Something right behind h.., p.18
Something Right Behind Her, page 18
They will give life to your spirit and grace to your throat.
Then, you will go your way safely and not injure your feet.
When you lie down, you will be unafraid.
What I could hardly bear about that were the throat and feet parts. Eve was someone who wanted grace for her throat. And who wouldn’t be reassured by the idea that your feet wouldn’t hurt? God, if death made your feet ache on top of everything else that’d be a lot to handle. Being unafraid, though, I was sure, was pure Doug, the reason he’d chosen the verse. That was what Doug wanted most, I knew in that instant. He would have wanted Eve to die unafraid. Her fear would have been beyond his capacity to withstand.
I didn’t go to the cemetery, because my parents didn’t think I’d make it, since I was still getting over what turned out to be a pretty intense flu. They helped me over to the O’Mearas to say goodbye, and that it was a nice funeral and the O’Mearas seemed relieved that my parents weren’t bringing me to the cemetery.
When we got home, Mom made me lie down on the couch in the den and shut my eyes. I was still in the black sweater-dress that she bought me for the funeral. I even kept my tights and boots on. I just lay there for about an hour. Milly sat next to me and read her book, and I just cried for a while - silent tears. I kept thinking about that day back in the fall, at the beach. I thought about how, even then, with her legs pretty much paralyzed, and her neck beginning to weaken, Eve didn’t accept that she was dying. She thought if the ocean could be so full of life, just a few feet off the Jersey coast, then she could be full of life too. But I knew starting really with that day that she was never coming back. I knew she’d never be there for me again.
Finally, I fell asleep there on the couch with little Milly sitting by my feet reading her book, and I was so glad she was there, and that she was Milly, and she was so quiet.
Since I was still feeling pretty sick, and I’d had the pregnancy scare, Mom took me to her OBGYN, who told me I was fine, and that everything was normal. This made me want to laugh, because I had no idea what that was anymore. I told her that after all this I was swearing off sex. She laughed and said that might be a good idea for the time being, but that, eventually, I would want a more effective means of birth control than just condoms, since they did sometimes break, leading to the kind of scare I’d had. That made me think of Carlos again, who I hadn’t really been thinking about much since my week of calamities began.
I had e-mailed Carlos about Eve dying and he’d sent a really nice message back. Carlos, it turned out, had a past. Carlos’ uncle had been killed when Carlos was ten and Carlos had seen the whole thing. It was a case of mistaken-identity. The uncle had been taking Carlos and his cousin to a Yankee game, and Carlos’ uncle was shot while they were all just standing there waiting for the bus. Carlos said that’s why he thought he was the kind of guy who never took anything for granted. I sent him a message back that I wasn’t at that stage yet, where you can tell how the whole deal is going to affect you, and maybe even change you for the better. I didn’t mention that mostly, so far, the experience had taught me that I am someone who deals with fucked up things by making things more fucked up. But maybe that’s not true, or maybe it won’t be true in the long run.
Later the next week, I met George in the parking lot and we took a ride down to the Milltown Trestle. That’s an old railroad trestle that guys sometimes jump off of into the reservoir. The water is barely six feet deep, so it is all about not smashing your head on some rock or something. It was pretty, though, with the ice still floating in the running water. George wanted to smoke, but I told him I was still feeling kind of bad. Then I told him about the pregnancy scare. He got real quiet.
“I guess the fact you waited until now to say anything should tell me something?” He said. He looked sad, like he might even start to cry.
I said I didn’t think I was in the right state of mind for a relationship, and he nodded.
“I get you,” he said.
“I’m sorry, George,” I said, and I was. Sorry how I’d used him to get over Doug. Sorry I was still messing with his head. At least I was trying to clean up the mess I’d made.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After about a month, people at school stopped talking about the funeral. At first, my nervous breakdown made me the object of a lot of concern. My friends all tried to get me to try out for the play to get my mind off things, and I finally did go out for a small part. Some of the teachers even asked me how I was. There was also a grief counselor guy named Craig who came around and met with people who were close to Eve, which turned out to be a larger group than I’d imagined, since Sharon and Gayle and a bunch of other girls who hadn’t been that good friends with Eve were acting pretty pathetic, which I thought was just a lot of grief-jacking. I didn’t bother pointing it out though. I figured if grief was something they wanted, they should have it.
Craig was really pretty nice and knew all about the MPC and all that, but he seemed more skeptical of those sorts of books than Randy was. “The thing is,” Craig said when I met with him, “you can use these catchphrases to help you think straight, but you can’t skip out on grief. It’s something you have to go through, and not just read about.” When I told Mom and Dad about him they said it was ok with them if I wanted to stop going to Randy and just see Craig.
What did happen that gave me something to be thankful for and invested in is Carlos e-mailed me that he is coming back to the states in June. He decided to blow off going to hotel school at Cornell. Instead, he’s going to go to Columbia, so he’ll be right in the city, a train ride away. He said he is going to start taking classes this summer.
My plan for the summer is to get a job down on the shore - something easy like selling ice cream or checking beach badges. Maybe Carlos will be able to come down and hang for a while. Mom and Dad said that would be fine with them.
In the meantime, I have play practice and regular school days. I still wish sometimes I had a friend who was as easy to be around, as much fun and as trustworthy as Eve was. It seems like, at least temporarily, I have Mom and Dad and Milly on my side, and that will have to do. I have Carlos out there in the “hopes and dreams” category, but not like as in a dream-guy. Sometimes I look at his pics on Facebook and I think that is one goofy-looking guy, because, really, he has a very toothy smile. And his ears stick out. And, he’s pretty scrawny. He’s a good writer, though, and I’m not afraid to tell him what’s on my mind. Also, I know he likes to hold hands, or at least he held mine a lot that week in the D.R. And right now, I’d like someone just to walk around with, and maybe hold my hand.
Sometimes, I still feel like all this stuff that happened over the last year is lurking out there - kind of just behind me - as if the past were, literally, hanging out there behind my back. Sometimes I get a little scared, like something bad is going to happen to me, or to someone I’m close to. I guess after something like that happens once, it’s pretty easy to think it will happen again. I guess that’s why there are all these books about how to deal with shit. Because there’s all these people out there, like me, who feel like there might be something lurking out there, making her feel just a bit unsteady, something she can’t see, but she can feel - something right behind her.
At least, for now, I can be thankful there is nothing looming over me. And I no longer have dreams about Eve that scare me. In fact, when I think of her now, I can picture her as her old, beautiful self.
She had a wide smile, with one small dimple on the right side that you had to know was there to see it. She had broad shoulders, and threw her head back whenever she laughed. She could eat half a pizza in a single sitting. She liked things that made her look too grown up, like red dresses, and silky pajamas, and her hair in a high bun.
I told all these things to Craig, the grief counselor, when he asked me one time how I wanted to remember Eve. I also told him I wasn’t afraid I’d forget her. Then I asked Craig didn’t he think our memories of people became a part of who we were? And he said, even better, we can sometimes take them with us into who we will become.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Alice Tasman at JVNLA for her constant support and early enthusiasm, to Daniel Hollander for his encouragement in all matters literary, to Writer’s Bloq for their innovative approach and amazing editorial input.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Hollander is a graduate of Brown’s MFA Program, a middle school teacher, and the author of two books of poetry. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Review. Something Right Behind Her is her first novel. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and three daughters.
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Claire Hollander, Something Right Behind Her
