When the World Tips Over, page 45
When the hospital was in sight, the RV with his father and Dizzy in it, in front of them now, turned into the lot, but instead of following them, Felix drove past the hospital and parked on the fire road where their journey began with Rod the Cannibal a day and a lifetime before. What was happening?
Was something finally going to happen!?
Felix killed the engine and looking straight ahead, he said, “I realized from talking to you today that I have to go back to Colorado.” Miles felt as if he’d been kicked in the throat. He’d not been expecting this. He’d been expecting the opposite of this! Even with the Eddie admission, he’d thought after they’d opened up so much that he’d had a shot. He wanted Samantha Brooksweather and Jericho Blane, Alonso and Sebastian, not goodbye. He couldn’t make any words so just nodded.
Felix took off his sunglasses, rested them on the dashboard. He petted Sandro, who was beginning to stir. “I can’t not go to Culinary School.” He looked at Miles, smiled a smile that was equal parts irony and sincerity. “It’s my destiny, like your great-grandfather Alonso getting on the ship.”
Miles nodded again. Of course, Felix had to go. It was his dream and Miles wanted him to have it, in the now, and hopefully always. “And Eddie?” Miles asked, unable to keep it in.
Felix shrugged. He seemed like he was going to answer, but then didn’t, probably to protect Miles who’d made it embarrassingly clear where he stood. Miles could see yearning in Felix’s face – like a billboard for it – but as much as Miles wanted it to be, it wasn’t for him. Felix was going back to Eddie. Miles had misread everything, including all the hand collisions, even the one happening this minute as they both petted Sandro. People’s hands accidently touched all the time, didn’t they? Meant nothing.
Even if it was making Miles feel like he had heatstroke.
Miles took his hand away, leaden with disappointment. He felt like all the birds flew away. He couldn’t look at Felix anymore for fear he would throw his arms around the guy and beg him not to go or tell him that he would wait for him to finish chef school and/or forever.
He looked instead toward the hospital. What was going on in that room? Was his brother waking up? He had to get in there. For so long, he’d been running away from his family, but somehow it was running toward them that finally allowed him to begin finding himself. And his father was right, he was almost a grown-ass man. He had to stop blaming others for his life. Yes, his dad abandoned him, and his brother alienated him, but neither was responsible for who he’d be in this family, or in the world. That was on him. As Sandro said to him yesterday, his story of choice has always been a woe-is-me one. He wanted to write a new story now. A big dreamy romantic one like his great-grandfather’s even.
And maybe he’d go to therapy like Dean Richards suggested, but The Gloom Room seemed light-years away. Like Felix said, he was in his life now and he had all these new people to turn to, if, once again, he slipped out of it. He even knew there was love somewhere somehow between him and his brother, a frail and flimsy love maybe, but love all the same. It was like lifting an impossibly heavy rock and finding some oblivious flower beneath it. How could it be alive and beautiful in that darkness, under such weight? But it was. Why couldn’t two Fall brothers be brothers for once? If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s, right? They’d forge their own uncursed path.
If he woke.
Miles turned back to Felix, whose face was still a billboard of yearning. For someone else. Miles sighed. His chest ached. This was goodbye then. He worried his voice would break if he spoke, but he had to. “Thanks, Felix. I mean it. Thanks for everything.” It was late to have made his first real friend, but better late than never. He opened the door. Sandro picked his head up, then snuggled back into Felix’s leg. Miles wanted to snuggle into Felix too, wanted to do so many things with this guy. He swung his backpack over his shoulder and was looking for the leash under the seat when Felix grabbed his arm. Felix grabbed his arm. Grabbed it and didn’t let go. “Wait,” Felix said.
Miles sat up, sparks flying off every thought.
Felix was grinning. “Want to—”
“Dude, not falling for that again,” Miles said. But this time, unlike last night, Felix’s hand was sliding up Miles’s arm, knocking the breath out of him.
Had the billboard been for him?
