The Half Life of Molly Pierce (5 page)

Then another text:

Please come.

Five seconds later, another:

I’ll pick you up.

And I realize now I have no choice.

I have to go. There’s no way to tell him not to come and get me.

But there’s something else.

I
want
him to come and get me.

I want to see him again.

And there’s another something else.

How does he know where I live?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
ask him when I see him.

I wait by the picture window in the living room and as soon as I see his car pull into my driveway, I’m out the door.

His car is nice. It’s a dark blue, shiny, clean.

He gets out to open the door for me, which I don’t expect. He’s there before I reach the passenger side, and he’s wearing a dark blue suit. I’m wearing a dress I’ve worn to each of my grandparents’ funerals. It’s black, goes to the knees. I feel weird wearing it. Like maybe it smells. Like somehow it’s absorbed the odor of all the funeral parlors it’s seen. The formaldehyde. The flowers. The smell nobody admits is rot.

“You look nice,” he says when I reach him.

I shrug and mumble thanks.

I don’t like when people give me compliments. It makes me feel like I owe them something in return.

Plus, it’s a funeral. Do I really want to look nice for a funeral? People shouldn’t look nice for funerals, should they? What does that say about them? Does it say that they don’t care about the person that died? That they have enough time to do their hair and their makeup and put appropriate shoes on? Shouldn’t we all be too upset to do any of that?

His car smells good. He closes the door for me and I put my seat belt on. He fixes the radio so it’s low enough for us to talk and then he pulls out of my driveway and starts off down the road. The funeral is three towns over. I guess it makes sense I didn’t know them. Despite what Erie said, it’s reasonable I wouldn’t know someone who lived three towns over. If they kept to themselves. Didn’t go to a lot of parties. I might not know them.

“You’re quiet,” he says.

It’s there again. This pull. This gravity. I realize I’m happy and I don’t know why. I feel a degree of happiness I haven’t hoped for in years. A calm, a stillness. I’m hoping he gets lost, that we drive around in circles until we both die, stopping only for gas and water when we’re thirsty and snacks when we’re hungry. I will put my hand on his leg when he drives and he will sing me lullabies when I can’t sleep and I realize I’ve never wanted any of this before. I’ve never felt a connection to someone like this and I’m wondering if it’s real. I don’t know why I should feel it now, for Sayer, but it’s here and I’m willing it to stay.

“I’m sorry,” I reply.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I like being quiet. I guess.”

I like being quiet? We both have apples?

“Molly,” he says then, and the way he says my name, it stirs something inside me. A memory, maybe, or a suggestion. All I know is that it sounds like he’s said my name before. It sounds like he’s practiced saying my name in front of a mirror until he got it completely right.

“Yes.”

“I’m really glad you’re coming.”

“Oh.”

“I think my brother would have appreciated it.”

“Were you close?”

“We were brothers,” he says, and just the way he says it you can tell exactly what he means. We had our disagreements and sometimes we hated each other but he was my brother and someone hit the back tire of his motorcycle and now he is dead. Now we are driving to his funeral and now I have you in my car and now we are making small talk and you shouldn’t have worn that dress. The smell of formaldehyde, it is suffocating me.

“Right, of course,” I say. I have a brother, too. And Clancy is sad and Clancy is annoying and Clancy murdered all my goldfish when he was seven, picked them out of the bowl by their tails and held them thrashing until their tiny lungs collapsed and I hated him for that. I hated him with the true hatred of a nine-year-old girl, but he is still my brother and my love for him will go beyond death. It will go beyond goldfish and it will go beyond life. And I can’t imagine driving to his funeral. In my mind, he will never die. He and Hazel will never die. They will never age and they will remain constant forever.

“I still can’t thank you enough,” he says. Out of the corner of my eye I see him look out of the corner of his eye at me. I see one finger of his right hand twitch like he would like to take my hand in his hand but he won’t. He doesn’t.

