“Please,
Derek.” My voice cracked.
“Please
get strong. Don't do this. Don't go! You can make it, I
know
you can.”
The respirator whooshed, machines beeping. My eyes were out of tears.
“Derek, listen. I love you. Me, Jackie. Just get better, okay? Do you hear me? I
love
you. Just . . . get . . .
better.”
“Uh,” he said in his throat. “Uuuh.”
I eased away to gaze at himâhis colorless cheeks, the cracking lips, stitches across his forehead. Then, carefully, I lowered my mouth to kiss the corner of his lips. When I pulled back, his eyes fluttered open for a brief moment. He tried to smile. I kissed him again, fresh tears filling my eyes. One landed on his nose, and I breathed a quivery laugh as I brushed it away.
The nurse appeared. “You should go now,” she said gently. “In case others want to come in again.”
I can't.
Bracing myself, I turned once more to Derek. “They're makin' me go, Derek. Otherwise I wouldn't. Get better now, okay? And I'll see you soon. Remember . . .” My voice caught. “Remember what you promised.”
I squeezed his hand hard, not wanting to let go. Memorizing the feel of it. Pressed a palm against the side of his face, reveling in its warmth.
Then I left him.
Nothing to do but wait. I slumped with Daddy and Grandma and Derek's family in the small room. Daddy held Katherine, his voice low and soothing when he spoke. Twice more, Derek's parents went in to see him, though he was no longer conscious. Katherine could not rise from the couch.
He died at 5:46 P.M.
T
hat night, after I'd comforted Katherine and Clarissa and Robert and Daddy, and helped put my tearful brother and sister to bed, I fled, finally, to my room, where I cried and cried, and begged God for forgiveness. Greg's ring hung once again around my neck.
I cannot say which emotion was strongerâmy grief or my self-loathing. They tumbled and burned within me like molten rock, until I thought they would crush me.
With the shrieking finality of a loved one's death, elusive meanings and desires inevitably surface. Only now, when I would never see Derek again, did I realize how much he meant to me. I wanted so much to kiss him again, feel his hand in mine. To just see his face. Derek
had
kept one of his promises to me, I realized. He had won a part of my heart.
Don't think I cried only for my own grief. There is enough reason to judge me without that. I was all too familiar with the pain of loss within a family. I grieved also for Katherine and Miss Connie and Mr. King. I prayed that God would strengthen them, somehow bear them through the coming horrible days.
Throughout that searing night, I dwelt purposely upon my grief. How different from my reaction to Mama's death, when I'd tried to drown my sorrow in a sea of busyness. But now my sadness would redeem me, for it was
right
to feel. It was understandable. Expected. It was humane. Derek had loved me wholeheartedly. He deserved my grief.
But underneath the sorrow, deep within the dark recesses of me, a little voice spoke. One utterance, and it echoed through me as a fallen boulder in a canyon. Even now, remembering the first time I heard it, I cringe. I still cannot help but harbor guilt over its insidious words. The truth is this. Even though I had begun to love Derek, I loved Greg far more. My duplicity could not have remained hidden forever. At some point I would have been forced to take the dreaded stepâin front of Derek's familyâand make my choice. How they would have judged me for it. Because my choice would have been for Greg.
And the little voice whispered, “Now you won't have to make it.”
I tried to tell myself that I thought only of Derek. That now he wouldn't have to be hurt. How flimsy, those excuses. Derek deserved to be
alive.
He could have graduated from high school, gone to college, met someone new and fallen in love. Deeper love than he'd ever felt for me. Hadn't Daddy loved Mama more than life itself after he'd lost Celia? So much that thoughts of his past devastation had been long forgotten?
No. That little voice spoke only for me. Selfish, dishonest, cowardly me.
And I could not bear to listen.
And I could not shut it out.
