See You at Harry's(31)

“Where will you go?” Sara asks.

“I just need some fresh air.” But as he turns to go, the phone rings. We all look at each other.

“What do we do?” Sara asks.

“Take it off the hook,” Holden says.

Before anyone can get to the phone in the kitchen, though, we hear the machine pick up, and Charlie’s voice echoes through the quiet house. “Hel-lo. Mom-my, Dad-dy, Sa-wuh, Hold-en, Fern, and Chah-lie ah not at home to take yo-uh call. Please leave a mes-sage, and we will call you back as soon as poss-ih-bull. Thank you. And see you at Hawee’s!”

No one moves.

Beeeeeep.

“Hello? Is anyone there? It’s Mona. Oh, God, we just heard. Um. Oh. Um. Please call when you can. We’re all here. Um. OK. We’ll try to call again later.”

Beeeeep.

“I’ll turn it off,” Holden says quietly.

I pull my knees to my chest again as he walks away.

“Fern,” Sara says. “Fern, you have to stop doing that. It’s OK to cry.”

I shake my head and tuck my face between my knees again.

“Fern,” Sara says. She touches the top of my head.

“Stop!” I yell at her. “Stop! I don’t want to . . . to . . . Just stop!”

“Stop what?” she asks quietly.

“Stop acting like he’s . . . like he’s not coming back.”

Sara kneels in front of me and wraps her arms around my legs, squeezing.

“Fern,” she says again, crying, hiding her face against me.

“I should have paid more attention to him,” I say. “I should have played with him. Then I wouldn’t have been the Big Bad Wolf. And then —”

“It’s not your fault,” she says quietly.

“He was so lonely,” I say.

“No, he wasn’t. He was just bored.”

“But if I had stopped doing my homework, maybe he wouldn’t have run away from me.”


“And maybe if the waitress service had been better, Mr. Seymore would have left the restaurant earlier and Charlie wouldn’t have run behind him. Maybe if Mom and I had come out to help sooner . . .” She trails off and looks away. And then she starts to cry uncontrollably. Shaking. This time I put my hand on her back, but she shrugs it off. When she finally stops, she takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “No,” she says quietly. “No.” She turns back to me. “It was an accident. Do you understand? It wasn’t your fault. It was —” But she stops and turns away again, as if she can’t lie to my face. As if it’s too hard to convince me.

“I’ll be home in a little while,” Holden says, coming from the kitchen. “I took the phone off the hook.” He pauses in front of the door, a guilty look on his face. “I just need to get out of this house,” he says. I can tell from the way he says it that he knows he shouldn’t. But he leaves anyway.

Sara pulls herself up and motions for me to move over. I slide over to make room, and she sits snug against me.

“Cry, Fern,” she says. “Cry right here.” She pats her chest, and I rest my head against her. She puts her arms around me so tightly, I know I won’t slip away. I feel my heart untwisting just a little, as if it is uncurling enough to call out for Charlie. But it doesn’t find him.

“Cry,” she says, and rubs my back the way my mom used to. “Please.”

I unclench my hands and reach for hers. I hold on to her as tightly as I can.

If I cry, he won’t come back.

I squeeze tighter.

I feel my body start to shake.

He won’t come back.

“Cry,” she says again, as if she needs me to.

I’m holding her so tightly, I feel my fingernails dig into her skin. The place in my chest where my heart must be hurts so badly, I know now that my grandfather probably did die from a broken heart. And I feel like I will, too.

He isn’t coming back.

“I have you, Fern.”

And then a sound comes out of me. And my chest opens up again, and I am holding on to Sara as I sob so hard, I think I will turn inside out. I sob and sob, and she does, too. I soak her shirt with my tears, and she soaks my hair with hers. And she holds me and holds me and doesn’t get up. And eventually we tire ourselves out so much we fall asleep.

The doorbell wakes us up.

We’re slightly stuck to each other, and by the time we get up, my dad is coming down the stairs. We hear him open the door and step outside. After a few minutes, he comes back in.

“That was Mona,” he says. “She said she tried to call.”

Sara nods. “We let the machine pick it up.”

“Where’s Holden?”

“He went for a walk,” I say.

“If I make lunch, will anyone eat it?”

We shake our heads. He nods. And we sit there in silence. No one seems to know what we’re supposed to do now. How can we do anything?

Sticking out from under the coffee table, I see a tiny plastic firefighter lying on his back, smiling up at us. I start to picture all the pieces of Charlie in the house. The half-drunk cup of milk from Charlie’s dinner the night before, still waiting for him in the refrigerator. Who would throw it out? By the front door, Charlie’s tiny sneakers are still lined up next to mine. His coat is on the coat hook. There’s nowhere in the house that you can’t see a trace of him. He is with us forever and gone forever all at once.