“Jesus, Maggie,” Culler says, and I am so glad he’s here with me for this. “Your humanity astounds me. What do you do, save it for your photos? Oh, wait, it’s not in those either…”
“Oh, fuck off, you digital dork. God, I’m not going to miss you.”
Culler points to me. “Her dad just died.”
“And Eddie should know my loathing of you does not extend to her father or her.”
“You call an unoriginal photographer unoriginal just once,” Culler tells me, “and they never, ever get over it.”
“Uhm, where are his things?” I have no idea what I’ve walked into.
She points behind me. I turn. Against the back wall, underneath the window, is a single, medium-size cardboard box, taped and sealed shut. I don’t know how I keep it together enough to walk over to it. I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. I try to swallow it; I can’t. My legs feel like they’re made of nothing. There has to be more than this.
He wouldn’t just leave us with nothing.
I face her. “Is this it? Did you pack his things?”
“You packed his things?” Culler demands. “What the fuck right of that was yours?”
“I didn’t touch his fucking things. That’s what he left.”
“Where’s the rest of it?”
“There is no rest of it,” Maggie says. “He got rid of it and left that box, which has been sitting there forever.”
I turn to Culler. “When did he get rid of everything?”
He looks totally lost. “I wasn’t here the week he … it had to be then, because the week before that…” He faces Maggie. “When did he get rid of everything?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know, Maggie? Anything?”
“How hard is it to pick up a box and leave?” She closes her magazine and gets to her feet. “I didn’t touch his fucking things, Jesus. I didn’t pack that box. I don’t know when he got rid of it. I’m leaving. I’ll be gone for an hour, Culler, and if you’re here when I get back—”
Her voice fades out. Culler starts talking, but he sounds so far away, I can’t get a handle on it. I stare at the box and run my hands over the cardboard. Do you know what this means? I want to ask them that. Do you know what this means?
The front door slams shut and it’s quiet.
Maggie’s gone.
She wouldn’t care what it meant.
I press my hands against my eyes and exhale slowly. Culler’s footsteps echo through the room as he walks over to me, stands close. He says my name, but if I move my hands I’ll cry. I don’t want to cry in front of Culler. I want to be cool and unflappable. I want to handle this. I have to handle this. I’m supposed to handle this. Beth sent me down here to handle this.
I am apparently the only person left who can handle this.
“Eddie,” Culler says.
I move away from him and lower my hands and I don’t cry, thank God, but I don’t say anything either. Everything I’m feeling is so beyond anything I could say. When I finally do find the words, they fall out of my mouth, my voice breaking. Stupid and confused.
“So he knew he was going to do it for at least a week,” I say. “So there were a few days where he was at home and he knew he was going to kill himself, which means he had time—”
I stop. I can’t.
“Had time for what?” Culler asks.
“To leave behind something more,” I mumble. “Better.”
Sometimes I feel hunted by my grief. It circles me, stalks me. It’s always in my periphery. Sometimes I can fake it out. Sometimes I make myself go so still, it can’t sense that I’m there anymore and it goes away. I do that right now.
I go so still the thing inside me doesn’t know I’m there anymore.
“Eddie?” Culler asks quietly.
I grab the box, but my hands quit on me, my dead hands, and it slips through my fingers and hits the floor. I hear the unmistakable sound of glass breaking and I start apologizing to no one, trying to pick it up again, but I can’t.
I can’t get my hands to work because they’re too cold.
“Sorry.” I can’t grip the box. “I didn’t—it’s my hands. They’re fucked up—”
“It’s okay.” Culler nudges me aside and picks up the box. “I’ve got it.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thank you.”
He nods and I follow him through the door, outside. We put the box into the back of the station wagon without a word and seeing it there, by itself, makes me almost cry again, but I don’t.
“Why are your hands fucked up?” Culler asks.
It’s an empty and painful moment. It is the kind of moment that has me by the throat, the heart. Culler stands there and watches me and doesn’t say anything.
“It’s a long story,” I finally answer.
“I’ve got the time.”
“I don’t really want to tell it.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” he says.
