Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
JADEN
The day before yesterday we made plans, wrote shopping lists, and spent hours watching YouTube videos.
Today, after our last shared shift as part of the exchange program, I’m on my way to the house in Ray’s station wagon, loaded down with tools and bags for the green waste.
Fortunately, he won’t be moving for another month and was able to lend me the car.
The afternoon sun is shining in the sky, the day couldn’t be more perfect, and I can even feel a sense of anticipation mixing with my nerves.
It’s crazy how things change. How I can suddenly do something that used to be unthinkable—and the other way around.
Because there are quite a few things I no longer do, even though they were such a solid part of my life for so long.
Like yesterday at work, when I didn’t storm into the burning house myself to get the resident out. The women and men from the fire department did a great job with the rescue, in their protective gear and with their expertise.
And like now, when I stop at a red light, activate the hands-free system, and call Mom.
‘Jaden? No, don’t say anything, I’m enjoying this moment before you realize you called me by accident.’ Mom’s laughter comes through the line.
‘Hi, Mom.’
‘So you accidentally hit call Mom and didn’t hang up right away…,’ she says, amused. ‘You haven’t started doing drugs lately, have you?’
I guess that’s fair punishment for avoiding her since Camee’s death. ‘Not today, for a change,’ I reply.
The light turns green, and I hit the gas.
‘Are you on your way?’ Mom asks.
‘I’m driving…’ My voice threatens to crack, I clear my throat. ‘I’m driving to the house.’
On the other end of the line, it stays quiet just a fraction too long. ‘So you’re finally selling it, very good, that’s long overdue anyway,’ she then chatters, putting on a cheerful tone.
‘No.’ I overtake a cyclist, the tools in the trunk rattle. ‘I’m going to renovate it and with the garden…’
‘Nonsense,’ Mom cuts me off, as if I’d made a joke. ‘Sell it, that’s for the best, believe me. Out of sight, out of mind.’
I knew she would say that, and I also know what reaction she’s expecting from me now. ‘Lilly didn’t want it to be sold. She wanted me to be happy in that house in her place,’ I answer anyway.
Silence again. ‘Oh dear, honey, there’s someone at the door, I have to go,’ she suddenly gushes.
For a moment I consider telling her that I didn’t hear a doorbell ring, but then I let it go. At least I tried. ‘I understand.’
‘I’m sorry, we’ll talk another time, okay? Come over for dinner.’
‘Sure, I’ll…’
And she’s already hung up. Another sigh leaves my mouth, I put on my blinker and turn into Governors Court.
Nyla is waiting by the house and waves at me.
Gardening gloves and safety goggles dangle from the front pocket of her jeans, her feet are in rubber boots.
A shopping bag sits on the ground in front of her.
I study her, trying to see whether yesterday’s tightness is still in her.
She hesitated. There was something that worried her.
Is she afraid of the physical strain, or of catching an infection?
I park the car, get out, and kiss her in greeting. ‘Hey,’ I murmur softly against her lips. ‘I brought you something.’ Expectantly, she raises her brows and I walk around the car to pull the straw hat out of the trunk. ‘So you don’t get sunburned,’ I say, and set it on her head.
‘Thanks.’ Her eyes shine. ‘Okay, where do we start?’
I grab a pair of loppers and manual hedge clippers from the car and hand both to her. ‘We’re taking this garden back from the wild.’
‘On it,’ she says, and stomps off in her rubber boots.
Absentmindedly, I watch her go and try to imagine what this garden might look like one day. Mom insists I should sell the house, but it’s right to keep it. Will Mom and Dad come visit me here someday?
Nyla turns to me. ‘What’s keeping you?’
‘Coming.’ Absentmindedly, I grab the electric hedge trimmer with one hand and the bags for the clippings with the other.
When I reach Nyla, she looks me over. She definitely notices that I’m brooding. ‘Step by step, at our own pace.’
I shake my head. ‘That’s not it.’
‘Then what is it?’ She tests the pruning shears on one of the thinner branches and snips it off. ‘You seem so… I don’t know… thoughtful.’
I break up the branch Nyla just cut off. ‘On my way here I talked to my mom on the phone.’
