What You Left Behind (25 page)

Joni leads the way to a little park. It's not much more than a small playground, a couple of benches, and a few trees, but the sky is just about dark, and we're the only ones here. It's a good spot.

She sits on a bench near a small cluster of old maple trees. Even in the muted streetlight, you can tell the leaves have turned shades of deep red and orange. A few are still green though, like they're clinging to the summer. Some just went straight to brown. Dead.

I take a seat next to Joni and put Hope's car seat on my other side, but she's starting to wake up, so I lift her out and hold her against my chest.

The crying starts immediately. “Sorry,” I tell Joni without looking at her, getting out Hope's diaper-changing stuff and making quick work of her dirty diaper. I give her a pacifier and put on the Washington Square Park noises, rocking her in my arms and shushing her.

A few minutes later, she's quieted down.

I can't really avoid Joni any longer, so I look at her. She's watching me.

“What?”

“You're really good at that,” she says.

“At what?”

“The baby stuff.” She nods toward Hope.

“You're joking, right? I'm total crap at this.”

Joni's eyebrows scrunch together. “No, you're not. You're a natural. You know, the first time I ever saw you, you were saving that kid from falling off the shelf at the store. Remember?”

I nod.

“At first, you let him try to reach the bag on his own, which I thought was really cool of you. Not everyone would do that. A lot of people would just yell at him to get down. It was how I knew I liked you. And then when he fell, you sprang into action without missing a beat, like helping that kid was second nature.”

We fall into silence again, and I think about what she said.

Have
I gotten better at the dad thing recently? I'm still not “really good” or a “natural,” but I think she might be right—maybe I'm better than I was. Joni's soundtrack has been a lifesaver, and I've had more time this past week to focus on the baby. Looking at her and not seeing Meg mirrored back at me helps. And, I don't know, ever since reading Meg's final confession, I think I've let the bad fade away.

The silence goes on way too long. Joni's waiting for me to say something. So I share the first thing that comes to mind. “Copse.” Random, I know.

She glances around the park. “Cops? Where? What?”

“No, not cops. Copse. With an
e
at the end. As in, ‘We're sitting near a copse of trees.' I've always liked that word.”

She laughs a little. “You and your words. What did you get on the Reading SAT?”

“I didn't take it. I was signed up for the October test last year, but then the shit hit the fan and I didn't go. I'm supposed to take it this November, but I'll probably bail again since I'm not going to college now anyway.”

“You're really smart, Ryden. You don't need soccer to go to college.”

I shrug. “I'll probably go to community college next year. Can't really live in a dorm with a baby.” I look down at Hope and run a hand over her head. “I think my mom's been trying to tell me that for months, actually.”

“I'd like to meet your mom,” Joni says.

“You will, I promise. Just not tonight because I'm pretty sure she's having sex with her boyfriend right about now.”

“Um, gross?”

“Tell me about it.”

More silence. Joni opens the bag of candy, thinks a minute, then opens a box of the Nerds. She holds the bag out to me, and I pick out a Swedish Fish.

“I thought for sure you were gonna go for a gummy worm,” I say.

“Can't. Gelatin. Not vegetarian.” She pours Nerds into her mouth.

“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”

“No worries. You just have to eat 'em.” She smiles. It's not a huge smile, but at least it's real.

“Okay.” It feels good to be talking with her again, even if it's about candy. “So, um, thanks for hearing me out today.”

“You're welcome. Thanks for being a pain in the ass and making me listen to you.”

“You're welcome.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” I say and mean it.

“I want to hear more about Meg.” The name sounds impossibly strange coming from Joni's lips. “You told me about how she got pregnant and died, but I'd really like to know more about her as a person. Why you loved her in the first place.”

I blink. “Are you sure?”

She bites into an Airhead. “Yup.”

I talk for a long time, and she listens closely, sometimes asking questions, sometimes not.

The last thing I say, as Joni pops the final piece of candy in her mouth, is, “I didn't go to her funeral.”

Joni looks surprised by that. “Why not?”

I take a deep breath, and it shudders on the way out.

