Page 8 of After His Eulogy
The pen stops. It is a small thing. The pen stops moving and then it moves again. Nobody notices. There is no reason for anyone to notice. Wednesday is a day. It’s one of seven. I write down what she said next and I underline it once and the line is straight. The line is straight. I’m fine.
Around the hour mark Mendel starts talking about a piece by an author I don’t know. She says his name. Then she says, “He died last spring. I don’t know if you knew that.”
A few people make small sounds. The pen-clicker stops clicking.
“He’d been sick for a while,” she says. “But still.”
But still. I do not look up. I write it down without meaning to. Then I cross it out. I put my pen down. Carefully, so it doesn’t roll. Mendel has moved on. She’s reading something out loud. I can hear her voice but the words aren’t landing. I look at the radiator. I look at the window. I look at the back of the head of the girl two rows up who has her hair in a clip shaped like a butterfly. I thinkthat’s a stupid clip. That’s enough. That’s the thing that pulls me back in. I pick up my pen. I write down what Mendel is saying. I underline it once. I’m fine.
The seminar ends at three. I pack my bag the way I always do — laptop first, notebook on top, pen in the side pocket — and walk out. Someone says my name in the hall; I turn, and it’s Priya from the cohort, asking if I’m going to the thing tonight, the welcome thing. I say I don’t think so. She says come on. I say maybe. We both know I won’t. Outside it’s gone gray. I walk back across the lawn. The grass is wetter now and my shoes will be a problem, but I keep going anyway because the path is longer and I want to be home. Home is a one-bedroom on the second floor of a house that’s been cut into four apartments. The stairs creak in the same two places every time. I unlock the door. I put my bag on the chair. I put the coffee cup, empty, in the sink. I stand in the kitchen for a second with my hand on the counter and I don’t think about anything. Then I make dinner. Pasta. I always make pasta on Tuesdays. I don’t know why I do that. I don’t think about it. I read for tomorrow. I go to bed at eleven, like I do.
The pillow on the other side of the bed is in the middle of the bed. I do not move it.
THREE
GRIFFIN
Six-fifteen. Four minutes before the alarm. My body does this now. I lie there until the alarm goes off, then turn it off and get up. The apartment is cold. The radiator does what it wants. I make coffee in the small pot, the one that does four cups even though I only ever drink two. I watch the steam come up off the burner because I’m not awake enough to do anything else. No class until eleven. This is the bad part of Wednesdays. I take the coffee to the desk by the window. The desk is too small for the laptop and the notebook both, so I stack them. I open the laptop. I look at the syllabus. I’ve already read what I need to read. I’ve already done the response paper. There is nothing for me to do until ten-thirty. The window faces the back of the next house over. There’s a bird feeder hanging off their porch and a squirrel has figured out how to get to it. The squirrel is there now, hanging upside down, eating. I think he would have laughed at that. The thought arrives whole, like it’s been queued up. I don’t know why today. I don’t know why the squirrel. There doesn’t have to be a reason. I learned that early.
I put the coffee down. I don’t say his name in my head. I haven’t, not really, in months. You thinkhimorheand that’senough. The name is louder than the rest of it. The program comes back first. They’d printed a typo in it,celabration of life, and his mother had been more upset about the typo than about anything else that day. Like the typo was the thing she could fix. His cousin cried in a way that was almost angry. Like she was mad at the room. Someone put a hand on my shoulder afterward and I thoughtplease don’t. They took it away. I never figured out who it was. For a while I wanted to know. Then I didn’t. The coffee is cold. I get up. I rinse the cup and put it on the drying rack. I stand at the sink with my hands on the edge of the counter and I count the tiles on the backsplash. Forty-two. Always forty-two. I go back to the desk. I open the response paper I’ve already finished. I read it again. I change two words and change them back. I do this for forty minutes. At ten-fifteen I close the laptop.
I put on the damp shoes. I go to class. I take notes. I come home. I put the empty cup, the one from this morning, in the sink next to the rinsed one.
Two cups. Same sink. I don’t know why I notice.
FOUR
GRIFFIN
The coffee shop has a new pastry case. That’s the first thing I notice when I walk in on Friday morning. The case has been swapped out — the old one was square and the new one is curved. The curved one fits better in the corner where it sits. Someone made a decision. Someone replaced a thing. The line is short. Two people. Liana isn’t working today. The guy at the register has a beard and a stud in his ear. He writes my name correctly the first time, which I notice and then immediately stop noticing because there’s no reason to notice it. I order, move down the bar, and wait. The shop is busier than usual for a Friday — there’s a lecture this morning that pulls a crowd, something about climate policy, and people are coming in clumps before it starts. I don’t look at any of them. I look at my phone, which has nothing on it; at the menu board, which I have already read; at the back of the barista’s neck where a piece of his hair is sticking out from under his cap.
