“Six times,” Dad adds. “Get dressed.”
“I’ll be out in ten minutes,” I say. “I promise.”
The last time I wore a black suit was for your cousin Allen’s wedding on Long Island. It was a couple of months after we’d finally started dating, and it was our first formal party, too, if we don’t count your sister’s baptism. To my relief, Wade—back when we were still close with him—was wrong when he said all gay weddings are like Katy Perry concerts. (I don’t think my anxiety could’ve handled dancing with you for the first time under strobe lights.) When I saw the white roses in the manor’s sunroom, I began looking ahead to the day I’d get to wear a black suit as I stood across from you, my hands in yours, ready to say, “You’re damn right I do.” I didn’t know it then, but that was the last time I’d wear a black suit, ever. I’m definitely not dressing up in one now.
I’m going to the funeral as is—okay, not completely as is, because showing up in these thermal pants might offend your grandmother. But I’m not taking off the green hoodie you gave me the afternoon we lost our virginity. I’ve been wearing it for the past two days—more, exactly fifty hours, though time has been bleeding in places. I wish I never washed the damn hoodie now that you’re gone. It no longer smells like your grandmother’s old flower shop; it doesn’t have the dirt stains from all the times we spent at the park. It’s like you’ve been erased.
I grab two of the four magnetic gryphons you got me two Christmases ago and fix them to the hoodie, one on my collarbone and the other on my heart. It’s like the blue one is chasing the green one through the sky.
I stare at the clock, waiting for the next even minute—9:26—and get out of bed. I step directly onto last night’s dinner, forgetting I had abandoned the plate down on the floor while I stared up at the ceiling, thinking about all the questions I’m too scared to ask you. But hey, if there’s one bright side to your dying, it’s that you aren’t around to tell me things I don’t like hearing.
I’m sorry. That was a dickhead thing to say. I need a condom for my mouth.
As much as I would like to go sit in the bathtub and let the shower rain down on me, I’ve got to get out of this room. I check the clock on my open laptop and leave once it switches from 9:31 to 9:32.
The hallway is lined with photographs in the cheap frames my aunt gave us last Christmas—the kind of present my mother dismisses as not thoughtful, but since she’s so nice, she puts them up anyway. She still drinks out of the Yoda mug you bought her two years ago, no occasion at all, just because. You’re always going to be a presence for my parents, even if now they can’t see your history on our walls.
I’m hoarding all the photographs and their cheap frames in my room. There are blank spots as I pass: the one of us sitting in your childhood living room on Columbus Avenue, putting together a puzzle of the Empire State Building; us at sixteen/fifteen, you wrapping your arms around my waist after some joke from Wade about boys not being able to hug other boys; you smiling at me from across another park bench as I toasted to my parents’ anniversary last year; and my favorites—side-by-side in the same frame—the first was taken by Wade, a blank-faced photo of us doing our damn best to keep our smiles in but failing. The second is of us holding each other and smiling after we came out to our parents at Denise’s birthday party.
You were always a fan of the sun glare above your head. “Like a cool, bad-ass angel of destruction,” you said. “The angel that gets a blazing sword while you get a harp.”
In the living room my parents are already in their jackets, and my dad is holding his baked goods in his lap as they stare at the muted news on TV. Mom sees me first and pops up, which I know is bad on her back, especially on rainy days like today. She hides the pain and approaches me cautiously, unsure which Griffin she’s about to get.
“I’m ready,” I lie. I’m hungry, I’m drained, I’m over it all, and I’m not ready. But there’s a clock on this thing. The service is today. The burial is tomorrow. I don’t know what comes after that.
Mom reaches out to me, like I’m some toddler that’s supposed to take his first steps into her arms. It’s ridiculous. I’m a seventeen-year-old grieving his favorite person. I grab my jacket and turn for the door. “I’ll be outside.”
When we’re all settled in the car, my dad puts on the radio to fill the silence. I stare outside the window as we stop at a red light, counting pairs for some sanity: two women in jackets, sharing a blue umbrella; two old guys pushing shopping carts out of a market; four beaten-down trees in a community garden; two trash cans piled high with garbage.
The counting brings me some relief, but it’s not enough. I drop my right hand to the empty space beside me, imagining your hand on mine. Two hands.
That feels better.
HISTORY