The Last Time We Say Goodbye

  “You look lost in thought,” Mom says, startling me. “Long day?”

  “The longest,” I say. Which is what every day feels like.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

  That’s nice. I wish I could tell Mom about the letter situation. I can imagine telling her, the way I used to occasionally ask for her advice, and then she’d help me work out the insignificant problems I had in my life before. But my mother isn’t that Mom anymore, and I’m not that Lex. The woman in front of me now, pouring herself a second (or however many) glass of wine, is almost a stranger to me, but I do know one thing about her: she’s fragile. She’s barely hanging on. If I told her now about me seeing Ty, she’d lose her grip. She’d fall.

  “Rain check, okay?” I tell her, giving her a brief hug. “I’m wiped.”

  In the hallway I notice that the empty frame, the one with the missing picture of Dad and Ty, is on the floor again. I pick it up. The glass in one corner is cracked. I turn it over and inspect it, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the loop on the back or the hook on the wall. It just happens to be on the floor. Again.

  I sigh. Just once I’d like to get through a day with nothing weird happening

  I go back to the kitchen.

  “Hey, Mom,” I ask. “Did you do something with this picture?”

  She frowns. “What picture?”

  I hand her the frame. “It’s the one with Ty and Dad going hunting. Did you take it out?”

  She shakes her head, staring at the empty space in the frame. “I remember that day,” she murmurs. “Your father was so proud. And Tyler . . .”

  She doesn’t finish her sentence, but she doesn’t have to. I know.

  Ty never wanted to kill anything. Not a fish or a deer or a spider, even. That’s just how he was.

  How is it, then, that he managed to do such damage to himself?

  Mom wipes at her eyes. “No. I didn’t take it.”

  And now I’ve started my mother crying again. Perfect.

  “There’s another picture missing, though,” she adds. “From the stairwell.”

  “What?”

  “Your father’s graduation picture. I noticed it the other day when I . . .”

  When she went down to sleep in Ty’s bed.

  I go straight to the stairs. There are dozens of pictures on the wall here as you descend into the basement: all the awkwardly posed family photos and pictures of both sides of relatives. A picture of Dad and his two older sisters standing in front of their house with seventies hair when Dad was just a toddler. A portrait of Gram and Pop, Mom’s parents, at their wedding on the steps of a stone church. Dad with a dorky little beard, holding a wet and naked baby (okay, that’s me) in a fluffy orange towel. Grandpa at his sixtieth birthday party. Christmas card photos of my cousins. Terrible class photos. And Mom’s right; there is a picture missing, on the bottom right side of the wall. The frame’s still there but the photo is gone. It was a black-and-white professional photo of Dad wearing a suit and tie, smiling serenely like there was nothing in the world he’d wanted so much as to graduate with a BS in accounting from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

  Sigh. Just one freaking day.

  When I was a kid I had a thing for Sherlock Holmes, the way he was able to ascertain so much by using deductive reasoning and simple observation. I went through a phase where I told people that I was going to be a detective when I grew up. But now I’ve got this seemingly simple mystery in front of me and I have no idea how to go about solving it.

  I head back up the stairs. Mom’s still sitting at the kitchen counter. Still drinking. Still crying.

  She glances up, sniffles. “Yes,” I affirm. “The photo’s missing.”

  “I thought your dad might have stopped by and taken it,” she says. “He still has a key to the house. Maybe he took the one in the hallway, too.”

  That explanation makes sense, I guess. Both missing photos are of Dad. But (a) I hope Dad doesn’t feel like he can sneak into the house whenever he likes and take stuff. He could ask me, if he wanted something. I wouldn’t give him any grief about it. And (b) why would he take the photos but not the frames? Why would he take the time, mid-sneak, to carefully unfasten the frames, slip the photos out, and then return the frames to their proper places? And, finally, and maybe most importantly, (c) why would he take the photo of himself at graduation and the hunting photo and not take, say, the picture of his sisters or of Grandpa or the one where he’s holding me?

