Every Little Thing Page 4

  His father’s voice was lifeless and unintentionally insincere, “That’s very kind of you, Matt.”

  Every moment since Ryan’s death felt crystalline and ready to shatter. Cohen looked at Allie, and when their eyes met, she didn’t look away like he thought she would. She didn’t look at a loss for words or like she felt awkward about all the dramatic tension. Instead she held his gaze, held all the weight in his body, and she kept her eyes in his until he looked away from her, back to his bag in the trunk.

  A reporter, microphone in hand, no older than thirty, stepped out of a car that had been sitting across the street. She was pressing her blue plaid skirt with one hand and motioning to a reluctant cameraman with the other. Cohen saw his father pretend not to notice her as he thrust his suitcases back into the trunk and jumped into his car.

  Cohen dashed to his front door because it was enough to be silently dealing with it for now. Talking about it, with her, with this woman, this stranger, was just too much. Too real. But it was too late; she had her metal-mesh-topped microphone in his face. “Cohen? Cohen Davies?”

  His mother was rolling her window down, screaming, “Get that microphone away from him, you soulless wretch!” but his father was backing out of the driveway like he couldn’t handle it. Like he’d been through enough. And it was the first time in Cohen’s life that his father hadn’t been there for him. It was the first time his father had let him down, and those were two separate shocks. And now here this woman was, with her microphone in his face, and the camera was rolling.

  She had a look on her face like there was something Cohen should say. And she wanted to be the one who got it on film. She had a look on her face like there were words for this, and he owed them to the world.

  Cohen opened his mouth, mindlessly, like some reflex would puppeteer his mouth and do the talking for him. Give her what she wanted to make her go away. He never heard Matt coming, but saw his hand grabbing the guy’s camera, pulling it out of his hand. The woman was shocked. “Sir!”

  Matt walked over to their car, camera in hand, tugged at the handle of a locked back door, and walked around to the passenger seat. He threw the camera in through a rolled-down window.

  “Get the fuck off this street. Now.”

  HE DIDN’T KNOW where he was headed, didn’t even think about it until he rolled up to a stop sign and watched two sisters playing hopscotch in their driveway. What he needed wasn’t time alone. He lived alone. What he wanted was to blare out the silence, to drown out life’s background noise; the noises he’d only noticed since Ryan died: wind, ticking clocks, his own breathing. He wanted a bar with a band that could make his ears ring with just one, loud sound.

  It was getting dark and he headed for The Avian-Dome because he worked there, had a key, and knew the passcode for the alarm: 8889. There was access to the roof and it seemed like the right place to go. The roof was flat, but its coarseness had been scuffed soft by the pacing of staff over so many years. A stone wall fenced it in, making a patio of the rooftop. There was a duck pond at the back, close enough for staff to throw feed over the edge into the pond. There was a picnic table, but he laid in the centre of the roof, stared up at the starless sky. Blue was bleeding into black, so the cloudless sky was a temporary and tender purple. A bruise-coloured blanket covering the world. He stuck in earphones, pressed play, closed his eyes.

  By the fourth or the fifth song, he heard a knocking, weak but deliberate; unmistakably knuckles on glass. Startled, he hopped up, tearing his headphones out, hauling wildly at the cords dangling at his chest. He thought of hiding and didn’t know why or what from. He looked over the side of the wall: no police cars or his boss’s blue sedan with the dented passenger door. He walked to the front of the building, peered down, and it was Allie. Knocking. Waiting a few seconds. Knocking. Tugging at the door handles. Tucking some hair behind an ear. She looked at her car like maybe she should leave or maybe she should try one more time. And then she looked up, almost as surprised as he was, like she wasn’t really expecting to find him, and definitely not up on the roof.

  “Um. Hi!” She laughed and reeled it in, no room for laughter in the situation. The building was only two storeys high, but she had to raise her voice a little. “Listen. I can go back home, if you want. It’s up to you.”

