Henry
The row house on Charles Street is completely deholidayed.
Cal and Mr. Ross helped me with that the other day—the disassembling of the tree, the boxing of the Christmas odds and ends, the tossing of junk.
Seasonally agnostic again, the place feels as open and roomy as a fifteen-foot-wide home in one of the densest parts of the city can.
When I got here this morning, though, Brynn’s things were everywhere. If you didn’t know, you’d think she was just out running errands and would be back any second with iced coffee and groceries.
The grapes were sketchy, but the raspberries look okay.
I was happy to have Cal and Mr. Ross around for the grunt work, but I wanted to gather her things alone. I’m not de-Brynning, because that would be impossible, but it’s time for things like the reminder note she left herself about her upcoming hair appointment to be gone.
To quell the silence of being here by myself, I turned the TV on earlier and flipped until I found A Christmas Story. About halfway through I texted Grace.
You know A Christmas Story? You’ll shoot your eye out, etc. Aside from the leg lamp and bunny outfit, it’s not as funny as I remember.
A few minutes later I texted her again.
I kinda wish Ralphie would shut up about the goddamn BB gun.
My plan is to sleep here tonight in our old house.
If things go well, I’ll sleep here tomorrow night, too, and so on.
I brought my City Series over from the apartment and set the four pieces over the mantel.
Now I’m walking around the house looking for a spot to hang the Christmas painting I made with Ian.
There’s nowhere that makes sense downstairs or in the kitchen, so I head up the creaky wood stairs.
The narrow hallway outside our bedroom makes the most sense.
I hold it up to the wall, tilt my head. A few weeks back, I determined that my City Series was the best piece of nonadvertising art I’d ever made. This is better.
You remembered to submit your painting, right?
I texted this to Ian this morning. He replied, simply, yea duh.
You feeling good about it?
He wrote back half an hour later. not supposed 2 use my fone at school!!!!
You hear parents talk about how they’d take a bullet for their kids, jump in front of a train, wrestle an alligator. Ian and Bella aren’t my kids, but as I hugged them the other night after Bella’s knock-knock joke, I finally got it. I’d have done anything for them.
It’s too dark up here in the hallway, so I flip the light switch, but nothing happens except a sickly buzzing sound, and I remember what Cal said about a bad socket.
“Shit,” I say.
I flip again, hoping for a domestic miracle, but no luck. I could call Cal and ask him to come over and fix it, but constantly demonstrating my own helplessness is exhausting. Then I remember something he told me once a few years ago.
Brynn and I were over at Cal and Sally’s for dinner. While Brynn and Sally hung out inside, I sat with Cal out back and watched him repair a crack in their stone patio.
“How do you know how to do all this shit, anyway?” I asked. “Like, where did you learn? Definitely not from Dad.”
“Trial and error, mostly,” he said. “I’d try something, fuck it up, then try not to fuck it up the next time. Oh, and when in doubt,” he added, “there’s a video for just about everything on YouTube.”
I find our old stepladder in the basement, and after sitting through a fifteen-second ad for batteries, I start watching a video on my phone about the ins and outs of light socketry.
A man named Herb tells me to start by checking the circuit breaker.
Even I know that’s a fool’s errand because Cal would’ve done that, but I hit Pause and do it anyway.
Next, Herb tells me to make sure the bulb isn’t bad, because changing light bulbs is “a heck of a lot easier than fixing whole darn sockets.” I hit Pause again and climb the stepladder.
Once I figure out how the screws work, the light fixture comes away easily, and maybe this is a turning point for me.
Maybe I’ll do the second half of my life as a guy who fixes things.
I set the fixture on the floor just as I hear the scene downstairs, where dumb Ralphie finally shoots himself in the face.
“You deserve it, you little shit.”
Back on the stepladder now, I tap the bulb.
Nothing happens, so I give it a gentle twist. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” I whisper.
There’s a gritty sound as it turns, but then it starts to break apart at the base, and now half the bulb is in my hand and the other half is stuck in the goddamn socket.
“Shit,” I say again.
I’m not giving up, though. The base of the bulb made a few rotations before the glass broke. If I can get a grip on it from the inside with my fingers, I bet I ca—
I had my wisdom teeth removed the summer before art school. I was nervous as I sat in that weird pleather torture chair because, a.) I’d heard horror stories about the recovery, and b.) I’d never been under anesthesia before.
