Author's note

I had planned to have this done sooner but I had to fly home due to a family emergency. I'm going to try to get the next one out a little faster, but bear with me.

Deciduous

The next Friday morning, Jess awoke to the shrill ring of the telephone. His eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness of his room, and he tried to guess what time it was. No one ever called before the sun came up. Unbidden, his mother's face swam into view, and a tight knot twisted in his belly. He heard Luke's bedroom door open and strained his ears to hear, but the phone was on the opposite side of the apartment, and all he could hear was a low murmur when his uncle spoke. He sat up slowly and waited, staring at his hands. When his uncle's footsteps came to a stop outside Jess's door, he felt a heavy weight settle between his shoulders and braced himself against it.

The doorknob turned slowly, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Luke come in and stand by his bed.

"Jess, uh, that was the—a friend of your mom's."

The cops, Jess thought bitterly.

"And um…well, I don't know…" His uncle stopped and took a deep breath, but Jess could hear him struggling. "…I don't know how to say this, but—"

"She's gone, right?" he finished for Luke.

"Yeah, she…yeah," Luke said, his voice failing him.

"How…what happened?"

"You don't need to—"

"Tell me," Jess said quietly.

Luke sighed heavily. "She was…they said she'd probably had too much, y'know, to drink, and then fell asleep, and when her body tried to…get rid of everything, she…well, she…it looks like she…drowned."

Jess nodded slowly. A small, distant part of him was aware that this news had been given to him by Liz's brother, and that Luke was also shocked and in need. However, the larger part of him was grappling with a vicious, violent rush of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. Anger came first, baring its teeth and latching onto his throat. Then relief reached into his gut and hauled guilt up gasping from the hole he thought he'd drowned it in. Sorrow followed quickly like a lost child and brought fear alongside. Together they howled and tore at his eyes, and it was all he could do to remain still and staring at his comforter.

He heard his uncle mumble something and leave the room. Jess let out a strangled breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. His mind raced backwards. He was nine, tugging at her sleeve first because he was hungry and then because he was scared. He was thirteen, angry and conscious now of the warning signs: the acrid smell of alcohol oozing out of her pores; her eyes, drowsy and distant; that tone of voice that meant danger. He started to stay away from the apartment that year, as much as he could. Looking back now from the finality of her end, he wondered if things would have turned out differently had he been around. But she had so easily ignored him when he was young and dependent on her. He hadn't been enough, even when he'd been small and eager to please, and he knew, terribly, deep in his bones, that his dour, teenage face could never have persuaded her to do anything that she didn't want to do. So he cursed her, furious and alone.

Soon, he noticed that his arms were shaking and wondered how long he had had his fists clenched. He glanced up, his vision blurred, and saw that his room was bathed in the yellow light of morning. He squeezed his eyes shut, unsurprised that the world around him would continue to shine if only just to spite him. He stood up and began to pace, flexing his fingers. His head and his heart were pulling him to a place he did not want to go, and as he always did when he wanted to avoid something painful, he decided to leave. He dressed and walked out of his room, dreading seeing the pity on his uncle's face, but noticed that Luke seemed to have had the same leaving impulse. Jess went down the stairs, past Ceasar opening the diner and out to the sidewalk. He was not unfamiliar with running away from himself, so he let his feet take him where they would.

An hour later, panic was rising in his chest. There was nowhere to go, and he was exposed. As he strode toward the bridge, he thought of Manhattan. There'd be any number of things to do within walking distance, and he'd be chasing them down one by one. Images of his life in New York made him feel sick, though, so he veered quickly away from those thoughts and instead slipped into the trees that stood to the right of the bridge. He'd hoped the shade would make him feel less on display, but sunlight crashed happily through the leaves and branches near him, and he wondered if at any point the woods would get deeper or darker. He lifted his head and considered what was in front of him. As his eyes focused on what lay farther in the distance, he saw the granny smith greens deepen reassuringly to jades, olives and hunters. He looked back down at his feet and began to pick his way toward the dark, strangely thankful for the muck and the mess and the thick, unruly undergrowth. He had to focus to avoid stepping in mud up to his ankles. He had to go slowly and deliberately. He had to look around him and consider which plants deserved the widest berth and which he could brush against with least regret. His body and mind leaned eagerly on this concentration, and he let it take over.