“I did what anyone would have done,” I say. But this is a lie. There were other people there and nobody else did what I did. Nobody let the dying boy cough blood all over them. Nobody held the dying boy’s head while he took his last dying breaths. I had to throw my sweater out. My favorite sweater, I pushed it to the bottom of the trash can and then I crumpled up pages of an old newspaper and I threw the pages in the trash until I couldn’t see the sweater anymore. Blood doesn’t come out. That much blood, it wouldn’t have come out and so I didn’t even try.

“I don’t think there are many people who would have done what you did,” Sayer says.

And then we’re quiet. I look out the window, and everything seems foreign. We might as well be in a different country, a different universe. We might as well be in the future or in the past. Nothing seems familiar to me anymore. The people I used to know are strangers. And the stranger sitting next to me seems like someone I’ve known my whole life.

I know.

Nothing makes sense to me, either.

And then I ask him. I say, “Sayer, how did you know where I live?”

And he says, “I don’t want to lie to you.”

And I say, “Why would you lie?”

And he says, “There are reasons.”

“What would you lie about?”

“It’s a small town,” he says. “Anyone could have told me.”

“Did someone tell you?”

“At one point,” he says, “someone told me.”

And I say, “How long have you known me?”

And he says, “It feels like forever.”

And I say, “I think it feels like forever, too.”

And he says, “No more questions, okay? Not right now.”

And I remember his brother has died and so I nod okay and I stare out the window again, and when we get to the funeral parlor I stay in the car while he walks around and opens the door for me. And when he opens the door, he takes my hand and he pulls me out and then he pulls me into a hug and he hugs me like he will die without me. Like I am the only thing keeping him alive. I want to tell him the feeling is mutual but I don’t. I don’t say anything. Anything I say will come out wrong and so I don’t say anything.

The funeral is a blur. I mean, I don’t lose time but I force myself to disassociate from my body, to lose concentration, because it’s easier to handle. This is something I’ve gotten very good at doing. I sit in the second row surrounded by strangers. Some of them look at me like they might know me, but that is how they look at everybody and nobody says hi to me. Sayer sits to the side with a man who might be his uncle, a woman who might be his grandmother. The room is small and the casket is closed. But even though it is closed I can see Lyle inside it. I can see Lyle bleeding and I can see Lyle dead. And I can see Lyle reborn and I can see Lyle flying through the air and I can see Lyle on the pavement with blood pouring out of his mouth.

And then I can see something else. And it is like I
am
somewhere else and I am in my car again and I am wearing my favorite gray sweater, the one Lyle bled on. And I am driving too fast and I am looking in my rearview mirror like someone might be following me. I’m trying to lose someone. And I’m crying, but I wipe the tears away from my face and I tell myself I’ve made the right decision. But what decision have I made?

What decision have I made?

I am in the funeral parlor and when I wake up it’s like I’m waking up from something I have lost.

I knew Lyle Avery.

Lyle Avery knew me.

I was with him before he died.

I was with him before he got on the motorcycle.

I knew him.

I was with him and then I left him and I told him not to follow me.

I told him not to follow me, but he did.

And he tried to catch up to me and someone hit the back tire of his motorcycle and he flew over my car but it was not my fault. It was not my fault because I told him not to follow me. It was not my fault because I told him I didn’t want him to follow me.

I get up in the middle of a eulogy. Somebody is giving a eulogy for Lyle, but if I do not get out of the room immediately, I will scream.

In the hallway I lean against the wall and I take big giant gulps of air and I force myself to remain present. I can feel myself slipping away, but I press my hands against the wall and I want to stay here. I want to be here. I do not want to miss any more time. This is my time and I do not want to lose it.

And of course I have never met Lyle Avery before. I have never met him before in my life.

“Molly.”

I open my eyes and Sayer is right in front of me.

I say, “How did I know your brother?”

And he says, “Let me get through today. Let me just get through today and I will explain everything.”

