No doubt we should stick to IM’ing.
“Sure. Yeah, why not? What’s the worst that can happen?” he asks, with a mysterious grin, an obvious reference to the same question I asked him just last night. I’m about to answer, I have a million things to say, but it turns out he’s just being rhetorical, because he has already walked out the door.
SN: how was work?
Me: It was nice of you to stop by.
SN: funny.
Me: not the word I’d use.
SN: ?
Me: ?
SN: okay, then. moving on. spent so much time with my Xbox today that I actually got bored. #neverthoughtthedaywouldcome Me: Sore hands?
SN: rising above obvious joke. aren’t you proud of me?
So this is how we’re going to play it. Pretend this afternoon never happened. Maybe this is for the best. Maybe SN/Caleb has been right all along. Writing is better.
Real-life talking? Way overrated.
CHAPTER 20
“This is a long-ass poem,” Ethan says. “And it’s kind of annoying and complicated. I can’t keep all the voices straight.”
We’re back at Starbucks, what I now think of as our Starbucks, which I would never admit to Ethan in a million years. I’m sipping the latte he bought for me after asking if I wanted the same as last week. He even remembered that I like it extra hot. He was so casual about it—ordered, slipped a credit card out of his wallet—I didn’t even feel weird about not offering to pay. Next time I’ll say something like “I got this one” or “This one is on me.” Or maybe not.
“I agree. I mean, I write terrible poetry, but I don’t know. I can’t help but write in my own voice. I am who I am who I am. Whether I like it or not.”
“A rose is a rose is a rose. Jessie is Jessie is Jessie.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve read Gertrude Stein?” I ask. My mom was a huge Stein fan, so when she got sick, that’s what I read to her out loud. Mostly The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, but some of her poetry too. “Sacred Emily”: a soothing nursery rhyme of a poem and, it turns out, where rose is a rose is a rose comes from. Not Shakespeare, which would have been my first guess.
Other things I learned then: Chemo blinds you. Steals your hair and blinds you. My mother couldn’t even read at the end.
Rose is a rose is a rose.
“Not much. Just Toklas. Talk about writing in someone else’s voice.” How does he find the time to read everything? Had I not insisted on working on this project, no doubt he would have delivered me an A. Come to think of it, I may end up actually bringing our grade down.
“My mom was an English professor at our local college, and she always used to quote Gertrude Stein. Called her G.S., like they were friends or something. Actually, for her fortieth birthday, my dad and I got her a vintage edition of The World Is Round. It’s this bizarre kids’ book. So random that I just thought of that.” I stare out the window to regain my equilibrium. I don’t talk about my mom to anyone, not even to Scarlett. Certainly not to my dad. Talking about her is like acknowledging that she’s gone, a jump into the unfathomable. Rendering true that which cannot be.
But we are talking about Gertrude Stein, which means we are already talking about my mom, and, I don’t know, the words just came out.
Ethan looks at me and waits a beat. He’s comfortable with silence, I realize. He’s comfortable with everything.
Ethan is Ethan is Ethan.
“I just want to say I’m sorry about your mom. People talk around here. Anyhow, it fucking blows,” he says. “I know that’s a crazy understatement, but it fucking sucks that people have to die and there’s nothing you can do about it. And so yeah, I just wanted to man up and say I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” I say into my coffee cup, because I can’t look at him. I am not brave enough to lift my eyes. I don’t know what I’ll see there: pity or empathy. But I’m going to add “brave” to my inner Ethan tally, and “honest,” and “right,” because it does fucking blow and he is the first person to actually say that to me. Everyone back at FDR mumbled “sorrys,” probably because their parents told them they had to, and they were so obviously relieved when the words were out, the requisite box checked, that they could move on, even if I couldn’t. Not that I blame them. Death makes everything awkward.
“Yeah, we don’t have to talk about it, but I hate how when something like that happens, people just like to pretend it didn’t because it’s uncomfortable and scary and they don’t know what to say. Not knowing the right thing to do is not an excuse for not doing anything. So,” he says.
“So,” I say. I do it. I bring my eyes to his. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
“And I’m not the only nerd who memorizes ‘The Waste Land.’ This first section is called ‘The Burial of the Dead,’ you know.”
“I know.” I smile, because I like Ethan and how he’s not afraid of anything, except maybe sleeping. And a smile is, in some ways, the same thing as saying thank you.
“Of course you know,” he says, smiling right back at me.