Summer of Vanities

That summer, I worked at the library.1

It looked like a good job for me; teachers always said I ‘loved to read’. It wasn’t quite true, not in the way of some people I’ve met. I more loved to know. To know what people saw in things, why some books were best-sellers, and why others, despite being many times better, were almost as obscure as me.2

Of course, I would occasionally read an entire book, even an entire trilogy (by which I mean The Lord of the Rings). But more often I’d check out a stack of books and spend an evening skimming them. I paged through the Da Vinci Code, unable to help noting its horrible writing style, its apparent lack of characterization; but also unable to help noting the thumping speed at which it moved, squashing scenes of awful exposition between chase and escape.3

Later in the evening I did some Shakespeare, but all I could really remember were the passages that everybody quotes, and I couldn’t even remember a context for them.4

The others at the library were nice. They were mostly female, and none my own age. They were fun though, smart, and some young enough not to seem like my mother.5

The first few weeks, I was on probation. That meant I was “shadowed” by the boss or one of the more experienced librarians. After that, they trusted me to work by myself. Sometimes I truly was alone up there; sometimes I had another staff person or a volunteer with me. It mattered little; I wasn’t very talkative unless spoken to first.6

*7

She came in one bright summer afternoon. All I had been able to think about all day was going home and opening all the shades so the brightness flooded the living room, then dropping into a chair and playing video games. Once she walked in, all I could think about, quite frankly, was her.8

I suppose it would suffice to say she was very, very pretty.9

She looked about my age, though I hadn’t seen her before, and I didn’t think I’d have missed her in our high school. She was tall, though not so tall as me. She had a sort of vibrant straightness that is really indescribable, but contributed much to her grace. Her hair was blond, and it looked soft, almost as if it were made from liquid sunlight. Her eyes were blue and wide and clear, her mouth beautiful and perpetually smiling. Even her nose was, well, cute.10

I told myself I was being foolish, and dragged myself back to work. But all I could think to do was pretend to type at the computer while watching her from the corner of my eye. We had this big picture window with chairs in front, and she would have looked stunning (I imagined) just standing in front of that window. But she veered off, and disappeared into the tall foreboding stacks of non-fiction.11

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” It was Wendy, the soccer-mom type I was working with this shift. I recognized the line from Shakespeare’s Sonnets I’d skimmed the other night, but I didn’t know why Wendy would quote it. Unless…12

I half-turned to look at her. “What?”13

She pointed over my shoulder at the computer. I looked down at the gibberish I had been typing. It had somehow resolved itself into that line. With no mistakes! I wrote Thou art… before having the presence of mind to erase it.14

“Nothing,” I said. “Something I was… Never mind.”15

“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t seem to believe me. She was clever enough to know something was up; I hoped she wasn’t clever enough to know what.16

I was sitting at another computer, checking in a stack of books, when she emerged from the non-fiction. I glanced at her, but I managed not to stare this time. She even walked gracefully, I noticed.17

She swept past me—which I found irrationally disappointing—and went to the help window. It was exactly what she was supposed to do, and why that window was there, but nobody ever did. They always just threw their problem at the nearest librarian, busy or not.18

Wendy was closer, and, in fact, less occupied, so she technically should have been the one to help her. I leapt from my chair and took two long strides, cutting off Wendy’s path to the window. “I got it,” I said, breathlessness making me louder than I liked.19

“Okay…” she said, confused for a second, and went back to checking in books.20

“Hi,” I said, smiling cheerfully, just like they’d trained me. “How can I help you?”21

She smiled and locked eyes with me (just for a second) and my heart melted. My legs shook a bit. If there had been any doubt before, there was none now: I was hers. Though I hoped she couldn’t tell.22

“Hi,” she said. If I related my response to all her actions, it would become tedious. Fill in the above paragraph after everything she said, and you have a pretty good idea.23

“I’d like a library card,” she said.24

“Okay…” I said, trying to remember what to do. I knew this! “Are you from around here?”25

“Um, yeah, down on… I forget the street name.”26

“In town, though?”27

“Yeah.”28

“Good.” I paused, trying to remember.29

“Do you have a driver’s license with your current address?” I desperately hoped she was old enough to have a driver’s license.30

“Yeah,” she started to pull it out.31

“Okay,” I said. I bent down and pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and handed it to her. “Fill out this stuff, sign the responsibility agreement on this page. Um, if you’re under eighteen, you’ll have to fill in a parent or guardian’s name who lives with you, but since you’re old enough to have a license, they don’t actually have to be here.32

“Okay,” she said, smiling at me again, and I almost fainted. She took a pen from the holder next to her and just started filling it out right there. Nobody did that.33

I could think of nothing to do but stand there dumbly and wait for her. And notice that she was wearing a loose short-sleeved blouse and blue jeans. And wonder if those were too warm for her in this weather. (I resisted wondering ‘if she was hot.’) I suppose I could have subtly looked down her shirt; but unlike other girls I’d had fleeting crushes on, I didn’t want to. It would have seemed like sacrilege, or… or something.34

She finished and handed the sheet back to me. Since the boss was at the help desk opposite me, I had to ask for her driver’s license again, and pretend to compare it against the number she’d put on the sheet. I noticed that she even looked good in her driver’s license photo. I suppose that should have been my first clue.35

I don’t like to talk to people, while I’m filling out their cards. I prefer to have both of us stand there, avoiding eye contact. So out of habit, I wasted the time it took to fill out five slots before realizing I had a perfect opportunity to talk to her.36

“You new to town?” I asked, filling in the address of a house that had been vacant for years.37

“Yeah,” she said. “A few weeks ago.”38

I nodded, casting about desperately for something else to say. “Like what you’ve seen so far?”39

“Sure,” she said, in a sort of a shrugging tone. “It’s a pretty town. I haven’t been many places. I’ve spent most of the summer reading books my dad throws at me.” She paused. “He’s an English professor.”40

“Ah,” I said, and grinned stupidly. “Well,” I said, after a moment, “You should at least go down to the movie theatre. Coolest theatre I’ve ever been to. Old—like, twenties decoration style, and the screen has a stage in front of it, ‘cuz in the old days, there were vaudeville acts and stuff at movies…” I trailed off, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. I don’t usually talk this much.”41

She grinned and shook her head, as if to say, No harm done.42

Just then someone sort of burst through the library doors. She looked in her mid-forties, a bit younger than my parents. She was short, but she looked strong. She looked about for a moment, then caught sight of… her, and hurried over.43

I lapsed into unreasonably embarrassed silence.44

“You forgot these, honey,” said her mom.45

“Thanks mom,” she said, in the tone only a fellow teenager could detect as “You’re embarrassing me.”46

“Sure, honey. Knock ‘em dead. I know you will.” She kissed her daughter on the cheek, and left in as much hurry as she’d come in.47

“My mom,” she said.48

“I figured,” I said. I gestured to the box she’d given her. “What’s in there?”49

She looked at the box as if slightly embarrassed. “Ballet slippers. I always forget them.”50

“You’re a dancer?” I said. She nodded. “Figures,” I said.51

“What do you mean?” she said, half smiling, half mock-angry.52

I lapsed again into embarrassed silence, hoping she would take the hint and pretend I hadn’t said that. But she kept looking at me. Finally I said, “I just noticed you’re… You’re very graceful.”53

