Lila

I drove down our road. We said we would never miss a fall. The leaves were mostly gone. The oak and birch were still vibrant. It had gotten so warm for October, I wondered if the bulbs would be tricked into thinking it was spring again. I knew full well it wasn’t; winter was coming.

I had the top down, and I remembered that silly notion of hers about birds and convertibles.

“Promise me you will never drive with the hood down without your sunglasses,” she had said.

“What are you talking about?” I smiled.

“The birds, Evan, think about it. You are flying a hundred kilometers per hour—sixty miles, whatever—and a bird is flying the opposite direction? What are you gonna do?”

“It would slam on the windshield!” I laughed.

“Promise me, I’m serious.”

I knew better than to argue with her. “I promise.”

I wiped a tear and reached for the sunglasses even though night was falling.

Her collection of poppies from Remembrance Days past hung on the rearview mirror, swirling.

“You got that idea from a luau necklace!” I had said.

“No I didn’t.” She smiled, with that guilty smile. “OK, maybe I did.”

Those beautiful teeth, big, like those of a bunny, and that heart shape in the middle of her upper lip.

I parked at the river bend after I nearly went into the ditch. Get a hold of yourself, Evan!

The water was low, barely making a sound as it streamed across the boulders. I wanted to jump. It has to be freezing, I thought.

The flutter near my ear startled me. I slapped, not thinking what it could be.

“Hey buddy, what are you doing here?” The hummingbird tried to drink from the fake poppies. “You are late going south. My mom is going to be wondering where you are.”

I felt so bad seeing him searching for nectar in plastic. It didn’t take him long to zoom away into the distance.

The sting of the needle driving the ink into the skin of my chest felt worse this time.

“What was it now?” Ed, my tattoo artist I’d seen a lot lately, asked.

“Hummingbird trying to drink out of the poppies in the car.”

“When?”

“Just yesterday,” I said.

“Isn’t that late for a hummingbird?”

“That’s what I told him.”

I had no tattoos two months ago. We used to make fun of omens, and now I’m getting a hummingbird tattooed next to a rainbow, a shooting star, and the words Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered. That was my first one, the song title.

That first night home without her, I opened a bottle of our favorite wine. I shuffled all songs on my phone, skipped two, because she always said that the first one is never good, and the second one could always be better, and there it was, her favorite song in the voice that she loved, Ella Fitzgerald.

Mom calls frequently. She’s been asking me to fly there for Thanksgiving. She has offered to pay and I know she can’t afford it, but she offers anyway.

“Your aunt Cassy will be here,” she said the last time she called. “She will be making your favorite casserole, the one with the bacon.”

“Mom, I barely remember it. It has been like ten years.”

I thought of Tom, her father. I had not called him in a few days. It was late, but he was probably still awake.

“Tom?”

“Is she okay? Why in the world are you calling me this late at night?”

“There has been no change. I just wanted to talk to you, see how you are doing.”

“I should be asking you that.”

There was silence. Neither of us said a thing.

Tom cleared his throat. “Now listen, I’m glad you called. Can you come tomorrow to help me put the mower up? I did the last cut today. Giving frost for tomorrow.”

I had never seen Tom with stubble. He was always clean-shaven and kept his hair buzzed with a number two.

“You look good,” I said.

“You think? Nearly scared myself shitless this morning in the mirror, thought someone had broken in.”

“Why the change?”

“Lila always said that I would look good with a beard, that my chin wasn’t strong enough. I want to look good for when she wakes up.”

“Tom…”

“Give me a hand, will ya? Can’t get these doors open.”

It wasn’t easy to visit Tom’s house. Her photos were everywhere, the ones of her, and the ones she took. Tom loved Lila fiercely. I had never known of another father to be more affectionate than him. I have always felt so honored that he would trust me with his baby. Homecoming Dance, 2007 was our first date. She was the girl everyone wanted to take out, the Canadian exchange student. A mythical creature that lived in igloos and hunted moose with a knife.

“Y’all dance up there in the tundra?” I asked, halfway truthfully and halfway trying to sound cute.

“It’s too cold for dancing. We only do it after a hunt or to keep warm so that we don’t die from frostbite.”

I was in.

Tom called me, long distance, to the house where she was staying, with the Smiths the night I was picking her up.

“Now listen, you yankee, redneck, whatever the hell you are. You treat my girl well or I will be driving there—don’t care what time of the night it is—and take you out myself on a dance… with my fists!”

Our prom photo was next to our wedding photo. Tom had his eyes closed, and the gap in his teeth was so visible. Lila was smiling, looking at him, and I was nearly bent in half, laughing. I can’t remember what the joke was, but it made for a great photo. I could still hear her goofy laugh.

We got snowed in on Remembrance Day.

“Tom, stop, stop!” I shouted.

He was wearing full uniform, shoveling against the bank of snow as the wind blew aggressively. He was fighting against a sand clock. His skin was red and the guttural sound he made each time he threw the snow behind his shoulder sounded like his soul exhaling pain.

He dropped to his knees and I rushed to hold him. I had never felt the agony of another man’s pain land on my shoulder. The frost had accumulated on his beard and it melted against my cheek as I held him close.

