Charlie sparkles in every shot, his dark hair flopping across his forehead. There’s one in front of his high school in Bangkok: his arms are slung around both of his parents, his grin—angled higher on one side—just barely showing, like he’s suppressing a laugh. There’s one of him as a kid in a swimming pool in what must have been Paris—he spent most of his childhood there. His eyes are so wide you can see the flecks of gold in the blue, and his arms are stuffed into floaties.
The pictures show Charlie with friends, Charlie with his parents. Charlie with the basset hound they used to have. My favorite is one of Charlie caught off-guard: he’s somewhere beachy—I can see a stretch of white sand like a long blanket wrapping itself around him in the background. The expression on his face is playful, like he’s teasing the person behind the camera. There’s one of Charlie and Adam wearing wide grins, their arms slung around each other’s shoulders against the backdrop of their dorm room, and it ignites something sharp in my heart. There’s an open checkerboard on the coffee table behind them. The memory that follows leaves me breathless.
Charlie places the checkerboard between us. We’re in the corridor outside a hospital room; my little brother has just gotten his appendix out.
Charlie banned checkers from our relationship shortly after we began dating, when he realized that I’m basically a checkers savant and win every single time. Checkers, however, keeps me calm and focused. On the checkerboard, I feel in control.
“Like a lamb to the slaughter,” I inform him in a serious tone, and he laughs loudly.
“I like that. Well, I’m happy to dig my own grave as long as you’ll lie in it too,” he says. Then he winks, and his whole face lights up with this mix of things: playfulness, secrecy, confidence, charm. When Charlie’s playing nice guy, he’s at his best.
The problem is, he’s always playing.
The thought crosses my mind before I can help it, and I react by reaching across the board and squeezing him again, extra tight.
“I love you,” I whisper. I desperately need to hear it back.
“You sweetheart,” he says instead, and I feel my heart sink.
I pull away and look him in the eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of what he’s thinking. But there it is again: that smile. Charlie being playful.
The image leaves me shaking. My armpits are damp, and I realize I’ve been lingering too long in front of the photo that triggered the memory. I push forward, shaking my head in an effort to clear my thoughts. There aren’t any pictures of Charlie and me in the photo display—not even the one he kept in a frame next to his bed in the dorm. We’d have been dating for over a year by now. Still, a lot has changed in the past few months.
I don’t even notice that I’m the only one still examining the photos until a man in a navy blue suit—maybe a funeral coordinator—taps me on the shoulder. “Miss, could you please take your seat? The ceremony is about to start.” He gestures toward the seats, which are almost all filled.
“Thanks,” I tell him as I scan for an empty chair. I’m about to take the one closest to me, right on the end by the aisle, when I see an older lady walking with a cane a few paces behind me. She’s clearly moving toward the same chair; so instead I squeeze halfway down the row behind this one, where there’s one remaining seat toward the center, next to a middle-aged couple that I’d mistake for siblings if they weren’t holding hands. The woman keeps clearing her throat loudly and blowing her nose into an elaborately embroidered handkerchief. I reach for my bag and hand her my extra pack of tissues, just in case.
The service passes in a blur: a few thoughtful words, some psalms. Then Charlie’s philosophy teacher from high school is at the podium saying a few nice and funny things about how Charlie once wrote an entire term paper in a series of haikus and still managed to hit on the relevant arguments; so technically, the teacher couldn’t fail him even though it wasn’t exactly a scholarly essay. That produces a chuckle. And an uncle tells a story about how when Charlie was a kid and crashing at his place, he’d had a hell of a time keeping Charlie away from the tree that stretched past the second-story terrace, and how Charlie had been found more than once clambering down it to the 7th arrondissement sidewalk, and how he’d never met a kid cleverer or sneakier. I laugh at that one because it’s so true. Charlie was always catching me off-guard—it was one of the reasons I cared about him.
After an hour of listening to other people’s memories, I’m exhausted. My boyfriend was beloved by more people than just me—that much is clear. It’s one of the main reasons I was drawn to him—at first, Charlie was a perfect fit. It doesn’t occur to me to offer some memories of my own, though; I feel like an outsider here. My throat constricts as it hits me: I’ll never see him again. The tears come from somewhere deep and indecipherable.
I blink rapidly, eyes stinging. I reach for my purse and rummage around for my other pack of tissues. I’ve just found them when I hear murmurs. When I look up to see the elfin girl stepping up to the podium. She smiles in the direction of Charlie’s mom, and for some reason my heart goes cold. She’s gripping the sides of the wooden frame like it’s a lifeline. I watch her draw in a breath. And then she begins to talk.
2
Lena