“Why?”
He smiles ruefully. “Because now the only thing left for me to do is take you home.”
Culler has to take photographs of the studio before we leave. He catches me in one of them. I hold up my hands—delayed reaction—and tell him not to.
“Why not?” he asks. “You’re beautiful.”
“You’re full of it,” I say, and then I realize it sounds like I’m fishing for compliments and I don’t want him to think that. “I mean—thank you.”
No one has ever called me beautiful before and I’m surprised by how strange and uncomfortable it makes me feel. It’s not a word I’ve ever considered for myself—or thought that other people would either, I guess.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
In the car, we’re quiet. I don’t know what to say. The box in the backseat makes the silence too heavy to breathe around and I ask Culler if I can open the window. He tells me sure and I roll it all the way down. The wind rushing into the car drowns out the sound of the radio, the sound of my heart beating. The box is still in the backseat, though.
I roll up the window and the silence is immediate. The box, the box. I tuck my hair behind my ears—Beth is right, I really need to cut it—and then I rub my eyes and rest my head against the seat. The box. I close my eyes.
Stop thinking about it.
“You have so many of his mannerisms,” Culler says suddenly. “You move the same way he did. You speak—the way you say certain words, it’s exactly on…”
“Does that freak you out?” I ask.
“No.”
It freaks me out, a little. I am so much my father. I know this. People used to tell me that all the time. I have his hands, his face—the same fine features, brown eyes, and thick brown hair. By the time I started looking like he did when he was my age, strangers were mistaking him for my grandfather. I wonder if that ever bothered him, being so much older than my mom, older than other fathers who had seventeen-year-old daughters. Like, if every time he looked at me, he felt his age and how much closer that made him to death than he used to be, like Beth does, but not like Beth exactly. I wonder if that would be a reason to kill yourself.
Maybe that’s why he killed himself.
It’s so quiet. Being quiet with Culler isn’t the same as being quiet with Milo. It doesn’t feel like something important is missing.
We’re about halfway back to Branford—floating through this town called Corby—when Culler says he has two cases of beer in the back of the station wagon, under the seat. He suggests we make a toast to my father and I agree, even though I hate the taste of beer. I just want to spend more time with him. I don’t want to go home.
Corby is nice. Culler drives us to this Catholic high school, St. Peter’s, and parks sideways in the parking lot. We sit on the pavement, behind the car, our backs against it, out of sight of any passersby. It feels wrong and right at the same time. Summer vacation looks great on schools. I’m dreading senior year.
I glance at Culler. He’s taking the caps off the bottles with his teeth, which is vaguely impressive. He’s so past high school. He must think I’m a little kid. He passes me a bottle.
Or maybe not.
“To Seth,” he says.
“My dad.”
We clink bottles and swig the beer in unison. It’s warm. Gross.
“The last time I was at that studio…” He trails off and takes another swig from his bottle. I wonder if the objective is to be drunk and stuck here until we sober up. “The last time I was at that studio … he had contact sheets, negatives, equipment—and he just … got rid of it.”
“Did you want it?” I ask. “I would’ve let you have it.” It’s out of my mouth before I know if I mean it, but then I decide that I mean it. If my dad had left it all behind, I would have let Culler take what he wanted. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” he says. He gives me a small smile. “Don’t be. That’s very sweet.”
He thinks I’m a little kid.
I finish off the beer and wait to feel something, but I don’t feel anything except sort of tired and sad. Culler doesn’t touch his beer and it’s more than half full and I think that means it’s time to go, but I don’t want to leave just yet.
I don’t want to go home.
“What’s with you and Maggie?” I ask.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Try me,” I say.
“We had a thing…”
“A thing?” I repeat, and then he looks at me and I feel my face turn totally red and he laughs again and I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. “Oh God … Maggie?” And then I make it even worse: “She doesn’t seem like…”
“Oh, I know,” Culler says. “I know. I mean, it was okay, I guess.” He shrugs. “She got to the point where she wanted to know what I really thought of her work and I felt like it would be okay to tell her.”