Which was a perfectly inappropriate thing to say. I stared hard at absolutely nothing on the card application. I realized she wouldn’t go away until I’d actually given her a card. I looked up again.54

Her cheeks were red, but she was smiling. Her eyes were slightly downcast too, as if she was embarrassed to look at me. “Thank you,” was all she said. More mumbled, actually.55

I took out a blank card, stuck a barcode on it, and scanned it. I handed it to her. “Just sign it down here.” I gave her a pen. She handed it back to me and said “Thanks.” She paused briefly. “I’m actually trying out for the local dance school today.”56

“Cool,” I said. There didn’t seem to be much else to say, so she started to leave.57

“Hey,” I said. “That movie theatre I mentioned does a matinee of some old movie once a month, and there’s an organ and vaudeville acts, and stuff. I don’t know if you like old movies, but it’s really… fun. You should… check it out sometime.” What a lame finish! I began cursing inwardly.58

She smiled and said something noncommittal, and left. It was only then that I thought to wish her good luck.59

The boss left the help desk and walked in my direction. I was sure she was going to berate me for flirting with patrons, though I didn’t think I’d been that obvious. But all she said was, “She’s pretty, eh?” And raised her eyebrows at me. She walked away, and all I could do was nod dumbly.60

*61

Working at the library, you develop sporadic relationships with people. You talk for the five minutes or the two minutes it takes for you to check their books out, then as often as not, you don’t see them for weeks. And, after all that time, they expect you to remember whatever it was you talked about last time. And the funny thing is, you do. You develop strange memory associations: the lady with the mole on her right cheek has the cat who was sick; the old woman who carries a flowered handbag hates Tolstoy, but continues to read all his books; the guy who looks like he has one leg shorter than the other is a gay Republican. That sort of thing.62

It’s not that you ask people these things; they just sort of tell you. It’s as if there’s such a vast compendium of knowledge all around them, that they feel compelled to add to it in some small way, and you, as gatekeeper, are the one to tell.63

But you give back to them; you share something of yourself. You mention the author you hated in English class, or talk about the pet you had die a few years back. And they appreciate it, because they feel like they know you, just a little. They know something about you beyond your appearance, and that creates a bond between you, somehow.64

*65

I had a shift every day that week. Most of them, covering for someone who was on vacation, were two to six, so I got the daycares that came after lunch and some teenagers who visited the library first thing after waking up, and later I got the people who were recently off work.66

She came in again one of those days, I can’t remember which. They all blur together after a while. I managed to catch her eye as she walked past the desk. I had thought of all sorts of opening lines, brilliant ones, but they all flooded into my head at once and various sections of brain started shutting down and all I could get out was,67

“Hi.”68

“Hi!” she said.69

“How are you?” I said.70

“I’m good. How are you?”71

Patricia, the lady working the desk with me (older lady, shortish, hair still brown, perhaps through use of dye), said, “How did your try-out go?”72

I didn’t know she’d been talking to other people here. I felt betrayed. I wished I had eyes in the back of my head. My mom said only parents could do that. If I’d had eyes in the back of my head, they would have been glaring daggers at Patricia.73

“My try-out went fine,” she said. “I know I’m in, at least.”74

“That’s great,” I said, taking back the conversation. It was mine in the first place, after all.75

“Yeah,” she said. “I was afraid I’d forgotten everything I knew. I mean, it’s only been two weeks without practicing, so that was pretty dumb, but…”76

“I know what you mean,” I said, glancing around covertly to make sure the boss wasn’t watching.77

She cocked her head. “Did you ever do ballet?”78

“No,” I said. “Well, yeah, actually I took a couple classes when I was younger. Had to beat up some guys at school because of it. But I just mean the not having practiced for a little while and being afraid of losing the skill.”79

“Oh,” she said, smiling.80

“I mean, I haven’t done any math since school let out, and now I… I can’t remember what two and five make.” I looked at her plaintively. “What do two and five make?”81

She laughed. “Eight. Nine. Somewhere in there.” I kept making eye contact with her, and not being able to sustain it, and glancing at the computer and typing something nonsensical. “I better go look for a book. Oh,” as if she’d just remembered, though I could tell she hadn’t, “it seems unfair that you’ve got my name, and I haven’t got yours.”82

“Trismegistus,” I said. “Most people call me Trist.” Which wasn’t true. They called me Tristan, because they could comprehend Tristan.83

She smiled, and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Trismegistus.” I took her hand and literally saw fireworks behind my eyes. Her hand was warm and soft and I wanted to hold it for a long time.84

She walked away, and I sat in a bit of a stupor. Patricia—not Pat, Pat was a little girl’s name—stepped behind me. I wanted to turn around and yell at her, but that wouldn’t be nice or reasonable.85

“My luve is like a red, red rose?” she said. The question mark sounded incongruous. She turned to me. “Luve?”86

I looked at what I had written and sighed. “A search I was doing. Never… Never mind.”87

I couldn’t understand what she’d said about me having her name. Then I mentally slapped myself on the forehead. I typed what I could remember of it—her last name—into the computer, found her and called her info up.88

Iseult.89

A couple days later, she came in again, in a flowery blouse and jeans that were somehow stylish. She walked like a doe in the woods, before it catches wind of you. I could no longer stand it. I wrote a note.90

I found excuses to stay up front, behind the counter, even though there were at least three things that I needed to do away from it. I sent Carolyn on her break, even though she’d only been here two hours and I’d been four. My excuses were wearing thin. I thought Iseult would never show up.91

But she did, carrying two books by Socrates and one on the languages of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. I scanned them for her and asked, “Do people usually call you Iseult? Or however you say it?”92

“Iseult,” she pronounced correctly, then laughed. “No, usually people call me Izzy or Isabel, because it’s more normal, I guess. Only my dad calls me Iseult.” She thought for a moment. “Well, my brother used to.”93

There was such a look of sadness on her face—and it fit so little with the person I thought (or wished) I knew—that it made me want to kill whatever made her look that way. I covered by asking her the one Elvish phrase I knew, before realizing it was from a love poem. She grinned and answered. Her pronunciation was better than mine ever hoped to be.94

I stuck my note inside the cover of the Tolkien book when she wasn’t looking. As I shoved the pile back to her, I realized what a dumb idea this was. As she picked it up and started to leave, I realized that maybe the note would fall out or something, and she wouldn’t see it.95

“Open the cover of the first book,” I said, knowing this was even lamer. “I think there’s something you’ll like.”96

She opened it, and looked at my note, and grinned. She out it down on the desk, reached behind it to a cup of pens (you weren’t supposed to do that, and I loved her for it), and scribbled something under my writing. She left it on the counter.97

Under my, Would you go to the movie with me Friday? –T., she had written, Yes, and left a phone number.98

*99

I got home and my mother had been crying. Her eyes gave her away. She kissed me, and smiled like sweetened honey, and excused herself to the bathroom.100

My dad was a brilliant man, but my mom always thought of him as a kid who needed protecting. This was also true. My dad was an engineer, and an outdoorsman. He had taught me to build things, all sorts of things, from wood and plastic and cardboard. We once made a whole set of stained-glass windows out of cardboard boxes, wax paper, and crayons. And he was brilliant at his work; the firm he was with credited him with much of its success.101

