A Sense of the Infinite (22 page)

I WENT TO SEE STEVEN AGAIN
later that week. He was still lying on his bed. Still wearing his suit. Still wearing his polished shoes. I wondered if he got dressed like that every morning, or if he had never changed.

“I still have your finger,” I said. “It’s in my freezer. If you don’t ask for it soon, I’m going to get it taxidermied.”

When Steven didn’t make any sign of answering in the near future, I took out my music player and slipped an earbud into his ear. I lay down beside him on the bed and slipped the other one into my own.

We listened to
The Velvet Underground
, then a few chapters
of
Kingdom of Stones
. When I got up to leave, Steven spoke suddenly.

“They all wanted me to cut off a piece of myself.”

I paused in his doorway. “Who?”

“Noe. My parents. The school. And I thought,
I’d rather cut off my finger than my soul
.” He looked at me with grim amusement. “I guess that’s pretty emo.”

I walked back to his bed and sat down. For some reason, my heart had begun to hammer. Normally, I would take that as a sign that I should make a hasty exit or steer the conversation toward a neutral topic, but then a funny thing happened in my throat. An unblocking.

“Steven?” I said. “If I tell you something really personal, will you tell me something really personal?”

“Annabeth Schultz wants to tell me something personal?” Steven said. “Even I’m not messed up enough to skip an opportunity like that.”

I HAD THOUGHT THAT THE FIRST
time I told anyone about Scott, I would break down. And maybe I would have four years ago. But it was like I’d grown stronger without noticing it, the way a seed doesn’t look like much until you turn around and see that it’s grown into a tree whose fruit you can actually eat.

“You’re the only person I’ve told,” I said to Steven.

He made a small bow. “I’m honored,” he said.

There was a beautiful quietness to his bedroom, a sleepiness interrupted only by the occasional noise from downstairs. I thought about how grateful I was for that day in art class when Steven had said,
In that case, we must introduce ourselves.
How awful it would have been to miss out on all this—to miss out on knowing him. It was no small thing to turn to another human and say,
I want to know you
, with the implied opposite,
I want you to know me
.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said. “What happened the night you tried to kill yourself? With Dominic?”

There was a long silence. Downstairs, I could hear Darla jingling car keys and opening the garage door. When the car had pulled out and the garage door had rumbled closed again, Steven said, “I know what you’re really asking.”

“You don’t have to tell me. It just seems relevant.”

A bird called outside Steven’s window. He curled his remaining fingers, suddenly agitated.

“The answer is ‘I don’t know.’ It’s too loud inside my head to know. When I think about it, all I hear is alarm bells. Nothing happened with Dominic, but he asked very sweetly if I was maybe-possibly-theoretically open to the idea of something happening, and the alarm bells started ringing so loudly it short-circuited my brain. I still don’t know if the alarm bells mean I wanted something to happen, or if it was just knowing that I would be completely fucked, in terms of my parents, if I even entertained the possibility. And then I fell in love with Noe and it seemed like everything was going to be okay.”

“That’s how I felt about Noe, too,” I said. “Like she saved me from myself.”

“Hear my soul speak,”
quoted Steven.
“Of the very instant that I saw you, did / my heart fly at your service.”

“I’m glad you’re alive,” I said, and hugged him.

“I’m glad you’re alive, too.”

DAFFODILS WERE UNFOLDING THEIR YELLOW
trumpets in the flower beds in front of my house. At school, we had a motivational speaker come in to talk about the K.E.Y.S. to success. He was thick-necked and greasy and sweated a lot. I sat near the back and read the poem that Loren sent me.

I read while the speaker jabbered and ranted, and while he had the whole auditorium shout the four keys like a cheer, and while the Senior Leaders presented him with a gift bag and shook his hand.

Afterward there was a draw to win a copy of his new book,
The K.E.Y.S. for Students
. I had the winning ticket. I folded it
up into an accordion and dropped it on the floor on my way out of the auditorium.

in castles of wind
, went the poem.
in halls of rain
.

THAT NIGHT I WROTE AN EMAIL
to Loren.
I didn’t know Wilda McClure wrote poetry
.

He wrote back,
I can send you the book.

I wrote back,
How was the hike to Garramond Lake?

By the end of the week, we were emailing two or three times a day.

I WENT TO STEVEN’S HOUSE MOST
days after school. He gave me his key so I wouldn’t have to talk to Darla when I came in. She had figured out that I was the girl Noe had told her about, the one who had refused to die.

“When are you coming back?” I said. “I miss you in Art. My collage sucks. Win and Dominic miss you, too. Margot Dilforth sends her love.”

“I’m not going back,” Steven said.

“What do you mean?” I said. “You can’t drop out of school. What about graduation?”

