Intensely Alice

  Most of us had brought a single flower and had placed it on the casket. I tried to steer my mind away from what was inside. Tried not to think of Mark’s body smashed between the back of an SUV and the front of a truck. Tried not to wonder what Mark had been thinking about as he waited for the light to change. If he had looked in his rearview mirror and seen the truck coming. If he’d realized he was trapped. I hoped he’d had the radio on full blast and hadn’t seen the truck coming up behind him; hadn’t heard it and had felt nothing because the impact was so swift and sudden. Hoped he had felt no panic, no fear, no pain—one moment music, the next moment nothing. It was over for Mark, yet all of us there at the service were going through the horror of it again and again.

  The minister did his best and said all the right things, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough. But when he asked if anyone would like to share a memory of Mark, I knew it wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t trust myself to speak at all.

  An uncle of Mark’s went to the microphone and spoke for the family. Told how Mark had always liked mechanical things. How he’d once taken a clock apart, then couldn’t get it back together the right way, and it was a day before the family realized that the clock wasn’t working.

  Low chuckles traveled around the room, people glad to have been afforded an emotion they could deal with. The Stedmeisters themselves didn’t speak, and I knew they couldn’t. Mrs. Stedmeister wept continuously into a handkerchief she held to her nose. Mr. Stedmeister had one arm around her and kept patting her shoulder. But his face looked old and lined, his head too heavy to hold up. A neighbor shared a few memories and told how Mark used to climb the fence to get to her apple tree and once asked her, as a small boy, why she didn’t grow apples without worms in them. More appreciative laughter.

  “Is there anyone else who would like to speak before we conclude the service?” the minister asked.

  I felt Patrick’s fingers disengage from mine. He got up and walked to the front of the church.

  When Patrick turned to face the audience, he looked taller than I remembered him just a month before—his shoulders more broad, perhaps because of his suit jacket. His red hair had become more brown, and his face, despite the freckles, looked more mature.

  “My name is Patrick Long, and I’ve been a friend of Mark’s since the fourth grade,” he said. “I hope I can speak for many of his friends when I say that Mark’s death has changed our lives in ways we didn’t expect. It has made us appreciate the life that we have, however short or long it may be; the friendships we’ve made; the loyalty of friends like Mark; and the generosity of his parents.

  “Mark was nothing if not loyal; if ever a friend was steady, a ‘there for you’ kind of friend, it was Mark. He wasn’t showy, wasn’t loud, but he was there. You could count on him completely.”

  And then, when Patrick ended his eulogy, I cried. We all cried.

  “Wish you were here, buddy. We’ll miss you.”

  Patrick’s voice trembled on those words, and I saw him blink as he came back to our row. I think every girl there reached for a tissue. I saw Keeno press two fingers into the corners of his eyes to hold back tears. From somewhere a few rows forward came a deep, choking sob, as though someone were holding back as long as possible before another sob could escape. I was surprised to see that it was Brian Brewster, his head in his hands.

  Patrick sat back down, and we leaned against each other. I squeezed his hand. His fingers squeezed back. I was glad he was here. Grateful he had come. Sad that he had to fly back to Wisconsin that same afternoon. But most of all I was angry at God. If I hadn’t had a personal relationship with him before, I did now. I was furious.

  Patrick had to go back to the airport, but I went to the cemetery with the others. Each of us tossed a handful of dirt on Mark’s coffin. Slowly, almost without sound, the coffin was lowered into the ground, the bands that held it slipped away. Mrs. Stedmeister couldn’t look. She and Mark’s dad sat on folding chairs at graveside, and she buried her head in his shoulder until the casket was out of sight. I hugged them both before we left and could feel her tears against my cheek.

  As I walked back to the car with my friends, Keeno with his arm around Liz, I said, “I think we should all take turns stopping by the Stedmeisters’ each week just to talk with them, see how they’re doing.”

  “We should,” agreed Gwen. “Just talk about every good or funny thing about him we can remember.”

