DECEMBER 15
On Summer Johnson’s twenty-fifth birthday, I find myself at Hank Basara and Autumn Mahal’s wedding.
Apparently they’d bonded after Summer’s funeral over their mutual love for her and their mutual hatred of almost everything else, and before long they fell for each other hard. Autumn’s been in total remission for a few months and her prognosis is very good, or so I hear. But you know how that is. Anyway, I guess it was nice seeing her so happy. And also a little hard, to be honest. I’d wanted Summer to get a big white wedding, too.
The ceremony was beautiful and heartbreaking and by God, it made me miss Summer so much, my progress of the past few weeks notwithstanding. I did notice a glimpse of something shiny and blonde in the sky above the altar as they said their vows, though, but by then I was so creeped out by the past week’s events, I just ignored it.
After the rings were exchanged, Autumn came up to me after talking to someone I guessed was someone’s grandpa. I gave her a big hug and then stood by the bar with her in a semi-awkward silence. We were linked forever now, but that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t really know her that well, and that neither of us had expected to be tossed into this horrible mess of a situation. Being with her felt about as natural as seeing one of your parents on a date.
“So, I just wanted to thank you,” she says after a minute.
“For what?”
She looks off at nothing, her mouth pulling into itself, and I know she is holding in tears. “For making my best friend happy in the last months of her life,” she says, with a shattering voice. “Because of you, Summer got a chance to have that great big romance every girl wants – one last hurrah. I know I’m getting to have a wedding and everything today, and she deserved this a million times more than me, but she…she got to feel love, too. That’s a debt her family and I will never be able to repay.”
“Oh,” I say as chills erupt all over my arms. “Thanks, but…I don’t know. It was easy. That girl taught me how to love, as much as it hurt me. And how to write about love, too. Talk about un-repayable debts.”
“I know.” Then she looks at me harder. “Ugh. You really did fall in love, didn’t you? Like, real love.”
“Yep,” I say, sneering like the bastard I am. “Real love. The expensive stuff. Not that fake, counterfeit kind they sell at Walgreens next to the cheap sunscreen – that brand that’s spelled L-U-V, or whatever.”
She takes a quick breath. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t mean it like that. I still just can’t believe everything that happened.” The most awkward of awkward silences followed. “Hey, did you get my Facebook group invite?”
“Already joined. But let me just say, the Facebook Group For People To Complain About Summer Johnson Not Being Here Anymore is quite a mouthful of a title, but I guess it has a certain ring to it.”
About a month after Summer’s death, Autumn made an online forum where members of the group could vent about her demise, and it had basically turned into a digital version of the Thursday night group, where everyone bitched and complained about whatever. And the best part was that the group was private, so we could say whatever we wanted and nobody could read it. We also had other plans. Another spinoff group called Summer’s Group For Awesome People Who Want to Make the World A Less Shitty (and More Summer-ish) Place had already been started, and through that group, Ethan’s rich uncle had awarded a five hundred dollar grant in Summer’s name to a local girl with Down’s Syndrome who wanted to attend a summer music camp, but couldn’t afford it. Summer’s good deeds were stretching on even in her death, and I was so ridiculously grateful.
“Shut up, I’ve never been good with names,” Autumn laughs, before staring out at the crowd. “God, I never thought I’d have one of these,” she says a minute later as she looks out at the roaring party, happily bewildered. “Thank God I did, but still. Life’s weird, huh? You think you’re at the end of the road, and then it slaps you upside the head and shows you a different direction – a direction that leads you straight into the arms of an amputee. Or the arm of an amputee, I guess I should say.” And then, more quietly, she says: “You know, I half-expected you to have a date today. I’m glad you don’t, but still, I was…nervous.”
I bite my lower lip. Why would I even start looking for a new thing when what I had was so perfect, so massive, burned so brightly? It’d be like leaving Aspen for Topeka and trying not to be disappointed. I’d had a mountain range, and I don’t want to settle for the prairie.
“What? Me? Never.”
“Well, you know,” she says, concern in her eyes and voice. “I feel awkward even talking to you about this, but you should let yourself meet someone eventually. Summer wanted you to be happy.” She pauses. “But when you do meet someone, you need to let me meet her so I can judge the shit out of her and then make sure she knows just what a legend Summer was, by the way.”
“Hmm. Maybe soon.”
We don’t say anything for a minute. The thought of me moving on is hurtful to us both, no matter how much we try to laugh it off.
