Root (Book One of The Liminality)

Chapter 1: The Liminality

Across the pond, a willow dances, branches twisting and swaying despite the absence of any breeze. The water’s stillness and sterility annoy me. Surface uncreased, depths devoid of fish or worms or even plankton, it may as well have been a pool of mercury.

I toss a pebble. Ripples expand and rebound off the shore, distorting the mirrored sky, cloudless yet grey. I toss another before the ripples can fade.

On a throne carved into the muddy bank, I wait for Karla, hopeful and calm, stable at my core. How much I’ve changed in the few years I’ve been coming here, as if all the neurons in my brain have been ripped apart and reconfigured. I’m only twenty-one, but I feel ancient.

Stray sprigs of tamed root inch across the flats, alternately tensing and releasing their spirals. One severed tendril pauses at my feet, sensing the presence of its master. Slowly, it curls and uncurls in time with my breath, reflecting my inner mood. I send it on its way with a glare.

Curious now, how my former foes await my beck and call like empathetic dogs. I used to think they were the nastiest things, before I learned how to domesticate them. So malleable and helpful, who knew these roots existed only to serve?

When I say ‘roots,’ I don’t mean those scraggly, dirty things that anchor trees and channel their life-giving nutrients. Sure, many here resemble something you might dig up from under a maple tree, but that’s just one iteration of their boggling diversity. You’ll find roots here as fine as spider silk or as thick as tree trunks, those that glow or vibrate, hollow ones, some slick and translucent that pulse and gurgle from their inner flows. I wouldn’t be surprised if some carried electricity or blood.

They creep and climb and wind themselves into thick and ropy tangles. They can wriggle like manic night crawlers or lie inert as dead wood, all mossy and frayed like the moorings of some old boat forgotten in a bayou.

They’re sneaky and sentient, scheming and conniving against us human souls. Some conspire with the Reapers, but I don’t think it’s voluntary. Reapers are Weavers, too. They just do their dirty work and get on with it. They don’t feel the need to boast or brag like us humans.

To ‘weave’ a root is to possess it with your will. Their diversity and mutability can be harnessed to any purpose imaginable. They’re the raw material of dreams. We can join them, split them, make them hard as steel or soft as mush.

With a glance, I spread one of the crawlers out into a sheet as thin as paper. I fold it into a crane and add it to the pile beside me.

Karla taught me all the origami I know. A crane is about all I can manage. After the tsunami in Japan, she had folded hundreds after hearing about some kind of fund-raising scheme for the victims, only to find that no one in her country knew what to do with a sack of paper cranes.

Roots will stay set for quite a while, once woven. But quite a while doesn’t mean forever. They tend to revert back to their native state after a week or so, sooner if you don’t instill enough desire into the things you’ve woven. So far, none of my cranes have dared unfold themselves.

One does not go to Root, by the way. Root comes to you. If you’re unlucky enough to have your soul plunge off the deep end, the roots will come fetching and immerse you in their world. You’ll know they’ve arrived from those fleeting blurs in your peripheral vision, those stray itches and random crawly sensations that brush or scrape against your limbs.

They’re attracted to depression of the deepest, darkest sort. They can sniff out the truly suicidal and I don’t mean the dabblers. They’ll lurk and drag you down just when you think you couldn’t possibly get any lower.

But it’s not so bad here, once you get past the Reapers. Some of us can weave a decent life out of the place. Life? Well, maybe that’s not the right word for it.

Subsistence? Persistence? Existence?

Though I do feel more alive in Root than I ever did in the world of my birth. My soul lives on here, happy, or at least hopeful, as I wait for my Karla.

Chapter 2: The Calling

Chances are, you’ll never meet anyone like me, and not just because I’m weird, and not because I’m dead. I have abilities you can’t even imagine, skills that serve me well in a place you’ll never go—if you’re lucky.

I’m not fishing for sympathy. Just because someone dies doesn’t make a story a tragedy. Death can be a good thing if it’s done right. And dead doesn’t necessarily mean forever. Nothing is permanent in the realms of the soul.

