GRIEF, GRAND CANYON

Annabelle Ford

I.

  We stood shoulder to shoulder, Raph and you and I, and not a word was spoken as our eyes hunted the canyon for understanding. Above, the ravens soared, and the valley of stone stretched below. Raph glanced in my direction, where I squinted into the great emptiness. Between us, your presence loomed, tall and towering and quiet.

“You’ll see,” Raph had told us. “You think you can’t be amazed. You think everyone’s hyped it too much. But it will still knock you off your feet.” I chose to believe him. In the days leading up to our visit, I allowed the balloon of anticipation to grow in my chest, and as we finally approached the lookout point, I kept an eye out for awe, which I expected to be waiting for me there, as though to say, “See? I showed up after all.” But when I got to the edge, when I placed my hands on the railing and let my eyes roam the great expanse, I felt nothing.

I’d never much liked rocks, to be honest. They always seemed too cold and impersonal, not to mention antipodal to New England’s verdant foliage, which remains, I’m convinced of it, my one true love. A decade in Paris hasn’t managed to soften the ache in my heart for the rustling trees, the singing rivers, the crisp air of our golden Pioneer Valley.

Raph had moved to Arizona five years earlier and fallen in love with its wild nature from the start. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised; when we were kids, he’d watch dinosaur movies with his mouth hanging open, absorbed by the curious creatures and their rocky terrains. These days, when Raph spoke about the wonders of the American Southwest, with its rocks and its cacti and its desert, there was that same childish enthusiasm we’d known all those years ago.

“It sounds amazing,” you, who were the last to stay local, would always tell him, in your deep, gravelly voice. “I’d love to see it.”

I never knew if you were serious or not, but I would nod in agreement anyway. And when Raph inevitably concluded with, “You guys should come visit,” you and I would nod again.

You made it there before I did. Mary flew you to out to surprise Raph for his birthday. My obligations in Paris had held me back then, but I was here now, a year later, and as we approached the lookout point, Raph turned to me and asked, “You ready?”

I’d assumed that my indifference to stone wouldn’t matter. This was the Grand Canyon, after all. And yet, as I stood on that red rock rim that stretched farther than the eye could see, as I muttered “wow,” again and again, I was intimately aware that I was performing awe rather than experiencing it. It felt important that I grant this to Raph, that I confirm to him that this was as amazing as he’d promised, and that I actually couldn’t believe it was real. But how could I be blown away by this great void, I wanted to tell him, when we’d just known an emptiness even greater and less believable than the one before us? I could not say this, so we fell into silence instead, and as we stood there, the cool air from the canyon’s depths rose up and wound its way about our ankles, filling the space of your emptiness which gaped between us.

II.

I was halfway to Arizona when your sister texted me.

“Sorry to bother you,” she wrote, “but when was the last time you spoke with Sam?”

My layover in New York was five hours long, a lapse of time that felt like forever until I was rushing through my phone, hurrying to find our last exchange (about my manuscript) and to relay the time back to her (Tuesday afternoon) and ask what was going on (“everything OK??”).

I knew it was bad when Raph called me. I was in line for customs, suspended in the nebulous territory of an airport neutral zone, neither in my adopted France nor on American home ground, when Raph informed me that you — our beloved Sam — had been found with a gunshot wound in your home. That was all we knew for the moment. I hung up and focused on my breathing, and when the customs agent welcomed me back to the United States with a smile and asked how I was, I didn’t know how to answer, because I didn’t know yet if you were still alive or not, thus if I was OK or not.

I knew it was over when your sister called.

“It’s the worst news,” she said, and I crumpled.

I can’t explain the feeling, the folding inwards of one’s self in the face of sudden horror. I had to tell Raph, Sam, do you realize? I had to be the one to inform my childhood best friend that his other childhood best friend was gone forever. I sat on the concrete floor of Terminal B and drew my knees to my chest, buried my head in my hands, surrendered to the shock. An airport terminal is lonely enough as it is: try being alone in one when you learn one of your best friends has killed himself.

In some ways, the timing felt serendipitous.

“At least we’ll be together tonight,” Raph and I told each other. “What are the chances?”

Five years I’d been meaning to make it out West and now, the day of my arrival in Arizona was the same day you left this world. In some small way, it gave things the appearance of order and alignment, and for a moment I wondered if you’d done it on purpose, knowing Raph and I would be together as we faced this new reality you’d created, a forever incomplete two to our usual three.  

