Erasing Aiden

She pulled open the screen against the breeze and squeezed through the doorway before it slammed shut behind her. The crisp smell of fall was in the air, and the trees were beginning to lose their yellow and orange leaves in the gusty winds that threatened to bring in the inevitable winter cold front. The house was a modest two-story with a brick exterior, and it backed up to wide fields of open space where a misshapen barn gave shelter to a few horses that were among other casualties to be lost in the impending divorce. The shutters used to be a vibrant blue, but the years had worn it down and the wood was visible through the paint in some parts.

“Hello?” There was no answer.

She dropped her backpack on the floor and opened the refrigerator to find a half-drunk beer, a questionably green clementine, and an unopened container of generic pasta sauce. Sighing, she closed the doors and looked at the pictures under colorful magnets. Two adults, three kids, and a black lab peeked out from a Yellowstone picture frame: her family circa 2008. A smiling boy clutched a university diploma in his hands. A little girl in a tutu stuck out her tongue at the camera through two missing teeth. Past Christmas cards mixed with shopping lists and invitations. A hand-written note was taped crookedly to the handle:

“Riley, I didn’t have time to run to the store today. Left you $20 for pizza. Going out with a friend later, should be back around midnight. Mom called. Don't stay up past 11:00. Sam”

After a few minutes of intense rummaging, she found a box of pasta and set some water on the stove to boil. A large stack of mail was thrown on top of the kitchen table and she shuffled through it. College pamphlets and bills mostly, along with a flyer of a smug, mousey looking attorney in a tie with the name “Allan Erdelweebler, J.D” in bright red letters across the bottom which she promptly threw in the trash.

***

Sam came in with an armful of groceries early the next morning. 

“When’s Mom coming home?” Riley asked as she rustled through the bags. Her mother was living with her sister a few hours away and her father had rented an apartment downtown.

“I don’t know. They said it would make things easier if neither of them live in the house right now, so she’s staying at Aunt Cathy’s until the judge figures out who gets what.”

“You mean who gets me.”

“Yeah, I guess that too.” He put a six pack of Corona in the fridge, and paused before shutting it, his arm resting on the handle. “Hey, I’m going to swing by and pick up flowers for Aiden today if you wanted to come with me.”

She began to form a pyramid with some Gala apples that were in another bag.

“No, I’m okay. I will next time. For sure.”

“Riley."

“Stop. I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Fine, but you’ll to have to talk about it sometime. Mom made you an appointment with that court counselor for the trial. The judge takes your opinion into consideration too, you know.”

“I’m old enough to stay by myself.”

“Not according to the law, kid.”

He handed her a box of cereal to put in the cabinet. “Look, I know this sucks. This whole thing -- God, it really sucks. I know you feel like the world owes you something, and maybe it does, but Mom and Dad lost someone too. We’re all just trying to find a way to make the best of a really s****y situation, okay?”

She shrugged. Maybe she did feel like the world owed her something. 

***

She sat in the waiting room of a dimly lit medical building. The actual hospital was across the street, but the space still gave off an eerily clinical feeling and smelled of bleach and dried macaroni shells, like a pre-school art project gone wrong. A flatscreen TV was mounted on the wall in front of her, and it showed an moving scene of water trickling through a clearing in the woods. How idyllic. She walked over and turned it off. A bespectacled man opened an office door and called her name, and she followed him into a brighter room.

“Hello, Riley. My name is Dr. Hoffman. I’m the certified grief counselor on staff here for custody cases.”

She nodded and sat down on the couch.

“Your mother requested that I meet with you today to talk through a few things. Is that alright?”

Riley looked around the white room. “Do you have any snacks?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Snacks. I was told there would be snacks here. The lady at the front desk mentioned something about it.”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t have anything like that here. I’ll try and remember to bring some for next time.”

He took the chair opposite her and picked up a wooden clipboard and ballpoint pen. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting about the man. He was old, she thought, around sixty, with glasses that slid down his nose every few minutes when he talked. He looked at her like everybody else did, and she hated it. Everybody walked around like she was broken. She wasn’t something to be pitied, and she most certainly didn’t want the man attaching any medical definitions onto her.

“Now, we can just begin by getting to know each other a little better. Your mother tells me that you’re a very good student and track athlete. You must keep a very busy schedule. Are you very busy?”

