“I separated myself to make their lives better. To make their lives something good. I was nothing but a damn burden for those two. I fuck up and over and over again, but if it means that they get a chance at being happy, then I will keep fucking up. For them. Always for them.” I stood there with tears in my eyes, listening to his words, replaying them in my head. He rubbed his temple before closing his eyes and taking a breath. “Sometimes loving someone means knowing they’re better off without you.”
40 Levi
When I got back to Alabama, Denise was waiting for me at the airport. We didn’t go to the hospital to see Mom until the next morning. Brian, Denise, and I stood outside of her hospital room. When I looked in at her small body, I felt sick. Seeing her hooked up to those machines tore me up inside. She looked a little pale in the face, but her brown eyes had life.
A life I hadn’t seen in her eyes in so long.
“I’m okay, Levi.” Within seconds I was beside her, holding her hands and hugging her tight as she held me back. “I’m okay,” she said again.
I held on tighter.
* * *
“She seems good,” I said as Denise and I stepped out of the hospital room.
“She is good. They have her on some new medicines that seem to be working well for her, besides this incident.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a hair brush and started running it through her locks. She then proceeded to apply lip gloss and mascara. Only she would be worried about looking put together in the hallways of a hospital. “You’ll stay with me and Brian for a while until she finishes up the next few weeks at St. John’s. I’ll help you with your homeschooling and everything until your mom’s back. Then if things are going well, she’ll be an outpatient with three appointments a week for the next few months, but she’ll be home with you.”
Home.
I’d missed home.
She excused herself to go find a decent cup of coffee.
I looked back into the room to see Mom staring my way with a smile. Within seconds, I was by her side again. “How’s your father?”
“Not too good.” I walked over to her and sat in the chair beside her.
Her fingers ran across my forehead as she moved my hair back. “I’m so sorry, honey. When do you go back?”
“I’m not going back. I’m staying with Denise for homeschooling until you come back home.”
She sat up in her bed. “That wasn’t part of the plan. Denise said you were just coming back to visit for a little while.”
“No. I’m staying.”
Shaking her head, she took my hands into hers. “You have to go back and stay with your father, Levi.”
“I’m here now, Mom. You wanted me to come home, and now I’m here.”
She frowned. “I wasn’t in my right mindset. You should have this time with your father.”
“He doesn’t want me.” I sat back in my chair and released a heavy sigh. “He told me he didn’t want me.”
“That’s a lie. He always wanted you. This is my fault,” she whispered, fidgeting with her fingers.
It didn’t matter anymore. He’d made his choice, and I’d made mine.
* * *
Later that night I had Denise drop me off at the cabin. I wanted to finally sleep in my own bed. She tried to talk me out of it, but she agreed after dropping off some groceries and things.
When I glanced at my cell phone, I saw new messages from Aria and opened them.
Aria: I wish I could’ve explained what you saw with James. He means nothing to me. I just want you to know that. You mean everything. I’m so sorry, Levi.
I knew that, and I knew Aria, but a part of me thought it would be easier to walk away than face the reasoning. I wouldn’t be back to Wisconsin any time soon, and it wasn’t really fair to ask her to wait around for me. Plus, she obviously had things to work out with James, and I was probably just getting in the way of that.
The distance was better for us, for her.
I was only clouding her judgment.
It was about time I awakened from the dream of Aria and me.
Aria: I – noun, often capitalized, often attributive ˈī : Aria Lauren Watson.
Aria: Miss – verb ˈmis : To feel the absence of.
Aria: You – pronoun | [yoo; unstressed yoo, yuh] : Levi Wesley Myers.
Miss you, too, Aria Lauren Watson.
But I couldn’t tell her that, even though it was true.
41 Aria
I texted Levi and waited. I took a shower, stared at my growing stomach, and I checked my phone. I practiced the air guitar, and then I checked my phone. I spoke to Mom and Dad about James, and then I checked my phone. I ate dinner, and then I checked my phone.
Over and over again, I checked my phone.
Over and over again, there was nothing to see.
My mind started wondering how much of Levi had been nothing more than a dream.
All I wanted to do was fall back asleep and find him again.
* * *
Thursday was my last visit to Dr. Ward before the New Year, and I really needed to sit across from him and talk about art. I hadn’t spoken to James since Christmas. I wasn’t even sure where to start. Mom told me I shouldn’t say anything to Keira and Paul until James and I spoke to one another.
Dr. Ward’s candy bowl was filled with red and green chocolate M&Ms, and I ate all of them within the first ten minutes.
“So what’s on your mind, Aria?”
It was funny how I’d come to love those words.