But at the same time, he did need protecting. He could drive and everything, but put him in a grocery store by himself and he was sure to get lost, and be so relieved to find the exit again that he would leave without buying anything. Send him to buy headache pills, he’d come back with something for arthritis. The everyday world was an endless mystery to him, and he was grateful to my mom for being his guide, and she was happy to be his protector.102

I believe I first saw this phrase on the dust jacket for a Danielle Steele novel, but it describes my mom as well as anything: she never forgave herself for being unable to protect him at the end.103

I thought about asking her what the matter was, and if she was all right, but I knew how it would go. She would say she was fine, everything was fine. She had just seen a couple at the supermarket, or at a restaurant, or at the gas station; and something reminded her of her and dad. And she had been missing dad. And she felt so alone.104

And I would pat her awkwardly on the shoulder, and say it’s all right, everything’s all right, he’s looking down on us, and he’s happy, and safe, and we’ll see him again. But I knew it wouldn’t help, and she’d brush it off and forget it. And that was how it would end.105

I called her—Izzy—later that evening. Her mom answered, and handed over the phone.106

“Hello?” I said, wondering why I sounded so desperate.107

“Hi,” she said, and a thrill shot through me, and I was suddenly short of breath.108

Come on now. I’m better than this. “So, Friday,” I said.109

“Yeah,” she said.110

“Sorry for the short notice.”111

“Not at all.”112

“So… The movie starts at seven, but we might want to find seats a little early. Can I pick you up at six-thirty?”113

“Oh, you have your own car? That’s such a turn-on.”114

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it’s my mom’s.”115

“Oh,” she said. “That’s not such a turn-on.” Then she laughed. And I laughed too, though it sounded almost like a sob. We were silent a moment. “Should I wear anything special?”116

I thought a moment. What did people wear? “Oh, well, you know—something to make my old girlfriends jealous.”117

She laughed. I was about ready to say something like, “See you Friday then,” but she said, “Do you have a lot of old girlfriends?”118

“No,” I said, and then we talked. For an hour. (This was truly amazing; I don’t talk to anyone for more than fifteen minutes.) Then she had to go eat supper. Then she called me back and we talked for another hour. Then it started getting late, and we said goodbye and I kissed my mom goodnight. Then I went to bed, and was asleep more quickly than usual.119

*120

When you work at a library, people aren’t afraid to tell you how they feel. You tell a woman about her one-dollar fine, and she asks you what it was from. Mullholland Drive, you say. Oh, she says, I watched that with my ex-boyfriend. You know what that guy did to me (she says)? Up and left me for a Vegas stripper. How long do you think that lasted?121

And you can see the cold fury in her gaze, and feel it in her words. It sends chills down your back. It sort of freezes you.122

You want to say I’m sorry or You’ll find someone else, he wasn’t worth it, or one of the other cliché lines—not because you care, necessarily, but because it feels like the part of the conversation you’re supposed to supply. But you can’t, because you’re a public servant, not a psychologist.123

But you’ve helped anyway. It seems to be therapeutic, ranting to complete strangers. She smiles, and picks up the stuff she was checking out, and leaves. You assume she’ll pay her fine next time.124

*125

That evening Izzy’s parents called and invited me over for supper. My mom too, if she wanted. She was working late, but I had no excuse not to come.126

I showed up there a little after six, and was introduced to her parents. Her mom I remembered, and I recognized her dad too. I had checked some books out for him the other day. He borrowed a curious mixture of classic literature and cheap horror novels, I remembered, but I hadn’t remarked because he was looking at the counter and I couldn’t catch his eye.127

“Vic,” he said to me, holding out his hand. “An awful name, but I’m stuck with it.”128

“I’m Trismegistus,” I said, grinning. “People call me Tristan.”129

Vic’s eyes lit up. “Middle name wouldn’t happen to be Shandy, would it?”130

We ate there, and her parents were pleasant. We left and she shut the door rather more quickly than was necessary on her dad saying, “Be back by midnight.”131

It was a beautiful summer evening, and the street was lit with gold and pink and dappled with shadow. It was a look you only get on a street with old houses and old trees, all set at just the right angle.132

“I suppose we could have walked,” I said, as we went 35 down the 25 street. The windows were open and it blew her hair back, but she didn’t seem to mind.133

“Yeah,” she said. “Then we’d have to walk back.”134

I shrugged. “This place is pretty cool at night. Kinda creepy though, I guess. You might get scared.”135

She grinned at me. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”136

I parked a block down, rather than go through the idiocy of trying to parallel park on a narrow street. As we started toward the theatre, she looped her arm through mine in what seemed an old-fashioned way.137

A guy was trying to parallel park his pick-up in front of the theatre. He was squeezing between a mini-van and a smaller truck. He was cursing both the other vehicles, and most of the people who turned to look at him. He shouted to me as we went by, “Hey Tristan!” and something I ignored about a hot date.138

“Hey Brent,” I said, but not too loud.139

I paid for the tickets and got in the long popcorn line. They were showing the Thief of Bagdad, the silent version, and the organist from the Lutheran church would play along to it.140

Brent and a small girl with heavy eyeliner—Carly, who liked me, but not like that—joined us after a few minutes. I introduced them to Isabel, because they would never be able to say Iseult. I told them she was new to town, and stayed protectively beside her.141

Brent expressed annoyance with the movie they were showing. Carly asked if he wanted to go to Marshfield and play laser tag, because she was only doing this because he had said he didn’t have much energy. Brent looked at her, and his eyes were bright. He almost seemed like he was telling her something, but it wasn’t something even she could understand. Finally he just shook his head.142

We took our seats just as they were setting up the stage for the first vaudeville act. She smiled at me, that warm sunlight smile, and I tried to keep my legs from giving out. We sat and I handed her the popcorn and after a few moments she handed it back to me.143

I looked at the nearest fire exit, imagining there was a fire, and we all had to run for it, and I swept her up in my arms and shoved people out of the way, and dove with her out of the fire exit just as flames exploded behind us. Then I ran back through the whole thing, and tried to figure out where it had started to lose its realism.144

The cool touch of her hand brought me back to earth.145

“Look,” she said. “The magician.”146

He was bravely venturing onstage, in the midst of the conversation, the screams of babies and small children, the flying popcorn, the catcalls. His outfit was classic: a suit that seemed to be made of pure silk, long, slightly loose sleeves, an oversized top hat.147

“I,” he announced, “am the Great Langdon.” The noise did not settle down. He seemed unperturbed. “I will now make all the lights in this theatre—go out!” There was slightly less noise, but not much. The magician waved his arms—148

And suddenly we were in pitch darkness. I grabbed her arm and she grabbed my leg, in mock fear. The audience had completely stopped making noise. “And now,” he said, if you are good little boys and girls, I will turn the lights back on. Will you behave like young gentlemen and young ladies?”149

“Yes!” came a chorus of under-tens.150

“What?” said the Great Langdon. “I heard the children, but not the parents. Can you all behave as gentlemen and ladies?”151