  “Mrs. Stedmeister told me she wants to give away some of his things to his friends,” said Keeno. “I’m afraid she’ll be sorry later. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Let’s do whatever makes her feel better,” I said. “And if she gives something away and then wants it back, she can have it.”

  Neighbors were preparing food at a community center for anyone who wanted to drop in, but most of us were wiped. I just wanted to go home and sleep. We were exhausted from the week and had already had our time alone with Mark’s parents the night we gathered around their house and pool. This was a chance for the adults to talk.

  I lay down on my bed and fell asleep. When I woke, I felt really good and rested for a minute or two until I remembered, and then I just wanted to stand at the window and scream at the sky.

  “I don’t believe in God anymore,” I said to David Reilly at work the next morning—a great thing to tell a would-be priest when he just stops by the Melody Inn to pick up his last paycheck. Dad had an eye appointment and wouldn’t be in until noon, and Sylvia was at school; teachers had to be in their classrooms getting ready for the fall semester. So I’d taken the bus in, and Marilyn and I alone were holding down the fort.

  “Because your friend died?” David asked me.

  “Because if God could have saved him, he didn’t, and he should have,” I said. “Because of all the horrible things that happen to innocent people.”

  “It’s okay to be angry,” David said.

  “I didn’t say I was just angry, I said I didn’t believe.”

  David only nodded that he understood, but he didn’t say anything. He started helping me pack up an order for a school.

  “How do you explain it?” I challenged him.

  “I don’t,” said David.

  “Well, it doesn’t make any sense to believe there’s a God watching over us when he lets something like this happen,” I said.

  “It does if your faith is stronger than your doubt,” David said. “And I want to believe in God, so I do.”

  “How can you talk yourself into that?” I demanded. “I would love to believe in a God that will watch over me, but I can’t. There’s too much evidence to the contrary.”

  “It may seem that way to you, but I see evidence of God in everyday beauty and kindness. I can’t imagine a world without God, so I’m going to live as though there is one,” said David.

  “Well, I can’t believe in something just because I want to, David.”

  “I understand that too,” said David.

  “Good, because I don’t understand anything at all.”

  19

  Good-byes and Beginnings

  No one talked about getting together the coming weekend, the last weekend of August. No one suggested a movie, a restaurant, a card game, bowling. It was as though we couldn’t find comfort in each other, as we had at first. We were drained. No matter what a person said, it didn’t work. Didn’t help.

  I was upset that neither Liz nor Pamela nor Gwen offered to have a sleepover where we could at least be together and talk about not talking. Why was it always me, it seemed, who invited them here? I used the computer at work to check my e-mail, but there wasn’t a message from any of them. No text messages on my cell.

  When Liz did finally call on Friday, it was to ask if I had seen the article about teenage accidents in the Gazette.

  “No,” I said crisply. “I have not.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “What’s wrong? You’ve forgotten already?”

&
nbsp; “About Mark? Of course not!” she said. And then she just hung up.

  I didn’t care. Why would I want to read an article about teenage accidents? Why on Earth would I want to read that now?

  I called Pamela to complain about Elizabeth, and her dad said she’d gone to the mall. I couldn’t believe it. The mall? As in shopping?

  I decided not to call Gwen. Let her call me.

  We had takeout for dinner and it wasn’t very good. Sylvia had used a coupon for a new Thai restaurant, and I left half the food on my plate.

  Dad looked over. “You planning anything for tonight, Al?”

  “No, and neither is anyone else, evidently,” I said sullenly.

  “Want to play Scrabble with Ben and me? Play cards? Rent a movie?” Sylvia asked.

  “Not particularly, but thanks,” I told her.

  Then Dad said, “Les is coming to the store tomorrow to help out, since David’s gone and Marilyn has a doctor’s appointment. Things will probably stay slow until the holiday sale next weekend, though, so if you’d rather stay home tomorrow—take a day off—you can.”

  “Yeah. I think I’ll do that,” I said.