“Gustave Courbet. He was a French painter who pretty much led the beginning of the realism movement. When he was asked to paint angels, his response was, ‘I have never seen angels. Show me an angel, and I will paint one.’ Mr. Courbet and I had very different views when it came to art. He believed that one should only paint what they could see with their eyes, and I believed that art should be from the heart and soul.”
“Believed? Do you not believe that anymore?”
“I want to, but each passing day realism is showing me its appeal. It represents life truthfully, without hidden meanings, without doubt and questions being seen from any angle. It’s just real. It’s exactly what it needs to be. It makes me embarrassed a little that I’ve only focused on abstract. Maybe Gustave Courbet was right.”
“Bullshit,” Dr. Ward said, narrowing his eyes. “I’m calling bullshit.”
“What?”
“Why does it have to be one or the other? The opposite of real isn’t abstract. The opposite of real is fake. Abstract can be real, and it can hold more truth in it than anything else. You taught me that. Abstract art can be as true as realistic art, as long as it finds the courage to speak its colors into the world with genuine honesty.”
“But what if abstract’s truth hurts someone else in the process?” I asked.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk. His fingers clasped together. “One truth stings far less than a thousand lies.”
42 Aria
“We can’t keep him, James.” I sat beside him on his porch swing, watching as my truth stung his soul.
He repeatedly tapped his fingers against his jeans. “We can do this, Aria. I know it will be hard, but we can do this.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true.”
“Why? Why can’t we do this? Why can’t we have him?”
“We don’t get what we want anymore. We don’t make choices for ourselves. Everything we do is for him. Every choice we make is to give him a better life. So, we don’t get to keep the baby.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would mean we were going after our own selfish wants and needs. For him we have to be selfless. For him, we have to let go. You and I would never be a couple, James. If we were, we would hate each other. Do you really want to raise a kid like that?”
He didn’t answer.
“Keira and Paul are already amazing parents. It’s not like the baby is going to someone we don’t know. I’ve
known them my whole life, and they are good people. They’ll love him. He’ll be safe and loved.”
The porch swing squeaked as he and I swayed back and forth on it. The chilled night sky was sprinkled with stars, and he stared at them as if trying to make a wish on each one.
“The night I slept with you was the night after I tried to fix things with Nadine,” he whispered at a volume that was almost mute. “We were already broken up for over a month, and she had no plans on getting back together with me. I came over to talk to Mike about it, and we ended up going to a party and getting drunk. I felt lost, broken.”
“So you were drunk when we slept together?”
“No,” he said quickly, turning my way. “No. I sobered up. But I was still lost. I didn’t handle things after she told me she had a miscarriage. I was still missing something I never really had. Something I never wanted. That nearly destroyed me. I was leaving Mike’s room and when I walked past yours, you smiled at me in a way that almost made it seem like everything would be okay. And then after you got pregnant, I reacted the same way I did with Nadine, searching for a quick fix. But, as time went on and I saw your stomach and that this whole baby thing was really happening, I guess I felt like it was a second chance to do the right thing.”
“You are doing the right thing,” I said, placing my hand on top of his. “It just so happens that sometimes the right thing sucks.”
He snickered and went back to staring at the stars. “So what do we do now?”
“You finish your senior year, then you go off to Duke and make something of yourself.”
“And you?”
Me?
I learn to breathe again.
* * *
I started homeschooling the first week of the New Year. Mom and Dad both worked random hours, and since they didn’t want me home alone during my online classes, I stayed with Keira each day.
Every day around lunchtime, I saw Mr. Myers walk outside toward the woods. By the time I left Keira’s in the afternoon, either Daisy or Lance showed up to spend the evening with him.
When the curiosity got the best of me, I packed up my lunch and followed him to the woods one day.
He stood on the snow covered ground, staring up at the old tree house.
“Did you build that for him?” I asked.
He slowly turned around to look at me and sneered. “You’re trespassing.”
“Yeah, I am, but I brought you lunch if you’re hungry.”
He huffed and walked back to his house, slamming the door in my face.
Maybe tomorrow.
* * *
I showed up at lunchtime each day for three weeks. It wasn’t until February that Mr. Myers let me inside. Actually, his nurse let me in, but it was good enough for me.
“You’re really annoying, you know that, right?” he muttered, sitting in his chair watching black and white shows.
“I brought chicken noodle soup.” I smiled.
“Not hungry.”
“Your nurse said you haven’t eaten much today.”
“Probably because I’m not fucking hungry,” he growled. He was grumpy a lot, but being that I was thirty-two weeks pregnant, carrying around Jicama, I had my grumpy days, too. I opened the soup, grabbed a spoonful, and hovered the spoon in front of his mouth. “What’s your problem?!” he hissed. “Why won’t you let me alone?”
“Because no one should spend their lunchtime alone. Not even grumpy men who think they deserve to be lonely.”