“Because I was really fucked up. She died and I became a father all in the same day. Nothing made any sense.”

Joni moves her hand toward me like she's about to put it on my thigh for encouragement. But then halfway there, she pulls her hand back—slowly, like she's trying to make the motion seem meaningless—and places it back in her lap.

Guess we aren't going back to normal as quickly as I'd hoped.

“She was trying to hold on, to stay pregnant for as long as possible so the baby had a better chance of being healthy,” I continue. “In one of her journals, it said that the doctor wanted her to have an early C-section, to get the baby out and give Meg's body a chance to bounce back, but she wouldn't do it.” I shake my head, thinking how different things could have been if she had. “She would have had to have a C-section anyway, 'cause she was too weak to push the baby out the natural way, but she was waiting as long as she could. And then, when she was a little more than eight months pregnant, her body failed.”

“What do you mean, failed?”

I clear my throat and check my emotions. “It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was at her house, sitting with her as she watched some movie. I don't even remember what it was. She looked like she had fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was hanging open. But her chest wasn't rising and falling as it should have been—the space between her breaths was way too long and uneven. I called her parents into the room and grabbed my phone and called 911. We kept talking to her, trying to get her to hold on while we waited for the EMTs to arrive, but her eyes wouldn't open. They wouldn't let me in the ambulance.”

I pause a minute. I will not cry. I will
not
cry.

“Anyway, I drove to the hospital. But they wouldn't let me back to see her or tell me how she was doing. And then, after I have no idea how long, I was being led to the NICU by a nurse, and she was pointing at Hope through the window. She was so small—a few weeks early—and hooked up to oxygen machines, but the nurse said she was going to be fine. I asked her about Meg, and her face got sad and all she said was, ‘Congratulations. You're a daddy,' and she walked away.”

“She didn't tell you what happened to Meg?” Joni sounds outraged.

I shake my head. “I went back to the waiting room and waited for a long time. They wouldn't tell me anything because I wasn't a blood relative. And Meg's parents seemed to have forgotten about me. Or they didn't care. The hospital people just kept talking about how the baby was doing—because I
was
Hope's blood relative. I was
the
relative. I had more say over what happened to Hope than anyone. But I didn't care. All I wanted to know was when I could see Meg and if she was going to be all right.”

I look at Joni and am surprised to see that she's crying. Not sobbing or anything, but thin tears are trickling down her cheeks. “So what happened?” she asks.

“My mom got there, demanded to speak to someone who knew what was going on, and found out what had happened: Meg had died midsurgery, before Hope was even out. She didn't live long enough to be a mother, not for one second.” I pause to steady my voice and my breathing. “And that was it. Hope came home with me after she got the all clear, and I never saw Meg or her parents again. When the funeral happened, I was too out of it to know, frantically trying to figure out how to take care of a newborn.” I shoot Joni a sideways glance. “Let's just say it wasn't a great time for me.”

“You never got to say good-bye,” she whispers.

“Nope.”

She wipes her face with the sleeve of her hoodie. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you need that chance. To say good-bye. She got to leave you the journals as her good-bye, but you don't have anything like that. You need closure.”

I smile a little. “That sounds amazing, really, but I don't know how it's possible, except for waiting it out.”

She shakes her head. “No. We need to have a funeral for her.”

I stare at her. “How are we supposed to do that? She's been dead for months, and she's not buried anywhere. She was cremated.”

Joni shrugs. “We can have a memorial service, where everyone says something and you all say good-bye together. Alan can come, and Meg's sister, and your mom, and whoever else you want. Maybe we can light some candles.”

I nod slowly, thinking. “Are you sure you're okay with that?”

“Of course.”

My mind starts to turn with the possibilities. “Mabel told me her parents keep her ashes in their living room. She would hate that. Maybe…”
No, it's too crazy. We couldn't.

But then again, just because it's crazy doesn't mean it's wrong.

“Maybe,” I say again, “we could take them, or get Mabel to take them, and we could scatter her ashes at the lake, like Meg would have wanted.”