Root is not the afterlife. It’s a showroom. Its makers, whoever they were, intended it to be a tough-love/scared-straight demonstration realm for wannabe suicides.

But simply not wanting to be alive anymore does not suffice to invoke a visitation. Everyone goes through that at some point in their life. No, it takes serious intent to execute the final deed to summon the roots.

The feelings that precede such big decisions have a way of loosening a soul’s attachment on the living realm. Loose souls then vacillate between life and Root, in theory inspiring a big enough nope to encourage sticking out the rest of the charade.

Some folks don’t make it. They die and their souls move on to places like Lethe, Avernus and the Deeps for further vetting. Some are dead ends and recycling centers. Some serve as veritable prep schools for the more permanent realms of the afterlife—places like Loom.

I knew a girl from Loom once. Though I have yet to meet a soul from Heaven or Hell. That doesn’t mean those places don’t exist. The entrance and exit requirements might be more stringent than we were told. Not that I’m in any hurry to get to either place. The Singularity, though! I’ve only had peeks, but that’s Heaven enough for me.

***

Root first came calling when both Mom and Dad were still alive. Those were simpler days, when my greatest angst revolved around how to spring loose to hang with the public school kids in downtown Fort Pierce.

Being cooped up at home with mom and dad drove me batty. My parents were not horrible people. But they were parents.

Being an only child only made things worse. No siblings meant having no one to deflect their focus from me.

I got home-schooled because Mom, the librarian, was convinced that Fort Pierce High School was infested with junkies, heathens and cretins. She was absolutely correct, of course, but she had no clue that her own darling boy met at least two of those qualifications.

Sneaking out of the house was no problem. Getting a public high school clique to acknowledge my existence was a bit more challenging. I don’t know about your town, but around here, society gets ossified once you hit about fourteen.

Being home-schooled made it even harder. The old play groups worked fine until I hit ten, and then as the years went on I found I had less in common with the prodigies, religious nuts and wacko Libertarians that made the bulk of the home school crowd. Creationism was popular among that crowd. Mom, on the other hand, pulled me out of charter school because she was afraid they wouldn’t teach me enough evolution. Remember, this was Florida.

The ice breaking strategy that had worked with grade schoolers—acting all goofy as I butted my nose into the business of complete strangers on playgrounds—now usually only drew ridicule or worse—blank stares. I kept at it because it was the only tool I had in my shed.

On rare occasions, it would get my ass kicked. Even rarer, it would score me drugs, like the time I linked up with a gaggle of potheads who wouldn’t have cared if Donald J. Trump had come to light up with them.

By far, my greatest success was the time I met up with Jenny Gallagher’s crowd. This incident was notable because it involved Jenny—a female my age who acknowledged my existence. That was a rare event in those solitary days.

It happened on a Saturday in June. I was scoping out the park when I spotted a bunch of teens loafing around behind the kiddie swings under an old weeping willow. I took a deep breath, walked up to them and went into my little nonsense spiel.

Anyone seen my pet wombat?

Blank stares. Blinking. All par for the course. The idea was to hit them with the unexpected, knock them out of their comfort zones. Pathetic, I know. Juvenile. But that’s what I was—a socially impaired juvenile. It failed more often than not, but like I said, it was my only game.

I’m serious. My wombat got loose. I think it went up a tree. I gazed up into the swaying fronds of the willow.

What the fuck’s a wombat? said this guy with a vacant scowl who was built like an offensive lineman. He outweighed me by about a hundred pounds.

Whoa! A response of any kind was a great sign, way better than total silence, which happened more often than I care to think about. At least this time I wouldn’t need to slink away feeling one inch tall.

Ain’t that some kinda rodent? said a skinny guy who wore a knit cap, despite heat and humidity in the nineties.

Not a rodent. It’s a marsupial. A kangaroo-like thingie, said a girl whose cinnamon hair flowed with the breeze, every strand dancing to its own rhythm. That was Jenny, of course. You could probably already tell it was her from my purple prose.

Are you serious? You actually have a pet wombat?

Yeah. And his name is Marco. I kept my face absolutely straight as I swam in blue-green eyes like twin lagoons.