But when he asks me to come inside with him, I say that I can’t. I can’t go back in there because there are too many people and the walls are moving. They are closing in on me, and he asks if I am okay and suddenly I am not okay. And he looks concerned and he takes my hand in his hand and I think, Please just leave me alone. Please just forget that you have ever met me. Please just let me be by myself and let me be quiet and let me be still.

“Molly,” he says. “Do you want to get some air?”

I nod stiffly. Air, sure. I’ve left my coat on my chair but suddenly air and cold are all I need. I leave him and walk down the hall as quickly as I can without running, and I burst out of the funeral parlor and it comes back in a rush. It comes back in a rush of color and sound and conversation.

I’m in a building. It is a dirty, abandoned building and I am arguing with someone. I’m arguing with Lyle. Of course, my mind says, I am always arguing with Lyle.

But that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never met Lyle before.

- - -

This is what happens.

Lyle has a bottle of whiskey in one hand, but it’s empty and he throws it against a wall and the bottle breaks into a thousand pieces and I jump backward and I feel scared of him for the first time. And when he sees my face, scared, he stops, and he takes a step away from the wall and he looks at me.

“You’re scared of me,” he says.

“I’m not scared of you, Lyle. Right now you’re scaring me a little, yes, but I’m not scared of you.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I just . . . Jesus, you can be such a . . .”

He paces a tight circle. I’m angry. I’m angry with him.

“Such a
what
, Lyle?” He doesn’t answer. I can tell he’s not going to answer.

I’m so angry now that I can’t stay still. I pace; I turn and walk away from him and then I come back and then I walk away and then I come back, and then he grabs my arm to get me to stay in one place.

“You know,” he says.

“Know what?”

“How much you mean to me.”

“Sure,” I say. “Yeah, I know how much I mean to you.”

“But that doesn’t change anything?”

“It changes everything,” I say. “You know that it changes everything.”

“It doesn’t change everything,” he says. “It doesn’t change your mind.”

“I can’t help it,” I say. It’s more like I beg. Like I plead.

“You can try. Maybe you’re just not trying hard enough.”

“You’d like me to try? You’d like me to
try
to be in love with you? Do you hear how that sounds?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It sounded like that’s what you meant.”

“I’m not asking you to . . . Fuck, how can you possibly . . . You don’t even know him!”

“I know him. Of course I know him.”

“But you forget him. All the time. You’re constantly forgetting him. How can you love someone you can’t even remember?”

It’s a low blow and I answer with an equally low blow.

“I forget you, too. As soon as you’re out of my sight, Lyle, I forget you.”

He looks like he wants to hit me. All this anger he has crawling underneath his skin, how have I never seen it before?

“Look, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stay here any longer. I’m missing school for this, Lyle. You said this was important.”

He yells, “THIS IS IMPORTANT!”

“You said it couldn’t wait. It could have waited. I can’t afford to miss any more school.”

His face softens a little. He looks around at the pieces of the whiskey bottle. Like he wishes they could gather themselves up and mold themselves together and fill themselves up again. I imagine him offering a toast to me. I don’t know what else he would toast to.

“You don’t even know him,” he says. His voice is quiet. His eyes will not meet mine.

“I know him,” I say. “You know I know him.”

“And there’s nothing I can say?”

There’s no emotion anymore. His voice, it’s flat.

“You’ve said everything.”

“So there’s nothing I can say?”

“I have to go.”

“You’re going?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re just going to go?”

“That’s what people do. They go.”

“Or they stay.”

“Yes. They stay in abandoned buildings forever. Grow up. Have kids. Paint murals.”

“We wouldn’t have to stay here.”

He’s so sincere and his sincerity makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know where to put it.

“Don’t you want him to be happy?” I say. I don’t know where these words come from; they jump to my throat and escape before I can stop them.

He looks like he’s thinking about it. He actually looks like he’s considering it. The happiness of another human being. Does it matter to him? Does it mean anything?