as it passed. He could give up his dream of her now.

* * * * * * *

(Saturday)

A water ox raises its head above muddy water. On the bank, the boy gazes through cloudy eyes, dried rivulets of salty streams crackling upon his cheeks. His ancient Uncle watches from a distance, wondering when the rain will come.

* * * * * * *

{See also 1:13 & 2:13}

If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry. ~ Anton Chekhov

It began and ended in the kitchen. The worn yellow walls, the grease-splattered metal, the bumpy linoleum floor ~ they were the backdrop to a marriage. Though the bedroom had seen things more intimate, and the den had witnessed the casual hours of camaraderie, the kitchen was where their marriage had lived and breathed, and the kitchen alone knew their secrets.

The faucet had kept time to the years. After fixing and replacing it regularly, they realized that the drip would never stop. The pressure always built up. They had decided to live with it, alternating methods of dealing with its incessant beating. A coffee cup or glass was the best solution ~ the water dripped and silently joined its own.

She held a silver spoon, idly torturing a teabag in her stained cup. It was past midnight. A small plate of crumbs sat forlornly at his place, and the thought of him eating alone at the table saddened and repelled her. The argument started over these crumbs, led to a surly exchange about finances, and ended up in a desperate screaming match resounding the regrets and losses of the last twenty years of their lives. It was the same argument they’d always had, only the ending was different. He stopped, shook his head a little, and walked quietly upstairs. No final shout, no slammed door, but not quite a defeat. Maybe there was nothing left to say.

She slumped in the kitchen chair. This is what she did after most arguments. He would retreat upstairs to the bedroom to sleep it off; she would busy herself in the kitchen. The dishes had been washed and dried and put away, and the counter had been wiped down; only his plate was left in front of the empty chair. She would leave that for him.

A single fluorescent bulb buzzed faintly above the sink, throwing off a steadily wavering stream of white light. Snow was falling steadily outside. Tree limbs drooped in the dim distance, barely discernible behind the swirling curtain of ice crystals.

Footfalls traveled above her. He was still awake.

Had they reached, then, an impasse? Was this finally it? After everything, all the years ~ the false barrenness, the sudden happy unexpected joy of their children – not one, but two – the slow drought of their passion, the insidious hazards of their comfort ~ had it come to an end?

They were poised on the precipice of a horror so great that both recoiled at the full notion of it. Fleeting thoughts of living alone again, brief daydreams of dividing up possessions, and the heavy prospect of starting over again conspired to keep down any serious rifts. Who could get worked up enough to be bothered? When they did travel down those corridors of possibility, and the complete scenarios of how it might happen played out in their heads, it always seemed a waste to go through with it. Somehow the idea that it could all end was enough to keep it together.

And then there were the children. They were older now, but still. How to explain the years of reasons, and the reassurance that it wasn’t all bad, it wasn’t all a lie? It was just too much.

She had almost left him one day, for no other reason than it felt like the moment, but that too had passed, and when his car pulled into the driveway and she still sat at the kitchen table in her nightgown it no longer mattered.

For some time it seemed that they were on the threshold of hating each other. Every petty argument and silly fight looked to be the last. Threats were made, ultimatums thrown, and nothing ever fully resolved. They had reached points of quiet desperation, and each had entertained thoughts of the other’s passing. Nothing murderous or calculated or anything more than fleeting, but they had been there ~ a vague vista of freedom or sorrow and a worry that it might be lonely but not unbearable.

During the pregnancies, and for some years thereafter, he had been the one to take over some of the housework. He cooked and cleaned, did the laundry and the dishes, even easing up on his work hours when his time at home was proving more valuable. As the kids got older, and she felt herself less necessary – is there a colder realization? – she almost gave it all up, before getting lost in a job, in the garden, in the maddening drudge of living.

She started doing the dishes again, and other small chores around the house – little tasks that he had picked up when she was the one at work. She suddenly refused his food and his cooking, as if to say, “I lived before you, and I will live after you’ve gone.” A trifling of a stance, but it grounded her, reminding her that she could, if need be, be all right alone. She did it to remind herself that she was still there. Even after all the years of co-mingled sustenance, she would still be able to do it on her own.

She started taking care of things again, doing her own dishes, washing her own clothes, in the simple way she had learned, in the simple way she had done it before they married. It wasn’t much, but it was survival. In its first stages it was always survival.

The notion of a break rocked her less than she thought it would, less than it had when she was younger and more hopeful. A strange, matter-of-fact resignation dulled the first drops of pain, even as she knew this would be a deeper cut, a more resonant hurt.

They were still friends, and certainly they loved each other, and were perhaps still in love with each other. Both knew it was a choice. There was always a choice. Knowing this made it easier, if a little sadder. The thoughts of freedom, of possibility, even with all the responsibilities, were what they lived on, and though both questioned whether or not it was enough, they always came to the conclusion that, for now, it was.

“This is how it would be if the world didn’t rock them too much” – the paraphrased words of a forgotten novel suddenly surfaced. Would they welcome then the sudden appearance of death if it were to come?

Years ago, when the kids were still little, she realized she would have to give up her dream of a traveling companion. Even before they came, she could tell he didn’t like leaving the house. It never bothered her – she enjoyed traveling alone. All these years later though, the distant and vague ache of regret crept into consciousness, growing clearer and more pronounced as the days passed.

Though she seemed to be returning to herself as the children grew up, it was just one bit of being busy being replaced by another. She let things go in other ways, focusing on her job, on her life outside of the house. The gardens, once her pride and province, sat beneath the snowy cover, neglected and overgrown for years. At first the change had been subtle, and he trusted that she had a game-plan in mind for the landscaping. In truth, she had simply let it run wild, allowing it to grow up as it wished, mustering a few half-hearted attempts at pruning throughout the year. She was loathe to admit that in the darkest, truest part of her heart, she had done much the same with her children once they were out of the house.

At first the change had been subtle, almost imperceptible – one day a patch of unruly, unwanted seedlings from an over-zealous cup plant had taken hold, establishing its tuberous roots in a prominent and not entirely unwelcome location. She let it happen, watching the land take itself where it wanted to go. Nature herself was seeing to the pruning, ancient pine trees high in the sky cracked and swayed perilously with the heaviness, dangling their burden over the northern end of the house. The gardens lost their manicured neatness, delicate perennials giving way to the strong and stalwart, the less exciting hardiness of weed trees. The early plantings she had made in the first few years had grown and matured, and what once seemed an impossible-to-fill space was now overgrown and crowded, swallowing the house, wrapping its tendrils and applying its suckers like the tiny sprig of Boston ivy she had started in one dim corner and now overran the entire backyard exterior. It sometimes felt like it would take the whole house down.

On this winter night, she remained at the kitchen table, listening to the pine trees moaning overhead. His footsteps had stopped just before the creaking of the bed. Now there was the muffled crack of the pines, and an occasional light crash of limbs falling from the sky. The faucet sounded its metronomic cadence, the deadening march of wasted time, or a wasted life. The sly and subtle maneuverings required to make a marriage work were the very machinations that wore away the very frivolous notions that made love such a joy.

It would always be like this. She would get up the next morning as she had so many times, start the coffee, shower, and begin again. She would remind herself how lucky she was, and tamp down the unfair greediness of wanting more. He would notice the change, and gratefully accept the return to form, not realizing that he had played any part in it. She could never forgive him for that, but her own apology for her own hatred was in not saying anything.

He came back downstairs. Lifting the crumb-dusted plate, he brought it to the kitchen sink and ran a stream of water over it. The noise filled the room. There was still life here, in this room. He sat down opposite her, raising the eyes she first loved about him.

“Let’s not decide this tonight.”

