Jumping (16 page)

Our parents have been gone for years now. We are only a year and a half apart in age, and we were always close growing up. We hung out together, sharing friends, all through school, and people often asked if we were twins. I thought that was more because we were always together than because we look a lot alike, which we do, though I see it as the usual sibling resemblance.

I went off to college first, attending the university near Portsmouth, not far from the village, and she came up often, meeting whomever I met, learning all the places I knew, hanging out with me and my best friend Tom. I had been attending the university for a year, majoring in English, when Silvia came up to begin her studies in nursing. She wanted to be a midwife.

Tom and I met attending many of the anti-war and human rights protests on campus, eager to voice our opinions on the over-involvement of our government in too many places in the world, from the Middle East, to Africa, to the South Pacific. We discovered we were both English majors, interested in becoming writers, and we decided to share a loft apartment. Silvia lived in the dorm and hadn't made many friends there, as I remember. So, the three of us were together most of the time, reading the same things and discussing them, seeing the same movies, going to the same protests.

I often think the protests, more than anything, forged the relationship among the three of us, enlivening and uniting us in an enduring way. They were some of my fondest memories. Usually held around lunch time, they brought together students who had some free time, provided us with free pizza, and kept great debates going on the finer points of whatever U.S. engagement we were protesting. Silvia and I were impassioned protesters, and began to help to organize the marches and find funding for their operation. Tom was more along for the ride, enjoying the camaraderie of the gatherings and finding all kinds of things to write about. Protest was all I wanted to write about, though, from early on. I sought out all the forgotten vets I could find in order to collect their war stories, which I then could weave into an argument against war.

As for Tom and Silvia, they're an example of why I've always considered good conversation the best aphrodisiac for a relationship. I could see how one conversational topic led to another and another for them, deepening their relationship incrementally. I can't say when I felt the energy change, but I soon came to fully understand the concept of “third wheel.” I was close to Tom and I could see they were both happy, so it was easy to be genuinely happy for them.

Silvia and Tom's wedding came that following summer, and Silvia quit her studies because she was pregnant by then, with Duncan Robert. Tom quit, too, and they moved back to the village, where Tom tried to find work to support them. I never understood their move back. Tom was a writer at heart, and a good one. He needed to have time and place to do it in order to thrive. I lost the everyday contact I'd had with them because of that move, and threw myself into completing my master's degree in the writing program, funded by a teaching fellowship.

I soon discovered that my real interest, and my strength, was in teaching. I liked doing it, and I liked myself when I did it. I knew that my writing, while serviceable, would never be as good as Tom's, and that knowledge didn't break my heart the way I thought it would. More and more, I wanted to tell other people's stories, particularly war stories, which I found deeply moving, and I knew they could provide background for my teaching.

I talked with returning vets, coming home after tours of duty in Iraq, though there weren't many returning at that time unless they'd been terribly wounded. I discovered that several of the older faculty on campus had fought in Vietnam, and their stories had had time to merge with the details of who they were then and are now in a way that made them powerful tools for teaching. I continued to enjoy teaching; it made me think and laugh and feel really alive. It wasn't as all-consuming and solitary as writing was. I found I had room to be, which suited me, and I happily settled into the routines of teaching, reading and writing that continue to define my life. Life was good, and I assumed it was for my sister, too.

What I didn't know, however, was that Tom and Silvia were heading for divorce, a decision they would make when Duncan Robert was three. Later, after talking at length with Silvia over late-night coffees, I wondered if Tom's trying to be something he wasn't had just worn them all out. There wasn't a job left in the village he hadn't tried and failed at, and not tending to his writing regularly seemed to rob him of something essential for his well-being. The part of him that knew joy diminished almost to the point of non-existence. So, he took what was left of himself out of the marriage, said good bye to his son, and promised to still provide for them in whatever ways he could. Tom told me he thought it was too late for him to try to be a student anymore, so he set out to write, supporting himself any way he could, which was easier when he was alone. He had some success with his writing, too, and sent money to Silvia regularly.

I know Silvia and Duncan Robert haven't seen Tom since, his work and life taking him in and out of the country. Silvia has kept him as the dad in Duncan Robert's life, not letting his absence obscure the fact, hoping they'll connect at some point. She stayed on in the village, liking that she could at least give Duncan Robert constancy in that way. She has worked almost twenty years now as secretary at the one Catholic church in town. Though she neither practices the faith nor believes in it, she feels herself lucky to be an essential part of the community. Duncan Robert grew up well supported, on all sides. I'm struck by the sad irony that he was named for two fathers—Silvia's and my father (Duncan) and Tom's father (Robert), but he never knew either of them. And of course he's never really known his own.

The divorce, however, gave
me
the unexpected gift of knowing Duncan Robert. I had some vague romantic notion of being the popular uncle, the one who only got to visit occasionally, and was all the more loved and longed for because of it. That was hogwash of course, and I instead found myself working hard to woo this active, discerning kid who regularly looked at me sideways, measuring the sum total of me in that look. I had no way of knowing what that look found in me, or didn't find. But without a shadow of a doubt, it began to matter to me more and more.

I finally admitted to myself that I was captivated by this boy—how he thought, what he might say, what he might do next—I had begun to love him. Duncan Robert was teaching me things that I couldn't learn anywhere else. So when I completed the master's program, contrary to what I thought I would do, I took a job teaching at the community college not far from the village so that I could be near Silvia and Duncan Robert. This arrangement also suited me better than I could have imagined. Duncan Robert and I grew to be very close, camping and hiking together, sharing books and music, and all the things that mattered most—including, eventually, his jump.

So, I'm here at Silvia's, to tell her about Babe's and my conversation with him. I pull into her driveway behind her old Subaru Forester, the back of the car still plastered with anti-war stickers. I pause a moment to see if she has any new ones. I savor the old ones—
Republicans for Voldemort
and
How many lives per gallon
? I spot one I haven't seen:
How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?—Dwight D. Eisenhower
. Good one, unexpected source. I'll have to ask her about it.

I follow the side brick walk, some signs of early frost in the shade of its borders, to the back door of her little cape cod, which is complete with black shutters at the narrow windows and fanlight above the front door. The back door opens directly into the kitchen, where I know she'll be. She has lived in the same house for all the time she and Duncan Robert have been in the village. I love her house. It feels like home to me. I open the door to see her, as expected, at the kitchen sink, washing lettuce.

“You're going to jump, aren't you?” She doesn't turn around to greet me.

I turn from shutting the door. “What makes you say that?” I have come to talk about Duncan Robert, not me, and she is going to fix dinner for us. My hard-won calm is threatening to desert me.

“You might just as well tell me, Miles. I know you. This has been coming for a long time.” She continues to wash her lettuce.

“Don't you want to hear about the interview first?”

“Oh, all right. I know the answer anyway.” She dries her hands and turns to hug me, and I hug her back, still glad to be here.

And she does want to hear about the interview. We sit at her kitchen table to eat the good stew and salad she has prepared, sharing some wine, too. So I tell her everything I can remember and say that Babe has an article coming out in the local paper in the next week or so, and she can talk to Babe, too.

Silvia has been in regular contact with Duncan Robert since the day he came out of the Void, which was the exact day he jumped in, so she already knew he was all right and where he was living and so on. She hadn't known the peace and understanding he'd discovered through his experience, though she'd guessed at it. I am able to provide that.

She listens quietly. When I finish, she says, “I thought I had failed him.”

“Why?” I ask, surprised. “How could you have thought that?”

“Because he couldn't find his way. That's why I supported his jump. I thought I'd let him down. That he had expected things from me as a mother I wasn't capable of. From the very beginning, my feelings for him had taken me beyond any place I'd ever been before. I didn't know how to do it. He had to be the teacher. You know our parents were the kind who never showed emotion. Everyone went to their rooms when they were angry. And it was an unspoken truth that going beyond our assigned roles was not appropriate or acceptable. I don't think this was true for you, but it left me feeling like an outcast most of the time. Nothing I thought or did seemed right.”

I sit amazed to hear this. She's never said any of this to me before.

“And that's what I think Duncan Robert felt, too. I hadn't been able to save him from it. But he didn't stick at that spot, as I had done. Look what he did instead! I so admire it—finding his own way, creating his own beliefs to live by. He jumped! My god, the courage that took. It still blows me away. I don't think I could do it.” She ruminates for a minute. “But if he hadn't come out, I probably would have gone in!” She laughs.

“The Void probably wouldn't have let you,” I say. I don't know if I could have handled both of them jumping.

“I know, I know.” She looks at me as if she's the older sibling. “It's just funny. His jump has made me feel like a better mother.” She smiles and hugs me, and I hug her back.

A
FEW WEEKS LATER
, I'm in one of my small night classes on basic composition at the community college. The college is just one town over, about seven miles from the village, so I know the students have heard about Babe's interview. Her article is out now. I don't expect them to talk about it, though. It's a topic no one really talks about in town—things are whispered, there's some random gossip hinted at more than stated, but that's all. It's kept behind closed doors, and I plan to honor that. Between now and next spring, the Void doesn't need any more attention cast on it.

There are five students there that night, three males, two females; one male student is absent. Most are nontraditional students, as they say, meaning not eighteen and fresh out of high school. More like twenty-five and up, and a product of the school of hard knocks, living on the fringe of purpose and ambition but driven to attend college to find some kind of future.

I'm doing a traditional writing exercise, without really thinking about it. I'm passing around the old cardboard box with a mismatched collection of odds and ends in it for them to choose from. Once they've chosen, they're given ten or twenty minutes in class to write on their object—manufacture a story about it and share it with the class. The box holds an old tube of fire-engine red lipstick, almost completely used up; some keys on a flimsy key chain; a frayed shoelace that could be from a child's shoe; a small battered blue flashlight; a pack of breath-saving gum with a couple of pieces left in it; an old Ray Bradbury paperback; a funeral home hand fan, inscribed with the name of the funeral home and a heavenly host of angels. Fodder for fiction, as one student called it.

As the box is being passed around, a male student named Lonnie in the back calls out, “Can we write about the Void?”

The room gets quiet. They all look up at me, standing by my desk, pen in hand, poised over the grade book open on my desk. I mark Nathan, the missing student, absent. Attendance is 20 percent of their grade. I know why they're asking, but I'm not going to discuss the interview with them.

“Sure.”

“But we haven't experienced it,” Lonnie says “and you always say it has to be our truth. Can we write about something that hasn't happened to us?”

I stop what I'm doing, put my grade book down, and sit back in my chair. I look at them, realizing it's an important point for me to make.

“I had a professor tell me once that my forte is war stories.” I pause and breathe a moment. “Have I ever been to war? No. In fact, I do the opposite. I protest wars, any and all wars. But can I tell a war story? You be the judge. Let me tell you part of one that I heard from one of my older friends who did go to war, in Vietnam.” I pull some typed pages out of the back of my grade book. They've served this duty before.

I'm not really trying to distract them from the Void, I tell myself, and I don't think I could. I'm trying to answer their question about telling others' stories, while making sure I'm being a good example for how it's done. And if I can get them to join hands aboard the love train and forsake war forever, as the old anti-war song says, so much the better. I start to read to them.

“O'Reilly was a young eighteen when he went to war, fresh out of high school and fresh out of ideas of what to do with himself. Every male in his family before him had enlisted. They weren't good at getting educated and didn't have the means for it anyway. There was no family business to go into. Enlisting offered their first chance at picking out a living wherever they could.