Things I'm Seeing Without You Page 14

  ‘Floozy?’ he said.

  ‘She pretended to care about me to get in your pants. I think that’s pretty obvious at this point.’

  ‘Tess,’ he said. ‘That’s not true. She’s a divorcee and we have a lot in common.’

  ‘Yeah, like you’re both selfish assholes.’

  I could see him getting angrier. Hell hath no fury like a middle-aged man scolded.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Can you cut me some slack please?’

  ‘You should print that on a T-shirt,’ I said.

  He shook his head. His face was red.

  ‘I thought she was going to be my friend,’ I said.

  He walked over to the counter and got himself a glass of water. He took a long drink, and his anger seemed to fade a little.

  ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘I thought you hated her.’

  ‘So did I,’ I said.

  When he was done with his water, his shoulders slumped, and he just stood there looking at the sink full of dishes.

  ‘Why are you even staying here if living with me is so miserable?’ he said.

  He sat down at the table. His question hung between us.

  ‘That’s a fair question,’ I said.

  He waited for me to go on. And though it would have been easy to get up and walk away again, I found that my feet didn’t want to do that. It was getting exhausting, all this evading.

  ‘I lost someone,’ I said.

  I took a breath. My father just watched.

  ‘Somebody I think I loved.’

  I tried not to look at him.

  ‘I feel stupid saying that because we barely knew each other as it turns out. But it’s true. I loved him. Or maybe the idea of him. Anyway, he made things better for a while. And last year I needed that. For some reason, I couldn’t do it myself.’

  My dad was looking me in the eyes now.

  ‘Tess,’ he said.

  ‘When I heard he was dead, I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t be at school. I really just wanted to disappear for a while. But when it came time to leave, I just came here. And I think now it’s because you don’t pretend.’

  My father looked at me now.

  ‘Pretend?’

  ‘That death isn’t part of things. I don’t understand all the reasons you do what you do, maybe it’s mostly for the money, but you deal with dying the best you can. I think maybe I knew that. So I came here. Even though we aren’t that close any more. Does that answer your question?’

  He scratched his face, under his ear.

  ‘God, Tess. I could have been more help if I had known what was going on,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have . . .’

  ‘I understand that,’ I said. ‘But I couldn’t talk about it.’

  He closed his mouth. I expected more anger about my secret. He had probably been through hell trying to find out what was wrong with me. But now that I’d told him, he seemed relieved more than anything else. Finally, he reached out and slung an arm around me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I love you and I’m sorry.’

  I leant against his shoulder. He spoke softly:

  ‘I thought maybe you were just here because you knew I didn’t have the guts to kick you out,’ he said.

  I spoke into his shoulder. ‘That might be another reason.’

  He smiled and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt.

  ‘There is one thing you can do for me now,’ I said. ‘If you really want to help.’

  I leant back against his arm.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Give me my share of the money from Mamie’s funeral.’

  ‘OK.’ He sighed. ‘There wasn’t too much left. But why now?’

  ‘I have to buy a plane ticket to Syracuse.’

  Daniel came downstairs and we explained everything as best we could.

  We told my dad about Jonah, what he meant to both of us, and our desire to create a meaningful ceremony for him. I repeated what I’d told Daniel about the importance of funerals, and what I’d learnt by working with him.

  All the while, my father sat at the table, watching the two of us speak, sweeping his hair behind his ears and waiting for it to come untucked. His eyes shifted back and forth between us. Finally, when we were done with our pitch, he sat up straight and clasped his hands in front of him.

  ‘Tess,’ he said, ‘I’m really glad you shared this with me. Thank you for doing that. But you do realize I would have to be a crazy person to let you travel across the country on your own, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Actually I don’t realize that.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be alone,’ said Daniel.

  My dad silenced him with a long stare.

  ‘You dropped out of high school,’ he said to me. ‘And it wasn’t that long ago that you seemed on the verge of a breakdown. Also, you’d be going there with an older guy who I don’t really even know. No offence, Daniel, but sleeping on my couch is one thing. Taking my daughter to New York is another.’

  ‘To be fair,’ I said, ‘I don’t know Daniel that well, either. He’s kind of a cipher.’

  ‘Not helping,’ said my father.

  Daniel looked down at the floor.

  ‘I understand your reasoning for all of this,’ Dad said. ‘And I think it’s beautiful that you want to put together this kind of tribute. But, it sounds like you don’t have a plan yet. You don’t have an itinerary, or even a sense of what you want to do when you get to his hometown. Tess, how could I, in good conscience, send you on your way with a stranger and absolutely nothing in place? What the hell kind of father would I be?’

  ‘The kind you’ve been the last two years,’ I said.

  He didn’t blink.

  ‘That’s not who I am any more,’ he said.

  I slumped against the wall of the kitchen and felt the old wallpaper stick against my bare arms. I looked at Daniel, who seemed to be biting his lip.

  ‘So where does that leave us?’ I asked. ‘Everything is just shot down?’

  My father looked surprised for a moment. He cocked his head.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I guess I haven’t been clear.’

  ‘What are you saying then?’ asked Daniel.