Eventually he noticed the ground sloping downwards. He didn't resist, unable to expend more energy countering gravity when it was all he could do to keep moving forward. The earth beneath his feet changed little by little, and he slipped and tripped over small stones until he came to a stop near a long shelf of rock. He studied it absently, chose a spot free of moss and mud, and sat down, distantly distressed that his city stamina had dwindled in such a short time. Before he'd been shipped off here, he'd been able to walk for blocks without a single ache or pain. Now, his thighs felt weak, he was breathing heavily, and his back was taut and tense. He wondered if he was really tired or if this was what grief felt like.

He sat with his head bowed for a time, unwilling to look beyond his own body for fear of accidentally admiring a color, texture or shape. Instead, he memorized the way the mud looked on his shoes and the damp that was creeping up the bottom of his jeans. He looked at his hands and saw several long scratches that began to sting as a soft breath of air passed over them. He thought back, trying to remember getting scratched, but he couldn't. His eyes crawled slowly over the watch on his wrist, looking without seeing that the watch read 12:23. His whole body was suddenly too heavy, and he leaned backwards until his back met the earth. He felt strange and far away from himself. He stared upwards, trying to organize his thoughts. His eyes unfocused as the green canopy above him swayed in the breeze. Abruptly, he remembered the year he turned eleven. It was one of the times when his mother had tried to pull herself together, and she'd started to make jewelry from odds and ends. She'd used a lot of green. He'd been hopeful. For years afterwards, when she'd inevitably fallen back into old habits, he would occasionally find a bead or an earring hook around the apartment and toss it bitterly in the trash, wondering what other pieces of her he would inherit.

He shook his head and tried to make sense of the shapes that had begun to swim in front of him, blurred by tears that threatened to fall swift and hot. Desperate to drown himself out, he focused his ears on the soft chatter of birdsong that filled the air and a steadier knocking that he thought may have been a woodpecker. Small things were rustling among the underbrush, busy with the wild duties of life, searching and preparing. He wondered where the nests were, if they were well-hidden, and who would survive the coming fall and winter when the leaves fell off the trees and left everything bare. His breath caught in his throat; no matter where he turned, there was no way for him to control the direction of his thoughts. The trees above him, the birds in his ears, the salt in his eyes, all of it overwhelmed him. He tried to understand the thoughtless, primitive impulse to multiply and what it meant that he was here, and she was not, where his father was, if he was still alive and, if so, why he stayed away. He thought of his uncle, his stilted way of talking and caring, and wondered what it was like to be young with him. What was she like when she was Jess's age? Had she felt alone? Did she feel anything at all at the end? Did she think of him?

The birds continued to sing, and the branches continued to sway, but he heard and saw less and less. The memory of the last time he'd seen her was threatening to bubble to the surface and he had very little hope left of keeping it at arm's length so he let it come.

The morning before the bus, before Connecticut, he'd woken to the sound of her shuffling angrily around the kitchen. He'd known the night before that she would be angry. He'd come home for the first time in days and earlier than usual, so the lumbering, glowering man she'd taken to most recently had seen him on the couch as he and Liz had stumbled into the apartment together. The guy had gotten upset, having apparently been under the impression that she didn't have kids, and he'd left angrily. Jess had pretended to sleep through this, hoping he could get out early enough and stay away long enough to avoid her erratic fury. But she'd anticipated this and beaten him to the morning, opening and shutting drawers loudly while she made coffee. He woke with a start, bleary-eyed, only half-conscious, and saw her staring at him from across the kitchen bar.

"Oh good, you're awake," she said, her voice icy.

He sat up and turned to face her.

"Why'd you come back last night?"