Felix grinned and dimpled at Miles and oh my God it was happening. “This time I mean something else.” He gripped Miles’s arm tighter. The air ignited. “I’m leaving, so I didn’t want to … but I’m dying, man. I’ve been dying. Because the thing is, I haven’t told you how it was when I saw your face in the hospital lobby. Or saw it when you were laughing in the woods. Or how it’s been seeing it every minute over the last two days.” His hand slid under the arm of Miles’s T-shirt. Miles went weak. “I haven’t told you how it is looking at your face right this minute.”
“How is it?” The words were entirely breath, expectation.
“It’s like: Who’s Eddie, man?” Felix laughed. Miles couldn’t believe he could be sitting in this truck and doing backflips at the same time. He was quite certain he was turning into a ball of light, like his great-grandfather. “You put it all in perspective, Miles. I’ve never felt like this before with anyone. I’ve been … scared though with everything going on.”
“I’ll be scared with you,” Miles said. “I want to do it all with you, Felix.”
Miles couldn’t wait another second. He was velocity itself, half reeling and all hope, as he slipped his hands beneath Felix’s shirt, leaving earth briefly at the sound of Felix sucking in breath as Miles’s hands glided across Felix’s chest, skin to skin, glided down, down, to his stomach, causing Felix to moan, which caused Miles to completely lose his mind as Felix’s hands traveled to Miles’s waist, to Miles’s waistband, winding his finger around a belt loop, and then pulling Miles to him by it, making Miles gasp as they each leaned in and, finally, finally, pressed their lips together, stopping time.
They breathed in as one, holding this key-to-lock moment, this cyclone-in-a-bottle moment, this connection of bodies and way beyond bodies, Miles on the verge of tears, on the verge of rapture, before the glass broke, the cyclone let loose, their mouths opened, and hunger took over and they were gone, teeth banged, mustache mustaching, tongues desperate, hands everywhere, the sound of Felix’s ragged breathing sending hot currents through Miles, making Miles want to say all the words in his pocket pad at once, all the words in all the books in all the world at once – because that would be the only way to describe this, what was happening between them, two boys in a truck falling off the world, falling in love. Miles was splashing around in happiness, and something was unfurling in his chest, something wild and free and deeply irrefutably him.
As if all the atoms in his body had been spinning at 1,000 mph for billions of years (which they had!) just to get to this moment.
What had he been thinking, keeping this most joyful side of himself a secret?
“Miles,” Felix said, smiling, their foreheads touching, their breath mingling. “We’re Alonso and Sebastian. We’re in the air.”
Then too, too soon, Miles was outside the truck and leaning in the driver’s-side window, his hand on Felix’s arm. He felt made of dreams.
You did it! Sandro was doing figure eights around his feet. Lucky duck! Lucky devil! Lucky dog!
I know! Miles made eye contact with the dog. It was time to forgive his eternal companion. You too, Sandro. You found Beauty.
His tail wagged. I know!
Felix grinned, looking at them. “Are you guys talking right now?”
I wish he could hear me!
Miles was untethered, so very far from perfect where happy seemed to be. And this was a goodbye that felt jam-packed with hello. He said to Felix, “If you get a letter one day with just a blank page inside, you’ll know what it means, right?”
Felix’s face configured into the deadliest half-smile yet.
Nice one, Sandro said to Miles. Maybe you do have some game after all.
Thank you.
Miles and Sandro began walking toward the hospital, toward the most improbable family gathering, when Miles heard Felix. “Hey!”
Miles turned. This guy was terrible at goodbyes. “You could come to Denver later in the summer? We have bigger mountains. At least I think we do.”
Miles had the money for a ticket, but would Felix be with Eddie later in the summer? Or back with his girlfriend? Who knew? Who knew anything? Miles said, “That’d be cool.”
Then he started for the hospital once more, hoping to be stopped again.
“Hey!” he heard, and Miles spun around. Felix was laughing. “Dude, this is your mother’s truck!”
Dizzy
Dizzy left her father to park the RV and ran across the parking lot and through the hospital doors. She couldn’t wait another second. She was careening down the hall to Wynton’s room when she heard her name.
