The Trouble Is

Chapter 41: Tearing the Fabric

As Grammy likes to say, everyone is on "tippy toes" for the rest of the day. My parents are clearly trying to give me some space. Katie's uncle comes over to drop off some of the food people have given them. I hear him talking to Skip at the front door.

"There's just so much," he says. "It's a waste."

Doug's friend Chris comes over to play at some point in the afternoon. I hear the clicking sound of Legos being dumped onto the floor from their buckets. For all I know, they are building their own little synagogue in there. There could be worse things, I think. Other than the initial sound of Legos, the guys are unusually quiet. Or maybe it's the buzzing that still surrounds my head.

I think about cleaning my closet, but there's too much Katie in there—discarded bikinis, t-shirts she loved and then hated, and stacks of spirals that document our friendship. I open and close the drawers of my desk and think about sharpening the colored pencils in the top drawer.

I sort my sock drawer instead. There are columns of white ankle socks, then colored ankle socks stacked by color and hue. There are columns of neatly rolled tights and those little fuzzy sock slipper things relatives seem to give me every Christmas. The drawer feels safe. I open each pair, flatten them out on the floor, and reroll them. I open every single pair of socks and tights and fuzzy slipper things and carefully place them in order in the drawer. There's not a single thing that equals Katie in this drawer. Friends don't give friends socks for Christmas. For a few minutes, I am able to catch my breath.

I'm halfway through re-rolling the tights, legs spread out on the floor at the foot of my bed, when I hear the doorbell ring, followed by the sound of Skip's voice, then the rumbly voice of East.

East is not allowed in my room, with a capital "NOT," followed by a capital "EVER." But today, Skip cracks the door open and asks if East can come in.

I nod in response, and in half a second East is standing in front of me. He gives me that look he gets when he's concentrating. If he was so worried about me, I think, why wasn't he there beside me? I feel my eyes squint as I try to hold back the tears. All my confusion and frustration pour out of me in anger. I don't understand how he could have missed the funeral. Where was he? And if he was there, why didn't he come sit with me? I needed him more in that moment than I ever had or, I think, ever will again. I yell all of this at him, throwing rolled-up balls of tights at him and watching them bounce off his chest.

East says nothing as he reaches out to touch his fingers to mine. I keep on with the yelling. He gently holds my hand and steps a little closer.

"Baby, I was there," he says softly as he leans his head to mine, stepping closer still. His voice is a whisper. "I was in the back."

I don't say anything back. I just wait. There has to be more; there just does.

"I made it just a few minutes before the service started," he says. "I just didn't know what to do or how to act. You had this whole little world of family around you—not just your parents and Doug, but your uncles and Katie's aunt. It was like a Maginot Line around you. I was there, in the back, watching you, feeling you, waiting for you."

He's right about the family thing, I know. It seemed wherever I turned, the gang was all there. Thinking about it now, it seems like they had formed some kind of unspoken circle around me, protecting me from whatever it was that they thought I needed protection from. I've seen our family do that before when my uncle died. They all hovered around my aunt, careful of whom they let into the circle. It's not a planned and spoken thing; it's instinctual.

"What does that even mean?" I ask, still in that too-loud voice of stress. "I've never heard of whatever you said about that line. I get the concept; I just don't know that word."

East is so close now. There's like an inch between us, but nothing is touching except our hands.

"It's a French-war thing," he explains. "They built this giant wall around their borders to provide some form of protection while they built up their army during the early days of World War II."

I think about that a bit more now that it has a name. He's right; our family tends to line up around those who need support. It can be oppressive sometimes. And sometimes it's just what you need.

"But didn't that wall fail in the end?" I ask, remembering the highlights of world history. "The enemy just came in through another way, right?"

He doesn't answer, just sits down on the floor at the end of the bed, leaning against the footboard. I sit beside him, shoulders tense. We sit like that for a few minutes or maybe a few hours. I don't really know. East hums old country songs. I recognize most of them—there's a burning ring of fire, a girl named Jolene, and Folsom Prison.

And suddenly, there are tears. There are more tears than I ever imagined a body could produce. East keeps humming and pulls me to his chest. I put my ear against his heart and hear its beat intertwined with his soft voice and feel the hum of it all in my head. For the first time since the accident, the buzzing of church music and people claiming their importance in Katie's life stops. It's been replaced with the sound of East. The flowers have been replaced with the smell of East. We sit like that for seconds, minutes, hours—I'm not really sure. East's shirt has a wet spot that covers the thin fabric covering his heart. I turn a bit and look at his face. I'm still crying silent tears. My eyes burn as I look up at him, now realizing that not all of the tears were mine.

I go to the closet and get the old scissors I keep there for cutting tags off clothes. I don't even ask; I just take the two steps back to him, lean down, and cut the neckband of his shirt, just over his heart. Neither one of us is Jewish, but we've learned a thing or two from the summer with Doug. I don't think they tear their clothes anymore; instead they wear a simple black ribbon to symbolize the pain of death. East reaches up and rips his t-shirt a little more. The sound of fabric tearing is soft and loud all at once. I don't understand how that could be, but I can't find a way to focus on it for more than a second or two.

East reaches up and gently takes my hand, pulling me down to his lap, where I curl up and we cry together again, our grief pressed tightly between us.

I guess some things, like grief, are hard to hold back.