  A little smile passed across my father’s lips.

  ‘I’m saying, if you want to go, I’m going to have to come with you.’

  Over the next few days, we put together the very beginnings of a plan. The more we talked about it, the more we agreed that we needed a better understanding of Jonah. If we were going to plan something with significance, we had to find out who he really was. Who he was when he wasn’t with us. So Daniel and I decided that we’d go to Jonah’s mom’s house and see what she could tell us about him.

  The problem, of course, was that she had been more than a tad icy to Daniel when he first tried to reach out. She hadn’t allowed him to come to the small, non-funeral she’d had, and she’d seemed reluctant to speak to him for very long on the phone. If we called her again, Daniel seemed to think, we could probably expect more of the same. So this time, we decided, we would just show up on her doorstep and hope she let us in.

  We didn’t share every detail with my dad.

  What we told him was that we had an appointment with Marian, Jonah’s mother. That she was expecting us. And that we were just getting her blessing before we continued with our funeral plan. When we flew into the city of Syracuse, it was too early to check into our cheap hotel so Dad found a spot in the bar while Daniel and I lugged our bags on to the bus to a neighbourhood called Eastwood.

  It was deemed ‘the village in the city’, and as we entered it, we passed a strip of small businesses. A cigar shop, a dentist office, a restored movie theatre with a terracotta facade. Jonah’s mom’s street was a little bland, but there were window boxes in most of the windows and well-groomed yards out front.

  The house was a green split-level with mint growing wild near the porch. Daniel and I walked up the long cement driveway and stood
on the stoop for a moment. It was a Saturday, but the house looked dark inside.

  ‘Maybe she works weekends,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Maybe you’re being a chickenshit,’ I said, and rang the doorbell.

  There was no movement, and the house stayed just as dark.

  ‘We should come back later,’ he said.

  Ignoring him, I stepped down from the porch and walked along the side of the house. The homes were close together, and the sun barely found its way in between Jonah’s house and the one next door. I shuffled over the rough cement until I reached a backyard.

  It was half asphalt and half raised-bed garden. But the garden was completely overgrown with weeds. They were six, seven feet tall, standing guard around any vegetables that might be trapped inside. Also, the weeds, we noticed after a moment, were moving.

  I unlocked the gate and stepped on to the asphalt. There was a pole for a basketball hoop on one side, but the rim was gone, leaving only the off-white backboard.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  The weeds stopped moving for a moment. Then they rustled again and a hand emerged, clutching a dirty spade. It was followed by the body of a short, pretty woman in a purple bandanna. Even covered in dirt and sweat, the resemblance to Jonah was immediate. His tangled blond hair spilt out the back of her scarf, and when she looked directly at me it was with those same grey-blue eyes. She wiped her brow with a gardening glove but only smeared the dirt around further.

  ‘I’m sorry, guys,’ she said. ‘I can’t donate to the marching band this year.’

  We just stared at her.

  ‘There have been some financial setbacks. I hope you kids have a good time on your trip, though.’

  She set down her small shovel, picked up a hoe, and turned back towards the forest of her garden without giving us a second look.

  ‘Wait,’ said Daniel. ‘Miss. I’m . . .’

  She turned around.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  Daniel went silent. Marian’s face was already pained, like the slightest human interaction was grating on her. I opened my mouth.

  ‘We don’t play in the marching band,’ I said. ‘In fact, I kind of hate marching bands. Does anyone really like them?’

  Daniel gave me a get-to-the-point look.

  ‘We’re friends of Jonah’s,’ I said. ‘We came to talk to you about him.’

  For a split second, her grimace disappeared, and I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me right. But then she closed her eyes for a moment and vanished into the garden. I heard the hoe hit the ground and watched as a few of the giant weeds started to tremble.

  ‘I’m not really in the mood for visitors today, guys,’ she said from inside. ‘I’ll give you the web address for his foundation, though. Feel free to add a message to the message board. That would be really nice.’

  We both stood there for a second, staring into the weeds. They were brown stalks, dry looking, with little tufts of seeds at the top. They looked like they were left over from last year. I didn’t want to leave this yard – and I knew I shouldn’t – but I also wasn’t sure what to do next. How aggressive could you really be with a grieving parent? We couldn’t force her to talk about things if she didn’t want to.

  So, I was surprised when Daniel took a step forward. Instead of heading back through the gate the way I expected him to, he walked over to the garden and grabbed a pair of dirty leather gloves sitting in the yard. Then he put them on, flexed his hands, and just started yanking on one of the weeds.

  I watched his muscles strain and, though it had never occurred to me before, he was strong for his size. He struggled with the weed for a minute, grunting a little. Then he gave it one last yank and up it came, roots heavy with dark soil. He broke the stalk in half and then moved on to the next one. Oddly enough, Marian didn’t comment. She just kept working.

  I watched for a minute or so, then started to help. With the two of us pulling, it was a little easier, and the second weed came up quickly. We moved on to a third. Then a fourth. Then, somehow, an hour passed without a single word being spoken. Marian worked in another part of the garden, tilling a patch of already weeded soil. Beneath some of the weeds we pulled up were some asparagus and what looked like the beginning of a zucchini plant.

