You'd Be Home Now (86)

     Addict and junkie and loser And you close the book on me, and him.

You have read us the way you wanted to And put us back on the shelf



But I’m not done with that story yet I would walk naked down Main Street In front of a thousand people

If it would bring my brother back Let you shout murderer and slut and whore and rich bitch Until my eyes bleed and my ears shatter If it would bring him home to me I would do all of those things

All of my days

With all of my heart

Because it would matter

I will do all of these things

Because I am not ready to say The End Because I don’t want to die

With a question burning in my heart: Did I try as hard as I could to live In service of the poets and saints Who ask us

To live with our whole hearts

Who ask us to believe in impossible things Who ask us to never stop loving the stars Who ask us to never stop writing our stories



Then the spotlight goes dark.





40


I HAVE TO WADE THROUGH throngs of parents and students in the hallway after the show to find my parents. Part of me is searching for Joey, too, just in case. But he’s not there.

People sneak looks at me. Murmur. I know they think we’ve gotten what we deserved. They’re like Hank, thinking we owed this town, and now we know what it’s like, to have lost something too.

My mom gives me a hug, almost too tight, and I want to wiggle away, but then I remember what Dad said last night about how parents feel a special kind of missing for their children.

She finally pulls away. “That was lovely, Emory. Hard, but lovely. I’m very proud of you.”

I’m not sure she’s ever said that to me in my life, and my eyes well up.

My dad rubs my shoulder. “Well done.”

“We should probably go,” I say.

“Isn’t there a cast party or something, after? Or you have to strike the set? Isn’t that what usually happens after something like this?” my mother asks. “It would be all right, if you wanted to go to that.”

“No. I’m good,” I say. “I’m good.”



* * *



—

    In the parking lot, we’re getting into the car when I hear my name. I whip around. Joey?

But it’s not Joey. It’s Daniel, jogging toward me.

“Hey,” he says, smiling. “That was really great. Much better than Ophelia. And the curse words…chef’s kiss. Betty from the Café was next to me and I thought she was going to lose it.”

“Her coffee is always lukewarm,” I say.

“Like her heart,” Daniel answers.

I smile, and then I don’t, because it feels both right and wrong to do this, to think I’m possibly flirting with someone in a parking lot when my brother is missing. I didn’t know you could feel both sad and hopeful all at once, and how much the mingling of those two things would hurt.

“It was mostly Liza, you know. The poem,” I say.

“But it was your feelings. It was you,” he says. “It was cool.”

“Thanks.” I hesitate. “I thought…when I first heard my name out here, that it might be Joey. But it was you and I was not…disappointed at that.”

Daniel kind of ducks his head. “Is that a good thing?”

“Yes,” I say slowly. “I think it is, but it’s also confusing. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do.”

We stand there, in the harsh yellow light of the parking lot, our breath coming out in white puffs in the cold. In any universe but this one, we would probably kiss.

But our universe is not that one. Not right now.

Daniel takes a breath. “I’ll be here a little while longer. I’ll keep an eye out. I look for him, too, you know. When I go into town. Take the dog for a walk.”

“You do?” A feeling of warmth spreads through me. “That’s…amazing.”

    “I do. Remember when I told you I always think about a thousand different things happening at once in my body, like when I’m doing something mundane, and I don’t even know it?”

“Yes. I liked that. It was an interesting thing to say, the way the world might be working against us, inside us or out.”

I could probably talk to Daniel Wankel for hours.

It’s like what Joey said. You should just feel comfortable talking to someone. It should come easy, not hard.

“A thousand different things could be happening right now, to get Joey back, and you don’t even realize it. Things you aren’t even thinking about. So, yeah, I could get up and get my dog’s leash and take her to the park, and maybe he’d be there. On a bench. Walking. I don’t know. But he’d be there. He’d be found. And if my dog hadn’t whined at me to take her out, I never would have known. You know? Millions of infinite things that add up to a whole.”

He takes my mittened hand in his. I look down at his fingerless gloves, his slightly chapped knuckles.

“That’s kind of a comforting thought,” I answer. “Maybe it means right now, something is happening that I don’t even know that will bring Joey back, or me to him.”

“I’m a comfort kind of person.”