Dear Edward(52)

Spring up with good form, Edward repeats in his head, and tries to comply.

Shay reads a chapter of The Golden Compass out loud, and then at nine o’clock Edward stands up. He tries to think of something to say, to stop this from happening. But no answer comes, because the truth is: If Shay wants him gone, he should go. He barely heard a word she read from the book; he will have to skim the pages later to catch up. The muscles in his body ping and wobble, like hundreds of rubber bands, and he knows he’ll be sore tomorrow.

He doesn’t look at her. He says, “Okay, well, good night.”

“I hope you sleep well. See you in the morning.”

They’re both speaking a little too loud, and Edward picks up his backpack and stumbles out of the room. He’s relieved Besa is nowhere in sight. He lets himself out the front door, and then, in the middle of the walk to his aunt and uncle’s house, in the shadows—a spot he knows Shay can’t see from her window—he sinks to the ground. It’s not a choice; his body just gives up and drops.

He thinks, I have no home now.

The New York City apartment, with his parents and brother, was home. After the crash, his body had led him to a place on Shay’s floor, and he’d burrowed there, grown stronger there. He’d gone from sleeping near Jordan to sleeping near Shay, and that had been a comfort. His aunt and uncle’s house, looming above him in the shadows, has never felt like what he needed. Edward has tipped off the end of the plank, and he’s in the dark water, with the sharks circling.

He curls up on his side on the ground. The September night is surprisingly cold. He closes his eyes to match the dark water and the dark sky. He can’t remember crying like this, since the crash, maybe ever. His cheeks become soaked, his shoulders judder. His tears raise the level of the ocean around him. Waves climb and then crumple into whitecaps, and he wonders if he’ll see Gary or his whales.

Only when someone shakes his arm does Edward realize he’s fallen asleep.

“Oh my God, Edward! Are you hurt?” His aunt’s pale, panicked face is above him. Then her face turns away and she screams, “John! John, come! John!”

Edward thinks, She sounds scared.

Lacey grips his shoulders. “Can you speak, Edward? Do you know where you are?”

He nods, even though the movement takes immense effort. His body feels like it’s been soldered into a solid entity. He finally gets his mouth to say, “Yes.”

Then his uncle is there too, bent over Edward. John’s wearing his old plaid pajamas. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. Look at him. Should we go to the hospital?”

“Let’s get him inside first.”

John half-lifts Edward to his feet, then puts one of the boy’s arms around his shoulders. Lacey does the same on the other side. On his feet, Edward is higher up than he remembered, and he wonders if he’s literally coming apart, with his head floating away. His only hope—as the three of them lurch forward—is that Shay is fast asleep and nowhere near her bedroom window, so she can’t see his aunt and uncle dragging what’s left of him into a house.





12:22 P.M.

People fly despite knowing that a certain percentage of airplanes crash every year. They “know” that fact yet find ways to qualify, and therefore soften, the knowledge. The most common qualification is the fact that it is statistically more dangerous to travel in a car than in an airplane. In absolute numbers, there are more than five million car accidents compared to twenty aeronautic accidents per year, so, in fact, flying is safer. People are also helped by etiquette; because commercial air travel is public, a kind of group confidence comes into play. People take comfort in one another’s presence. Sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, they believe that it is impossible for this many people to have taken a foolish risk at the same time.

The floor shudders beneath Crispin’s feet as he inches back to his seat. The round trip to the bathroom has probably taken twenty minutes. He had to rest on the toilet seat for a long time, just to summon the strength to walk back. He’d thought, I felt fine a month ago. I felt like myself. I don’t know who the hell this guy is.

Right before the flight, Crispin’s lawyer, Samuels, who is as old as he is but so fit he decided to take up powerlifting in his seventies, called to say that Crispin was on the annual Forbes list of the top hundred richest individuals in America.

“Huh,” he’d said into the phone.

“Congratulations, Cox. You’re a beast.”

“Huh,” he’d said again. What he was really doing was registering that he felt nothing. He’d been on the list for twenty years, and in the top half for the last decade, ever since he sold his company, and he’d looked forward to the announcement by Forbes every year. Noted the date on his calendar, answered the phone with alacrity on the day. Whooped and pounded the desk with the news.

“Cox, you feeling okay? I know the docs in L.A. are going to fix you up in no time.”

“Call Ernie and tell him I want to redo my will when I get there.”

“Will do.”

“Why am I leaving everything to the kids? They hate me.”

“The Met is hoping you might think of them, obviously.”

“Fuck them.” Crispin was on the board for decades—he enjoyed the meetings, filled with New York heavy hitters and much of his social group—but he almost never walked through the rooms to look at the art. It had been a fun sparring ground for him and Louisa, since they were both involved in the institution. She had majored in art history in college and fancied herself a collector. For one stretch in the mid-nineties, she had been president of the board and had banned him from meetings.