  He stared down at her. His eyes feeling heavy enough to fall out of their sockets. “I asked Dad to go after you, but he said men need time alone. That’s bullshit. So I followed you here. I don’t know. I just...I followed you.”She shrugged one shoulder, looked from his eyes to the door, like Are you going to let me in?

  “I can go or I can stay, but I wasn’t going to sit home wondering if you were alone or with someone or okay or not. I can go back home or you can let me up there with you. You can tell me anything. How it happened, how it wouldn’t have happened if a million things had gone differently. Whatever. Because trust me, it helps just to speak and shout and cry and burst wide open, it does. I won’t tell you everything is going to be okay because it’s not. Or we won’t talk about Ryan at all. We can just hang out. I’ve got a book. I have a few books, one for you too if you want to just sit around and read.” She tapped her purse as a question mark. “I took a few novels out of a box. Before I left. We can just sit and read a little?”

  He liked that she’d come. How she was new and unpredictable and how that kept his mind divided between thoughts of Ryan and thoughts of her and what she might say next.

  She looked in through the glass doors with binoculared hands over her eyes. “Or you can give me a tour of this—”

  “Hang on a second.” He walked away from the wall, out of her sight, whispered Fuck, shook his head, kicked his Discman across the roof. He hated himself for not being cold enough to ask her to leave or to shut the fuck up about Ryan. He hated the part of himself that was glad she’d come. It was Ryan’s death he wanted to feel overwhelmed by, and pinned under, and the way she could lift him out from under that weight made him feel cheap, guilty. As if mourning meant feeling pain as intensely as he could, all alone, not sharing it with a stranger.

  He peered back down over the wall. “Give me a second. I’ll be right down.” He went towards the door, but swung back around. “Do you wanna to come up here, you mean, or go somewhere else?” She clutched her chest; he’d startled her. She looked a little anxious, like What am I doing here, what do I say to the guy now?

  “Up to you, Cohen, but...I like the idea of being up on that roof tonight. I bet it’s...pretty?” She shook her head, like What a stupid thing to say. She had a shy smile she was trying to fight off.

  He descended the stairs, walked across the open foyer, the claps of his feet echoing off the tile floor. He pulled open the door and she tucked some hair behind her ears and smiled shyly again. “What is this place anyway?” And he filled her in as they walked towards the door that led to the roof—that the mandate was all about protecting, promoting, and preserving the avian wildlife of Atlantic Canada, and that the three theatres were simulated ecosystems. He put a hand on one and said he’d personally stuffed all the auks in the puffin and razorbill display.

  She was stutter-stepping, amazed by the place, a child-like awe about her. He liked that. He liked that all the stuff had caught her attention, and how she could be that interested in birds hanging from wires. He’d always equated intelligence, or intellect, with curiosity.

  He reached behind him, turned a volume dial on bust, and pressed play on one of the displays to scare her. She jumped backwards, kicking into a number four, like a flamingo standing in water, and a booming voice, speaking over the sound of waves, and cawing birds, explained the mating habits and diet of the Atlantic Puffin,Fratercula arctica. She slapped him on the chest for it, for scaring her, as she walked past him and up the stairs.

  She’d jumped again at the gunshot sound of the steel door slamming shut behind them in the stairwell. She’d clung to him, instinctively out of fright, and apologized for scaring so easily. He liked
the softness of her voice in his ears, her body pressed into his elbow. He tapped in the keycode. 8889.

  She burst out onto the roof, spun around once in a circle, like she wanted to say My God, it’s beautiful up here! but those words would seem too cheery. She turned and leaned into the front of the building, palms flat against the wall. Looking at the city, from that distance, the streetlights looked like sticks with stars on their ends. She walked to the back of the building, cupped her hands to her mouth. “Oh My God!” She flung her purse on the picnic table. “Look at all the fucking cute ducks!”

  Watching her was perfect. Minus the fear of awkward silences or forced conversations, like it wasn’t your fault, you know. Because it was, and he’d want her gone if she even insinuated that it wasn’t, in some trite conversation. He just wanted to watch her watching the ducks. Maybe tell her there’s a barrel of feed in the stairwell and that, sometimes, the ducks come up on the roof.

