Before You Go (16 page)

The next afternoon Becka stopped by the house without a word of warning. She arrived on the pretense of returning a few music books he’d lent her. Jude didn’t invite her inside; she would have refused anyway, he could see that on her face. They talked out in the front yard, under the scraggly limbs of his butt-ugly tree. The scene felt about right, depressing as hell. Becka didn’t appear that angry.
Over it
, he guessed. At long last, Becka straightened her shoulders, sighed a weary sort of resignation, and resolved, “I lost you out on that road, didn’t I?”

Jude didn’t argue. It had to be this way to make his isolation complete. He was traveling now between two steel rails running parallel into the distance. No steering wheel, no brakes. Jude followed the path carved out for him, gobbling up track,
toot-toot.
Get out of the way and nobody gets hurt.

Becka was the one who walked away after that, not looking back.

Deleted.

And nobody gets hurt.

Jude went inside, up the stairs, and climbed out onto the roof. It had become his alone place, a refuge he had formerly shared with Corey. Up there, above it all, he felt closer to Corey, remembered his friend more keenly. Up there, he wrestled with a world gone wrong. The pale sun dropped down to nest momentarily in a stand of high trees to the west before setting entirely. Sundown, sundown.

A car pulled up, idled in front of the house. Jude recognized it instantly. The dark blue, practical Ford. Corey’s parents’ car. The passenger door opened, a woman got out.

It was Jude’s mother.

She leaned down, poked her head through the passenger window. Corey’s mother was behind the wheel. In all these years, Jude had rarely seen the two women together. Here and there, maybe, but it’s not like they were friends.
Why now?
Then Jude understood. It was obvious. Mrs. Masterson had buried a child. She was now a member of the club. Two mothers, brought together in shared recognition of their unspeakable grief.

The earth’s ceiling turned crimson and orange, before deepening to blue and black, the sky a great bruise. Time passed. No stars yet, but Jude knew they were up there, needing the darkness to shine. That’s what Becka told him:
each star, a soul.

Jude lay on his back and waited for the darkness to swallow him, for the stars to appear, for mourning to come. He couldn’t pray, didn’t have the words, didn’t have the God, but he could grieve, and maybe that was a prayer of its own. Jude wondered, like Becka, why he didn’t float off the earth and fly away. What anchor kept him tethered to this place?

TWENTY-NINE

Roberto at Jude’s front door waving an envelope. “S’up, Jude,” he said. “I thought I’d deliver your last check from work. You never came to pick it up.”

“Oh, hey, thanks,” Jude managed. “You didn’t have to; they could have mailed it.”

“Could’ve, would’ve,” Roberto said. “I figured I’d bring it over, see how you’re doing.”

Jude waited for Roberto to hand over the check. It didn’t happen.

“So how’s it going?” Roberto asked.

Jude shrugged his answer.

“You going to invite me inside?”

Jude looked past Roberto’s shoulder to the car parked by the curb. “Mom’s Taurus, huh? I see you’re still riding in style.”

“Yeah, well, the red Lamborghini is in the shop,” Roberto explained. “And I only drive the yellow one on Tuesdays.”

Jude grinned, shifted his feet, opened his shoulders. “Come on in,” he offered. Jude led Roberto downstairs into the finished basement, which was set up with video games, a flat-screen television, Jude’s music gear, places to sit.

Roberto whistled, head swiveling, taking in the room. “Wow, it’s like a recording studio. You know what else you need down here?”

Before Roberto could fill in the blank, Jude reflexively quipped, “More cowbell?” The words slipped from his mouth out of habit. An old joke he shared with Corey. It was the first funny thing he’d said in weeks. But Roberto stared blankly. He didn’t get the joke.

“What?”

“More cowbell,” Jude repeated. “It’s from the
SNL
skit. Will Ferrell, Christopher Walken, ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’ Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it.” He looked hopefully at Roberto, who shook his head.

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Roberto confessed.

Jude did his best impression of Christopher Walken, barking out lines from the skit: “Guess what? I’ve got a
fever.
And the only
prescription
 … is more cowbell!”

Jude turned on the computer, a virus-infested IBM clone—he definitely regretted the Great Laptop Toss; what an idiot—and found the skit on YouTube. “I can’t believe you don’t know this,” he said, shaking his head. Jude felt a jigger of old enthusiasm rising up inside him, an approximation of his normal self. For the next hour, the two boys swapped favorite funny videos pulled from the Web, cracking up over the dumb things people do.

