“Can I trust you to tell me you’re okay? Do you need to be watched?” he’d asked.
I nodded my head resolutely.
“Only take these three times a day. Don’t take more than what I’ve prescribed.”
The long line of people kept coming past and touching my hands, kissing me on the cheek, pulling me into them until I could smell their deceit, their concerned faces like masks they would take off as soon as they walked from Truman’s casket. But then I saw Carly far down the line. I could see her crying, her face pale, her eyes lowered, looking at her trembling hands, twisting a handkerchief, and it was as if she and I were the only ones in the room, as if the other people had been erased. She would look at me, then put her face down into her handkerchief and cry into it. Someone’s hand occasionally appeared on her shoulder. I assumed it was her father’s, but she ignored it the way I ignored the faces looming in front of me, their voices all faint, hollow echoes in an empty room.
She had loved Truman from the very beginning: For as long as I can remember it was always the two of them. They would experiment with sex above the garage as they became older. She loved him, and it was only in the past year or so that she didn’t come over as often, mostly because of that Beck boy. What was his name? Terry or Tommy or something. They were awful people. Ethan and I had seen the father, Rich, at a party, with a too-loud voice and the ersatz confidence that probably made him successful as a businessman and popular at the Persia Country Club. Ethan and I laughed later about how Beck’s sycophantic wife kept running to get him drinks and laughing as his voice boomed through the house. As we walked out to our car we saw his black Porsche SUV, the sticker on the back bumper reading SOCIALIST in the colors and font of Obama’s own stickers. I suspected his son was the same kind of person, and heard he’d made some headlines as an athlete. I asked Truman once or twice what the boy was like.
“He’s an asshole,” he’d said.
“Is this because Carly is spending time with him and not with you?”
Truman had been heading for the stairs, and he stopped and turned to me.
“No,” he said, and smiled his Truman smile. “It’s because he’s a moron. I can’t imagine what Carly sees in the guy.” He shook his head. “Must be the sex.”
And then he bounded up the stairs, taking two at a time as he always did.
Carly was dressed in black, as all of the people were. I would’ve worn something with flowers, something bright, but Ethan begged me not to. I know he is suffering in his own way and so I try to bend to his wishes as much as I can. She has blond hair, the color of golden wheat, I’ve heard Truman say, with green eyes that intensify when she is with him. I wanted to make all the people in front of her go away so that I could hold her, and know that Truman was still there in her heart. I knew that was the only way I would get through this torture.
“I don’t know what to say, Ethan,” I overheard Laura Stafford whisper to Ethan as she put her arms around him and patted his back.
Ethan’s face was red from crying and he bowed his head to her shoulder as if they were praying together. They all said that: “I don’t know what to say.” Why do they think that means something to me? Why do they even say it, when they then go on to say how sorry they are; how sad they are for us; how much they wish they could do something to ease our pain while, in fact, they are all glad it isn’t one of theirs lying there in that coffin, that contravention of anything humane or comforting. Truman in a box! Truman not in his room, but locked in a chest with no air for him to breathe himself back to life.
Some man I couldn’t quite remember was rubbing my arm and whispering something that had to do with tragedy and how he had always admired Truman for his truthfulness and what a brilliant boy he had been. He may have been the terrible man who for six months gave Truman piano lessons until the day Truman finally refused to come out of his room until the man left the house. Truman said he had dirty fingernails and halitosis, but I didn’t have time to substantiate the veracity of that before he’d moved on to Ethan and then to the box where my Truman temporarily lay. And it seemed as if Carly was not getting any closer to me, and I urgently wanted it to be her turn so she could reassure me of Truman being in her heart and in her mind, and therefore so far removed from what seemed to confine him now. I wanted to leave my post next to Ethan and go to where Carly was, the whites of her stunning green eyes red and her beautiful face glistening with salty wetness I wanted to drink.
But finally she came to me. As soon as I enfolded her in my arms she began to shake furiously.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered into my ear. “Truman, Truman.”
The wetness of her voice made it seem viscous.
“What will I do? I have to still come over and stay with you so that it’s like he’s still here.”
“Yes,” I said, but I think she thought I was conceding when I was actually confirming his return.
“Drink wine,” I said.
She pulled back from me and giggled, only for a moment, and then she covered her mouth and I pulled her into me once again, tightly, and, just as I thought, I could feel Truman coming into me through her. So many times they sat, their heads together, laughing in the living room, Carly looking adoringly at Truman as he explained some thought he’d suddenly had that only Carly, my Carly, Truman’s Carly, would understand. They would sit there on the carpet and Carly would touch Truman’s hand lightly, and even though Truman often didn’t like to be touched he always let her hand rest there.
“What did you do above the garage all those times?” I whispered into her ear. I felt her stiffen but I wouldn’t let her go, and she leaned into me, shaking her head and crying softly. “I know it’s love that keeps him here. I know you know that. What you did up there is the most tender avowal of his life. Thank you.”
And then she pulled away from me forcefully and put her hands to her face and wept.
The people behind her waited patiently for her to stop. When she did, she said, “I’m sorry, Amy. I wish I could bring him back right now.”
But before I could say anything she was already in Ethan’s arms, her face buried in his shoulder.
They both cried softly as Ethan patted her back and said, “Oh, Carly, Carly. What will we do?”
But it couldn’t erase what I felt and knew. I knew the truth, and Carly did, too, and that was all I needed to go on with this whole service. And as I stood there nodding to people, allowing them to kiss me on the cheek and hold me, I thought that in the past I would’ve gone to God for help to get through this. How absurd that seemed now. What did people think he would do? Hadn’t he already done enough? Hadn’t he already made all crimes his own so that people would remain cleaved to him as the sole provider of benediction?
