Some of the Parts (4 page)

Before we've taken three steps, though, she turns back to the circle and jabs a finger at Chase. “You coming?” she asks him.

“Uh—” he starts to say, and then Absalom loses what's left of his composure and shoves Chase in our direction.

“He's right behind you,” Absalom says.

“All right, Absalom.” Chase bows to him, and walks to where Mel and I are waiting. Then he turns and begins to walk backward, saying, “Oh my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, oh Absalom, my son, my son!”

The rest of the séance attendees, still standing in a sloppy circle (now with three holes in it), watch him, slack-jawed.

“Very funny,” Absalom mutters.

“Well, then,” Chase says before we exit, “pick a better stage name. May I suggest Erik Weisz?”

“You may not,” Absalom snaps, and he disappears behind the front door of the Elbow Room as it closes with us on the other side of it.

Mel looks at Chase quizzically. “Erik Weisz?”

He tucks his hands into his back pockets and shrugs. “Harry Houdini's real name,” he says. Then he slopes off toward Aspect Avenue, and calls over his shoulder, “See ya, Tallie.”

I
am shaking when I get home. Being Mel's passenger produces that effect from time to time, but I am pretty sure this particular set of tremors is the result of my latest encounter with Chase, of hearing him say my name out loud. Very few people say it anymore. Cranky Andy hollers it across the coffee shop once in a while, but that's entirely different from the sound it made in Chase's voice, so easy and deep, like a low note on a piano.

Mom and Dad are talking in the kitchen. Normally, I would sneak quietly up the stairs to spare us all the agony of questions and answers, but something about the tone of their voices makes me pause. They sound intense, like hissing snakes.

“Don't do this,” Dad says.

“I'm not
doing
anything.”

“You're thinking about doing something.”

“The agency called and said that one of them wants to write to us, and I said we would be open to receiving a letter. That's all.”

“These people can't offer you anything,” Dad says. “It's not going to bring him back.”

My knotted heart pulls even tighter.

They are talking about him.

They
never
talk about him.

“They want to thank us, that's all,” Mom says. “What's so wrong about them wanting to thank us?”

“Don't do this,” Dad says again.

“It's not up to you, Gene,” Mom snaps. “I can do this with or without your blessing.” It's as if Mom has been reanimated, like Sleeping Beauty awakened from her hundred years' nap. She's fighting for something again. Better this, whatever it is, than Dad's campaign to leave Molton forever.

I can't see Dad's face, but his silence says that he didn't expect this either.

More quietly Mom adds, “I know I can't bring him back. But I'm also not going to erase him. He lived. He was here. He was
real.
”

“He
was
here,” Dad says. “
Was.
Tallie still
is,
and if Dr. Blankenbaker thinks that we should move—just remember that we agreed to consider her recommendation. You've got three and a half weeks until the appointment. Do whatever you want until then.”

My shaking gets worse. I run upstairs before either of them gets angry enough to say his name out loud, fire it like a bullet.

When things get bad like this, the yearbook and the memories aren't enough. I need my secret weapon. I use it sparingly, as one must do with something small and powerful, or else the power will disperse like smoke.

I keep it in an old cookie tin on my bookshelf, tucked in with seashells from family trips and movie ticket stubs and junk jewelry.

His MP3 player.

He called it Matthew Pendergrass the Third. Matty, for short.

My parents don't know I still have it. They think it was destroyed in the accident, or lost in the aftermath, but it wasn't. It came to the hospital with us because it was in his pocket, and when they cut his clothes off his body, it fell out and a nurse picked it up and later she brought it to my room. I know this because the nurse told me when she handed it to me. She was perceptive enough to realize I might want it, but not enough to leave out the part about them cutting my brother's clothes off.