  “We should change the locks,” I say to Mom.

  She sets her glass down on the counter. “Because we have a photo thief on our hands?”

  “Because Dad shouldn’t have the key to the house anymore. Or I can ask him to give it back, I guess. Whichever you prefer.”

  She folds her hands in her lap and looks down at them, her decision-making pose. “I don’t know, Lex. That seems excessive.”

  It’s not excessive. It’s been three years since he moved out. They’re divorced.

  Dad’s never coming back, I want to say to her, but I don’t. I don’t want to push her. But I wish that Mom was stronger. That she didn’t cry. That she hadn’t been so devastated when Dad left. That she’d done that woman-scorned thing and piled up his stuff in the yard and burned it all. Maybe, I think, if she hadn’t been so weak, then Ty could have let go of the rage he felt whenever he saw her hurting like that. He could have moved on. And then maybe he would never have made that first attempt with the Advil. And maybe it would have occurred to him to fight back when life got tough.

  Maybe he’d still be alive.

  So in that moment, even though she’s kind of the only thing I have left in this world, I blame her.

  But there’s nothing to do with that emotion but swallow it down.

  “I’ll ask him,” I say to her, although I don’t clarify whether I’m referring to the photo or the house key. I turn away. “I’m going to bed.” I tilt my head toward the hall and my waiting bedroom. “I’m thrashed.”

  “Night,” she says. “Sleep well, sweetie.”

  Yeah, right.

  17 February

  The last basketball game I saw of Ty’s was in the first week of December. December 3rd, if I remember correctly. A Tuesday night. On Thursday morning Mom would get called into the principal’s office because Ty had punched one of his jock friends. Broke his nose, so the story went. By Friday people at school were giving Ty that we’re-so-over-you look. So Tuesday night might have been when he and Ashley broke up.

  That was the week Ty made shooting guard on the junior varsity team. It was a big deal. He was proud of it, I could tell by the half jog he did as he came out onto the court that night, wearing the black jersey with the number 02 on his back. He tried to look confident through his nervousness: nonchalant, unruffled, oh-so-cool. Then he gazed up into the stands the way he always did, scanning the crowd. He never said so, but I knew he was searching for Dad’s face.

  Dad was the reason Ty started basketball.

  Basketball had been one of Dad’s obsessions back when Ty was around 12. Dad was like that, before, always looking for a new weekend hobby, finding something that interested him and then getting consumed by it, spending all his time and extra cash on procuring the best equipment and how-to manuals and clothes. I used to chalk it up to Dad having the most boring job in the world, so he was looking to get some excitement in his life. Every few months it was a different thing. Tennis is the first one I remember, a string of early Saturday and Sunday mornings where Dad went off wearing white shorts and carrying a racket. Then sailing—Dad bought a sailboat (yes, a sailboat in Nebraska: landlocked state) and a different set of white shorts, and spent 2 entire summers gliding back and forth across Branched Oak Lake before he lost interest in that. Then came inline skating, which was mercifully short, only a few weeks that he dragged us out to the empty church parking lot laden with pads and helmets to practice pivoting and stopping. Then mountain biking, which en
ded in Dad breaking his leg. Then chess, while the broken leg healed. And then, if I remember correctly, it was basketball.

  We woke up on a Saturday morning to the sound of a ball hitting the concrete in our driveway, Dad wearing some kind of jumpsuit, throwing and missing and cursing as the ball bounced off the hoop he’d just installed over the garage door.

  “Hey, kiddos,” he said when we went out on the porch to watch him. “Want to shoot some hoops?”

  I declined. I’d borrowed a book about Einstein from the library, and I wanted to spend the day curled up in my room trying to get my 14-year-old brain around the theory of general relativity. But my brother’s eyes lit up.

  Finally, something he could do. Something he and Dad could do together.

