The Things You Kiss Goodbye (25 page)

She pressed her hand toward me. “Let’s not,” she said.
She collected her thick, dark hair in her hands. “So,” she said rather suddenly, “you want something.”

“Well.” I cleared my throat. “I wanted to tell you about my . . . friend.” My own choice of words surprised me at first, but then seemed right. I waited for Momma to interrupt me. She didn’t. “His name is . . . Silas,” I said, “but I call him Cowboy.”

She made a little bit of a face. I ignored her.

I told her how I’d been taking him coffees, and cutting bits of school and cheerleading practice to see him. I told her that he owned a small, classical car restoration company and that he rented a unit at the complex that Bampas owned. Momma rolled her eyes. “Oh, Bettina. Your father will forbid this. You know that.”

“But Cowboy really admires Bampas—”

“They
know
each other?” She raised her brow. “Dear God.”

“They’ve met. To sign the lease. Business stuff.”

My mother nodded. “So what else about him, Bettina?” she asked crisply. She wound her hair tightly at the back of her head and pinned it. “There was Brady Cullen, and I suspect, a few before him. What is it that makes you
have
to have this one—the older one?”

“Well, I’m not sure I can explain it, Momma.” I began to try anyway. “He listens, and he likes the way I think. He
believes in me as an artist and that makes me feel like I
am
someone. Momma, there is this exchange. . . .” I shifted my hands back and forth. “I’ve never had this before. But really, it’s my heart. This is who my heart loves. I can’t help that. The fact that he’s older is . . . an obstacle. He and I both know that.”

“I see,” she said. “I’m surprised. I expected something more superficial.”

“Nice, Momma.”

“I don’t mean to be unkind. It’s just that—I know how it feels. You want to be swept away. You really do.”

“So maybe there’s no stopping that,” I said. “He and I only just admitted this to each other, Momma. I haven’t decided to marry him. I just want to be able to see him without lying. I want you to meet him. And someday I want him to come over and—oh, I don’t know—wash cars in our driveway and have Sunday supper with us.” I finished with a small, hopeful laugh. “Momma, will you meet him?”

“Possibly,” she said. “I just don’t know. I cannot imagine telling this to—”

My father strode into the room. “Loreena, I’m going to have a shower and—oh. Bettina.” It was funny—he said my name just the way my mother had. He stood, looking back and forth between us, one hand poised on his top shirt button.

“I was just on my way out,” I said. I gave my mother a
parting glance; she returned an unreadable one, but I realized, she had not said no.

On my way down the hall, I poked my head inside the boys’ bedroom.

“Hey, nerds, wanna come out and shovel turds?”

“You rhymed!” Avel laughed. “You going to do the rabbits? Yeah, I’ll come!” He jammed his feet into his sneakers.

“Wait, wait! Boots,” I told him. “Snow’s melting. It’ll be muddy out there.”

“I’m gonna come, too.” Favian swung himself down from the upper bunk. “I haven’t been out to see the rabbits in a while.”

“Been checking out some
other
bunnies?” I poked him in the ribs. “You know. On Bampas’s reader?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Avel, did you tell?” Favian reached to swat him and I caught his arm.

“He didn’t tell.” I said. “I just know
everything
.”

“Are you gonna bust us?” Favian whispered. He shot a glance down the hallway toward Momma and Bampas’s bedroom door.

“Not as long as you promise me that you’ll always be nice to girls,” I said. “And now, I
am
going to make you scoop
major
poop.”

“Catch me first!” Favian hollered, and he took off down
the hall. I chased him to the kitchen and held him in a bear hug.

Avel came running. “Pig pile!” he hollered. He jumped on my back and knocked us all down on the kitchen floor. We lay there laughing until Avel—on top—said, “Uh-oh! I’m gonna pee my pants!” We were suddenly arms, legs, and torsos everywhere, as Favian and I scrambled to get out from under Avel.

I looked up and saw my mother in the hall. She wore a faint smile that broke open when she said, “What are you children doing?” I felt so much warmth from Momma at that moment. Once again, I believed that a good turn had come.

