Exactly six months younger than me, it is his seventh birthday today. His modestly sized California home is decorated to the fullest extent. Neon balloons hover around the room and streamers are draped onto every surface. Neatly wrapped presents (obviously wrapped by mothers) are stacked on a table by the foyer window. His friends, all twenty-something of them, are either in the backyard or playing with the toys in his bedroom. He and I are perched behind a half wall that separates the hallway from the living room. Rooms filled with guests, but he is attached to my side and me to his.
“You see them?” he asks.
I slowly rise to peak over the half wall, binoculars pressed to my face. I see a cake stand of donuts on the kitchen table, just across from the living room.
“They are beautiful,” I gasp in desire as I sit back down. He and I formulate a strategy to get our hands on the fried confections. Our mothers have told us that we are to wait until they deem an appropriate time to eat. He pulls a walkie-talkie set from his hoodie pouch: one red and the other silver. They had been an early morning present from his parents. He hands me one.
“This one is going to be yours and this one will be mine,” he says adamantly. We adjust the frequency of the walkie-talkies. The interactions are barely audible, but it is good enough for us. He stretches night vision goggles around his head. Our elaborate game plan is ready to be put into action. I stay stationed behind the half wall while he makes his way to the other side of the house.
He crawls along the carpet, occasionally stopping to look at his surroundings. We exchange spy-like banter through the receivers- words like “Roger” and “Clear.” He somersaults beneath a table, clearly seen by the adults above him. They pay little attention; they are too involved in discussions of the Y2K scare and the new line of Martha Stewart home décor at K-Mart. Noticed but ignored, he makes it to the other side.
“Do you see me?” he asks into the walkie-talkie.
“Yes,” I respond.
Since our meeting in the mid-90s, he has become my best friend. He lives three houses down. He is the expectant knock on my screen door in the mid-afternoon, usually dressed in some costume with the request for me to join him outside. His bike is frequently found lying on my front lawn and mine on his. He is quick-witted and smart. He has a toothy grin surrounded by dimples, the kind that will make him a heartbreaker when he grows up. He is to be the childhood friend I will probably fall out of contact with in years to come, but will always manage to reconnect for future events- weddings, hometown visits, that sort of thing.
***
I am eleven. I have moved several miles away and the process of growing apart has begun. Yet something has compelled a confession to my babysitter that I have a harbored crush. My babysitter encourages me to disclose my feelings. She is seventeen, an age that still allows her to believe in indestructible happiness. She grants me phone privileges; I flip through the junk drawer to find his phone number sloppily written in blue pen. I go forth. It is four months before the window of opportunity closes.
A giggle slips between my words.
“I really, like you, you know?”
He laughs. I hang up because there is not much left to say. It is surprising how much you think to say after you realize the chance to say it is suddenly gone. But enough of that mushy-gushy absurdity. After all, I’m only eleven and the ability to understand the significance of time is marginally smaller than that of an adult.
***
I am twelve. He turns twelve soon. We have grown apart more as expected. Yet his mother promises we’ll still keep contact after I move four states away.
I brush my teeth in the bathroom of my family’s new home in the Oklahoma boonies. The walls are decorated with black wallpaper that is accentuated with a watercolor fruit pattern, causing the florescent lighting to be more forgiving. My mother brings in a box of knick knacks and my father follows behind her. She reaches in the cabinet beneath the sink; I shuffle over slightly to get out of her way, causing toothpaste to drip from my mouth onto the counter.
The news is almost said in passing. The few words I will remember are, “accident,” “Thanksgiving,” and lastly, “died.” I stand breathless with a mouth full of toothpaste in a tacky graphic shirt that reads, “It’s not me. It’s you.” I lean over the bathroom sink wailing. The counter’s rounded edges are too slick to grasp, but I try to clutch it regardless. My parents seem alarmed by my reaction.
“You know what, how about a movie? Would you like that, baby?” my mother says gently.
She shifts through a box in the living room and comes back with a DVD of some crappy Nicholas Cage flick. I sit alone in my new bedroom and stare at the television that has been quickly assembled by my father. Eventually, I peek through the blinds and look at the sky. My religious upbringing has taught me to believe that heaven is somewhere beyond it. He died in Oregon though. I believe that to mean he is above the sky that covers Oregon, not the sky that covers Oklahoma. I am disappointed; I am looking up at no one. I look back to Nicholas Cage, the only person trying to console me.
***
His death is rarely spoken about until eleven months later.
My history teacher, a firm believer in “live life to the fullest” philosophies, has recently assigned us a project where we present the history of ourselves to the class. We are to assemble a memory box filled with our cherished possessions, memories, and interests. My presentation is today. I rummage through my memory box at the front of the room, presenting my favorite CDs and several pieces of Hot Topic jewelry that represent my “style.” I had placed his obituary at the bottom of the box. No reason in particular, I just wanted it there. I would have included his pictures, but my mother wouldn’t give them to me. She said looking at them would be unhealthy. Printed on computer paper, the ink of the obituary is faded due to a near empty cartridge. For an eleven year old boy, it is pretty lengthy and horrendously overwritten by an underpaid reporter who never had any sort of emotional attachment to him.
I pull it out and hold it up in front of the class, as if they can read the tiny print from their seats. I don’t get to say much. Months of suppressed sadness creeps to the surface and sobs interrupt my presentation. I am a blubbery mess. The class attempts to conceal their laughter. I leave the room as I promise to never share anything with anyone again.
***
The crappiest way to deal with death is to not deal with it at all. Hypocritically, I choose not to think of him often. I cannot decide if this is because I’d be too heart-stricken by pain or even more heart-stricken at the fact that memories of him aren’t clear anymore. I still haven’t seen our pictures together. Nine years later, my mother still thinks it to be unhealthy. I don’t remember much of what he looked like, besides the miniature school photo that accompanies his obituary.
I have, however, thought of those walkie-talkies and their fate. They probably stayed stashed beneath his bed a while after his death. His family eventually had to face the unimaginable experience of packing up his things. Keeping the important and favorite items, there is possibility everything else was donated to Goodwill. There is possibility the walkie-talkies were bought by some mother for her child, eventually to be packed up and donated again when that child outgrows them. I resent that hypothetical child. In my theory, that child gets to outgrow childhood.
The Crap Cave 