Days fell into each other, blurring into one, my time with my uncle growing shorter and shorter. He started losing weight, his bright eyes growing dull and full of pain. Each day was a battle for him, but he wouldn’t quit fighting. Every morning, he woke up, took his coffee to the kitchen, and sat down with me to talk about life, school, and the many ways he could beat Heathcliff at their next game of checkers. He needed the conversation, and I needed to talk.
I’d gotten better at talking. I’d even gotten better at making friends. Rebecca Martin particularly. For all of her looks and popularity, she was a lonely girl.
“I’m looking for a genuine friendship,” she told me one morning, her eyes glowing as she leaned back in her chair. “Something that doesn’t involve pageants, surgery, and clothes. You get that, right?”
I’d nodded and that had been enough. After that, she’d found ways to catch up with me in between classes and after school when Heathcliff was working. One nod, and we were suddenly friends, as if she’d decided telling me she wanted a genuine person in her life was an invisible contract of comradeship.
“You need a mentor,” she said. “Someone who can teach you something about hair. Makeup, too, if you want. And let’s be honest, I need you because the only time I get to cheat on this ridiculous diet my mother always has me on is when I’m somewhere she can’t watch me.”
With Rebecca, I never had to do a lot of talking, just a lot of nodding, smiles, and car trips to places I didn’t care a whole lot about. The mall for one. And yet, being around Rebecca felt good. She made me smile and filled a lonely place in me I’d never realized was missing.
“Skinny jeans. That’s where it is. You need skinny jeans,” she murmured one afternoon.
No matter how many times I told Rebecca no, she found a way around it. Clothes appeared in my locker, coupons appeared on my desk, and packages appeared at my house. I kept trying to return them, and Rebecca kept bringing them back. It was a never ending cycle that concluded with me telling her I couldn’t take anymore, and her agreeing to stop if I kept what she’d already sent.
Truth was, I began to count on her need to be there. Rebecca was living a lie, and I was living in the shadow of death. Somehow, we met in that strange place between the two, clinging to the companionship we found there.
She drove me home after school every afternoon, coming in to meet my uncle before sitting in the kitchen nibbling on whatever I’d baked that week. I came to depend on her and on her friendship. It was nice, really, being close to someone who didn’t share any interests with you, but who enjoyed being in the same room with you anyway.
“When you become a chef, I’ll totally help you open a place,” Rebecca said. She loved to eat as much as I loved to cook. It worked, our friendship.
Strangely enough, I had Heathcliff to thank for Rebecca. I had Heathcliff to thank for all of it. He was the reason my life was changing. In a quiet, almost imperceptible way, he was repairing my relationship with the town and with me. He was taking me places, encouraging me to talk, and helping me grow. He was teaching me to trust myself and to trust others. He was teaching me to be a part of something and yet still be unique.
Every spare moment we had, Heathcliff and I spent it together, his building in the woods our favorite destination. It was the only place not filled with grief and the threat of graduation. There among the trees, there was only love and long conversations.
One afternoon, he pulled out his guitar. His couch had been turned into a bed, and I was reclined on it, reading. Heathcliff had been working on a new “parts” project, turning a bunch of scrap metal into a grill for the creek. The parties there were few and far between in the winter, but they grew more frequent with warm weather. There wasn’t much to do in our small town other than crowding together in fields, barns, or at the creek, the pickups circled and the tailgates down.
“You can’t laugh,” he said as he sat opposite me, tugging the instrument across his lap.
I set my book aside. “I won’t.”
Taking a pick, he strummed the guitar, testing the strings before falling into a familiar rhythm. He didn’t sing, he just played, the tune a mix of blues and country. Outside the sun grew lower in the sky, but it didn’t matter.
The music waned, and I leaned forward. “I didn’t take you for a country music guy.”
He shrugged. “I’m not really. I listen to a little bit of everything, but when I play … well, country is kind of in the blood whether I want it to be or not. All that crap about love, drinking, pickup trucks, and hard living is the way it is here.”
“I like country,” I offered. “Some of it better than others. A lot of it’s sad.”
He picked at the guitar again. “There’s a lot of truth in sadness.”
My gaze searched his face, my chest tightening. Time was my enemy. Like with Uncle Gregor, I was losing Heathcliff, the far off look in his eyes full of dreams he’d never be able to fulfill here. January had melted into February and March, the weather outside warmer than it had been, green foliage starting to sprout among the brown.
“Do you ever sing?” I asked.