  So he surprised himself when the words came out. “Ryan was drunk, Allie. He was drunk, and eighteen, and I was drinking, and I never even thought about life jackets until he was dead. He was drunk, and that’s why he had to piss, and that’s why his legs fucked up, and that’s why he’s dead. Because he was drunk, and I might have been too, and I thought life jackets were a fucking joke, for people who can’t swim, you know? Because he could swim?Who can’t swim? But. A life jacket. He would’ve floated. I would’ve found my brother.”

  She nodded, like she knew how to have this conversation. She nodded, like Go on, you’re not done yet, and Cohen said, “I mean...it was a pond,not the fucking ocean. Who just…drowns? The life jackets. I mean,” he shook his head. “I bought the beer. We were in this piece of shit wobbly boat, and there I was, thinking it’s funny he couldn’t stand up straight.”

  He looked at her like he was done, and she said nothing, and he said, “What if they do an autopsy? And I’m the guy who got his kid brother drunk and killed him? It’s how it happens, you know. People hear the facts, and someone sounds like an asshole. It wasn’t like that—”

  “There isn’t going to be an autopsy, okay? Or, I mean, there wasn’t one. I mean, he...he’s waking tomorrow night. They had no need to do an autopsy. Okay?” She kept saying okay until he acknowledged it with a nod of his head.

  She sat at the picnic table but he didn’t join her. He stayed where he was, staring out at the ocean. The palms of both hands on the ledge of the stone wall, arms straight as poles like he was pushing the wall.

  “...and things like this are never anyone’s fault,Cohen, even when it feels that way.”

  A sardonic laugh, and he shook his head, like I should’ve known you’d pull this shit. But she countered, almost offended. “Do not shake your head at me. Unless you kicked him overboard and held his head under water, do not shake your head at me!” And he appreciated her sudden sternness. “I said, I can stay here or I can go. It’s up to you. I won’t be offended if you want me to leave, or if you want me to shut up about Ryan. I just...felt...compelled to come. To be decent. To say things that needed to be said, like this really isn’t your fault. And get ready to shake your head again, but I know what you’re going through because my mother recently passed away, too, you know.”

  He kept staring at the sea, lulled into pacification by the sound of waves off land, over and over. Rocks rolling over each other, jostled by the sea.

  “And now you’re thinking, It’s not the same, right?”

  About ten seconds of silence, and he said, “It’s not. I mean, I’m very sorry. About your mother. But.” He shrugged his shoulders, looked out at the sea again, the fog.

  “Of course it’s not the same same. With Mom it was slow and painful.” She looked down at the picnic table and drew little ovals onto it with her middle finger. “Cancer. There was less life in Mom’s eyes every day, until her eyes were just these glass...spheres.”She waited a second, like maybe there was a better word. Globes. Balls.

  “And then the weird smell, like she was literally rotting away. It was slow for me and fast for you. You weren’t expecting it, whereas I was waiting for it, and feeling guilty for that. I mean, she was shitting herself in bed, and she stopped recognizing Dad and me. That’s brutal too, okay? In its own, different way. And that’s my last memories of her now. Bloated. Fragile. Kind of gross, really. She was something to take care of, not the woman I’d relied on my whole life. At least, for you, you’ll think of Ryan with nothing but fond memories. No gross ones like I have in the bank.” She tapped her head with a finger, trying to act tough, but her glossy eyes gave her away.

  She stopped talking for a second, to get back on track, or because it still hurt to talk about her own side of the story: the wounds still fresh and best kept under bandages, pulled back a little at a time. “You blame yourself for Ryan, right? So no, it’s not the same same. You get to replay a thousand ways things could have gone differently, I’m sure, and I’m sure that’s torture. It’s all different, all of it. Of course it is. But from this moment on, it is the same. From the day after we lose someone, how we lost them doesn’t matter. All that matters now is that they’re gone, and there’s absolutely no more interacting with that person. There’s just the memories. And those memories will come pelting at you at random for a while, before you realize it can be beautiful to let them run through you.”