Someone behind me laughs. It’s a short laugh, low, a single sound:ha. My body knows it before I do. I don’t turn around. That’s the first thing. I don’t turn around. There’s a second of suspended nothing where my hand is on the edge of the barand I am holding very still. The espresso machine is hissing. Someone is saying something about a muffin. I thinkdon’t. I don’t. It’s not him. It can’t be him. It’s a laugh. People laugh. I take a breath that is too obviously a breath. I look at the pastry case. The curved one. The new one. There’s a cinnamon roll in the front row and the icing has slid down one side because someone left it near the window. I look at it. I count the rotations of the spiral, which is a thing I’ve never done before in my life. I do it. I am still not turning around. The barista calls my name. I step forward. I take the cup. I do not look at the line. I walk out. Outside the air hits and I don’t feel it. I walk two blocks before I realize I’m walking the wrong way, away from Hartwell, away from where I’m supposed to be. I stop on the corner and stand there with the cup in my hand and I don’t know what I’m doing.
It wasn’t him. I say it like a sentence.It wasn’t him.I say it again. There’s a part of my brain running a list of all the reasons it wasn’t him, calmly, like it has been waiting for this assignment. He is dead. He died two years ago. You went to the funeral. You wrote the eulogy. You stood up and said the words. His mother sat in the front row. The cousin was angry. The typo. The chairs. The hand on the shoulder. He is dead. The list runs. I let it run. I stand on the corner. A woman with a stroller goes around me. The kid in the stroller is looking at me upside down because he’s tilted back. His face is very serious. I look at him and he looks at me. Then his mother is past and he is gone. I turn around. I don’t decide to. I just do it. I turn around and walk back toward the coffee shop. I am moving faster than I usually move. The coffee is too hot through the cup. My hand is shaking a little, which I notice. I keep walking. I get back to the shop. I look through the window.
He’s at a table by the wall. He’s sitting with two other people, a girl and a guy I don’t know. They are talking. He is laughing again, the short one, theha. He is leaning back in the chair theway he used to lean back, with one arm hooked over the top rail. His hair is shorter. There’s something different about his face that I can’t place from here. He is alive. The girl at the table says something and he turns to answer her. I see his face from a different angle and it is him. The scar above his left eyebrow. I can’t see it from here. I can’t possibly see it from here. But I know where it is. I am looking at the place where it is. The place where it is is on his face. The conversation in the shop has gone underwater. I can see the door chime move when the door opens behind a woman coming out, but I can’t hear it. I should move. I am standing in the middle of the sidewalk and people are going around me. Someone says excuse me. I move. I’m not in the same place anymore. I’m leaning against the side of the building next to the window, out of view, with one hand flat on the brick.
I focus on that. There’s a piece of gum stuck near my thumb, dried gray, old.I buried him.The sentence arrives. It arrives the way the squirrel thought arrived yesterday, whole, queued up. I buried him. I stood up and I said the words. His mother sat in the front row and didn’t look at me. His cousin cried angry. The program had a typo. He is sitting at a table eight feet from me drinking coffee. The coffee in my hand is shaking. I put it down on the windowsill because I am going to drop it. I put it down carefully. I straighten up. I take my hand off the brick. I walk away from the window. I walk past the door. I do not look in. I walk. I don’t know how long. The streets I’m on are not the ones I usually take. Then they are. Then they aren’t again. I pass a hardware store I have never noticed. I pass a dog tied to a bench whose owner is nowhere and who watches me go past without barking. I pass the same crosswalk twice, I think, although I’m not sure. The light is yellow and then it’s red and then it’s yellow again and I am still standing at it.
At some point I’m at Hartwell. I stand outside it and I look up at the third floor where the radiator hisses and I do not go in.I go home instead. I walk the long way. I take the path. I let my shoes get wet. When I get to the apartment I sit on the floor in the kitchen with my back against the cabinet. I put my hands flat on the linoleum, palms down. I sit there for a long time. I buried him. I gave the eulogy. I said the words. I don’t remember which words. I buried him.
FIVE
REECE
I see him through the window. Not… okay. Back up. I’m sitting with Maya and Dev. Maya is talking about her advisor. I’m half-listening because Maya talks about her advisor a lot. I look up because I always look up. I can’t not. There’s a man on the sidewalk looking through the glass and the man is Griffin. The man is Griffin. No. I look down. I look at my hands. My hands are on the table, around my coffee cup. They are not shaking, which is interesting, because the rest of me is.
“And then she emails me back at eleven at night,” Maya is saying, “like that’s normal, like I’m just supposed to…“
“Yeah,” I say.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
I do not look up. I look up. He’s gone. The window is just window. The sidewalk is just sidewalk. There’s a woman walking a dog past the door and a guy on a phone. The morning light is cutting across the floor in a stripe. There is no one standing there. Maybe there was no one standing there. Maybe I am… yeah. Maybe I am.
“Reed.”