“I just miss her still,” I finally say. “And I’m mad at the world for her not being in it.”
“Trust me – I know. I miss her too. Every fucking day. It’s so unfair. She was such a badass. And there were so many other people who deserved to die in her place, too. Like, the douchebag salesman who wouldn’t sell me a dress I wanted because he said I was too fat? Totally should’ve bit the dust instead, lemme tell you. Summer did more good for the world in twenty-four years than most people do in eighty. But still, I know she’s smiling down on us from above.”
I fail to hide the little chuckle that rises into my throat.
“What?” Autumn says. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those condescending religion-haters.”
“Noooo, it’s just that, you know, Summer didn’t believe in the harps and the golden gates and the big, booming voice calling her forward and everything. And neither do I, really. But I hope she’s, you know, somewhere.” I lower my voice. “And, I don’t know, but sometimes, I even think she’s…”
“What? Watching you?” she asks, searching me with her eyes, and I know she’s been suspecting the same thing.
I swallow. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t believe in heaven or anything, but – sometimes I think I can sense her. Is that crazy?”
“No,” she says. “It’s hopeful.”
I shrug. “Ugh. It’s certainly pretty to believe she’s here, I’ll give you that.”
“It’s more than pretty. Don’t you know how Hank and I ended up together?”
I shake my head.
“Well, for one, we met in her Anti-Support Group, but there’s more than that.”
Her eyes turn to the sky. “It was the strangest thing, actually. One day about a week after she died, I got the strangest urge I’ve ever had, to go to this park. I am not a park person – give me a marathon of Say Yes to the Dress and I’m good – but I just couldn’t not walk to this park, you know? So I took my dog and went, and lo and behold, Hank was standing there by a picnic table, looking just as confused as I was. We’d been talking and stuff, but nothing serious yet. I asked him why he was there, and he said he had no idea. Of course within five minutes we were deep in a Summer discussion, and we kind of never looked back. And I don’t doubt for a second that it was her that led us there. I could just…feel her on that soccer field, in the strangest way.”
All four of our eyes were misty again. She laughed and shook her head. “And it’s not that complicated, the reason we got hitched. I mean, look at us: I’m chubby, and he has one arm. It was bound to happen eventually.”
We both laugh, and then she gets serious, steps closer, and puts a finger on my chest. I can feel her breath on my chin, and I wince as I realize it is the closest anyone has been to me in months – besides that night with that girl, at least. “Summer made her way in there, and she’ll never leave, you know.”
I inch my body away, really starting to get annoyed for some reason. I don’t want the Hallmark messages. Hallmark messages never did anything for me.
“Come on,” I say. “We’re not sitting on Oprah’s couch. Get real: she’s dead. Summer is dead.”
A defiant gaze takes control of Autumn’s face. She looks back and points at the old guy she’d been talking to. He looks as clueless as a baby. “See that guy?”
I nod.
“That’s Hank’s grandpa, Big Al. His brain has been so destroyed by Alzheimer’s that half the time he has no fucking clue how to tie his shoe or what his name is or who Hank even is, his only grandson. But every single night he walks two blocks to his wife’s grave and puts grass on it.”
“Grass?”
She loosens up a bit. “Yeah. Like, he’s so senile that he doesn’t even know the difference between picking flowers and picking grass anymore, but deep down at the bottom of his soul, something in him knows he has to place something on her grave, because he’s in love with her and always will be. So he walks around the cemetery picking blades of grass, and he then puts them on her grave just like a bouquet and walks home.” She presses my chest harder. “The heart doesn’t forget, Cooper. It never forgets. God, would it really be so hard for you to just fucking believe in something, writer boy?”
I sort of tear up and look away. I have never felt more alone. “I don’t know. Life hasn’t given me much to believe in.”
She backs off and crosses her arms. “Well if you can’t believe in Summer, you can’t believe in anything.”
That makes me want to cry even more.
“I just…I just wish her death wasn’t so, like, meaningless,” I say. “I wish I could make it mean something.”
“I know. Shit, I know.” Then her face lights up. “Wait, come to think of it, you’re a writer. Why don’t you write something about her? Most dead people aren’t lucky enough to have known a writer who could, I don’t know, memorialize them, or whatever. Write a book!”
I blush a little, but still, I dismiss her. “Ha. I wish, but I can’t even think about her for two seconds without breaking down. If I’m ever able to write about her at all, it’ll be years down the line. Fifty, probably.”
