Touch (2 page)

He knows the answer now. He knows, and he should have known it then, would have, if
he’d known how to think about tears the same way he thinks about circuit boards. He
is standing in his house. He is standing in his room. His room hasn’t changed. Transistors,
wires, solder, tweezers, in neat boxes, like a wall at the back of his desk. His clamps,
his light, his computer. It’s been three months.

He knows because the date is marked on his calendar, the calendar that hangs from
the corkboard to one side of his bedroom window. Someone’s been marking the date.
He watches as his mother puts a neat, red line through a square box in October. She
doesn’t need it; her calendars exist in the ether.

But she puts the pen on his desk, draws his curtains shut. Stands behind the closed
curtains, her shoulders curving toward the floor, her arms bending at the elbows until
she wraps them around her upper body. They’re shaking. No, she’s shaking. Her head
drops. Nathan stands frozen for one immobile moment, and then he reaches out for her
back in a kind of terrified wonder.

She cries.

God, she cries. It’s a terrifying, horrible sound. No quiet tears; it’s like someone
is trying to rip the insides out of her, but they’ve got nowhere to put them. It’s
paralyzing; it’s worse than walking into his parents’ bedroom when the bed was heavily
occupied. He feels like he’s violating her, just standing here in his own room.

And then the guilt and the paralysis break, and he’s reaching out for her, he’s trying,
trying
, to put his arms around her—from the back, he’s not an idiot—but he
can’t
. He can’t. They don’t
go
anywhere. He calls her. He shouts. He shouts louder than he’s ever shouted—and she
hears nothing, and her knees give, and her forehead is pressed against his goddamn
desk, and it is the worst thing he’s ever seen.

Worse than an SUV driving toward the side of his car.

He can’t
do
anything. He knows, watching her back, that no one can. She’s here, in his room;
his door is closed. She
isn’t
crying in public. There’s no public here, because no one lives in his room anymore.
And he knows she won’t cry like this outside of her own house. Because it would have
to practically kill anyone who could see her and hear her; a sound like this could
burn itself into your brain, and the only way you could avoid it would be to plug
your ears and run screaming.

You couldn’t help her. You couldn’t do anything to make the pain go away—and you’d
want
to. You’d be immobile, your own helplessness and uselessness made clear. You couldn’t
escape it unless you avoided her, avoided any hint of her grief, and let what you
witnessed fade.

She doesn’t cry in public because of what it would do to everyone
else
. It’s not because of what other people will think of her—that’s what he assumed,
once—it’s because of what they’ll think of
themselves
, afterward. He knows because he
hates
himself, now. He hates himself for dying. He hates the people who killed him—first
time, for everything—and he hates that he can’t
touch
her, can’t
reach
her, because if he could, it would stop. Or change.

This is the first time Nathan’s been home since he died. He wants to flee. He almost
does. But he waits it out, because in the end, he has to know that it does stop. If
he leaves now, he won’t believe it; every other memory of home will be buried beneath
this one.

* * *

It does stop.

It stops. The rawness of grief peters into an echo of itself—but the echo speaks of
pain as if pain were an iceberg, a colossal structure beneath surfaces that hide nothing
if you know how to look. When it’s once again submerged, she stands, slowly and awkwardly,
as if she’s spent months living on her knees, her forehead propped up against the
edge of his desk.

Her father died when Nathan was a child. He remembers it clearly, now. He remembers
the phone call; he remembers her eight-hour absence. He remembers arguing with his
dad about bedtime because he wanted his mother. His mother did not come home that
night. When she returned the next day, she told him his grandfather had died. He wanted
to know why, because death made no sense. Death had no impact.

He asked her if his father was going to die.

“No,” she told him softly. “Not for a long time. But, Nathan, everyone eventually
dies.”

She didn’t cry. He didn’t cry because she didn’t. He asked her if she would miss Grandpa,
and she said, “Yes, very much.”

She carried him—at five years of age—for most of her father’s funeral. He thought
it strange, because babies were carried and he was a Big Boy. But she still didn’t
cry. For the whole, long day, she didn’t cry.

People came up to talk to her. He recognized some of them; some were strangers—but
not to his mother. They told her they were sorry (But why? They hadn’t killed him).
They told her he’d had a good life. A full life. But some of them told her stories
about her father, instead, and they made her smile.

No one tells his mother stories in this room. He knows. No one can tell her that her
son had a full life, or a good life. There is nothing to make her smile, here. Seeing
her gaunt face in the evening light, he wonders if she’s smiled at all in the last
three months. He thinks she must have—but he can’t make himself believe it.

She straightens her clothing. No one can see it, but she straightens it anyway. Then
she turns, walks to the door, opens it, and turns again. Into the darkness that contains
her son, she says, “Good night, Nathan.”

She closes the door.

* * *

Nathan has learned a few things about being dead.

He’s learned, for instance, that the dead don’t eat. They can’t. They don’t feel hunger,
and physical pain is beyond them. They never get thirsty. Snow, hail, storms, and
blistering desert heat don’t bother them. He assumes that bullets won’t hurt; knives
don’t.

He’s learned that the dead have their own version of sleep. It doesn’t involve beds,
and it doesn’t hold dreams—or nightmares. It’s a kind of darkness and stillness in
which even memories fade. It’s the ultimate silence. The silence of the grave.

It’s not boring, this sleep. It’s not confining. It’s . . . nothing. Just nothing.
But sometimes, nothing is good; right now, he’s not keen on the alternative.

Because tonight, he’s learned that the dead are useless. They can’t touch anything.
They can’t change anything. In any way that counts, they’ve got no voice. They can
speak—but no one can hear them.