She rose and went over to him, bending down and kissing him on the forehead. She pushed her chair under the table and left. He watched her go, listening to the faint familiar creaking of the stairs and the steady dripping of the kitchen faucet. The wet plate sat in the sink, another thing that could wait until tomorrow.

———————————————————————————————————-

{See also 1:13}

While I’m in travel status, I offer an invitation for you to read The Writings, especially for anyone who is new here. Some of my best work is written (no matter what you may hear on the corner), and over the years I’ve whittled down a large collection of mundane and mediocre work into a few bright spots of polished prose. For starters, you might like ‘The Secret I Kept for Twenty Years‘, which is pretty self-explanatory (a secret that I kept for, well, twenty years). If you have a bit more time and the slightest interest in what it’s like to serve on a jury for a murder trial, check out my stint as ‘The Reluctant Juror‘. For those who have ever experienced a difficult break-up, when you’re at an absolute loss as to how to navigate such treacly waters, take a gander at ‘Heart of Winter‘, set in my last days in Chicago. Finally, in the briefest of snippets of a coming-of-age story, I wrote ‘The Boys of McNulty‘ to immortalize a childhood friend who committed suicide. Taken together, they may not be the happiest or funniest group of stories I’ve written, but they’re among my favorites. Sometimes it’s not all rainbows and roses and unicorns. Butterfly in the sky, I cannot go twice as high…

It started as he was walking down Newbury Street, just a few days into the year. He paused, struck by the realization that it may never have happened to him. Though expected on this day, it still caught him by surprise, to be outside at the actual moment a snowstorm began.

Surely he had been out when it was snowing before, and probably close to the very start of it, but not like this, when the snow was just barely appearing in the sky, when it evaporated before it came close to the ground, when the air swallowed it up instead of spitting it out. He would follow the downward trajectory of a large flake and it would simply disappear. He watched them fall, against the dark background of bricks, and still none of them managed to last. It was a strange thing, the way it started, the way everything started, and how rare it was to notice the beginning. He continued on, pulling his scarf tighter around his neck.

The stores still had their Christmas decorations displayed. What had always been a bother to him, a bump on the road of getting on with it, was, in the days after Christmas, more of a comfort. They no longer shouted false or forced merriment, they were a sign of the effort. Speaking in a quieter manner, they resonated differently with him now, their meaning and intention somehow more pure as soon as the hubbub had died down. If he was a person who took pictures, this would be the time when he would take them. The days after rather than the days before. Anyone can get themselves worked up into a frenzy of a few days – it’s what happened afterward that always proved more fascinating, and troublesome. That was where the tension was revealed.

He needed new boots, and the impending storm impelled him out on this Saturday morning, when otherwise he would have gladly slept in, the luxurious relief of an absent roommate punctuated only briefly by a few sparks of lonely terror, pangs of something akin to homesickness.

In the shoe store, he sat down on the low bench and waited for the woman to return. She gave him a fake smile. He wondered if everyone saw how obvious some people were at pretending. He wondered if he would ever be handsome. He sucked his stomach in just in case.

The boots, rubber-soled, fit well enough. Maybe they were a mite too snug, lined as they were with some sort of off-yellow fleece, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare look to the salesperson for approval or reassurance. His hooded jacket suddenly felt hot, and he pulled it off quickly enough to transfer a bit of static to his hair. In a mirror behind the counter, he caught a few wisps of unruly pieces rising like they did when he was a little kid. Tamping them down, he quickly proffered his credit card. The woman slid it expertly through the machine, giving out another false smile.

With box in bag, and bag in hand, he put his coat back on before going outside. Above, the sky turned darker, a shade of wet cement, deadened and upheld by bare tree branches and strings of unlit Christmas lights. Still the snow fell and fell and never reached the ground.

The forecast had called for a foot of it. He would need food. Trying to picture what was left in the dark half-fridge of the apartment left him feeling lonely. The thought of stocking it filled him with the closest thing to hope. A market was on the corner, a line of leftover Christmas tree tops meandered around the entrance. Nailed into wooden slabs, the tops of the trees looked especially desolate. He wouldn’t glance at the price or the markdowns, pushing instead into the cramped store to the sound of bells clanging against the door.

A man at the counter eyed him wearily. Two young women giggled in a corner. It sometimes felt like there was nowhere in the world where he might belong, where he would be welcomed. Hurriedly, for he was suddenly uncomfortable in the small space, he picked out a loaf of bread, some butter, a box of pasta, and a jar of sauce. One step up from a can of Campbell’s or Chef Boyardee. At the register he grabbed a candle and added it to his pile. Behind the counter, the man absently bagged up the sad collection of provisions, saying nothing of the impending storm.

He walked along Newbury, not because he needed anything else, but because he wasn’t ready to go back to the apartment. The sky was dark, though the snow had not started sticking. He looked up, tilting his head back, darting his tongue out like he did when he was a boy, feeling the tiny death of a snowflake on his skin. He stood still in that stance, not noticing the snickering of a couple, the puzzled gaze of a child holding absently onto the hand of her mother.

As alienated as he sometimes felt around people, he found comfort being in their presence. Sometimes it was enough to watch them, to surreptitiously join in their mundane tasks, to feel like he was one of them. The ease of others was infuriatingly out of grasp, ever just ahead, beyond reach, beyond understanding. They made it look so easy, and all his life he had done nothing but struggle. As he got older, he realized it wasn’t youth that was holding him back. He began to think it was him. Even so, he stayed on Newbury a little longer. To be with them. And to watch the snow.

He was nearing the cross street that would take him back to the apartment. His arms were weighted down with bags, the plastic handles stretching and cutting into his hands. He should have worn gloves. A coffee-shop glowed on the corner, its windows shrouded in cloudy condensation, a few rivulets of water already starting to streak. Only when confronted with the opportunity of warmth did he feel the cold. He had mastered the gestures, the crossed arms folding in on themselves, the hunched retraction of his head into the folds of a scarf, but they were just show, just what he was supposed to do.

As he ducked into the place, no one looked up. Ordering a small coffee, he eyed a raised plate of cookies but didn’t get one. Carefully, he balanced the drink with the pendulous pull of the bags, managing to add a bit of cream and two packets of sugar to the dark liquid. He sat at a table looking out onto the street, placing the bags between his legs, ever furtive, slightly suspicious. It was hard for him to trust in people.

He brushed his hair out of his face. It was too long. He thought it would look better, but it merely made him feel sloppier. Blowing on the coffee before him, he noticed a girl around his age, sitting a few tables away, reading a book. She was pretty, in a plain way, someone he would love to talk to, someone he might even like to date, but he would never. How would he even begin? Buried in her book, she had a self-possession that he attributed to well-won confidence. There it was again – the ease of living – and he was just playing along, pretending, trying to catch up and follow the pattern in the hopes that one day it would be real and he wouldn’t have to think about it because that’s who he would really be.

He thought of the cream he had swirled into his coffee, the way it mixed in so easily, with barely a twist of a spoon. Why was everything always so hard? In front of him, obscured by cloudy windows, cars drove by, their lights stretched and distorted. His eyes narrowed, overcome by a wave of sleepiness and lulled by a stomach filled with hot coffee before the caffeine kicked in. Giving one last backward glance at the girl, who didn’t lift her eyes, he threw the coffee cup away.

Outside, he waited for the snow to land. It was sticking to the cars, darkening the street, but only in its melting. More was falling, and soon it would stay. People were moving faster now. They could feel it too.

He wasn’t quite ready to go home, but he had nowhere else to go. Turning toward Copley, he made his way to a couple of towering hotels. His coat was speckled with melted snow as he pushed through a revolving door. In the lobby, the busy excitement of travelers in flux offered a bit of comfortable anonymity. He sometimes went to hotels to find this kind of comfort. It was enough just to sit and watch others coming and going. It reminded him of childhood trips. As much as it pained him, it was a sort of relief from the dull lack of pain he’d noticed lately.

