With or Without You (29 page)

Exhausted, I sat on a curb and cried, hoping someone would take pity on me, tell me to click my heels three times, and this would all be over. Then, a small shadow fell over me.

“Hey,” said a squeaky voice.

I looked up and caught my first sight of Davis. His hair, a farrago of sandy curls, fell down into his eyes. He hid his small frame under a bright lemon-colored San Francisco T-shirt. His jean shorts and sandals did little to mask his willow-branch legs. I wouldn’t have guessed he was my age—he was short back then, too. But he was talking to me and that was all that mattered.

“Anything to do around here?”

I expected taunts. “Crybaby!” “Whiner!” He didn’t seem to care that I was obviously bawling my eyes out. Already, he was special.

I sniffed back more tears and said, “What?”

He sat down next to me and jerked his thumb over his shoulder to where a teal moving truck was backed up to a beautiful house.

“We just moved here and I’m bored out of my skull. If we were still back in California, I’d go to the Boys and Girls Club or something. But I don’t know what there is to do around here. They won’t let me help unload the truck and I’m going apeshit.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone my age curse but it was the coolest swear I’d ever heard. Apeshit? Awesome.

I smeared my tears with the heel of my hand and gave it a thought. “There’s a Chuck E. Cheese over by East Towne Mall,” I suggested.

He nodded. “That’s cool. I rock at air hockey. Is East Towne far?”

I had to admit: “I have no clue where I am. I … took a wrong turn.”

Davis didn’t even blink. Instead, he pulled a neatly folded brochure from his back pocket, opening it to reveal a Madison street map. “Mom’s terrified I’ll get lost so she makes me carry this,” he explained, pointing to the map. “She even marked our house on it.” A lopsided star, crudely drawn in red marker, branded a spot on Wells Drive. He tapped it with his finger and said in a mock deep, authoritarian voice, “You … are … here.”

I traced the streets and found Pinckney and Gamble, the corner of our store. It was embarrassingly close, only a few blocks. I must have spent the better part of the afternoon going around in circles. I thought I’d gone an incredible distance, only to realize I was practically back where I’d started.

“Come on,” Davis announced, standing. “It looks pretty easy.”

“I can find it.” I stood, securing my backpack to my shoulder. “You don’t have to—”

But he was already walking down the sidewalk, holding the map out in front of him like he was following a compass. As I scrambled to catch up, we were stopped by a high, wavering voice. “Davis?”

Mrs. Grayson hasn’t changed much since I met her. She was barely real, even back then.

Mrs. Grayson moved with tentative steps to the edge of the driveway, eyes darting nervously for unseen predators.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Davis called, then whispered to me. “What’s your name?”

“Evan,” I whispered back.

“Ev here is just showing me around the neighborhood.”

Mrs. Grayson’s eyes raked over me but I’m not sure she actually saw me. I must have passed inspection because she nodded absently and said, “Don’t go far.”

Davis smiled, and there was something gentle and reassuring
in the gesture. Just about to start third grade and already taking care of Mom. “We won’t.”

We turned and made our way up the sidewalk. Davis heaved a sigh. “She’s getting better. Her therapist got on her case to give me a little more space. Back in California, I practically wore a leash.”

And it all came out during the walk back to my house. Everything. His life in San Francisco. His mother’s emotional descent mirroring his father’s growing distance from the family. I can’t imagine that kind of candor now; I have no idea how Davis managed it at nine. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that he
needed
to share all this. And he’d decided I could be trusted. Me. I never told him but that’s when I first felt love for Davis.

When we got back to the store, I invited him in.

“You live over a grocery store?” Davis asked, grinning. “That is so cool. It’s like your own personal buffet.” In fact, it wasn’t like that at all. Anything we wanted from the stock was taken out of our allowance. But why explain and ruin my newly instated coolness?

Dad was at the register reading the paper. He looked up long enough to see it was me before going back to his reading. I grabbed us each a Dr Pepper from the cold case and we sat outside on the steps of the store.

I don’t know how long we talked. He told me about living in California and I tried to indoctrinate him into the concept of
cheese and brats, two staples he was going to need to embrace to make it in Wisconsin. I told him about Grant School, where we’d both be starting third grade in a few weeks. When it looked like it might be getting dark, Davis got up to leave.

“So, I guess I’ll see you in school?” I asked.

Davis scrunched up his face. Here it was at last. The admission that he didn’t want to be caught dead with me, like everyone else. But then he said, “What’s wrong with tomorrow? I have some unpacking to do in the morning. We should do something when I’m done. There’s supposed to be a lake around here, right?”

Davis had a lot to learn about the isthmus city.

“You can show me that.”

We agreed where and when to meet. Then Davis walked home.

Sometimes I imagine an alternate life for Davis. A life where we didn’t meet that stiflingly hot August day. A life where Davis just showed up as the new kid in school, an unknown quantity with bright eyes and an infectious smile. I wonder if we still would have ended up as friends. Did I doom him to a stagnant social life because he showed up to school with me, the class joke?

In that alternate life I picture, Davis made friends with everyone who ever ignored me. He instantly received everything he wanted: recognition, belonging. He never got beat up. He never went to extremes to fit in.

But that’s my imagination. In reality, I have no reason to believe Davis would have been popular even if we hadn’t met. But I also never thought I could be loved by someone like Erik. That alone tells me anything is possible. And if there was a chance Davis could have been someone else without me. …

I don’t have many regrets. But I told myself years ago that if Davis, even unknowingly, sacrificed another life to be my friend, I owed it to him to be the best friend I could. To always stand by him. To make sure he never once regretted helping some dumb, lost kid find his way back home.

Back then, getting home was the answer. Today, nothing’s that simple.

The next morning, Davis is gone.