"Had to," he said with a shrug. He knew she didn't care about the actual reason. She didn't want to know about his friends whose parents let him crash with them when he asked or about how he came home every so often so that he wouldn't wear out his welcome with them. She'd never even met Tommy, his good friend since eighth grade, whose older brother, Seth, was off to college now and whose mom, Mrs. Blakely, had offered him Seth's room whenever he needed it. He wished he could shout their names at his mother and make her understand what came so easily to other families, but he bit his tongue. There was no use.

"I wish you hadn't. I hate it when you're here. You make me miserable," she spat at him, wrenching him back to his reality. He sat at the edge of the couch, his head bowed, his teeth clenched, furious.

She continued, dispassionate now and seemingly talking to the air. "I should've waited to have a kid. I don't want you here. You're so…all you do is cause problems and get in the way. What is the point of you?"

"The point of me?" Jess said loudly. "What's the point of you? You've never been a mother. You've barely even been an adult. You can blame it on me all you want, but I'm not what's standing in the way of your great success working one dead-end job after another, picking up loser after loser."

"Everything's better when you're gone," she said, her face stony.

Jess scoffed. "Do you have any idea what kind of shit you'd be in without me?! I've bailed you out on rent, I've kept your flimsy-ass place from completely falling apart, I've—"

"Oh, fuck you, I don't need you!"

"So kick me out then, Liz! See how long you last!"

"I can't just kick you out! I'd get arrested," she said hotly. "But…" she began, taking a breath and looked at him with something like delight, which sent a chill down his spine. "I decided last night. I'm going to call your uncle, and you'll go stay with him."

He remembered how stunned he'd been at the matter-of-fact way she had said this. She'd planned it out. She'd considered, carefully, what her best option was in getting rid of him. Daydreamed about it, probably. He had stared at her, unable to speak, and watched and listened as she called her brother, who he could hear shouting over the phone. She'd said he'd been getting into trouble, blaming him for what was happening, and after a minute, she slammed the phone down and triumphantly declared that he would leave on the next bus to Connecticut. He'd watched as she'd found his duffel bag and tossed it at his feet. Eventually, he'd stood up and begun to gather his things, noticing that in his cold fury, his hands were calm and deliberate. She had walked him to the bus station, paid for his ticket, and they had parted ways a short time later in hateful silence.

That was the last time he had seen her. Those were the last words spoken between them. Those were facts that he would live with now forever. This empty bitterness was all she'd left him, and he carved out a dark place inside himself for it, somewhere to keep it, a bastard's heirloom.

Sometime later, he heard a sound in the distance that resembled his name. He listened. He heard it again after a few moments, so he stood up. The light had faded, but he wasn't sure if clouds had moved in or if evening was approaching. Normally, the possibility of getting caught in the rain would make him move a little faster, but he found that he couldn't be bothered. He walked slowly in the direction of the town and the voice.

By the time he could see the bridge in the gray twilight, he recognized that it was Rory calling him. She'd come to look for him. His chest tightened painfully, and he drew a shaky breath before stepping out from beneath the trees. She had turned to call out in the opposite direction and didn't see him. He couldn't think of what to do to get her attention, so he just kept walking. A twig snapped beneath his foot as he stepped onto the bridge, and she turned around quickly.

"Jess! We've been—" Rory started and cut herself off quickly as she absorbed the sight of him.

"Rory…" he mumbled, his voice rough from strain and disuse. He walked to her slowly until he was close enough to drop his head on her shoulder and feel her arms close around him. He wrapped his arms around her and breathed her in. For the first time since he'd woken up that morning, he felt like he was coming back into himself again.

They stood that way for a while. He focused on her fingers, which stroked the back of his neck and played gently with his hair, and promised himself that he would never forget the way it felt. Concerned and careful.

After a minute, Rory broke the silence.

"Jess…Luke was really worried. We should get back," she whispered.

He nodded and pulled away. She took his hand and leaned into him, and they turned to walk back to the center of town.