Things I'm Seeing Without You Page 21

  I know. But it just seems like the end of something.

  It’s not the end. You said so yourself.

  There was another pause then a new message.

  You got the letter.

  I did.

  I realized something after I sent it.

  What?

  You never answered the question yourself. On that first day.

  That’s true.

  I waited. He sent no follow up. He was waiting for me.

  My answer has changed since then.

  Still nothing from him. I wrote:

  I have been in love twice.

  It came so easily from my fingertips that I immediately suspected it wasn’t true. But when the tears came back, I knew that it probably was. He wrote:

  You owe me a letter, Tess Fowler.

  Then:

  I’ll leave the FB page for a memorial. Everything else will be gone by tonight.

  And then what happens?

  Like you said: Something imperfect.

  And then before he signed off:

  I’ll be watching my mailbox.

  I put the phone in my pocket and I looked out the cab window as the heat of the afternoon made waves in the air of the city. It was just before rush hour, and the roads were nearly empty. After the driver got off the freeway, we passed a public high school. A long brick building with what looked like hundreds of small windows. It was out for the summer, and an American flag flapped lazily in the light breeze. Is that where I’d end up going? It was unimaginable.

  The cab pulled up at my father’s house, and I gave him Grace’s money and got out. Part of me expected to see her Jeep parked in the driveway with her rowing shell on top. But of course, she wouldn’t have put me in a cab just to drive here herself.

  I walked through the screen door and let it slap closed behind me. The house was a little cleaner than usual, and in the hallway, I noticed the tacky wallpaper had been stripped down. It sat in sheets along the wall.

  “Dad!” I said.

  There were buckets of paint by the staircase, and the first few steps were painted a clean white color instead of the dingy brown that used to be there. There was plastic on the railing.

  “Dad,” I said. “Are you having a nervous breakdown?”

  No answer. I kept walking until I got to the living room where I found my father on the couch with tears in his eyes.

  “You are having a nervous breakdown,” I said.

  He didn’t look up at me. His eyes were fixated on the television. I followed his gaze and saw myself. I saw myself in a cave in Sicily. He was watching the footage. As far as I knew, we had not received it from Paul yet. But now it was playing in my dad’s living room.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  Again, he didn’t look up. He pointed to an open envelope on the coffee table. I recognized the return address as Grace’s.

  He motioned for me to sit down. So, I walked across the room and sat on the ratty couch next to my father, who was covered in splatters of paint and a gummy substance that was probably wallpaper paste. He put his arm around me, and I didn’t care that he was getting paint on me. Then I looked back at the screen. The dust was swirling in the air, glittering in the Mediterranean light. And all of us were standing silent.

  “I liked what you said,” he whispered.

  I nodded.

  “It wasn’t bad,” I said.

  Paul was shooting us walking down the trail now. Moving toward the valley below. As the angle of the light changed, we looked like silhouettes against the rock face.

  I looked away from the screen. The walls of the living room were scraped down, too. Patches of old paint colors were coming through.

  “Are you tearing this place down?” I asked.

  He smiled.

  “I thought I’d make it habitable now that there’re two of us.”

  “Two of us?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Does that mean I’m getting a bedroom?”

  “If you mean a room with a bed,” he said. “Then yes. You are getting one of those. If you don’t max out any credit cards this week, you might even get a dresser.”

  He chuckled at his own joke. And he was already walking out of the room into the kitchen where he had something going for dinner. I thought about following him in. I wanted to ask him more about my room. But instead, I sat there and watched the end of the footage.

  We were so far down now that Paul couldn’t get us in focus. If I squinted, I could see us moving. But it was hard to tell. He tried to zoom in, but we were indistinguishable from the water below. I know I was down there. But everything around me was so big and dazzling there was no way to find me.

  And maybe, I thought, that was okay.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Hello, reader. The book you have just finished almost never happened. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but there was a time when I thought I would never figure out how to make it work. It took years to find its voice and without the help of some wonderful people, I’m not sure it would ever have made it there. So, here goes:

  First of all, thank you to Junita Bognanni for reading a 470-page draft of this book four times. Four times! And for listening to me talk about funeral practices at the dinner table for three years. Also, thank you for marrying me. Have I said that enough? You will always be my first reader, and the one who matters most.

  Thank you to Kathy Bognanni, who has read more books than anyone I know, and who gave me a no-nonsense reading along with a vision of what this book could be. Thank you to Cecil Castellucci for a revelatory conversation about Young Adult literature in a crowded bar in Minneapolis, and for an agent recommendation that changed everything. Thank you, Kirby Kim, agent of agents, for guiding this thing perfectly and giving me the encouragement to finish it. I’m happy to have you as a friend and a partner in crime. Thank you, too, to Brenna English-Loeb, Cecile Barendsma, and everyone else at Janklow & Nesbit.

  An enormous thank you to Namrata Tripathi, my phenomenal editor. You understood this book better than I did when we first spoke on the phone, and you have challenged and supported me every step of the way. It has been an honor to work with you. And thanks to Lily Yengle, my amazing publicist, and everyone at Dial Books for Young Readers.

  I first began this book at the American Academy in Rome on the best fellowship an artist can receive. Thank you to the Academy and to the readers who selected me for an experience where I met some of the greatest humans on the planet and sang in the hardest-working Sinatra cover band this side of the Janiculum Hill.

  Thank you to my colleagues and students at Macalester College, who inspire me on a daily basis. Readers, givers of advice, and amateur mental health professionals include: Tarik Karam, Matt Burgess, Nick Dybek, Ethan Rutherford, Hamlett Dobbins, Peter Livolsi, and Alex Albright.

  Thank you to my guru, and father, Sal Bognanni, and to Mark Bognanni, the smartest person I know. Thank you to all the Bognannis and all the Rhynas crew for your love and unwavering belief in me.

  Finally, to Roman Bognanni: I was writing this book in the hospital after you were born, wondering, after I looked at your tiny face, how I would ever finish another novel again. Now I know: I just have to look at myself the way you look at me, and then sit down at the computer. I can’t wait to hear the stories you invent.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  * * *

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.

 

 

 
" -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share