His Dark Words

12 | Death of a Salesman

"You've gotta help me, Son. You know how your Grandfather is. I mean he's got more money than he knows what to do with, but he's mean... Lord is he ever mean. In every sense of the word. I figured it out that with my say so you can get into whatever money he's put aside for you. Now, he's mentioned a trust fund to you at some point, hasn't he?"

I shook my head no. It was the truth.

"Don't be a kid about this now. You'll see when you get older, life is hard, Son. You'll get it all back, with interest. Is that what you're worried about? I mean God-damn it, Son, are you really so selfish?"

I think he realized what he'd said after the words had all tumbled out between us. He swallowed hard, his pupils like tiny wells of darkness corrupting clear, blue bowls of water.

"I just want to do something, Son." He hung his head. "I just want to make something of myself. I just need..."

He couldn't finish his sentence. Couldn't beg his teenage son for money again. We were there maybe a half hour more, trying to talk about other, smaller things but it was stiff and awkward. I got up to go to the bathroom, paid the tab and left without saying goodbye. I just couldn't go back and look at his face again. I had another panic attack right there in the parking lot. I thought I'd actually die that time. Over and over in my head I couldn't stop thinking;

"That's you. You have two choices, become your father or your grandfather. Drop out or go all in. Either way crush yourself to bits in the process."

Either way I look at it the world looks dark and unending. Either life I don't want to live... So where does that leave me?

I stop reading at the end of the entry. The loneliness in the boy's words feels like it pierced me right through the page. But I realize with slow, dawning horror that Alex was right all along. I have been jumping to conclusions, so desperate to find the Book-Boy I didn't even think things through. 

It couldn't be Derrick. 

For one thing his parents were still together. There is no sad apparition of an absent father to haunt him. And Derrick has never been to a school play in his life. I'm sure about this because Vanessa was in that play and she forced Alex and me to go to every rehearsal she had even though we had nothing to do with it. 

Maybe the real boy was in the play? It's a better lead than just finding my notebook in some boy's room... Isn't it?

Guiltily I slip my phone out of my pocket.

No messages, no missed calls, nothing.

Swallowing down my nerves I type in that oh-too-familiar name and press the phone up to my ear. It rings for so long I start to prepare myself for the answering machine but then there's a click and the silence of someone on the other end who refuses to be the first to speak.

"Vanessa... I am so sorry." I say.

"I can barely hear you." Her voice crackles back to me, feeling as if it were too far away over some impenetrable distance.

"Sorry... It's the signal, it's terrible out here."

"Where are you?" Despite the crackles her voice is undeniably cold.

"At the beach. I just wanted to tell you, you were right. I was wrong, so, so, so wrong about Derrick. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions like that, I just... Well I won't try to make excuses. I'm sorry."

"'kay..." I can almost hear her twirling her hair through the phone.

"I'm really happy for you, that you have someone you know?"

"'kay..."

"Is it okay?" I try not to sound irritated by her monosyllabic responses.

She sighs a good, five-second-long sigh. "I dunno what you want me to say, Harlow... Sometimes it's hard being your friend."

That one hurt.

"I don't mean it to be." I fight the urge to say exactly the same thing back to her.

There is a long pause.

"See you Monday, then I guess?" She says.

"Uhmmm, sure."

Another pause and then, click, I'm alone again. 

So, is it all ruined? 

And is it so easy to throw all these years of friendship away, just like that? 

I guess people throw away other people all the time. Book-Boy's Dad threw him away and had been thrown away himself... It seems like a pattern we are all doomed to repeat, failure after failure and people left behind at every turn...

My phone buzzes in my hand.

A text from Vanessa pops up on the home screen.

"xx"

Just enough to say I love you, but I'm still pissed at you and you better not forget it. I smile, I can't help it. We're not done, not yet at least.

I look up at the sky wistfully. That one text made me so stupidly happy. I can feel hope surging up from inside me over something so minute, so unimportant. I watch the clouds racing over the impossible blue space above me. 

What if there was a way to capture that feeling? 

These odd half-nothing moments... Kodak memories worth capturing, framing... That somehow have more life to them than that... 

A vague idea crosses my mind. I stand up and walk back to the house, turning the idea over and over in my mind. I go into the kitchen. My Grandma is wrapping up plates of cookies in cellophane.

"Grandma... Do you have any home movies?"

Her face lights up. "NED!"