The others got up started scanning the willow branches. All except Jenny, who looked at me with her nose scrunched up.

Wombats don’t climb trees, she whispered. Don’t they burrow?

I just winked.

***

So that time, at least, my stupid little entrée worked. From that moment on, Jenny’s friends let me hang with them. I never had to bring up my pet wombat again. Most of them figured out right away that I was just goofing on them. Though Burke, the football player, was still asking me about it weeks later.

It was quite the breakthrough. A huge confidence booster. All on my own I had managed to meet a group of fellow humans my age that weren’t home-schooled prodigies or Jesus freaks. Not only that, the group included the rarest of creatures, the most mythical of beasts—a girl who liked me.

When some of the others tried to blow me off or ditch me, Jenny wouldn’t let them. She insisted that they include me in their plans and conversations, treating me as if I had equal standing with the kids she went to class with every day. That basically forced the reluctant ones to acknowledge me. I still got ribbed a lot for being a mama’s boy, but Jenny would always jump in and defend me when things got too brutal. Is it any wonder I got stuck on her so fast?

My weeks came to revolve around hanging out with the gang every Friday night and Saturday. One night Jenny didn’t show and it perturbed the whole equilibrium. Without Jenny there, those kids turned nasty on me. I clunked around their periphery like a square wheel, parrying jibes, absorbing insults. I left early and lumbered home feeling down in the dumps.

That night I was in such a fragile state, every little bit of friction with my parents ignited arguments. Over stupid stuff. Socks on the floor. The tone of my voice. And that sent me spiraling into a full-fledged funk.

I dreamt that night of being trapped in a jungle. Lianas tangled around my waist. Spider webs plastered my face. Little did I know then that these were the first visitations of Root.

Things got clearer the following week when Jenny didn’t show for the second week in a row. No one could or would tell me why she wasn’t there.

I dunno. Maybe she moved, said Burke, sporting a cruel grin.

I never had Jenny’s number. I didn’t even know how to spell her last name. I went home early, barricaded myself in my room and stayed there for the rest of the weekend.

I barely knew the girl. She was hardly my girlfriend. Still, I could not bear the thought of losing her. If she never came back to the group, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on living. Pathetic, I know, compared to the tragedies to come, but that just shows you the depth of my obsession.

Meanwhile, mom kept hassling me to practice my SATs. She was in way over her head trying to teach me college level chemistry and physics. It was driving me insane.

It drove me to consider taking drastic measures to break out of this funk. I could legally disown or divorce my parents and go off on my own. Emancipation, it was called. I could leave Ft. Pierce, go to Ohio where my Uncle Ed, who managed a landscaping business, had made me a standing offer for a job.

Other options more extreme and permanent also crossed my radar. Things were getting crowded in my head, and I wanted out.

At night, I’d creep downstairs after mom and dad went to bed, raid the liquor cabinet and scarf some of my mom’s pain killers. Not that I was a junkie or anything. I was just looking to nudge my mood towards a condition more tolerable than the status quo. By that time, I had tried just about everything but heroin, but never long enough to get hooked on anything, except for maybe alcohol a little bit. There was always plenty of wine and whiskey in the house.

So I was sitting there all drowsy and wallowing on the sofa. Some crappy movie was on, full of spies or criminals or whatever, careening in cars, taking pot shots at each other. And then this stuff came creeping into my consciousness, slithering into the space between waking and sleep. For a time, I felt stuck between two worlds, mingling the audio of those mindless movies with these under-the-forest sensations: a musty smell like the mold growing inside a rotten log. Bristly, snaky things scraping their bellies across my legs.

All of these ‘hallucinations’ started happening about a month before the embolism claimed my dad, an event that made them a hundred times worse. Hard to believe that it’s already been over a year now. There I was, a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old wanna-be rebel seeking emancipation from his parents. Dad beat me to it. Nothing is more emancipatory than death.

One windy Saturday morning, as lightning flashed against a bank of dark clouds, he collapsed on the sidewalk while fetching the mail, crumpling like a puppet with his strings cut. I watched it all happen while I was moping on the front stoop. I ran up and started CPR, the breathing part and all, pressing my mouth against his onion breath and gritty five o’clock shadow. A neighbor called 911. He was already gone for good before I even reached him.

