We’re walking on the path again, but she veers off to the right.
“I’m not,” Sylvie says. “Generally I find poetry tedious. But I like Teasdale’s poems. Unlike most poets, she knew how to get to the point. And since I was going to be here anyway…” She trails off as we leave the gravel for the grass.
Sylvie counts the headstones we pass under her breath as I follow behind. I think about a hundred years ago, when these graves were new, how they’d been important, how people had come here to weep and remember. I wonder if Finn’s headstone will, one day, be nothing more to anyone than a marker to be counted to find someone else’s final resting place.
“Here it is. Oh.”
At first, I don’t understand, and then I see it.
Sara Teasdale was born on August 8, 1884.
“I didn’t know her birthday,” Sylvie says.
“Just a coincidence,” I say.
She shrugs and stares at the date.
“What’s your favorite poem of hers?” I try.
She smiles in a way that lets me know that I haven’t changed the topic how I’d hoped.
Sylvie closes her eyes before reciting.
“Now while my lips are living,
Their words must stay unsaid,
And will my soul remember
To speak when I am dead?
Yet if my soul remembered
You would not heed it, dear,
For now you must not listen,
And then you could not hear.”
Sylvie doesn’t open her eyes; she stands there. The heat has finally gotten to her, and her face has a pink and dewy glow that makes her look like she’s been crying, even though I’m pretty sure she’s hasn’t been.
“Is that it?”
Sylvie opens her eyes and blinks at me.
“It seemed complete, but it was so short.”
“I told you she knew how to get to the point,” Sylvie says. Finally, she takes off her jacket. “I found her book on the English language shelf in a used bookstore in Paris. I read that poem and bought the book.” She folds her jacket over her arm and sighs. “I read it cover to cover twice on the train to Berlin.”
“You know,” I’m not sure what I’m about to say, though it feels important. “Finn would love this. You planning to visit the grave of the one poet you thought wasn’t bullshit after his funeral.” I rush to say, “He wouldn’t love that he was…you know, having a funeral.” I can tell Sylvie’s trying to follow along, so I continue. “But if he had to have a funeral, he would love that you were doing this afterward. Are doing it.”
“Because it’s the sort of thing Autumn would do?” She raises her chin and looks me in the eyes.
I shake my head. “She wouldn’t have a map. Or she would lose the map or get lost even with the map.” I wave Autumn’s ghost away with my hands. “But, Sylv, my point was Finn would have loved you having that map in your jacket pocket all through his funeral. He would have loved you saying that, unlike other poets, this one knew how to get to the point. He loved you.”
Sylvie is back to staring at the grave. “But not the way he loved her.”
I can’t argue with that. More than anyone, I can’t argue with it, so I join her in staring at the date on the grave.
The wind picks up, giving some relief. There are so many old trees in this part of the cemetery, and the rustle of the leaves is so loud I can barely hear her say, “Where was she?”
“Autumn?”
Sylvie nods. “I thought about asking Angelina, but I could tell she knew that Finn and I were breaking up that night and why. It felt better not to ask.”
“Autumn told me that she felt you should have the funeral.” It hadn’t made sense to me when Autumn said it, and I don’t expect it to make sense to Sylvie, but she nods.
“I didn’t expect that of her,” she says.
We’re quiet again. The wind is starting to feel like the beginning of an afternoon storm. We won’t be able to stay much longer.
“Um, you didn’t want to be alone with your poet or anything, did you?”
“My poet?” Sylvie cracks another sad smile. “She was the first poet to ever win a Pulitzer, so she’s hardly ‘mine.’ But no and thank you for asking.” She pauses. “You need a ride home, don’t you?”
“Um, yeah?” I say. “Sorry. I didn’t plan my day well.”
“Most people don’t,” Sylvie says as she puts her jacket on again. She touches the poet’s headstone with two fingers. “All right, let’s go,” she says to me.
Sylvie remembers the way back to Finn’s grave without checking her map. By the time we return to the site, the rain is starting, and we hurry past him and to her car. It feels like a betrayal to leave him in the rain.
Inside her car, I open my mouth to ask Sylvie if she’s sure she wants to drive in the rain, but before I can, she says, “In case you’re going to offer to drive, the reason I drove separately from my parents is because I can’t ride in a car driven by anyone else. I’ll be fine. Put on your seat belt.”
I look back as she drives us away from him, but I comfort myself remembering Autumn will come by later to see that Finn is settled in.
seven
A week after the funeral, I get a text from Charlie, my next oldest brother and therefore, by Murphy tradition, the one responsible for things like getting me off the kindergarten bus and teaching me to drive.
Mom says you’re not running.
Translation: Are you okay?
I text back.
Been hot. Busy packing for the dorm.
Translation: I’m fine.
Charlie replies.
Mom also said you hadn’t packed at all.
Translation: Bullshit.
I’ll go running later today.
Translation: I’m fine.
Mom asked me to come home and help you pack.
Translation: Bullshit.
I’ll get her off your back.
Translation: I’ll get it together.
OK. Same. Go run.
Translation: I’ll tell Mom you’re fine but don’t make a liar out of me.
So now I have to go for a run.
The reason I hadn’t gone for a run yet was because I knew I was going to have to find a place. It’s not like I only went running with Finn. We went running together a few times a month. Finn liked to go to different places to run, for scenery or whatever. I always thought it was stupid to drive somewhere to run, so he’d invite Sylvie when he wanted to go running at a sculpture park or a nature reserve.
But sometimes, he’d call or text me and say he wanted to go running right that moment, and I wanted to be running already, and we would meet at the halfway point between our houses and just go.
We would run all over Ferguson. There isn’t a street within running distance of my home that isn’t painted in memories of trash-talking with Finn, pushing myself to go harder because of him, or giving myself a break because he said it was okay.
So that’s why I was putting this off. Now I have to drive somewhere to go running, which is stupid. But here I am putting on my running clothes and getting into my car as if there isn’t a perfectly good sidewalk outside. I went with Alexis to her cousin’s birthday party last May at this gazebo in a park, and I’m pretty sure it had a path around a lake or something, so I drive in the direction I remember the park being in until, to my surprise, I find it.
So fine. I’ll go running.
I’m not going to stretch any more than I normally would, though Finn was always saying I didn’t stretch enough. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean everything he ever said has to be right.
After a normal amount of stretching, I’m off and it’s fine.
But obviously I’m thinking about Finn since it’s the first run.
Because he won’t run again.
I feel like Finn’s death has rattled my brain. How many times am I going to remember that being dead means you’re never going to do shit again?
I should have checked how many times around this lake makes a mile. The gravel spread over the dirt path is ground down and causing more slippage than absorbing impact. This will be a stamina run, not a speed run. And that’s fine. I didn’t check the time before I started, and I’ll have no idea when I’ve hit my first mile.
“Let’s run and not worry about why,” Finn would say, and we would just go.