Home, Sweet Cherryvale
"I'm sorry, Kyle, but I can't be there."
Kyle bit his thumb nail, ripping off the excess length with his front teeth. He'd expected as much, but rejection still hurt, even when he saw it coming.
"Please, Rebecca. It would—" He stopped, took a deep breath. "I just—I don't wanna go by myself, okay?" With a sigh, Kyle let the disappoint sink further into his chest. "I know you didn't know her, but she was..." My family. "She was a good person."
The phone trembled in Kyle's grip. He steadied his fingers with the palm of his right hand.
Rebecca's voice was distant, as if they had thrown out technology and were instead yelling at each other across a wide chasm. "I've got a really important patient right now, and I can't leave him. You understand, right? I'd love to be there for you, to pay my respects to... uh... to..."
"Sue," Kyle supplied, hoping the crack in his voice was lost in the crackle of the phone connection.
"To Sue," Rebecca continued. "But I'm sure you'll be fine." He heard her shuffle some papers. "You weren't really that close, right?"
Kyle dropped his head into his hand and swallowed. "No, I guess you're right. I'll be—I'll be fine. I mean, I may not go either. I'm kinda busy with med school, and I just started a new job—"
"Oh Kyle, shoot," Rebecca cut in, her voice gone strangely animated. "I gotta go. I'm really sorry, little bro, but something huge just came up with my patient. I'm sorry. I'll call you tomorrow?"
"Uh, yeah, okay. Tomorrow, then?"
He waited a few seconds in silence before realizing she'd already clicked off. He rolled his eyes so far up in the sockets it actually hurt.
"Bye."
Kyle set the phone on his desk. He could hear his roommate Raj in the kitchen, slamming cupboard doors. It was the only thing that stopped him from throwing his phone against the wall. He stared down at it, its black, empty screen, and wondered how long ago it was when Rebecca became so cold. He couldn't actually remember; they hadn't spent enough time together since she'd left, save a few Christmases here and there, as bare in words as in presents exchanged.
In his memories, playing back through his mind like old home movies—though they'd never actually starred in any—Rebecca had always seemed a little sad, a little withdrawn, but not as... empty as she seemed now. The spark had fizzled out. Or maybe his memories were embellished and she was as she'd always been. He didn't know.
When he tried to rewind the memories, go further back, before the times that were filled with sickness and loss, to maybe catch a glimpse of her happiness, he didn't have much film to choose from. He'd been young, too young, to record much of that period into memory. Rebecca was only a side presence in those moments he had managed to capture, back before she had become something more important to him, before he was able to identify her as family. Someone he belonged to, and who belonged to him.
Until she left.
But that wasn't her fault. She was almost eighteen; it was bound to happen eventually. She was supposed to leave. The large gap in their ages made that outcome almost certain, and though he probably didn't understand it at the time, he got it now. It wasn't like she was taken from him too soon, or anything.
Without knowing why, he absently flipped through to the mental reel labeled Mom; he could lay the film strip in the palm of his hand and pick through it quickly.
Brown hair, soft waves blowing in the wind on a cold fall afternoon, small hands picking dried leaves off her clothes. Dark eyes set in pale skin, crinkling around a smile. Being lifted, spun around the room, his arms jetted out wide to embrace the wind, then pulled in close to embrace her neck.
And then... the film reel skipped, spinning out of the projector, thwap-thwap-thwapping against his mind, as the screen went black.
Unbidden, the word father snaked through his thoughts. Memories flashed before his eyes—still, motionless—images trapped behind glass. Like photographs frozen in time.
Bony, dark-haired fingers resting on a thick bible. Rebecca's frightened eyes.
Kyle didn't think of the word often.
He stared at his phone, combing through lists in his mind, wondering if he'd called everyone he should've. Which, at that point, had been Larry and Rebecca. Larry had spoken to him in a soft voice; he'd never heard it so soft, all the gruffness peeled away by sympathy. It had unsettled Kyle. But only a little bit. Another part of him, a younger part perhaps, liked the sound of it, found comfort in it, and his hands had stopped trembling for a little while after the call.
He was grateful to Larry, for taking care of things, for working with the city to get Sue's remains, to set up a little memorial at her place, by the stables. Kyle had been dreading that himself, having to take responsibility for someone else's farewell from the world. He wouldn't have known where to start, though the police officer who had called to tell him the news had offered to assist in any way he could.
Receiving kind words from strangers... those were the times when Kyle missed Cherryvale the most. The people in Llanview were always too caught up in their own brewing dramas to care about their neighbors, or even to show the slightest hint of courtesy. Probably something in the drinking water.
He should've known, after Rebecca's own problems in this town, what a monumentally dumb decision it was to come here, that his own personal dramas would follow. But it was so close to Cherryvale, and after years of moving around, he just felt like settling for once. Nobody ever said he made the best decisions. Probably a curse of his genetics.