B
radleyville suspended school for two days. Monday the viewing for Derek would be held at the Albertsville Funeral Home. The funeral was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
Sunday's service at our church felt like a funeral in itself. My eyes were swollen and lined, my face puffy. Not that I possessed the energy to care. Knowing how Derek's family grieved for him, I did not want to face them, especially Katherine. Surely they saw into my soul, read the horrifying words of that little voice etched upon it.
Pastor Beekins didn't preach. Instead we gathered as a body of believers to pray that God in his mercy would see the Kings through the tragedy. Katherine clung to Daddy as if she could barely stand, remorse over the lost years with her brother carved into her face. Even Derek's parents seemed stronger than she. Everyone cried. At the end of the service, Miss Jessie hugged me tightly, commenting with a shaky smile that if the church had a yearly tissue budget, we'd have gone through it that day.
Daddy went straight from church to the Kings' house with Katherine. I took Clarissa and Robert home, both red-eyed and worn. Seeing my stoic brother cry had torn me in new ways. As soon as she could, Clarissa went out to play with Della, needing to reconnect with childhood. Robert sat halfheartedly at the computer.
Greg called that afternoon, and we talked a long time. Hearing his voice took my own away. “Jackie, I wish I was there for you right now,” he soothed again and again. “I love you so much. I'm so sorry.”
I clutched his ring until my fingers cramped. The worst part was that he would never be able to comfort the most devastated pieces of meâthe pieces that needed him most. “I love you, too, Greg,” I breathed. “I love you, too.”
After his call I lay upon my bed, staring at his picture, utterly spent. For once my radio was silent. I envisioned the events of the next two days and wondered how our family would survive them. We'd not attended a funeral since Mama's, and instinctively I knew it would bring back all the grief of her death as well. How would Daddy endure itâreliving Mama's funeral while comforting Katherine? I hurt for Daddy almost more than I hurt for the Kings.
From sheer exhaustion, I fell asleep. I awoke with a start an hour later, an implacable knowledge filling my head. There was something I must do for Derek. For me. Compelled to my feet, I shuffled out to tell Robert that I was going to the Kings' house, then I needed to drive to Albertsville. Would he please take care of Clarissa?
Many had gathered at Derek's house, bringing food. It reminded me of the gathering at our own not two years before. I made the rounds, hugging Derek's mama and daddy, unable to look them in the eye. I gave Katherine a perfunctory hug and could have sworn I sensed a chill between us. I knew I had to keep her at an emotional distance. She knew my heart too well.
As soon as possible, I edged down the hall, pretending to go to the bathroom, and slipped into Derek's room.
Memories of Derek instantly pounded me. He'd stood right there the day I first saw him without his glasses. I'd sat there as he scanned a photo of me to send to Greg. I leaned against his dresser, waves of sadness sifting me like sand. After some time, I pulled open his top drawer, staring with hollowed intimacy at its contents. With a deep breath, I reached in to search for the reason I'd come. One orange sock and one green. I flattened and hid them underneath the waistband of my denim skirt, said my goodbyes to Derek's parents, and escaped to the car.
At the Albertsville Funeral Home, I sought the director, closing my mind to the unknown mourners who'd gathered for the viewing of their own. I could not let their grief seep into mine. “I need to give you something for Derek King,” I told him. He graciously ushered me into his office.
From my purse, I pulled out the socks. “Please. When you dress Derek, would you use these?”
He looked from the socks to me, smoothing all reaction from his expression. Funeral directors are good at that. “Derek's mother has already given me the clothes she would like to use.” He paused. “Are you part of the family?”
“I . . . not really.”
The man shook his head. “I'm sorry. But I always comply with the family'sâ”
“Please.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. “They won't know. Who will ever see? No one else ever needs to know, but I need to do this for Derek!”
He hesitated, then raised a reluctant hand for the socks. Before he could change his mind, I shoved them into his palm. “Please tell me you'll do it.”
His gaze fell again to the ugly, mismatched colors. “I need to know who you are.”
“Jackie Delham.”
He repeated the name. “A friend of Derek's?”
I hugged my arms to my chest, searching for an answer intimate enough to give this perfect stranger. He studied the tears in my eyes.
