The Mourning After (26 page)

The loud buzzer signals the end of their foray into his mother’s psyche. “Saved by the bell,” she says.

Levon begins to unload the damp clothes, while Lucy remains seated atop the dryer.  Her feet are dangling in front of the machine’s door. “Move,” he says, and with the disobedience of a schoolgirl, she ignores him and positions her legs so that they are framing the door Levon wants to open.

“It would be a lot easier if you got down,” he says.

“It would, wouldn’t it?” she teases.

Ignoring her taunting eyes, he slowly fills the machine while she watches him in amusement.

What should have taken him minutes ends up taking him close to ten.  Instead of filling his hands with fistfuls of shirts and shorts and jeans, he takes out each piece one by one, cradling them in his hands.  He’s not even sure which items are meant for the dryer.  His mother is obsessive about things shrinking. He’s having too much fun being close to Lucy to consider what clothes should hang on the rack against the wall.

“If Ellen could see you now,” she laughs.

“Don’t joke about that.  Ellen has been known to show up unannounced at viewers’ doorsteps with a microphone and a camera.  Next thing you know, the whole school knows I’m doing laundry.”

“The world,” she says, correcting him, which reminds him of the girl from last week’s show.  Ellen and her crew showed up at the woman’s house with a truckful of cash. The woman was then locked in a clear, Lucite chamber while a leaf blower blew around the money.  She had two minutes to fill her pockets and clothes with as much as she could.  Levon was eating a bag of Cheetos at the time.  If there was food in the chamber, he’d know exactly where to put it.

The dryer door slams shut, and Lucy wriggles her body to the side, leaving room for Levon to manage the controls.  She is fixed on him, a stare that is filled with a multitude of emotions.  His fingers brush against the knob.  Lucy’s fingers are already there.  They make room for his, where they remain.

“Delicate or heavy?” he asks.

“Delicate,” she whispers.

Levon feels his palms sweating, and he knows it’s not from the heat of the dryer.

“Any new theories about laundry you want to share with me?” she asks, her words taking on an echo of vibration as Levon powers up the machine with his other hand.  She is so near to him that her breath touches his cheek.

He thinks back to his face in the reflection of the washer and the envelope that is folded and creased in his pants.  Wash.  Dry.  Fold.  Repeat the cycle. 
No, no, no,
Levon thinks to himself
. 
Time to break the cycle.  Time to find the guy who wrote that letter to Ellen, the one whose backside boasts of courage.

“Levon?” she asks.  “You have that face on again.”

Well, duh,
he wants to say to her
.  There is this gorgeous person draped across my dryer, and I’m about to make my move, leap into oblivion.

Without hesitation, he looks her squarely in the eyes and says, “I love you, Lucy.”

“What?” she shrieks, simultaneously jerking her hand away from his.

“I think I love you,” he stammers again.

“Oh, Jesus, Levon, you don’t love me.  Get a grip.”

He steps back from the machine as she lets herself down.

“You can’t say things like that.”

“What am I supposed to say with you sitting like that?”

She’s wiping the lint off her pants and bouncing around him. “Not that, Levon.  Say something, anything, but not that.  You don’t love me.  You hardly know me.”

He thought they had grown to know each other pretty well.

“Slow down and think about what you’re saying.  There’s no need to jump to conclusions. You think you feel something, but you don’t.  Trust me.  You might love me, but not in the way you think.”

The box of Bounce drops to the floor, and the fragrant towels scatter across their feet.  Levon hides his humiliation by taking his time to re-stack the individual sheets in the box.

“Levon, don’t be upset,” she says.

“Easy for you to say. I’m like the dark that ruins your whites.”

“It’s okay.  Boys tell me they love me all the time.”

Of course they do.  “Have you ever loved any of them back?”

“I’m not sure I’m capable of love.”

“Do you think that will ever change?”

She is quiet, which is altogether foreign to both of them.  She takes a white rubber band from off her wrist and pulls her hair from her face.  He concentrates on her white sweatpants.

“Why white?” he persists.

Lucy grabs hold of the sides of the dryer.  “You better sit, or better yet, document this in your journal.  It’s extremely personal.  I don’t share it with anyone.”  She’s thinking about the letter that she slept with the other night and says, “I’m allergic to the dye in most clothing.”