There was a knock on his open door, then Raj poked his head in. He rattled a box of Kyle's breakfast cereal. "Hey, you mind if I eat this?"
Kyle wiped his cheek. "Nah, man. Have at it." And with that, Raj's head retreated.
Kyle pushed himself out of his chair and wandered to the bed, collapsing onto it without energy. He should've visited Sue more often. He hadn't been down to her place since the summer before senior year of college, more than two years back. He'd taken that bus trip alone then, but he hadn't felt alone. Not when he had memories of a better time to keep him company.
Going back now, though, without someone by his side, someone he trusted, someone to steady him... without Sue there to pick him up from the bus stop, to pat him on the shoulder and call him a good kid, to ask him how things were going with... with his life—he didn't know what to expect, what would be waiting for him.
Would the memories be salt or a salve on his wounds?
Kyle shifted uncomfortably where he stood. His slacks were too loose and he felt like an idiot, standing twenty feet away from horse stables wearing dress pants and a coat with a hole in the pocket. It was stupid to want to look nicer for Sue, since Sue was nothing more than a pile of burnt ash encased in metal at the moment, but he wanted that for her, nonetheless.
Not like she would have cared. She would've come to his funeral dressed in ripped jeans and a leather vest, no doubt.
Larry understood her tastes well enough, seeing as how the service wasn't much of anything. There was a folding table with a carafe of coffee and an igloo cooler filled with lukewarm water and... that was it. No enlarged photo, black-and-white for dramatic effect. No giant wreathes of flowers. No slide show set to sappy music.
Kyle was grateful for that.
He sifted through the faces milling about. A lot of older people, people he'd never met. A few of them came over and asked how he knew Sue, if he was family. He would nod his head yes and tell some variation of the old story. Sue's place was like a second home, Sue always had her door open for him... nice, noncommittal responses that earned him a sympathetic smile and maybe a pat on the arm.
Until an older man with a faceful of silver scruff and a crooked smile sidled up to him and said, "One of Susie's old foster brats, eh? Nice of you to come back and remember her."
Kyle shoved his hands in his worn coat pockets and walked away as if he hadn't heard the question or seen the speaker.
Turning toward the stables, he finally saw a familiar face.
"Josh!" He walked toward him, picking up his pace a little and waving his arm in the air. "Josh. Hey. I'm so glad you came."
Josh narrowed his eyes at him, looking him up and down.
Kyle bit his lip, feeling stupid for running up to someone he hadn't seen in years and assaulting him with nervous enthusiasm. "I mean, it's just nice to actually know someone here."
Josh scratched the bridge of his nose. "What's up, dong smuggler?"
"Ah," Kyle said, suddenly recalling that Josh was something of a huge prick, and not the kind he liked spending time with. "Okay then. Walking away." Kyle put up his arms and retreated backwards. Josh turned away, seemingly content to stare off into the distance, chewing his bottom lip.
Though Kyle prided himself on being able to scrap with the best of them, engaging Josh when he started up with the idiocy could never lead any place good, not when Josh outweighed him by at least two classes and stood a good six inches taller.
Back when they were in high school, sharing that tiny bedroom and bristling with claustrophobia and general dislike, Josh would mostly ignore him, and that worked out well for both of them. Other times, Josh just liked being a dick.
Kyle remembered a particularly embarrassing incident, when Sue had surprised him after school with a pair of knee pads. "Josh told me you tried out for the volleyball team. He said you were gonna need these." Kyle had simply smiled and nodded, thanking her as he shot death glares at Josh on the sly, while Josh sat on the couch and held back a snicker.
The next morning Kyle pulled the receipt out of Sue's records and returned the knee pads, sliding the cash into her leather billfold while she slept.
He shook his head. He didn't want that to be the kind of memory that filled his head today. Josh showing up to something like this surprised him, and almost made him more willing to forgive his pervading dickitude. Today was about Sue, anyway, and she had bought those knee pads for him just because she thought he wanted them, that they would make him happy, not because it was her responsibility to him.
Like all those times she let him crash with her when she didn't have to.
She had always been different that way. But he'd been different with her too.
When he was a kid, his first instinct had been to cling to the new mothers, imprinting on them like some brain dead duckling. He would run into their arms straight off, yelling, "Spin! Spin! Spin!" and if they lifted him, he would hug them close and tell them he loved them. It was the quickest, most efficient way to secure their love in return. And it usually worked. While Rebecca shied away from their contact, Kyle courted it, and he always knew he was their favorite, that he earned more of their affection than Rebecca did. She knew it too, and it had confused him why she didn't follow his lead. He had the system all figured out, while she languished on the sidelines, unhappy and alone.