“Yes!” came a chorus that was more varied. She joined it, next to me, and whacked me on the arm for not doing so as well.152

“Very well,” said the Great Langdon. “Abra cadabra.”153

And the lights went on again, momentarily blinding us. He stepped towards the back of the stage, taking off his hat. “That,” he said, “wasn’t magic. That was just me coordinating with the lighting people.” He showed us his empty hat, turned it bottom-up, waved his wand. “This, however,” pulling out a bouquet of flowers, “and everything I’m going to show you in the next few minutes, is.” And he waved his arms and the flowers burst into confetti and showered the audience.154

I suppose I was showing off, but I kept trying to tell her how every trick worked. I knew them all; I couldn’t repeat most of them, because it would take hours of repetitious practice. But she kept saying, “Shut up and enjoy the show.”155

A vaudeville act was next, a song and dance team. They were, well, vaudevillian. There was a lull, and Izzy and I talked quietly about nothing. The projector started, throwing black and white, but mainly gray, against the wall. The organ announced a booming salute as the screen proclaimed, THE THIEF OF BAGDAD and its stars.156

*157

When I was in fourth grade, one of the boys I ate lunch with invited me to his farm. I went over there one Saturday afternoon, when they were finished with morning chores and had eaten lunch. He showed me around the place, and we ended up in the barn, climbing around on bales of hay. I tumbled off one, looked up, and saw a big white barn cat staring at me. His eyes were hateful.158

I had been warned about barn cats. You stayed away from barn cats.159

Little did I ever heed warnings given to me. This one looked so pretty, or majestic, and his fur was somehow still white, even after living in a barn for so many years. I ignored the hateful look in his eyes, or I pretended it was regality or something else nobler than hate. I approached him with my hand outstretched, sure he would be transformed by my touch.160

Adam, the kid whose place this was, popped up from behind a bale and saw me.161

“Tristan don’t!”162

The cat’s paw darted out, and he buried his claws deep in my arm, and pulled toward him. I twisted away with a cry and clapped my palm over the wound, as much to stop seeing it as to stop it from bleeding. Adam rushed over and chased the cat away, then helped me down from the loft and took me to his father. At first I wanted, unreasonably, to hide it, thinking he could steal bandages from the house and we could take care of this ourselves (and nobody’s parents have to be told, and nobody have to get in trouble). But of course, that couldn’t happen.163

I have a three-inch scar on my forearm today.164

*165

It really was a grand old movie. The thief wanders around for a while, stealing things, scandalizing the masses, and generally being an enlightened cynic. He is the ultimate bachelor, you wish you could be him, and he knows it.166

Then the princess enters the picture. And all is lost.167

The thief steals his way into her heart, and steals into her chamber. He takes her in his arms. He admits to being a thief, and an evil man. BUT WHEN I MET YOU, he tells her, by way of big white letters splashed across the screen, ALL THE EVIL LEFT MY HEART.168

I leaned over to Izzy, to wonder in her ear how many other guys had used that line in the history of the world. But when I looked at her, there were tears in her eyes, so I put my arm around her instead.169

The movie over, we filed out of the theatre at the back of the crowd. We walked slowly, thinking our own thoughts, and when we hit the cool night air, she suggested we take a walk around the block before going home. I frankly would never have thought of such a thing. I didn’t know how safe a prospect it was, despite the size of the town and the apparent competence of the police department. But if she was willing to suggest it, I wasn’t going to be the one to wimp out.170

We walked next to each other, and I felt the urge to put my arm around her, or take her hand. Or maybe kiss her. But I didn’t act on it. I was still feeling overawed by the end of the movie. I have this habit of looking at someone on screen, and trying to feel what they’re feeling, rather than just passively notice what they’re doing. It opens up a whole depth of emotion, and sometimes leaves me embarrassed by my tearfulness. It also allows me to appreciate movies that are actually pretty bad.171

She turned to look at me, and I imagined her in black and white (she looked gorgeous) and dressed in Middle Eastern finery, and me sneaking in to her palace and falling in love with her…172

“You miss him, don’t you?” she said.173

“Who?”174

“Your dad.”175

“How…” I started. I hadn’t told her. But I suppose the how didn’t really matter.176

She smiled, and it was almost like she could read my mind. Again. “No one told me. But you talked about your mom a couple times, and you never mention your dad. And you never mention him carefully enough that he could still be around, which you wouldn’t do if he were. So he’s dead, or run off, or something.”177

That last sentence would have cooked anybody else. But there was something in her voice that made it not coldly calculating, the way it looks on paper. It was as if she had been hurt by it too.178

“He died,” I said. “A long time ago.”179

We walked on in total silence, shoes tapping against the sidewalk. Step. Step.180

“It sucks,” I said.181

She took my hand, and for the first time in several years, the scar where the cat scratched me began to throb.182

I was in a haze after that—of amazement, relief, maybe a little fear. A deep emotion welled in me at the mere gesture of taking my hand, one that was not sadness but could only be realized by a spurt of crying.183

It took me until we were getting into the car to realize she was amazingly perceptive. When I pointed this out to her, she laughed.184

“People our age aren’t that hard to figure out,” she said. She paused. “We just don’t have… a lot of layers. We’re complicated, obviously, but we’re like… like a movie in its first act. You can come in a little ways into it—when someone’s seventeen, say—and figure out well enough what’s come before. There’s bits you might miss, but you can get the general idea. Adults are in their later acts, and you might be able to figure out what’s going on now, but Lord knows what they’ve buried from… from earlier.”185

She stopped talking and looked at me. “Have I creeped you out yet?”186

I shook my head. “I know what you mean, but I could never have said it. People have a lot of undertones that I can’t quite grasp. Like Brent and Carly tonight. Something wasn’t quite right with them, but I couldn’t say what. Something beyond the obvious, I mean.”187

“He wants to sleep with her,” she said promptly.188

I couldn’t talk for a moment. “But Carly… she’s got a chastity ring. She’s not the type to… do it with someone she’s dating. She told me that herself.”189

“And that’s why he will never be happy with whatever they’re doing. Until she takes the hint.”190

Of course, she added the obvious that you couldn’t act on this, because these were just feelings, and they could be completely wrong. Even though she knew and I knew they weren’t.191

Later, at a party, Brent admitted as much to me.192

*193

I walked her to her door. I was, of course, debating the whole time whether to try to kiss her. I wimped out and thought of it as not pressuring her. We stood for a few moments, just looking at each other, then she turned to go in. She turned back and kissed me on the nose.194

As I left a light winked out in one of the upstairs windows.195

*196

I got home and my mom was watching Philadelphia Story. Jimmy Stewart was and Cary Grant was trying to keep it together. I loved this scene.197

“How did it go?” said mom. She carefully didn’t use “date”, because I carefully hadn’t, though at this point I don’t suppose it could have been anything else.198

“Fine,” I said, distracted by the TV. “Great.”199

“Yeah? Was she nice?”200

“Very nice,” I said.201

“That’s wonderful, dear.” A pause. Yes they do, don’t they? said Cary Grant, very stately. Yestheydodon’tthey, slurred a Jimmy Stewart. “You should go to bed,” my mom said. “It’s late.”202