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A
LL
I
COULD THINK ABOUT ON
M
ONDAY MORNING WAS
getting over to the garage to see Cowboy. For the first time, I could go in there and hug him the way I’d always wanted to. What seemed right would be right. I could kiss him and know he’d kiss me back. That would get me through a long day at school.

I was excited, a little scared, and full to my brim. I didn’t have our solution yet. I didn’t know how to tell Bampas or how I was going to handle ending things with Brady. Big changes were coming. But all I could think of for the moment was that I was sure as heck going in there to tell Cowboy that
I loved him. I had never said the words on Friday night beside the river. I believed that he knew; he’d said it himself. But I was going to make sure—
this very morning
. I jingled some quarters, meant for our usual pair of coffees, in the hollows of my hands as I stepped into the kitchen.

“Twenty-six!” my father said loudly. He slapped his hand down on the morning paper, which lay open before him. The kitchen table shook. “I
know
this young man! This Silas Shepherd.”

My breath stopped. I locked eyes with my mother.

Bampas knows? About Cowboy and me?

She stared back at me, seemingly frozen, frightened—and what else? What was that other look in her eyes? Helplessness? Yes, I thought so. I pressed my quarters hard between my hands. What was going on here?

“He ran SWS Auto at my Hamilton complex.” My father went on. “Can you believe it, Loreena?
Dead
, at twenty-six.”

Dead?

I looked at Momma. She covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head.

“No,” I said. “No. That’s not possible. . . .” I watched Momma’s eyes begin to fill. Her face crumpled. The wall met my shoulder. “Bampas. No. You . . . you are wrong. . . .”

“What do you know of it?” Bampas said. His brow creased.
“It
is
so. It is written right
here
.” He thumped a finger on the newspaper. “He is dead.”

My quarters crashed to the floor. They bounced and spun with a horrible ringing. I slid lower and lower down the wall. I pushed words from my chest.

“Oh, no! No. Momma.
Please!
”

I watched the quarters rolling far away from me—away from my useless arms. Weightless hands.

Footsteps pounded. Bampas was there, kneeling next to me. He reached for me but did not touch me. “Loreena!” he called into the kitchen air. “What is the matter with her? Loreena, come to us!”

“Dinos,” my mother said. She sniffled as she pushed into his place on the floor beside me. “It’s about the boy in the newspaper.” Her whispering filled the space all around me. She gathered me into her arms. My head fell heavily against her breastbone. She rocked me. “Bettina, take a breath,” my mother begged. “Sweetheart, breathe!”

My lungs let in a painful rush of air. “Oh, Mom-ma, no! Tell Bampas he is
wrong
!” I cried. My body shook, my teeth chattered violently. I gripped the arm of her bathrobe in my fingers and wailed.

In the unearthly kitchen air, I heard Favian calling, “Bampas! Who? Who died? What’s the matter with Bettina?” I saw his wide eyes, his open mouth. Then Avel’s bewildered
face mixed into the haze.

“Get a blanket for your sister, Favian.” My mother spoke gently. “Dinos, go put the kettle on. Bettina needs to stay home today.”

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HarperCollins Publishers

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I
T RAINED
,
OF COURSE
,
FOR THE GRAVESIDE SERVICE
. A
T
first, I thought I would not go. I’d done nothing but stay home and ratchet my bedsheets into a knot since Monday morning when I’d dropped all the quarters in the kitchen. I still heard the ringing and the sound of them spinning—I still reached for them in replay.

Momma had tried to cook for me but I couldn’t bear to feed the stone in my stomach. God knows why, she brought me the paper, showed me the report.

A twenty-six-year-old man had “perished” early Sunday morning.
Perished
struck me as such a gentle-sounding word.
Swished. Wished. Perished
. The Chevy had gone off the
overlook at the water property and crashed in the branches of the trees. Not gentle. They put the time of the accident at 12:40 a.m.—about an hour after we’d parted.

Mechanical failure, road conditions, driver error—all were suspects.
What?
I thought. What could have happened? Did Cowboy really make a mistake—punch the gas? Was something wrong with the car? Was it those brakes I had watched him install? All the possibilities dug their jagged edges into me. I thought about what the report didn’t say—didn’t say because nobody knew: he had been with me minutes before.

