What We Leave Behind (16 page)

“I’m so sorry,” I said, unable to muster any other words.

He didn’t say anything. He just stared out past me.

Then, “Look, Emily’s inside, so I really can’t stay long. We’re just picking up some things.”

He still wouldn’t look at me. He gazed into the distance. “She’s here?” I asked.

My question brought his eyes to mine. They were bloodshot. I saw a coldness in them I’d never seen before.

He said, “I think it’d be best if you don’t come to the funeral. It’ll just complicate things. My dad liked you a lot, I know, but it’ll be easier for us, for me, if you just don’t…I’m already feeling terrible about…”

I was starting to understand.

“Emily and I are leaving for Boston right after shiva.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Jonas,” I interrupted. “Don’t do this to yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“We can’t see each other anymore.”

My head shook back and forth, resisting each sentence.
He doesn’t realize what he’s saying. He’s upset. He’s confused
.

“We can’t be anything to each other anymore.”

My body was racked with fear.

I tried to maintain control of my voice. “How could you do this? How could you do this to me?”

He didn’t answer. He looked right through me as if I wasn’t there at all.

Was he preparing me for this the other night?
This
, this ugliness? What I thought was love staring me in the face, was it something else? When he looked at the photo I had given him, he had said my eyes were sad, and they were. They were eyes that had learned that good-bye was no different than death, that good-bye meant never seeing someone again, never touching someone again. Didn’t he know what his leaving would do to me?

The moment that had passed between us was now eclipsed by a cloud of distrust.

“You’ve been a very good friend,” he said, as if he was signing my yearbook and sending me on my way. “Treasure the memory, ’cause it’s never going to happen again.” Then he turned and walked away, and that was it. Quickly, he entered my life. Abruptly, he departed. And I understood what it felt like to have the ground swallow you up and how agonizing and painful it can be when someone you love takes your heart, rips it out of your chest, and stomps it on the floor.

“Jessica,” I heard my mother calling from outside my bedroom door. It was morning, but I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to feel the rush of pain again. Its grip was paralyzing, choking me of life.

“Jessica,” she said it again, louder. “Beth’s here.”

I rolled over in my bed, the sheets sticking to my legs. Beth poked her head through the doorway and entered the room. “Is it alright if I come in?”

“You’re already in,” I said, a statement I regretted before I had the chance to disband it.

I watched her open my drawers and throw a change of clothes at me. Beth was not about to watch me wallow in self-pity. “I’ll be waiting for you outside in the car,” she said. Then she looked at her watch. “You have eight minutes.”

When I got into Beth’s car, I slammed the door shut to let her know how angry I was by her intrusion.

“Slam away,” she said. “Get all that anger out.”

I didn’t say anything. It was better for the both of us.

We drove through the neighborhood, and I looked out the window for a part of the familiar terrain to be whole again, to be recognizable. My neighborhood, that just yesterday was familiar, had morphed overnight into flimsy shades and ghosts, a land without substance.

Beth stopped at a red light. She slammed so hard on the brakes that it jolted me from my trance.

“Go ahead,” she said, “blow on it.”

I looked around. There were no other cars on the road. The clock on the dashboard told me it was too early on a Sunday for anyone to be out driving.

Neither of us moved. The light changed to green. Then it changed to yellow. Beth didn’t take her foot off the brakes. The light changed back to red again.

“Blow,” she said again; this time she demanded me to, and I couldn’t ignore her.

“Why are you doing this, Beth?” I asked.

“Just blow, Jessie. Blow the damn light.”

All I had to do was blow, and it would turn green. That’s the way it always worked. That’s the way my mother had taught me when we used to drive in her car. We’d stop at the red street light and she’d tell me when to blow, and the light would magically turn green.

“I’m not doing it,” I told her. “I don’t know why you’re doing this.” My hands wrapped around my forearms, protecting me from her response. Tears welled up in my eyes.

Beth put the car into park, took her foot off the gas. We were sitting in the middle of the road. She switched on the hazards. Its tapping sound was the only noise between us.

I looked up as the light switched again from red to green to yellow and then back around again. Red green yellow, red green yellow. The repetition of light and the beating sound of the blinkers unnerved me. Nobody was blowing. No cars were in sight.

I don’t know how much time passed before she turned the hazards off and put the car into gear.

“And you don’t have control over people leaving either,” was all she said.

1994–2001

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

-Albert Schweitzer

Today the ocean’s waves are disorderly and unkind. I watch them fingering the shore—coming close and backing away. The sea is a grayish hue that I’d never seen, full of somber regret. I reach for the blanket I am sitting on and wrap it around my shoulders. The movement sends a sharp pain through my leg and up through my back. I’m almost certain it stops in my stomach.

Searching the span of beach, I see that I am not alone. A little girl—about five—and her mother are building a sand castle nearby. Other than myself, they are the only ones brave enough to venture out on this chilly afternoon.

The daughter is determined and playful at the same time. Her movements are controlled as she scoops the sand into her shovel and drops it haphazardly on top of the other piles.

I watch them for more than an hour. Shaping, smoothing, decorating. The little girl’s patience is wearing thin. Her mother is executing the finishing touches.

I look away from this family to stare out at the ocean. I hear the little girl’s cries first.

“Mommy,” she shrieks, as I turn my head in her direction. “Mommy,” she yelps again, as if her mother can stop the wave from beating down on her castle. I look up and see their hard work has been washed away with the tide. Almost instantly, the daughter bursts into tears. The mother desperately begins to rebuild. I know that however successful the mother is, the castle will never be the same for the child.