Not no one.

* * *

I want you to go back to your home, Nathan.

“Why?”

Because there, you will find an opportunity that most of the dead will never have.

He didn’t ask what the opportunity was. Even the first question had been a risk. The
Queen of the Dead doesn’t like to be questioned.

Go home. I will give you no other orders yet. Just go home. Watch your family, watch
your friends.
Her smile was winter, her eyes sky blue. They were wide, and looked, in the radiance
of her face, like windows. Beyond those windows: clouds, lightning, destruction. As
if she were the only thing that kept the storm out.

Promise me, when we’re old, you’ll let me die first
.

What kind of a promise is that, Em?

The only one I want. I don’t want you to die first. I don’t want to be left behind
again. Promise?

* * *

Emma’s house is half lit. Her mother’s office lights are on on the second floor, but
her mother’s probably working—as she usually does—in the dining room. Emma’s bedroom
is dark. Nathan stands between two streetlights, looking up. He wants to see Emma.
He wants more than that, but he’ll settle for what death has left him.

The moon is high. The night sky is a different shade of gray. Nathan slides his hands
into his pockets and waits. He’s got nothing but time, and he hates it. But he hates
it less when the front door of the Hall house opens and Emma steps out, surrounded
by Petal, the rottweiler who refuses to stand still. Nathan can’t take his eyes off
her; for one long moment, she is the only thing he sees.

He watches her lead Petal toward the sidewalk in silence.

Nathan joins her, stopping when she stops and moving when she moves. He can pretend,
for a few minutes, that he’s still alive, that this is a normal night, a normal walk.
He doesn’t have to fill the silence. Silence has never bothered Emma.

There’s a difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Emma is alone. Nathan?
Doesn’t want to think about it.

The breeze lifts Emma’s hair. Petal’s name leaves her lips. She keeps walking. Nathan
watches her go. He wants to talk to her. He doesn’t try.

The problem with death—this version of death—is that it feels pretty much like life,
at least to the dead people. He’s not dragging bits and pieces of corpse around, because
he’s pretty sure that’s what he’d be doing if the manner of death defined him. He’s
not spouting blood. He’s not a poltergeist.

He’s Nathan. She’s Emma. They haven’t seen each other for three months, and the last
thing Nathan did was break a vow. He left her. He left her behind.

It was a stupid promise. He knew it was stupid before he made it. But she was there,
lying in his arms, curled against his chest, her hair tangled, her eyes wide. She
wasn’t joking. She wouldn’t
let
him make a joke of it.

He promised. He promised because to him it was just a different way of saying
I love you
.

And he does. He meant every word of it. She knows—she
must
know—that dying wasn’t his choice. It wasn’t his fault. She must know that he’d be
out here by her side, walking her half-deaf dog, if it had been up to him.

He shakes himself, hurries to catch up with her, and stops when he finally realizes
where she’s going. The cemetery.

Emma. Oh, Em.

* * *

Nathan has no desire to see his grave. He’d had no idea, until he followed Emma from
her house, where he’d been buried. But he knows now, and he almost leaves. He doesn’t
want to see Emma cry. He doesn’t want to see her go to pieces the way his mother did.
He can’t comfort her. He’s got nothing to offer her at all.

But when she slips behind the fence, he walks through it. He keeps her in sight. The
night sky is clear. If there’s a breeze, he can’t feel it; he can feel the cold, but
it’s always cold now. He doesn’t read the headstones. He doesn’t read the markers.

To his surprise, Emma does. She reads them. She lingers. But she doesn’t stop; she
hasn’t reached the gravestone with his name on it. Petal’s tongue is hanging out of
his mouth as he trots back and forth between the markers. He’s happy. Emma is silent.
She’s not in a hurry.

Emma finds a standing wreath of white flowers before one marker. She kneels in front
of it, picks up a petal, blows it off her fingers. Tucking her legs to the right,
she sits; Petal flops down to her left and drops his head in her lap. She scratches
behind his ears.

She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t weep.

Nathan listens to the ever-present sounds of passing cars. Mount Pleasant isn’t a
small cemetery, but it’s in the middle of a city. He looks up, as Emma does, to see
the stars. To see the moon in the night sky. To know that they’re seeing the same
thing.

He’s never minded waiting for Emma. He could wait for her forever. He doesn’t interrupt
her. He doesn’t talk. He knows she’ll come to him in her own time.

She picks up Petal’s leash as she unfolds, straightening her hair and brushing petals
off her legs. Her head is bent as she walks back the way she came; Nathan knows, because
he’s standing there.

But she lifts her chin, and as she does, she slows. He can see her eyes so clearly,
even though it’s dark. He can see their shape, the way they round; he can see the
edge of her lashes. Her mouth opens slightly as she approaches. Her eyes are brown.
They’ve always been brown. But they’re also luminescent. It’s not an exaggeration:
They glow; they’re alight. He’s seen light like that twice since his death. Only twice.

And he knows, then, that Emma can see him. He knows how to hide from the sight of
anyone but the Queen of the Dead; if she’s looking for someone among the dead, she’ll
find them. But he can make himself so still, so quiet, that no one else who can see
the dead will see him.

It never occurred to him to worry that Emma might see him. It doesn’t occur to him
now. If he’s afraid at all, it’s of the sharp edge of ridiculous hope. He has never
loved anyone the way he loves Emma. When she lifts a hand, palm up, it’s the most
natural thing in the world to reach out to take it.

It’s the most natural thing in the world, but he’s dead, and she’s not. She can
see
him. He can see her. Touching doesn’t happen, for the dead; it’s too much to hope
for.