“It’s okay, sir. It’s okay, Tom.”

I took time off work and we got on the road. Tom insisted we take his truck. We hung the poppies on his rearview mirror to remember Lila.

“Tell Aunt Cassy Tom has never had Southern food, and he is single,” I told Mom. He didn’t like the single comment, but it was true.

We stopped a lot. I drove more than we had originally agreed. Tom spent a lot of time observing the road with his eyes closed.

“The best jerky in New England,” he read as he woke up, pretending to have been awake all along.

“Is that so? Next time you open your eyes it will be best peach cobbler in the South.”

There was silence; only the jingle of the keys and the hum of the heater could be heard.

“What if she wakes up?”

“It’s been three months, Tom.”

“She ain’t dead yet,” he said. His tone sharpened, as if he were reprimanding a child.

“You are right, but the doctors said…”

“I don’t give a damn about what the doctors said,” he cut in, sharp.

After two nights on the road, and nearly two thousand miles, we finally made it. The quiet moments had been the best—when Tom was awake. We found comfort in the silence that would break from time to time when pointing out a tree, or reading a billboard with a terrible fake Southern accent.

We did agree that if Lila woke up, we would drop the truck off at the nearest airport and fly on the next flight to Halifax. But I knew the chances of that happening narrowed each day.

“Her brain suffered…” the doctor said the day of the accident. The ringing in my ears as I faded out made his voice deep, and slow, as I dissociated. Tom caught me before I hit the ground. I read the doctor’s report the next day. I didn’t remember hardly anything.

Everyone treated us like we were broken at my parents’ house, except for Dad. He is emotionally unavailable except for football. I have seen my father cry only once, the day the Falcons lost the final of the Super Bowl in 2017.

Aunt Cassy burnt the casserole. The turkey was raw in the middle, and something about the pear salad was off.

“Bobby, did you get the mayo from the top shelf, or the bottom shelf?” Mom asked Dad.

“I don’t know, woman, I just got the darn mayo when you asked for it.”

I was glad we had a hotel, and separate rooms. We shared a room while we were on the road. But both said it would be best to have separate rooms for the time we stayed in Georgia. We booked three nights. But there was no exact return plan.

We had breakfast at the Waffle House. Tom was not used to the grease, but he ate it.

“Is this what you were feeding my poor Lila when you guys were down here?”

Saturday night, he was early to bed. I went over to his room and could see the light from the television flickering with no sound on from under the door.

An old friend asked me to meet him and some other high school friends for drinks. I reluctantly agreed.

I hadn’t been to a bar in years. Lila and I always stayed home. We drank wine into the night listening to music, or watching a show, but we didn’t party. We didn’t have friends our age and we didn’t need to—we had each other.

“Evan, you home, eh?” I hadn’t seen Rebecca since high school. Why did Troy invite her?

“Nobody says ‘eh’ where I live,” I said, not fully realizing I was flirting back. I had had a lot to drink.

Troy kept buying shots. He had recently divorced.

“Listen man, it’s like a new pass in life. Best year so far since we left high school. I’m never getting married again,” Troy loudly said as he passed the tequila shooters.

I could feel the corners of my mouth pulling upwards for the first time since the accident.

Rebecca and I danced arrhythmically—too close to each other. Her long blond hair rubbing against my neck sent electric currents down my spine. She smelled of the same perfume she wore when we were in high school.

“What’s it called? Your perfume,” I shouted; the music was too loud.

“Chance, by Chanel.”

The more noise we made, the more turned on Rebecca seemed. Lips smacking, belt buckle, shoes thrown across the floor, zippers; it was so loud. She was reckless.

She ripped my shirt open and stared at my chest, studying it. She tilted her head to read the words; I could tell. I started to turn when she connected her lips with mine. Her nails were almost digging into my skull as she inflicted her passionate kiss on me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I realized then that I was behaving like a victim. A grieving man who was being taken advantage of by an old high school fling—not a participant, just a pathetic fool.

“You are beautiful,” I lied, staring at her eyes. She was beautiful, yes, but that is not what I was thinking. I wanted her to leave.

I took control of the situation, achingly. Like a victim, again. Bless my heart.

“Evan?”

I didn’t realize Tom had a key to my room.

Tom left the following morning. He didn’t give me a chance to explain. There was nothing to explain.

I flew into Halifax on a bitter cold night; it was drizzling sideways, as it often does here. Our apartment was so cold. All of Lila’s things were still there, mere objects of desolation.

I wrapped myself in blankets on our bed and looked out the window. My breathing accelerated as my heart slowly, but deeply, beat.

“It’s time,” I said out loud. My voice was barely audible from not having spoken in over an hour.

I called Tom. He didn’t pick up.

I wish I could have cried. I felt nothing. I had heard of pain so strong that you feel numb, but I had never experienced it. I tried screaming against the pillow as if my soul could be primed like a water pump. Nothing.

“You are so silly, how does that make you cry?” she said when we watched The Notebook together. “That’s why I love you.”

“How does it make me cry? How does it not make you cry?”

“Evan, it’s awful, it’s silly!”

˜

The End