It was Lizard. Right there in the hallway with his hair gelled but nerd glasses back on like in the pre-divorce days. Dizzy had the same feeling she got right before she started crying. There were moments in life, she understood, seeing her best friend smile big at her again, when souls bloomed like flowers.
“You got my texts?” he asked.
She nodded. “We hurried.” She wanted to burst out of herself like a jack-in-the-box and hug him. She wanted to tell him every single thing that had happened since their breakup. But then she remembered Melinda, remembered what he’d written on the bathroom mirror the last time she’d seen him: Leave Me Alone. “You said there was a reason for our divorce,” she said. “What was it?”
He smiled, shyly this time, then straightened his glasses, which were already straight. Dizzy did the same to her pair. Her stomach was churning, and her skin felt prickly. “Okay,” he said. “What I have to tell you…” He took a big dramatic breath. “The reason I … I mean… So, okay, Dizzy, when we … for me… There were, you know… I lied—”
She was impatient to get in the hospital room where everything was happening, but equally as impatient to know what was going on here. Lizard never acted shy like this, never ever stammered – she had no idea what he was trying to say. And he’d lied to her? “Just say it, Tristan.” She’d call him this if that was what he wanted, but in the privacy of her mind, he’d always be Lizard.
“Okay, okay.” He smiled sheepishly. His cheeks were flushing. “All right. Here goes. When we kissed that time, I felt them.”
“Them?”
“The endorphins! And the spontaneous internal explosions from your stupid romance book too! I said I didn’t because you said you didn’t first, but I did!”
“Did you feel endorphins and spontaneous internal explosions with Melinda?” Dizzy asked.
He shook his head.
Okay. Okay. There was only one thing for her to do then. She walked over to him, put her hands on Lizard’s shoulders, closed her eyes, and for the second time, she kissed her best friend. It felt like lips touching, nothing else. She was about to pull away, to break it to him that she felt no endorphins or internal explosions when his thumb brushed her cheek. Had he done that the last time? She didn’t think so. Then his hands were in her hair. He definitely hadn’t done this before. He parted his lips – nope, not this either – and so did she. Then they were wrapping their arms around each other, and she was buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, and not just in her soul but in her fiery furnace.
The doors of her wild femininity were swinging open just like Samantha Brooksweather’s!
Two weeks’ worth of this would definitely not be enough for her lifetime. It took all her strength to disentangle from him. “I felt it this time, Lizard.” The words came out more like breaths. Whoa was Dizzy dizzy.
His glasses were crooked, as was his smile. She straightened her own. “That was dope,” he said.
“So dope,” she said. “Now come on. Everything’s about to happen!”
Dizzy and Lizard blew into Wynton’s hospital room.
By the window, in a row, looking out over the parking lot were her mother, her uncle Clive, and Cassidy, who was with a man she’d seen playing chess with Wynton on the square. But that wasn’t all. At Wynton’s bedside were Dizzy’s favorite mute ghosts. Her ancestors, she now knew for sure. Alonso Fall and Sebastian Ortega were holding hands, their feet a few inches above the ground. On the other side of Wynton was Maria Guerrero, her fire-red hair tumbling with buttercups and orange roses, filling the hospital room with a magenta smell. But there was another ghost next to her, holding her hand, a new one Dizzy had never seen before, a younger man with a sad face and red hair like Maria. Was it Bazzy from Cassidy’s story? Dizzy’s grandfather’s ghost? Had he been with his son Theo all these years? And had now followed him home to Paradise Springs? Yes, she thought, he must have.
Dizzy went to Wynton, placed her hand on his chest, nodded at the ghosts who all ignored her like always, and then she and Lizard joined the rest by the window. Cassidy met Dizzy’s eyes, then bopped her nose and Dizzy did it back, happiness overtaking Dizzy, toes to head. She had a sister now, what on earth could be better than that? Except that Wynton was about to wake! Then Dizzy hugged her mother and could smell sweat on her – green with rust speckles. Her mother’s body was shaking and even as they embraced, her mother didn’t take her eyes off the purple RV out of which Dizzy’s father had not yet emerged.