Carly
Four days after Truman’s death
I should’ve been standing up there with them. Truman would’ve wanted that, I think. But I understood why they didn’t have me there. I understood. Both of them were so brave and I was such a coward, standing in that line crying the whole time, no one understanding the great ocean-like wave of grief I felt every time I thought of Truman dead; every time I thought of his murdered body. The closer I got to them and the casket the more dread I felt. If I could, I would’ve turned around and left. But my father would’ve never let me do that. My mother couldn’t come. She was too upset. She said she could not see the Engroffs with that poor, lovely Truman in that casket behind them. She said she would go to the funeral so that she could stand away and in the open space.
I am a coward
, I thought, as I moved forward in the line and closer to Truman, closer to the truth we both shared and no one else did.
Truman and I used to talk about death sometimes and it always seemed so distant. It was as if we were talking about it on an intercom from different rooms. We talked about whether there was a God. Once, I asked if he thought God would be just a force present in all of human history. Truman said a presence for all living creatures, not just the shitty humans. I pretty much agreed with him. Why just humans? Why not all things that live? We’d smoked a little weed and the gargantuan thought of all that had lived before us and would live after us was so weighty that I just started to laugh. Truman said my laugh was infectious and it made him laugh, too.
But now I think of all the times we talked about death when we smoked, and even when we didn’t smoke, and I wonder if Truman had some premonition about his own death. He wasn’t exactly morbid, but he was alone much of the time, especially as he and I saw less and less of each other. It was true that when I scored a little weed he would be the first one I would go to. Tommy hated when I smoked; he said it was disgusting and for people who were weak, and it was much more fun being around Truman anyway.
I knew he went to see friends in New York, like Logan Marsh, who’d graduated the year before and was two years older than Truman and me. He said he felt more comfortable in the city where there were people like him. He wanted to go to NYU after he graduated.
“I can’t get into Columbia like my parents,” he told me one rainy afternoon when I’d gone to his house after not seeing him for a few weeks.
Truman had already told me he was gay. It made sense to me, especially after that one time above his garage. I’d felt so empty for the longest time after that. I wanted only to be with him and he’d not allowed me near him for months, as if he’d been disgusted by what we’d done. I had to reason it was just Truman being fucking Truman, but then I think he sensed how hurt I was and so he told me.
I didn’t believe him at first. He wasn’t anything like what I had always viewed as gay, always such drama in their actions and behavior, talking loudly with flamboyant gestures. Truman was more like an old man in some ways. He was never interested in hanging out with a bunch of friends or going to parties. He told me he’d gone to parties at Columbia, when he’d visited Logan and some other boy whose name I don’t remember, and it was easy for me to see him there with kids who’d already graduated high school. Kids living in New York and going to dark bars and museums and walks in Central Park.
I don’t think Logan was gay, though. We smoked weed a few times together, but I always saw him as too into himself, and Tommy hated him, too.
“He thinks his shit don’t stink. Just like your friend Truman. They’re perfect fuck-buddies.”
But then he wouldn’t say anything after that. He knew I didn’t like it and if he wanted to do what he wanted to do, he had to behave.
It was that rainy day, though, that I realized Truman was embarrassed about his poor performance as a student. He’d scored perfectly on the SATs, but he had low Cs in all his classes. Both his parents had gone to Columbia. I think that’s where they met. Ethan was so smart and I think, in some weird way, Truman resented his father. It was nothing I could exactly put my finger on; they got along and joked around together and his father always looked at him with just this incredible fucking love, but on Truman’s part there was something there. Don’t ask me to tell you what it was, because I can’t. Anyone who knew Truman well enough knew that he was always much closer to his mother. It might’ve been the fact that his father was just so wrapped up in his work and in Amy. Maybe that Freudian thing where the son hates the father never left Truman and they were both competing for Amy’s love.
But it would’ve only been on Truman’s part. His father loved Truman. I know that for a fact, because all I had to do was watch how he looked at him. I saw.
I also know Truman always wanted to please his father, and not getting into Columbia was going to be a disappointment for him and for his parents. Truman had a Columbia pennant in his room with that awful light blue background and I used to tease him about it. Why would he have that if he wasn’t somehow trying to please his dad? And then there was the whole thing of his great-grandfather Truman being a general in the army and the expectations of this family who had excelled in every way. And I think that’s why he was so much closer to his mother, because she didn’t care about any of the stuff normal parents care about, like my mom and dad do.
I have to go to Princeton and my dad’ll make sure I do. Amy was just happy when Truman was being Truman, I guess. He didn’t have to fucking perform or excel or any of the bullshit me and my friends have to do for our mothers so they can brag about us at cocktail parties or whatever.
“I should’ve worked harder,” Truman said. He took a hit of weed and held it in his lungs for a long time. When he exhaled he laughed. “This wacky weed has taken away my drive.”
He looked at me suspiciously.
“It’s your fault, Carly. You always make me think of getting high.”
“What difference does it make if you don’t go to Columbia?”
“None, really. I just wanted to go there because they went there.” He nodded toward his door. “It would’ve been cool. Three generations of Engroffs going to the same school.”
He took another hit and laughed. “I don’t know what I would’ve done there, is all. I guess just walk around campus and feel the thrum of the Engroffs.”
“I hear NYU is a great school.”
He cocked his head toward me and smiled. That’s when it was always melt time for me.
“There is absolutely no one better than you, Carly Rodenbaugh. You don’t know a thing about NYU.”