Chapter 59
Will
I’ve been at my parents’ house for a few weeks now, and everything’s so normal that I can’t help but think something will soon shatter the monotony because life is just like that: peaks and valleys followed by more peaks and valleys.
I’m trimming one of the bushes in the garden when I lose my patience. The shears are dull and rusty, and I can hardly cut anything with them, so I decide to take the Jeep to the store to buy some decent ones.
Mom’s talking on the phone in the living room when I tell her, and she nods without paying attention. I grab my jacket and take off.
I leave our neighborhood, but I don’t go all the way into town because there’s a convenience store close by with a little hardware section that should have what I need.
I go inside and walk the aisles, and when I don’t find any shears, I ask one of the stockers, who’s kneeling down in front of the soda cooler.
He turns around and grimaces for a moment before he manages to cover it up.
It’s George Dannis. I recognize him because Josh used to make fun of him so much.
One time, in art class, he squirted a whole tube of blue paint in his hair.
A strange feeling overcomes me: discomfort, nausea.
I didn’t do anything, though. I just stood next to Josh, faithful, inseparable, thinking I’d rather be on his side than the alternative. I felt lucky, almost, back then.
“How can I help you?” he asks professionally.
“I…” This is when I should tell him I’m sorry. I know it. It’s as plain as the sky is blue. But the words get caught in my throat, and I wind up saying, “I’m looking for some garden shears.”
“Short or long?”
“Short. For pruning.”
“They’re all for pruning,” he murmurs with irritation in his voice, and instead of encouraging me to take the step I need to take, that makes me even more timid.
“Right. Sure. Where are they?”
“Aisle two, on the right.”
“Thanks.”
I look back at him. George is carefully lining up the soft drinks and seems to be ignoring me on purpose. I don’t blame him. I find what I need and pay. And when I’m back in the car, I stare at the door awhile before I decide to take off.
Now it’s night, and I can’t sleep.
When I get tired of tossing and turning in bed, I turn on the light and take a notebook and pen out of the top drawer. I scribble until the ink starts to flow and then I think of all the people I’ve hurt in the course of my life, either actively or because I stood by when I shouldn’t have.
How often do we fail to think of other people’s feelings? How often do we act selfishly? How often do we hurt people we love or say cruel things we don’t really mean? How many times do we screw up, then realize it and screw up even worse?
The closest thing I can do to going back in time is making this list. I start with the easy ones, my parents, my family, the people I ignored at Christmastime, then Greta, then people who passed through my life—colleagues, ex-girlfriends, ex-friends—and I end with Lena, the girl whose heart I broke.
Only when I’ve folded up that list and put it in my wallet do I manage to fall asleep.
Submerging yourself in the past is an adventure.
I start with all my friends from school: Most of them are easy to find because I still have my yearbooks.
It’s nuts to go door to door, it’s probably not even possible, so I look for them on social media and start writing my apologies.
One guy from the football team wrote back right away.
He was really friendly and even asked me how things were going.
Laura Hells, on the other hand—I left her hanging a few months after we started going out—just replied with: You’re an idiot, Will Tucker.
Who can blame her? Most people saw the messages and just didn’t reply.
That week, I go to the convenience store eight times. I buy cereal, lemonade, starter logs for the fireplace, gum, Kool-Aid, Band-Aids, energy bars, a book about aliens.
I’m not sure what keeps pushing me to drive there every time I need something, but I can’t stop. I see George a few times. He’s the one who checks me out when I buy the book. He’s calm as he punches in the numbers and slips it into the bag.
But he doesn’t say anything. And I don’t, either.
The days keep passing.
My mother gets used to ordering me around in the kitchen. Dad takes it for granted we’ll watch football together, and one night, he invites me out to the yard because the sky is full of stars.
“Remember how we used to look through the telescope?”
“Yeah. Where is it?” I ask.
“In the attic. No one was using it.”
“Not even you?”
“Nah.”
We stand there for a while contemplating the immensity of the universe.
Looking at the stars is fascinating—they’re so magnificent, so alluring, but what’s really remarkable, if you think about it, is that you’re observing light that comes to us from the past. When you see the moon, you’re seeing what it looked like a second ago.
The light from the sun is eight minutes old.
As for Andromeda, the galaxy closest to Earth, what we see on a clear night is what it looked like more than two million years ago.
“We should set it up,” I tell him.
“Yeah.” My father nods. “Someday. Maybe.”
I go back to the convenience store.
I don’t know what the hell to buy anymore.
For a long time, I walk the aisles, and at last I decide to buy some barbecue chips. I don’t even know if they’re any good, but it doesn’t matter. I go to the counter and George checks me out, takes my money, gives me a receipt.
It’s not so hard. All I have to do is say I’m sorry, but I can’t get the words out.
Holding the bag of chips, I walk out of the store.
I guess I’m scared he’ll think I’m stupid, which he must after all these trips to the convenience store, or maybe he won’t remember why I’m saying sorry or he’ll say I can stick my apologies up my ass. I really have no idea.
I go home, and Mom tells me to peel some apples to make applesauce.
I really should start thinking about leaving the nest.
The attic is full of junk.
There are piles of old toys no one will ever use again: action figures, scooters, a bike with flat tires, puzzles…
I find the telescope in the back. It’s been taken apart, and I have to look for all the pieces. With the tripod, the mount, and the body, I walk out in the yard. Then I go back and find a box with the smaller parts, like the eyepiece.