I think of the last time we were all together. It was the holidays, and we were back in Massachusetts, and we’d planned to meet at Jake’s for breakfast. This was our new tradition, the one we’d created to replace our old high school ways. Back then, we’d meet at night, for burgers at Packard’s, always sitting in the same table in the back corner. Now, breakfast had replaced dinner, and omelets had replaced burgers, but it was still the three of us: Raph, ambitious and self-serious; you, sarcastic and lolling; and me, somewhere in between. On this morning, though, as our three dots met (four, technically, as Raph had come with Mary) at the intersection of Main Street, we discovered Jake’s closed — some exceptional circumstance. Second best was Sylvester’s, we decided, so we walked towards the red awning on Pleasant Street. Except that it wasn’t Sylvester’s anymore — it was a new place, with a new owner, and a new name I’ve already forgotten. Still, we crowded into a window booth and ate their mediocre food and drank their watered-down coffee, trying to resuscitate the old days in that restaurant that wasn’t Sylvester’s, wasn’t even Jake’s, and definitely wasn’t Packard’s.

You were sitting next to me, your big frame hunched over your plate of potatoes and scrambled eggs, and I could feel our complicity beating in the inches separating us. We both knew what the other was thinking, as we punted topics from one to the next as though by rote. We were waiting for the after. In the meantime, though, we listened to Raph, our once-goofy friend turned sober with the years, and asked questions of Mary, so sweet, so easy, so different from what we’d imagined for our friend. You and I nodded obediently, laughed as though on command. Perhaps there was some bittersweet comfort in chasing a feeling that was gone, because finding it again would have meant that we hadn’t continued living in the meantime. That’s the thing about life, I’m learning: to embrace it, you have to keep moving forward, even if it sometimes means leaving things you love behind.

III.

The others don’t know that you and I would meet up, afterward, like secret lovers. We’d linger once Raph and Mary had turned towards home, then walk to the bookstore or pop into a coffee shop and talk about the things we hadn’t dared discuss in front of the other two: our hopes, dreams, and fears, though not the big, headline-worthy kind, but the real ones, the small ones, the tender ones. You’d ask me how to get closer to your sisters, or what life might be like if you moved to Europe, or what kind of job you might be able to get with your master’s degree in music theory.

I’ll never forget the day we spoke on the phone, me walking east through Paris and you driving north on the Massachusetts coast. I told you about wanting to quit my job, do something new, maybe try writing a novel. You said that sounded brave and exciting. You confessed you’d have liked to get a master’s in music.

“It’s not too late,” I told you, and you seemed to consider the possibility seriously for the first time. “What’s the harm in applying?” I said. “Just to see.”

There were tones of uncharacteristic hope and eagerness in your voice, as you told me, “You know what? I’ll look into it tonight.” 

I remember hanging up and feeling like we’d pierced though a cloud to uncover a whole new layer of sky and light behind it. In the end, you not only looked into master’s programs, but you applied, got a scholarship, and you went. I was so proud — though the accomplishment was all yours, I like to think I played a small part in nudging you there. But that’s just the story I tell myself.

The last time I saw you was in Concord. We’d started doing that, just the two of us, a few years back: meeting for lunch halfway between Northampton (our childhood home) and Scituate (your new home). It was one of those summer days where the heat wraps you in its fragrant embrace and the sun spills golden light about the place. We ate on the porch of the historic inn, a long, languishing lunch during which we spoke of Raph (we always worried about him), but also of our lovers (mine younger, yours older), our families (beloved sisters, both, and parents growing older), and our dreams (finding happiness? Who knows). You told me you were thinking about moving back to the Valley, and I remember thinking that if you went back, I’d consider it too.

After lunch, we decided to visit the Louisa May Alcott house, just down the road. The old wood-framed home cramped your giant form, but from the start, you were more curious and engaged than I’d seen you in a long while. During the introduction, you cracked a joke under your breath and I spent the rest of the presentation fighting the riotous laughter which threatened to burst from my lungs. As we followed our guide from one room to the next, the others on the tour were charmed by your offbeat dad vibes and your casual humor. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of your towering figure bent over in examination of the tidbits and curiosities of the Alcott residence. I was proud to be with you that day. You felt so alive, I thought to myself, and shining and bright.

