This breakup is not a big deal, I tell myself.
It’s not relevant, and it hardly counts, and I shouldn’t have to face the fallout of us not beinguson my own.
Four
Mom insists I spend the weekend resting, which I take as permission to not think about anything stressful and simply cozy up in bed and read. A few months before Dad died, I researched a list of books everybody needs to read in their lifetimes, and it became the official reading list for the Cartwright Father-Daughter Book Club of Best Books to Read Before You Die.
For more than one reason, I wish we’d picked a different name.
All the way to August, Dad and I spent hours on the phone discussing George Orwell, bell hooks, Emily Brontë, and Dad’s favorite, Zadie Smith. Dad took it as a personal challenge to argue any point that was opposite to mine, to “make me think.” He was immovable in his opinions and completely obnoxious when he managed to win me over to his side. He used to say that, at its core, every story was about love.
I think that was true about his story too. One great big adventure that he incorporated me into whenever I visited him in Portland after the divorce. He’d take me to all the museums and galleries and bookstores he loved, cherished coffee shops he liked to attempt to write in. We’d act like tourists and overdose on lobster, go to concerts of Dad’s favorite musicians that he only sometimes had tickets to. Meet up with his eccentric artist friends and whichever woman he happened to be dating at the time.
We were still doing our book club, smack in the middle ofToKill a Mockingbird, when his heart stopped, but when I got to the end in September, I flipped to the beginning and immediately started again.
Today on my Mom-imposed “me time,” I reach for my twenty-fifth book once again, but I can never do it. I can’t read another book on our list without Dad. I go for a walk because my muscles are itching for a run, despite where I’m sore from the crash. I wear a T-shirt with one of Dad’s favorite bands on it, always funk music. I didn’t inherit his musical taste, but I saved his T-shirts, his old music records, as many of his books as I could stand to keep. As I walk, I try to think of only happy things. Sonotthe book list I will never finish,notthe stress of making plans for the future,notthe heartache of losing the boy I love.
But it’s pretty much a lost cause.
It turns out, you can’t outrun your life.
***
Part of me wishes I could go on “recovering” into the new week, but by Monday, even I’ve exceeded the amount of moping I can tolerate, so I’m back to school. It turns out there’s only so much BookTok recommendations can do to fix a broken heart. If I was brave enough, I’d wear my heartache on the outside. I’d walk around in a flowing all-black lace getup like some grieving Victorian widow, but I realize people get committed for that kind of thing.
So I settle for two black stud earrings, the open secrets no one will notice.
As I enter English class, Mr.Tan hands me the essay I turned ina week early last Monday, with a circled red 98. Before I can ask where I lost two marks, he says, “You hanging in there, Zadie?”
Mr.Tan is in his mid-forties, a perpetual wearer of beige cardigans, and one of Dad’s old friends. He discovered Dad was M. L. Cartwright, the author ofMoon Over Hanover, during a parent-teacher conference, and Dad was never able to shake him again. Mr.Tan has been giving me sad eyes for a month, since the one-year mark of Dad’s death, reminding me at every turn that there are resources available if I need them. For the briefest second, I don’t know why, I think he’s talking about Dad, and I almost blurt out that I’m not reallyhanging in there. That some days I miss him so much my bones ache.
But then I remember what he’s really asking: the accident, Jason, Jason’s coma.
I just manage to blurt out an “It’s tough, but” before I’m flanked by a bunch of people I’ve gone to school with since kindergarten.
“Oh my God!” Penelope Miller says, throwing her arms around me.
Penny and I aren’t friends exactly. With me hopefully going to Princeton and Penny heading to UMaine, there’s no way we’ll keep in touch once we graduate. Still, she hugs me fiercely now. The kind of hug you give a person you never thought you’d see again.
“Wow, thanks!” My voice is muffled by her shoulder. “I love your haircut.”
“Ugh, thanks,” Penny says. “Caleb hasn’t even noticed.”
Before I’m fully out of Penny’s embrace, somebody else hugs me, and then another person, and then another. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know—”
“I’m so sorry about the accident.”
“I’m so sorry about Jason.”
“We’ve been praying for him.”
“We’ve been praying foryou.”
“You should sue that driver!”
“I heard you had a concussion.”
