The Grievers (11 page)

__And now your father’s sick, and I wish I had the words to make sense of everything I want to tell you.

N
EIL FOUND
a cramped pizzeria where a man in an apron stood behind the counter and tossed dough in the air. We ordered a medium pie and two iced teas and sat in a booth by a window where flies beat their wings in vain against the glass. We ate and talked. We sipped our drinks and ordered refills. Watching from a distance, a stranger might get the impression that Neil was my accountant or my insurance agent or maybe even a social worker assigned to deal with a mentally challenged adult with a penchant for rubber boots and brightly colored stockings. Up close, the impression I got was more or less the same.

This was my friend, I thought to myself as Neil filled me in on the details of his father’s illness: he was still in the early stages, still recognized faces, was starting on Razadyne, but the look of almost perpetual confusion and frustration on his face said that he wasn’t the man he used to be. There was a time when Neil and I talked all the time, when no secret was too great, no dream too wild. Now this was what passed for our relationship—exchanging the digest versions of each other’s lives in a fiberglass booth at some dirty, run-down pizza place.

“And the hits keep coming,” Neil said. “Madeline got a job.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

Neil’s head bobbed from side to side. “It’s in Baltimore.” It wasn’t much further than where she was already going to school, Neil said, but living in Delaware was too much for them—not the state so much, but splitting their lives between two cities.

“Two hours each day,” he said. “And for Madeline, it’s worse. The good news is I can waive into DC, so the bar exam won’t be an issue.”

I wasn’t sure what this meant, but I smiled and nodded anyway.

“My mother’s a wreck,” Neil said. “She thinks we’re abandoning her and my dad in their time of need.”

“At least you’ll get Packer out of your hair,” I said.

“
That
guy,” Neil said. “You wouldn’t believe half the shit he does. He called me at work the other day and asked if I could drive him to Conshohocken for a haircut.”

“That was me,” I said.

Neil laughed, so I laughed, too, but if I wanted to be honest with myself, I had to admit that calling him away from his job to pull me out of the mud suggested that I was at least a little clingy, if not entirely helpless.

“That was different,” Neil said. “You wanted to tell me about Billy. All Greg ever wants is a free ride and a haircut—though this time around it’s a ride to the hospital.”

“Is he sick?” I asked.

“No,” Neil said. “He wants an epidural.”

“No kidding,” I said. “Who’s the father?”

“It has something to do with his back and this girl he’s meeting in Chicago. He sent her a picture, by the way.”

“And it didn’t scare her off?”

“It was a picture of me.”

“Creepy,” I said. “Why do you bother?”

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I’ve been thinking about Billy lately. Maybe with Greg we can make a difference.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I still feel—I wish we’d done something. I wish
I’d
done something. Said something, even.”

“You can’t think like that,” Neil said. “It’ll make you crazy.”

“Too late,” I said. “Do you feel like going for a ride?”

“I have to get back to work,” Neil said.

“Me too, but there’s something I need to see.”

Neil rolled his eyes by way of protest, but a mischievous grin spread across his face at the thought, I guessed, of skipping work for one last romp with his best friend before he moved.

“Call Dwayne,” I said. “It’s in his neck of the woods.”

D
WAYNE LIVED
alone in a three-bedroom twin on the outer fringes of Philadelphia. As a civil servant, he was bound by law to live within city limits, but as a human being, it was the last place on Earth he wanted to live. The solution most civil servants found to this dilemma was to take up residence in the northernmost part of the city—north of North Philly and west of the Northeast in neighborhoods like Chestnut Hill, Manayunk, Germantown, and Roxborough—the same part of the city where Billy had grown up.

“Do you know what time it is?” Dwayne asked when we arrived on his doorstep. “I’m working nights this week.”

“I told you he’d be cranky,” Neil said. “The man needs his beauty rest.”

Dwayne stood, unamused, in his doorway, wearing nothing but a tattered brown robe and fuzzy blue slippers. In the two years he’d lived in the house, he only invited us inside once, and that was to move furniture. Since then, he’d painted the walls and had carpets installed, so whenever Neil and I visited, Dwayne stopped us at the door lest we track mud all over the place like a couple of wild animals. Holding up a pizza box, I said we brought lunch, but he only opened his door wide enough to join us on the front steps.

“It’s cold,” he said, opening the box. “And you took a bite out of it.”

“I got hungry,” I said. “Listen, we need your help. Can you show us how to get to the Henry Avenue Bridge?”

“No way,” Dwayne said. “Bad idea.”

Radio towers loomed over his house, red warning lights flashing in the gray, gloomy sky.

“I just want to look,” I said.

“Trust me,” Dwayne said. “The view is terrible.”

“I’m not talking about the view,” I said. “I’m talking about closure.”

“Closure? Please. Morbid curiosity’s more like it.”

“Morbid curiosity, then. I want to see it.”

“You crossed that bridge to get here,” Dwayne said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“We did?” Neil said.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“Christ,” Dwayne said, lifting a cold slice from the box. “Where’s the car?”

If I were a considerate friend, I’d have let Dwayne take the front seat, but the part of me that let him squeeze into the back of Neil’s Pontiac with my balloons and my giant dollar sign also told me it would be funny to force his knees up to his chest by pushing the passenger seat as far back as it would go. Still in his bathrobe, Dwayne called me an asshole, then grunted directions at Neil between bites of cold pizza.

