This will be where the story begins and this will be where the story ends—with Jesse standing on the edge of a roaring river. At the age of 7, he is in the center of the moment from which everything else in his life will be marked.
“Jesse? Did that happen before or after your father and your sister drown?” asked Dr. Willis, the child psychiatrist his mother will send him to at the age of 13 because his teachers are expressing concern that Jesse appears withdrawn and perhaps depressed.
“What does it matter?” Jesse will ask with half-hearted defiance.
“Good question. It’s possible it doesn’t matter at all. But I want to have a good chronological sense of your life so that I can know you better. Does that make sense?”
As much as Jesse will want to hate him, the truth is, Dr. Willis will be the only person who isn’t terrified of Jesse’s life and can talk to him about it without the slightest concern or hesitancy—as though they are talking about what Jesse watched on TV last night. And for some reason that will comfort Jesse.
Jesse nods.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” he punches out with mock irritation because Dr. Willis seems obsessed with always getting an audible response from him.
“Excellent. So, did the story you were telling me about the fight you got into with this boy Kap, happen before or after your father and your sister drown?”
“After.”
Stretching from this moment back is his life before they died and stretching forward is his life after.
But right now, no one is dead yet. In fact, no one has ever died. There had been the giant bug that he had to kill for a science project after keeping it in a jar for weeks— a cruel and devastating process for which Jesse had not fully prepared himself. It was a giant pine sawyer beetle (formally known as Monochamus) that Jesse’s dad, who had a knack for finding strange and rare things, had found on a hike, captured and safely returned home knowing that Jesse was working on a bug collection for science camp.
“Oh my god! What is it, Dad!?” Jesse squealed with delight and a little bit of terror as he and his best friend Kap slowly back away from the makeshift bug carrier that up until this day had held his dad’s golf shoes in the trunk of his car.
“That’s your job, twerp. I am the muscle of this operation. You are the brains.”
A little research informed Jesse that this bug would be an impressive addition to his collection because it was extremely difficult to find even when specifically looking for it.
“Are you gonna name it?” Jesse’s dad asked.
Jesse looked at Kap startled, like there was a right or wrong answer.
“Name it Bruce,” Kap said as a huge smile crept across his face. The boys disintegrated into fits of giggling, a state not uncommon when these two spent any time together.
Using a giant glass jar his mom typically filled with the whole-wheat flour she scooped from bins at the local health food store, Jesse created a home for Bruce with dead wood (the diet of sawyer beetles), grass and dirt. A nocturnal insect, Bruce rarely moved when Jesse was awake and Jesse often shook the jar to make sure Bruce was still alive. But on nights when he could not fall asleep, Jesse would lie for hours and listen to Bruce moving around the jar and eating.
When it was time to kill Bruce so that Jesse could pin him on the board he had created to hold the many bugs he had collected, his father and sister helped him. Everyone approached the task with inquisitive enthusiasm, including Jesse. Jesse had no idea until the poison was introduced and Bruce began racing around the bottom of the jar, desperately trying to get away from the noxious substance, that killing this bug would be so traumatic. The second he saw Bruce transform and felt the weight of what was happening, he diverted his eyes to the birth mark on his fathers powerful left bicep and pretended to be unaffected in front of his dad and sister. But in the privacy of his room as the image sank in of the enormous bug moving so quickly around the jar, he silently wept for that creature for which he had unknowingly developed a great affection.
Years later, standing in line at a grocery store, driving home from work, waiting for his number to be called at the DMV, tears will well up in Jess’s eyes when memories of this moment creep in unexpectedly and he will close his eyes tightly and literally shake his head to remove the image.
The death of the family cat had not been sad at all because the cat so clearly favored his sister. It was a long-haired bright white cat with butterscotch markings that his mother and father had named Franz because of the cat’s habit of walking across Jesse’s mother’s piano keyboard. His parents had explained to Jesse and his sister that Franz Liszt was a wildly famous Hungarian pianist from the 19th century who had been widely considered the most technically advanced pianist of his age. Both Jesse and his sister liked the idea of their cat being named after someone so obscure and felt smarter than all of their friends because they knew who Franz Liszt was.
“Jesse. You are not going to believe how the vet spelled Franz’s name,” Jesse’s mother told him as he climbed into the car with all of his gear after soccer practice.