Roberto’s howling, cackling laughter was infectious. He talked up a stream of stories about life at West End Two. Adventures with Kenny, dumb lifeguards, surprise inspections, softball games, and postwork parties in the dunes. Roberto had a way of finding the comical in most things. “So get this,” he said. “I walked into the back office and caught Kath sucking face with Denzel. I didn’t know whether to pretend I didn’t see it, go all invisible or something, or get in line. They should lock those doors is all I’m saying!”

Jude roared at Berto’s bug-eyed delivery.

“This one’s crazy, Jude, check it,” Roberto said, leaning forward, gesturing with his hands in excitement. “Billy Motchsweller got arrested at work last week for selling ecstasy.”

“What!”

“It was a whole freaking scene. So, like, he was stuffing the pills between the hamburger buns—that was his distribution system, see—and Billy accidentally sold to an off-duty cop!”

“Oh, my God,” Jude said, stunned.

“He’s so screwed, man,” Roberto said.

“Well, I guess that explains the long lines,” Jude commented.

“Never thought of that.” Roberto chuckled. “Sales have really dropped off since the arrest.” He pointed to Jude’s gear in the corner. “That your guitar?”

“Obviously, you’re not a golfer,” Jude deadpanned.

Roberto laughed. He pulled a DVD off the shelf. “I can’t believe you own
Plan 9 from Outer Space.
I love that movie!”

“Worst film ever made,” Jude said. “Actually, I sort of inherited that copy from Corey. He brought it over one night and…”

A leaden silence filled the room, threatening to sink the lightness of the past hour.

“We should watch it,” Roberto piped up. “Get some people together. Come on, Jude. It’s a good idea. Corey would approve.”

Jude shook his head, placed the movie back on the shelf. “I don’t think so, not now.”

“Another time,” Roberto said. He glanced toward the stairs, pondering his options. “You were pretty trashed the other night at the log,” he said.

“Yeah, I just—”

“—cut out with that girl,” Roberto said, completing Jude’s sentence.

The memory embarrassed Jude. He wasn’t proud of it.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Jude, with Becka there. That was cold.”

Jude didn’t try to explain, couldn’t explain even if he wanted to. It was like kicking a dog. What could you say? The dog deserved it? He finally asked, “How is she?”

“Becka’s good.” Roberto paused, thinking it over. “Don’t ask me, Jude. You’ve got her number.”

“You think I should call her?”

“What do I know? I’m just a fat virgin,” Roberto replied. “But, yeah, I think you should call. Absolutely.”

“I screwed up,” Jude admitted.

“Yeah, you did,” Roberto agreed. “But there’s been a lot of that going on. You’ve been dealing with stuff. I hate to see you guys end this way. Besides, now you’re even, right?”

Jude remembered that night at the bowling alley. How he felt when he saw Becka with the drummer. A fatigue came over him; he could almost feel his face drain of color. “Look, I’m fried.” Jude yawned.

Roberto took the hint. “Sure, sure. I was just leaving.” They climbed the stairs together. Roberto paused at the front door, looked at Jude as if he had something important to say. “You’re going to be all right, Jude.”

Jude nodded, remorseful. “I know, I know. I want to feel better.… It’s just … not easy, you know.”

Roberto nodded, trying to know.

“What about Daphne?” Jude asked. He was surprised to hear the words come from his mouth. He didn’t think he cared about her.

“Daphne?” Roberto smiled, his eyes a little more alive. He considered the question for a long while, looked down, tilted his head from shoulder to shoulder. “She’s like you. Stopped coming to work. Went into stealth mode, you know. I’ve hung out with her a little lately.”

Jude raised an eyebrow.

“Just friends,” Roberto said, “my specialty.” He paused, thought of something to add. “Daphne’s applying to veterinary schools. All of them out of state. I think she wants to get as far away as possible.”

The news made Jude feel glad. He felt a tremor in his heart. As if a deadened nerve ending twitched to life. It was something. A murmur. Jude stepped forward, held open the door. “Thanks,” he said. “For the check, for stopping by. I mean it. You didn’t have to come.”

Roberto smiled. “It was Becka’s idea. She still cares about you, bro.”

