Among the Dead and Dreaming. Samuel Ligon
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so unfair that it has to be Kyle when there are all these awful people whose deaths would make the world a better place, like serial killers and rapists, all the horrible people who hurt people, and I can hardly even believe any of it until I see her at the airport and fall apart completely, because it’s so unfair that I’m never going to see him again, unless I believe in heaven, which I don’t think I do believe, but maybe I do, though I don’t think you can just decide to believe in something like that.
Mom doesn’t look that horrible is what rubs me so wrong in the car on the Cross Island, like she’s only comforting me and hasn’t been crying for days. She tells me again what happened—a motorcycle accident on the Ocean Parkway, which I already know, and this rich woman, Cynthia, who my mother obviously hates, which is weird because she doesn’t get jealous, and I’m like, “He was cheating on you?” not sure if I hope he was or hope he wasn’t, and she’s like, “I don’t think so,” but it’s so obvious she’s lying.
“Was it over between you, then?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Why was he with that woman?”
“I told you, they were friends.”
“And you didn’t like her.”
“I didn’t know her.”
Everything she says is a lie. For the first time, I can recognize it, and that feels kind of cool, just that I can tell, but also horrible, and then I remember I’ll never see Kyle again, and I wish it was me instead of him, or me with him, the two of us dead together, since my mom hardly even cares that he’s dead. She was at school with me for two nights and then I was alone two nights, with Cassandra, my roommate, who seems really nice, but I was also missing home and my mom and Kyle, even knowing he was coming to Interlochen next week, our secret, unless he told her, which I know he didn’t because I’d be able to tell, but now he’s dead and I’ll never see him again. She tells me about this lunch we have to go to with the families—right this second, so I’m not even going to drop my stuff off—and I’m like, Are you kidding me? But I see how hard she’s trying to keep from crying, her face gone bloodless, and I feel it all coming up from wherever I’m holding it, and I can’t hold it any longer, and she lets go, too, both of us crying all the way to Rockville Centre, where this stupid lunch is going to be, and that makes me feel worse, or just so guilty because of everything I felt for him but didn’t mean to feel, just how he was coming to visit and how she never seemed to give him what he needed, but her crying now and feeling it with me, both of us crying now all the way to Rockville Centre and this stupid lunch.
Mark
I didn’t expect to see Nikki at The Pavilion, seated next to Kyle’s father, big fat Gino Pantopes. People weren’t telling me the plans, or I was forgetting them. Nikki looked nearly as worn out as Cynthia had, her face drained and washed out from crying.
She didn’t know anything yet.
The Pavilion was a wedding mill, with fountains and cherubs and a dining room upstairs offering a view of the rolling lawn and duck pond out back. Cynthia’s sister, Beth, sat between me and her broker husband, Craig, who Cynthia had always called Dreg, and Nikki sat across the room with Gino and a girl who had to be her daughter. Plates of food appeared and disappeared. I thought of how Cynthia would have hated this event, how we’d have mocked it together, the duck pond and Gino’s fat purple face and Dreg asking stupid questions. If I could have told her anything, I’d have told her how much I hated her and Kyle being remembered together like this. I didn’t want to be that petty, but I was. I looked at Nikki across the room, entirely self-contained, and then I heard my name and noticed Denys standing and looking at me.
They were all looking at me.
“So, that’s fine,” Denys said. “Diana and I want to provide these opportunities to share our memories of Cynthia and Kyle. We thought you’d start, Mark.”
I looked at my untouched plate, felt heat rush to my face. What could I possibly share about Cynthia and Kyle?
“I thought we’d go around the room,” Denys said, “each of us—”
“Oh, God, no!” Celia Pantopes wailed.
She was half out of her seat, Gino trying to pull her down. When he lost his hold, she stumbled out the door, wailing.
I got away from my table before anyone could stop me.
Denys said, “Well, we don’t,” and Diana said, “Please, everyone, finish your lunch.”
I followed Gino out the door, Celia struggling down the winding staircase.
I stood against the railing above them, watching them, unsure where to go.
Nikki came out of the banquet room, leading the girl she’d been sitting with, her daughter. She stopped to introduce us, and I stuck out my hand like a car salesman. “Mark Barlow,” I said to the girl, startled by how much she looked like her mother.
“We’re going out back for a minute,” Nikki said. “To get some air.”
It seemed like an invitation. I followed them down the staircase, past Gino and Celia hunched by a fountain in the lobby. I stopped to take off my jacket, then caught up with Nikki and Alina on the manicured lawn.
“Because I want to is why,” Alina said, snapping her hand away from Nikki and storming toward the duck pond.
Nikki seemed surprised to see me. “She’s upset,” she said, and I said, “Who wouldn’t be?”
Nikki looked away. “I know,” she said.
“I’ll leave you alone,” I said, and she said, “Stay.”
We sat on a bench in the shade of an oak tree, watching Alina make her way around the pond. “She seems like a nice kid,” I said.
“She is nice,” Nikki said.
A fountain of water sprayed up from the center of the pond.
Nikki massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “This whole thing’s so weird,” she said. “I don’t know what to say up there. About Kyle. About the two of us.”
“It’s not like you’re going to reveal some secret,” I said.
She looked across the water at Alina half way around. “Secret?”
“You know,” I said. “Everything you suspect or whatever.”
She looked at me and sort of shook her head—like, We’re not doing this—then looked away again. Fine by me. I didn’t know anything anyway. Not for sure. Long seconds passed. I had a memory in my mouth of Cynthia’s freezer burned forehead, even as I smelled Nikki through the humidity, vanilla or cinnamon, some kind of spice.
“This thing tomorrow,” she said. She stood and scanned the lawn, raising herself on tiptoes to look across the water, then sat back down. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t go to Cynthia’s service. It just seems crazy to me—doing them one after another like that at the funeral home. I know they were friends and everything.”
“I’m not going to Kyle’s either,” I said.
We looked back to the pond, and then I couldn’t help myself: “What do you think they were doing on that motorcycle, anyway—after midnight on the Ocean Parkway.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t wonder?”
She looked away.
“My mind keeps circling that,” I said. “All the stuff we’ll never know.”
“There’s plenty we’ll never know,” she said. “And they were close. So what?”
“I just want to know something,” I said. “Where they were going. Where they were coming from. Anything”
“It doesn’t make any difference,”