“We . . . he loved me.”
The man's eyelids flickered, and in that tiny movement I saw his empathy over the death of a boy he had not known, and all that could have been. His hand lowered.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He nodded.
Greg and LuvRush sent a flower arrangement to the funeral home. The largest one around Derek's casket.
Two things got me through the next few days: prayer, and focusing on my secret, symbolic gift to Derek. When the guilt rose as I laid my palm against his cold, hard skin, I thought of the socks. When we stood at the grave site, Katherine sobbing into Daddy's chest, his own eyes filled with pain, I remembered the socks. I said a final goodbye to Derek as the
chink chink
of metal gear lowered him into the earth, and I pictured the socks. What a hit they would be in heaven. How the angels would grin.
No theology or logic in that, I know. But at funerals, you do what you can to survive.
R
aleigh, Charlotte, Charleston. Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa. LuvRush continued their tour through the south, then began looping back toward the west as the Indian summer of September gave way to the chill of fall. Greg was busier than ever, studying in earnest on the bus and in hotel rooms now that his own “school” was back in session. “Hung Up on You” would stay number one on the charts throughout September. When it fell to number five, “All Is Enough” took its place at the top. Every concert proved a sellout.
Greg, now aware of his frailties, spent even more time reading his Bible and praying. “I have to,” he told me. “I am so weak without that.”
He remained loyal to me and loving, comforting me over the loss of “my friend” Derek. In my sorrow I needed to hear Greg's voice daily. I ached to see him. Yet I wept with the knowledge of the profound change between us. I had secrets now that I could never share. A part of myself that forever would remain locked away from him. I know he sensed this. Sometimes when Greg and I talked on the phone, the questions hovered almost tangibly between us. But never again did he voice them. I think he was afraid to hear the answers.
In those days I thought often of Pastor Beekins' sermon. That God could work through the mistakes of our past for his own glory. And I prayed that somehow, some way, God would do that for me.
Derek's parents held up amazingly well in their mourning. At least it appeared so from the outside. But then, what else can you do? Life goes on, even when your insides feel like they're wasting away. I prayed for them every day. I
knew
what pain they endured.
Katherine struggled terribly under the weight of her grief and remorse. Emotionally she flailed herself for her perceived failings with Derek. Amidst her own pain, the distance between us grew. Guilt bends one's perceptions as surely as water bends light. I thought in her disgust of me that
she
had drawn away. Now I know how wrong I was. Now I see that when she needed me most, I refused to help.
She and Daddy continued to plan their wedding, set for Saturday, December 12. But Katherine's enthusiasm had gone. At first we merely thought the obviousâKatherine's pain over her brother's death overshadowed her joy. Then I really began to worry. All the stress made her and Daddy short-tempered with one another, particularly Katherine, the smallest of things tripping irritation across her brow. I'd catch Daddy gazing at nothing, anxiety lining his face. Sometimes he had little appetite for supper. I fussed at him like a mother hen, telling him he hardly needed to lose weight. Clarissa took to pushing around the vegetables on her plate that she didn't like.
“Eat 'em,” Daddy commanded her.
“Well, you're not eatin' yours.”
“This is not a suggestion. Eat 'em.”
One month after Derek's death, Katherine and Daddy had a major argument. Thank goodness it was Sunday afternoon, with both Robert and Clarissa at friends' houses, because I certainly heard an earful. I balanced on the edge of my bed, biting my lip, the door cracked open, listening.
“All I want to do is go to Lexington for overnight, Bobby. I could get Saturday off work. You and I need to get away.”
“Like I told you, I don't think we should go anywhere overnight,” Daddy said. “Separate hotel rooms or not, it just wouldn't look right to the folks here.”
“Who cares what the âfolks' think?” A pause. “Fine, then, maybe we could at least take a drive for the day. Go
somewhere.”
“Katherine, please. We've talked about this enough already. I just don't want to go anywhere next weekend. Let's do it later in the month.”
Next weekend?
I thought.
She picked a fine time.