One
And then everything changed.
It was 1996, the summer after my seventh
grade, and our spring trip to Niagara Falls, which I wrote about in the
previous packet of these papers, had been a disaster.
My friend Gil Bysshe—my dear, dear friend
Gil—had committed suicide at the Falls. Suffering from a terminal illness, he
had decided—without telling anyone—that he would die there during the trip that
he and I (and others) had won for our high ratings at the school science fair
only weeks earlier. Gil had long loved the Falls, he’d told me. And I guess he
thought that dying in a spot he loved would be much better than suffering in
some hospital. Much better than gradually diminishing to nothing.
I’d just met Gil that year, and we hadn’t
exactly hit it off immediately. In fact, there was at first quite a bit of
tension between us, especially when I accidentally discovered that for a local
history project he was doing research on my
house!
He swore he hadn’t known the house was
ours. I wasn’t so sure.
But—gradually, gradually—we began to
discover that we had a lot in common. We were both, well, loners. We liked to
read. We each had an odd sense of humor.
I was not quite the loner that Gil was, of
course. I had a best friend—a double, almost (though we were very different in
some basic ways). Harriet Eastbrook, who had moved next door to us. We were
great friends, though as middle school went along, we drifted a little bit
apart—at least on the outside. She became a school cheerleader—and loved that
public life.
Harriet also had … developed … quite a bit
in middle school. More … “womanly,” I guess would be the word. She attracted
older boys (even creepy men—as we saw). And she liked it.
These attractions got us into big trouble
earlier when we were up on Put-in-Bay, a Lake Erie island (as I’ve written).
***
Anyway, that summer after Gil’s death,
everything changed.
I just could not accept his loss. Could
not stand it that he would no longer phone me. Or be waiting for me after
class. Or walk me home. Or to the library (our home away from home). Just the
fact that he was no longer here was a
reality I just could not handle. He haunted my nights. My daydreams. And
whenever I kthought of him, tears. I just couldn’t help it. Gil was gone. Forever. How is that even possible? In what universe is that even right?
My father had tried all kinds of things to
try to help. From being home more. To taking me on little trips. Buying me
books he knew I’d love. Trying to talk with me about it.
But I couldn’t talk about it. Whenever I
began to do so, my voice would just fall apart. And so would I.
Occasionally that summer, here and there,
I would run into kids from school. If they could, they’d pretend they hadn’t
seen me. Or they would say something rushed and insincere. But I have to be fair
to them—people don’t really know what
to say to other people who are really suffering. And so they say dumb
things—like “In time you’ll feel better” or “He’s in a better place now” or “We
can’t know when our time will come” or … you know?
At first, I was annoyed when people said
things like this to me.
But then I realized that just saying something was a hint that the speaker
actually had a heart.
***
I suppose it was all of this that
convinced Father that we ought to leave Franconia, the southern Ohio town where
we’d been living, where I’d been going to school, where he had been working for
the local newspaper.[i]
“Vickie,” he said to me one night at
supper. “I think my career is about to change.”
I looked up in surprise. I’d always
imagined he’d be writing for newspapers forever. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Well, it’s not so much something that has
happened but something that’s going
to happen.”
I just looked at him.
“Computers are changing everything,” he
said. “And I think it won’t be too much longer before they pretty much
completely take over the journalism profession.”
During the silence that followed I thought
about what he’d said. It made sense. Sad, sad sense.
“So what are you going to do?”
He looked at me a bit before he spoke. “I
think,” he said, “there will always be news—but for most people it’s going to
arrive on screens instead of on the front porch.”
“So you’re going to start doing computer
journalism?”
“That’s the idea,” he said.
And then I realized what he was saying.
And I was shocked. “But you’re not going to do it here,” I said. “Not in Franconia.”
“It’s not going to happen here—not until
it’s too late.” He sighed. “If I want to make a new career,” he said, “I’m
going to have to do it near a major city.”
“Like?”
“Like Cleveland.”
“Cleveland? But that’s way north of here
…”
He just looked at me. Then said, “I don’t think I really have a choice, Not if I want to make enough money to support us.”
I knew there was no arguing with him—and I
didn’t really want to argue with
Father. And though I really didn’t want to leave Franconia and Harriet, I knew
that everything in town—every single thing—would forever remind me of Gil. And
I wasn’t sure I could survive that. Just the thought of walking through the
school hallways, the thought of not finding Gil there … it was just all too much
for me.
And so began the process of leaving. It
was surprisingly quick. And painful.
[i] As I mentioned in
the first volume of Vickie’s papers, there is no town named Franconia in all of
Ohio.
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