imagined him pressing the Main Menu button in his brain and scanning the scene selections. “You know about the skinny-dipping?” he asked, followed by a sidelong glance and a stifled laugh into his balled right fist.
“Yeah. Shelly told me.”
“What about Johnson’s Island when we were kids?”
“She talked about that too,” I said.
Gordon hadn’t noticed, but Shelly and I had grown close during our countless hours of compiling editions of the
Beacon
. Maybe it was the two-year difference in age (teen years are like dog years: seven teen years to one human year), or maybe it was the difference in social classes—if so, it was my problem not hers—but we never hung out anywhere else or at any other times. We were friendly and all in the hallways, but we never stopped to talk. In a way, it made our time in the media center special.
The best times were the nights when we’d stay late and order pizza delivered. She always paid, and I always apologized and promised to get the next one. We’d get sodas from the machines in the cafeteria, sit cross-legged on the floor withthe pizza box between us, and play “What If? Past, Present, and Future.” It was a stupid game we’d made up. We each had to answer the three questions in a series.
For example, Shelly would ask, “What if? Past.”
I’d answer with something like, “What if I’d been born to different parents?”
Then she’d say, “What if? Present.”
“What if …
I
lived next door to you instead of Gordon?”
“What if? Future.”
“What if … I die before I do anything that matters?”
You know, she didn’t patronize me as if I were being irrational when I hit her with that one. She knew I meant it, and she respected my intuition. I really appreciated that. I guess it’s kind of ironic now.
Then it was my turn to ask the questions. “What if? Past.”
She’d begin “what if” riffing about her childhood with Gordon and Augusta. Before long the pizza would be cold and the soda warm. That game is another reason why I know as much as I do about when they were kids. Now that I think about it, I never got to ask her the “present” and “future” questions.
Gordon was continuing his internal probing of his catalog of Shelly stories. “How about, do you remember at the beginning of my and Shelly’s junior year, your sophomore, when she went all sixties, protesting Trinity’s sports team names?”
* * *
That incident occurred shortly after my father’s funeral. My mom had gone off the deep end, beginning the process of willing herself to death. Tom and I were taking turns staying home from school, babysitting her for fear of what she might do. (That was when Tom was still relatively healthy and taking classes in radiology at a nearby branch campus of the Ohio State University.) My father had died in September. Nothing dramatic. One morning, he just didn’t wake up.
I remember calling goodbye to my parents from outside their closed bedroom door as I did every morning before leaving for school, even though, typically, I’d receive no response. By then, my dad had already lost his ability to speak, and my mother—well, let’s just say that she’d never been the communicative type. That day, however, she returned my goodbye. It struck me as odd, and I sensed that something was wrong. But I immediately dismissed it and went on about my day.
By the time I got home from school, he was gone, both body and soul.
“Your father’s dead” was the extent of the explanation my mother offered through the exhaled smoke that rose from the lowered right corner of her bottom lip as she pressed a half-finished cigarette against the metal ashtray on the kitchen table. “Tell your brother. I have to go and meet with the man at the cemetery. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for this,” she mumbled without once looking me in the eyes. Life insurance, by the way, is one of those things I mentioned at the
“Yeah. Shelly told me.”
“What about Johnson’s Island when we were kids?”
“She talked about that too,” I said.
Gordon hadn’t noticed, but Shelly and I had grown close during our countless hours of compiling editions of the
Beacon
. Maybe it was the two-year difference in age (teen years are like dog years: seven teen years to one human year), or maybe it was the difference in social classes—if so, it was my problem not hers—but we never hung out anywhere else or at any other times. We were friendly and all in the hallways, but we never stopped to talk. In a way, it made our time in the media center special.
The best times were the nights when we’d stay late and order pizza delivered. She always paid, and I always apologized and promised to get the next one. We’d get sodas from the machines in the cafeteria, sit cross-legged on the floor withthe pizza box between us, and play “What If? Past, Present, and Future.” It was a stupid game we’d made up. We each had to answer the three questions in a series.
For example, Shelly would ask, “What if? Past.”
I’d answer with something like, “What if I’d been born to different parents?”
Then she’d say, “What if? Present.”
“What if …
I
lived next door to you instead of Gordon?”
“What if? Future.”
“What if … I die before I do anything that matters?”
You know, she didn’t patronize me as if I were being irrational when I hit her with that one. She knew I meant it, and she respected my intuition. I really appreciated that. I guess it’s kind of ironic now.
Then it was my turn to ask the questions. “What if? Past.”
She’d begin “what if” riffing about her childhood with Gordon and Augusta. Before long the pizza would be cold and the soda warm. That game is another reason why I know as much as I do about when they were kids. Now that I think about it, I never got to ask her the “present” and “future” questions.
Gordon was continuing his internal probing of his catalog of Shelly stories. “How about, do you remember at the beginning of my and Shelly’s junior year, your sophomore, when she went all sixties, protesting Trinity’s sports team names?”
* * *
That incident occurred shortly after my father’s funeral. My mom had gone off the deep end, beginning the process of willing herself to death. Tom and I were taking turns staying home from school, babysitting her for fear of what she might do. (That was when Tom was still relatively healthy and taking classes in radiology at a nearby branch campus of the Ohio State University.) My father had died in September. Nothing dramatic. One morning, he just didn’t wake up.
I remember calling goodbye to my parents from outside their closed bedroom door as I did every morning before leaving for school, even though, typically, I’d receive no response. By then, my dad had already lost his ability to speak, and my mother—well, let’s just say that she’d never been the communicative type. That day, however, she returned my goodbye. It struck me as odd, and I sensed that something was wrong. But I immediately dismissed it and went on about my day.
By the time I got home from school, he was gone, both body and soul.
“Your father’s dead” was the extent of the explanation my mother offered through the exhaled smoke that rose from the lowered right corner of her bottom lip as she pressed a half-finished cigarette against the metal ashtray on the kitchen table. “Tell your brother. I have to go and meet with the man at the cemetery. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for this,” she mumbled without once looking me in the eyes. Life insurance, by the way, is one of those things I mentioned at the
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