Midnight wasn’t usually late, for me, but I did feel pretty tired. I kissed her on the cheek and went to my room.203

*204

“And then,” says the resentful voice on the phone. “I broke my leg in a skiing accident. Couldn’t move for a couple months. My boyfriend was trying to help, but he’s dumb, you know? I couldn’t get him to bring it back. So now there’s five dollars in fines on it.” The voice sighs. “All right, well, just thought I’d let you guys know what happened. Bye.”205

And she hangs up, leaving you to wonder what you were supposed to do, and if you could have done anything. But in the back of your mind you know she didn’t really want anything, just to get that off her shoulders and have someone to be resentful to about her five-dollar fine as well.206

The thing about people at the library is they never ask you how you’re doing, besides the “How are you?” where they don’t really care what the answer is. They want someone to confess to, someone to lighten their load. Nobody ever asks the priest how many days since his last confession.207

*208

It only took a couple days of Izzy stopping by the library talking to me for the boss to take me aside and ask me what’s up. She was a career woman, driven and all those other clichés. She supposedly had a boyfriend somewhere, though nobody’d ever seen him. I don’t think she cared about people dating, just about people not working, or appearing to not work.209

“What do you mean?” I said, in response to her question.210

“Well… Are you two flirting? She seems to hang around a lot.”211

“No!” I exclaimed, though I didn’t mean to seem so repulsed by the idea. It was what we were doing, after all.212

“Oh,” she said. “Well… Make sure you’re working.”213

I was annoyed with her for the rest of the day. It was unreasonable, I suppose.214

*215

We went to see another movie, a couple nights later. It was a modern one, some chick flick about a relationship that seems too good to be true, and then turns out to actually be too good to be true, but then the guy wins her back and they live happily ever after. This is all justified by some very comforting generalizations about love and happiness and relationships.216

In the lobby afterward, she saw an advertisement for the Town Carnival, and wondered aloud if I wanted to go. The way she said it, it was obvious she wanted to. I sighed.217

“You want the scoop on the carnival? It’s a bunch of old creaky rides that somehow continue to pass inspection and not kill people; a lot of rigged games run by carnies with eye patches and theories about spontaneous combustion and UFOs; and a series of food stands selling stuff that will give you indigestion for a week.” I nodded, rather satisfied with my monologue.218

“Sounds fun,” she said. “Which day should we go?”219

I sighed. “Well, teen night is Friday, so unless you want to navigate around the type of morons who go to that, how about Saturday?”220

*221

The midway, I had to admit, looked very cool in the dusk.222

The gray light of evening was fading into the black of night, and with eerie good timing the carnies had lit their rides and stands. The Ferris wheel flashed a pastel rainbow of colors into the night; the Tilt-a-Whirl blinked bright, and dark, and bright, and dark, as it spun its human cargo at angles man was not meant to know. The very food stands blared across the eye, their signs lit from within. The world’s smallest bull charged about his mud pit in a swath of spotlights.223

“I didn’t know they could still do that,” she said, gesturing to a tent whose headboard proclaimed FEATURE ATTRACTION. At the right of the doorway, on a smaller sign, Must be 18 or older to enter.224

“I don’t think they can,” I said, looking hard at it, almost meeting the carnie’s gaze, looking away. All night I saw men going in there, but none coming out.225

We played an old-fashioned rubber duck shooting game, because even if it was rigged, it was just fun to plug away at the things. Then we (well, she made me) went to one of those water-shooting games, where two people shoot water at a target to make their horses (or whatever) race. I started out to let her win, but ended up struggling to lose with dignity.226

Out near the edge, there was one of those weird old wishing machines. Madame Zoroastra would answer your deepest questions, and grant your most sincere wish. She was a scary old lady. Her brown face was smooth but old; her brow wrinkled just enough to make her look wise; her earrings and sparkling headdress combining to suggest she was some sort of dethroned royalty, reduced to telling people’s fortunes at the edge of a cheap carnival.227

“Say you want to be big,” said Izzy in my ear. “Maybe you’ll wake up to be Tom Hanks.”228

“Nah,” I said, turning away. “With my luck I’d be Rob Zombie.”229

I bought us tickets to the Ferris Wheel. According to her, no one should be allowed to leave the carnival without riding the Ferris Wheel. The carnie who strapped us in leered a bit.230

The Wheel spun us up, up, and the view expanded in front of us. I found myself looking at my feet. I glanced at Izzy, and saw she was as wide-eyed as ever, grinning out across town lights and dark country, her gaze like a benediction.231

We jerked to a halt to take on more passengers. Then we were spinning again, and stopped. She whispered in my ear, “We’re at the top now. You have to look.”232

I jerked my head up and forced my eyes open. The lights of the town glared back at me. The rooftops looked forlorn and forgotten. The streets were laid out in a grid that looked too perfect to actually exist. I kind of gasped, and instinctively grabbed for her hand. She took mine, gently.233

The view expanded rapidly. I was—I seemed to be—in space, or high in the atmosphere. I saw the lights of the world laid out before me, a mass of lights and storms and darkness. City lights winked up at me, unflinching, invincible. Single lights, out in the country, struggled on, strong, alone. A dark mist crept over the countryside, and it swallowed up the lights. It started with the single ones, shrouding them in darkness, extinguishing them or blocking them out (it didn’t matter which). Then the darkness spread to the cities, and their invincible blocks of light were shrouded, little by little, until there was nothing left but mist.234

Then the sight switched, like changing the channel on TV. I saw people laid out before me, lives by the hundreds of thousands of millions of billions. I saw everyone. People lived, and died, and ate, and hunted, and fought, and ran, and cried, and sang, and feared, and overcame their fear. They planted crops, and reaped crops, built cities and saw them fall, built them again and let them fall again. They—we—fell in love, and there were moments of happiness, moments of pure bliss. And they were followed always by a soul-quenching darkness, loneliness, fear or sadness or anger or lust. And soon the darkness overcame them too, and they were lost.235

It could not have lasted more than a moment; the jerking of the wheel brought me out of it. But my face was streaming with tears, silent, deep, and dark. I was greatly relieved that I hadn’t damn well sobbed. She had a kleenex out and wiped my cheeks. I turned to her and looked in her eyes, and they were big and understanding and they seemed to contain everything, and there was nothing to say. She kissed me on the forehead.236

*237

We stood there in the streetlight, in front of her house. I wish I could say I took the lead, but I won’t lie. She kissed me, on the lips. Hers were soft, and warm, and they were indefinably comforting, where other girls I’d kissed (though admittedly few) had been thrilling.238

I walked her to the door, and she reached up and just hugged me, and laid her head on my shoulder. I could have stayed that way forever. She pulled back, and reached up to wipe away a tear I hadn’t known about.239

“You’ll see him again,” she said.240

I nodded, and said it had been wonderful tonight. And she said yes, it had, and went into her house before her parents got too suspicious. I went and sat in the car.241

*242

You want to know what falling in love with her was like? But how do you describe the indescribable?243

There’s a feeling I get, when I’m with certain people I call my friends. I say I get it, but I think everybody gets it. We smile, and we laugh. But there’s this invisible barrier, and I can never get beyond it to talk about the stuff that I really want to talk about, the flash of teeth that tears at the edge of my thoughts, the darkness run amok in my soul. Though when I think about it, there’s really no way to put it beyond those vague words.244