I keep my eyes closed when I turn it on because it has his name on the screen when it first lights up, and run my fingers across the places where the blue coating is chipped and dented. I know by now how to get the songs to shuffle without looking: 793 songs. That sounds like a lot, but it isn't really, it won't last very long. So I have to be careful. I have it on shuffle and I let myself listen to two songs at a time. Three, if it's getting really bad. It would be so easy to lie back and let the music play and play and play, play for hours, play until I was dried up like a raisin, petrified like wood. Preserved. Motionless.

But my parents would come looking for me, eventually, and they'd see my secret weapon and they'd probably take it away. They would want it for themselves, wouldn't they? Because it is a vital thing, to have someone's handpicked collection of songs in your grasp. It's the soundtrack of that person, and everyone knows the soundtrack is the most important part. There would be no mood without it, no impact. Even silent movies had soundtracks.

The soundtrack is the key.

Part of my brain wants to make sense of what I heard in the kitchen, what my parents could possibly have been talking about. But every time I let the conversation scratch at the door, too many other thoughts threaten to flood in along with it. So I lock it up again and retreat. I am allowed to do that.

No excuses are required of me.

I have the earbuds in now, I have the first song beginning to flow, and even though it's loud and frenetic-sounding, I feel myself calming down. Until I'm calm enough to picture Chase, the shape of his shoulders as he half turned around and said my name. I'm not upset with him. He doesn't know I don't like people to say my name anymore. He doesn't know that I can't feel enough to connect with him, can't construct a bridge out of the metal shards and splinters I've got left. I'm dragging myself back to normal, but I'm not there yet.

But it's not his fault for trying.

I decide I will forgive him.

I fall asleep before I figure out what that means.

monday
9/22

I
n that way the universe has of taunting you with what you least want to think about or deal with, Chase is the first person I see the next morning. Sometimes Mel sleeps late, so I walk to school, and it's a long enough journey that I go into a kind of trance state, which is not unpleasant. But it is hard to come out of, and I am almost past the Star Students display before I see him, leaning slouchily against the edge of the glass case. He is wearing a dark blue T-shirt that says, simply,
BOOM
.

Along with the detritus of others' achievements, the display holds a memorial to my brother. I loathe the Star Students display. I usually walk past it with my eyes closed but I'm startled into forgetting to do it, so I accidentally catch a glimpse of my brother's preserved image—the particular color of his hair, a fleeting sense that he is trying to get my attention—because Chase is there. Does he realize his proximity to the picture? It seems an unlikely coincidence, but I kind of hope it is. Because—my stomach sinks at the thought—if he's heard about me, if he's been told and he's standing there on purpose, that makes him just a bit of an asshole. Which would make it harder to be around him. Not impossible. Just harder.

On the other hand, it would be the perfect reason, should I need to give myself one, for never talking to him again. I'll keep that in my proverbial pocket for later.

I stride past the display case, willing my eyes forward, and Chase launches himself into rhythm next to me, following me down the hall, and says, “Some scene last night, huh?”

For a moment, I hear my parents arguing and wonder how he knows. Then I realize that he is talking about the séance.

“Sure was,” I say, trying to match his casual-cool tone. And failing.

“Did it surprise you that I knew your name?” he asks. “You looked surprised.”

“Um—um,” I stammer, “a little, maybe, I guess…”

“I believe in honest emotional exchange,” he tells me.

“Right,” I say. “Well, that doesn't mean you have to use it like a hammer.”

We are nearing my locker, so I slow down. His locker must be in a different hall, which could explain why I haven't seen him in school before now, but he matches my waning pace and stops when I stop, hovering behind me as I subject my ancient combination lock to the usual series of twists and turns. It often takes at least three tries to open the thing, but the gods are obliging today, benevolent. First try and I'm in.

The door swings open and I am greeted by a chipmunk perched on the edge of the locker's shelf, one paw raised in greeting, a tiny bowler hat on his head. Pinned to his chest is a wee sign that says
CECI N'EST PAS UN TAMIA
.

I successfully swallow a scream, but Chase yells, “What the hell?!”