A fireplace glowed along one wall, and a Christmas tree stood fully lit in the center of the space. To most, it would make a merry scene, even coming days after the fact. It filled him with weariness. Already the day was too long. There were no windows here. He couldn’t tell how much it was snowing. He studied the coats and heads of those walking in, but it was difficult to discern. His eyes fell back upon the fireplace, on the tips of flames, lapping at the air. ‘We are so easily extinguished,’ he thought.

A bellman rolled a collection of suitcases across the carpeted floor, the brass-topped cart humming smoothly, the carriage arriving safely at the elevators, and a happy couple making empty chit-chat. Another flawless execution of living. He decided then that he would rather not go through the motions.

An hour or two passed. He felt as though he might fall asleep, even as the coffee tugged at his bladder. He was too far from the windows to tell how much darker it had gotten. The days were still so short. He waited a little while longer. It was easier to go out into full darkness than the tricky abyss of what fell just before. He preferred things to be definite. Nimble nuances and subtle shading were problematic. The unintentionally-cruel words of a teacher, written in a note he was never meant to see, came back to him. ‘Your son is good at dealing with things that are black or white, but isn’t capable of deciphering the range of possibility outside clearly defined entities.’ He remembered the finicky penmanship in which it had been written, and the way the words looked on crumpled paper. He also remembered the way the ink burned, and how it had remained legible before it crumbled into ash. It was all so much rubbish.

Gathering his bags, he stood. When he stayed too long in one place, he felt them turn his gaze back on himself. People started watching him then, and that made it worse. He took a final look at the fire, turned, and walked toward the revolving door in the distance.

According to his half-unwitting plan, it was already dark, but the darkness was buffered. The snow had started to accumulate and was beginning to reflect the lights of the city. What had been hard edges were now softened into white curves, sculpted into an artist’s abstract rendition of a city street. He liked it this way. It felt safer, easier to navigate among the mess than the dangers of a clear sunny day. The snowstorm provided refuge, and the snowflakes were falling fiercely.

They tickled his ears and nose. They shuffled down along hair shafts and tingled against his scalp. They blew into his eyes and he laughed as he cried. He should have changed into his new boots, but it was too late now. With head hunched down, he hurried along to the apartment. It would be cold when he got there. He had to prepare himself for that.

Flecks of dirty salt and wet patches that got smaller and smaller as he ascended the stairs hinted that others were in the building, but he never saw them. A light-bulb was out on the landing between the first and second floor, but his key was already in his hand, turning the lock, gaining him entrance to the emptiness. He closed the door quickly behind him, locking it and checking the peep-hole out of habit. Wriggling free of his shoes, he left them by the door. He would clean up the little puddle later.

In the kitchen, he put the food away. The boots he left in his bedroom, still boxed and bagged. On the table in the living room, near the window that looked out onto the street, he lit the candle. A stool stood between the table and the window. He sat down on it to watch the falling snow.

Early in the morning, while it was still dark, a truck had plowed the winding road to the Perkins Home for Adults. Father Daemon’s old Dodge now climbed the cleared path, the heater just starting to warm the car as he pulled into the Clergy’s reserved parking spot. A stand of trees surrounded the back of the low building; gusts of wind were scattering clumps of snow from their limbs. Inside the entranceway, Father Daemon added his galoshes to an assorted collection of muddy boots; he was not the first visitor of the day.

“Good morning, Lucy,” he whispered to the tired-looking attendant at the reception desk.

“Hello Father,” she said with a half-hearted effort to smile. “He’s been awake for a while. Upset about the snow or something.”

Father Daemon did not approve of her flagrant tone, eyeing her critically then walking down the bright hallway. The pastel wallpaper and faded flowers of the carpet found no forgiveness in the fluorescent light. It is a harsh hallway, Father Daemon thought – how many have lost hope here? A fake ficus tree in a plastic-lined wicker basket stood in the corner at the end of the corridor, not quite obscuring a dusty air vent.

The last room on the right was labeled “Vener, William”, and below the name was a list of food restrictions. It gave the place the feeling of a hospital, and the decorations and efforts of the staff to downplay this aspect only made it sadder. Father entered the room quietly, confronted by a stringent odor of some unseen antiseptic.

Monsignor Vener was sitting up in the bed, staring out the window and mumbling something under his breath. His wet lips moved unevenly, the right side of his face having been ravaged by the worst of his strokes a year ago. Wisps of white hair were combed back thinly against his skull, and his pale blue eyes were coated with a cloudy film. In his hands he worried a wooden rosary. Father Daemon moved into his line of vision, blocking the window.

“Good morning, Monsignor. The snow is pretty, isn’t it?” Father began. “I always enjoy the first snowfall of the year.” He waited for a reply. “And then my enjoyment diminishes with each succeeding storm.”

With a shaky hand, Monsignor placed the rosary on the bedside table. Father Daemon pulled up the metal chair beside him. It screeched along the linoleum floor. Monsignor jerked his head to the sound, as if surprised that someone else was suddenly there. He cast an annoyed glance at Father Daemon, who received it with a patient ache. “How are you doing?” Father asked.

Monsignor looked beyond him, out the window. The snowy scene seemed like a cocoon, all gauzy filament, silky strands, and impenetrable encasement. He would be gone soon enough, and with him his silent power. It no longer held much sway. One of the last of the cloistered priests, from a time when the church could keep the world at bay, when God was still feared and revered, he had somehow survived this long, but the end was near. Age and failing health had taken him away from the only home he’d known. This place was not home. God was not everywhere.

Father Daemon held the elderly man’s hand. His skin was thin but surprisingly warm; the veins were the color of bruises. Father explained that he was visiting his niece for her birthday the next week and wouldn’t be in to see him. He decided to take a chance.

“Would you like to meet Brother Logan? He’s been doing a fine job helping out. I’m hoping he thinks about coming back to us when he finishes.”

Monsignor cut him off sharply. “No, I don’t want to meet him!” he roared. “Don’t bring him here.” Then the old man started to cry, pulling his hand away from Father Daemon and hiding his eyes.

It was time to leave. He had been trying to find a way to explain to Monsignor that his health was such that he wouldn’t be returning to the church, but that would not come to pass today. For now, he allowed Monsignor to think that there was still hope – perhaps he would let him believe in that until… until it was done. He left the sobbing man alone.

The land was quiet beneath the blanket of snow. Father Daemon sat in the car without moving, relieved and guilty, reveling in and regretting the silent absence of the sounds of his mentor’s weeping.

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It was the second snowstorm that wreaked destruction – a violent Nor’easter, swirling and circling back over the town, a mass of unstable air hovering and dumping inches of snow and ice, accompanied by hurricane-force gales of bitterly cold air. The parking lot between St. Ann’s church and the rectory had been plowed twice, and Father Daemon was digging the Dodge out for his trip the next day. Brother Logan joined him. They piled shovelfuls of snow against the rectory wall, slowly freeing the car, and still the wintry mix kept falling.

“Think you’ll make it out tomorrow?” Brother Logan asked, brushing a coating of snow and ice off his shoulder and arm.

“Oh yes, yes – we’ve seen far worse in these parts.” He didn’t want to be absent from his niece’s birthday party. “I’ll be fine.”

The men finished and went inside. They watched the Winter Storm Warning advisory then went to bed.

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The first snow day of the year inspired John’s usual ruckus in the Crawford house. Jesse had listened wanly to the school closings at John’s repeated insistence – grateful to sign that school was cancelled, then to roll over and let his little brother rush downstairs to bug their parents.

Mr. and Mrs. Crawford were secretly upset that there was no school – it only made everything more difficult, but they indulged their youngest son, outfitting him in a heavy snowsuit and thick foam boots, setting him free in the gated backyard.