I want to rush over to them and tell the mother to stop. I want to take her hands into my own to prevent her from making a mistake. And when she turns to me with unyielding surprise, then anger, I will explain it all to her. I will tell her that if she builds a new castle, her daughter will never learn about loss, about mourning. She won’t have the chance to move through her feelings and come out the other side, whole and recovered.

I don’t say anything to the very young mother. Instead, I stand up, aware that it’s time for me to leave and return to my son. I wipe the sand from my pants and hear the faint cries of the daughter as I fold the blanket. The mother is consoling her, rebuilding, frantic in her attempts to replace what’s been lost.

I begin the walk up the beach toward my car and when I step in, I look at myself in the rearview mirror. I’m reminded of who I am and the various castles in my life that have been destroyed by the fateful waves of nature. I have been unable to stop the waves or rebuild the fortresses and dreams. I can tell you about the force of the ocean, but first, allow me to return to better times when my castle seemed to magically form out of thin air.

The ring of the doorbell roused me from such a deep sleep that I lifted up my head, thought I was dreaming, and put my head back down on the pillow. This commenced my twenty-second birthday. Then I heard it again. I looked at the clock, annoyed at what I saw, nine something or other. Some of the lights on the digital numbers were out, so it could have been 9:13 or 9:33. I didn’t know, but I was sure I didn’t want to be awake before eleven.

I was living in Santa Monica in a duplex I shared with two fellow UCLA film school grads. Mom had moved to Phoenix when a job opportunity presented itself at the same time that Harold broke off their engagement. Her sadness forbid me from saying, “I told you so,” and reminding her that I was the one who had said that sometimes one love was enough. Beth had graduated from Boston University with honors and was moving to New York City to attend law school in the fall. I couldn’t imagine why Kevin and Patricia weren’t jumping up to get the door, but then I remembered the night before, and I figured they were both passed out, having partied until the wee hours of the morning. Some of us from film school had gone to Q’s to play pool and ended up a whole lot intoxicated. It was the usual industry crowd, agents-in-waiting, mailroom contenders, aspiring actors, musicians, video promotion geeks, a small, incestuous group. Sure, we all had this untamed obsession for music or film, but you’d think sometimes we worked in the emergency room at Cedars Sinai by the seriousness in which we rubbed elbows. Then there were the A&R guys, Artist and Repertoire, a complicated group at best. One of my roommates, Kevin, well, he was aspiring to be just that and changing the world along the way. “We hear the music in our hearts and then it’s our job to ensure the world hears it too. That’s touching people’s lives.”

My June birthday always marked the completion of some milestone. This year, it was my graduation from film school, finishing a successful internship at Fox, and consulting with a local radio station on its playlist. “You should program, Jess. You’re wasting your time in film school,” they would tell me, but I shrugged it off, acutely aware of my goals.

The doorbell sounded again. I got out of bed, wrapped myself in something that lay strewn on the floor, headed toward the door, and with eyes half opened, peered through the peephole.

He was tall and gangly, with a face hidden from view beneath a mass of curls. I thought he was a delivery guy but couldn’t figure out what he’d be delivering so early in the morning. Patricia, the aspiring actress, with enough drama in her life to fill an entire year of
General Hospital
, had promised me a strip-o-gram, joking that I needed a little loosening up. Could he be there for that? Or maybe it was one of Kevin’s A&R cronies. This one I hadn’t seen before.

“Who is it?” I called out.

“I’m here to see a Miss Jessie Parker.”

I turned from the door. I wondered if this was one more version of the game my roommates played with me—drinks to get me to talk, a little pot here and there, smuggling guys into our house to see if perhaps I still had a pulse. I’d learned what kind of messes loosening up could get me into and saved the melodrama for the movies and the collection of songs I hoisted onto film, the backdrops to an oh-so-common theme: I love you and I can’t have you and you’re breaking my heart, but I love you anyway, still, forever, and hey, it feels great.

He knocked again and I turned around, searching through the door to see if he was carrying anything with him, nothing that I could see.

“What is this regarding?” I asked, slightly apprehensive.

“I have a delivery for a Jessie Parker.”

“Leave it at the door,” I shouted, seeing through the small circle that he was getting impatient.

“I’ll just slide it under the door if that’s okay with you, Miss.” And I watched as the thin envelope found its way through the door without making a sound.

Kneeling over, I recognized the logo on the envelope at once,
SixthSense
. It was only one of the most well-known and successful production companies in the business.

My fingers were jumping, tugging at the sealed flap. The lone business card fell to the floor while I searched the remainder of the envelope for more, but it was definitely empty. The card with a Beverly Hills address was all that was there, and when I turned it over, it read,
10:30 sharp
, with today’s date.

I opened the door, racing to find the messenger, shouting in case he couldn’t hear me, “Who am I meeting there?” He was already out of sight. So I politely thanked him under my breath, closed the door behind me, and remembered, according to my misleading clock, how little time there was to get myself ready.

The ground floor reception area of SixthSense was silent and unassuming. I had given the receptionist my name. She eyed me coolly. I eyed her back, and when she told me to take a seat, I obliged. She didn’t strike me as one that divulged
anything
to
anyone
, so I dismissed the idea of inquiring any further and waited patiently like the
anyone
I was.