That was when he was a kid.
It all changed after Rebecca left. The homes seemed different without Rebecca there to hold his hand as he walked through the threshold for the first time. They seemed... bigger somehow, the shadows hanging lower, darker. That's when he learned the truth, though he thought maybe he'd always known, and that knowing voice had just been smothered by willful ignorance.
People leave. Even if you love them, even if you tell them everyday that you love them, they leave.
So he stopped clinging. He pulled back instead, learned to follow Rebecca's pattern, because she'd obviously known better. She was able to leave without looking back. He wanted to be able to do that too. So he held himself back, didn't care, and nothing could hurt him. He lived his life Rebecca's way. And it worked fine for him.
Until Sue. Until he ended up loving someone anyway, for herself, for loving him for himself, for letting him stay when he needed to, even after it was no longer her job.
She was the only person he'd opened himself up to. Well, not the only one. He couldn't lie to himself about that. But she was the only one who hadn't left. At least not until now.
Kyle wandered over to the fold-up table, but paused as he reached out for a paper cup. He squinted at the parked police cruiser in confusion. How long had it been there, sitting at the bottom of the drive, watching over the proceedings with that air of menace? He didn't like cops, didn't trust 'em. They were always too quick to judge, too quick to believe the worst in someone. It was the nature of their job, but it was probably the nature of the man that drove him to that particular job.
He almost jumped out of his skin when a strong hand landed on his shoulder.
"Hey, kid," Larry said, his voice still strangely soft. "How you holding up?"
"I'm—" He gulped. "I'm fine. I mean, I guess I'm doing okay." He finished reaching for his paper cup and filled it with water. He gestured toward the squad car. "You know why the cops are here?"
Larry shrugged. "No clue. Keep the peace, maybe? Make sure no one goes where they shouldn't? The county administrator said something about selling the place off."
Kyle allowed that bit of news to sink into his chest, lodging itself next to his lungs, shallowing his breaths. Larry patted him on the shoulder and gravitated toward a small group of people sipping out of their paper cups and nodding their heads at each other.
Left to their own devices, Kyle's legs carried him toward the main house. His hands jammed tightly in his coat pockets, he slowly made his way to the porch, ascending the steps cautiously, as if he were about to enter a quarantine and needed to do it as deftly as possible so as not to disturb the house, or the memories sealed within.
The wood groaned underneath his weight. He ran his fingers along the cold chains holding up the porch swing. His place to wait for Sue, bundled under jackets to keep out the cold, alone in the dark. Except that once, when he hadn't been alone. When he had a calming presence beside him, strong fingers on his shoulder, a firm leg to lie his head on and just be sad for a little while without feeling weak or stupid. Without feeling the cold creep of loneliness along his bones.
Kyle scoffed at himself, at his sudden, ridiculous display of self-pity. That kind of indulgence was left for people who needed constant company, who longed for it, who were desperate; he knew better. He had himself. He had his own life with his own dreams and he was so close to getting what he wanted. Becoming a doctor... that was what mattered. And he would do anything, give up anything, to get there. Then he'd be complete. He'd be Dr. Lewis, and he wouldn't need anything or anyone. People would need him, and he could give them their worlds back and then walk away, cleanly.
He just had to get there first.
Because he still had needs, much to his annoyance. He needed to go inside, so be with Sue's stuff, to cement certain memories and banish others.
He pulled out his old key and slid it into the lock. It still fit, clicked, turned. The county administrator hadn't taken enough precautions to keep the place pristine for sale. Turning his head, he glanced back at the cop car and stared, just stared, daring it to move forward, to release its antsy inhabitants, for them to drag him away from the closest place he could call home. The engine sparked into life; Kyle gripped the door knob tighter, keeping his eyes fixed on the cruiser, preparing himself for a fight.
But the squad car rolled away from him, backwards out of the drive and onto the main road. His eyes followed closely as it drove off and finally disappeared from sight into the blank beige distance.
He wanted to say goodbye to the horses, but they were already gone, shipped off to God-knows-where. So, instead, he wandered through Sue's living room, pulling old photos out of books, shoved between the pages as place-markers. They were mostly of the horses, so he said his goodbyes to the still images, even though it felt hollow and dead and pathetic to his own ears. It probably would have felt the same way had he been face-to-face with them. They would've understood as much as what he was saying as the photos did.
There was still food in the kitchen cupboards. A manila envelope sat on the table, PERSONAL BELONGINGS scrawled across the front. He reached out a hand for it, then stopped. What right did he have to go poking through her stuff? He entered the hall, instead, and found himself in front of the second door on the right. His room. His stuff. Well, not anymore, but he had more cause to be there than anywhere else.