We know the darkness is there, ready to swallow us up. But we ignore it, because it ruins the mood.245

But with her… She would look at me, and we’d smile, and we’d laugh. But behind the laugh, behind the smile, there was frank acknowledgement of the pain that caused the laughter, of the scar that caused the smile.246

The barrier was smashed to bits.247

*248

The next day I didn’t have to work, but I was up early anyway. Early enough to be watching TV when Mr. Roberts came by to pick up my mom. Mr. Roberts was Carly’s dad. He and my mom worked in the same office, and they carpooled. He had lost his wife several years ago.249

“Hey Trist,” he said, though only because he was too lazy to say Tristan. “What’s up?”250

I shrugged. “Watching… useless crap on TV. I don’t have to work today, so I have all day to finish my important job of watching useless crap on TV.”251

He laughed. “Glad to see you’ve got ambitions.” He paused. “Haven’t got a girlfriend, or something?”252

“He does, actually,” called my mom.253

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I do. Maybe I’ll invite her over to help.”254

Mr. Roberts laughed. He liked to laugh, and his eyes twinkled when he did.255

If this were a romantic comedy, Mr. Roberts and my mom would get married. They would be happy, and they would no longer be lonely. I would have a sister. Unfortunately, this is not a romantic comedy.256

*257

We went to the pool (her idea). Even in her relatively modest swimsuit, she looked fantastic. I tried not to stare too much. I felt rather embarrassed to be shirtless; my stomach was too soft, I thought, my skin too white.258

I was pleased to find I remembered my breaststroke from swim lessons, all those years ago. She swam pretty well too, though a little unevenly; she was self-taught.259

At one point we raced from the deep end to the shallow end. I went frog-like under the deep water. I got from the nine-foot mark to the five-foot without coming up for air. I glanced over and noticed she was walking beside me. I looked up, and saw her distorted through the water. Her face was fractured, but it looked pretty with the sunlight hitting it and the water making it ebb and flow. The sun backlit her, and she seemed to wear a halo. She reached down and pulled me up, and her face was even more beautiful now I could see it clearly.260

We splashed around for a while, and poked, and flirted, and I generally acted like an idiot. I tried not to think how wonderfully dreamlike it was to splash and play with a girl like her. To have her grin at me and know she was grinning at me, at something stupid I’d said. The feeling is indescribable. But I tried not to think about it, for fear that thinking about it would make it go away.261

That night we had her over for dinner. It was my mom’s idea. She made casserole and cooked asparagus and even made fruit punch, a really good kind only she can make. Even the frozen rolls she made were cooked to perfection. She decorated the table, and got out the good place settings. We hadn’t had a meal this nice since… since dad.262

Izzy arrived just as the last preparations were being made. I introduced her to my mom. We sat down, said a quick prayer, and passed the dishes around. Izzy served herself last.263

There was a brief moment of silence as we picked up our utensils, which did not bode well for the rest of the evening. I opened my mouth to say something stupid, but Izzy beat me to it.264

“Where do you work?” she asked my mom. Mom told her, and Izzy asked something else, and pretty soon she had my mom spinning long stories about her job. They were stories I knew, so I could zone out and still nod or laugh where appropriate. Izzy seemed very interested. I wondered what my mom was actually telling her, what secrets Izzy had divined from this innocuous talk of work265

When my mom had gone on for a while, she declared there had been enough said about her, and began asking questions of Izzy. They were mostly things I’d heard before, but I paid attention anyway, trying to fix them in my mind. Stuff about her parents, where she had lived before, what she liked to do, what she liked to read. How she liked our town.266

Mom cleared the plates after a while, and went to get dessert. She refused Izzy’s and my help. When she had left the room, I reached under the table and squeezed her leg, just above the knee. She smiled at me, and I smiled back.267

We ate dessert, the three of us, and shot the breeze. Once the breeze was pretty much dead and we were finished eating, mom cleared the table again. I offered to help with the dishes, but mom said, “No, I can do them. You two should… Take a walk. The woods in the backyard are pretty this time of evening.”268

Now, you would never have known this, but that was amazing, coming from my mom. She would never have sent me on a walk alone with most of the other girlfriends who had come over for dinner. Okay, the two other girlfriends who had come over for dinner.269

I saw the bug spray on the table by the door as we went outside, but I didn’t use it. All the evenings I’d been with Izzy, she never had mosquitoes around her. She seemed to repel them.270

We walked along the clipped forest path—my mom came out here on Saturdays and rode the mower along it. The light was fading in the west, but strong golden shafts of it stretched through the trees, like God’s fingers, reaching out to call me home.271

I took Izzy’s hand, and the world shifted before me. I was on a ravaged battlefield, the battle newly over. The dead lay all around and the smell of death hung in the air. I looked at one body, an old man with a hollow face. He was naked, and his body was unwounded, his face fixed in an expression of horror. He had no weapon, and no weapon was near him.272

My mom was there, in front of me, weeping into the hard red earth. Her face was pressed to the ground, and her clothes were faded, as if they had not been worn for months. I stood for a moment, immobile, until I heard a liquid sound behind me. I looked back, and there was a well rising from a soft patch of earth. I went to it, and dipped a cup from it.273

I went to her, and raised her head, and offered her what was in the cup. She looked bewildered, for a moment. The sticky red substance seemed unnatural. I had a flashback to the theatre, to those awful romantic comedies with their generalizing speeches, and I said, “There are some things only blood can heal.”274

A bird sang. The leaves of the trees moved gently in the light wind. The grass was soft beneath my shoes, beneath my feet. A squirrel’s chatter ricocheted off the trees and hit my ears. I stumbled for a moment, and she looked at me keenly. “Are you all right?”275

“Yeah,” I said, and started to say something else. I stopped. “You look pretty.”276

She blushed, and laughed, and muttered thanks. That was what I hoped she’d do, because otherwise (I thought) she’d hit me.277

“Your mom’s really cool,” she said after a bit.278

“Oh yeah?” I said, thinking she had very odd standards of cool.279

“Yeah,” she said.280

We walked around and back to the beginning of the path, and went back up to the house. Izzy hugged my mom goodbye, and hugged me and rested her head on my shoulder for a moment, and I said goodnight.281

*282

Her dad was at the library the next day. I have a habit of noting the books people check out, trying to notice a theme. It’s hardly ever anything interesting. Either someone checking out a couple titles by their favorite author or in their favorite genre, or non-fiction books on the same subject, our what-have-you. Once in a while you get somebody who checks out a mass of books on varied subjects. These people are usually the most fun to talk to.283

He had Romeo and Juliet, Beroul’s Great Works, Hamlet, Lord Jim, Dubliners, and The Arabian Nights. I glanced briefly at the back of one of the Shakespeare plays, and he took the bait.284

“Did you know that Shakespeare had love or sex as a central theme in every one of his plays?” he said.285

I quickly reviewed my knowledge of various of the Bard’s plays. This seemed to be true. I shook my head. “I never realized that.”286

He nodded, and glanced down at his pile. “I’ve got to read up on these, for… For a writing project I’m working on. Mainly a tragedy of sorts, but with some elements of old fantasy thrown in.” He shrugged. “It’ll make sense eventually.”287

