Counting Backwards

Work was actually a good thing. There was always something to do there. If it was slow, well, there were returned movies to put back, and when those were all taken care of, I could always go around looking for videos people had decided against renting and put back on the wrong shelf, in the wrong section. I could keep myself busy for quite a few hours this way, but then Kacie would be there in my mind again and I'd feel guilty on top of it for trying not to think about her. And for succeeding.

Then I'd think about something really small, something I thought I'd completely forgotten about, like forging an absentee note for Kacie in the school parking lot for the day before when we'd skipped to go to the park with some friends. The note was going to be from her father because he'd never written notes for her before and this way our teacher wouldn't know what his handwriting looked like. I remembered telling her how paranoid she was being, that it didn't matter if I wrote the note or she did.

"I just can't, Danny," she'd said. "Please?"

And so I did it. What did it matter? No one would ever know if it had or hadn't been done with his hand.

"Danny, can you come help me cash out?" Melissa, another one of the girls who worked at Back Bay Video, was standing in behind me. "My register is short again."

It took me a moment to understand what she had said.

"Sure. Are we locked up already?"

"Yeah."

I followed behind her, watching her yellow pony tail bob back and forth. I was still a little dazed. Sometimes a night went by so fast that the end didn't seem real.

"I just can't figure out why it's short," Melissa said, handing me the register print out.

"Did you count the drawer twice?" I asked.

"Three times," she said, looking concerned.

I checked her math, counted the money, checked the math again. "Did you have any voids?"

"No."

"Well, then it looks like you're missing about ten dollars."

"Shit," she said. "Beth's going to kill me. Or at least fire me."

"Don't worry. I'll talk to her. It'll be okay."

"Can't we just do what we've always done?"

I looked at Melissa as though I didn't know what she was talking about.

"You know," she said. "Can't we just say that we found a couple of videos in the return box and the customer insisted that they weren't late and refused to pay the fee?"

"No." I began to wrap up her money in the cash out sheet.

"Why not?"

I placed the money in its bag and dropped it into the safe. "Because Beth will get suspicious."

It was almost three months after the funeral when Mrs. Sullivan called me. The conversation was a little awkward. I could tell she wasn't sure what to say, and it felt odd for her to ask me how I was doing. She, if anyone, had more right to be miserable than me. I was glad that she cut to the point and said she was calling to see if I'd help her go through Kacie's room on Saturday and that she ended the call once I told her that I would.

When we spoke on the phone, we'd agreed to meet at noon. I was a little early. It took Mrs. Sullivan a few moments to answer the door.

"Come on in, Danny. I wasn't expecting you so soon. I was just finishing the dishes."

I stepped through the door and off to the side and waited. I wasn't sure what to do with myself. If I'd been there for any other reason, I would have just gone straight ahead to Kacie's room, but I just stood there, not sure what to do with my hands. I stuck them in the pockets of my jeans and attempted a smile, more like sucking in my lips than anything else. I asked her how she was.

"I'm okay," she said. "I have my good days and bad days."

I looked at my shoes and shifted my weight.

"Well, how about something to drink? I think there's some cola. Or would you like a cup of coffee?"

I wanted to say a beer would be nice. "Coffee's fine."

I felt cold in Kacie's room. Seeing all her stuff was odd. I kept thinking these used to be her CDs, her posters, her clothes. Everything doesn't just disappear when someone dies. There's always a ghost, some shoe on the floor, or worse, a picture that reminds you.

"Kacie was really attached to you," Mrs. Sullivan said holding out a framed photograph of the two of us at Hampton Beach. We were in our bathing suits, our hair wet and plastered to our heads, grinning, our arms around each other. The picture must have been taken the day we went to the waterslide.

"I always felt a little guilty that Kacie never had a brother or sister. I did my best with her. I tried to be there for her, but I sometimes thought that maybe she was a little lonely. Kacie and I got along well, but I don't think she was comfortable talking to me about some things, you know?"

I shrugged and smiled awkwardly. "She loved you a lot."

