Elliot
I squeezed Rick's hand and backed away, slipping into the background as Sophie and Wade took my place by their father's side. Sophie sat on the edge of the bed, caging Rick's hand in both of hers as if she could hang on to him forever, if she were strong enough. Wade pulled up a chair, his profile cut out against the shadows behind him, jaw firm, throat working, brow low. He'd changed so much, aged into a man, hardened into stone and muscle. I didn't recognize him, and yet the familiarity of him sang to me, called to me.
But he wasn't mine. He hadn't been for a long time.
And he didn't want to be.
So I sat in the back of the room in the shadows, shouldering my pain and all of theirs, wishing I could take it from them. I could be strong for them. I wanted to be strong for them — I had a feeling they'd need that in the days to come. It was a small offering, but an offering I had to give nonetheless.
The proximity to Wade was stifling, the shock of seeing him stripping me bare every few minutes, over and over again. I thought I'd find my footing and lose it, my feet slipping out from underneath as the undertow dragged me beneath the surface.
I'd loved him since the second I first saw him, and though time had passed, though I thought I'd buried that love, it sprang fresh the second I saw him again. The moments I kept locked away broke their chains and pressed themselves into my mind.
Long nights with his lips against mine, my body entwined in his, our hearts wrapped in each other. Simple, happy moments of his smile, his laughter, his love. It had always been him, from the first. There had never been anyone else.
The pain of our last words slipped in like a fog, banishing the warmth of the good. He'd asked the impossible of me, but that it was impossible didn't stop my regretting everything.
But it wasn't supposed to happen like that. We had a plan, a plan that he redrew without me.
Enlisting in the Army had always been part of that, a part that had never been contested. I was to stay in New York and graduate from high school, and then we would get married, start our lives together. Where he would go, I would go.
The night before he left, he came to me with his grandmother's ring and changed the rules. He couldn't leave without me, he'd said. He needed me to promise him, to come with him. And I wanted to.
But I was seventeen, too young, too afraid, and I didn't have my father's blessing. Why couldn't he wait? I asked him the question, begging him as he begged me. He wanted me to choose him.
I didn't know how to walk away from my life. And my biggest regret, my biggest shame, was that I wasn't brave enough to do it anyway.
The proposal devolved into an argument as his pain twisted him until he was angry. But he wanted me to leave everything. He wanted to burn the plan and fly off instinct. And I wanted time, that was all. But it was more than he could give.
He said if I loved him, I'd go.
Time, I begged.
Now, he pleaded.
And in the end, it was over, his anger sending the shrapnel of his pain into my heart, shredding it to ribbons.
The wounds never healed. I was acutely aware of every rip, every tear, as I watched him from the shadows of the room.
Sophie and Wade both stood after a while, and so did I. Wade turned for the door, his eyes passing over me like I was invisible. Sophie reached for my hand.
"Will you stay with Dad while we meet with the social worker?" she asked quietly.
I squeezed her fingers. "Of course I will. Go."
She closed her eyes, bowing her head slightly in thanks, and then she turned to leave, following Wade out the door.
He took my heart with him when he left. It had been his, always — he'd possessed it since the beginning — and being near that atrophied piece of me after so long had the broken muscle thumping in my chest, erratic, beating again for the first time.
I took Wade's place by his father's side, resting my hand on his.
"Glad," he mumbled, pausing, "you're here."
"I'm always here for you, Rick."
He blinked back tears, eyes moving to the door. "Wade …" He didn't finish.
I didn't speak.
His eyes found mine again. "You okay?"
I smiled. "Only you would be worried about me right now."
Half his face lifted just enough to soften it. "You okay?" he pressed.
"I'm okay. You think he's okay?"
"No."
I pulled in a slow breath and let it out. "It's been a long time."
"Too long."
"He was surprised to see me. He didn't know … I should have waited to come."
"No," he said, squeezing my hand. "Needed you."
I wondered for a fleeting moment whether he meant himself or Wade.
I reached into my bag for my book, eliciting half a smile from him when he saw the cover. He couldn't read, but he recognized the book.
"Whitman," he said.
I nodded, pleased that he was pleased. "I thought you might like me to read to you."
"Please," he said and closed his eyes, and I turned to "Song of Myself," one of his favorites, and I began to read.
Rick was part of the reason I studied literature at NYU — he'd cultivated my hobby of writing poetry, turning it into an adoration of literature, putting books of poetry in my hand, prompting discussions after school that rolled into dinner with me and his children. They were used to it, consequences of having a father who was a Lit professor at Columbia, but I wasn't — those moments fed my soul.
I kept my voice steady and smooth, though I could feel the heat in my cheeks from the emotion, knowing he knew every word by heart, though he couldn't speak them, could never read them again, and a tear slipped from the corner of his eye as I read on.
* * *
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
* * *
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
* * *
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
* * *
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
* * *
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
* * *
I took a breath, overcome for a moment, unable to continue as my tears fell fresh. And he opened his eyes, the man who had been one of the constants in my life, the man who believed in me when no one else did, the man who would depart as air in just a matter of days, slipping away from me forever.
"Don't cry." He reached for my face, and I leaned forward for him to cup my cheek.
"I can't help it. What will we do without you?"
And to that, he only had one answer, and he gave it to me with strength his body no longer possessed, but his soul always would.
"Live."
Wade