No one ever believes that they can experience an ache that stops all movement and forces you to lie in bed for days, weeks, even months if it’s deep enough. It’s an unnatural pain. Something out of the darkest, most twisted and sickening of fairy tales. You live with it forever once it makes its home in you and all you can do is numb it and hope for the best.
I didn’t talk to many people after I received that ache. At first it was because I couldn’t handle it, couldn’t form the words in my dry mouth. Then, it was because no one wanted to know. That’s why ,in the early morning of a pluvious Valentine’s day, I stepped out of the office where I worked alone with no goodbye from my partner or recognition from any of the few pedestrians on the drenched sidewalk. I faintly praise my umbrella for staying sheltered in the safe, warm closet of my apartment, nestled between my winter jacket and a pair of abandoned heels. I thought, briefly, about venturing across the street and into the still lit candy store there, to search for a bit of warmth. I shot the idea down quickly as my ache creeped into my stomach. I couldn’t stay around, I needed to go home.
I spun, my hair stuck in wet dark strands on my cheeks and tickled the corners of my eyes. I slipped into a brisk walk and headed in the direction of my home, it wasn’t far enough away so that I would need a car. But, in the rain that only seemed to come down harder and colder around me, I wish I’d invested in one.
I don’t believe in miracles, nor fate. Coincidences, yes.I jumped when a car honked behind me. I was half way home by that point, soaked to the bone, and running from the invisible threats in the pelt of water behind me. In short, I didn’t see the cab creep up on me. I stared at the illuminated area in front of me before turning to the faded yellow taxi behind me. It was an opportunity and I took it. I nodded my thanks to the driver and climbed in the back. The slam of the door cut off the chilly air outside and shut me in, with another rider.
He didn’t take notice of me at first and of course I didn’t expect him to. He stayed, huddled where he sat in a dingy brown sweater that had yet to kiss the rain outside. White roses rested delicately on his lap putting me in awe.
“They’re beautiful,”
I couldn’t stop the claim from running off my tongue. He turned, his eyes were glassy and I couldn’t see the color.
“Thank you,” He whispered.
My ache grew stronger and I strove to cover it with curiosity,
“Is it her favorite?”
“What?”
“Your girlfriend, or mother, or sister, or what not. I was just wondering…if those were her favorite,”
I was feeling intrusive now.
“Um, yes. They’re her favorite.”
“What’s she like?” I ventured.
“She’s strong. Very very strong. And she tries to make everyone else strong with her. She is always telling us not to cry, because that’s giving up. She doesn’t want me to—“
He abruptly stopped. Throwing his hand over his mouth he stifled what could have been yawn or, in fact, a cry. Our conversation fell away.
The taxi stopped not long after and the boy gathered his things. He opened the door and turned to bid me goodbye. That’s when I took notice of something. Something positive in all the years I’d spent in mundane, everyday negativity. His eyes were green. They were green and they were youthful and they glittered with a special kind of sorrow that children, because that’s what he was, a mere child, should never have to face. And I knew, before I was unable to utter any remanent of a good bye. I knew, before he walked through the mist the clearing rain had left in its wake. I knew before he opened that iron gate and trudged to a stone near the front, before he sat the flowers down next to it, before he planted himself before it and leant forward to touch his forehead to the inevitably cold stone. I knew before the low long string of grief reached the frozen taxi that I sat in. I knew he’d broken a promise he made to a dead girl. I knew, deeply rooted into him, was a niggling insect that dug into his brain and heart to implant it’s questions that had no answer. I knew that his tears, as few as there were, were out of a swimming, swirling, whirlpool of guilt that he couldn’t out run forever.
That’s when I thought I heard it. A little voice, no more than a tinkling of bells.
“He’s not going to make it,”
I had looked to the cab driver who was dabbing his eyes with the knuckle of his oversized thumb. I thought back, believing it was only my conscience and I let the driver pull away from the cemetery. I wouldn’t be seeing that boy again.
I walked into my apartment that night, numb as I was every night when I walked in and saw his shoes still by the door. Numb as when I saw all the pictures I couldn’t bring myself to take down. I spent the remaining early hours drifting in and out on a sea of home videos and pictures and memories until I couldn’t keep my eyes open and forced myself to my feet, to make coffee. In the same motion I switched the t.v. to the news.
I never wondered before then how reporters got their stories so quickly. Just four hours after leaving him behind, telling myself I would never see him again. There he was. A school picture. Green eyes, and dirty blond hair and a young, youthful face where his lips only twitched up into a half smile. They told me, as I stood stunned in the doorway, that a groundkeeper found him. Hanging from the lowest limb of a tree on the outskirts of the cemetery. They told me of the valiant efforts that were made to save him. They said he put flowers on his own plot. What they didn’t say was who was beside him. What his eyes looked like as that groundskeeper realized that there was no hope. Or why. They never tell you why. No one does. I felt my ache again and I retreated. To the nest of blankets on my mattress. To his pictures on the wall. This ache, it was a cycle and it never went away.