“It’s Dan!”
AS THE DAYS careened past me in a rush, I tried to memorize every moment with Matt. When I wasn’t with him, I wished I was. One day, he brought a beta fish to my room after class. “I bought him to keep you company while I’m gone. His name is Jeff Buckley.”
I laughed and then leaned up and kissed him. “Thank you, you’re sweet.” But, really, I only wanted Matt to keep me company.
I spent graduation day with Matt and his dad and stepmom. After the ceremony we had dinner and went back to Matt’s dorm, where he and I stayed for the next few days. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight.
On June fourth, the day before Matt left, while he was at the doctor getting necessary inoculations for his trip, I stopped into my favorite café in the East village for a coffee. I was sitting at the bar, looking out the front window, when I overheard the café owner’s daughter, who worked as a waitress there, mumbling about an “utter tragedy.” She was crying to her father as he held her. An older, hippie-looking woman came over and wiped down the wooden bar top. “Did you hear?”
I shook my head.
“They found his body.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
She sighed heavily. “Poor guy, used to hang out around here all the time.”
“Who?”
“Buckley.”
I put my hand over my heart. “Jeff Buckley?”
“The very same. Handsome kid. So talented, gone too soon.”
Her eyes crinkled as she shook her head mournfully.
“What happened?” I could barely speak.
She stopped cleaning and stared out the window in a daze. Her voice was low and wobbly, like she was on the verge of tears. “Drowned in the Mississippi with his damn boots on. He’d been missing, and they just found his body on the shore. Used to see him walk by here all the time.”
I melted into sobs, feeling such sadness for someone I didn’t even know but had felt intensely connected to for so long. It was the first time I really thought about how fleeting it all is. Was this life? I wondered. You can spend hours upon hours engaged in meaningless, arbitrary bullshit, and then die while taking a dip in the river, your bloated body washing up onshore like discarded trash, only to be buried and forgotten?
The first time someone young and vibrant dies—-someone you look up to, someone you relate to—it blows you back, right off your feet. Oh, fuck, we’re all gonna die, nobody knows when, nobody knows how, you think. And in that moment, you realize how little control you have over your own destiny. From the time you’re born, you have no control; you can’t choose your parents, and, unless you’re suicidal, you can’t choose your death. The only thing you can do is choose the person you love, be kind to others, and make your brutally short stint on earth as pleasant as possible.
I left the café in a blur of tears, too sick to finish my coffee. The waitress wouldn’t let me pay, probably because she didn’t realize how much the news would affect me. “It’s on me, hon.” I nodded gratefully and ran all the way back to Senior House. When I saw Matt standing outside of the building, I slammed right into his chest and dissolved.
“Grace, what is it?”
I rubbed my tears and snot all over his shirt and broke the news through sobs. “Jeff . . . Buckley’s . . . dead.”
“Oh baby, it’s okay.” He rubbed my back and swayed with me. “Shh, don’t worry, we can get you another fish.”
I pulled away and looked up at him. “No. The real Jeff Buckley.”
His face turned ashen. “Oh shit. How?”
“Drowned a few days ago. They found his body today.”
“That’s terrible.” He held me to his chest, and I could hear his heart beating fast.
“I know, I can’t believe it,” I said through tears.
But the truth was, I wasn’t sad for Jeff Buckley as much as I was sad for Matt and for me. For us. For the short time we had left together.
If I asked, would you stay?
He knew my thoughts somehow. He bent and kissed me once on each cheek, then my forehead, then my chin, then my lips. “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you, too,” I said through my tears.
“Grace, will you do something with me?”
“Anything.” Ask me to go with you. Tell me you’ll stay. Tell me you’ll marry me. For real this time.
“Let’s go right now and get tattoos.”
“Okay,” I said, a little stunned. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I would do anything he asked in that moment.