  After that, Ty was always out there practicing. Dad moved on to hunting and guns and target practice that year, but Ty stayed with basketball.

  The team was up against Omaha North that night, in the last game I saw Ty play. Math Club was running concessions, per usual, but they let me sit out in the stands for most of the game and then rush back at halftime to help fill sodas and pour nasty molten nacho cheese over stale chips and run the register. So I saw him play. I caught the look he sent into the crowd, the search for Dad, and when he glanced in my direction I held up my hand and smiled. He nodded, glad to see me and disappointed that I was alone, and turned away. He didn’t look up into the bleachers again.

  Dad came to a few games in the beginning, but that petered out fast. I guess he couldn’t bear to be away from Megan for that long. It’s a shame, though, that Dad didn’t get to see Ty play. It was a thing of beauty to watch him. And it would have made Ty so happy—even though he never would have admitted it—if Dad could have seen just how stellar he’d become on the court.

  He was the best shot on the team. No question. Sometimes I wonder if that’s how the math gene presented itself in Ty—his ability to calculate angle and force with the muscles of his arm, so he could hurl a ball from half a court away and then stand back to watch it swish effortlessly through the net. He wasn’t the fastest player, or the tallest, and he wasn’t great at blocking or guarding or slam dunks. But my brother could shoot.

  I want to remember that game. I’ve tried so many times in the past week, since I figured out that the letter belongs to Ashley Davenport. I try to bring up even one shot he made that night. He must have made several—we won the game 97 to 33. I remember the freaking score, the red digital numbers lit up on the board, I remember what happened right before, as he came out with the team, and what happened after, but no matter how many times I go back through it, I don’t remember any specific moment with Ty during the actual game.

  When I try to think about it, instead I remember 17 days later.

  Sorry Mom but I was below empty.

  And then everything goes mercifully numb. Or I get the hole in my chest. One or the other.

  Here’s what I do remember about December 3:

  Steven came down from the concessions stand about 10 minutes in, said El and Beaker had it covered. He took my hand, and he held it for a while, and then he turned it over and ran his index finger up and down the length of my palm. All my nerves started firing. I shivered and laughed and told him to quit, but I liked it. He laced his fingers with mine, and we watched the game, but I was really watching Steven, the jerk of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, the small freckle he had next to his right ear, the way he pushed his glasses up on his nose a bit awkwardly with his left hand, because his right hand was holding mine, the way his eyelashes were long enough to brush the lens if he pushed the glasses too close to his face.

  I remember that at the beginning of halftime Beaker did an imitation of Principal Boone that was so funny that El snorted soda up her nose, and we were trying not to die laughing almost the entire 15 minutes of the break, as we counted out the people’s change and served their food, and they were looking at us strangely, because what could possibly be so hilarious, which made us laugh even harder.

  I remember Mom showed up 20 minutes before the game was over. She looked tired but happy that she’d made it. She smelled like the hospital when she sat down next to me, like Clorox and burned plastic and antiseptic. She said hello to Steven, and he produced a Hershey bar with almonds (Mom’s favorite) from his jacket pocket and said he’d snagged one from the booth just for her. Oh, the smile she gave him, the approving-mother smile, like a ray of sunshine in that cold gym.

  Steven knew how to bask in it.

  “You’re a total kiss-up,” I told him, bumping my shoulder into his. “Where’s my candy bar?”

  He shrugged, but his eyes said that there were things in this world better than candy.

  Yes, there were.

  I remember we stayed parked outside the house for longer than usual when he brought me home, until Mom flipped the porch light on and off, which was her way of saying, Enough necking. Time to come in. Good night, Steven.

  “Mom. Please. You don’t have to do that,” I told her when I slipped inside the house. “I’m perfectly capable of deciding when I should call it a night.” My lips were swollen and my hair a total mess and my face felt flushed, probably red because I was embarrassed that I looked like I’d been making out. Which I had been. Excessively. And my mother was standing just inside the door like the chastity police.