I’m the first to notice. When I wake up, his sleeping bag is empty. I’m not surprised. But I don’t raise the alarm. I sit cross-legged in the middle of the floor for a long time, just staring at the vacant bag. Something in me wants to be angry. But I’m too numb to respond.

Shan and Brett stumble out to the kitchen, followed shortly thereafter by Erik, wincing and clutching his side. It only takes a moment for them to register exactly what has happened.

This is the point where anyone else would give up. We’d done our best. We got him back. Time for things to be over. But that’s not what happens. These people who have every reason to be angry with me for countless lies and evasions, these people who should turn their backs on me—these people mobilize.

Brett spreads out a map of the city. “I was in the
kitchen about an hour ago for a glass of water. He was still here then. He didn’t have any money so he can’t have gone far.”

Shan grabs the cordless phone. “He’ll go looking for Sable. It’s a long shot but maybe his mom can help us with other ideas. Find Sable, find Davis. What’s her number?”

I turn to Erik, who is paging through the address book on his cell phone. “I’ll call and get us a later flight.”

“No.”

I say this to everyone. It’s not loud, but it’s forceful. “It’s time to go home.”

We say our good-byes to Shan and Brett. Shan’s hug, even though hampered by baby belly, is crippling, and she cries. She throws a one-armed hug around Erik, who smiles. As Brett talks Erik through how to catch the bus to the airport, Shan takes me aside.

“So?” she asks, a glance at Erik. She no longer looks disapproving.

“If he’ll have me,” I say. We hug.

“If he won’t,” she whispers in my ear, “he doesn’t deserve you.”

On the bus, I call Mrs. Sable. I let her know we weren’t able to find her son. This is one lie Erik approves of. She thanks us, but her voice is hollow. I think she knows it’s time to move on too.

An overhead chime assures us it’s now safe to use electronic devices. Bullshit. If it’s so dangerous to listen to my iPod during takeoff, why is it suddenly safe at 30,000 feet? I’d rather listen to the plane’s engines than think I was responsible for crashing us into a cornfield by plugging into a podcast.

“So,” Erik says, “does this crap with Davis have anything to do with why you haven’t touched your paints in a month?”

The days of Erik letting me get away with stuff are gone. The King of Evasions is dead. Long live the king.

I relay the story Oxana told me about Picasso and his blue period. “All the time I spent studying painters … I only ever looked at their work. I never learned about their lives and understood
why
they painted. That’s why my stuff sucks.”

“Your stuff doesn’t suck,” Erik says. “Evan, everybody learns by imitating what they know. You just never figured out how to stop. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, pick up your brushes, and take the next step.”

But I shake my head. “I’m done painting. I need to find something new to do with my life.”

Before he can question me, I pull out Oxana’s copy of Haring’s journal and show him the passage that said every painting I’ve ever done is unnecessary. He scans it, then stares at me blankly.

“Did you read the
whole
thing?”

He points at the sentence just past the underlined text I read in Milwaukee.

If they are exploring in an “individual way” with “different ideas” the idea of another Individual, they are making a worthy contribution, but as soon as they call themselves followers or accept the truth they have not explored as truths, they are defeating the purpose of art as an individual expression—Art as art.

I spent the last month feeling like Haring had called me out. Now he’s vindicating me. Talk about a mixed message.

“Are you calling yourself a follower?”

I shake my head.

“Do you plan on exploring a little truth?”

I nod my head.

“Then I think you might have a shot at this whole ‘finding your own voice’ thing after all. I think that’s what Oxana was trying to pound into that stubborn head of yours.”

I gently close the book and slide it into my backpack. I’m not sure my stubborn head can take much more
pounding. “Is he still working? Haring, I mean. Is he still painting?”

Erik’s shoulders press back against the seat. “I thought you knew,” he says quietly. “He died of AIDS.”

Oh.

Erik turns to me and asks, “Do you want to move to San Diego?”

I whisper, “Do you still want me to move to San Diego?”

Erik slips his hand into mine; our fingers mesh together. This is the closest thing we have to an answer right now.

When I walk through the door back home with Erik at my side, I expect the world to spin out of control, faster and faster until centrifugal force pastes me against the wall. But, no. For once, I make an intelligent decision. One that took me a year to think about. Standing in my parents’ kitchen, things slow down to a sane speed for a change.

“Mom. Dad. This is Erik. He’s my boyfriend.”

Mom blinks as she looks Erik in the eyes. “Do you live in San Diego?”

Dad squints as he looks Erik up and down. “Your head looks like a square egg.”

It’s Mom who suggests we visit Mrs. Grayson at Mendota. “She needs closure.”

Don’t we all?

We clip visitor badges to our shirts as a nurse escorts us down a pale white hall.

“Will she even understand what we tell her?” I ask as we approach Mrs. Grayson’s room.

“She’ll know,” Mom says. “Mothers always know.”

Mrs. Grayson’s eyes are glassy. Her head bobs from side to side, a childlike smile on her face. Mom starts with small talk, which is sadly limited to how well the store is doing.

“Have you seen my Davis?” Mrs. Grayson asks. Her voice is oddly strong. Like she’s fighting to be lucid.

I don’t know what to tell her. Mom offers assurances so I don’t have to.

“We’ll keep an eye out for him, Clara. Let him know you miss him.”

Mrs. Grayson nods sadly. For a second, I think she gets it.
Really
gets it. She knows she’ll probably never see her son again. Then a nurse stops by and feeds Mrs. Grayson her evening meds. Soon, her head is swaying again. Any epiphany she may have had disappears. She doesn’t have to worry about Davis now.

“So that’s closure?” I ask as we stand to leave.

“Only for the lucky ones,” Mom says.

Later, at home, I find a set of really nice luggage in the living room with a bow tied to it. My graduation present.