The Sky is Everywhere(18)
Author: Jandy Nelson

When I’m with him,
there is someone with me
in my house of grief,
someone who knows
its architecture as I do,
who can walk with me,
from room to sorrowful room,
making the whole rambling structure
of wind and emptiness
not quiet as scary, as lonely
as it was before.

(Found on a branch of a tree outside Clover High)

Joe Fontaine’s knocking. I’m lying awake in bed, thinking about moving to Antarctica to get away from this mess with Toby. I prop myself up on an elbow to look out the window at the early, bony light.

Joe’s our rooster. Each morning since his first visit, a week and a half ago, he arrives at dawn with his guitar, a bag of chocolate croissants from the bakery and a few dead bugs for Big. If we aren’t up, he lets himself in, makes a pot of coffee thick as tar and sits at the kitchen table strumming melancholy chords on his guitar. Every so often he asks me if I feel like playing, to which I reply no, to which he replies fine. A polite stand-off. He hasn’t mentioned Rachel again, which is okay by me.

The strangest part about all this is that it’s not strange at all, for any of us. Even Big, who is not a morning person, pads down the stairs in his slippers, greets Joe with a boisterous back slap, and after checking the pyramids (which Joe has already checked), he jumps right back into their conversation from the previous morning about his obsession du jour: exploding cakes.

Big heard that a woman in Idaho was making a birthday cake for her husband when the flour ignited. They were having a dry spell, so there was lots of static electricity in the air. A cloud of flour dust surrounded her and due to a spark from a static charge in her hand, it exploded: an inadvertent flour bomb. Now Big is trying to enlist Joe to re-enact the event with him for the sake of science. Gram and I have been adamantly opposed to this for obvious reasons. “We’ve had enough catastrophe, Big,” Gram said yesterday, putting her foot down. I think the amount of pot Big’s been smoking has made the idea of the exploding cake much funnier and more fascinating than it really is, but somehow Joe is equally enthralled with the concept.

It’s Sunday and I have to be at the deli in a few hours. The kitchen’s bustling when I stumble in.

“Morning, John Lennon,” Joe says, looking up from his guitar strings and throwing me a jaw-dropping grin – what am I doing making out with Toby, Bailey’s Toby, I think as I smile back at the holy horses unfreakingbelievable Joe Fontaine, who has seemingly moved into our kitchen. Things are so mixed up – the boy who should kiss me acts like a brother and the boy who should act like a brother keeps kissing me. Sheesh.

“Hey, John Lennon,” Gram echoes.

Unbelievable. This can’t be catching on. “Only Joe’s allowed to call me that,” I grumble at her.

“John Lennon!” Big whisks into the kitchen and me into his arms, dancing me around the room. “How’s my girl today?”

“Why’s everyone in such a good mood?” I feel like Scrooge.

“I’m not in a good mood,” Gram says, beaming ear to ear, looking akin to Joe. I notice her hair is dry too. No grief-shower this morning. A first. “I just got an idea last night. It’s a surprise.” Joe and Big glance at me and shrug. Gram’s ideas often rival Big’s on the bizarre scale, but I doubt this one involves explosions or necromancy.

“We don’t know what it is either, honey,” Big bellows in a baritone unfit for 8 a.m. “In other breaking news, Joe had an epiphany this morning: He put the Lennie houseplant under one of the pyramids – I can’t believe I never thought of that.” Big can’t contain his excitement, he’s smiling down on Joe like a proud father. I wonder how Joe slipped in like this, wonder if it’s somehow because he never knew her, doesn’t have one single memory of her, he’s like the world without our heartbreak—

My cell phone goes off. I glance at the screen. It’s Toby. I let it go to voicemail, feeling like the worst person in the world because just seeing his name recalls last night, and my stomach flies into a sequence of contortions. How could I have let this happen?

I look up, all eyes are on me, wondering why I didn’t pick up the phone. I have to get out of the kitchen.

“Want to play, Joe?” I say, heading upstairs for my clarinet.

“Holy shit,” I hear, then apologies to Gram and Big.

Back on the porch, I say, “You start, I’ll follow.”

He nods and starts playing some sweet soft chords in G minor. But I feel too unnerved for sweet, too unnerved for soft. I can’t shake off Toby’s call, his kisses. I can’t shake off cardboard boxes, perfume that never gets used, bookmarks that don’t move, St Anthony statues that do. I can’t shake off the fact that Bailey at eleven years old did not put herself in the drawing of our family, and suddenly, I am so upset I forget I’m playing music, forget Joe’s even there beside me.

I start to think about all the things I haven’t said since Bailey died, all the words stowed deep in my heart, in our orange bedroom, all the words in the whole world that aren’t said after someone dies because they are too sad, too enraged, too devastated, too guilty to come out – all of them begin to course inside me like a lunatic river. I suck in all the air I can, until there’s probably no air left in Clover for anyone else, and then I blast it all out my clarinet in one mad bleating typhoon of a note. I don’t know if a clarinet has ever made such a terrible sound, but I can’t stop, all the years come tumbling out now – Bailey and me in the river, the ocean, tucked so snug into our room, the backseat of cars, bathtubs, running through the trees, through days and nights and months and years without Mom – I am breaking windows, busting through walls, burning up the past, pushing Toby off me, taking the dumb-ass Lennie houseplant and hurling it into the sea—

I open my eyes. Joe’s staring at me, astonished. The dogs next door are barking.

“Wow, I think I’ll follow next time,” he says.

I’d been making decisions for days.
I picked out the dress Bailey would wear forever—
a black slinky one—inappropriate—that she loved.
I chose a sweater to go over it, earrings, bracelet, necklace,
her most beloved strappy sandals.
I collected her make-up to give to the funeral director
with a recent photo—
I thought it would be me that would dress her;
I didn’t think a strange man should see her naked
touch her body