Her mood fades a little. “Oh. Okay. Yeah. I get it.”
When we both regain our composures, she hits me lightly. “And I need to say something else: you look fucking terrible. Like, ‘I just lost my job and woke up under an overpass’ terrible. What’s going on, Brad Pitt?”
“Sorry. It’s been…an interesting few weeks. No time for manicures, I’m afraid.”
“Well at least take a shower and get a haircut, will ya? You’re worrying me.”
“Will do, Mom.”
Autumn picks up the bottom of her poufy wedding dress and turns to the dance floor.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a one-armed groom to dance with.”
“Just don’t be too annoying on Facebook about all this!” I say after her. “You know how Sum felt about that!”
“Are you kidding me?” she calls over her shoulder as Crash by Dave Matthews, her wedding song, came on for the tenth time. “Sorry, Summer, but this girl is about to be the most annoying Facebook bride in the history of Facebook brides! Where is that photographer, by the way? This is the best I’ve ever looked – all the depression this summer made me incredibly miserable and incredibly sexy. I want selfies! Give me all of the selfies!”
After that, the Summer Johnson Anti-Support Group huddles by the wedding cake one last time. They’d tried to keep the group together for a while, but it just wasn’t the same without her. Her absence filled the room, and sitting there without her felt like digging nails into your skin. A pink dress hung behind the wedding cake with Summer’s name on it, and although I didn’t know the story behind it, I still teared up when I saw her name on the label. Autumn wanted us to cut her wedding cake with her, and not just because of her joke about Hank not being able to provide much help because of the whole one-arm situation. According to her, she wanted to hold one last group meeting before we all went our separate ways.
As we all gather around the cake, Autumn smiles at us and then chokes up a bit, yet again.
“Ugh, this really sucked without Sum,” she finally says. “There were several ridiculous moments during my pastor’s speech when I would’ve loved to exchange an eye-roll and a sigh with her.”
“I know,” Ethan says. “Ever since she died, sitting in an empty room and bitching about my problems just isn’t the same anymore.”
“True,” I say. “As far as complaint sponges went, Summer was unparalleled. She was literally the master of getting bitched at. Her skills will never be surpassed.”
“You guyssss,” Autumn says. “You’re making me cry on my Vera Wang. Stop.”
“You’re such a shallow brat,” Hank says, smiling down at his bride. “Kiss me.” And then they proceed to make out so passionately and grotesquely, everyone in their vicinity grimaces and looks away.
“Okay, stop,” Autumn says finally, pushing him off. With tears in her eyes, she hands out some plastic knives, and then we all crowd closer to the cake. I lean down and hand a knife to Kim, who blushes. Then I take a deep, nervous breath and look around at Summer’s group one final time, doing my best to smile through the water in my eyes. And suddenly I think about where we’d all be today if we’d never met Summer. I see Kim in her wheelchair, filled with confidence from Summer’s constant encouragement, smiling at last. I see Hank, who is finally thinking of tomorrow instead of peering back at yesterday. I see Autumn, who had literally met her husband through Summer – what more of a legacy could there be? And then I think of myself a year ago, a lost little boy locked inside his own head, set free from himself at last by Summer’s spirit and her insight and her love. We were all okay, or getting to okay, because of the parts of her we’d been left with. And suddenly I am not so angry anymore.
And maybe this is the invincible summer: the parts of our loved ones we take with us. Death is the ultimate wrecking ball, coming in and smashing a human life to bits, but when they break, they leave pieces of themselves behind – and it is up to us to make those pieces into a whole. Only we can pick them up and fit them into our lives in a way that makes sense and lasts for the long haul. Only we can banish the winter and make the summer remain. And the book – that is the ultimate memento of her. I will treasure it forever. And maybe I just might write a new book.
“For Summer,” Autumn says as she holds up her knife and sinks it into the rainbow flesh of her Funfetti wedding cake. “Happy birthday, baby doll.”
“For Summer,” the Anti-Support Group says as we all do the same, united in love and Summer and the past forever. And for the first time since she died, I touch my chest, feel my heart, and smile about the fact that I am alive.
At the end of the night, Autumn throws the bouquet at me as I sit at my table alone. I let it fall to my feet before I grab it, hand it to Kim, and walk away. I may have decided not to die, but after Summer’s pink roses at her funeral, I still don’t think I’m ready for any flowers just yet.