  “Are we going to have to revisit ‘the talk’?” she asked.

  “God, no. Once was enough for this lifetime, thanks.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to take you in and get a prescription for birth control pills?”

  My mouth opened and then closed. I frowned. “No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Condoms break,” she informed me.

  Now I knew for a fact that my face was fire-engine red. “I am aware of that. Good grief, Mom. Where’s Ty?” I asked, sure he was going to jump out from the hallway with a giant smirk. I did not want to be having this conversation in front of him.

  “Ty’s not home yet,” Mom said.

  “Ah. Maybe he needs ‘the talk.’” I started past her toward the safety of the hall and my bedroom, a full-scale retreat, and for once I was glad that Dad didn’t still live with us. One parent in this situation was bad enough. I didn’t need Dad and his shotgun.

  “I just want you to be safe,” Mom called after me.

  “I’m safe,” I answered, and then I went in my room and closed the door and took a deep breath. Because I was safe. Steven and I hadn’t been past, er (what were the bases, again?)—second base yet. But we were definitely on second, taking a few steps in the direction of third.

  Maybe it was time for us to discuss it, I thought. Maybe it was time.

  I wanted it to be Steven, the first time. I knew that much. I didn’t know when or how or where something like that could happen, but I did know who.

  And sitting there in my bedroom, thinking about it, I blushed and I smiled.

  December 3. I remember all that. In detail.

  Steven. El and Beaker. Mom. Steven.

  But I don’t remember Ty playing. I don’t remember him interacting with any of the cheerleaders.

  I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy being the star of my own movie, while my brother might have been out there that night, in the dark somewhere, getting his heart broken. And 17 days later, he was dead.

  13.

  “SO, HOW’S THE WRITING COMING?” Dave asks from his comfortable chair.

  “Swell,” I reply.

  He waits for me to give him a straight answer.

  I shrug. “I don’t think it’s doing me much good.”

  I glance at the clock. God. Forty-two minutes to go.

  “Why do you say that?” he asks.

  “There’s no real point to it. No purpose.”

  “We discussed this. The purpose is to release some of the pain, express it onto the paper so you don’t have to carry it around with you in your day-to-day life. It’s cathartic.”

  “Yeah, that’s n
ot happening,” I report.

  I’m still carrying around plenty.

  His eyebrows bunch together. Dave has very expressive eyebrows. “Are you writing about Tyler?”

  “Look, I did what you asked. I wrote about the firsts and the lasts.” I sigh. “I think it’s time to try something else. Let’s just call it done with the writing part of the healing process, okay?”

  He rubs his hand over his mouth, then says, “But how does it feel, when you’re writing?”

  “Honestly? It sucks to try to remember. It hurts. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  “Ah. It hurts. Good,” he says.

  Wait, I think, good that it hurts? But then it hits me: Dave knows about the numbness. Somehow, he knows. And this writing thing isn’t his attempt to get me to express my feelings so much as it’s trying to get me to actually have feelings.

  Dave’s sneaky that way.

  “Maybe I want to forget,” I say, just to be contrary. “Maybe it’d be easier to forget, and get on with my life. Isn’t that healthier? Moving on?”

  “Is that what you really want?” Dave asks.

  “Would you please stop answering my question with a question?”

  “What would you like me to say? Aren’t there some vital questions that you must answer for yourself?”

  Dave doesn’t play fair.

  I sit back and consult the clock again. Ugh. Thirty-eight minutes.

  “I think you should continue with the journal. Humor me for a while longer,” he says. “What I think you might need, to make the writing seem more relevant, is a recipient.”

  “A recipient?” That doesn’t sound good.

  “Someone you are writing to.”

  Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.

  He sees the look on my face. “Alexis. I’m not suggesting that you give the journal to anyone. It’s for your eyes only, I understand. But perhaps if you use the journal to express something to someone specific, you’ll be able to get some of the weightier issues off your chest.”