Chapter 77
— Chapter 77 —
Aubrey’s alarm is set for four AM, turned up so loud that it wakes me in the den. Coriolanus is purring into my neck, and I lie there listening to him until I hear Aubrey’s footsteps overhead.
“I got to go, Anus,” I say. He bites my chin when I move him.
Jam said he was going to come see us off. I didn’t believe it would happen, but he shows up at four-thirty and starts making coffee and French toast. I don’t think he’s been to bed yet.
I watch him for a bit before I say anything. I know he knows I’m there, in the doorway. He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t say a word. He pours water in the coffee cones, the fingers of his left hand playing a piano piece in his mind. Mouth moving slightly.
“Come with us,” I say, even though I know it’s a ridiculous, impossible thing. He’s still limping. “We have a few days of cushion built in. We could round up gear.”
He shakes his head. “But it’s nice that you believe I could.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” I hug him hard. Kiss his mouth and his cheeks and his neck. “You’re my favorite elephant.”
“You will always be mine,” he says.
The pipes shake in the walls. Aubrey is showering one last time. I know I should too, but it feels so final: my very last moments as this person in this house with this version of Jam. I want to stretch the minutes.
I sit next to him on the piano bench while I drink my coffee. We wheeled the Steinway to the other side of the sunroom, where the table used to be, where the support beams aren’t soft yet.
“I think it sounds better over here,” he says, hitting a few chords to show me.
He plays the intro to Times Square by Marianne Faithfull and starts to sing. His voice is delicate and higher than you’d expect from how he speaks, but it works with the song. His tone and those lyrics and the way he still sits at the piano with his back so straight—it’s almost too beautiful to bear. I sing with him at the second verse, all the words still on ready recall in my brain, even though I haven’t heard this song since we were in the car with his mom on the way home from the art center before we were even friends.
Jam stands to play the chords at the instrumental part, strong, sparse and powerful. He’s so bright and sad and lost in the music that I wonder if he’s taken something to get through our goodbye, but when he plays the final notes and looks at me, his eyes are clear and focused.
“What did she have hanging from her review mirror again?” he asks, because he knows my memory works that way, that if he gives me a trigger, I can crawl back into her car and tell him all the details.
“A pressboard air freshener shaped like a rose, the blue plastic lanyard you made her at summer camp, and two prayer bracelets. One was brown wood, and the other had bone beads carved into skulls, and one of the skulls was broken, so it hung sideways, and we called him Phil.”
Jam smiles. I think he can remember too, but he likes to know that someone else does.
Aubrey runs downstairs in her bathrobe, gathers her hiking clothes, and goes into the bathroom to put them on. I change in the living room. Jam watches like he’s trying to remember every bit of me.
“Come with us,” I say again.
“That’s not the plan.”
“Plans are stupid.”
He shakes his head. “Your plan isn’t.”
He helps us pack Step’s car.
Aubrey scraped off the VIN. In Georgia, we’ll strip the plates and walk away. We just need it to get us there, and I’ve learned enough from Shorty to keep it puttering along.
I give Jam the house key.
“I’ll take care of it,” he says. “Promise.”
“And Cory!” Aubrey shouts.
“I’ll take care of Anus,” Jam says, laughing. “I’ll stop by every day.” There’s a lightness to him now. I think the sense of purpose has brought him some relief.
I kiss him. On the mouth. Hard. Aubrey winces.
“I’m getting in the car,” she says.
I turn around to watch her. Just a second. And then Jam is already walking away, down the driveway. He waves one hand in the air without looking back.
“Here.” Aubrey slips a cassette into the tape deck as I get in the car. “He recorded this while you were at work. It’s called S-E-I-weirdshape-R,” she says, holding up the plastic case he’s labeled with a Sharpie on masking tape: Seier.
“That’s the magic Freya practices to re-weave destiny,” I tell her.
“Huh?”
“In Norse mythology.”
“Oh,” she says. “Because we’re changing our future.”
“Well,” I say. “It’s the end of this world, at least!”
Aubrey grins and shouts, “Lenny’s juice is not afraid!”
The car starts on the fifth try, and the engine hums strong. We left the windows open for a week to air it out. In the dark of morning, right before the sun comes up, the lights on the dashboard look so bright, and a little bit blurry. Step’s sun-faded sweatshirt is still on the back seat.
As I throw the car in reverse and follow the edge of the driveway out to the street; the headlights show us what we are leaving. The house looks better than I found it. Even though I know how broken it is, I’m glad I had the chance to repair what I could. The stone steps are still crumbling. The iron railing is still dissolving into rusty lace. Weeds will overtake my mother’s garden again while we’re gone. None of it really matters. There are whole towns under reservoirs, flooded and left behind.
“Eat,” Aubrey says, and hands me a pack of Red Vines. “We need the calories.”
It’s cold, but we drive with the windows down, listening to Jam’s song for us. The notes seem to ramble and twist with the road.
“Shit,” I say. “I swear this car smells like bananas.”
“It doesn’t.” Aubrey laughs, her hair blowing in her face as we speed down the highway.
The sun is rising and she’s beautiful.
We drive until we get to the beginning.