Joni's eyes go wide. “You want to steal her ashes from her parents,” she repeats.

“Yeah. Too much?”

“Probably,” she says.

“Yeah.”

She shrugs. “But it's worth a shot.”

“Really?”

“Sure, why not.”

My phone beeps in my pocket. It's a text from my mom asking if I'm all right. Guess they're done having sex. I text back that I'm fine and I'll be home soon.

“I have to go,” I say. “Can we talk more about this tomorrow?”

She nods. “You going to be at work?”

“No, my mom told them I'm not coming back until Monday.”

“Wait—you haven't been at work all week either?”

I shake my head.

“And I thought I was being all crafty to avoid you.” She laughs. After a second, so do I. It feels pretty freaking phenomenal to laugh with her again.

I put Hope in her car seat and we start back toward Joni's house. I want to hold her hand, but I don't dare reach for it. It's up to her to make the first move.

“Hey, Ryden?” she asks quietly as we walk.

“Yeah?”

“One more thing. I want you to know I'm okay with you having a baby,” she says. “It doesn't change the way I feel about you.”

Feel
, as in present tense. Phew.

“Thanks. You have no idea how good it is to hear that,” I say.

“But…”

Shit. But what?

I stop and wait for her to finish her sentence. She stops too.

“A couple of things. One—you cannot lie to me, about
anything
, ever again. It's really not okay.”

I nod. “I know. I won't. I promise.”

“And two…I can't be her mother,” she says.

“Joni, I would never expect you to—”

“No, listen,” she says, cutting me off. Her voice is gentle, but I can tell she's about to say something serious. Again. “Even if the three of us are together a lot, you have to do the feeding and diaper-changing and stuff. It can't be my responsibility. And I can't babysit either. I can't fall into that routine. Because I feel like it would be really hard to get out of the habit, and I may not know what I'm doing after high school, but I know I need a
lot
more time before I even think about becoming a parent. Does that make sense?”

I nod. “Total sense.”

“You can't rely on me like you relied on Alan. When I'm around, it's because you want to be with me, not because you need help with Hope. Okay?”

“Okay. Yes, got it.”

She exhales. “Good. Now let's go steal some ashes.”

“I'll do it,” Mabel says without hesitation.

I pull the phone from my ear and stare at it. Has
everyone
in the world gone nuts? You'd think this sort of thing would require a fair amount of coercion. Apparently not. “You will?”

“It's what Meg would have wanted. Plus, I doubt my parents will even notice—they're off in la-la land pretty much twenty-four seven these days.”

“That was a lot easier than I thought it'd be.”

“When does this whole thing go down?” Mabel asks.

“I was thinking next weekend? Sunday?”

“Sounds good. Did you tell Alan about it yet?”

“Not yet. I figured I'd ask you about the ashes first.”

“Admit it: you're scared to call him,” she says.

Oh
Jesus
. “What do you know about it?”

“He told me what happened—we talk, you know. Though if I didn't hear it from him, I would have heard about it from
someone
. You didn't exactly choose the most private place for your mental breakdown.”

“It wasn't a mental—” Oh, hell. “Are people at school talking about it?”

“Um,
yeah
. I mean, everyone knows you're dealing with a lot so no one's, like, making fun of you or anything. You could probably drive a bus full of nuns into the lake and still be Mr. Popularity. But the Shoshanna/Dave gossip is delicious. Of
course
people are talking about it.”

I sigh. “So you think Alan's gonna forgive me long enough to come to the memorial? We can't really do it without him.”

“Guess you won't know until you try.”

“Yeah.”

There's a brief silence. “He told me about Joni.”

I chew on the inside of my bottom lip. “He did?”

“Yeah.”

“So, um, what do you think?”

“It's not any of my business…”

“But?”

She laughs. “But…it's good she's there for you. Helping you at the party and all that.”

“She was the one who came up with the idea for the memorial,” I tell her.

“She sounds like a good person.”

“She is. Well, see ya, Mabel.”

“See ya, Ryden.”

I end the call and dial Alan's number before I talk myself out of it.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Alan, it's Ryden.”