  As the sun got hotter, Daniel took off his T-shirt and put it over his head like a turban. I rolled up the sleeves of my V-neck until I could feel the heat on the tops of my shoulders. I’m not sure how long we were out there, but eventually when we had half the garden weeded, and the sun was too much to bear, Daniel and I sat down in a small patch of shade nearby.

  Marian ducked into the house and reappeared with a pitcher of lemonade. It was full of ice, and sweating on the sides, and it was the best lemonade I’ve ever had. I chugged my first glass, but then tried to savour the second. We sat there and drank until the pitcher was empty. Then, finally, Marian spoke.

  ‘This was our project together,’ she said. ‘Me and Jonah’s.’

  Daniel and I both watched her.

  ‘In high school he read this book about urban homesteading. The previous owners had a garden here. I was always too busy. But when Jonah got interested in something, he did not do it halfway. In weeks, he was trading seeds with people in the neighbourhood. And guess who got conscripted to help? I did most of the planting actually. He made plans on his computer. This intricate blueprint with all the spacing mapped out.’

  She smiled, but her eyes seemed to strain against it.

  ‘He stopped asking about it after I took him to college, though. That was the first sign, I think, that things were going wrong again. I kept the garden up at first, so it would look good when he got home, but then when he didn’t seem to care, I let it go.’

  Her gaze lingered on the plot of dirt and scrubby vegetables. Then it gradually turned back to me. She studied my face for a moment.

  ‘You’re Tess,’ she said.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘He told me about you. He didn’t talk about girls very often, but he mentioned you. I knew it was you the moment you showed up. You’re just as pretty as he said.’

  I felt my face turning red.

  ‘And you’re Daniel,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Where did you guys come from?’ she asked.

  ‘Minnesota,’ I said. ‘And outside Chicago.’

  If she thought anything of these places, she didn’t say. She just took one last drink from her lemonade and swirled the ice around in her glass.

  ‘And you came here because you’re not sure you really knew him,’ she said. ‘Is that it?’

  We were both silent.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to join the club.’

  She got up then to go inside. Daniel and I followed, and instead of shooing us away, she held the door open as we walked in. The inside of the house was cluttered, but not messy. There were books about fad diets and self-help stacked haphazardly on the shelves. It smelt like scented candles, something citrusy. It was all perfectly nice, but the living room felt spare to me for some reason. Eventually I realized it was because there were no family pictures.

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ Marian said after a moment. ‘I’m not sure I knew him completely, either. I still couldn’t tell you how things got so bad. He had the support of his family – his grandparents and me. He had counselling. He had medication. I made sure he saw someone at school. I checked in as much as I could. In the end, I think it was his own sense of shame more than anything else.’

  ‘Shame?’ I said.

  ‘He felt like he was deficient ever since he got his diagnosis of depression and anxiety in the eighth grade. He used to lie to his friends when he missed school. He’d say he had other conditions. Mono. Asthma. The flu. He wanted to be cured. Just having a good day or a good week wasn’t enough. He was so hard on himself. Instead of learning to embrace who he was, he tried to be another person entirely. Someone flawless. If he was feeling less than per
fect, he wouldn’t let anyone see him. His friends at school only knew him as this smart, funny guy. They didn’t know anything else.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ I said.

  She nodded.

  ‘It probably made him happy,’ said Marian. ‘To be his best self with you. To be who he wanted to be online like that.’

  She closed her eyes. And it seemed like she was about to cry. Daniel sensed this and I watched his body tighten up.

  ‘What can you tell us about Sicily?’ he asked quickly.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘I found this notebook. He wrote in it that he wanted to go to Italy. To Sicily specifically. It seemed like it was important to him. But maybe it was just a random thought or something. I don’t know.’

  ‘Syracuse,’ Marian said.

  ‘What?’ Daniel said.

  ‘I forgot all about that,’ she said. ‘Syracuse. That’s where he wanted to go.’

  ‘You mean here?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean Syracuse in Sicily. Siracusa.’

  I looked at Daniel. He was stone-faced.

  ‘It’s a city in Sicily. He saw it once on a travel show. I was in the other room, working on our taxes. He had been talking to me from the living room about computer science classes he wanted to take in college. Then he just went silent. I asked him a couple of questions that went unanswered until finally I got up from the table and came into the room and he was just staring at the TV. “Look,” he said. “Another Syracuse.”

  ‘And we both watched the host walk through the beautiful ancient streets of the city’s historic district. Jonah looked mesmerized. At one point he said something so quiet I almost didn’t hear him. “What did you say, sweetie?” I asked. “That’s where I live,” he said. “That’s where you want to live?” I asked. “No,” he said. “That’s where I live right now. The other me.” “What other you?” I asked him. “The . . . one who’s not depressed. He lives in the other Syracuse. And he walks those streets in that bright sun every day. I’m sure of it.”

  ‘I told him there was no other him. That he was the perfect version. But I could see that he wasn’t listening. That he had kind of stuck on this idea. That there was this alternate city with an alternate him in it. I never heard him talk about going there, though.’