Mom shows up just as I’m tightening the last screws.
“I haven’t seen that thing in forever. You used to love it when you were a kid.”
“I still love it,” I say.
I’ve thought many times about why Lucy told Greta to make a list of all the things she liked.
I guess because I still have that list and I’ve read it so many times I know it by heart.
It was like an exercise in self-awareness—the whole Map of Longing was, with challenges that didn’t always lead you to a clear answer.
If it hadn’t been subtle like that, maybe it wouldn’t have worked.
I think Lucy wanted to remind Greta of something, turn the spotlight back on her.
How often do we think we like something just because we’ve done it for a long time? And how often do we decide not to return to the things we once loved because we’ve changed and the person who enjoyed them before only lives in the last, like the stars we see every day?
Stopping to appreciate your world isn’t easy. Do you still like the same posters or clothes you bought five years ago? Are you interested in the same stuff as back then? Do you have the same worries? What defines you now, as opposed to a year ago or yesterday?
“This will make your father very happy,” my mother says.
“Yeah, I thought it might.”
“Does this mean you’re leaving soon?” she guesses.
I nod. She smiles and touches my back before going inside.
It’s cold. November has come with its chilly winds and torn the last trembling leaves from the branches.
Even though it’s early, some stores are taking reservations for Christmas trees.
I feel it’s time to go, before the cold air freezes my good intentions.
And I can’t stop thinking about Greta—I imagine her in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Rome, or maybe Florence. I see her walking the streets, discovering the world and herself, and I ask myself how deeply this adventure will mark her, because I know after a trip like that, you never come back the same.
I walk back into the damned convenience store.
I talk a walk through the aisles. By now they might as well hire me.
I’d have no trouble stocking; I know where every single thing is.
I don’t grab anything. Instead I go straight to the register.
George is there. He looks at me with the same neutral expression he reserves for all the customers, as if he doesn’t know me.
I notice some donuts in a glass case on the counter.
“Give me two of those.”
“Chocolate?”
“Yeah. And a strawberry one too.”
“You got it.”
I watch him grab the donuts with a pair of tongs and slide them into a paper bag.
I remember George back in high school, with his acne-covered face and his glasses, which look like the ones he’s wearing right now.
He made it through puberty and his zits went away, but otherwise, he doesn’t look much different.
He is more self-assured, though; he’s not shrugging, and he doesn’t look down when someone talks to him.
He’s wearing a wedding ring. I wonder what his life is like. If he has kids. If he’s happy.
I take a breath as he’s punching buttons on the cash register.
“Hey, George…” He looks up, surprised to be called by his name, even though it’s right there on his name tag. “I’m sorry.”
He smirks. “See? It wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“No.”
“Here, take some candy on the house.” He grabs a fistful and drops it on the counter.
“This, uh…thanks.”
“No problem. Next!”
I step aside to let past a woman standing behind me in line.
As I walk to the Jeep, I feel confused. I start it up and turn on the heat.
It rarely works—those are the risks of an impulse buy.
I don’t care, though. I’m still comfortable in it.
I drive down residential streets, and when I get to where I’m going, I see a guy coming from the house next door walking with a smug air.
He’s looking at his phone and I don’t see his face, but I’d recognize Josh anywhere just by his posture and his movements, even without seeing his face.
I think about putting it in reverse and pulling into his driveway.
But then what? Would I ask him how it was possible that he cared so little about the friendship we shared when we were boys?
Maybe—I almost do, then I change my mind.
I turn off the Jeep. There’s no point in asking because I realize now we never were friends.
We just knew each other; we found in each other something we were looking for: Reassurance, praise, it’s all the same.
There’s nothing to talk about now. He’s a dead-end street and I shouldn’t waste my time turning down it.
“Lookie there. You can see it perfectly. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”
I bend over to look into the telescope. Saturn’s there with its majestic rings. The night is so bright that I can see the Cassini Division. For a moment, I feel like a boy again, with immense peace extending through my chest as I remember that I’m alive.
We stay there awhile, my father with a beer in his hand, me with a can of Dr Pepper. We see the Orion Nebula, which looks like a cottony blotch, and observe, for a while, the irregular surface of the moon.
It’s almost morning when we put the telescope away.
We spend our lives measuring things. From the time we’re born, the first thing anyone knows about us is our name and a bunch of measurements: 19.
6 inches, 6.7 pounds. And we grow up the same way.
Statistics show your family’s social class is a major factor in your destiny: The more you have, the more you’re worth.
We instinctively aspire for more. More money, more friends, more hookups, more trips, more experiences, more stuff.
We get frustrated. One day we hit ourselves on the head and we realize to our shock that you can’t measure the richness of your inner life, your friendships, your loves, your hopes and sorrows.
And you’re lost. How do you stay afloat when everything you believed vanishes?
The rules are broken. You have to start from zero: Look at the white page, start writing.
If you can’t organize your world by measuring what’s around you, how can you?
I start to imagine my head is full of little drawers in which my life is compartmentalized, with this thing separated from that, the way you have to separate cats and dogs.
I take it all out. It hurt less when it was all tucked away, but this is the only way I can bring order to the chaos.
I start to see bits of my real self as past and present intertwined.
I knock the dust off. I throw out my disappointments and my guilt. I get to polishing.
I put my head in order.