Dizzy then turned her attention to what was going on outside the window too. The sun was setting over the mountain, flooding the valley with golden light. By the entrance to the hospital was Miles telling Sandro something, to wait probably, then he opened the door to enter, but Sandro darted in anyway, and moments later, Miles walked in with the dog, who was definitely not allowed in the hospital, but no one seemed to care.
To her surprise, Miles walked to the side of the hospital bed and placed his hand on Wynton’s chest, on his heart like she had done. Dizzy wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her brothers touch. Miles bent over and whispered something in Wynton’s ear. She couldn’t hear what. Then he approached the rest of them at the window bank, and he and Cassidy welled up looking at each other. Dizzy thought they might be mind-talking like shamans. Miles hugged his mother and nodded at Uncle Clive. Dizzy reached for Miles’s hand. Miles smiled and took it and reached for Cassidy’s. Below the window, people were gathering in front of the hospital. “Word’s out,” Cassidy whispered.
Every gaze was on the RV called Purple Rain as the door opened and Theo Fall emerged in his cowboy hat. Even through the window, Dizzy could hear the thwap, thwap, thwap of his boots on the pavement as he strode across the lot. Tears were rolling down her mother’s face and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. Her uncle Clive was smiling, and Dizzy realized she’d never seen him do that before, not once in her life. All these firsts were happening in this room now, a good omen.
She remembered the atheist hospital administrator Cynthia explaining to her on the night of the accident that she could pray by trying to wrap her arms around the whole world. This was Dizzy’s whole world, she thought, her personal people-pile. And the only safety in the world was that. She couldn’t really permanently lock everyone in a house together, but she could close her eyes and imagine wrapping her arms around this newly expanded family, her best friend (first boyfriend?), even the dumb dog. Cynthia was right, it was a good way to pray, to hope, to wring sacredness out of life.
There was so much, Dizzy thought, so much muchness to it all.
Then she opened her eyes and set them on her father, who was going to wake Wynton. Her father, who’d finally come home.
However, when he was halfway across the lot, he stopped, pivoted, and headed back toward the RV at a fast, purposeful clip.
“No!” the row of them shouted in unison, all banging on the window with their palms.
Her mom said, “Not again, Theo,” and was out the hospital room door so she didn’t see that he’d only gone back to the RV because he’d forgotten his trumpet.
Wynton
The first note calls to you like it used to when you had a body, had a violin, had a wonderful screwed-up life, like it used to when your father’s ghost-music would take you from room to river to roof to meadow.
And now, it’s brought you back to the hospital room.
Except something’s wrong. Terribly wrong.
This can’t be him because this musician can’t play. You shudder inside at the tone, cringe at how shrill the sound. You recoil at the braying notes slapped together haphazardly, anemically. Who is this awful musician? And why is he so close to you, blaring each atrocious riff right at your head. This is not the trumpet-playing you’ve been hearing your whole life!
If only you could move so you could cover your ears!
You beg whoever is playing to stop already, to just stop, but they don’t. You have to get away. You’re on your way back to the meadow, to wait for death, anywhere where that noise pretending to be jazz isn’t, when…
It’s Miles talking to you, whispering about the day on the swings. You can’t believe it. He remembers that afternoon too! And once again you’re running across that field hand in hand and he’s your little brother, your monkey, your banana, your little guy.
You want to tell him sorry for everything, that you are done done done being an ogre like Hector. You want to tell him that this moment, like every moment, is a first, is the beginning again, so you two can start over. You try with all your might to move your mouth so you can say the words little brother, when…
You’re face down in a pile of leaves. You try to lift your head.
Can it be?
And then you hear his voice for the first time in twelve years. It is him. He’s come back for you, you cry in your head at the same time he says, Wynton please come back to us.
Oh, you have to see him! You don’t care anymore that he’s not your father by blood, he’s still the father in your memory, in your heart. You use all your strength to open one eyelid, but you can’t do it.