“This is not a chipmunk,” I translate for him. Mel is a fan of both taxidermy and Magritte, and never misses a chance to combine the two.

“But it
is
a chipmunk, isn't it?”

“No,” I say. “It's not a chipmunk anymore. Now it's the representation of a chipmunk. It's something that signifies a chipmunk.”

“It's dead,” he says.

“Yes. The chipmunk is dead.”

We both look at it intently so we don't look at each other.

Chase says, “Long live the chipmunk.”

And then the bell rings, and we part. This time, he doesn't say my name as he walks away. I wonder if this was too weird for him. I wonder if I'm disappointed if it was.

I whisper my own name to myself one time, twice, and it actually feels okay. Then I start to say my brother's. “Na—” But I stop because my stomach flips at the sound.

Maybe I can work up to the other letters. Maybe it could be like any other word again.

Over the summer, I developed what you could call an odd habit. At least once a day, usually more, I imagined I was talking to a therapist. Just a guy I made up, no one too specific. And then that escalated into imagining that Dr. Imaginary was with me in my house. Sort of like a sidekick. But one who was a really good listener and endlessly fascinated with everything I had to say. I talked for hours, in my head, about my life and my parents and how I felt about everything. Or how I would have felt if I wasn't numb from the inside out, as if my heart had fallen asleep like an errant appendage.

The only problem was that when Mom decided, in those early postaccident days, that I should actually talk to someone, I had nothing left to say. I had told Dr. I. all about it and I was done. The therapist my mother brought me to—Dr. Blankenbaker—was not so receptive to this logic. But she was no Dr. I., let me tell you. I think she was just jealous.

We sat in her professionally furnished office, which looked exactly like the set of a TV show about a therapist counseling a girl who had lost her brother in a car accident, and she delivered her lines with clipped, clean, perfect diction while I said nothing at all.

“I can't tell,” she finally admitted, “if you're trying to antagonize me.”

“I'm not,” I assured her.

“Okay,” she said. She set her notepad and pen on her flawlessly organized desk, called my mother into the room, and told her that our time was up.

My mother said there was no point in continuing the sessions if I wasn't going to say anything, but Dad disagreed—I think he wanted a diagnostic checklist that showed I was okay, like the paper they give you when you take your car for an oil change. Dr. Blankenbaker agreed that there wasn't much point in forcing things, but before she released us from her office, she made us schedule a follow-up appointment for an in-depth evaluation. That's what she called it.

“I am sympathetic to Tallie's reluctance to talk about what happened,” she told my parents. And me, but only because I was eavesdropping. (Someone should really tell Dr. Blankenbaker that the heating vent in her waiting room makes it very easy to hear what's being said in her office.) “But if she doesn't face what happened, it could be crippling for her future.”

Use the word
future
with anyone's parents and they'll do whatever you say.

So an appointment was made. October fifteenth. It's on our calendar at home, circled in red so none of us forget about it. Red Circle Day. On that day I will be escorted back to Dr. Blankenbaker's office and asked many probing questions, and my father made it clear (before he entered into his silent orbit) that I
will
answer those questions, and if Dr. Blankenbaker believes I should change schools or take pills or spend three afternoons a week with her, that is what will happen. Because she is the expert.

And this is what we must do after life knocks the wind out of us so thoroughly. We must follow the advice of those who know better. Lucky for me, school is also full of well-meaning professionals just chomping at the bit to tell me what to do. Specifically:

dr. elias hunter, principal

ms. stephanie doberskiff, guidance counselor/cheerleading coach

In light of my failed attempt to come back to school after the accident as if nothing had happened, Principal Hunter and Ms. Doberskiff corralled me on the first day this year and laid out the Plan (approved, they said, by my parents), wherein I was presented with some rules. The first one was that I would attend weekly support-group meetings.