On the day of Dad’s wake and in the weeks that followed, I took to lying in the cab of his F150, popping whatever pills I could scrounge from the medicine cabinet. Sometimes I would find mom already sitting there.

That interior of his truck retained the distilled essence of everything that had been the man named Roy Moody: traces of tobacco smoke from the time before he quit; the spearmint chewing gum he had used to compensate; with undertones of rancid French fries, stale farts and rubbed-off aftershave. Being there, I could close my eyes and imagine him sitting right next to me.

That’s how that dang truck ended up becoming a sort of shrine, never driven, devoted only to meditation about the enigma that had been Roy—devoted father and angry beast packed into five feet seven inches and one hundred forty pounds of wire and bone and sinew.

I didn’t know how I was going to manage without him. Though sometimes, when he lost his temper, he had played the enforcer, more often than not he had acted as a buffer between me and mom. Without him around, mom and I scraped more coarsely on each other’s nerves.

On the morning of dad’s funeral I left my bed early and staggered into the garage. The simple fact that the truck was present on a day that he would usually already be at work was a stark reminder of his absence. I climbed in and laid across the seat, letting my body go numb and my mind go blank until I felt nothing, not an itch or quiver or daydream to let me know I was alive. I let the heaviness flow over me like a pool of mercury.

This numb feeling soon became my new waking and walking normal. It came to be that I no longer had to steal mom’s Oxycontin to conjure it. When the fog fell over me, I greeted it like a friend. It got so that things didn’t feel right without it.

But once in a while, another sensation would intrude—a feeling like rough twine coiling around my neck and wrists, reaching out of the seat, wrapping around, hauling me down. My eyes would flash open and there would be nothing there. Close my eyes and the feeling would return.

For a while, I blamed these crawly sensations on the crystal meth I had played around with a couple months back. That had been just a lark, because that stuff scared me. It felt dangerous, like taunting a mean dog on a frayed leash, but the stuff never set its teeth into me the way it had ripped into some of my acquaintances—now fifteen pounds underweight with teeth and gums like seventy-year-old vagrants.

And then the ‘hallucinations’ began. One night when I feeling extra sorry for myself and hiding out in the pickup as usual, I felt something tighten up against my ankle, and it wouldn’t let go. When I looked down, I could actually see this gnarly root stripped of bark, snaking along the scuffed black leather of my combat boot. I was staring right at it, and it wouldn’t go away.

Jesus Christ!

I pulled at it with his hand and still it clung. I pulled out my Buck hunting knife and hacked away.

The loop loosened, bleeding white sap. I yanked my foot free and stumbled out of the cab of the truck, only to see other roots poking up out of the concrete floor of the garage, wiggling like worms, bending their tips at me like little periscopes. I screamed and ran into the house, slamming the door behind me, pounding up the stairs to my room. I dove into bed and pulled up the covers, swearing I’d go see a doc about this before dad’s insurance ran out.

I didn’t know it then, but being upstairs and cozy in my bed didn’t make one bit of difference when it came to conjuring visitations. It doesn’t matter where you are. Like I said, one doesn’t go to Root, it comes to you, wherever you keep your soul.

***

Why do they call it ‘Root?’ Well, that’s pretty obvious, though not everybody gives it that name. Some here call it ‘Limen’ or the ‘The Liminality.’ Don’t ask me what it means. Karla explained it to me once, but I forget. You can look it up if you want. I’m sure it’s in most dictionaries.

Like I said, it’s obvious why it’s called ‘Root’ to anyone who sees it in its raw and untamed form. It’s a subterranean jungle, a tangle of brown strands of every dimension, woven into sheets like old spider webs, threading in and out in every possible direction, connecting things, outlining spaces, or just getting in the way.

Root is basically a staging area for souls on the way out. It’s not Purgatory. That’s for dead people. I’m talking about live folks about an inch from ending their lives. And not from cancer or heart attacks or anything like that. The folks I’m talking about are what you might call … volunteers.