Everything was the same. He thought it would be smaller, or emptier, but it was as it had always been. The same double bunk, the old blue and tan plaid curtains, the bureau with the cracked mirror. He looked down at the bed—his bed.
His first night sleeping in it, he'd had the most vivid dream. In it he was a younger version of himself, lying in a different bed, one he'd never actually slept in before, with posts and a headboard and thick, soft pillows. His mom sat at his side, stroking her hands through his hair. She spoke to him in a soothing voice, told him he was different, that he wasn't like the other boys, and younger-him didn't know he was gay yet, though dreamer-him did, and in all the confusion he heard her voice, so clear and musical, telling him he was special, that she loved him, loved him no matter what, just as he was, and that she'd never leave him.
"You promise?" he had begged. Younger-him and dreamer-him together, in stereo.
"I promise, you'll never be alone again."
He had woken from the dream in a strange, unfamiliar bed, yet so completely sure it had been real that he'd almost walked out of the room in search for his mom. Then he heard Josh snoring above him, and reality knocked the air out of his gut.
His mother hadn't visited his dreams again, except as a memory, those spotty, incomplete images that spun out of the film reel after only a few moments.
He moved closer to the bed, close enough to run his fingers along the sheets.
It was the place he'd lost his virginity. Lost his heart. And your self-respect, a mean little voice piped into his ears.
"No," he said aloud to the empty room. His voice reverberated off the walls. "No matter what came after, it was special. It was... perfect."
You needy, naive child.
Kyle closed his eyes.
You think he thought it was special? You think he thought you were special?
"Yes," he replied quietly, though he couldn't quite make himself believe it.
You're an idiot.
Kyle had no response to that, except to nod his head in agreement, so he left the room, knowing it would be the last time he would ever step foot in there, and the thought made him strangely gratified.
He returned to the living room, glancing at the picture frames on the mantel, and a sudden urge exploded in his chest. He needed to find the picture—his favorite picture. The one with Sue and the foal. That day had been amazing, seeing firsthand new life come into the world, the joy on Sue's face, the way she treated the foal as if it were her own child. And the photo had almost captured it, was such a close facsimile, that he needed to have it. He couldn't think of leaving this place, this whole city without it.
He flipped through every book, searched through all the drawers, blew the dust off an old music box and practically ripped it apart looking for a secret compartment, before he remembered. She always kept it in her billfold, in the back sleeve.
He practically ran to the kitchen, grabbing the manila envelope and dumping its contents onto the table. He picked through every sleeve impatiently, twice, three times.
It wasn't there.
It wasn't anywhere.
The frustration began mounting in his chest, growing so high he could feel it bumping at the backs of his teeth. Where was that goddamn photo? He pulled at his hair, felt the tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. He needed it. He wouldn't leave without it. He'd turn the whole house upside-down if had to. Except, he'd already done that. He'd looked everywhere. It was gone. It was nowhere.
He threw himself onto one of the kitchen-table chairs. Balling his fists, he rested his head on the cold wooden tabletop and sucked in halting breaths.
He just wanted the picture. That was all. One tiny little picture. The only thing he wanted to take away from this place, the one thing he wanted, and he couldn't have it.
Sitting up, he grabbed his wallet out of his pants pocket. He pulled out a different photo, caressed it almost unconsciously, then roughly shoved it back in place once he brain had cottoned on to what his fingers had been up to.
He remembered his mother's promise, and felt stupid, utterly stupid for believing promises told to him in a dream. It was his own fault the promises broke. They shattered like spun glass in his fingers; he'd gripped on to them too tightly, held them too close. And the shards dug in deep, so deep that the skin healed over them, so that he couldn't forget them, forget how stupid he'd always been, no matter how hard he tried.
Wiping his eyes with the backs of his fingers, he finally lifted himself out of the chair, walked to the front door, and left the house. It had gotten late, the sun dipping low in the west, and the grounds empty. Everyone had left, the fold-up table and beverages carted away.
As Kyle descended the porch steps, he saw another police car—or maybe it was the same one as before—drive past the house, slowly, as if keeping a suspicious eye on him as it passed. Maybe they thought he was trespassing. He kind of felt that way himself.
He began the long, solitary walk back to the bus stop. It was a good three miles down the road. The quiet was getting to him. He wanted to hear voices again, maybe just to silence the ones in his head for a little while. He pulled out his phone and dialed rapidly. After one ring, he quickly hung up. That wasn't the number he'd meant to call. He tried again, cursing his stupid, stubborn fingers. This time, he dialed correctly.
"Hey," he said, his voice clogging up around the lump in his throat. "It's me."
"Hey, little bro. What's up? You sound like you have a cold."
Rebecca must not have remembered where he was today.
"I'm fine. I just... wanted to hear a friendly voice, and yours is the friendliest I know."
It was the truth. He tried not to let that fact bother him.