The group at my school operates under the laborious name Bridges Through Grief to New Beginnings. Obviously, we all just refer to it as Bridges, for efficiency as well as to avoid sounding like a cult. Many other names were proposed for the group when it first started, but they all sounded too sad or too weird or marginally perverse. And then someone suggested it was discriminatory to have a group just for kids with families in which someone had died, so the group was expanded to include any student “grappling with a life-altering change or loss of any kind.”

This covers a lot of territory.
Loss
is an entirely relative term.

Ms. Doberskiff sadistically scheduled our Bridges meetings for Monday afternoons, claiming it was the only day she was free. Seeing as how she is also the cheerleading coach, a school counselor, and the faculty advisor for the literary magazine, it is true that her schedule is chock-full of angst-producing activities.

Mel is highly suspicious of Ms. Doberskiff, as she is of anyone who would voluntarily spend so much time listening to high school students talk about themselves.

“Maybe she just cares a lot about other people,” I suggested once.

“Maybe she's avoiding her own problems,” Mel retorted. “Maybe she's collecting material for a tell-all exposé on the modern American teenager. Maybe she's a sociopath, studying emotional patterns to learn how to act like a normal person.”

“Sometimes I think you're a sociopath,” I offered.

Mel shrugged. “I just don't happen to think
caring
is a good enough reason to wallow in the pity pool week after week.”

She probably doesn't think “because the principal told me to” is a very good reason either. But she doesn't give me a hard time about it. She even walks me to the meetings and pretends she's dropping me off at something distinctly more fun than Bridges. “Have fun!” she trills, and nudges me through the door.

“Let's get started,” Ms. Doberskiff says. Everyone is in their usual place. Toby and Jackson have already annihilated the snack table. Margaret nibbles conspicuously at a donut hole, which will take her fifteen minutes to finish. Bethany is texting, getting in a few more vital messages before Ms. Doberskiff makes everyone turn their phones off and put them away. Jackson sits closest to the door, I guess in case he might suddenly have to run out of the room. He never has, but he always seems right on the verge of fleeing. Bethany sits on my other side, then Margaret, then Toby. We sit this way every time. We like our routines.

“Who has something to share?” asks Ms. Doberskiff.

A hand shoots up. Margaret. “I do!” she yelps. Margaret always has something to share. Margaret is an oversharer. But at least half of anything she says is a lie, and the other half isn't entirely true. No one knows whether Margaret has ever actually experienced a personal tragedy of any kind. I think she was sent to Bridges as a last-ditch effort, as if everyone got together and said,
We can't get her to admit she's a compulsive liar, so we'll pretend she's telling the truth and see how far it goes.

Ms. Doberskiff smiles, a pained but tolerant smile that comes from being freshly trained in grief counseling. “Why don't we let someone else go first this time, Margaret?”

Ignoring her, Margaret tells us that her grandmother is gravely ill. “She may not survive the week.”

Ms. Doberskiff forces herself to say, “That must be very difficult for you, Margaret.” And this is all Margaret needs to hear, really. She's a sympathy addict, a junkie for pity. Which is what makes me think that probably nothing bad has ever really happened to her. The truly traumatized don't like this kind of attention. Jackson, for instance, has a mother with stage #4 brain cancer and all he wants to talk about is old movies. Now Ms. Doberskiff will ask how he's doing and he'll try to change the subject. Observe:

“And how is your mother, Jackson? Any change?”

Jackson's foot starts tapping like a woodpecker. “No,” he says, and in the same breath he adds, “I watched
Blade Runner
last night. I really think the whole human-android dichotomy says a lot about social strata in our—”

Ms. Doberskiff cuts in. “Did your mother watch the movie with you?”

Jackson's foot slows, stops. “She mostly just sleeps. The hospital gave us a bed. It's in the living room.”

I can almost feel the air in the room drawing away from me, like a vacuum.

“I see,” says Ms. Doberskiff. “That must be”—she is about to say
very difficult,
but she knows she can't use the same words for Jackson's real dying mother as she did for Margaret's probably fake dying grandmother—“incredibly painful.”