He huffed and puffed some more, grumbling at me, but he opened his mouth and took the soup.
“Your son’s ignoring all of my text messages, and I don’t know why,” I said after a few more spoonfuls of soup.
“His mom said it’s because he thinks you’re better off.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Why would he think that?”
“I don’t know. But everything Levi does is always to help. It’s just who he is.”
Mr. Myers’ words ran through my head for a while longer, but I didn’t speak about Levi anymore. “I didn’t know you and his mom still spoke.”
“She calls me every night,” he said. “She wants me to know that I’m not alone.”
I ate lunch with Mr. Myers each day until the last day of his life. Sometimes he stayed in his bedroom, so I would play the CDs that Levi made for me and the baby, which always helped Mr. Myers sleep better.
Other times, we watched television together.
One of the last things he told me was to tell his son that he loved him until the very end.
43 Levi
Dad passed away the second week of March. Mom wanted to fly in for the funeral with me, but I told her I didn’t think she should. She’d have to miss her appointments at St. John’s, and I knew they were keeping her mind balanced. She was doing so well, I finally had my mom back. I wouldn’t want her to fall backward from the stress of Dad’s funeral.
My trip to Mayfair Heights would only last a week before I had to be on a plane back to Alabama. Aria had texted me the word of the day for the past sixty-eight days. I never replied, except to one message.
Aria: Are you even thinking of me?
Me: Every day.
It was true, too. I thought about her all the time, wondering how she was doing, wondering if the baby was okay.
When I reached Wisconsin, Lance picked me up and drove me into town so I wouldn’t have to take the city bus. It was funny how everything was the same, but so different. Lance lost some color to his eyes. When we pulled up behind Soulful Things, he parked the car and we sat silent for a few minutes. He tossed his hair on top of his head, then rubbed his fingers repeatedly over his face.
“I keep waking up hoping it was a dream, you know? That my brother’s still an asshole living down the street, eating artificial TV dinners.”
I didn’t reply.
The last I knew of my father was that he sent me away.
I felt bitter.
Angry.
Sad.
Mostly sad.
“He loved you, you know, Levi,” Lance said. A lie that was meant to bring me comfort. “Kent wasn’t the best at showing his feelings or expressing himself, but he loved you. I remember he would—”
“Can we head inside? I’m tired,” I said, not wanting to go down the memory lane of how my father loved me from a distance. All I wanted was to get this funeral over with and be on a plane in a few days, not talk about who my father was when in all honesty I didn’t know him.
“Yeah, of course. Daisy’s already upstairs. I’ll be up in a second,” Lance replied.
I climbed out of the car and started heading up to their place. When I turned around, I saw Lance with the palm of his hand resting against his forehead. His eyes were closed, and his other hand formed a fist as he tapped it against the steering wheel.
I’m such an asshole.
Walking back to the car, I opened the door and climbed back inside. Lance wasn’t telling me the stories to make me feel better. They were for his own comfort.
“You were saying?” I asked.
He looked at me, bit into his bottom lip, and sighed. “I used to catch him listening to you play the violin in the woods. He would sit in his lawn chair right on the outskirts of the trees and listen to you play. Once when I showed up, he said to me, ‘The kid’s good.’ That’s all. Then we would both stay awhile and listen together. He wasn’t the best person out there…but he was the best person he knew how to be.”
We sat in the car for hours. Lance told me stories about a man I never really knew. I learned more about my father sitting in that car than I had ever known.
It all felt a little too late.
* * *
The day of the funeral, no one from town showed up. I knew my father wasn’t liked around town, but no one showing up to his funeral really drove that fact home.
I sat in the back pew, not wanting to walk up and see his face for the last time. Lance and Daisy sat in the front row as the funeral organiz
er talked them through all the details about moving my father to the burial location.
My fingers tapped against the pew repeatedly. My tie was choking me. Each breath was harder than the last to take in. I loosened the tie, but the feeling of suffocation was still there as I went back to tapping my fingers.
Lance and Daisy walked toward me and sat beside me in the pew. “Are we leaving?” I asked Lance.
“They said there’s one more thing.” He placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it for comfort.
We stared forward as the organizer set up three microphone stands on the stage. I cocked an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he answered.
The speakers in the room squeaked as they were turned on, and seconds later a song began to play. I knew the song the moment the first note hit the sound system. A small smile found my lips as Simon and Abigail walked out to the two further back microphones, playing the air guitar to The Black Crowes’ “She Talks To Angels.” They played the intro to the song perfectly, Abigail even taking a moment to tune her invisible strings.
I turned to see Aria walking out to the center microphone, and right on time, she started lip syncing along with the song. Her fingers gripped around the mic as she sang her heart out, her beautiful eyes locking with mine.