Page 21 of The Last to Let Go
I smack my hand over my mouth and mumble, “Oops,” unable to stop the laughter erupting from somewhere deep in my center. I reach out my hand to help him up, but he pulls me down along with him. I trip over his legs. And suddenly we’re both keeled over on the floor, cracking up, wheezing, contagious, like it always used to be when we were kids, our laughter filling in all the rooms and the empty spaces that were afraid they’d been forgotten.
Every time our laughter slows and I think we’re going to stop, all we have to do is look at each other and we start up again for no reason. My abdomen expands and contracts too violently, sending waves of nausea through my body, which hasn’t laughed like this in years. “Okay, stop—ow, stop, my stomach hurts!” I gasp.
By then we’re both sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor. It feels like something has shifted, like some jagged edge of bedrock in our foundation has just now settled into place, and perhaps, at last, we’ve reached a cease-fire in our ongoing cold war.
He sighs as he extends his arm toward me, holding his hand with his pinkie sticking out. It takes me a moment to understand the meaning of this gesture, uncertain what exactly we’re pinkie-swearing over. This is another thing we haven’t done in years—I guess somewhere along the way we must have learned that pinkie promises were not, in fact, the most binding of agreements.
“What?” I ask, squinting at him.
“Come on.” He tips his head toward the space between us, extending his arm a little farther. As I reach my hand out and lock my pinkie finger with his, he looks me in the eye, no trace of playfulness in his voice when he says, “I’m in.”
FALL
ARTIFACTS
JACKIE CAME THIS MORNINGarmed with muffins and pastries, coffee, juice, and old cardboard boxes from the shop that previously contained bulk shipments of things like napkins and paper cups, plastic eating utensils, and coffee beans. It’s the very last weekend before school starts up, and Carmen and Jackie have been here all day helping us get the apartment in order, getting our things moved back in and making room for Aaron in our parents’ room.
I pull on the string that hangs from the ceiling of their closet and step inside as the light flickers on. Mom’s dresses and blouses and skirts take up at least two thirds of the space. Her shoes are laid out on the floor, left and right, in two neat rows. On the other side are Dad’s clothes, his uniforms lined up one after the other. I reach out and run my fingers along the sleeve of one of the black police shirts he wore every day. I carefully press my face against the starchy fabric, realizing that this is the closest I’ve come to hugging my father since I was in elementary school, and it’s the closest I’ll ever come again. Then, like a reflex, I stretch my arms wide and gather all my mom’s clothes up at once and fall into them, breathing her in, missing her so much it feels like she’s the one who died.
“Oh!” Jackie says, suddenly standing behind me.
I turn around, letting go of the clothes so abruptly one of Mom’s dresses slides off the hanger, the entire wardrobe left swinging back and forth on the rod.
“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” she says, holding out a stack of garment bags folded over her arm. “I was just bringing you these.”
“Thanks.” I take them from her and lay them down on the bed. Then I scan the room, trying to devise a plan for how to go about clearing the jewelry and spare change from the tops of their nightstands, how to empty the dresser drawers, and then there’s the perfume and cologne and makeup and toothbrushes in the bathroom. It has to be done, but as I run my fingers over these mundane items, they feel more like artifacts, remains of another life and another time, that should not be disturbed.
Jackie was against the whole thing, naturally. But Aaron and I went to see Mom and we explained everything. She heard us out, and while she didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the idea either, I don’t think she had the energy to debate the issue. She looked back and forth between us, lost in her thoughts. Then she shook her head and said, “I don’t know. You kids do what you think is best for everybody. I don’t know,” she repeated. “Not anymore.”
“How about I help you in here?” Jackie says, looking around the room at everything that still needs to be done.
Also lacking the energy to debate the issue, I tell her, “Sure.”
We’re all at it for hours; small fragments of conversation punctuate the time, bringing us out of our minds and back into the present for a reprieve. We manage to box things up we won’t be needing. I make so many trips up and down the stairs to our tiny storage unit in the basement that my legs begin to feel like putty.
The last remnants of daylight are streaming in through the open windows, painting a band of gold light across the living room wall. Jackie has postponed leaving for as long as humanly possible. She stands in the living room clutching her purse, reminding us for the thousandth time: “Your mother agreed to this on a trial basis. I’m only twenty minutes away, if you need anything—really, anything. And I’m going to be checking in. I’ll be a pain in your ass,” she tells us, wagging her finger.
“We know. Thank you for everything, Jackie,” Aaron tells her.
“Bye, Callie,” Jackie calls across the room.
Callie raises her hand and waves. Another small victory for us all.
“And, Brooke,” she says, directing her attention at me. “See you tomorrow for your shift?”
I nod.
At last she leaves. I think we all take her exit as the cue we’ve been waiting for, the one that allows us to cave into our exhaustion. We each find a place to sit, simultaneously. Me on the floor, Carmen on one end of the couch and Callie on the other, and Aaron in the armchair that used to be Dad’s spot. It feels wrong to see Aaron sitting there—and maybe he feels it too, because he sits there for only a second before he sinks down to the floor with me.
Carmen’s been making polite small talk with me all day, but she’s been acting like Aaron is invisible. Which means they’re in some stage of fighting; I can’t tell if it’s the beginning or the end.
“So, Brooke,” Carmen says, breaking up the groggy silence that’s washed over us. “Getting excited about school?”
“I guess!” I say it with the same level of enthusiasm as if I’d said,Yes, absolutely! I can’t wait.But the thing is, I’m not excited. I’m glad, sure. This was never about excitement. It was about strategy, about creating a way for me to exit, to leave, to get out. I can tell from her puzzled expression that my answer wasn’t good enough. So I try again. “I mean, yeah. Yes,” I repeat. “I’m excited.”
That earns me a smile.
“And, Callie, how ’bout you, babe?” Carmen says, louder. “How’s your summer been?”
