The Big Boom [re-writing]

11:20 am [updated]

11: 20 am

"Have you ever had a Go Gurt?"

I watched as Christopher ripped the top off of the wrapper, an enthusiastic look to his face that worried me a little. "Yes," I answered. "But the question is, have you?"

He shook his head. "Not since my mom went to Vancouver."

There it went again. I kept my eyes on him while he slurped the tip of it like it was the vodka he was downing behind God earlier. What exactly did Christopher believe?

"When was that?" I asked.

"Maybe...fourteen years ago?" His fingers pinched the rest of the yogurt into his mouth until there was only a wrapper left. He licked the residue off his lips after throwing it away and then looked at me look at him.

What did he want to believe?

My eyes caught onto the cherry wood flask peeking from the left pocket of the suit jacket he was carrying, my mind going back to a time when your own fingers could've wrapped around it with some feigned shyness.

He was like an aged type of wine, you said, like he was a self-written poem and the question was which one had come first: him or the poetry? Even though he was a free man within his family and the grounds he walked on, he was like an aged type of wine, kept and stuck in the barrel for however long others wanted until he can be appreciated in the clinking of their glasses.

It was the day after your third date with Christopher and you'd just gotten back from this restaurant his great uncle owned. You were intoxicated for the first time. You said you saw the stars you drank.

"Shit," I heard him say after wiping his fingers on his dress shirt. "I forgot I rented this."

"It's only a little yogurt, right?" I wiped at his chest, feathering out the mild stain as he sided his arm away to help. He was staring again, and I hadn't looked back each time he did so I didn't know what was behind them.

It got quiet between us, and our walk yielded in the middle of the crowded terminal; we were the representation of the photograph I'd mentioned earlier, a picture frozen in the middle with everyone else zipping by on all sides of us, going on about their lives.

I rested my wrist on him, staring at the crook of his neck. "You got all dressed up for her. I just want to know why you never stepped foot into the church."

His face remained passive.

"Christopher," I said when he wouldn't answer. I took my hand back. "I just want to know before I leave."

"Where to?" He asked quietly.

"Her post-funeral reception. I have to be there in the next hour." I gave him a look. "You know that. You should be there, too."

His jaw clenched and he wouldn't meet my eyes this time. "I don't actually."

"She'd want you there for her. We weren't there for her before; we should be there now."

He shook his head at that. The coldness was back. "No one said we could go," He said curtly.

"You don't have to have someone invite you if you've been to the funeral. You just have to know her to show up and they'll appreciate it."

"That's the thing!" He snapped, causing a couple girls walking by to jump. Clicking his tongue, he waited for them to pass by before continuing. "All you have to do is know Sarah, know her name, know how she's even remarkably related to you. And who are you regarding to as 'they'? Her family?"

"I'm saying it's –"

"Because you and I both know that her family are the same people who went bat-shit crazy when they found her cold and dead on the ground and the same people who didn't lift a finger when she said hell was the one thing that helped her stand back up."

That was enough to shut me up.

"For respect then," I muttered, slightly ashamed.

"To who?"

And then that really did shut me up.

When my mom heard about the day your funeral was being held, she kept looking at me as if I was going to break down anytime. When I wouldn't show her anything she or anyone else would expect, she kept looking at me the way your mother did. And I can't get those eyes out of my head.

It was my sister Jen who did most of the crying in the house. "I know I was never really friends with her the way you were," She'd told me in broken wobbles, "but I just knew her for so long, you know?"

Long enough to understand?

"It can't be real. That can't be real. It was like she was always there in a way," said Jen, wiping her eyes.

Were you ever really?

"I want to understand her," Christopher said, forcing me back to this photograph. "I want to get into her head and have her let me stay long enough to see. Do you get what I mean, Candice?"

I didn't have to nod for him to know that I did.

It's what Jen couldn't do past all those goddamn tears of hers, tears that I won't say aren't worthy because sadness is sadness and it all pays back equally in salt. It's what my mom could do only when disaster struck, since her scope was through violent wind shields alone. For my dad, it was what he always did so casually, like a man of science not bothering to understand art or to see a corpse as a bed of un-watered flowers rather than some decomposing matter.

These were all people who came to your funeral.

"God bless her and her family," My dad murmured, looking down with closed eyes and clasped hands.

"Amen," said my mom.

"Amen," said Jen.

"Amen," said the others, but only those who heard.

And me – for me it was the escalating hype that suddenly plateaued. The fuzzy background noise you couldn't shut off too early into the morning. I'd hear that blaring shrillness and think again that it was your voice telling me to wake up.

It was the high, leveled ringing on cheap 5 a.m. radio stations. The alarming orchestra of two adjacent notes on hold as the conductor dropped to the ground, no one there to help from his collapse because they were too enticed by his musical composition that continued to play on and on into the cold hour.

Still, I hadn't managed to see inside your head.

"Sarah," Christopher mentioned, "she should be remembered for all the ways we remembered her as, not as some daughter of a Patterson who was noticed only the minute she shot herself."

I swallowed hard. "So how do we do that?"

He scratched the back of his head but his thoughts were solid, as if he'd planned everything already. "Well first, we gotta get the hell out of this airport," He said.

I nodded almost irregularly. I was too glad to use an excuse. I didn't want to think too long about you or your funeral, otherwise I'd cry again, I'd break down, I'd imagine your face slack against the concrete.

"You're right," I said.

Amen, said everyone, all in poor conjunction.

People, so many in every direction I looked to, going in many more directions, scared me. They all could have been me. The high-pitched ringing, the smacking of a hundred-and-two pounds against oak wood, 'bought and furnished from a Longrington family from the eighties,' your father said, it was all sounding scary.

Walking towards the exit, I repeated, "You're right." I said, "This place reeks of carrying on."