“I know.”

“Right. ‘99 Problems.'”

“Nah. You're ‘I Used to Love H.E.R.' by Common now.”

Wonderful. “Well, I wanted to say I'm really sorry about pretty much everything, and thank you for everything you've done for me and Hope. I really do appreciate it, even if it doesn't seem like it.”

There's silence on the other end of the line.

“And, um, we're going to have a memorial for Meg. Next Sunday at the hidden spot at the lake your family took her to when you were kids.”

“I haven't been there in years,” Alan says. “How do you know about that place?”

“She took me there. It sorta became our place.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I didn't know that.”

“Anyway, Mabel's going to steal Meg's ashes from her house, and we're going to say a few words and scatter them there. You want to come?”

“Hold up—Mabel's going to
steal
her
ashes
? Are you fucking crazy? Is
she
fucking crazy?”

Finally, a logical response to this insane plan. “Uh, I guess?”

I can almost see Alan shaking his head in the silence that follows. But then he says, “You bet your ass I'll be there.”

• • •

All week, I've been counting down the days to the memorial.

I've had so much schoolwork to catch up on from the week I missed—though Mrs. Schonhorn said if I study hard for her test next week and get at least an eighty-five, she'll let the homework I missed slide. Love that woman.

Plus, I've had to deal with all the gossipy bullshit at school. Half the guys think I'm a hero for hooking up with Shoshanna, and the other half think I broke the bro code by trying to sleep with Dave's girlfriend. Half the girls think I'm a total asshole who was using Shoshanna, while the other half throw themselves at me now that I'm “ready to start dating again.” They're all a bunch of fuckheads.

I see Shoshanna every day in AP English, but she barely looks at me. I don't blame her. I haven't seen Dave much now that I'm off the team and spending lunch in the library to catch up on work. I hear they broke up though.

Joni hasn't been able to come over all week because we've both been really busy with work and homework. But I've seen her at work almost every day, and we're almost back to normal—joking, laughing, talking. No touching. Not yet.

Anyway, it's probably weird that I've been looking forward to the memorial—something else for my future therapist to analyze—but it's really kept me going. It will be nice to have all the people who are important to me in one place to remember Meg. 'Cause that happens, like, never. Or maybe I'm just looking forward to introducing Joni to my mother.

Sunday morning arrives, and I put on my favorite jeans and a button-down shirt. I wash my hair too. Now that Hope isn't crying quite so much, I have a little more time to work with in the shower. I'm never going to take little things, like having time to use conditioner, for granted ever again.

Joni borrows Elijah's car and meets me at my house.

I'm sitting on the stoop when she rolls up. She looks amazing. Bright red dress that's tight around the top and then flares out at her waist and black cowboy boots. Her nose ring is a black stone. I stand as she walks over and have to stop myself from pulling her into my arms and kissing the top of her head.

“Hey,” she says, smiling.

“You look really beautiful.”

She looks down at her dress. “You sure? I wasn't sure if the red would be appropriate or not. I have another dress in the car in case—”

“It's perfect.”

Joni rocks back on her heels, her hands on her hips. “Thanks. You look nice too.” She reaches up tentatively and brushes a thumb across my eyebrow scar, the corner of her mouth quirking up. Then her face becomes serious. “Are you sure you want me to come today?”

“Of course I do. Why?”

“I don't know, because I didn't know Meg? It's only going to be people who knew her and loved her. I don't know if they'd appreciate me being there.”

I take both her hands and look her in the eye. “I really want you to be there. Besides, everyone already knows you're coming.”

She gives me a nervous smile. “Okay.”

“Come on.” I nod toward the house.

She follows me inside, and we find my mother in the living room, dancing around to Sia's “Chandelier” with Hope in her arms. Mom stops when she sees us and holds a hand out to Joni. “You must be Joni. I'm Deanna.”

Joni shakes her hand. “Great song,” she says.

Mom laughs. “Oh yeah, we're going to get along just fine.”