I’d kept my phone off, while I’d balled myself into my sheets and salted my face with tears. When Sunday afternoon came, I was numbly conscious of needing to be at the service. I’d heard about “closure.” But I didn’t want to close this. I could not concede that Cowboy was gone. It was Momma who nudged me along.

She lent me her long, black skirt and her dress boots. She followed me out to the front step and dropped her gray tweed coat over my shoulders. She pressed the handle of her black umbrella into my palm. “Stay dry,” she said.

She looked up into the weeping sky and I looked after her. Sometimes even grayness is too bright. I had to look away.

“Ready?” my father asked. He sounded like he was about to take me to the merry-go-round. Since the morning the news all came spilling out, I’d had the sense that Bampas was
having as much trouble acknowledging the truth as I was. Momma had told him about Cowboy and me. He seemed dumbstruck, very unsure how to treat me.

As we neared the cemetery gate, I saw a dozen or so cars entering—some of them classics. My heart skipped. I’d seen the parts of those cars—the bolts, tailpipes, and radiator caps. I’d seen them before Cowboy had used them to make each car whole. I watched the cars park one behind the other in the long U-shaped drive. It dawned on me that none of them would be able to move until the first one did.

“Don’t pull in,” I told Bampas. “Drop me off here. I want to go alone.”

“But Bettina . . .”

I had the car door open. I stepped out on the curb and let the umbrella pop up. “Just come back for me in an hour.” I pressed one palm toward him.

“No, no. I will drive the way around and watch for you—”

“Go, Bampas. Please.”

“We meet at this gate,” he said.

The grass was spongy underfoot, still spotted with rain-weary snow. There was a tiny gathering, a circle of maybe thirty people. I stayed on the outside, my mother’s umbrella open over my head.

There was the urn on a draped pedestal. It was simple—made of marble I guessed, ivory with gray veins. The base
was narrow, and the shape rose to maybe fourteen inches. The top was full-shouldered. The rim narrowed to meet the flat lid cleanly.

It is not Cowboy. Cannot be Cowboy
. I thought it over and over again.

The people stepped closer as the service started.

A solemn voice began, “The family would like to invite—”

I looked up. I saw them—the family. The four stood together beneath a portable awning that seemed to expose them more than it sheltered them. I saw the brothers with the beautiful names. And his mother—she was small—her hair in tight curls, her mouth a straight line. She held her own hands clasped at her chest. It seemed like my heart should go cold at the sight of her, knowing what I knew. But she looked like a mother, was all. I wondered what kind of sorrow she felt.

Behind her, a tall man stood with his hands on her shoulders. His sweet, sleepy eyes so much like Cowboy’s. I stared at him. I watched his gaze move slowly around the circle of people, then to the outside until he was looking right at me. Then it hit me; I’d seen him before. He’d seen me too. I was the girl who had stared up at him from a ditch beside a back road while an apple rotted nearby. He was the man who’d let me go that night. “Shep”—that’s what his friend had called him. Shep, like Shepherd. His eyes narrowed, he tilted his head at me—the tiniest of movements—as if to ask,
Why are
you here?
I think he smiled at me. Then he bowed his head.

A flicker of color caught the corner of my eye. A little girl in a bright blue coat and tights was stepping up and down over the footstones well outside the circle. She held a yellow umbrella almost over her head. She tipped and bobbed like a toy against the gray-flannel backdrop. Mud began to dot her tights. But she didn’t seem to notice. I glanced back into the circle where Cowboy’s father stood pressing his thumb and finger into his eyes. The woman in front of him stood unblinking. Two brothers stared at the ground. I turned my gaze back to the little girl and watched her while all the words rasped the air.

“Hello.” Large, cool hands closed briefly over mine as I held the handle of Momma’s umbrella. Startled, I stared up at the moon-faced man. “I’m Kenneth Shepherd,” he said. I managed to give him my name. He waited, then asked, “You a friend of Silas’s?”

“Mmm.” I nodded.

“Well, that’s nice for Silas,” he said, but not in an indecent way. He sounded equally sincere and surprised. “Thank you for coming.” He faltered a little. “There’s a small reception at my farm. Would you like directions? Or can we take you with us?”