“How?” he asked, always excited to participate in a little cattiness with his mother.
“L-I-S-T.”
“No way! How stupid can you be!?” he responded rolling his eyes in feigned exasperation as they laughed together at the world’s ignorance.
Upon learning of the cat’s death he was briefly overcome by feelings of guilt for having so thoroughly enjoyed irritating Franz by putting rubber bands around his paws and watching as the cat tried to walk and shake the irritant off. It hadn’t occurred to Jesse as he laughed uncontrollably, that some day that cat would die. Not entirely certain why it mattered, Jesse nonetheless felt like torturing a cat that would some day die seemed horribly unfair.
The closest Jesse had ever come to knowing a dead person was when a friend of Jesse’s dad had leaned in to the car to tell his parents that someone Jesse didn’t know had died. They spoke in hushed tones and he watched uneasily as his mother’s face turned white and she started to cry. Seeing her cry was nothing new as she frequently cried during movies or TV shows. In fact, the whole family had teased her for an entire evening after she cried during a commercial. He had also heard her cry a few times when she and his father had argued late at night not knowing he was still awake. But this was the first time she had ever cried about something that happened in her life while being in full view of Jesse.
“Who was that person who died?” Jesse had later asked his dad.
“Oh he was a musician your mom and I loved. His music was one of the first things your mother and I bonded over. When I found out that she was as big a fan as I was, I thought to myself, ‘This is a woman I can marry,’” his dad explained.
“No way! You decided you wanted to marry her based on that one thing!?”
“Well … I don’t know if that was the only thing. I can’t really explain it. It sounds ridiculous to say that’s how I knew I would marry her. And there are a millions of reasons I love her. But I really did know at that moment that I wanted to spend the rest of my life her. I can’t explain love. You’ll know what I’m talking about some day.”
“Ewww! Gross, dad!”
In addition to being disturbed by the notion that someday he would love a girl, Jesse was uncomfortable with the idea that his parents were so rattled by the death of someone they didn’t know. He couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if someone they knew died. Suddenly they seemed so fragile, on the verge of being destroyed by the slightest loss.
As of right now, though, Jesse knows no one who has died.
His days before this moment had been spent playing pretend games where sometimes people pretend die. He was a Packers fan and loved the LA Dodgers for reasons only a 7-year old boy could understand and he covered his room in posters he collected from fan magazines. He played video games whenever his mom let him, which was hardly ever, or so it seemed to him.
He has curly brown hair that he will hate until he is well in to his 20s, at which point he will wish he could go back and explain to young Jesse that he has the coolest hair of all the boys in his school.
“Do you know that you have the most amazing hair, ever!? Like, every girl I know would kill for that hair,” the cute girl who serves him coffee every day at the coffee shop he stops at on his way to campus will gush as she gazes coquettishly into his eyes.
“Dude! I know. Can you believe that I used to hate my hair? I was so clueless as kid,” he will respond as he walks away to dump cream and honey into his coffee to hide the coffee flavor.
He was the exact same size as every average boy in his grade and had the exact same reaction to girls as every boy in his grade. He loved pizza and anything that exploded and the perfect day, as far as Jesse was concerned, was one full of ice cream, no adults or sisters and not even a minute of sleep.
When one has never experienced death, it is impossible to imagine. So as Jesse stood staring into the white foamy water, he was unable to fully grasp the seriousness of the tragedy that was in the process of unfolding before him—the process that will ultimately lead to the part of his life known as “after they drown.”
As the seconds creep inevitably toward his life “after,” he stands motionless and largely undisturbed on the sandy riverbank where his dad left him, told him to wait while he dove into the roaring water after his sister, who had disappeared out of her inner tube. Unable to look up, he focuses on the intersection of water and sand at the river’s edge. A gush of foamy water spills over the glossy sand and falls back. As the sand soaks it in, hundreds of little bubbles push their way to the top, disrupting the smooth sheen of water. Where were they coming from, he wonders. Was there something alive under the sand?
Unlike anytime in the mind of a 7-year old boy, this moment is silent as he stands enveloped in—comforted by—the deafening sound of roaring water. After this moment Jesse’s head will begin to chatter again. But right now he is in that place where everything that has happened up until now has already happened but nothing that will happen has happened yet.