“Bullshit,” Levon says.

“I never lie,” she says, “except when I’m lying.”

“Really,” he says, “tell me about it.”

“One day, Levon. Soon, I hope.  I’ll show you mine, and you’ll show me yours.  What do you think?” she adds, tossing her head to the side.  “What do you say we spill all our secrets?”

Levon wrestles with this.

“But not here in the laundry room,” she continues. “Not when we’re puppets in Mom’s little play.  There are things neither of us will ever understand.  That’s okay too.”

Levon’s words are thick and clumsy like the Play-Doh he once shaped in his pudgy fingers.  When they finally emerge, he stammers, “I’m not really sure why my mother insists on doing laundry everyday, and I don’t think I’ll ever make any sense of any of it—not my mother, not David, not the spin cycle, not even you. I do know that if you were to sit here like that with me, I’d never say no to laundry.  I’d never say no to the great abyss.”

“That’s better,” she says, “much better.”

The holidays have arrived, and with them, a blast of exquisite weather and joyful tourists.  Miami Beach is cramped and crowded; visitors from all over the world are bursting onto its pristine beaches.  Restaurants and nightclubs are decorated with families and vacationing college kids, and Lincoln Road is vibrant and bustling with scantily clad bodies from around the globe escaping the frost.

Levon and Lucy are at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, and Chloe is finishing up a sticky collage with the help of a woman dressed as a clown.  Levon is bored and losing interest.

“What’s up your ass today?” Lucy asks.  “I’m the one who’s supposed to be upset.”  Levon knows she received a call from Ricky, and he wasn’t coming home for another week.  He’s been invited to go skiing in Colorado with a bunch of what Lucy deemed, “smelly frat boys.”

His parents had pulled out of the driveway that morning and within thirty seconds Lucy was at his door beckoning him to come outside.  “Grab Chloe and whatever she needs for the next couple of hours because I’m getting the two of you out of this house.”  Her mother dropped them off at the museum.  Levon noticed how Lucy’s mom didn’t ask how he was doing after the Thanksgiving fiasco.  There were some questions that people generally knew the answers to. Carol Bell was too polite to interfere.

A little girl approaches Chloe with a cone topped with pink and blue cotton candy, and Levon hurls himself in front of her.  The startled girl trips backward and reaches for her mother.  The woman snaps Levon a nasty look before shielding her youngster with an outstretched arm and leading her away from the creepy boy.  He hadn’t meant to scare the poor child—his response was a reflex, the natural instinct to protect his sister from deadly sweets.

Chloe holds up her completed artwork for them to see, which helps Levon forget the hypersensitive mother and her sugary daughter.  Lucy says, “It’s awesome, Chloe.  Nice job.”  Levon is staring.  The disjointed myriad of textures and colors make Levon want to cry.  Resting across the buttons and strips of yarn and lace are three cutout newspaper people.  The two boys are taller than the girl in the middle.  They are all holding hands, face-down on the construction paper.  He knows they are boys and a girl because of their yarn hair. Levon doesn’t have to ask why they are glued to the page backwards.  Nor does he need to guess which one of the boys is him.  Chloe has made that perfectly obvious by the hefty size of the one on the left.

Chloe’s freckled face turns to Levon for his critique.  Her brown, beautiful eyes would be enough to melt his resistance, but Lucy’s are watching him as well.  Seeing her flanked in a white sweatsuit, he wonders if her open closet looks like a giant cloud, if her drawers are layers and layers of deep snow.

Lucy throws her arm around Chloe and pulls her close.  The picture rests between the two of them.  If Levon had his cell phone, he would snap a photo of Chloe’s masterpiece held by his two brilliant girls.  He longs to be the center of their touch, the center of something.

“I love it,” he says.  “Almost as much as I love you, noodle.”

“Noodle?” she giggles.  “You haven’t called me that since I was six and a quarter.”

Somehow it felt right.  Today more than ever.

“Where are we going now?” She asks Lucy, tucking the project under her arm, diminishing it to the crook of her elbow.

“Follow me,” Lucy says, leading them out of the gardens.