  I sat in front of the TV that night flipping channels, not able to focus long on anything. I’d thought that Gwen and Pamela and Liz and I were so close. I’d always considered them my best friends. What was happening to us?

  It rained that night. After weeks of dry weather, it poured off and on, and I slept fitfully, waking several times to listen to the rain, then drifting off again. It was only in the morning that I slept deeply, and I woke to find that Dad had already left for work. A note from Sylvia said that she was putting in a few hours in her classroom.

  I went out on the back porch in my pajamas. There was a touch of green to grass that had been a dull yellow-brown. Flowers had opened their petals. I felt a little better, but still, the knowledge that I was still here and the world would go on was tempered by the fact that a longtime friend was gone. That rain would still rain and snow would still fall, but Mark wouldn’t hear or see it. And that I could stand this only because I had to.

  I had lunch in place of breakfast, and halfway through the afternoon I texted Liz and Pamela and Gwen: It’s cooler out. Does anyone feel like a walk this evening? To anywhere?

  Pamela answered: I’m up for it.

  Gwen texted: What time?

  Liz answered: Yes.

  Gwen drove over, and we stood awkwardly in front of my house, discussing where we should go. No one suggested a park because those are too crowded on summer weekends. When Pamela said, “The playground?” we headed over to the old brick building where Liz and Pam and I had gone to grade school. There was nothing picturesque about it, nothing special except the memories, but Gwen gamely walked the perimeter with us, just as we used to do with Mark and Patrick and Brian. Finally we walked across to the playground equipment and sat down.

  “It’s hard,” I said at last, forcing the words from my lips.

  “I know,” said Liz.

  “Even talking about it.”

  “I don’t want anyone asking how I feel because the answer is … numb,” said Pamela. She was perched on the low end of the teeter-totter facing downhill, feet resting on the hand bar. “Yesterday I went to the mall and just walked. I think I went down every hallway, looked in every shop, but I didn’t go inside any of them. I just wanted to be distracted—window after window—shoes, toys, lawn mowers, greeting cards … it didn’t matter.”

  “Did it help?” asked Gwen.

  “Not much.”

  I was strangely quiet. Gwen and I were sitting on the swings. She sat with her legs stretched out in front of her, but I was turning slowly around and around, the chains above me twisting until they wouldn’t turn any farther. But I didn’t uncoil as I used to do back in sixth grade, letting myself whirl around, then back again. I uncoiled myself slowly, letting my feet make a circle in the dirt.

  “I just … I keep going to Google, looking for stuff about road accidents,” said Liz, from a bench at one side. “First I think I’m looking for statistics to tell me Mark’s accident was one in a million, a freak sort of thing, and it’s highly unlikely it would ever happen again to anyone I know. And then I think I’m reading to reassure myself that Mark wasn’t alone—that this happens more often than we think. I just keep looking and looking and reading and reading and never find anything that makes me feel more accepting of it.”

  The flatness I’d been feeling was giving way to surprise. But when Gwen didn’t say anything, I asked, “What about you?”

  She sighed and let her shoulders drop. “I feel like I’m not feeling enough. All of you knew Mark longer than I did. I just feel sort of left out—all the memories you have that I don’t.”

  Just the word memories made me tear up. My mouth turned down at the corners. “I’m just so … incredibly … sad … for the Stedmeisters,” I said, and began to cry.

  Pamela got off the teeter-totter and came over and hugged me.

  “So how have you been dealing with the sadness, Alice?” Gwen asked. “Until yesterday I hadn’t heard from you all week.”

  I wiped my eyes. “Well, I didn’t see any e-mails from you. Any of you. Nobody called. I’ve been miserable, if you want the truth. Just flat. Hollow. I thought that at least one of you would know how I felt.”

  “Alice, is it that hard to ask for help?” asked Gwen.

  “Yeah, why didn’t you call us?” said Liz.

  “You were there for me when I got pregnant,” said Pamela. “You were there for me when Mom left and I had fights with my dad.”