Root’s not intended for loiterers. You’re supposed to go there for the inspiration to off yourself. When even your dreams have gone dry and all you have to look forward to besides your daily life is the dim, brown cave that is what most souls see of Root, well then there’s not much point in pressing on.

The end that comes to the less gifted in Root is not so pleasant. The bearers of bad news are these nasty things called Reapers. They don’t wear cloaks or carry scythes. They’re nothing even close to human; and not like anything of this earth. Only another monster could have designed them.

But don’t ask me about the afterlife. I’m not there. Yet.

I’m James. James Moody. Nobody you’d look twice at on this end of the plane of existence. I’m just some white trash kid from Florida via Ohio. In Root, though, I’m pretty special—a top-end weaver of worlds, a warrior and resurrectionist.

Chapter 3: The Funeral

My early visitations were nothing compared with what was to come, but for a time Root only offered me little teases and glimpses. It would take some major jolts to break down the doors for good, but those were on the way. Dad’s passing was the start of a very bumpy ride.

On the morning of the funeral, Aunt Helen made breakfast for all of us—buckwheat pancakes with sausages and bacon. I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than a bite or two, but I cut some up and slid them around in the syrup to make it look I was eating. I did have a slice of bacon, though. No state of mind, no matter how dark, could ever allow me to resist a good, crisp slice of bacon.

Dad was Episcopalian so his funeral was going to be the whole shebang. We had already suffered through a four-hour wake the night before. We still had to muddle through a full mass and then a procession to the cemetery for yet another ceremony. I couldn’t wait to get it all over with and get home to mourn in peace and on my own terms.

At the church, I sat in the front pew next to Mom and Aunt Helen, her sister-in-law who had come down from Ohio with my mom’s brother Ed. Uncle Ed stayed on his feet, keeping chase after his rowdy eight-year-old twins, Jay and Josh, who were given free rein over any havoc they wished to wreak. They blew out a whole bank of votive candles before Ed could coax them to stop.

Kids, please. It’s not your birthday.

Jay, then discovered a holy water font and was whipping his wet fingers at Josh and anyone else unfortunate enough to pass between them.

Mom gripped my hand like a pet hamster she was afraid might get loose and run away the instant she slackened her grip. I just sat there and stared straight ahead, trying not to look at the coffin, wishing my bratty cousins would stop goofing around and act like they were at a funeral.

Whenever the main door creaked open, Mom would crane her neck around to see who else had arrived. I’m sure she was keeping some kind of running tally in her head of the folks who came to pay their respects to dad. Social slights were important to her.

That girl’s here, she whispered, turning back around.

What girl?

The one you were hanging out with … in the park.

I turned around and there was Jenny with her mom, settling into a pew way in the back.

I swallowed my gum. A flame that had been guttering inside of me had roared back to life. My blood, which had been settling into my lowest reaches like bilge water, began to course like superheated steam through my veins.

Mom managed a grin. You like her, don’t you?

I turned and faced the front, still not looking at the coffin, my lids pegged open a half inch wider.

I hadn’t seen Jenny in weeks. I’m not sure how she got wind of what happened to my dad. It’s not like we shared any social circles anymore. I had become a circle of one.

Her being there did a good job of taking my mind off the grotesque side show that was my dad’s coffin. At least the lid was closed this time, unlike at the wake, where he had been displayed like some slab of meat, because that’s what he was—meat. That thing in there was not my dad. My real dad—the consciousness that made all that meat move and think and talk—was long gone away to another place.

If Dad was here, there was no way he would have tolerated all these people staring at him lying in a box. Dad was a social creature. If he could have, he would have gotten up and made the rounds, with body or without, going from pew to pew cracking jokes and making small talk. There was no way my real dad was in the room with us.

Meat-Dad was an impostor and totally irrelevant. We might as well have been performing rites for a pair of his old shoes.

I kept glancing back towards Jenny, trying not to be too obvious. She seemed to be trying real hard to ignore me, apart from one brief puzzled stare. I started to worry. Why was she here, if she wanted nothing to do with me? I didn’t get it.