Levon trails behind the two angelic creatures.  They frolic and wave in the crisp breeze, spinning around each other, smiling and laughing.  He is happy to see his sister relaxing and being a kid.  Despite being denied a normal, carefree childhood, she is alongside Lucy, dancing in the breeze.  That the two of them instantly bonded is not a surprise.  Finding each other is just another string of coincidences.

The Holocaust Memorial stands proud and somber.  Lucy and Chloe enter first.  Levon takes his time.  He thought today was going to be another thrilling adventure like Haulover Beach.  “Maybe she’s too young for this,” he says.

“I know about the Holocaust, Levvy.  They’re teaching us about it in school.”

Chloe spots a friend of hers from the neighborhood and runs toward her at full speed.

“Who knew this was such a hot spot?” he laughs, only because he’s nervous as hell and unsure of what to expect.

“Levon, this is serious stuff,” says Lucy.

He agrees in silence.

They walk through the arbor of history, garden of meditation, dome of contemplations, the lonely path, and finally stop to stare at the large arm jutting out from the tranquil waters, the sculpture of love and anguish.  They reflect on what they have witnessed in the many galleries:  children torn from their parents, the mass destruction of generations, the contrasting evil, black granite against the tender, unforgiving Jerusalem stone. Neither of them speaks.  Lucy wears her glasses today.  They darken in the sun and hide her thoughts.

Chloe returns with her friend and asks if she can go to her house.  The mother appears cordial and capable so Levon pulls from his back pocket the folded list of instructions he keeps with him at all times.  It outlines Chloe’s illness, what she can eat, what she can’t, her dosing schedule, and a list of their emergency numbers.  Then he searches his backpack for Chloe’s GSD bag, which contains suitable snacks and her next measure of cornstarch.  He hands it over to the woman as though he’s handing over his heart.  “I know your mother,” she says, “and we’ve had Chloe to the house a few times.  I can call her if you’d like.”

Levon imagines her interrupting them at Dr. Lerner’s office.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll let her know.”

The threesome hurry off and Levon is left with Lucy.

“Alone at last,” he says.

She is surveying the surroundings and the breeze ruffles her pants and hair.  The wisdom brought forth in the sacred spot incites her. “Let’s sit,” she says.

He follows her to a spot on the floor, close to the edge of the water lily garden.  Levon longs for his journal. The world is becoming a much larger place.  The symbols of the lost souls in the garden, the lily pads— he begins to see them anew.  “The water sustains the pads,” Lucy says. “Among the sadness and ruin there are signs of life and purity.”

The two sit there for a while, awash in their thoughts and prayers.  Levon stares up at the giant hand as it touches the bright blue sky.  Its shadow falls on the dark waters below. 
Lightness and dark.  The forces of evil and good.

“Do you see that?” Lucy hollers.

Levon turns to his friend who is pointing toward the water.  “There’s another one!”  He follows the direction of her short fingernails and spots the white flower resting upon the green pad.

Lucy reaches into her bag and draws out an envelope.  Handing it over to Levon, she takes off her glasses and dabs at her eyes and cheeks.

Levon wants to ask her about the ominous envelope, what it means.  Instead, he heeds its call and begins to read:

Dear Lucy,

Mrs. Bara and I will never be able to make sense of our loss and your pain, though we can offer you something that we hadn’t offered our son when he was still with us, something he was not able to give to himself: the lesson of forgiveness.

We have been angry, and we have mourned.  We have repeatedly asked God why?  No answers come. We find ourselves clutching to the belief that from darkness comes light.  From the depths of misery comes hope.  From black soil grow supple flowers.

I’m asking you to find it within yourself to trust the world again.  I am asking you, a young girl, to find peace in your heart.  I am asking you to understand that innocence is not lost unless you allow it to be.

Upon Nathan’s death, we came across this book in his room.

The pages were earmarked, and we left them untouched. 

Your name was scribbled throughout.

We are certain he wanted you to have it.

With my deepest respect,

Mr. William Bara

Levon folds the letter and places it carefully back in the envelope. Lucy grabs him by the hand and leads him to the sculpture of the mother who is hovering over her two frightened children.