and there he was. Ohhh, there he was.”
First, I see the glint of dark blond hair twining in the weave of the rug.
Then, stepping forward, I see more.
Coach’s sneakers slip from my hands, shoe string tickling my leg as they drop to the carpet with a soft clunk.
There he is.
There he is.
There’s Sarge. There’s Will.
“Addy,” Coach whispers, far behind me. “I don’t think you want to…I don’t think you need to…Addy…is it like I thought?”
His chest bare, wearing only a towel, his arms stretched out, he’s like one of those laminated saint pictures the Catholic girls always brought from catechism. Saint Sebastian, his head always thrown back, body both luminous and tortured.
“Addy,” says Coach, almost a whimper. Like little Caitlin, just waking up and scared.
I just keep looking. At Will. On the floor.
In those saint pictures, their bodies are always torn, split, lacerated. But their faces so lovely, so tranquil.
But Will’s face does not look righteous and exalted.
My eyes fix on the thing that was Will’s mouth, but is now a red flower, its tendrils sprawling to all corners and, like a poppy, an inky whorl at the center.
In those saint pictures, their eyes, lovingly lashed, are always looking up.
And, for all the ruin of Will’s handsome face, his eyes, they are gazing up too.
But it seems to me not to the Kingdom of God but to the tottering ceiling fan.
Looking up so he doesn’t have to see the ruin of his face.
Behind his head, the rug is dark and wet.
I can’t stop looking at him, at the bright streak of his face.
It’s like I’m seeing Will and I’m seeing something else too. The old woman from the bus, the one with the black eyes Will was sure could bore through to the center of him. That story never felt real to me, it felt like when someone tells you a dream and they can’t make you feel what they feel. It didn’t feel real to me except as something I wanted to understand but couldn’t. But now suddenly I can. The woman’s hat tilting up, eyes like shale.
“Stop crying,” Coach is saying, begging. “Addy, stop crying.”
“I didn’t touch him.” Coach says, and I cannot catch my breath, but she will not wait. “When I ran over, I slipped on those.”
She points to three small white things dotted across the floor. The something I’d felt wobbling under my foot, that I’d sent spinning across the parquet. A button or spool of thread.
“What are…” But then suddenly I know.
Turning again to Will’s poppy-struck face on the floor, the bottom half of it blown away, I know what they are.
I hear a moan come up from within me, my fingers clapping my own teeth, as if to remind myself they’re still there.
“Coach, why am I here?” someone says in a voice I recognize, obscurely, as my own. The words just tumble out, constricted and lost. “Why did you make me come?”
But she doesn’t answer me. I don’t even think she’s heard me.
ZZzzzzt! My phone, my phone. Like a paddle over my heart.
Beth. I’m sure I’ve pressed that button long enough to turn it off until the end of time, but I must’ve pressed it so long I turned it on again.
The way it keeps ringing, it’s like Beth is there in the room too. And I’m afraid to even touch the phone because it seems somehow Beth will know if I turn it off, like she knows everything. Like she’s here right now, claws out.
“Do you see it,” Coach says, still ten feet from me, she won’t come any closer.
“I see him,” I say, as calm as I can, my finger scratching at my phone, trying to hold the Off button just long enough to make it stop. As soon as I do it shudders ZZzzzt! again. “Of course I see him.”
“No,” she says, her voice going quieter still but more insistent. “On the floor.”
I don’t want to look again, but I do. At his hands, palms faced up, his legs, which have a queer violet cast.
That’s when I spot the gun peeking out from under his left leg.
I turn to face Coach, who’s standing in front of the dining room table, winding a dewy strand of hair behind her ear. She looks younger than me, I think.
“He did this to himself?” I whisper, not even wanting to say it out loud.
“Yes,” she says. “I found him.”
“Was there a note or something?”
“No,” she says.
“You didn’t call nine-one-one,” I say. Maybe it’s a