"Yes, I believe that," Mrs. Sullivan said. "But a girl sometimes needs someone other than her mom to talk to. You were like a sister for Kacie."

Mrs. Sullivan's composure caught me a little off guard. I hadn't expected her to be so calm, but she went through Kacie's room, touching things and talking about memories and not crying. I was relieved, and I relaxed. I knew she still hurt, but as she opened drawers and placed clothes in boxes, she kept telling me that it wasn't bad to remember and get a little sad. Mrs. Sullivan told me that she'd been in Kacie's room every day since Kacie took her life, but that she couldn't start packing things up right away. Now she was ready to start a little cleaning at least, as she'd put it on the phone.

"I wanted you here," Mrs. Sullivan said. "Because I thought you could help me decide what things Kacie would have wanted to keep. I think I'm going to send her clothes to the Goodwill, but if there's anything you want, of course you can keep it. I thought you might like this picture of the two of you."

I said, thank you, I would. I also took an old sweatshirt of Kacie's. In the bottom drawer of her dresser I found a shoe box. In it were all sorts of old letters, notes passed back and forth in high school. Kacie had kept all of them. Next to the shoe box was Kacie's checkbook. I wrapped it in the sweatshirt I had set aside. Kacie had always said she'd teach me how to balance my own if I'd wanted. Mrs. Sullivan taped up the last of the boxes she was going to send to Goodwill and sat down on Kacie's bed. I began to go through the letters, reading them. A lot of them were from me.

"Danny, I don't know how to ask you this," Mrs. Sullivan began.

I froze.

"But, did Kacie ever say anything to you about being unhappy?" She looked at me, hopeful, her eyes wet.

"No," I said and looked at the letters scattered about me on the floor.

"I know that even if there was something Kacie couldn't talk about to me, that she'd tell you."

It was hard knowing more about Kacie than her mother, but I still didn't have the answer she was looking for.

"I can't explain it," I said. "I'm sorry. I don't know."

Mrs. Sullivan nodded, then stared up at the ceiling.

"Margaret?" Mr. Sullivan was home. His voice made my heart skip a beat. I hadn't expected him to be there. It just didn't seem right. He was never at the Sullivan's home any time I'd ever been there, almost as if he wasn't a part of Kacie's life. I didn't want him to be a part of her death, either.

"Oh, here you are," he said entering the room. "Hello, Danny."

"Hi," I said flatly, without looking up.

He stayed in the doorway, fingering the sleeve of Kacie's blue windbreaker hanging on the door. The little comfort I'd found in Kacie's room surrounded by her keepsakes disappeared. I watched him caress the material of Kacie's jacket and doubted his pain. Anger began to swell in me, my muscles tensing. He couldn't possibly be hurting. He didn't love Kacie. I couldn't imagine him loving her the way I did. It just wasn't possible, the way she hated him.

"We were just packing up some things," Mrs. Sullivan said.

"Good," he said. "I think it's time."

He turned to me. "Thank you, Danny, for helping us get rid of some of these things."

"Jim! How can you say that?" Mrs. Sullivan started to cry. "Kacie's belongings are not just things to be thrown away!"

"Margaret, you know that's not how I meant it."

Mrs. Sullivan got up and left the room and I began to gather the letters and put them back in the box.

"What have you got there?" Mr. Sullivan asked me.

"Some letters Mrs. Sullivan said I could keep."

"Mind if I look at them first?"

"Well, I think they're kind of private," I said putting the lid on the box, picking up Kacie's sweatshirt and standing to leave.

"I'm sure there's nothing that private in there. I'm Kacie's father. I just want to see them."

Even if there wasn't anything private in the letters, I didn't want him to have them. Kacie wouldn't have either. I knew she told her father even less than her mother.

"They're just letters from friends."

"I think I have a right," he said. "You can have them after."

He held out his hand for the box. I couldn't give it to him.

"No." I walked over to him and stopped, waiting for him to let me by.

"Just let me see them," he insisted, gripping my shoulder.