Dwayne was right, of course. I
was
an asshole and probably still am, but the voice that told me it would be funny to crush Dwayne’s knees with the passenger seat also told me that my brand of assholery, if such a thing exists, was the good kind, the kind that let guys like us push each other around and call each other pussies and make jokes about each other’s mothers even when they were dead or dying of unspeakable diseases. Crushing Dwayne’s knees was like breaking his balls, I told myself. It said I knew I could fool around with him, knew that deep down he had a good sense of humor, and knew most of all that he could take it. If there was anything four years at the Academy had taught me, it was that the best way to tell my friends I loved them was through torture and abuse. But as we neared the Henry Avenue Bridge, I remembered that the lesson was completely lost on Billy.

The evening commute was hours away, but the avenue was already heavy with traffic as Neil parked his car and we walked the hundred or so yards of tree-lined sidewalk that led to the bridge. If anyone on the force saw him out and about in his bathrobe, Dwayne complained, it could mean his badge. They’d arrest him for indecent exposure or, worse, force him into counseling if the wind happened to blow his robe open at just the right moment.

“Quit complaining,” I said. “You had plenty of time to change before we got here.”

“Into what?” Dwayne asked. “I haven’t done laundry in weeks.”

“And this is my fault?”

“Maybe I was planning to do some today.”

“I’m sure of it,” I said.

“I’m saying
maybe
.”

I turned to give Neil a look of contempt for our sartorially challenged friend and realized that we’d lost him somewhere between his car and the bridge.

“Hey, pal!” I shouted when I turned around and spotted him about twenty paces back. “Are you coming or what?”

“You guys go ahead,” Neil said. “I’ll wait here.”

“No way,” I said. “We’re doing this together.”

“I can’t, Charley. I’m not good with heights.”

“Neither am I, remember?”

“No,” Neil said. “I mean it. I’m
really
not good with heights.”

“But your honeymoon,” I said. “The helicopter. You sent me pictures.”

“I bought them from a kid at the airport.”

“Whatever,” I said. “This is totally different. You drive across bridges all the time.”

“Driving’s one thing,” Neil said. “Walking’s another. You’ll want me to look down, and I can’t do that.”

“Nobody wants you to look down,” I said. “We’re only taking a walk. You need to trust me on this, Neil. It’ll be good for you. A chance to say goodbye to Billy on our own terms before all this crap with the Academy gets out of control.”

Neil kept his eyes on his feet and followed us to the center of the bridge. It was a slow walk, and the rain had turned to a fine mist. In my mind, I could picture Billy walking ahead of me. If I hurried, I thought, maybe I could catch him. If I matched his footsteps stride for stride, maybe I could place myself in Billy’s shoes and make him walk back home. Or if I stood where he stood and saw what he saw and thought what he thought, maybe I could reach back in time and stop him from doing what he did.

From below, the Henry Avenue Bridge looks like an aqueduct—stone arches curving down into massive concrete pilings—but all we could see were the tops of trees and the river coursing through the valley below.

A low concrete wall ran along the edge of the bridge. I laid my hands on it and leaned over.

“This is it,” I said, the arches of my feet tingling with fear. “This is where he did it.”

“Jesus,” Neil said. “Get back from there.”

I leaned out a little further. The drop had to be at least two hundred feet.

“He woke up one day, and that was it,” I said. “He got dressed, walked out the door and headed straight for this bridge.”

I hoisted myself up onto the wall. It was waist-high and as accommodating as a park bench as I swung my legs over the edge, one then the other, and let them dangle. Looking out over the trees, I could feel the tingle in my feet spreading to my knees. Neil looked away. Dwayne told me to cut it out. I could feel Billy sitting next to me. When I turned my head, I could almost see him.

“Come and look,” I said.

“For Christ’s sake,” Dwayne said. “Would you get down from there?”

“This was the last thing Billy saw,” I said.

“He was in a bad place.”

“Fuck a bad place,” I said. “He was the smartest guy I knew.”

I leaned forward, and the tingle spread to my elbows and wrists. My breath was shallow. My stomach was turning. It would be so easy, I thought. Not that I wanted to. Not that I was considering it. But I could see the attraction—a gesture so ordinary, like rising from a seat or stepping off a curb.

“Come look,” I said.

“We look, you come down,” Dwayne said. “That’s the deal, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

Dwayne took a step forward and peered over the edge.

“Neil?” I said.

“You said I wouldn’t have to.”

“You don’t, but it’ll be good for you.”

He inched toward the wall. He laid his hands on the concrete. He leaned over the edge.

“Jesus,” he said, and sank to his knees.

“Now come on down,” Dwayne said. “That was the deal.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Quit fooling around.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “I can’t move my legs.”

“Come on,” Dwayne said. “Just swing around. One leg and then the other.”

I turned my head, but Billy was gone. I couldn’t see him, couldn’t feel his presence, couldn’t even remember his face. He was there one second and gone the next. Down below were the tops of trees. Down below was the river. Down below was the choice he made, and deep inside I hated him for it.

“Fucking asshole,” I croaked. “Why’d he do it?”

“You’re the fucking asshole,” Dwayne said, looping a long, bony arm across my chest and dragging me backwards to safety. “Not Billy.”

My face was red. My throat was tight. I wanted Dwayne to punch me, to really let me have it for always treating him like shit, to beat the hell out of me for always dragging him down, to completely lay me out for always turning everything into a joke, but instead he just helped Neil back onto his feet and walked away in silence as cars and trucks whipped past us on their way over the bridge. Overhead, the clouds grew heavy, and the red lights of the radio towers behind Dwayne’s house pulsed slow and steady in the darkening afternoon sky.