The priest finally came out and got the proceedings underway. When all of the mumbo jumbo was finally done, a group of pallbearers—Dad’s buddies from work—came up the aisle to carry his coffin. Mom and I followed after, and everybody else filed out of the church behind us.

Mom went straight to Uncle Ed’s car but I waited for Jenny on the steps, the downside being I had to listen to a hundred people say: So sorry for your loss.

Look at him … so brave, came a disembodied whisper.

What’s he wearing?—another subdued and anonymous voice. Shush, he’s in mourning, scolded a younger voice.

What was I wearing? Jeans with holes. Teva sandals. A white dress shirt, un-tucked. Dad would not have cared. He would have been impressed that I put on a clean shirt for the occasion.

Finally, Jenny came walking out onto the landing. Her hair looked shorter and perkier. She wore makeup for a change, and even a dress.

Our eyes met. She veered over and gave me a hug, standing one stair higher than me so our faces were about even. My heart practically burrowed out of my chest. I forgot completely about all this funeral business, oblivious to several couples who passed by, patting me and whispering condolences. It might as well have been just me and Jenny alone on those stairs.

Sucks. What happened to your dad.

Yeah, was about all I could muster. I was having trouble gathering my breath.

Jenny’s mother stood a few steps back. She looked nothing at all like her daughter. She had the face of a bulldog and a body to match. She hovered by the door, trying to smile, looking very uncomfortable.

Burke told me. I was gonna come on my own but my mom insisted on coming along. Can you imagine? I need a chaperone to go to a funeral. She doesn’t even know anybody here.

My eyes lingered on Jenny’s face, studying every freckle. Haven’t seen you downtown lately. Where’ve you been?

Grounded, she said. For no good reason. Just … sass. She tossed a glare at her mother.

Are you still?

Nah. But I’m not allowed to hang out in the park. My dad freaked when he found out it was just me and a bunch of guys. I don’t know what the heck he’s worried about. They’re all good kids. What’s he thinking? I’m gonna get gang-banged or something? I mean, really.

Shit, I said. That means we don’t get to hang out. I mean, like ever.

She scrunched her eyes. Why the heck not?

Well, because the park’s the only place I ever get to see you.

That makes no sense at all. We can—

Something in her expression shifted, like she had lost her favorite earrings and remembered where she had left them. But it was more than that. It was a bigger change, an epiphany that momentarily rendered her speechless. A smile invaded her face. The light that sprang from the depths of her eyes made me gasp.

There … are … other … places … you fool, she said. You never heard of a mall? Movies? Her eyes went wide. Hey, you know what? My big sister’s having a beach party next weekend. Upperclassmen mostly, but I’m gonna go. Wanna come? She glanced towards the hearse. I mean, if you feel up to it.

A quake trembled through me. Um. Sh-sure! Definitely!

It felt so wrong to feel so good with a funeral procession ready to roll and my mom blubbering on her brother’s shoulder, but I think Dad would have approved. He worried about me being such a loner. He would have been proud to see me making a date with a girl at his funeral. It was certainly something he would have bragged about. Who knows, he might have been bragging about me right then, wherever he had gone.

Great! I think we’re going Saturday at nine. Jillian’s taking the minivan. You can meet us in front of the library. I’ll save you a spot.

Cool.

She patted my arm. I’m afraid we can’t go to the cemetery. Mom’s got a hair appointment. But I’m so sorry about your dad. Must be so hard.

I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded.

Looking forward to Saturday, she said, winking.

Me too! Th-thanks. For inviting me.

I watched her walk away, astounded by what had just transpired. I just stood there, letting the last few minutes resonate through my being.

I heard a long whistle. Uncle Ed stood on the sidewalk, waving for me to join him. Cars were lined up, ready to go. I realized that I was standing alone on the church steps. I stumbled back down to the car in a stupor.

***

Mourning is supposed to progress in a series of phases, one leading into the other. That’s what the grief counselor told me, anyhow. Problem was, neither mom nor I could seem to break out of shock and denial.

Mom was a wreck. She stayed in her pajamas all day, and lurched around the house like a zombie.