‘How nice, is she going to help us with the garden?’ Nyla clips off the next branch with determination.
‘She can’t.’
She pauses mid-movement, a deep furrow forming between her brows. ‘Is she sick?’
I catch her gaze, then shake my head, and even though I try to smile, I can’t manage it. In her eyes I think I can see that she suspects something.
‘Do you want to tell me about her?’ she asks.
While I think about it, I step up to a shrub and start trimming the branches one by one. At first Nyla waits patiently, but when I stay silent, she turns back to the work as well.
‘When I was ten, we had to put our Labrador Milo to sleep,’ I eventually begin. ‘Camee was seven and couldn’t stop crying.’
I can already see my little sister huddled on her bed, eyes swollen, tears running down her cheeks. It’s definitely not a pleasant memory, but I let it rise up and tell Nyla what happened back then.
The door to her room is only open a crack, and I peek inside.
Camee is clutching the teddy bear to her chest that she actually had disappear into a box in the attic years ago, and she’s quietly sniffling to herself.
She hasn’t noticed me watching her yet; I could just walk on, but I’m still standing here.
I shouldn’t do it, it would be better for me, but I still knock on the door and push it open right after.
Harshly, she wipes the tears from her cheeks. ‘What do you want?’
I sit down next to her, not really sure what I should say or do. So I just sit there and put my arm around her and feel pretty damn stupid doing it. Ringing doorbells of strangers’ houses with her and then running away, I’m good at that. But this…
All of a sudden Mom appears in the doorway. It only takes a fraction of a second for her to grasp the situation and for the corners of her mouth to lift.
‘Who feels like getting ice cream?’ she asks, clapping her hands. ‘Dad and I were just talking about going to the ice-cream parlor, you know, the one with the horse in front of the door that you can ride on.’
‘That wasn’t even cool anymore five years ago,’ I say, even though I know Camee still loves the bobbing plastic pony. But right now she’s sad; we should be there for her, shouldn’t we?
‘Come on, you two, today is such a beautiful day, we have to go out and enjoy the sun.’ Mom comes over to us and reaches out her hand to Lilly.
She doesn’t comment on her tearstained face, nor on the soft whimpering she still lets out from time to time.
‘Come on, honey, we’re going to make it a really lovely day. ’
‘But it’s not a lovely day.’ Lilly folds her arms.
‘But of course he is,’ Mom answers, almost indignant. ‘And now, shoo, shoo, or Dad and I will eat all the ice cream by ourselves.’
‘I don’t want ice cream,’ my little sister yells at her. ‘I want Milo.’
For a fraction of a second Mom stiffens, then she turns to me. ‘And what about you? You want some ice cream, right?’
The difference between Lilly and me is that I’ve already learned how things work with Mom, and that it’s easier to just go along. ‘Sure, I’ll take one,’ I say, then I lean down to Lilly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring one for you, Camee. To eat later, if you feel like it.’
I’ve never told this story to anyone. Nyla has listened in silence the whole time and even now she doesn’t say a word, just looks at me with understanding.
‘I can still see the sadness in Lilly’s eyes from back then,’ I say quietly. ‘I did my best and still betrayed her, ignored her grief for Milo just like Mom did.’
‘How were you supposed to know how to handle situations like that if no one ever showed you?’ Nyla says.
She’s got a point. A burning pain grips me. I keep cutting. ‘While I wanted to forget Milo, Lilly apparently never stopped missing him. That’s probably why the dog is on her bucket list.’
‘But why didn’t she get one much earlier?’ Nyla asks, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘I mean, she could have done that without any problem.’
To her it may look that way, to everyone probably, but when I look back on our childhood now, only then do I realize what happened to Lilly back then—and maybe to me, too.
‘Losing Milo broke her heart,’ I try to explain. ‘Probably more than I realized.’
‘You mean she was too afraid of getting hurt again?’ she asks thoughtfully, cutting a branch into small pieces.
She was. ‘There was never any room for fear at home, just like there was no room for grief or weakness.’ Mom and Dad made sure the sun was always shining for us. We laughed a lot, even when there was actually nothing to laugh about.
‘Your parents left you alone with all those feelings?’ Nyla lets her arms drop, concern reflected in her expression. ‘How old were you back then again?’