“Can you check in on them?” Mrs. Crawford asked as she watched John from inside the living room.

“Not today,” he said. “They’ll be fine. Jesse’s still asleep. I’ll talk to him… He’s old enough now. John will be okay. I’m home by three, I’ll make sure.”

“All right,” she sighed, uneasy but acquiescing. “I’ve got to go. I’m already late.” She threw her purse over her shoulder and waved good-bye to John from the back door. He wasn’t looking her way.

Mr. Crawford called upstairs, “Jesse! Jesse, we’re leaving. Your brother’s outside – keep an eye on him! Call the office if you need anything.” He didn’t wait for a response. In the backyard he waved his hands to get John’s attention. The boy was focused intently on making something, his back to the house and Mr. Crawford. His hands dug into the snow; it bit at the tender skin of his wrists, where the mittens didn’t quite meet the sleeves. He flung a handful of snow into the air and studied the pattern it made as it landed on the untouched blanket of white.

Mr. Crawford swore and put his coat on. His brown Oxford shoes sunk deep into the snow as he waved his arms wildly. Exasperated, he gathered a snowball in his hands and lobbed it in John’s direction. It fell short a few feet, while John continued to play, not glancing in Mr. Crawford’s direction. A second snowball flew through the air over John’s head, the boy still looking down.

“Goddamn it!” Mr. Crawford yelled, his hands raw and red and wet with melted snow. He packed a third snowball, rounding and solidifying it into a hard sphere of ice. Aiming to the right of John, he threw hard and watched with horror and immediate regret as it slammed into the back of John’s head.

The boy looked up, then around, and, feeling for the back of his head, started wailing. Mr. Crawford ran through the knee-high drifts of snow to his crying son. “Shit,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “Shit.”

He reached John and pulled his hat off, examining his head through the wet hair. There was no blood. He couldn’t have thrown it that hard. Mr. Crawford signed frantically to him, “Are you hurt? Are you okay? I’m so sorry… I was trying to get your attention…”

His khakis were soaked to a dark tan, and the cold was starting to register. John’s sobs had subsided. He returned to playing as if nothing had happened. Mr. Crawford put his hat back on and asked one more time if he was all right, explaining that he had to go to work.

“I’m good,” John signed, after impatiently removing his mittens.

After he had changed, Mr. Crawford went into the boys’ room and told Jesse to watch John. Jesse mumbled assent and listened to his father’s retreating footsteps. He wanted only to sleep.

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The Olin home was awake to the sounds of the radio and an endless list of school closings, the kitchen filled with the aromas of breakfast. A coffeepot perked away on the counter, releasing its pungent steam. Elise was standing over the stove, stirring a skillet of scrambled eggs. Her Mom sat at the kitchen table in a flannel bathrobe, idly flipping through a damp newspaper.

“These are almost done, can you get the toast going?” Elise asked. Mrs. Olin got up and pulled a loaf of bread from the pantry. She struggled with the small twist-tie, finally handing it off to her husband. “David? Would you? My arthritis today…”

He took it from her and asked, “How many?”

“Elise, are you having toast?”

“Just one piece, please.”

“One for me too,” Mrs. Olin said.

Mr. Olin brought out four pieces of bread, putting two into the toaster and laying two on the counter. He put the loaf back in the pantry. As he stood in the doorway, he watched his family. His wife and daughter moved together at the stove, Elise transferring the eggs into a bowl held by his wife. They were almost exactly the same height. Elise would be taller soon, but for now they were equally matched. He listened to their shared laughter as some of the eggs fell onto the floor, smiling at their good fortune. If spilled eggs were the worst part of the day, it was worthy of laughter.

“Elise,” her Mom said as she set the eggs on the table, “Would you walk Cooper after breakfast? You don’t have to go far in this snow. I am just feeling this weather today.” She rubbed her wrists in her hands.

“Sure.” The eggs warmed Elise’s stomach. Cooper trotted into the kitchen, staring up at Elise for a treat. She tossed him a bit of toast with jelly on it.

“Elise,” her Dad warned, “No eggs for him. He’ll get sick.”

“I know, I know.” She watched Cooper’s expectant expression. It felt good to be needed.

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“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Brother Logan asked. Father Daemon had loaded his overnight bag in the car and was going over some last-minute instructions.

“Really, it’s fine. You forget that we’re accustomed to such weather – and this wasn’t even a very bad storm. You wait… but I don’t want to frighten you. Thank you, I’ll be fine,” Father Daemon reiterated. He paused and went over things in his head. “Now, just make sure that the church is locked by 8 PM. You probably won’t get anyone today anyway, not in this weather. People will brave the elements for food, movies, parties, but not for prayer. Maybe someone young like you will change that. We’ll need it, if we’re going to survive. I have faith!”

Father Daemon gave Brother Logan a friendly tap on the shoulder, crinkling his eyes with a benevolent smile. He believed in his church.

“Call when you get in, if you would,” Brother Logan said seeing him off. The Dodge started up and crunched through the plowed snow. He watched it turn out of the parking lot and disappear behind the snow banks and then the church.

There was all of today, tonight, and a bit of tomorrow. Opening his wallet, Brother Logan thumbed through a few dollar bills and retrieved the crumpled paper that had Jesse’s phone number on it. The hall clock chimed ten times, and then the rectory was silent.

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The heavy snowfall had muffled the world. Jesse traipsed through the hallway to his parents’ bathroom, relieving himself at the toilet – the steady stream of dark yellow urine steaming on the cool porcelain. Why was their room always so cold? He shivered from the pissing and the air.

Pulling the drapes back from the tiny bathroom window, he looked down at the white landscape. In the middle of it sat John, the bright red of his snowsuit the only spot of color in the vast sea of snow – a trampled path radiating outward from him.

Jesse flushed the toilet just as the phone started ringing. He knew it wasn’t his parents.

“Hello?” he said weakly, then cleared his throat.

“Jesse? It’s Brother Logan.”

“Oh… hi,” he stammered, “How are you?”

“I need to see you.”

In a few years Jesse would recognize that insistence for what it was; for now he heard the urgent voice of a man he loved – and it was love, Jesse admitted to himself.

I love him.

He is why I live.

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He trudged through the thick snow. John had promised to stay in the backyard. He’d be in trouble for leaving him, but maybe he’d be back in time. He didn’t care either way. Brother Logan had asked for him, and he had to attend.

Not all of the sidewalks had been cleared, and Jesse found himself ankle-deep in some spots, not minding or even noticing the chilled, wet state of his shoes. Brother Logan had finally called on him, and they would resume their – he struggled for the right word – connection? Relationship? Affair? There was no name for it yet, and it didn’t matter.

The parking lot was empty – just the recent tracks of Father Daemon’s car remained. When Brother Logan swung open the rectory door, Jesse could not stifle a smile.

“Oh, you’re so cold,” Brother Logan said, putting his hands on Jesse’s cheeks, then cupping his ears. Jesse felt the usual rise when he was with him, and followed him silently down the hallway, kicking off his sneakers outside the bedroom. He closed the door behind him.

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Elise opened the door and Cooper flew out onto the snowy walkway that her Dad had just finished shoveling. The dog ran into the thick snow, jumping up and shaking its head. Elise walked carefully to the sidewalk and turned right. She folded her arms across her chest and hunched her shoulders as bits of snow fell from the trees in the wind.

The sky was impenetrably gray. It felt like dusk despite the early hour. She cut through the back lot of St. Ann’s, not admitting to herself that she was going to walk past Jesse Crawford’s house. The old priest’s car was gone and she walked through its tracks, not noticing the footprints that led to the rectory door. At the corner of the building, Cooper lifted his leg and started peeing. Elise looked around guiltily, then hurried over to the patch of yellow, throwing some fresh snow over it with her mittens.