“I’m going to move in with my uncle,” he said. “I can finish my classes online.”

“But why?” I sputtered. The thought of finishing the year
without Steven was preposterous. School would be so empty without him. I couldn’t imagine graduation without Steven there to make a Royal Society of Pee Sisters salute. “Everyone loves you,” I said. “We can figure things out so that you don’t ever have to cross paths with Noe and Alex.”

“Do you know why I’m lying here?” said Steven.

“Why?”

“It is taking every ounce of effort I have not to kill myself.”

“Steven.”

“It’s okay. I’m not going to do it. I just need to focus.”

“Focus on what?”

“Not doing it. And I think that will be a lot easier once I’m living in a place where being myself isn’t going to make anyone hate me.”

“How will you do it?” I said. “I mean, how is your mom letting you?”

“I’m eighteen,” said Steven. “That means nobody has to let you anymore.”

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow. My uncle was all set to come up and get me tonight, but I wanted to say good-bye to you.”

“Today’s your last day here?”

He nodded. “Hopefully forever.”

“In that case,” I said. “Let’s go. There’s something we need to do.”

WE DROVE TO MY HOUSE TO
get the finger out of my freezer. At my house, I put on Nan’s old wedding dress, an armful of beaded necklaces from the Halloween box, and the straw hat Mom wore to mow the lawn. We made a shrine out of tinfoil and birthday candles and laid the finger inside it. It was wrinkly at the knuckle and flat and dull at the nail: a stubby gray saint on its way to a resurrection.

As we drove away from my house, Steven lit the birthday candles. They cast a warm glow on the finger. Presently the tinfoil was spotted with dots of pink and blue wax.

We went to the Botanical Gardens first to get some flowers for the shrine. It had rained in the morning and now warm
air heaved up from the ground in damp waves. Children in frilly socks were chasing geese across the lawn while their parents strolled along the stone pathways. I led Steven through the labyrinth and past the sundial to the rare plants section to pick some blood lilies and African moonflowers for his finger, but Steven thought they were too pretty to kill so we ended up scooping out handfuls of soil and fertilizer instead, as if Steven’s finger were a bulb that could grow a whole new Steven underground.

At the SkyTram I bought him a hot dog. We rode over the river in the shuddering red car. A pair of tourists from Milwaukee asked what happened to Steven’s finger. We told them he lost it in the war.

“You look too young to have been in a war,” the tourists said, shaking their heads like the world had truly hit the pits. The man of the couple gave Steven a hug and thanked him for his service, and we stood by the gift shop for a long time while they told us about life in Milwaukee.

After the SkyTram we followed the river upstream, parking the car when we got close to the waterfall and going the last half mile on foot. This part of town was always noisy with tour buses and school groups. People were always looking for the bathroom. Still, if you could imagine it without the knickknack shops and overpriced restaurants, it was an awesome sight.

The waterfall was churning out rainbows. Tourists in gauzy yellow rain ponchos floated along in the mist.

We stood by the railing and said a prayer and threw the finger over. It tumbled down, down, down in its tinfoil coffin like a tiny daredevil in a canoe.

On the way up the walkway, a pair of Australian tourists asked to take our picture. We posed with our arms around each other’s shoulders, the waterfall behind us. I think someone said “Cheese” but I couldn’t hear it for the roar.

A FEW DAYS AFTER STEVEN WENT
to New York, I got my first letter from him. It was in a plain white envelope that someone had stepped on; there was a dusty footprint on top of the address.

Dear A
, the letter said.

How goes the Society of Pee Sisters? Have you gained girth? I miss your furrowed brow. Send me some artwork.

Steven McNeil

I wrote back:

Dear Steven,

Please find enclosed a Pee Sisters ID card, valid for entry into any opposite-sex bathroom in the Western world. While my brow remains furrowed, the nutritionist assures me I am now eating almost as much as three beavers, six raccoons, or one medium-size deer, which is apparently an improvement. I miss you.

A. Schultz

WIN AND I STARTED WRITING OUR
one-act play together. We mostly worked at her house. Win had a nice room. We’d get lost in our ideas for hours, thinking up all the details of the set and costumes, writing and rewriting the script. Somehow, bits of other conversations always snuck in.

Win had brown hair that curled on its own. She had a button collection. She was obsessed with anime. She had an older sister who lived in Chicago and was in a band, and a half brother and half sister who lived with their mom in Virginia. She had once spent the night in a cave during a rainstorm. She had a boyfriend, Felix, who was a professional juggler. He was
homeschooled, so he could do whatever he wanted, and he traveled around with this juggling troupe and did shows in schools. He had invented a juggling pattern and named it after her: it was called Win’s Wiggle and it involved six balls. She showed me a video. It looked hard. The balls went so high, and the flow of them really did seem to wiggle in the air.