After the tour, we lingered in the parking lot, and I took pictures of you, your arms hanging from the open car door behind which you stood, for your future dating profile. You wore a sideways smile as you told me you wanted to start meeting girls again, get out of your comfort zone: see, you had projects yet.

You sent me a message, after we’d driven off in opposite directions. “I had this tune stuck in my head during our tour,” you said, then whistled a melody and tapped out the rhythm on the steering wheel. That evening, you sat at your piano and transposed the piece, sent me a video of you playing it. Your face was cut from the frame and your instruments cluttered the background, but it was unmistakably you, with your flannel shirt rolled to the elbows and your large hands waltzing over the ivories. The song danced with happiness and light, and I told you it sounded like the background track for a Meg Ryan romcom or a Woody Allen movie. I’ve thought about tattooing the notes on my skin. I’ve never wanted a tattoo before, but then again, I’ve never had something I so desperately wanted to keep in the world of the living. But now you’ve gone and become like the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, and I don’t know what else to do.

IV.

I’ve never been one for poetry. Much like rocks, I find poems to be too difficult to crack, cold and unyielding at first glance, and only after considerable effort to pry them open does any color or beauty or understanding reveal itself. And even then, more often than not, I’m still left at a loss, dissatisfied. So I can’t explain why, when I was flying to New York, not yet aware that you’d left us, I had the idea to read T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. A cornerstone of Modernism, they say. Which means what? Romantic notions upended by the darkness of contemporary life? Sounds about right.

I read no poetry on my second flight, from New York to Phoenix, since by then I’d learned the news and waves of grief were collapsing over me, making fellow passengers dart looks at the crying girl in 28B. As I sat there, all I wanted was to run down to the underworld and bang my fists on Rodin’s bronze doors, to plead my case with you. (I don’t know why that’s where I pictured you, as I picture all the dead in the days after life. It’s not hell, but a dark, earthy layer of obscurity that my dead must pass through before they can rise again, to wherever they end up, somewhere in the air, beyond the clouds. Or maybe it was because I was flying through the clouds at that very moment, and goodness knows you weren’t there). A few moments were all I required, to remind you how loved and important you were to us, on this side. I wanted to grab you by the shoulders, give them a good shake, and say, “Oh no, you don’t. Get back here.” And then drag you, by your long, languorous limbs, back to us.

Instead, the brutal finality of your closing act was the clang of the door holding still against the pounding of my fists, refusing to budge, telling me, “Let him be. Do not disturb him just to appease your own disquiet.” I have no choice but to turn a defeated shoulder and acquiesce, head hung low, and drag none but my two lonely feet back to the land of the living, where it will forever more feel a little emptier and a lot quieter.

Do you remember, in sixth grade, when we had to write poems for class? Mine was an innocent rhyme, a childish inanity about a staring contest with a teddy bear, but yours already carried that heavy-lidded sadness that had tucked itself into your spirit from a young age. You wrote of a Great Oak, one that stood tall and proud, but that had aged so greatly, the time had come to cut it down. When the men came with their saws, you described them as poachers, but also friends.

I know to resist reading too much into it now, twenty years later and after the fact. But how can I not?

In the wake of your disappearance, swift and without a word, I find myself needing a story to understand why. In the absence of one, we are left to dig through your detritus, in search of even the faintest of red threads. As things begin to surface, I’m learning that there are the stories we tell ourselves, in our quiet intimacies, and the stories kept in the hearts of others. And though these stories may deal with the same person or moment, they are often so different that they wouldn’t recognize each other if they met. Which is a shame, because I think you told yourself things I’d never have accepted, had you dared speak them out loud to me.

I have stories I never told you, too, Sammy.

“Don’t call me Sammy,” you said once, but I think you were just being snippy. Because couldn’t you hear all the love in that name? How you weren’t just “Sam” to me and Raph, but something more, something special and uniquely ours?

I never told you that I called you Sammy, too, because as the years passed and our friendship matured, I’d wondered if we should just throw our hands in the air and grow old together, laughing and being snide. But I never told you, so how could you guess?

You probably only remember that night in the car, back in high school. You’d had one too many drinks and stood in Raph’s driveway, swaying like a tree in the wind. “Get in, I’ll drive you home,” I said. I had just barely turned the ignition on when you tried to kiss me. I pushed you away, may have even told you not to be ridiculous. We began the silent drive down the long straight road towards town, and you sat, folded in on yourself, ashamed. The car’s headlights illuminated the route that stretched between shadowy sentries of pine rising on either side of us, but they never crossed, never met, never got to look each other in the eye. I wish you could have understood that I didn’t care about the kiss or even the silence. When you opened the door and tried throwing yourself from the moving car, I told you to, “stop being an idiot.” You probably thought you disgusted me, but that wasn’t possible, don’t you see?