Figures moved in the window. A lamp glowed on a desk, and beyond that Elise could see Jesse removing his winter coat. She watched through the half-closed blind as he took a man’s shirt off. She stared and wondered and decided to wait for Jesse to tell her about it. She understood then that she would never have him. She didn’t know if it upset her, or if she felt relieved. There would never be tension between them. Yes, it was relief.

When Jesse and the unknown man kissed, she brought her fingers to her lips, then turned and ran. Cooper barked and followed her home.

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Father Daemon had forgotten the birthday gift for his niece. He thought about it half an hour into the trip. Swearing, he turned around. It would cost him an hour at least, probably more with the bad roads, but the whole point of the trip was his niece’s birthday, and he had searched everywhere for the perfect present.

He pulled up to the church, not wanting to park and run the risk of getting stuck. He was also trying to avoid Brother Logan, who would probably riddle him with more concern about driving in the weather.

The door to the rectory was open a crack. Father Daemon cautiously entered. There were puddles from melted snow on the floor, the dirty wet tracks of sneakers, and then the pair of them outside Brother Logan’s door. One of them was lying on its side. Father Daemon bent down and inspected it. The brightly-colored high-top was the style that the kids were wearing. It belonged to a boy.

From inside the bedroom came a subdued creaking of the bed. Father Daemon put the sneaker back on the floor and quietly walked away. He stopped at his own room and picked up the birthday present, then closed the door on his way out. It was too cold to leave it open.

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The bed that had at first felt frigid, starchy, and spindly now cradled them comfortably in warmth. It was done. The hopes that had spun happily out of control the night before felt foolish and frightening now, and though the warm body and strong embrace of the man behind him felt good, it offered scant assurance. Jesse was still alone.

The oil lamp was burning, the low blue flame almost invisible but for the thin stream of smoke that signified it was still on. Jesse went over and turned it up, trying to add some warmth to the room. The flame brightened and the smoke became thicker. Logan watched his naked body before the lamp, a scene of unbearable beauty, sickening in its temporal fleetingness. Jesse shuddered and jumped back into the cramped bed.

The joining of their bodies had felt glorious. He pulled Brother Logan close to his chest. The fingers of his hand were thick, and rougher than Jesse’s. Was this love then? Two people staving off the cold, uniting and separating and still bound to one another – and did Brother Logan feel the same? Jesse wanted to ask, to end his doubt either way, even if Logan didn’t return the feeling. But what would he do then?

There was emptiness behind the man’s eyes when Jesse searched them, a distance that spanned back to a time before Jesse was even alive. He could not surmount that past, and he didn’t know if he could make the present matter more.

“I have to get back and help my brother shovel,” Jesse finally said. He didn’t know what he was doing.

“So soon?” Logan asked. “Father won’t be back until tomorrow,” he pleaded, a sparkle of mischief in his eyes once again.

It was all Jesse had. How long would it be before the glint was gone? He kissed Brother Logan, moving down to his neck, to his chest, suckling on his nipples and the small patches of hair surrounding them. Logan closed his eyes, remembering his dead brother. The memories came at awkward times. Beneath the weight and moving tongue of Jesse, Logan shifted, and his gaze found the oil lamp, focusing on its wavering light and curling ribbons of black smoke.

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For most of the ride home the next day, Father Daemon had tried to determine exactly what to say to Brother Logan, but when he pulled into the church lot he decided to wait. All traces of the boy, whoever it was, were gone from the rectory. Dinner was on the stove and Brother Logan came out of the kitchen to greet him.

Maybe that was it, maybe it was a one-time deal. He weighed the greater good with this single incident. There were unsaid rules and protocol that were followed at other churches – mysteries that could be cloaked in silence and a strategically-employed blind eye. At his most shameful he thought that Monsignor Vener could be blamed if it ever came to that – then he banished the idea, hating himself for the very notion.

Yet that would have been what the once-wise man did in this situation. No conflict, no noise, no messiness. It was easier then, though. No one questioned the church – all-powerful and all-knowing. Father Daemon felt himself spanning the old and the new. His greatest interest was preserving the institution that meant so much to him. The decision was made. There was no other way. This was the sort of mess that came from sin – it contaminated everyone, it stained everything.

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She was waiting for him when he came out of the house the day after the storm. The snow was already dirty and gray. Parts of it had melted and frozen again in the night, leaving a rumpled, rough surface of bumps and ridges. The street was a muddy mix of salt and dirt, the pavement dark with wet run-off. It was no longer pretty.

Elise wore an old pair of boots, still caked with sediment from the last winter. Her hair peeked out from beneath a knit hat that she pulled down over her ears. Jesse joined her, zipping up his coat and shaking off his own damp hair. They walked together past St. Ann’s. She waited for him to tell her, but he never spoke. Already he was different, already he was removed, and if he seemed happier today, she knew why. The sense of loss she felt was something she did not understand, nor did she know why she moved closer to him, or why she felt safer in his presence. The love of friendship was pure and lasting; in many ways it trumped that of romantic love. That is what she told herself on the walk to school, as Jesse strode beside her – quietly and respectfully, and oblivious to her unkempt hair hidden by a hat, and the dirty boots that she’d wear throughout the day.

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Brother Logan was sitting at the kitchen table – a small, mustard-tinted formica circle, edged with a band of ridged metal. He sipped at black coffee, unable to finish the second half of wheat toast on his plate. His thoughts went to the boy – flashes of smooth skin, the slippery gloss of his lips, the need in his eyes, in his actions, in the way he held onto him. It reminded him of the ones who came before, the small handful of men and boys he had almost loved – whom he could have loved if it had been possible.

A pair of rickety wooden shutters hung in front of the kitchen window, their slats slanted open to let in the light – so harsh at this time of the year, bouncing from sky to snow and everywhere in between, and so bright that the windowpane was only a square of brilliant white. It hurt to look out of it.

Father Daemon swept into the kitchen, fully dressed in his robes for daily Mass. It was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, and he did not want to draw this out.

“I saw what happened here yesterday,” he began, holding his hands up to quell any protest. “I came back because I forgot the birthday present, and… I know.” He paused there, standing next to the counter and looking down on the unknown man at his kitchen table. He breathed in deeply, folding his hands together, intertwining his hands.

“Brother Logan,” he began again, “I think you would make a good priest. But you cannot stay here. I won’t have you endanger this parish. I’m not going to mention anything to anyone, on the condition that you end this, and then leave. I will contact the Bishop and put in for a transfer.”

Father Daemon studied the face of the man before him. It hadn’t registered shock, or even surprise. Perhaps it had happened before. He refused to dwell on it, leaving the room brusquely and heading to the church. It wouldn’t be difficult to move him. There were always churches with dislocated priests, always empty spots to fill. And maybe he had learned his lesson. He said a quick prayer for him and entered the back door of St. Ann’s.

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That Sunday an eerie thaw broke up the January chill. A thick fog settled over the area – swirling clouds gathered at ground level, and the morning had an other-worldly glow to it. The banks of snow oozed water vapor, seeping into the ground and revealing forgotten fences and the barren sticks of ice-ravaged brush.

The Crawford boys stood in the driveway waiting for their father to back the car out. They breathed in the ripe smell of ozone – a displaced scent of spring and summer storms. Mr. Crawford drove the short distance to the church, taking his time, waving other drivers before him. John was staring out at the foggy street. He could smell the freedom of spring already, even if it was months away, and he wanted to be outside.

The family sidled into their front pew. Jesse kept a furtive watch out for Brother Logan. He’d made up his mind to go to confession if he was hearing them this morning. He had to talk to him again, even if it was under sacramental guise. Craning his neck, Jesse turned to look at the new organ. Its main frame was complete but it remained under construction. Dusty drop cloths and scaffolding were stacked on each side of it, framing the rosewood façade. The middle three pipes, the largest ones, had been installed, soaring upward to the rafters, and Jesse studied the slits in them, about a third of the way up their length. He wondered what sort of sound they would emit, how the notes would fill the church, and if he would still be there to hear them. John never would – he could only gauge their power through the vibrations.