One day I was at her house and I noticed a pair of scissors on her desk.

“Hey, Win,” I said. “Can you give me a haircut?”

I sat on the floor and she sat above me on her bed. Her hands moved around my head. “How short do you want it?” said Win.

“Short.”

“Like bowl-cut short?”

“Like spring chicken short.”

“Oh man,” giggled Win. She started snipping,
schick, schick, schick.
She snipped forever. Shards of hair fell on my shoulders and lap.

When Win was done cutting my hair, we took a picture of the pile of hair and texted it to Steven. He texted back immediately.

is that what i think it is?

I texted back.

your finger needed company.

I walked home from Win’s house feeling lighter. My neck and ears got cold, but it was a good cold, a clean cold.

“You cut your hair!” said Mom. “Wow!”

I smiled back at her, a real smile. I floated wordlessly up the stairs to my room.

“NICE HAIRCUT,” SAID BOB.

“Thanks,” I said. “My friend cut it.”

When he reached for my food journal, his arm knocked into a stack of basketballs, which promptly collapsed into bouncing, rolling chaos in the tiny office. I leaped up from my chair and Bob leaped up from his. When we had stuffed the basketballs out of the way, we were both disgruntled and Bob was covered in a film of sweat.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “They keep saying they’ll move those.”

“Do you want to get out of here?” I said.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I believe you owe me some pizza,” I said.

THE YEAR WAS ROLLING TO AN
end. Teachers started opening the windows in classrooms again. Outside the funeral parlor, purple and yellow crocuses were pushing up from the ground. Win and I performed our play at the One-Act Play Festival.

“We dedicate this performance to the memory of Steven McNeil’s finger,” we announced when we came onstage.

Dominic and Kris filmed it, to send him. The play was surrealist. We wore mustaches, and dug for butterflies that were burrowed underground.

IN MAY, JEANETTE FIELDING CALLED TO
see if I could pick up a few shifts at the ice-cream shop before coming on full-time in the summer. I had nothing better to do on the weekends, so I said okay.

On my second shift, I was leaning against the counter chatting with Phinnea so I hardly noticed when a family drifted in from the Gardens.

“I’ll get this,” I said, and I turned to the ice-cream case to take their order.

“Hi there,” I said in my usual way. “What can I get for you?”

There were six of them: a mom, a dad, two grandparents, a little girl with pink beads in her hair, and—

Loren Wilder.

Loren Wilder.

Loren Wilder was in the ice-cream shop.

The others were hovering around the ice-cream case, peering down at the flavors. Loren was the tallest, hanging back to let the others see. He saw me too. Our eyes locked, and his face dawned with a smile of surprise.

“Annabeth?” he said.

Phinnea had come up to take the others’ orders.

“Hi, Loren,” I said.

My body reacted before my brain had a chance to get a word in. I smiled at him, the way water falls, the way rainbows form in the mist. Happiness. It lit inside me, simple as a bird taking off.

“How are you?” he said.

“How are YOU? How was the rock-climbing trip?”

We babbled at each other over the ice-cream case, our words less like words than the spouting of fountains, the happy clanging of trams.

“What kind of ice cream do you want?”

“Um,” he said. “Um.”

It was as if our smiles had temporarily stunned our brains. Loren widened his eyes and blinked and looked down at the ice cream, but his eyes bubbled back up to me.

“What’s good?” he said.

“Pralines and cream,” I blurted.

I don’t know where it came from. But as soon as I said it, I knew it was true. Pralines and cream was delicious. Pralines and cream was the most exquisite flavor of ice cream in the world. Suddenly, I was filled with the knowledge of sweetness.

“Okay,” said Loren. “I’ll have that.”

We were quiet while I scooped it, although I could tell we were both eager to speak. His grandfather was paying. Phinnea was at the cash register. I handed Loren his cone.

“Do you get off work soon?” said Loren.

“Three o’clock.”

“Do you want to—I mean, I could come back,” Loren said.

“We can go to the gorge!” I said.

“Yes!” said Loren. “Yes!”

“Loren,” shouted his little sister from the door. “We’re GOING.”

“See you,” he said. “I’ll come back in—I’ll come back.”

He hurried out the door after his sister, almost dropping his cone.

I hummed. I buzzed. I felt like a fountain turning on again after a winter spent cradling dry leaves. I bent over the ice-cream case with the scoop.

“Annabeth Schultz,” said Phinnea. “Are you making yourself a cone?”

I couldn’t speak. I had just taken the first bite.

Portrait of the artist as a person in bliss.