*288

The theatre was dark; the light of the screen had flickered out. Everyone was gone. Cardboard popcorn boxes rattled across the floor before the ushers. A cup spilled, throwing its ice across the tile with a sound like glass across marble. Izzy and I were the only ones still seated. My arm was around her, and her head was across my shoulder. I seemed unable to think.289

“What do you see?” she said. An usher shuffled past a row in front of us, but he ignored us.290

“What?” I said.291

“When you take my hand,” she said. “What do you see?”292

That she would know I saw stuff was the least surprising bit, but it was the aspect I’d thought about the least.293

“I don’t know,” I said. I thought about it for a second. “I really don’t.”294

She sighed, reflectively. “I’ve been having them since I was seven. They hardly ever mean anything. At least, at the time. Then later I remember bits and pieces, and sometimes they make sense. But I never remember the whole vision, or whatever it is, unless I write it down. Which I don’t.”295

“Maybe you should,” I said.296

“Yeah, but I’m afraid if I do, it’ll…” she trailed off, as if I should know what came next. And I did. Sort of. “I mean, just the other night I…”297

An usher from behind us interrupted her. “You guys sleeping here tonight?”298

We both jumped a little, then got up. “Wouldn’t want to disturb you,” I said, not looking at him.299

The streets were silent as I walked her home. She had declared it too nice a night to drive. We walked hand in hand, but I didn’t see anything this time. It didn’t happen every time.300

“The first time one of those made sense,” she said, “Was when I was fourteen. My dog died. Only I knew about it three weeks earlier, and I was crying off and on the whole time. I was hugging him one day, crying, and he didn’t like that. So he ran away from me, out into the street, and got hit by a truck.”301

This was getting weirder and weirder; I knew I should have felt scared, or awed, or admiring, or something. But all I could feel was sympathy, for her and her lost, dead dog.302

*303

I tried writing her a prose passage, like something out of the Arabian Nights. Something with metaphors praising all her features.304

Your feet are like two lily pads, (yes, yes, good start). Your legs… (no, too lewd). Your eyes are like violets laden with morning dew. (What the hell did that mean? Ah, well, it sounded good.) Your hands are beautiful like porcelain, but soft like silk. They open the door to visions glorious. (No, scratch that last part. The visions aren’t exactly glorious. And it’s too much like pointing out how weird she is. Not that she is weird…) Your face could launch a million ships, where the Beauty of Troy’s could only launch a thousand. (Yeah? Yeah.) Your hair is like a shaft of golden sunlight. Your lips….305

Are there any non-potentially-offensive metaphors for lips? If so, I haven’t found them.306

Oh well, it was worth a shot.307

*308

When you work at a library, you can’t help but wonder about certain things. Like what that kid, son of the Baptist minister in town, is doing checking out half a dozen books about alchemy. Or who returned this book about UFOs, and how much of it did they believe, and how much did they laugh at. And who was the poor unfortunate who had three books by George Eliot?309

I used to think that you could tell someone’s personality by what books they check out. Books about war and battles and armies went to males, usually gangly ones with glasses, who would never have made it in the battles they read about. Books about sports go to well-toned jocks who likely haven’t cracked the cover of a novel since high school. A curious amount of books about mysteries solved by old ladies and cats are read by old ladies with cats.310

Except for the last sentence, I was pretty thoroughly proven wrong. So much for generalizations.311

*312

Work, at this point, was no longer my entire social life, but something to be gotten through so I could spend time with her. I suppose, if not for her, I would have hung out with some of the morons from high school, and done stupid things with them, and cracked jokes, and laughed. And gone home at night and thought about what morons they were, and how I couldn’t stand them, and couldn’t wait for another year of high school and college and leaving them behind.313

School being more than four weeks away at this point, I liked to think I had all the time in the world.314

*315

Her parents invited my mom and I over for dinner on a Friday night. Izzy and I would both have preferred to see the movie, but (she said) there would be no swaying her parents. Their dishes were at least as nice as ours.316

Our parents got to know each other. Izzy and I exchanged glances and occasional eye-rolls. Things went along boring-pleasant through the meal. Izzy helped her mom clear the plates and bring out dessert.317

Her dad made some off handed comment about his current tragical work. “How’s that going, by the way?” I asked.318

He looked me in the eye. He had a disconcerting way of doing that, as if he could read your soul through those windows. “The crisis is coming,” he said. “Only one of the characters can’t see it.” I nodded, as if I understood.319

I didn’t think I knew Carly that well. So maybe she was just desperate, or something. Anyway, she showed up at the library while I was pulling an all-day shift, and asked when my lunch break was. Fortunately, because of how long my shift was, I had half an hour. She needed it.320

We sat on a bench, outside, in the shade of the library’s roof. A group of grade school kids laughed and chased each other on the wide green lawn bordering the library. Carly and I looked at them for a few minutes. She smiled, wistfully, and I had a wistful memory of when I was that age—it seemed a lifetime ago. Things were simple then, more direct. More innocent. I heard a shout of “Fuck!” from one of the kids.321

“So what’s up?” I said to her.322

She sighed. She stuttered. I waited.323

“I—it’s probably stupid.”324

“I’ll never know unless you tell me.”325

“I… you know how Brent can be kind of an asshole?”326

“I guess.” I didn’t know Brent that well.327

“Well, the other night, he, he was , and… He kind of yelled at me. A lot. He said some really nasty things. I… I don’t want to say them, and after a while they didn’t make much sense (like I said, ), but the point was… um, some of them were, that I didn’t understand him, that after all this time I should know him better, that I must really hate him, that I couldn’t possibly love him… That one really hurt. I don’t know why. Oh hell, I don’t know…” She leaned over and her face disappeared in her hands. I thought she was crying, and wondered what I should do about it, and wished Izzy were here…328

But Carly straitened up, and her eyes were dry, her cheeks clean. I glanced at my watch, trying not to be obvious about it.329

“You have to get back to work…” she said.330

“I’ve got a few minutes,” I said.331

She looked relieved. “I… I don’t know what to do.”332

I shrugged, having little experience to draw on. “You’ll have to decide. He’ll call you, and say he was , and apologize profusely, and beg forgiveness, and blah blah blah. He may even try to do something to make it up to you. So you’ll have to decide if you can forgive him or not.”333

Suddenly I wished I hadn’t phrased it that way. She knew she was supposed to forgive people. But I wanted her to get rid of him, get far away from him. But what could I do?334

“Where did all this happen?” I said, trying gently to see if she wanted to talk more.335

“At… At some party. One of his friends. You’d know the name, if I could remember it. It was late, some people had left, we were chilling outside… There was kind of a clump of people who saw, and they kind of stared and looked uncomfortable and I could see they were wondering whether to get help. But none of them did anything.”336

I grunted acknowledgement. I couldn’t explain to her—I couldn’t explain to myself at that point—but I wished I’d been there. I wished I’d seen Brent yelling at her, and I wished I’d punched him.337

She got up. “I should let you get back in there.” She made a helpless gesture, as if she’d forgotten how to speak. She looked at me, as if she wanted to say a bunch of things and words escaped her. “Thanks,” she said finally. We hugged awkwardly.338