“Good morning,” Father Daemon announced from the altar, opening his arms wide and accepting the expected reply.

“Good morning, Father,” they answered.

“For all of our visitors, let me extend a greeting of welcome to our church, and to everyone who attends St. Ann’s. I’m glad to see all of you here.”

Jesse looked around impatiently, mumbling the prayers and moving his mouth to the hymns. The confessional was dark. As Father began his homily, the congregation sat back in their pews. After droning on for about fifteen minutes, Father Daemon changed his tone from the preachy to the practical, pricking Jesse’s attention.

“And on a bittersweet note, this week we bid goodbye to Brother Logan, who has been called onward to the next stage of his… journey. His training that is. I would personally like to thank him for all of his help.”

There was a brief spattering of applause, when in fact most people had no idea who Brother Logan was. Even now, he was nowhere to be seen. Father Daemon immediately launched into the next topic. Only Jesse noticed the jarring switch, the abrupt end of the mention of his name. With those few words, Father severed Brother Logan from the dominion, and protection, of St. Ann’s.

Jesse was stunned. His stomach dropped and turned inside out, while an oily sweat broke out on his forehead. He covered his mouth, thinking he might throw up, fighting the welling tears, lost so suddenly and inconsolably. John was kicking his leg; Jesse almost raised his arm to strike him, and then the loud shuffle to communion stifled his rage.

Why hadn’t he said anything? Surely he’d known. And for how long? It was a subtle betrayal, one that might otherwise have cut Jesse deeply enough for him to let go, but not now, not when he felt this way, not after having given so much.

Dazed, he let his mother out of the pew, following her to the start of the line for communion. He opened his mouth to receive the Body of Christ from Father Daemon, whispering “Amen” in a choked sob. He swallowed the brittle wafer with some difficulty, moving to the right and sipping, for the first time, the Blood of Christ. The stale red wine burned his mouth, and he was grateful for the pain. It cut downward along his throat, settling discontentedly into the bowels of his belly, smoldering there but offering no succor.

There was no way to explain his state to the family. They rode home in silence, unaware of the pain their eldest son was in, occupied only with the strange mellow weather in the middle of winter.

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At the house, Jesse went directly to the phone book, looking up the number for the rectory. He waited for his mother to change out of her church dress and head downstairs, then slowly, quietly turned the rotary dial of the phone. Sliding down against the wall, Jesse sat on the floor listening to the distant ringing. Brother Logan picked up, his cautious voice small and removed.

“Father Daemon said you were leaving. Why didn’t you tell me?” Jesse asked. He didn’t want to sound desperate, but Logan recognized the panic in his voice, and part of him felt it too.

“I’m sorry, Jesse. I didn’t know myself. Father Daemon saw us the last time you were here.”

“When? How?”

“It doesn’t matter. He knows about us and I have to leave.”

“Where will you go? Around here? Another church near here?”

“Probably not. I don’t know yet, it’s up to the Bishop.”

“Does the Bishop know why?”

“No, I don’t think so. Father Daemon has been very kind.”

“When are you going? It can’t be right away.”

“I don’t know, Jesse,” Logan sighed. “Most likely soon.”Jesse didn’t know what to make of the man’s tone – partly annoyed, partly resigned, and somewhat dismissive. He didn’t seem all that concerned about the situation. The phone cord was knotted; Jesse absently unwound it, then watched it curl back into a tangled mass.

“Can I see you? To say goodbye?” he asked timidly.

Brother Logan was struck by how young he sounded, how like a kid. He was almost three times as old as Jesse, yet he had allowed Jesse to lead him. Who was at fault? And, again, did it even matter?

“You can come by today after four o’clock, but you can’t stay long. Father will be visiting Monsignor and then the hospital,” Logan explained. “I’d like to see you too,” he added.

It was enough for Jesse. It had to be. He went into the bedroom to lie down, drawing the blind and shutting out the fog. A few months ago the world was open, and the idea of Brother Logan was a happy inspiration. This morning it was closed, claustrophobically contained by walls of fog, closing ever inward – an irrevocable suffocation. Jesse heard John coming up the stairs. He closed his eyes, pretending to sleep, as John burst into the room.

John found a light jacket in the bottom of the closet and rushed back out. The front door slammed shut. Jesse embraced the silence, grasping at its emptiness and giving in to the sorrow. Folding himself into a fetal position, he turned to the wall, silently convulsing, weeping for the first time since the summer he broke his arm, almost three years ago. It lasted for about an hour, subsiding and starting up again, until finally he welcomed sleep and momentary oblivion.

When he awoke shortly before three o’clock, he remembered the lack of consciousness, glad for the fleeting forgetfulness, and intent on forcing a way to find it again.

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He told his mother he had to help Father Daemon out at the church for a while.

“Be back in time for dinner,” she yelled after him. “Five thirty!”

He was gone. In the backyard John was running back and forth. He had dug down through the snow and reached the lawn, but the ground was still frozen. The bottom half of his pants were soaked, and his boots were covered in a slushy mix. He looked to be having a swordfight, parrying and blocking his unseen foes. A heavy mist swirled around him, obscuring his face.

Jesse walked through the dense air, unable to see more than ten or fifteen feet ahead of himself, moving out of habit and instinct and a propulsion made up equally of dread and desire. He knew this would be the last time.

The spires of St. Ann’s were lost to the fog. Even as Jesse walked along the side of the church, its upper half could not be seen. As the rectory came into hazy view, Jesse gulped back another urge to vomit. He stopped walking. Brother Logan was waiting for him there, the door was half-way open, but he didn’t have to go in.

It was the first time he really had a choice, and a rare moment when he was fully aware of growing up. Sadness and resignation had been abstract ideas. He knew when he was supposed to feel that way, but had always pretended. The passing of a family pet, the death of a grandparent, the suicide of a classmate – his sadness had been one of principal and respect, but never of pain or loss. Brother Logan had awakened his access to sorrow, bringing him to life, even as it felt like it was killing him.

Jesse walked into the rectory. The fog closed behind him. Brother Logan came out of his bedroom at the other end of the hallway, his eyes swollen and red. Jesse ran into his arms and sobbed violently.

“Shh, shh… it’s okay. You’re all right,” the man whispered, stroking Jesse’s hair. He brought them into the bedroom, sitting down on the bed.

“You can’t… you can’t go. Please don’t leave,” Jesse sobbed into his hands. Brother Logan watched the boy cry and he joined him, pulling his shaking body close. The two of them rocked on the bed that way, holding each other, until there was nothing left to do.

Jesse stood up and stated calmly, “I’m coming with you, wherever you go.”

Brother Logan shut his eyes. He had imagined, even hoped, that Jesse would say that, and now that it had been spoken he was lost.

“That’s not possible,” he replied quietly. “You know you can’t. Your life is just starting.”

“I know what I want. I’m not a kid. And you know that.” Jesse started to cry again.

“Come on, let’s go outside for a bit,” Brother Logan said gently. He led Jesse to the back door, leaning his shoulder against it and pushing hard. It was stuck. He rammed it harder with his whole body and it gave way. The bright fog crept in as Jesse and Brother Logan stepped out of the rectory.

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The kitchen was warm. Mrs. Crawford cracked open a window, picking out a few dead leaves from the pot of devil’s ivy that sat on the windowsill. The oven alarm went off, a low buzzing that grew into an excruciating screech. Mrs. Crawford turned down a boiling pot of broccoli and crossed the kitchen to the oven. She peered inside, a scorching wall of heat hitting her face, and saw that the chicken was done. She turned the oven off, leaving the door slightly ajar. Turning back to the stove, she ran into John.

