Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,105

Barnaby still has a bruise on his cheek, still has a black eye. Trevor still won’t talk to me, but Kurt will. At lunch I sit with Kurt now, and with some people he is friends with.

Lindsay sits with me now too. Her friends, I think, are still mad at me. In my opinion this means they are good friends.

It’s nice in a way not to be going out with her. I miss her but it’s nice to have her as a friend, as a very good friend, it’s nice that for the first time she knows who I am and I know who she is. It’s important.

Pottsy made me stay after class and said Anything you need, Keller.

Thanks, I said.

Anything you need, he said again.

Thanks, I said again.

I’m not allowed to play basketball this winter.

I’m sorry, said Coach. It’s just not in my power to let you.

I imagine that Matt Barnaby’s parents had a hand in this. But I don’t particularly care. Dee and I play basketball together on the Warburton court when he gets home from practice. It’s usually dark already and it’s usually very cold. We play until our fingers freeze, until the inside of our ears burn from the panting. Only streetlamps light the court. Anyone else would be scared to play at night. But we’re not: we’re huge, we’re bigger than everyone else. We could kill anyone who tried to hurt us. We live here and this is our neighborhood. We play and play for hours. Sometimes he lets me make a shot.

I have been telling people. I have stopped lying or being very silent. I have been telling everyone the truth. I have been letting them help me. They all want to help me and so I am letting them.

Lindsay told me that when someone in your family dies you have to let people think they are helping. It is kind to. It helps them, she told me. It helps them to think they are helping.

So I’ve been trying. For Lindsay.

I have to do something about my mother. A woman from the hospital called and told me that she was sorry, but I was going to have to do something about her body immediately. Apparently they’ve been calling a lot.

I talked to Mr. Harper about it and he says I am the one that has to make the decision.

When we—he said. Have you thought about cremation? he said.

I never had. I always thought my mother would be buried. It’s what happened to people after they died. But something about cremation made sense to me. I feel as if my mother spent her whole life being buried. I feel as if she should be released somewhere.

Mr. Harper said he would call the woman and talk to her about it.

I have to sell the house. It isn’t mine, anyway. I’ll never go back into it. Only for my things. Only for her things. And I need the money. Mr. Harper says he can help me with that too. His sister is a real estate broker in Scarsdale. I imagine my mother’s will be the shittiest house she ever sold.

I wrote an obituary to put in the paper. I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. Pottsy helped me write it.

Yes. I keep letting people help me. I feel like I am opening, but also like I am dying.

I talked to Gerard Kane’s assistant on the phone. Sarah. She still sounded pretty. I put on a deep voice when I talked to her. I felt powerful for the first time in a very long time.

I said, Can Gerard still do Saturday the 10th?

I called him by his first name. Like a man.

She said, We’re on.

So that’s when it is. I don’t feel ready, but I have to be.

I looked up Arthur Opp on the computer at school. There is only one Arthur Opp in New York City, and he lives in Brooklyn. There was no information about him. It seems like he does not teach anymore. Just a phone number and address. I wrote down both on a little piece of paper and put it in my wallet alongside my mother’s letter.

Late at night, after Dee and his mother were both asleep, I called him. I let it ring once and then hung up.

In some ways I feel that I am everyone’s son. That I have many parents now.

Pottsy and I wrote this about my mother.

Charlene Louise Turner Keller of Yonkers died Monday, November 28, at the