She kept on making breakfast for Dad, setting out a plate of bacon and eggs, dumping it in the trash when it got cold. I, too, was caught in the same time loop. On Saturdays I washed his truck like always, still expecting to find a ten dollar bill show up on my dresser. Nobody dared sit in his chair in the family room, not even Uncle Ed or the twins.

The dynamics in the house were just wrong now without him. At first. Mom tried using me to compensate for his absence, gossiping to me like I was some substitute husband. What did I care what the neighbors were doing with their septic tank or who was snubbing who?

Thank God Uncle Ed’s family stayed with us that first week after the funeral to take some of the pressure off me. Aunt Helen became her gossip receptacle and spared me the bother.

They hadn’t intended to stay this long. Uncle Ed was anxious to get back to his business in Cleveland, but Mom kept breaking down. She would go all catatonic, refusing to shower or eat, locking herself in the master bedroom.

Ed was reluctant to leave with her in such a state, so they made arrangements to stay on till the weekend. Aunt Helen did her best to keep mom occupied, taking her shopping, to the movies and for long drives along the waterfront.

Ed didn’t do a heck of a lot to help out beyond being there. He stayed inside the house all day, watching ESPN, munching Doritos and screaming at the twins who had taken to making forts from the sofa cushions and blasting each other with Nerf weapons.

For the owner of a landscaping company, Ed didn’t seem to take much interest in the state of our lawn, not that I had any intention of mowing it. Seeing those lanky grass blades blossom into seed heads felt life-affirming. Our overgrown lawn paid homage to Dad’s absence and what he used to do for our household. The neighbors did not dare complain.

One morning, when Aunt Helen had me bring Ed a cup of coffee, I found him in dad’s office sorting through a stack of papers, muttering to himself.

Something wrong, Uncle Ed?

He gave me this sick look and tried to smile. Eh. It’s no big deal. Let’s just say your dad wasn’t the best at staying on top of things. I can’t make head nor tail out of the mortgage refinancing stuff. And I was kind of hoping he’d’ve set up some kind of life insurance. But no.

He was talking about it. I mean, mom kept nagging him about getting some.

Yeah, well. Apparently he never got off his butt to get it done. Ed got up from the chair, and brushed back a dangling lock of hair.

His grey-green eyes looked so much like Mom’s. Yet, little else about him was anything like her. He wasn’t curious about the world like she was. He had never gone to college. And he seemed to have little interest in the world beyond Cleveland. But he was her brother and my uncle and had always been good to me.

James? You ever need a job, you can come up to Ohio and work for me.

You mean it?

He shrugged. Why not? If you learned anything from your mom, I know you can write, work with numbers. I could use some help in the head office. Especially if you could bone up on some accounting. Why don’t you see if there’s some night classes at the community college or something?

I should have been grateful for the offer, but a desk job? That had no appeal to me whatsoever. The coolest part of landscaping to me was the world-building—carving up dirt with bulldozers and backhoes; creating hills and dales, rock gardens and water features; transforming boring yards into living sculpture. That was more my style.

How about a job outside? I mean, if I came to work for you?

He narrowed his eyes. You don’t wanna be doing that.

Why not? I think I’d like it. I think it’d be cool.

Uncle Ed sighed. Trust me. It’s not something you want to be doing. He went into the kitchen and got a Bud out of the fridge. Yard work is why God put Dominicans and Guatemalans on this earth.

***

I gladly let my twin nine-year-old cousins sleep in my room. That week, I pretty much stayed up until everyone else had gone to bed and then crashed on the sofa. I didn’t sleep a whole lot, between thinking about Dad and thinking about that beach party on Saturday.

Despite the pall that the funeral had spread over everything, I had the sense that this beach thing was going to be a momentous occasion—a major crux in the story of my life. I certainly couldn’t hype it up any bigger in my head.

The way I saw it, Jenny was fishing for a way for us to connect, creating an opportunity for our feeble and inefficient banter to evolve into an actual relationship. This was monumental. It had never happened to me before—a girl my age taking interest in me, reaching out to me, wanting to get to know me.

That sort of thing probably happened every day to all sorts of kids in the corridors of public high