Jude took in the news, accepted it as fact. Becka Bliss McCrystal. She still cared, even after he’d given her every reason to give up on him. “Tell her … hey, you.”

“‘Hey, you,’” Roberto echoed. “That it?”

“That’s it,” Jude replied.

THIRTY

Jude had been painting the house for three days now—and hadn’t yet dipped a brush into the paint can. The first step, in his father’s words, was all about “surface preparation.” That is, scraping off the old paint that cracked and peeled along the white trim. It was mind-numbing work, done with a metal scraper, a coarse pad, and an iPod on shuffle. To cover his eyes and head from falling flakes, Jude wore sunglasses and a floppy rain hat he’d found at the bottom of a closet, along with a damp bandana wrapped around his neck to keep cool. Becka would have laughed at the sight of him. “Comical,” she would have said. Nevertheless, Jude enjoyed the work. He took satisfaction in laying down the drop cloth to catch the falling paint chips, steadily inching the ladder along the side of the house. It was put-your-shoulder-to-the-wheel labor, no heavy thinking required. And so the job gave his mind room to roam free, like a knock-kneed pony in a great open pasture.

The bizarre thing about death—besides the absolute, heartbreaking, unfathomable horror of it—was that everyday life kept on coming, like a slow-moving river burbling past. It seeped into every corner, into his bedroom, the living room, and out into the streets. The universe didn’t cry or regret; it just rambled on. Nothing changed, yet everything felt different. Friends sent text messages. His father knocked on his bedroom door, inventing ways to lure Jude out of the house. The world tugged on Jude’s sleeve. He found himself rinsing the dishes in the sink, hauling the garbage out to the street, scraping paint.
From can to can’t.
Wherever he turned, life chased him down, dragged him back to the land of the living. And that was the whole deal, Jude mused, standing high on a ladder, arms moving back and forth across the eaves. You had to ride that river all the way to the sea. Jude didn’t believe the stories that the priests told in church, the myths they taught in Sunday school. He wished he could, but he could never get past the problem of how all those different gods, from all those different religions, could possibly be right. Somebody had to be wrong. Instead of belief, Jude cradled doubt. He carried uncertainty on his back, a burden of not knowing. As he scraped away at the surface of his house, Jude made a truce with that unknowing.

He still thought of Corey all the time, but the shape of those thoughts had morphed. It wasn’t Corey in death; it was the positive memories, images of the friendship that endured. Time had not healed him, but it had eroded the bitterness in his heart. For the first time, Jude felt sympathy for Daphne, the driver of the car. She was a nice enough girl who dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, fretted over sick cats, and now had to lug around guilt for the rest of her life. Daphne had agreed to be DD for the night; she wasn’t drinking, wasn’t jabbering on a phone. It was a freak accident: An animal stepped into the road, and she crashed into the only tree within a hundred yards. It could have happened to anyone, should never have happened at all.
Could have, should have
: The universe yawned its gaping maw. Jude couldn’t hate Daphne any longer. The whole thing required too much energy.

Around noon, with the sun at its height, his father came around to eyeball Jude’s progress. “Take a break,” he said. “Come for a ride with me. I have to run a few errands.”

“I’m rolling here,” Jude replied. “You go.”

His father waggled the keys. “Come,” he said. It wasn’t a request. That’s the way people talked to Jude nowadays, like they all knew best.
Whatever.
Though Jude had his permit, he declined the offer to drive. He sat in the backseat, talking baseball with his dad. A safe, easy topic. Mr. Fox pulled into a plaza off Sunrise Highway. He handed Jude a fold of money and a short list of grocery items. “Do me a favor, Jude, pick these things up while I get the paint.”

Jude frowned, accepted the assignment. He pushed a creaky shopping cart into the vast, cool supermarket, steered to the fruits and vegetables section. He checked the first items on the list:
grapefruit, apples, bananas
. Jude noticed an elderly couple nearby. A shuffling, bent-backed man wore Coke-bottle glasses and a green Jets sweatshirt that hung loose around his frail body. He squinted to read the prices, appeared confused by it all, shaking his head as if in great sorrow. A stout, white-haired woman stood beside him. She appeared alert, capable, and sturdy. A tough old bird. Gently she spoke to her husband and placed a bag of oranges into their cart. They rolled away together. This nothing encounter somehow drove a stake through Jude’s heart.