Riley noticed four diplomas hanging crookedly on the wall behind him. “I guess. Look, for the record, I’m not crazy.”

“Excuse me?” He set the clipboard down in his lap.

“I’m not crazy. I know a lot of people think different things about me because of my brother and stuff, but I’m not crazy. I just thought you should know.” 

“I see.”

She dug her fingers into the corduroy couch. The man didn’t see. He had a lot of textbooks about this type of thing, and he went to school for a good number of years, but he wasn’t able to see nearly as much as he thought he could. Her mother was like that too. She bought a bunch of books about loss. She thought that if she could recite the five stages of grief, or get rid of anything that reminded her of Aiden, that it would be like that part of her life wasn’t over. It would be like it had never really existed at all. Like he had never existed at all. She could pick up all the pieces and fly them down to her new home in Palm Beach. She didn’t even like the ocean, but nothing was safe from erasing. Not even her husband. Not even her daughter.

“Your mother is concerned that you’re not fully processing the extent of what happened with your brother. Do you think that’s true?”

“If she thinks it is, it must be. No one really asks me what I think. If that’s what you’re supposed to write in your notes, go ahead. I don’t really care.”

He scratched his face and wrote something down on the clipboard.

“Your mother also tells me that you left quite soon after the funeral. Is this correct?”

“Yeah, I took a bus to visit a friend in Denver. I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.” She didn’t want to venture into this conversation. “I just didn’t want to deal with all of it.”

“I see.”

There it was again. There was always that judgement. She knew they didn’t understand, but no one had given her the time to figure out what she was feeling without people telling her exactly how to feel it. No one told her mother how to feel. She didn’t have to explain everything to some certified counselor and custody judge. She was just able to up and leave. 

The man coughed and continued writing in his notes. “How do you feel about everything? Can you describe your emotions to me?” 

“Is this going to affect who the judge decides I live with?”

He shook his head.

“Mad, I guess. Yeah, mostly mad.”

He began writing again and didn’t look back up at her. She continued.

“I guess I was a little shocked at first. But then I wasn’t. Aiden was really sad for a long time. Sick really, and I kept telling myself at the beginning that I could help, like I could do something to change how he was feeling and thinking and stuff, but I don’t think I could have. No matter how much I wanted to. And right after it happened, I was just cold. There was a numb sort of feeling, and then I was angry. He knew how much it would hurt all of us, and he did it anyway. He put a bullet in his head because he couldn’t deal with real life and he left us here to clean up his mess. It was selfish. It was so stupid.”

“Your mother tells me you were the one to find him?” 

She pushed her fingers deeper into the couch. “Yeah, I was. No one else was home.”

“That must have been hard.”

“Look, I don’t really want to talk about this anymore. Can you just do your report so I can leave?”

He stared at her awhile, and then he scratched a quick note on the piece of paper.

“Before I write anything, do you have a preference?”

“Preference of what?”

“Who you live with.” He leaned forward a little. “Your mother or your father?”

Riley looked out the window of the office and saw that the clouds were beginning to clear and a cold wind blew through the orange trees outside. She wondered if her mother still felt the heaviness of it all where she was. Was it possible to feel pain by the ocean? It was almost December.

“I don’t really like the cold.”

***

The car pulled up alongside a strip of grass and a large iron gate stood tall and pointed up towards the sky. The back window was covered with bags and suitcases. Her mother had talked up Palm Beach on the phone, and Riley put the colorful postcards she had sent her in the glove compartment along with her plane ticket. 

She hated night flights, but it was the only direct one and her mother wanted her there as soon as possible. The cemetery was emptier than she had expected, which she figured was probably a good thing, and she pictured what it had looked like during the service when it was filled with people.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Sam put the car in park.

“No, I think I’m just going to do this alone. I won’t be long.”

There were a few trees along the road and the scenery was dotted with the occasional bouquet, and it made her feel guilty that she hadn’t brought flowers. Clouds rolled in as she walked along the pathway. They were heavy and gray, the kind that brought snow and she smelled it in the air. The wind picked up and she closed her eyes against it and felt a calmness.

Winter was here and she was leaving it. She would be on a plane soon to Florida, and she wouldn’t be cold anymore. Her mother found peace in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, and she hoped that -- maybe together -- they would be able to erase loss from their memories and Aiden from their bones.