Page 130 of All That We Are Together
“You want me to wear fluorescent green?” Justin complained.
“Actually, I’d fucking pay for that.” I laughed and he slapped me on the back of the neck. “Hey, I’m driving!” I said. “Dad, say something to him.”
“Something,” my dad joked.
I smiled, shook my head, and drove through the silent, empty streets. I slowed down when we reached our destination and wheeled around the Joneses’ old house to park in the back, behind the wall that faced the woods. When I parked, we noticed how quiet it was, and for a few seconds, none of us moved.
“We should get started, right?” I said.
“Give me a flashlight,” Oliver said, stepping out and shutting the door softly behind him.
The rest of us followed. I felt strange as I remembered the night Leah had asked me to go there. I remembered shivering as I held her around the waist to get her over the wall that was now behind us, and how her hand held mine as we walked through the grass, and that intense, warm hug in the middle of that studio full of dust and paint…
I tried not to think of her, but there was no point.
She was beside me every step I took, when we opened the door, when we walked through the living room with the furnishings covered in sheets. She was there when we climbed the steps and looked through every room searching for memories it was now time to recover. Obviously for the new owners, that place meant nothing, they’d turn it to rubble and sweep away those lost moments along with the building dust, but for us, all those old objects and photos were throbbing with life, with joy.
After some struggle, we managed to throw our full backpacksand the abandoned paintings that had remained too long in darkness over the wall. Justin gave his opinion on each step we took and urged us to be quiet every five minutes. Dad loved the idea that we were doing something illegal and keeping it from Mom. And Oliver could hardly speak as we gathered up those reminders of his family.
For the last trip inside, it was just him and me, while Dad and my brother packed everything into the trunk of the car. We went in one last time to look through all the rooms, our flashlights casting shadows.
“You all right?” I grabbed him by the elbow.
“Yeah. Thanks for this, Axel.”
“Don’t thank me; this was your sister’s idea. She asked me to come here a couple of months ago, just a few weeks before we left for Paris. I… It’s strange, I must have just taken it for granted that you all cleared the place out after the accident.”
“We couldn’t. Leah was so fucked up, we had just rented a small apartment, and all I could get was the really important stuff. It wasn’t the best time, you know? I think there was even a part of me that didn’t want to take anything, because it still hurt too much. I swear sometimes I can’t believe we made it through.”
He didn’t need to say more. I understood.
Death is like that. It catches you off guard; it shakes you up and leaves you with a pain and emptiness so intense that you can’t even think about the people who are gone. It’s a shield, a way to keep going from one day to the next, pretending that something didn’t happen that made the ground shake beneath your feet. But then time passes, days, months, years. You blink, and you realize that it’s beenfour whole years since everything changed. And on some random afternoon, while you’re listening to music, painting, or showering, you get shaken by one of those memories that would have saddened you before and now, all of a sudden, they’re just…beautiful.
Yeah, beautiful. Full of light. Of longing.
And your suffering sheds its skin and loses intensity.
And the strong colors give way to softer ones.
“Even if it was Leah’s idea, thank you for this.”
Oliver gave me a comforting slap on the back.
I looked one last time at the living room where we had spent so much time with Rose and Douglas, with my parents and my brother, and with Leah growing up around me. I had no idea she’d become the love of my life.
Just before stepping outside, I looked at one wall and saw a painting of hers, one of the first she ever did, one that caught the eye of a family friend who invited them all to visit the gallery in Brisbane they were driving to on the day of the accident. I handed Oliver the flashlight.
“Hold this a moment.”
I dragged the sofa over to the wall and stood on the back to reach the frame.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Oliver asked, waving the light back and forth.
“This is an act of love for your sister. The least you could do is lend me a damn hand.”
“Let me give you some advice along with it,” he said, climbing up beside me. “Don’t try and be romantic. It makes you look pitiful. Just be yourself instead.”
“Very funny,” I murmured as I grabbed the picture.