We Didn't Make It After All

Chapter Fifteen

I thought about Papa that night. Tucked under covers with Ezra Parker on his sister's sofa, I thought about him while Ezra and I breezed through horror movies. It was halfway into our second movie that the nostalgia became too much to bear.

I excused myself and slid out of Clara's apartment—and I saw in the damp January streets the daylight of late August, of our street, Madison Avenue, after a vicious downpour, when all the neighborhood kids gathered to float paper sailboats on the puddles forming on the sides of the roads. In the memory, I am ten and Papa is watching me from the steps of our townhouse, his tender glances warming our cul-de-sac.

"Are they your best friends, Narnie?" he would ask me, referring to my friends, Trevor and Lilian. "Are you going to grow old with them?"

"No, Papa," I wanted to say to him. "But Micah, Ezra, Sol, Anderson, Teo and Bella—with them I will."

"How do you know, my sweet?"

"I just do."

I turned the corner, debilitated by the longing to hear him say, one last time, "Narnie, my baby girl. I am so proud of you."

I wondered what would happen if Papa, like Clara, had faked his death. What if he was still out there, wandering this beautiful, cruel world, running away from something bigger than himself? Was his death just our collective hallucination? But how could any of it be, when I had seen his body taken away in an ivory casket just months ago—when it had been taken to Woodhaven cemetery for only the earthworms to break into?

I boarded a crosstown bus to Woodhaven cemetery, wondering what I was looking for on my way there. Maybe it was closure, to wake up one day no longer affected by his death. Maybe it was something else entirely.

The hours veered toward midnight, revealing the disparate alcoves of San City: its carefree adolescents, the sons and daughters of the wealthy socialites, its low wage workers, toiling to make ends meet, and its university students, their lives intersecting on the late night busses and metros despite their worlds being far apart, the latter of them intoxicated and in the process of forgetting. I tried to imagine that Micah was one of them, that he was on this bus on New Year's Day, going home with the people he loved most.

The graveyard was the same as I remembered it, surrounded by rows of weathering granite, bare willow trees and a shallow pond of stillwater. I followed the only path to Papa's tombstone. It was covered in season old ivy, with a case of white roses resting underneath the granite engraving: Here lies Theodore, a father, a husband and a beloved son. I kneeled before the roses, picking one up. Someone had been here—but who?

"I was wondering if I would find you here tonight, Narnie."

My blood went cold—and when I turned around, there she was: my mother, Maya Larson, who's months of neglect had convinced me that she was as good as dead.

"Taking a flight to San City on New Year's Day with a boy you met no less than five months ago. A bit careless, don't you think?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but every word I knew suddenly left my mind. I wanted to ask her what right she had to look for me. She hadn't even shown her face on New Year's day.

Mama took the rose from my hand and released a sigh, spreading its petals on the body of his grave. "I miss him too, you know. I miss him everyday. I miss him so much that my bones ache at the simple thought of him, like they're missing a part, like my limbs were torn out and I'm being tested to live on without them." And for the first time, her stoic countenance gave themselves away to the reality of her grief.

There she lay, Maya Larson, a mother, a wife and a victim of her cruel destiny—but maybe we were all a victim of our cruel destinies. Maybe that was something we consented to by the fact of our being alive.

"I miss him, Mama," I said. "I miss him so much."

She looked at me wistfully with eyes that could cry no more. "Come here," she whispered. When I just stood there, saying nothing, she ushered me closer. "Come."

I carried my body toward her, listless and heavy, until she enveloped me in the familiar spearmint of her embrace. Maybe we were there for a minute—maybe more. We were there until her gentle sobs subsided into a quieter night, leaving us with nothing but the hollowed out memory of what once was. Maybe remembering was the root of all suffering and all of life was a journey to forget, until our eventual death, when our memories became no more.

"I'd bring him back for you if I could, you know," I told her. "Even if it meant I had to take his place."

"And I would never let you do that, my dear, not in a million years."

"But—"

"No buts. Do you know how happy we were the day you came into our lives? Seven pounds and always smiling, I was convinced your father would never look at another woman again. And how disappointed he would be, if he knew what has happened to us. Forgive me, baby. Forgive me."

I held her closely to give her a body to hold, convinced that the forgiveness she was seeking was not mine, but somebody else's. And above us, the stars flickered in delight, teasing us with the possibility that Papa had heard us—that he had forgiven her. But how could he? He was dead.

We took an Uber back home to Madison Avenue. It was the same as we had left it, a little like walking into a repeating dream, an old comfort, a tucked away memory. We took our coats off and sat in the living room, talking about everything until I had spilled over almost every detail of my life about Ezra.

"They're good people, the Parkers," Mama said. "They're a lot to take on, but they're good people."

"He needs me now, Mama."

"Be safe, my sweet Narnie."

"I am safe. We have Clara."

"That you do—but does Clara offer protection against eighteen year old boys?"

"Mama, I—"

"Just joking, my dear. No need to take it so seriously."

It was nearly sunrise by the time I returned to Clara's bedroom, but I found Ezra wide awake, staring at his ceiling. He tilted his head at the noise of my retreating footsteps. "Went off on an adventure?"

I slipped my coat off my body and slid next to him. "Something like that."

He snaked his arms around me, leaving an airy kiss on my shoulder. "It's good to have you back."

I closed my eyes and exploited his warmth, counting sheep until I fell asleep. It was good to be back.

☽

Author's Note: I'm in a really weird position right now. Life is funny. Don't trust French men.