V.

After the tree was cut down,

There was great sorrow in the town.

But all the people know one thing,

The Trunk is still standing.

Twelve-year-old Sam believed a part of the tree would remain after it had been felled. You must know, now, whether the trunk stands or not. Tell me, are you still here, somewhere, and are you listening? With your disappearance from this world, I have to speak to you differently now.

Raph and I were hiking the Superstition Mountains, and conversation had veered, for a short moment, away from you. I filled the quiet with a story about the last time I was home, when I’d gone to karaoke at Bishop’s Lounge, and a girl had sung “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” in a velvety, ethereal voice. 

I told Raph how much the song struck me. How I’d been listening to it nonstop ever since. I knew he’d appreciate the anecdote, for I remembered the days when the three of us would gather around the baby grand in Raph’s living room and listen to him play “Piano Man,” singing along in our earnest, untrained voices.

“That was Sammy’s favorite Billy Joel song, too,” Raph told me now, huffing as we reached the top of the path. “He always talked to me about it. Called it a great piece of lyrical storytelling.”

I can’t tell you how much I wished, in that moment, to be able to tell you about that song neither one of us knew the other loved. That I couldn’t call or write or yell it out across the expanse and hear your deep laugh in response was the first time your disappearance felt like cruelty.

I tried telling you, a couple nights later. Raph and Mary and I had stopped in Flagstaff on our way to the Grand Canyon. It was a cold night and we’d wound up in a cocktail bar with a fluorescent sign lighting a stage from which people sang.

“Why don’t we sing that Billy Joel song?” I suggested to Raph.

He tilted his head from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, which I knew was a reluctant yes (it’s one of his quirks that you would imitate, making me laugh every time). I wrote down the title, put the folded slip of paper in the emcee’s hat, and we waited. My heart beat faster as our turn approached, as I got so close to being able to tell you, but Raph was wilting. Backlit against the fluorescent stage, his darkened silhouette began to shake his head and cry.

“I’d like to go, please,” Raph said quietly, downing the last of his bourbon and wiping tears from his cheeks. We walked out, the three of us traipsing back to the hotel in single file under the light of the moon. The moon hangs upside down in Flagstaff, did you know? I wish I could tell you that, too.

Here’s something you didn’t tell me: on your computer, they found a letter resigning from the music school. Was it a fear of failure that led you to do what you did? When we’d exchanged messages, two days before you took your life, you mentioned none of this to me, allowed me only to go on about how impressed I was by your father, how grateful I was that he’d encouraged me to keep writing. I’m afraid I contributed to your sense of failure. But didn’t you know there’s room for so much success in this world? And when I told you I “loved” your father, couldn’t you see how I was using the word in the light, nimble way we employ when finding the right words would require too much effort? I hope you understood why I couldn’t say I loved you, too. Why’d you leave too early for me to tell you?

   The next morning, Raph and I rose with the sun — that sun that rises regardless of what’s happened down on earth — and drove to the Grand Canyon — those striations of rock that have seen millions of cycles of life and death — and I felt nothing in the power of it all.

When I returned to France, I discovered that the trees outside my living room had been cut. Their foliage had been the reason I moved in to this Parisian apartment. I could almost believe I was back in Massachusetts when I saw those green branches waving in the wind, and I’d feel safe and happy and home. But in my absence, they’d been brutally trimmed, without warning, and I was overwhelmed by the surplus of nothingness.

I stood at my window and cried for the trees, cried at the sight of the bare trunks that stood thin and lifeless in the late winter gray. I screamed against the void, hurled a series of “fuck you’s” into the air, but my anger reverberated off the cold limestone wall of the building opposite. Surely some revelation is at hand, Yeats once begged, though his words stooped with futility. I, too, did not want to reassure myself that new sprouts would grow back stronger come spring. I did not want to think about how, in emptiness, there would be room for new things to grow. I wanted only for things to be the way they used to be, back when I hadn’t seen the canyon yet, when the view from my window was still verdant and green and rustling with leaves, and when I could call you on the phone and you’d answer in your wry, gruff hello.