He’d talked to every friend, every teammate, every teacher, every coach. None of them had answers. There was nothing more to know.
“Fan through the back,” said Yao.
Napoleon fanned through the back and felt his muscles stretch and the sun warm on his face as he tasted the sea from the tears that ran heedlessly down his face.
But he wasn’t broken.
27
Zoe
Zoe saw the tears slide down her father’s face and wondered if he knew he was crying. Her dad cried a lot without seeming to realize he was doing it, like a scratch he didn’t know was bleeding, as if his body excreted grief without his knowledge.
“Touch the sky,” said Yao.
Zoe followed the graceful arc of Yao’s arms and turned now in her mother’s direction, and saw the deep crevices in her mother’s face and heard once more the sound of her mother’s scream that awful morning. Like the scream of an animal caught in a trap. A scream that tore straight through Zoe’s life like a razor blade.
Tomorrow it would be three years. Would it ever get any easier for her parents? Because it sure didn’t look like it was getting any easier. There was no use hoping that once they got through this next anniversary things would get better, because she’d thought that the last two anniversaries. She knew that when they went back home it would all be just the same.
It felt like her parents were sick with a terrible, incurable disease that ravaged their bodies. It felt like they’d been assaulted. As if someone had come after them with a baseball bat. She had not realized that grief was so physical. Before Zach died, she thought grief happened in your head. She didn’t know that your whole body ached with it, that it screwed up your digestive system, your menstrual cycle, your sleep patterns, your skin. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
Sometimes it felt like Zoe was just waiting out her life now, enduring it, ticking off events and days and months and years, as if she just had to get herself through something unspecified and then things would be better except she never got through it and it never got better and she would never forgive him. His death was the ultimate “fuck you.”
At least you weren’t close, said her friend Cara in her head.
At least we weren’t close. At least we weren’t close. At least we weren’t close.
28
Heather
Heather didn’t see Napoleon’s tears as they did tai chi.
She was remembering something that had happened last week, after a long exhausting night shift when she’d helped to deliver two baby boys.
It was impossible not to think of Zach every time she held another newborn baby boy and stared into those sad wise eyes. All babies had that same wise look, as if they’d just come from another realm where they’d learned some beautiful truth they couldn’t share. Every day brought an endless stream of new life.
Heather had gone to get her coffee from the hospital café after her shift and run into a familiar face from the past. There was no time to turn away and pretend she hadn’t seen. She recognized her instantly. One of the soccer mums. Before Zach gave it up. Lisa Somebody. A friendly, bubbly lady. It had been years. Lisa Somebody’s face lit up when she saw Heather. Oh, I know you! And then, as so often happened, a moment later her face fell, as she remembered what she’d heard on the grapevine. You could virtually read her thoughts: Oh fuck, she’s that mother, but no time to look away!
Some people crossed the street to get away from her. She’d seen them do it. Some people recoiled. They literally recoiled, as if what happened to Heather’s family was vile and shameful. This woman was one of the brave ones. She didn’t duck or hide or pretend.
“I was so sorry to hear about Zach,” she said. She even said his name without lowering her voice.
“Thank you,” said Heather, longing for coffee. She looked at the boy standing next to her on crutches. “This must be … Justin?” The name came to her on a flood of memories of shivering Saturday mornings on the soccer field, and suddenly, without warning, the anger exploded in her chest, and this kid, this living stupid kid, was her target.
“I remember you,” she hissed at him. “You were the kid who never passed to Zach!”