“God!” she said, annoyed. She squatted down and held him by the shoulders. “Is your brother home yet?” she signed.

John shook his head no.

Mrs. Crawford hesitated, but there was still some light left, and it was only a few blocks to St. Ann’s. The smell of spring was making John antsy; he’d been tugging on her legs since he’d come inside, getting underfoot as she tried to finish dinner.

She signed to him, “Can you find him at the church and bring him home?”

John nodded vigorously.

There was quiet when he left. She turned the stove off completely and moved the broccoli to a cool burner. Dinner was almost done. She had a few minutes, and, guiltily wishing the boys would take their time, went upstairs to lie down. She only needed a few minutes.

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The back of the church was littered with work lamps, and a thin coating of sawdust covered the floor. Tools and saw were scattered around the organ. John looked around but couldn’t find Jesse anywhere. He made his way up the aisle. At the front of the church he turned around and took in the organ, high in the back, its pipes running to the very top of the cathedral. They shined a bright bronze in the spotlights. It would be completed soon.

He went into the dark back room of the office, but no one was there. John walked past the altar and out the side entrance. Behind St. Ann’s stood the rectory. The front door was open and a sliver of amber light cut through the fog. John approached cautiously, unsure that Jesse would be there. He opened the door all the way and waited for someone to come.

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Behind the rectory was a small cemetery. Brother Logan and Jesse walked through it, bits of wet ice crackling beneath their feet. Enough snow had melted to reveal an irregular path of slate stones that led into and among the graves. Naked trees framed the little yard, their girdling roots twisting around the wayward iron fence. It tilted precariously, bending low to the ground in some spots, rising upward at the posts.

“Jesse, when my brother died, I was with him. He told me to live my life. I didn’t really listen. Not like I should have. But you can. You remind me of him,” Brother Logan tried to explain.

“Did you fuck him too?” Jesse asked out of petulance and defiance.

Logan raised a fist and Jesse waited for the blow. Instead, he took the boy’s face in his hands and kissed him. Jesse pulled away, but Logan wouldn’t let go ~ he was glad to be forced, enthralled by the power the man had over him. He stopped struggling and spoke.

“You’ve shown me this life, what this life could be, and now I have to go on without it. How can you do that?” He pounded his open palms against Brother Logan’s chest. “You made me start to believe. You showed me that love… was its own form of faith… when I didn’t believe in anything else… and I still don’t believe… but I might, I might have, with you.”

Enveloped by the fog and hidden from the world, they held onto each other. The last moments with someone you love, knowing you will never them again, are different than saying goodbye to someone who has died. They will still be out there somewhere, living on without you, perhaps loving others and finding happiness on their own.

They kissed, tenderly at first, then desperately.

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John walked into Brother Logan’s room, drawn by the flickering light of the oil lamp. He explored the small space, briefly touching the lamp that burned hotly into heavy black smoke. A stack of books was on the corner of the desk, along with an old wooden box bound by a lock and key. It opened with a click, and inside he saw a familiar gold rosary and a picture of Jesse from a newspaper clipping. It showed him in mid-air, going for a rebound at one of his basketball games. He doesn’t understand why these things are in this box.

Outside the window, he notices Jesse and Brother Logan and sees that they are crying. Frightened and confused, he is unsure what to do. He looks around and thinks about hiding under the bed before noticing the little closet in the corner. Opening the door, his eyes rest upon a pile of blankets. Not realizing how cold he is, he goes into the closet and crawls under them. He pulls the door almost shut and waits. It is cozy here. As the day fades, he falls asleep. The oil lamp burns on the desk, throwing long shadows across the room.

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They had to go inside. This time, Jesse led them. He held onto Brother Logan’s hand, the pair of them moving as one. Amid urgent whimpers and kisses salty with tears, they stumbled back into the bedroom, grasping at each other, unwilling to separate. The two of them stripped, a ravenous tearing off of clothing, then struggled against each other on the bed, fighting off what little time they had left and taking it out on the other. It was almost over.

Bleed into me.

Cry all of your tears and blood and semen into me.

Fill me with you.

After this, I may die.

It would be all right, after this.

It would have been worth it.

From the hallway, the phone rang, breaking them apart. Logan thought about not answering it, then jumped up and scurried into the hallway naked.

‘I cannot leave him,’ Jesse thought.

He will not allow it to happen. They will not be parted.

Jesse stood up and walked over to the desk. He picked up the oil lamp and smashed it down. The glass broke, and burning oil ran over the wooden floor. He knelt down, pressed his hands into the oil and raised them, burning flesh and flowing blood before his eyes. He looked up towards the ceiling, flames refracting in his tears, tiny rivulets of fire running down his face. Grabbing onto the fractured base, he threw it against the desk, spraying fire everywhere. His hands felt for fiery glass, sweeping up shards of it, seering himself with the fire and the flood of blood.

Brother Logan moved rapidly, tackling Jesse with the bedspread and dragging him out of the room. He smothered the fire on him and tried to pry the broken glass from Jesse’s grasp.

“Jesse, please, please… Why!? Why did you do it?” he wailed, horrified at the charred blood on Jesse’s hands. The boy was still awake, eyes open but vacant.

Brother Logan rushed back into the bedroom and tried to pull the mattress over the fire, but it had spread beyond, engulfing the desk and chair. Choking on the smoke, Logan grabbed the clothes that weren’t burning and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

In the closet, Jesse’s little brother slept, eyes closed to the flickering flames and ears cut off from the crackling roar, surrounded by a shroud of smoke, suffocating soundlessly in his sleep.

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Father Daemon and the old Dodge arrived at St. Ann’s to the chaotic scene of fire-trucks and a fire unit spraying the back of the rectory down. Smoke billowed forth from the building, blending seamlessly into the thick fog. Near one of the trucks, Brother Logan and a tall boy huddled together inside a blanket, Logan in a pair of wet black pants, the boy naked but for the blanket. It was the new altar server. There was no pretending now; Father would have to speak with the family.

No one reported anyone else in the building until Jesse’s parents ran up the driveway, their faces turning from concern to panic to horror and disbelief.

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Three days later, Father Daemon stopped by the Crawford house. Elise Olin answered the door, shaking his hand and bringing him into the living room. He stepped gingerly among the mourning family and friends, asking to speak with Mr. and Mrs. Crawford. Elise brought him to Jesse’s parents, then left them alone.

“I am deeply sorry for your loss,” he began. They eyed him warily. “I wish… I don’t… I don’t know where to begin. I want you to know that Brother Logan is being moved. If you want to go any further with charges regarding what he did to Jesse… that’s up to you. At this point I am just very sorry for your loss, and it is up to you. I don’t know if it would help. This is a terrible loss, none as worse as that of a child so young…” and he trailed off.

Jesse had been standing at the doorway listening. He entered the room. The three adults turned toward him. That it was Father Daemon who cared for him – enough to risk everything he was risking in offering the chance to charge Brother Logan – moved Jesse more than anything his own parents had done.

They couldn’t have saved him. They had forgotten that he still needed protection.

“I’m so sorry,” his mother sobbed.

He looked at her with wonder. He didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry for not protecting you, for letting this happen to you.”

It suddenly struck him – his vulnerability, his innocence, and his haphazard disposal of it. He was supposed to be sad. His own mother was sad for him, but he did not feel it. He only wondered why it was such a big deal. They had been quiet over things that seemed to matter much more than this; why the sudden flood of concern? It started to irritate him, and he walked out of the room.

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Elise was standing in the corner of the kitchen, staring out of the window. She had been coming over every day, helping out with the food and answering the phone and door. They’d hugged the first time she was there, but he hadn’t spoken to her since. He went up to her and looked out the window.