I watched her walk to her car, and watched her peel out of the parking lot.339

Ten minutes later, she was dead.340

*341

“It was just an accident,” said her dad, on the phone. I had arrived home half an hour before he called. “She was going too fast around the turn, and she jerked the wheel at the wrong moment, or… Or something.” His voice was strange.342

I couldn’t talk. “I…” I choked. “I’m so sorry…”343

The noise from his end could have been a sigh, or a sob. “Thanks. Just… Have your mom call me, when you get the chance, okay?”344

“Sure.” He hung up then. I called Izzy.345

“Trist?” she said when she answered the phone.346

“Yeah,” I said, but didn’t get a chance to say more.347

“I’m coming over there. I have to tell you something.”348

She arrived a few minutes later. Her eyes were wide, though not quite with fear, and not quite with sadness. I sat next to her on the couch. I turned off the TV, which was blaring for some reason.349

“It made sense,” she said.350

“What?” I said.351

“I had a vision the other night,” she was breathless. “And it made sense. I knew what it meant. I know what it meant.”352

I stared at her. This wasn’t all she wanted to tell me. I somehow knew what she would say, and it was ridiculous. Tears started to my eyes anyway.353

“I die,” she said.354

“What?” I said.355

“I know,” she said. “But that’s the only thing it could mean. There’s a car crash, and I die.”356

A cold chill crawled through my body. “That couldn’t be it—” and I told her about Carly.357

Immediately her eyes filled with grief. “That’s horrible. And poor Mr. Roberts, his wife and now his daughter… But that’s not what this is. It was about me. And you.”358

I looked at her, and the cold chill turned to a hot shiver of fear. “Me?”359

“I wasn’t going to tell you this part, but yes, you. You’re all right. You… you go on to great things.”360

“Without you?” I said, and the first inexplicable tears coursed down my cheeks.361

“Yes,” she said, calmly wiping my cheeks with her fingers. “But I’m selfish. I’m the lucky one.”362

I took her hand as the grief in my chest, for Carly and for this ridiculousness, overflowed. I looked around, and there we all were, all of us, everybody I had ever known. We were sitting at a table, and eating food, and drinking of an exquisite aged wine. But some of us were not eating, were not drinking. We were sitting off to the side, ignoring the others.363

And after the meal was cleared, we cast dice, in some kind of game we all understood implicitly. Some of us who had eaten the meal, being well-fed, expected to be given a better chance at the dice. But we succeeded and failed, randomly (if the dice were indeed random) just as the rest of them. Some of us got angry about this, and shouted for our host (whoever that might be) to come and settle things in our favor. But to no avail. The fed and the unfed played on, and the dice favored none.364

*365

She was next to me on the couch, with her arms around me, and the tears were streaming down my face. That’s how mom found us when she got home.366

I told her about Carly, but not about Izzy’s vision. I couldn’t, couldn’t possibly tell her about that. Mom called Mr. Roberts, and extended her sympathy, and they began talking. Mom disappeared into what had been my dad’s den, and shut the door. Her voice was muffled, and later her sobs were too.367

I made some supper for Izzy and I, but we hardly ate. We hardly spoke. I stared at the tiled floor, as if trying to decode in its pattern the secret of the universe. It was the worst night of my life, and I was glad Izzy was there to share it with me. I ached.368

*369

A couple days later was Carly’s funeral. I went in the doors of the church, my mom on my arm, wearing somber clothes. Mr. Roberts nodded to us, and there were tears in his eyes. He didn’t really see us.370

Why do we celebrate at births and weep at funerals? I thought. Because we are not the ones involved.371

I saw Brent standing in the narthex, looking out of place. I left my mom’s side and went to him. He started to say something, then he hugged me. His tears wet my shoulder. He stepped back with a look of defiance.372

I left him and went to the door. On a table outside the sanctuary, filled with church flyers and such things, there was a Book lying open, as if somebody had stopped reading suddenly and put it aside. I picked it up.373

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.374

I put the Book aside, and went into her funeral.375

*376

“Have you told your parents?” I asked Izzy, in the darkened theatre, a few days later.377

“Yeah,” she said. “No. My dad was there when I snapped out of it. I looked at him and he nodded, and I knew he understood. Something about being a writer—you know things, if you have the courage to know them. My mom… I couldn’t tell her. You know?”378

“Yeah. So is it tonight?379

“Who knows? You know what I’d do if I knew the world were going to end tomorrow?”380

“What?”381

“I’d go out and plant a tree.”382

I laughed, and carried her from the theatre. She let me.383

*384

A week later. My shift at the library was about to end, when the phone jangled. I picked it up, hoping it wouldn’t be anything complicated.385

“Hello?”386

“Trismegistus?” It was her dad.387

“Yeah,” I said, grinning slightly.388

“My daughter is at the dance school, and she needs a ride. Would you mind picking her up?”389

“Sure,” I said, thinking this was slightly odd. “I’ll head over there when my shift ends. Five minutes.”390

I picked her up, and set out for her house. She had been there in preparation for fall classes; they were seeing where she was, skill level and so forth.391

We talked of that, and of other things of even less importance. I stopped at a stop sign, near the outskirts of town (it was a pretty day, so we had decided the long way home, with its country roads, would be best). A car was coming up on the right, but he was a little way off yet.392

“Go,” she said. “He’ll stop.”393

I hesitated, then acted on her advice. He didn’t stop.394

I grasped her hand as he plunged into us. Her hand was cold.395

*396

When I woke up, I was alone on the couch, and it was the middle of the night. I found on my chest a note from my mom. Don’t get up. Your old baby monitor’s behind you. Call, and I’ll come.397

I didn’t call. I looked around the room, realizing that it looked basically as it had when Izzy was alive. Well, except for the depression in the couch, and the wetness around it, where my mom had laid her head and cried.398

I was sapped of all strength, and I drifted to sleep again. She was there, behind my eyelids, offering me her hand.399

I took it, and she led me forward, through a long straight hall, lit by torches on either side. The light fell incidental in the darkness, making the shadows dance and leap. We knelt before an altar, heads bowed. I could not resist looking to either side. My dad was there, next to me, and next him my mom. On the other side of Iseult I saw her mom and her dad, and a boy who looked like her (her brother, I somehow knew). Mr. Roberts was there, and Carly, and her mom. Brent was there too, and tears of despair ran down his face. He crossed himself, over and over and over, until someone laid a hand on his head. His tears dried, and he bowed his head deeper still.400

And we ate, and we drank, and we were sated and filled.401

I was awakened by my mom, some incidental noise she made. I was on the couch, in my own house. And I was crying, because I missed my home.402

*403

The rain came down, pouring from the heavens. It fell on the gravestones, on the earth between them. It fell on the small funeral party, now breaking up, friends and neighbors and relatives going their slow, separate ways. It fell, steadily, on the living and on the dead.404

I stayed by the grave and stared a while. I don’t know what I was thinking; I didn’t know what to think. It was all so confused. Push on, I guessed, push through. Have faith.405

Her dad was next to me. He bent down to the mound of raised earth, and placed a single rose on her grave.406

“Vanity of vanities,” said her father. “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity."