One Reckless Summer (28 page)

He leaned closer, gave her a little kiss. “I’m glad.”

Overhead, she could see dark clouds shifting, the light of the moon starting to peek through, a few stars twinkling in the background—and she decided she had to quit this, push back all she was feeling.
Say something simple, something…practical.
“That offer to dry your clothes still stands.”

His expression changed—he looked a little distant, sad. “And I wish I could take you up on it, honey.”

Oh. “But you have to go.” Her heart pinched even as she said the words.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“So…
Wayne
’s bad then?”

Next to her, he stiffened slightly. “Let’s not talk about that, okay? It’s a rule I have—when I’m with you…I’m just with you, not anywhere else.”

She bit her lip and said, “I like that rule.” But she was really thinking,
I love you, I love you,
I
love you
.
I’m doomed, but I love you.

“Why don’t we get dressed and maybe you can walk me down to the dock,” he suggested.

And though she’d never done that before, she loved the idea of doing it now—it felt like the perfect ending to a liaison that had made her feel so…free to be with him. Finally. Well, wait, no, the perfect ending would be if he could stay. If they were like normal people, normal couples, without secrets or reputations. Maybe that offer to dry his clothes had been more emotional than practical, after all—an effort to extend his visit. But with Mick, she’d take what he could give her.

After they went in and toweled off, Jenny put on a fresh
cami
and a pair of gym shorts, and Mick didn’t bother putting back on the wet tee he’d arrived in—he just carried it in his fist as they walked across the road and down onto the dock.

Once there, he lifted his palms to her face to kiss her, and she nearly melted from the fresh pleasure. With Mick, it seemed, she was insatiable—always wanting more. And as their kisses deepened in the first cool night air she’d felt since coming home, she realized he was pushing his hands up under her top—all the way, to her breasts—and then he was raising the fabric, peeling it upward, until she was on full display. Right there on the dock.

“
Wh
-
what are you doing?” she asked.

Just before he lowered his mouth to one beaded peak, he whispered, “Making you
live
.”

And she thought of protesting, because even though it was unlikely, one of her neighbors along the shore
could
see if they were looking out a window or came outside for anything—but she didn’t, because it also felt
wild.
As wild as the woods. As wild as the rain. Mick gave her more freedom than she’d ever known she even wanted.

He kissed her breasts for a few blissful moments as she leaned her head back, basking in the pleasure, letting her gaze get lost in the stars now reappearing overhead.

Until he sweetly pulled her top back down into place, kissed her lips one last time, and said, “Bye, pussycat.”

We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Tombstone
epitaph of two amateur astronomers

T
he blisters on Mick’s hands had started to heal, but he knew more were coming. All the dirt he’d shoveled out of that hole had to go back in.

He sat next to
Wayne
’s bed, watching him sleep fitfully, feeling his brother’s pain in his gut. He thought of what Jenny had said to him the other night—that he was making her live. The irony burned inside him, the irony of making one person live while watching another die. Maybe that should make him think about the circle of life and all that profound shit, but mostly it just made him glad he was able to make
someone
happy.
Wayne
he could comfort, but there was no more happiness or sadness now—there was only sleep and pain and long nights and a knot in Mick’s stomach that wouldn’t go away.

The pain patches had quit working, and now Mick had to administer the other medicine—the stuff he had to inject, under
Wayne
’s tongue. And he now had to crush up the
oxycodone
and put that under his brother’s tongue, as well, because he could no longer swallow it.

Thank God it had rained. Thank God. Because it wasn’t so hot in here now, and maybe that was a little thing, but it felt big at the moment. It had only rained for a day or so, on and off, and several more days had passed since then, but the temps had only climbed back into the mid-eighties and so far the humidity hadn’t returned. He had to hang on to what he could to keep himself going now.

Darkness had just fallen, night had come, and pleasant, breathable air wafted in the open windows. He wondered if
Wayne
could feel that at all. He
wanted
his brother to feel it.

He watched him some more, pleased when his sleep slowly became more peaceful—probably the medicine he’d recently administered taking effect. And he watched his brother’s face, gaunt now from not eating, and he tried to mentally prepare for what was to come. And then he turned his eyes on that photo
Wayne
had saved from their boyhood, and he cried, just a little.

But then he got disgusted with himself—this was no time for weakness—and he got up and walked outside, into the small clearing by the house. And he stared up into the stars, and he felt what Jenny had taught him the sky could make him feel: that in the hugeness of it all, his troubles weren’t insurmountable, and in the vastness of time, these next few days were less than the blink of an eye and would be over soon.

Two days later, around
noon
,
Wayne
opened his eyes, looked up at Mick from his bed, and said, “Am I dead yet?”

For a second, Mick thought he was losing it—his brother hadn’t spoken in a long while. But he looked into
Wayne
’s eyes, and behind the stark frailty, he saw a surprising lucidity that hadn’t been there in days. “No,” Mick said. “Not yet.”

“I’m sorry I’m making you do this,”
Wayne
said, his words slow, his voice dry and cracking. He didn’t need to say more—they both knew how horrible this had gotten.

But Mick only shook his head. “No,
it’s
okay,” he promised.

Then
Wayne
started making a wheezing sound, so Mick hurried to grab a glass of water and stick a straw in it. He held it to
Wayne
’s mouth and urged his brother to try to drink—and he choked a little, but got some down.

“Anything you want?” Mick asked when
Wayne
seemed calmer.

“Nah,”
Wayne
said. And his eyes looked vacant for a moment, and Mick thought maybe he was “leaving” again as quickly as he’d arrived—but then he turned his head slightly toward Mick and said feebly, “Still seeing your girl across the lake?”

The question surprised Mick as much as
Wayne
’s sudden clarity—it seemed like Mick’s love life should be the last thing on
Wayne
’s mind right now. “Yeah,” he answered softly.

“What’s it like?”

Mick blinked, confused. “What’s what like?”

Wayne
hesitated,
then
replied, his voice even weaker now. “Been a while…since I got laid. What’s…the sex like?”

Mick drew in a deep breath. His brother wanted to remember what it was like to be with a woman. In any other situation, it might have felt like a betrayal to Jenny to talk about it, but this was…this was just one more way of helping his brother die. “It’s…warm,” Mick said, more softly than he’d intended—then closed his eyes, tired and trying to come up with other ways to describe sex with Jenny. “Her skin is soft. Her curves are perfect…like they were made for my hands. When I’m inside her, I feel…safe. When she comes, she moans in a way I feel in my chest.”

When Mick opened his eyes,
Wayne
’s were shut, but he still replied. “Damn, bro…sounds nice.”

“It is.”

Wayne
’s breath came slow, shallow. “Can you…take me…outside? Into the sun?”

“All right,” Mick said, without hesitation, anxious to honor any request his brother made now—despite the utter strangeness, and the finality that coursed through him, when he scooped his brother’s depleted body up into his arms.
Wayne
was little more than skin and bones, and Mick felt that in a whole new, brutal way, holding him like this. But neither spoke as Mick carried him to one of the few sunny, grassy spots on their side of the lake—a little knoll,
unshrouded
by shade, that overlooked the water, which Mick thought especially pretty today with the sun shining on it. It was the same spot where he’d lain on his back with Jenny and looked at the stars on the night she’d found out about Wayne.

Wayne
lay on the ground now, as well, too weak to sit up on his own, so Mick left him for a minute, returning with an old lounge chair from the shed that he was able to fold and set up on the ground like a backrest.

They sat quietly and he sensed
Wayne
soaking in the pretty day, soaking in…life, the last he would know of it. A bird sang somewhere nearby. Mick felt thankful again that the weather was nice, hot but not scorching—and then a soft breeze even wafted past, making the leaves in the trees
shush
together and the pine boughs sway. Everything about the moment felt surreal.

Mick saw
Wayne
’s eyes skim the opposite
shore,
all the pretty little houses perched there like pictures from a storybook. They used to sit here as boys sometimes, looking across the lake this way—but they’d never talked about it, about how much brighter the world appeared on the other side. Now, though,
Wayne
asked, “You ever wonder…what it’s like…to live over
there?
”

“Yeah,” Mick replied. He’d
always
wondered.

“Me, too.”

“I’ve been…getting a taste of it lately, I guess. With Jenny.”

Wayne
slowly shifted his glance to Mick. “Yeah? What’s…it like?”

“Nice. Just the way you’d expect. Nice…but dangerous.” He looked across the lake again himself, remembering how far away it had seemed as a boy—sort of like The Emerald City across that wide field of poppies. “I’d almost rather not
know
what it’s like, you know? Since I don’t get to keep it.”

“Maybe…you will,”
Wayne
said, as if it were a real possibility.

And Mick knew better, but he wanted to let
Wayne
think cheerful thoughts, and he got the idea it made his brother happy to picture Mick over there amid the pastel cottages and colored canoes and hanging flowerpots. So he just said, “Maybe.”

And then
Wayne
lifted his eyes skyward, up past the trees to the blue expanse above, dotted today with white, fluffy clouds. He stared intently, like someone watching a movie, mesmerized by what they saw on the screen, and he said, “Do you see that? Do you see it? Man, it’s beautiful.”

And then he closed his eyes, and he expelled a small puff of breath…and then he went still.

And Mick’s chest tightened with a jolt because he knew
Wayne
was dead.

“Shit,” he whispered to no one. “God.” Because he’d known this was coming—but he just hadn’t expected it right
now,
at this very moment, while they were talking, for Christ’s sake.

And he didn’t know if, with
Wayne
’s last words, he’d simply been talking about the sky being beautiful—or if he’d seen a white
light,
or maybe the hand of God. And if the latter, if it was real or a hallucination. He only knew the strange starkness of death.

And as he looked at his brother’s limp, lifeless body, he wondered who would remember Wayne—who would remember that he could be funny, that he’d been good at math, that he’d liked horses as a kid but had never ridden one. It would be like
Wayne
had never existed—and due to the circumstances of his death, Mick couldn’t even give him a decent gravestone to mark his passing.

Despite the fact that
Wayne
couldn’t hear him anymore, he heard himself say, “
I’ll
remember you,” just before the tears flowed down his face.

It had taken sheer will to put the lid on the simple wooden coffin Mick had built over the summer.

Sheer will to use the ropes-and-pulley system he’d set up to lower it into the ground.

Sheer will to shovel the dirt back over it.

A somehow numb-but-crushing pain had vibrated through his chest with every step he took, every move he made, to complete the grim task that he’d had to accomplish today.

Afterward, he sat next to the fresh grave for a long time, hours. He wasn’t sure why.

Was he waiting for darkness to fall, for the day of his brother’s death to come to an end? Was he avoiding going back into the house, feeling the fresh sense of loneliness that would surely fill the space? Maybe he just didn’t want to leave
Wayne
alone there, in the ground. He knew
Wayne
was dead, but it felt strange, as if to walk away was to abandon him. He couldn’t believe he’d just covered his brother with dirt—and his chest tightened all over again to remember it. Every fucking shovelful of it.

He’s dead—it’s okay that you covered him with dirt. It’s okay.

He knew that—there was just something inside him having a hard time believing it right now.

As he sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, he reached down to run his fingers through the soft, rich soil atop the mound he’d created with it. He wondered if there was a God. He wondered if God had mercy on sinners like his brother when they died. And sinners like him.

Then he glanced up through the trees surrounding the little family cemetery only a stone’s throw from the house to see
Wayne
’s last blue sky beginning to turn just a little purple, like a pale bruise. Night was beginning to fall. Thank God. He wanted it to get dark now, dark, dark,
dark
—so he could finally go see Jenny. He guessed maybe
that
was what he’d been waiting for all this time, because it was the only thought in his head that held any goodness, any comfort,
any
relief.