He stares down at his ice-cream cone instead of licking it, even though the mint is softening by the second, threatening to drip. “Why haven’t you asked about my parents?”
I’ve noticed the lack of parent in the Daniels household—of course I have. They’ve said enough that I know their mom is upstairs and maybe ill. The littles use the phrase my dad used to, but I don’t know if he’s dead or if he left or if something else prevents him from being around. Maybe he’s institutionalized or deployed. Jonah doesn’t watch me while I think; he eats his ice cream and stares out at the waves.
“Well, let’s just say I have my own personal fun facts that I keep close to the vest.” I take a lick of my rocky road, rotating the cone in my hand to smooth the ice cream into a rounder shape. “If there were things you wanted to tell me, I figured you’d tell me in your own time.”
“Oh.” He looks genuinely relieved. “Okay, good. I thought you didn’t ask because you already knew—like someone in town told you.”
Come to think of it, Whitney did mention something the day I met Jonah. She made him seem haunted, followed around by ghosts who tug at him in the silent spaces.
“My dad died. Six months ago. That’s what they would have told you. Heart attack.”
I take this information like a knee to my gut, an oof sound almost escaping my lips. It knocks the wind out of me, despite the breeze pushing extra air against my face. I imagine the sweet faces of this beautiful boy and his siblings, and I nearly have to gasp for breath. “Oh, Jonah.”
“I don’t like to talk about it. I mean, I’m not good about talking about it.” The ice-cream cone droops from his hand, nearly dropping to the fire escape below. “And my mom is—I don’t know. She pretty much stays in bed. We keep thinking it’ll get better, but I’m not sure how much longer we can keep it up. Silas is supposed to go to college in the fall, and . . . I don’t know. I can’t take care of the littles by myself.”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple making a barely perceptible shift at his throat. Then he lifts his hand as if to shade his eyes and instead rubs a tense space of forehead, massaging right above his eyebrow. “She does have good days. She usually goes to church on Sundays. Sometimes she gets up and showers, and sometimes she even goes to the grocery store. We’ve tried to get her to a therapist, but it just makes her cry when we bring it up. Naomi keeps saying it’s clinical depression, and she needs to be on medicine, but my mom won’t hear about it. God, this all sounds so crazy. I hear myself saying it, and it sounds crazy.”
“Jonah, I swear on my favorite vintage dress that what you’re saying is not crazy by my standards. Sad? Difficult? Yes. But there is nothing crazy about that kind of grief, especially when it’s totally justified and normal.”
“You call it normal to be despondent for six months?” With a snort, he finishes his waffle cone and dusts off his hands.
“Maybe.” I shrug. “I can’t really say. I’ve never been madly in love with someone for two decades and had six babies with him and made a life with him and then had him ripped away from me in one instant. So I’m not sure what’s ‘normal’ for that.”
He winces, taking that in. “Well, now I feel like an asshole again.”
“Again?”
His hand goes back to the spot on his forehead. “About a month after my dad died, Felix reminded me there’s a difference between grief and depression. His son has dealt with depression, so he would know. And it’s like you said—my mom’s grieving. I know that. I just think it maybe slipped into depression. How can you even tell? Six months seems like too long to stay in your room.”
I almost say that I think it’s a good sign that he said she still cries, but I close my mouth because that seems like a cruel sentiment. But what I mean is, depression, it settles like a shadow over your body while you sleep, and it mutes every frequency into blankness, into fog. Everyone thinks you can’t laugh when you’re depressed, but I couldn’t cry either, because I couldn’t feel.
Instead, I put it back on Jonah. “Are you mad at her?”
“Yeah.” He looks up, guilty and bewildered at the sound of his own voice, like the word slipped out of his mouth without his mind’s permission. “I’ve never admitted that before. I’ve never even thought it before. Maybe I’m not mad. I know it’s not her fault. I just hate this. I hate it for her, and I hate it for me, and I hate it for Leah and for Isaac, and . . .”
“You’re doing everything you can, you know. Taking care of everyone, shouldering all the responsibility to give her time to grieve?” I pat his leg. “You’re doing everything.”
Jonah bobs his head, as if he hears me but doesn’t quite believe it. I’m overwhelmed with sadness for him, but I still feel a sense of wonder up here beside him. We’re on the rooftop of the world, and I think of kids like us somewhere in Madrid or in Sydney or Hong Kong, and I wonder if they spend their summers getting as close to the stars as they possibly can.