‘She was seven, I was ten.’ My God, I should have been there for her more, should have talked with her about all the things my parents couldn’t even name.
I should have been a real brother, not one who only worked when it came to joint conspiracies.
But I grew up there too; I learned to keep unpleasant things buried in silence as well.
‘Mom and Dad acted as if nothing had happened. As if Milo had never even existed.’
‘That’s awful…’
Lost in thought, I nod. ‘I never knew anything else. That’s just how it was.’
‘And Lilly never knew anything else either,’ Nyla replies. ‘That’s why she went to the doctor so late, downplayed her pain, didn’t want to admit that something was wrong with her.’
Maybe. I don’t know.
Suddenly she’s beside me and lays her hand on my upper arm. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It felt right, and every time something bad happened and no one at home talked about it, it felt even more right. Easier,’ I try to explain. ‘I had a good childhood, I was happy.’
‘And that’s what you wanted to be after Lilly died, too.’ I don’t know if Nyla is talking to me or to herself, but either way, she’s right.
‘We all wanted that.’ Not once did we mourn her together; my parents just wanted to forget, and so did I.
‘On the day of the funeral, Mom took all the photos with Camee down from the walls, hauled the furniture from her old childhood room—which they had kept for years after she moved out—out for bulky waste collection. Where her bed, her wardrobe, and her desk had once stood, a treadmill, a rowing machine, and a weight bench soon filled the emptiness.’
In disbelief, Nyla shakes her head. ‘Just because you don’t want to see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.’
A few weeks ago I would have denied it; today I nod.
‘On the contrary, the things you don’t want to see are often the ones you feel the deepest.’ Her hand touches my chest.
I know that; I feel it everywhere. Thanks to this woman standing across from me in the overgrown garden, ready to see me through every low and celebrate every high with me. This woman I don’t want to lose for anything in the world.
I look at her. ‘After Camee’s death, nothing made sense anymore.’ My life ended with hers. ‘I distracted myself with parties, was constantly chasing the next kick to drown out the pain. I dropped out of med school, too.’
‘You studied medicine?’ Nyla raises her brows.
The memory of it feels as distant as another life. ‘Yeah, up to the eighth semester, even.’
Thoughtfully, she chews on her lower lip. ‘You’d make a great doctor.’
‘I thought so too. Until I lost Camee and knew it would destroy me to accompany sick people for longer than a few minutes in the ambulance and thereby…’
‘…build a connection that could break,’ Nyla quietly finishes my thought. My words seem to hit her; she’s probably thinking about her risk of getting sick again.
But she shouldn’t be thinking about that, and neither should I.
‘All my life I’ve been taught that it’s better to stay on the sunny side of life,’ I say quickly. ‘My parents are still there.’
‘That’s why your mom can’t come here. She doesn’t want to see Lilly’s legacy, doesn’t want to be confronted with everything it would do to her.’ Sunlight falls through the gaps in the straw hat onto Nyla’s face. ‘One day she’ll be ready,’ she says earnestly. ‘Because you’ll help her.’
Could that be possible? She’s been living in her make-believe world for fifty-five years now, and who knows what’s lurking in her past that I’ve had no idea about so far. How much pain she had to endure, how much suffering she experienced. What made her become the way she is.
‘Possibly.’ I give Nyla a hopeful smile.
The corners of her mouth lift as well. ‘Step by step.’
‘Day by day.’ With a deep breath, I lift the hedge trimmer. ‘And today: branch by branch,’ I say and press the start button.
Nyla turns to one of the smaller bushes, I step up to the huge shrub that has spread over the years to the middle of the garden and get to work.
Minute by minute, the pile of clippings grows higher, and bit by bit more of the actual garden comes into view.
I find the stream as well; a partly rotten shrub juts out above it.
I start cutting off its branches one by one and chopping them up. The last branch still seems intact; it’s barely possible to cut through. With all my strength, I lean on my tool, the hedge trimmer lets out a strained hum. When I’m halfway through, it starts to smoke.
I can manage the last few centimeters…
Suddenly the resistance gives way, I pitch forward with a jolt – and lose control of the tool.