Nano Snippet

Gradually, as though someone had brought it near me, I heard the sound of the phone ringing. “Are you alright, Kate ? ”

What could I answer? The question made no sense to me at all. Alright? When everything was all so wrong?

“They’ve found his… He …”

“ I know, honey. I know. Do you want me to come over?”

After they’d given up looking for him, Kevin’s body had been found wedged against the river bank, stuck between some rotting logs. His mother had called me. She thought I would want to know, but I didn’t really. I wanted not to know, I wanted the truth to go away.

It was a clear, brilliant afternoon, Friday. Kevin had been missing for four days and I’d known for two hours where he’d gone to by then. But it felt like it had happened a long, long time ago. To other people. Not to me, not to my Kevin.

“Do you want me to come over?”

I must have let the question hang for a long time, or maybe she repeated it again and again. At some point I noticed that the phone had gone dead. I replaced the receiver slowly, like I was afraid it might shatter.

When Ella arrived, I was still sitting on my bed, staring down at the telephone. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t ringing. I remember thinking that Kevin would be calling me any moment and I didn’t want to miss his call.

She put her arms around me and gave me an awkward hug. Neither one of us was in the habit of touching, being touched. I had to repress the urge to push her away. Even in the state I was in, I knew that if I moved so much as a muscle, I would slam her against the wall, throw her to the floor and strangle her. Anything to keep the tide of pain inside from rising any further.

“You must feel so awful, Kate. I mean, he wasn’t my boyfriend, I know. I barely knew him, right? Still, I can’t stop thinking about him either. How will I ever – I mean, how will you ever get over him?”

Only then did I focus on her face. But only for a second or two, because I couldn’t hold onto the image. In my mind, it kept being submerged. Just like Kevin, I thought, who would have floated around on his own in the river after he fell. Did he die right away? Before he hit the water? Or had his heart stopped before he’d reached it?

Despite the care with which she’d applied her make-up, her long lashes thick with mascara, I noticed then that Ella’s eyes were puffy and red. I envied her then. I hadn’t cried yet. I hadn’t screamed, I hadn’t even moved since Kevin’s mother had called with the news of her son’s death. When I finally started to cry, would I feel better, or worse?

“It’s just like him, isn’t it? If ever I’d had to guess how he would go – I mean, on purpose, you know – that’s exactly how I would have imagined him doing it. Slipping away quietly into the water like that, without even leaving a note.”

Had he not made a sound as he fell? Did he drop down without taking a leap, or had he soared in an elegant arc, stretching his body as far as it would go, as though he were getting ready to fly?

Ella kept on talking. I guess she thought she was distracting me, being a good friend by staying by my side and waiting until I finally broke down so she could offer me her shoulder to cry on when I did. But I wasn’t about to. I was going to keep my pain to myself. It was all I had left of him now. I even regretted having told Ella so much about him, about us. I hoped Kevin would forgive me for all I’d told her about him already. As though he were standing before me, I promised him that with time, she would forget, just as I vowed that I would not.

But I was wrong. Not only did Ella’s memories of Kevin never fade, it seemed to me that while my own pictures of him eventually grew fainter as the years went by, hers acquired crisper edges. Details about him – little things I could barely remember about him – resurfaced. Long after I’d managed to let go of him, Ella would continue to bring him up. It felt like she didn’t want to let me forget him.

But it wasn’t about me. It was about her. Ella was the one who wouldn’t let herself forget the way Kevin died.