The oral surgeon, an older guy with a framed photo of Keith Richards on the ceiling, told me not to worry.
“It’s like a little Sunday nap,” he said before telling me to count backward from one hundred.
The lights went out somewhere around ninety-seven, then, what felt like a split second later, a nurse was shaking me and everything tasted like pennies.
Henry?
This feels like that: like no time has passed at all. I was on the stepladder reaching into the socket, now I’m on the floor. I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding, but it doesn’t seem like that much, as far as blood goes, which is good.
Henry?
Brynn is on the floor with me, her legs crisscrossed. She’s wearing the outfit she wore on her trip.
There you are.
She smiles. Hey.
I wonder if I’m dead. That wouldn’t be so bad. Brynn is finally here. We’re in our house together again. I’m hurt, I think, but nothing hurts.
Don’t worry, you’re not dead.
What am I then?
Somewhere in between. That means we don’t have much time.
God, look at you. You’re beautiful.
She smiles again, and it aches to see.
Sorry. It’s just that I’ve kind of forgotten exactly what you look like. Now here you are.
She touches my head, and her hand is so warm. You’re gonna need stitches. And you probably have a concussion.
What happened?
You electrocuted yourself. Then you hit your head on the banister. You really should’ve called Cal.
I’ve missed you.
I know.
I’ve tried talking to you. A lot.
I know that, too. But that’s not how this works.
But Grace said—
I know what Grace said, Henry.
You do?
I do. Grace is just sad, though, like you, and she’s doing the best she can to get through the day. Tim is all in her head.
Seventeen freckles across her nose—from cheekbone to cheekbone. I counted them once. The tiny scar on her chin from a junior high field hockey mishap. Her long fingers. Those eyes. How could I have forgotten these things?
Wait. Does that mean you’re in my head?
She’s holding my painting in her lap now. She touches where the sky blends from yellows to grays. This is really good. I loved this about you—how you could make things like this.
Thanks. You should see Ian’s, though. It’s even better. I told you about him. He’s so talented, Brynn. Such a sweet kid.
You could really help him, you know. And I don’t just mean painting pictures of elves and reindeer. The world can be tough for boys like Ian.
I know.
Bella, too.
I think of the shoulder of my sweater, wet from her tears.
God, Henry, that little girl needs you so much. She’s struggling.
I know.
Brynn is fading again, like before, her edges blurring, and I hate it because I somehow know that this will never happen again. This is our goodbye.
Now, let’s talk about Grace.
Grace?
You could love her, you know.
But I love you.
She looks up—not at the ceiling, exactly, but beyond, the way we look at stars in the darkest part of nighttime.
I know you do. But I’m gone, Henry. And Grace is here.
And if you let yourself, you could love her.
And even though she acts tough and would probably get along just fine without you, I think she could love you, too.
I don’t tell Brynn that I know this because I don’t want to hurt her feelings.
I do know, though. I’ve felt it, the possibility of being with Grace, of loving her.
I think of her Crocs and sweatpants and swear words and bitter beers.
I think of the look she gave me on her phone after we watched Charlie Brown.
Of her screaming into the cold, rushing water. Of her in her dress looking beautiful.
I’m so sorry, Brynn. I’m so sorry for—
I know you are, Henry.
You shouldn’t even have been on—
You need to stop thinking about that. I chose to be on that plane.
I hate that the last thing you thought was that I was being a dick.
She laughs, looks again at where the stars would be. She’s even more gone now, a ghost fading, and the side of my head has started to throb. How do you know what I was thinking?
Well, I was—
The last thing I thought was that I loved you.
Yeah?
I know you’ve worried about me—about what those last few minutes were like.
I have. Shit, Brynn. I’ve thought about it so much.
I was so scared. We all were. But then…it’s hard to explain exactly. I was terrified, but then, at a certain point, I felt calm, because I understood what was happening. And then I thought about you and how much I was going to miss you.
You weren’t mad at me?
She touches my face. I don’t feel it this time, though, because she’s not really here. Henry, the last thing I did on earth was tell you that I loved you. And I meant it.
I love you, too, Brynn.