For longer than he would have guessed possible, Jesse will return to this day and look for the signs that might have foreshadowed this tragedy—a word, a glance, a rock or a tree out of place. Something that warned him and that if he had noticed at the time, he would have been able to stop the train events.
When they had started making sandwiches and snacks for the trip, Jesse realized they were out of the recycled plastic bags they used as sandwich bags instead of the normal zip lock sandwich bags that Jesse’s dad found so egregiously wasteful. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but after this day, this would be one of the many moments that he would live and relive, looking for meaning or some way to predict the future.
Some signs had seemed obvious, like the dry summer that had made the water level lower, which meant the river was rougher than usual. Some were subtle, like the nearly empty parking lot that seemed to say, “go home,” or the vultures he noticed several times circling overhead throughout the float.
He will review in anguishing detail the behavior and words of his father and sister in the days preceding the event, looking for an indication that unconsciously they knew their time was coming to an end. When his dad had said good night, had he lingered for longer than usual? Was he holding on to his last night with his son? When he said I love you, it seemed as though he might have said it more deliberately—or was it more reassuringly—perhaps to ensure that his son would never question his love for him should something happen and he were never able to say it again.
Had his sister appeared more needy with their dad? Was she aware that things were about to get scary? She seemed to have been less annoying on that day. Was she attempting to spend the last hours with her brother in peace?
For unimaginable stretches of his life he will reconstruct days and weeks in a way that either changes the outcome or at least allows him to say and do the things he believes he should have said and done had he known that they would die. Perhaps if he had not insisted on being in his own inner tube, his sister would not have insisted on being in her own inner tube.
When his dad had asked Jesse and his sister what they wanted to do this weekend because their mom was away taking care of his grandmother who was sick with something that made her forget who everyone was, his sister had suggested lame things like going to the movies or swimming at the public pool.
“Let’s go inner tubing, dad!” Jesse interrupted the litany of boring girl stuff.
The initial look on her face had been one of rejection but she quickly recovered and remembered that the only thing that mattered to her was being as cool as her brother and she screamed, “YEAH! Let’s go inner tubing, dad!”
Looking back on this moment he will hate himself for not having simply agreed to going to the movies. He will remember that he didn’t even want to go inner tubing. He was just trying to out do his sister and get her to change her mind for him.
His cast from when he had broken his arm trying to dangle from a tree like the monkeys he and Kap loved to watch at the zoo had come off three weeks earlier.
“Wait. Watch this, Kap! Remember that one guy that was hanging from one arm looking around?” were Jesse’s last words before he lost his grip and came down hard on the arm trying to brace his fall. At first he thought the tree limb had cracked, the sound was so loud.
How many times had he and Kap climbed around the sprawling Sally Wattle tree in Kap’s backyard? If he had broken his arm two weeks or even a week later, he would have had the cast removed later and his father would have objected to an activity like inner tubing for fear of reinjuring Jesse’s weakened arm.
Then there was the pile of orange life vests crumbled in the back of the raft. Jesse will remember glancing back at the vests as he stepped out of the raft into his tube. He hadn’t wanted to wear one. He was a good swimmer and knew he could take care of himself but he knew his sister should probably wear one. But if he said something about it, his dad would make him wear one, too. After debating for a split second, he opted to keep his mouth shut and jumped in his tube.
The night before the trip, his sister had been jumping on his bed trying to get his attention as he cut out pictures of his favorite players from fan magazines while their dad worked in his wood shop on a dining room table he had been promising their mother for years.
“I want to be famous,” Alexia had announced.
“What are you talking about, foo’,” Jesse responded, only half paying attention.
“I want to be famous, too.”
“Famous how?”
“I don’t know. Just famous.”
“Do you even know what being famous is, dork?”
“Yes! I know what it is! I want to be famous.”
“Yeah, but what do you want to be famous for? What do you want to do to be famous?”
“I don’t care, I just want to be famous.”
“Why?”
“So I can do whatever I want.”
“Oh my god. You are such a moron. What are you even talking about?”
“I want to be able to do whatever I want and when you are famous you can do whatever you want.”
“What makes you think that because you are famous you can do whatever you want?”
“Shut up, jerk! I know what I am talking about.”