• • •

Mom, Joni, Hope, and I meet Alan and Mabel at the turnoff to the one-lane road that leads to the dirt road, and they follow us in their car as we drive farther and farther into the woods until we reach the point where we have to go on foot. The beach at this time of year—bare and chilly, the water uninviting—reminds me of the last time I was here with Meg. We huddled together under a blanket, watching the water as if we weren't on a deadline. I can't believe that was nearly a whole year ago.

Mom squeezes my hand. “This is really beautiful, bud,” she whispers.

I nod. Now that we're here, the anticipation has disappeared, leaving only nerves and a slightly sick-to-my-stomach feeling in its place.

I get the candles out of my bag, and Mom helps me put them in the sand and make it look all pretty. Then Mabel removes a shoe box from the shopping bag she brought with her. Inside the box is a gallon-size Ziploc bag. And inside the bag are the ashes. Mabel holds it out to me, like she's actually expecting me to take it, like it's nothing. “I left the box where it was on the windowsill,” she explains. “My parents will never look inside.”

“What do you mean?” Mom asks. “Your parents don't know you took them? Oh, I don't know how I feel about—”

“It's okay,” Mabel says. She sounds really sure of herself. “I left some behind. For them to scatter themselves, if—when—they ever decide to.”

She's still waiting for me to take the bag, but I can't move. That's
Meg
in there. All that's left of her are millions of tiny gray flakes, one indistinguishable from the next, like the stuff that comes out of our vacuum when we empty the canister.

My gut lurches, and I force my feet to move. I barely make it to the edge of the woods before I throw up. I stay there, heaving, until there's nothing left to come out. I feel a hand on my back. “It's okay, Ryden,” Mom says quietly. “We don't have to do this if you're having second thoughts.”

I right myself and wipe my mouth with the tissue she's holding out to me. “No. Let's do it.” Everyone is waiting over on the beach, looking solemn. The bag of ashes is sitting on the sand now. Mabel is holding Hope.

I clear my throat and walk slowly back. “Sorry, guys.”

“Don't apologize,” Alan says, staring at the bag of ashes. “I feel like doing the same thing.”

“Okay, well…” I say. “I guess we should start. Who, uh…who would like to say something?”

One by one, we talk about Meg. The good stuff: the stuff we loved about her, the stuff we'll miss most about her. There are lots of tears.

Mabel goes first. She talks about birthdays and Christmases and family vacations and how she feels like she doesn't have a family anymore now that Meg's gone. Mom says how she didn't know Meg long but she's so honored to have been part of her life. And she thanks her for her amazing granddaughter. Alan talks as if Meg's there with us and tells her the entire plot of the most recent Korean import he saw. It's what he
doesn't
say that's the most clear though—he misses talking to his best friend about random everyday stuff. Joni doesn't say anything but places her hand on my arm to let me know she's there, and that's all I need.

When it's my turn to talk, I pull the pink notebook—
Ryden
—out of my bag. Here's what I figure: anything I say in my own words won't do Meg justice, won't even begin to articulate what she meant to me, what we went through together. Alan, Mabel, and Joni haven't read the pink notebook yet. What better way to say good-bye than to read her last words aloud?

I take Hope out of Mabel's arms and hitch her on my hip while I hold the notebook in my other hand and begin to read.

I take a deep breath. “Dear Ryden…”

• • •

The only thing left to do is let her ashes go. The six of us stare at the bag for a ridiculously long time, each waiting for someone else to make the first move. The candles have mostly flickered out, and it's getting cold. Hope is fussing in my arms. She's probably hungry. I smooth a hand over her hair. Time to get this show on the road.

They're just ashes. It's nothing to be afraid of.
I pick up the bag and wordlessly walk to the waterline. I close my eyes, rest my head against Hope's, breathing in the combination of her baby smell and the fresh lake air, and then look up at the sky. “We'll miss you forever,” I whisper and open the bag, holding it out to the wind.

In less than a minute, all the ashes are gone, carried away on the breeze, on their way to becoming part of the sand or soil or a bird's nest or the waves, working their way into the earth until they're nothing but a memory.