Sunday Paper: Ode by Daniel Perry, part 4 of 4.
Molly
Well, what do you know? I thought. Martin is human.
When he started to cry I sat down on the bed, and immediately, he keeled over. His head landed in my lap.
“Oh my God. Oh, God. It’s my fault,” he moaned, tears on my jeans and his chest heaving. “I killed him!”
I took him by the shoulders.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Easy for you to say,” he sniffed. “Paul jumped because even his oldest friend walked out on him.”
How melodramatic. And wrong.
“Martin, you said you just wanted to remember being kids. Right?”
He sat up and put his hands to his eyes, correcting the aberration, this sudden show of emotion. He stretched his cheeks as he wiped them. He nodded.
“I think he decided to be a kid again,” I said.
Martin dried his nose on his sleeve. His two hundred-dollar sleeve.
“It was a mistake,” I said. “It wasn’t suicide.”
Martin clenched his fists.
“What’s it matter?” he snarled. “Everyone’s decided already.”
“Not everyone.”
I took the notebook from the desk.
“I remember jumping off the bridge,” I read, “with Martin. We’re not friends anymore, which I feel bad about, but–”
I looked at Martin. He held his breath.
“–now, with Dad gone, that’s all I want to keep. The rest of my youth has faded, been thrown under a blanket. I can’t make sense of it. Most of it, I can’t even remember. All I have now are summer afternoons, laying our towels on the banks, walking to the bridge and jumping. Freefalling.”
Martin reached for the notebook.
“Let me see that,” he said.
I pulled back and shielded it with my body.
“I can’t believe–”
“Run with what you have.”
“You think that’s best?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You’re talking about the good parts, when you were kids, and you never suggest that he killed himself.”
Martin stared off, through the poster on the wall. Reggie Lewis. Paul’s favourite NBA player. We were all kids when he died.
“I should have read the stories.”
“You already had your mind made up.”
He inhaled and gathered himself, looking first out the window.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And then, ever the taskmaster, he stood up. He looked at the watch on the bed.
“Okay,” he said. “Your turn. What will you say tomorrow?”
I took my speech from the desk – three pages, typed the night before – and read aloud about the memories we had made. Undergrad, Teacher’s College, China, and even Currie, Ontario.
“I know that he didn’t want to die,” I said. “This is just a terrible twist of fate. Like Reggie, Paul would have said.”
A useful cliché. A relatable example. And now, to wow them. Just like the public speaking people teach:
“He knew that he could be really good. He had written so much, and finally, he was ready to put the work in. It was magical, and for once, he was excited.
“Awakening.
“That’s how I’ll remember Paul.”
I looked up from my papers. I hadn’t cried at all.
“It’s good,” Martin said.
We knew what to expect before we finished writing. People had lined up out the funeral home door for visitation, so Gail moved the service to the church. Today half the pews seat Paul’s extended family, and the teachers from Currie High School and most of his students. In the back are a lot of those small-town types, who met Paul maybe once, maybe when he was ten, but who still can’t imagine not being here.
“He was only twenty-eight,” they all whisper. “Such a shame.”
I sit onstage, behind the curtain, between an industrial-sized trash can and Martin’s empty chair, watching his mechanical song. He says his speech word for word and never looks down, even better than he did in the mirror yesterday.
When he steps away, each silent second tamps the crowd, and when he’s finally out of sight he exhales. It betrays the weight it carries.
The minister takes Martin’s place. He leans over the microphone, “And now, I’d like to call Paul’s girlfriend, Molly Davis.”
Martin flashes a miniature thumbs up as he passes. It’s corny but I know it’s sincere. I edge between him and a cage of red dodge-balls, but then I turn back, to the trash can. I drop my speech in. From my skirt pocket, I pull out the journal.
“Molly, no,” Martin whispers. “Paul didn’t know what to leave out.”
On the stage I rest the green book on the podium, and I turn to a story, The Jade Nightingale. I take a deep breath and I open my mouth. All that comes out is a sob. I drop my head into my arms on the wood.
Martin taps his watch backstage.
Nine minutes.
My throaty gasp echoes through the speakers. It rattles the walls.
By Daniel Perry.