“Um. No you don’t. You are an immature little brat and you have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I want to be able to do whatever I want. Like in the movies. They can do whatever they want. When something goes wrong, they always figure out a way to fix it. And they are never bored and they never have to do the dishes or clean the bathroom or wake up too early when they are still tired. They find things that give them magical powers or transport them into worlds where everything is fun. No one is ever stuck sitting inside doing homework every night or grounded when all their friends are going to birthday swim parties. And even when bad things happen, it is always exciting bad things like evil teachers trying to take over the world or bad kids trying to cheat at sporting events or aliens invading. It is never lame bad stuff like the TV breaking and not having enough money to fix it or people getting into bad accidents or mom making eggplant for dinner. I want to be famous so I can do whatever I want, like the famous people in the movies. So I can have fun and not be bored or scared or sad. Like that.”
“Dude. Those people aren’t famous. Those people are fiction. The people who play them are famous.”
“But they still do whatever they want.”
“In the movie, they do whatever they want. But not in real life. In real life, …like where you an I are…right now … here in real life … they are normal people and have to do all the same things that normal people have to do. You are so clueless. Those people you watch in the movies aren’t real! That is not what their real lives are like. They are ACTING.”
“I know what they are doing. And besides they still get to do all those things when they are making the movie. So they still get to do it.”
“Yeah! But not for real. They are pretending. Do you hear what I am saying? Nothing that happens in the movies is real. It doesn’t happen like that. It’s fake.”
“I know it’s fake! Stop saying that! I am just saying that they get to do that stuff even when they are acting. And I want to be able to do that. I want to have an exciting life like that.”
“I can’t even talk to you. You don’t get it. THOSE SHOWS ARE NOT REAL!”
“THEY ARE REAL. It happened. Even if they are pretending, it still happened when they pretended. They are pretending for real. And they are doing stuff that is real even if it is made up. They are real. They are real. They are real. And I can be famous, if I want and you can’t tell me what I can and cannot want and what I can and cannot believe. I can pretend and you can’t stop me and I can pretend to be real and I hate you. I hate you.”
“Whatever. Get out of my room you stupid little girl.”
“You’re stupid and I feel sorry for you because you are going to grow up and be bored and boring and alone in your stupid room,” she screamed as she jumped down off the bed and ran out of the room. After he slammed the door behind her, she lay down in the hallway and started kicking the door. After several minutes he opened the door and kicked her in the arm as hard as he could and told her to get away from his room. He knew he hurt her. She had a different cry when she was pretending. He will never forget the look on her face.
Jesse will replay this moment in his head, wishing he could change any number of things he had said and done. He hadn’t needed to argue with her. He did it because he wanted to make her see how foolish she was.
Jesse’s “after” life will always carry some element of guilt that his father and sister are in an eternal state of drowning and that he and everyone else in the world should have been nicer to these two people who would suffer such a horrible fate.
Most jarring for Jesse, though, is the unbearable fact that everything will go on after they are gone. That while his world remains shattered, everyone else will get back to life and forget this happened until they see him. He will become a shadow, a ghost, which periodically and uncomfortably drifts by to remind them that things don’t always happen the way they are supposed to.
In the weeks following the accident, after all of the services have ended and the poems have been read, after all the relatives and casseroles and family friends have gone, Jesse will walk through town one bright sunny Saturday afternoon to discover a May Day festival in full rhapsody. There will be clowns and a horse and carriage, the smell of cotton candy will fill the air, children will be chasing each other with butterflies and flowers painted on their cheeks and the sound of music will accentuate the joyous proceedings.
He kept his eyes steady on the horizon so as not to catch anyone’s eye and force them to acknowledge that very bad things happen. At his moment the idea began to creep into his consciousness that everyone was moving on and that no one has, no one does and no one ever will understand how he feels. Because if they did, each and every person would stop where they stood, sit down, fold into themselves and cry. And the sorrow would be so immense that clouds would gather in the sky and it would rain for months.
Instead, here they all were—classmates, family friends, teachers, strangers—singing, talking, laughing and soaking in the warm spring day, grateful to be alive.
But all of that comes after this moment. Right now, though he doesn’t know it yet, is the best moment of Jesse’s life. Because it is neither before nor after the worst day of his life. It is the center of his life where nothing has happened yet and any number of things are still possible.
