Speechless

by Adam P. Schmitt

I need a piece of paper. I have to write this down. I haven’t had a single idea today and I’m not about to lose this one before someone grabs me and makes me talk to them. Where can I find some paper?

Why is a simple thing like a piece of paper so hard to find when you need it?

I flip to the front side: the typed, articulate, organized side with a compliment in red ink. And back again to Patrick’s scattered, jumbled voice. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s all over the place. I know his brain worked fast at times, but I’ve never seen it in writing like this. Is this how he always thought about stuff? All . . . whatever this is? I don’t know how his hands kept up with his thoughts, or if they did at all. I read it again, looking for some sense in it. I’m only more lost. I don’t get it. How can these be written by the same person? How can I have known Patrick all of my life and still be so confused about who he was? I don’t know if I can make sense of this note. I don’t even know who it was written for or why. The more I think about him, the less I understand. Patrick never said anything was wrong, though. He never said anything about why he acted the way he did. But things like this note . . . Was Patrick trying to say something?

“If it were important, it wouldn’t be in a junk drawer.”

In all the times I had been in these woods with Patrick, I always did my best to hide my fear of a train being so close to us when it roared by. When you’re at home or anywhere in town you can hear it. You can see it from anywhere downtown, and it’s something that always commands respect. But seeing the train from a distance is tremendously different from being five feet away when it passes by. You don’t realize how big an engine is until you’re in spitting distance from its size and power. Its massive sound is deafening. I would always grind my teeth to hide my anxiety when it stormed by us. Patrick always studied it as if he were admiring an exhibit at a museum. It would roar by while he stood unflinching, motionless, and asking some question in his head only he knew.

Patrick saw this as a defeat, and he didn’t accept defeat well.

I don’t think Patrick had many thoughts he felt like sharing. I didn’t understand why my cousin was willing to risk his life like that. For a penny. Then throw it away? Patrick came within a few inches of death yet stood there calmly. Maybe he didn’t notice he could have died. Maybe he didn’t care.

What am I supposed to say about someone who was never nice to me?”

Why? Why won’t she listen to me?

“And why don’t you protect me like you protect her?”

“I’m saying what if he knew this would happen? What if he chose to go out on the ice and knew he wouldn’t come back?”

I have no idea how getting a stinger like that didn’t make me cry more, but it smacked the tears right out of me.

She didn’t want me to interfere. The family law.

If you weren’t in band, seeing the musicians get ready for a performance looked like some perverse group ritual that was a lawsuit waiting to happen.

despite being one band, specific instrument players stuck together and embraced how different they were from every other member of the band. The individual groups had one thing in common, though: they each felt they were the most vital piece of the band. They had their own personality, and nothing brought that out more than how each dressed before performing.

I was always envious of Patrick’s confidence. He didn’t care what others thought and had no fear how he looked with his shirt off. Maybe it was more ignorance than confidence, but I was jealous either way.

Jack Rossi had a creepy half smile whenever he dished them out, particularly when he saw fear in the junior-high musicians. He was one of those guys who make you wonder how he’s gotten this far in life without someone giving him a severe beating.

I heard everyone’s story. Except Patrick’s. Seeing my cousin challenge authority wasn’t anything new, but that night stayed with me. It wasn’t his getting in trouble or being yelled at that was the most haunting part. It was what the rest of us did when we saw Patrick’s tired eyes. It was when the music stopped. And we just sat and watched.

Nothing triggers the horrible effects of anxiety like a blank page mixed with a very public deadline.

I’ve written plenty of last-minute papers that sound like I know what I’m talking about. That’s what separates us Honors kids from regular English students. We’re not any smarter, just better at shoveling it on the page.

Mom sucks at apologies. She’ll say everything but “I’m sorry.”

Put wall clocks on the list of things you never notice the sound of until the room goes awkwardly silent.

There was nothing anyone could do.”

“But she wanted to have good memories of him, not the rest of it.”

“Sometimes, people don’t want to see things because it’s too difficult. Sometimes the bad is too much. So they see bad things how they want. They believe what they want.”

Between having never seen this side of my mother, never hearing about my grandfather’s death, and never knowing my family had secrets . . . I’ll take looking confused over my head exploding.

“They believe it until it becomes their reality.”

“Your grandma was a very good mother, but she didn’t want to see her husband as someone who would end his own life. And she didn’t want others to see him that way, either.”

“She also didn’t want to see her husband as someone who wasn’t the best father.”

“He had a”— she searches for a descriptor to soften the blow of what she really wants to say — “a temper.” She looks as though a particular memory of this temper is playing in her head. “And we never knew when it would come out. But when it did”— she inhales deeply — “it was bad.” Sounds like someone else we know.

“It was hard for us sometimes, living with him. He seemed to medicate himself more and more as he —”

“He was sick. We didn’t know how to help him get better.”

“When you said that, about Patrick, it reminded me of some things I wanted to forget. And I reacted. Without realizing it.”

I don’t think the day of talking to people at the wake compares to how exhausting the last few minutes were for her.

I’ve never seen this . . . this vulnerable side of my mother.

I have never taken in so much information at once. I have no words at all. I think she senses the overload.

“Don’t make anything up.”

I had no idea that people walked out of funerals and went straight to parties. It has to be better than the wake.

This is it, my last chance to figure out what to say. I was too exhausted last night to write anything. Between the wake and hearing everything about my family, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

OK, Patrick. What do you want me to say? Something nice? How you’ll be missed? Or the truth?

Oh, no. Are we going to be the first ones to walk in? No? Oh, much worse. Everyone else is already here, seated, and waiting for us.

I hate sitting near the front at church. I always feel like the priest is staring at me or thinking I did something bad. Or he’s going to call on me to answer some question about John or Matthew or Michelangelo from the Old Testament to see if I know the Bible. No barrier between you and the man of the cloth means at any time he could take three steps and put you on the spot. I knew I was going to be on the spot today, and it makes me want to throw up even more.

I’ve been so crazed about speaking that I didn’t even notice he was here.

I’ve never been this nervous in my life. I’m aware of every detail around me and also completely unable to process anything. I know the priest is talking, but I’m only hearing disconnected words. I’m a mess. A train wreck.

I only hear “James” and know I’m done for.

I look over the crowd from the front of the church and two steps higher than everyone, and it’s a completely different room. And bigger. Somehow the laws of physics are bent when you give a speech, and the room lengthens by twice as much. And the people, at least four times as many as it looked like from the back.

The button popping off my pants may have actually been the miracle I prayed for. I can breathe. Never mind the awkward silence; I need this. No one is shaking my hand, no one is talking to me, and no one is asking me where I was when Patrick died.

Another breath, this one bigger than the last, and my chest is full for what feels like the first time in days. One more and I’ll let the words go with it.

No manners, no filter, no holding back — just my actual thoughts.

“Ever since I’ve known him, I’ve never understood him. I’ve never understood why he did the things he did or why he acted the way he did.”