“Do you think we have enough food?” he asked, referencing the overflowing counters of platters and plastic-covered dishes. Elise forced out a smile. He didn’t look at her. “I did it, Elise. He died because of me.”

She reached up and put her hand on his shoulder. Jesse withdrew from the touch, then hurried out of the kitchen. He couldn’t talk to anyone. As he walked through the crowded living room, people parted silently to let him pass. They looked at him strangely, a mix of pity and suspicion – this sad, tall boy who had just been made an only child, with his two bandaged hands and burned arms. He went upstairs as the doorbell rang again.

John’s bed remained unmade. His parents had not entered the room since he died. Jesse had had to live there, alone with everything that was left of John. His toys and action figures were scattered about the floor. A model airplane was propped up on the desk, unfinished – an act of creation forever stalled. Jesse couldn’t bear seeing it. He threw the plane into the metal garbage can, where it splintered into a heap of broken balsa wood and plastic pieces.

Jesse stood over John’s bed before crumpling onto it. He could still smell John as he cried into his pillow, writhing and wishing it had been him. Tears soaked his bandaged hands. His baby brother had been sacrificed, and the fire had cauterized Jesse’s heart ~ burnt and sterilized it, scoured and sealed it, removing any bit of tenderness that remained.

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A few Sundays after John had been buried, the Crawfords returned to St. Ann’s for the last time. Jesse hadn’t spoken much to his parents, even when the three of them had gone to a professional counselor. His brother was gone and it had been Jesse’s fault. He couldn’t explain when they asked if he knew why John had been there. Their grief didn’t allow for them to notice Jesse much, and he was thankful for that. In his intentional, careless act he found the destruction he so desired. The craving had been satisfied, and he had inadvertently killed his brother in the process. Now there was nothing left to do. His fate was set, his heart hardened. All that remained was a cold ambition fueled by emptiness – an emptiness he knew would be his lot.

The counselor had suggested attending mass again, and Mrs. Crawford wanted to get it over with, to end it in some way, for good. It was early March, and the fractured family walked stoically to their front pew. The renovation of the organ had been completed and the interior of the church had been painted anew. It was brighter, but somehow colder. Jesse looked over his shoulder to the back of the church, where the magnificent organ shone brilliantly in the sunlight of the unforgiving end of winter.

The immense wooden monolith sounded, its upper notes falling then rising in rapid arpeggios. As the organist struck the lower keys, Jesse felt the moaning bass notes rumble through the church – sounds that hadn’t been heard in that sacred space for decades. It shook the pews and columns and stained-glass windows. It would have been what John felt. Pigeons flew from their nests, dust fell from the rafters, and the power of the sound rendered the congregation absolutely silent.

Jesse allowed the moment to overcome him. He began to cry – silently and convulsively – over his lost brother, his lost lover, his lost childhood. He couldn’t stop. His mother put her arm awkwardly around him and he pushed it away. His father pretended not to notice. There was no peace here. Jesse shut his eyes and slowly it subsided. He would not cry again.

The Crawfords moved away that Spring, not telling any of their friends. Jesse left his childhood there. 

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E p i l o g u e

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A glass of red wine stood between them, deep burgundy in the candlelight. The man wore a tailored suit, a tightly-coiled tie knot centered precisely at his neck, and cuff links of jade framed with gold; the woman sat upright with crossed legs, her elegant black dress topped by a light sweater. She wore a thin necklace of gold, and a simple wedding band.

He would always be unknowable to her. It was part of his charm. He would never be predictable or safe. She loved it, but had realized early on that it was exactly what would keep her from being with him. Not that he had ever shown the least interest. The pull of such detachment kept her close. She accepted that and guarded it. She could be unknowable too, or at least pretend. His affection, though limited, was genuine, and few others had been granted that much.

They had been in sporadic contact, but had never spoken about that year. Now, two decades later, they found themselves crossing paths in a city not far from the town in which they were born, and Jesse had finally told Elise how it had all happened.

“So that’s why you left,” she said. “We never heard the story. Mom and Dad just assumed it was because of John. I wish you had told me then.”

“I know, I’m sorry. Didn’t feel like talking to anyone about anything.” Jesse tried to change the subject. “It’s good to see you.”

She gave him a perfunctory smile that soon faded.

“You know that wasn’t your fault, Jesse.”

She reached for his faintly-scarred hand. Drawing it away with a shrug, and his quick, sheepish laugh, he said, “I know… No, I know.”

His early prediction had come true – she was pretty, with short, bobbed hair, a ring on her finger and a new name – “Mrs. Abrams,” she said with a lilting laugh.

“Elise, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Brother Logan then. I didn’t know if… I didn’t know how… and then John… it seemed, well, I don’t know…”

She did not mention that she knew, that she had seen them together. It didn’t matter; it was so long ago. “Have you seen him since then? Brother Logan?”

Jesse sipped at the glass of whiskey in his hand. “Once. A few years ago. Right after it all happened, I had tried to find him, but couldn’t. It wasn’t as easy then. And when I could have… it didn’t seem worth the bother.” He looked away.

“Well, how did it finally happen?” she asked.

“It was in a café, when I was out West. I was sitting there reading a newspaper and he walked in, and I knew it was him. He was still a priest, well, I mean, he had become a priest and was wearing the collar and the outfit.” Jesse took a quick sip of his drink. “He was balding, and heavier, and not as handsome as I remembered him, but still vaguely attractive to me – in the same way as when I first met him I guess. We looked at each other briefly, but he didn’t recognize me. He ordered a coffee to take out, then he was gone. That was the last I saw of him.”

“Did you ever think of finding him and pressing charges, or at least of calling him out on it? For what he did to you?” she wondered critically.

“Who’s to say it was wrong?” he asked seriously. “I was thirteen years old. I remember. I remember I wanted him. I wanted his attention. I wanted his affection. I wanted him to love me. I remember that he never forced me, never manipulated me. And I remember knowing the difference. Was it abuse if I wanted it? If I welcomed it? Not to sound full of myself, but I was quite an intelligent child, and at thirteen I was smarter than a lot of adults. I didn’t know it then, but now I see. And I’d always felt emotionally more mature than my friends, so I knew I could handle it. Who knows, maybe I’m still fooling myself. Maybe I’m a sad, sorry victim who can’t see the damage that’s been done to himself. But does anyone really believe that? You know me. I’ve always been too self-aware to be duped so grandly. And certainly not by a Priest.”

He had a playful sparkle in his eyes. He was enjoying this scandalous bit of his past. It was part of the myth. It was tough to tell whether he was really hurt by it, or whether it had happened at all. Elise had stopped trying to figure him out.

“I mean, I invited his advances. When he looked around furtively before we did anything, I disrobed proudly, daring the world to look upon what he was about to do to me. I wanted everyone to see what we shared, to see how beautiful it was, how pure and innocent and sacred it seemed. To this day I bear no shame for what we did. That doesn’t mean anyone else should be put in my position at such an age, but for me, well, it didn’t turn out badly. Not because of him.”

“So you think it would be okay for you to do that with a thirteen-year-old boy?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Even if he asked you? Even if you were invited? And he said he was all-knowing and aware of what he wanted?”

“No. Because the only person that I trust to handle that at such an age is… was… myself. I’m sure there are others that could, but I’m not going to be the one to test them. Besides, I like them older.”

Elise had listened to the story. She sipped her wine. He had finally told her what she had waited to hear. The boy she had loved had become a man, and he was still, somehow, in her life. She had not tried to escape the past like he had, and they had found their way back to each other.

“It’s good to see you too,” she said.

Jesse smiled and swallowed the rest of his whiskey. His lips engulfed an ice cube and he took it into his mouth, crushing the cold between his teeth. He had always been hungry for love.

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THE REVELATION

By Alan Bennett Ilagan