  “Yeah, Alice. You stayed at the hospital with me when Mom was having Nathan,” said Liz. “You didn’t freak out when I told you I’d been molested. Why can’t you call us when you’re down?”

  I didn’t know why. Why it seemed easier somehow to give comfort than to ask for it.

  “I guess … I didn’t think any of you felt the same way I did. I mean, when I called your house, Pam, your dad said you were at the mall, and shopping was the last thing I wanted to do.”

  “But I wasn’t—”

  “I know.”

  “Even if she was shopping, Alice, we grieve in different ways,” said Gwen. “Is that so hard to accept?”

  “We go to different churches,” said Liz.

  “We don’t wear our hair exactly the same way or look good in exactly the same clothes,” added Pamela. “We even have different bad habits. Once you’re in the bathroom, for example, you set up housekeeping and stay in there forever.”

  That made us smile.

  “Well, I’ve really been needing you guys,” I told them. “I’ve just felt I was down in a hole and couldn’t climb out. That it was up to you to figure out what to do about it.”

  “One thing we can do is visit the Stedmeisters,” said Gwen. “What about tomorrow?”

  That seemed so right. Doing anything constructive seemed right.

  “I’ll bake something for them,” said Liz.

  “I could take them some of Sylvia’s flowers,” I said.

  “Then I’ll drive,” said Pamela. “Pick you up about three, Gwen?”

  Amazing how one idea led to another. As we walked back toward my place, I knew what I was going to write for the first issue of the school paper. A feature article, “Memories of Mark.”

  As we turned at the corner, Liz said, “Keeno was supposed to come by last night, but he didn’t.”

  Uh-oh, I thought.

  “You know where he was?” she continued. “He went to the soup kitchen at closing time and gave William a lesson on the musical saw.”

  I just turned toward her and grinned.

  “William was so psyched. Keeno says he’s a natural, and he’s going to stop by again sometime and let him play some more.”

  “I think I like Keeno,” I told her.

  “I know I do,” she said.

  At the Stedmeisters’ on Sunday afternoon, Gwen gave Mark’s parents a photo s
omeone had taken of the night we’d all stood around their home—the candles little pinpricks of light in the darkness.

  Mrs. Stedmeister closed her eyes for a moment and held it close to her chest. “Thank you so much,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Later, Mark’s dad took us out in their backyard and showed us a tree he had just planted in Mark’s memory. It was a maple sapling, and it stood right at the back of the driveway, where Mark used to tinker with old cars. The leaves would turn orange-red in October, Mr. Stedmeister said, and a tag on one of the branches read, OCTOBER SUNSET.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful tree,” I told him. “We’d like to come back when the leaves turn and see it.”

  I felt like a tree myself, newly planted, changing color. Like I had survived the summer heat and was dressing up for fall. Even after the girls left, the feeling stayed with me.

  I’d received an e-mail from David, saying he was visiting his folks in New Hampshire and already had seen a few trees start to turn—that nothing was as glorious as New England in the fall. Then he added: I miss you and the Melody Inn already—all our good discussions. You’ve been through a tough time lately, but I’m trusting that as the weeks go on, you’ll feel better. Astonishing things can happen to people who hope.

  I noticed he didn’t say believe, he said hope. I wondered if they were the same. If they could be the same. Since no one really knows what or who God is, or whether God is at all, why can’t God be hope? I couldn’t understand that, either, but I liked that David wrote to me.

  There was an e-mail from Patrick, too—Patrick, who hates to e-mail. He wondered if I had been wearing the blue earrings he’d bought for me in Chicago—the ones shaped like little globes. Could someone take a picture of me wearing them, he wondered, and send it on to him?

  I was feeling really good. Sylvia was making spareribs for dinner, and the aroma drifted through the house. I was rearranging my dresser drawers and desk after having hung a framed photo of the candlelight vigil at the Stedmeisters’ on the wall—glad that I had gone to visit them before school began.