  “Beautiful?”

  She nodded her head, once. “Don’t get me wrong. I feel Mom’s absence, every day, like a brick in the face. Every day. You’re going to find yourself shocked sometimes, that he’s gone, because you’re so used to him being here. You’re going to find yourself in places where some primitive part of your brain will expect to see him. That’s the worst. Their absence feeling so…physical.”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say, and he didn’t want to.

  “Listen,”she said. “You didn’t shoot your brother in the head. And you need to stop acting like you did. Because, straight up, answer me, yes or no: did you push your brother off the boat? Did you hold his head under water? Or did you almost drown yourself, looking for him? Did you swim until your muscles starting snapping off your bones?”

  She waited.

  “Just answer that one question, and I’ll shut up. Say yes or no, and we’ll both get in our cars and drive home. Did you drown Ryan? Did you push him off the boat and hold his head under water, or did you spend hours in the water looking for him?”

  Silence.

  “Did you push him off the boat, Cohen?”

  Cohen broke like a doll. His limbs and torso fell to the ground in five different pieces. His throat tightened. If he blinked, tears would have fallen out. So he didn’t blink.

  She came to him. Sat next to him. Put her hand on the side of his head to coax it onto her shoulder. “It’s okay. All of it.” Neither of them were really sure what she meant.

  “Thirsty? I brought a few bottles of water with me. I’m always thirsty. I’m thirsty right now. Or we can go home. But it’s pretty up here, and I’d like to stay if you are staying.”

  Absentmindedly, like a distressed kid, “I was listening to music before you knocked at the door.” He wiped an eye with the back of his finger, expecting tears there, and pointed to his Discman. “What kind of music do you like? Shitty music?”

  She laughed and fetched his Discman for him. She pulled a mixed CD out of her purse, put it in, and handed it to him.

  “Listen to at least half these songs before you judge me?”

  He put his headphones on. He felt closer to her because he wasn’t embarrassed to come undone in front of her. Felt close to her because he could cry in front of her, if he wanted to, but not even his own mother. Crying in front of his parents would’ve been an admission of guilt or a way of pulling them down even further into their own grieving process.

  But Allie—and not knowing what she’d say or how she’d react to him crying, not knowing what books she’d brought, or how much she loved ducks, that unpredictability, her newness
— was stirring some life into his world.

  She walked over to the picnic table and cracked the spine of a yellow book. Plucked out a bookmark. She looked perfectly content to be there. Cohen shimmied over to the corner, where two walls met, and reclined into it. She took the cap off a bottle of water, took a sip. He watched her. She looked up, plucked another bottle out of her pumpkin-orange purse, and threw it towards him like a football, but she didn’t say “here” until the bottle was in the air, and it thudded him in the chest before he could stick a hand out to catch it. He let out an almost-audible laugh, and Allie had her hands over her mouth, laughing out an apology, “So sorry!”

  He smiled at her animated body. He was comfortable enough around her now to go back to the centre of the roof and just lay there, looking up at the stars, as he’d been doing before she came knocking at the door. He was squinting one eye, then the other, then the other. The stars looked like jewels on a black blanket. It started raining, lightly.

  “When Ryan was a kid, he had all these crazy, almost poetic theories about things.”

  From the base of his eyes, he saw her lay her book down to listen.

  “He was a kid, I mean, there was eight years between us. One night, me and him and Dad were out back barbecuing chicken or something, and he just looked at us. He looked up at the stars, and then he looked at us, and he said, startled almost, like he’d just discovered it, Stars are the twinkle of the moon, reflected off peoples’ eyes, back up into the sky! He said it like it was the truth, you know?”

  She giggled, warmly, like she liked the idea of that. Or the way kids’minds could spin the world however they wanted. “That’s beautiful. Really.”

  Neither of them said anything for ten, fifteen seconds. They just looked at each other. “It’s raining,” she said.

  “Yeah.”