June, Reimagined (78)

“So I should keep playing football so you can get drunk and hook up with older dudes?”

“No,” June said. “You should keep playing football because you don’t know what it’s like to lose. If you quit, all of this will be gone. Forget the flowers and the balloons and the hot girlfriend with loose morals and big lips. Do you know what Archie Williams got for being the lead in the fall play? The word ‘fag’ written on his locker. You only know life as a winner, Josh. Do you honestly think you can handle being a loser? Because that’s what you’ll be. And then what?”

Josh went silent. He poked at the food on his plate.

“Ugh, I’m not feeding you like a baby,” June said.

“I’m not hungry,” Josh murmured.

“Well, I’m not taking the tray back downstairs. Mom can get it later.” June turned to leave.

“Wait.” Josh pushed himself up straighter on the bed. “Hand me my pain pills.”

June tossed them onto the bed. “By the way, I hear they’re doing Bye Bye Birdie for the spring musical, and there’s a tap number. You’d look good in tights and a top hat.”

“Fuck off.”

June pretended to tap dance out the door. The next day Josh was at the physical therapist, determined to get his arm back into working order for his senior year.

In the years to come, when Josh’s arm became irrevocably damaged, when June found her brother barely conscious on their living room couch, when he lost weight and grew skittish and pasty and quiet, she would look back at her mistake and see that losing back then might have saved Josh’s life.

June told all this to Matt as they sat in the church, shaking her hands at the mute Jesus overhead. “I told him not to quit. I convinced him to keep playing. I handed him the pills. If I had answered him differently, Josh would be alive now. I should have told him to go for it. Fuck what other people think. Do what makes you happy. Be a nobody. But I didn’t. Now he’s dead, and it’s my fault.”

Tears dripped down her face. June didn’t bother wiping them dry. She waited for a lightning bolt to crack the ceiling, or a priest to drag her out of the church in stocks. She waited through the deafening silence that followed her confession, until Matt whispered, “No.”

June looked at him.

“What about the doctors who prescribed the medicine in the first place?” Matt asked. “Or your parents, who put him in football to begin with? Or the cornerback who knocked him over? Or the person who gave him heroin for the first time? Or the college coach, for putting him in the game that ended his career? The list goes on and on, but Josh is the one to blame. He became who he was by his own volition, just like the rest of us. You can carry the burden of his death, June, but it won’t change Josh’s choices. It will only change you. You can let his death be your undoing, or you can let it go and become who you want to be, because Josh couldn’t. Do you think he’d want you to make the same mistake he did and out of penance no less?”

June’s eyes were so clouded over with tears that Matt’s face was a blur. “But it’s not fair that I can decide who I want to be, and he can’t.”

“It’s not fair that I love you and you don’t love me the same way,” Matt said. June tried to refute him, but he stopped her. “Don’t tell me otherwise, I saw it in your eyes in Scotland. I know you, June. Better than you know yourself sometimes. The night I left, I thought I was mad because you had lied to me, but really, I was mad that you don’t want me like I want you. That some other fucking guy gets to have you instead. But I’d rather have you any way I can get you than lose you over my fucking pride. Josh would want the same.”

“Do you mean that, Matty?” June blubbered.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yeah, I mean it.”

June threw herself on Matt right there in Sacré-Coeur, with Jesus watching overhead, and she held him until her tears dried.

“Now can we get out of here? I’m fucking exhausted,” Matt said. “And Jesus is starting to creep me out. He knows way too much about me.”

They stood and walked toward the doors, arm in arm. “Let’s go find some snails to eat,” she said.

“Only if you promise we can go see the Bouquinistes along the Seine tomorrow.”

“I have no idea what that is, but yes.” June nodded. “Sounds très chic. And we’ll buy all the snow globes we can find.”

“You’re gonna make me wear a beret, aren’t you?”

June took the one from her head and put it on him. “Looks good on you.”

Matt laughed. “Have I ever told you what a pain in the ass you are?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, you’re a stain on a white shirt, June Merriweather. A hangnail I can’t get rid of. A hole in only one sock.” He hugged June closer. “You’ve been a thorn in my side since the day I met you.”

“Consider yourself lucky. I could have been a splinter.”

“Splinters.” Matt cringed. “How can something so small cause so much pain?” They stopped at the back of the nave and turned to take one last look at the basilica. “Confession time?” Matt said.

“Is this another story about Farty Marty, because you owe that kid an apology.”