I was shaking. His knuckles were white from the grip he had on me. My face grew hot. I was scared as well as angry, but I couldn't give in. Kacie had trusted me, but she never trusted him.

"No."

"Danny..."

Something broke and I fixed my eyes on his, hoping to channel my fury into a single, white flame that would reduce him to ashes, to nothing.

"I said no. I don't think she'd want you to."

"Kacie was my daughter."

"Look," I hissed. "Kacie may have been your daughter, but she never liked you. She hated you."

He stood there for a moment, his lips stitched together. I couldn't tell if he was angry or hurt. I broke free and made my way into the living room where Mrs. Sullivan was curled up on the couch, holding Kacie's graduation picture and crying. I was crying then, too.

"I'm sorry," I said, pausing for a moment. Then I walked out the front door.

I drove for half an hour. I just kept turning, never really going anywhere. Finally, I decided that I was going to the cemetery. I stopped at a store along the way and bought some daisies. Kacie didn't have a favorite flower. I don't even think she liked flowers, but it seemed like the thing to do.

I hadn't been there since the funeral. I was shaking. I sat there on her grave for a while, not knowing what to say. I was supposed to say something, wasn't I? I didn't know how to talk to someone who wasn't there. How can you tell the air that you miss her? Because she took her own life, everyone, the minister, her relatives, said that we had to forgive her. I didn't have to forgive her. She hadn't done anything wrong. So I sat, the daisies in my hand, and gave in to the whirling in my head.

I was angry that she didn't come to me, that she'd do this without talking to me. Maybe she had tried. I hated myself for not returning her calls, and I couldn't console myself with excuses that she didn't want to see me anymore because of the way I had messed up. I was always messing up, but Kacie always forgave me. That was just her way. She gave so much. She was so fair.

I felt guilty. I just kept thinking there must have been something I could have done to prevent this. She did so much for me, and I wasn't sure if I'd done as much in return. I thought about our night together and wondered if there was more to it. I wished I had asked her why she did it, but then she had said that she didn't expect it to be more than that, and after a little while, neither one of us were uncomfortable about it anymore. But I should have given more, said more. Though I never denied enjoying our night together, I never said it to her. I never told her how good it had been to be so close. There were so many times that I'd never told her things that I should have, so many times I didn't say thank you, you're my best friend, or I love you.

There was nothing I wanted more than for her to be here with me, to tell me what happened. What had she wanted to talk about when she called? I thought again of what had happened earlier at her house and shivered. I could still feel his fingers pressing into me, demanding I give him Kacie's letters. What was he hoping, or fearing, he'd find? I was nauseated.

This was just too much. Every moment with Kacie came back to me like an unexpected rain storm. I saw everything I loved and sometimes even hated about her. Her strength, her beauty, her ironic sense of humor. She had a sense of duty that I admired, but couldn't appreciate when she turned it on me. She was right whenever she lectured me about holding up my end of anything, particularly when it came to finances and responsibility. Whenever she did that, I'd treat her the way I would my mother. Yes, you're right. Okay. Fine. But I wasn't listening. Still, I looked to her in a way I didn't with anyone else. I let her take care of me. She protected me. I looked to her to guide me, to tell me what to do. I needed her. Deep down, I know she needed me, too.

As much as she claimed to be independent, she wanted an ally. I pictured Kacie, our senior year, oscillating from hot to cold. One day hysterical, hopeless, she'd never escape. The next, calm, determined, she'd show the world she could stand on her own. Whether happy or sad, though, she was always with me. We were always planning when we would be together and away from the confines of being young and dependent, a time when no one could ever again touch us.

I remembered the day we signed the lease for our apartment, how happy and proud she'd been. When we walked out of the realtor's office, she turned to me and smiled.

"You see?" she said. I thought she had simply meant that it had been easy, but what had she been trying to tell me all this time?

I couldn't stay any longer. I just wanted to hold her hand, to hug her one more time. Finally, I stood. I bent over and placed the daisies on the brown, brown earth. I wiped my eyes and then the seat of my pants. I stayed a moment longer and took a deep breath.

"I promise to be good."