Chapter 12 (continued)

He stood there awkwardly, hiding something behind his back. Something big that he really couldn't hide behind his back.

"What do you got there?" she asked.

"What this? It's a little—a little something for you." He handed her the giant cardboard card and sat down after realizing he couldn't exactly hide it. The thing was bigger than a menu, and Allison took it gingerly.

The front side was thick with black marker, and the scent still wafted from the card, not exactly the aroma Sedgewick was hoping for. But Allison didn't notice. Her eyes were taking in the drawing, the scrawled black edges and drawing in the middle of a flower, colored with negative space. But it wasn't just a flower. It was ragged and weak, yet strong—an upstart.

Allison realized what it was and squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed hard. Sedgewick sat there quietly, biting his lip, his hands fiddling with a stray straw wrapper. He didn't know what to expect, and seeing as Allison's face was hidden behind the enormous card, he couldn't gauge the reaction.

Allison remembered picking dandelions when she was a little girl, maybe only 5 years old, to give to her mother. She never really faulted her mom for it, for they were just weeds that lined the driveway, but her mom didn't graciously accept the bouquet and put them in water in a crystal vase on the table. It hadn't crushed Allison, it wasn't a traumatic childhood experience come back to haunt her. It was just a quiet moment, an early memory.

"I would have picked a real one for you, but they're kind of rare in October."

She lowered the card, and he watched a lone tear fall from her green eyes and drip down her pretty face. She let it fall, then closed her eyes and another followed, and another. She opened them again and reached across the table to grab Sedgewick's hand, to anchor herself. She mouthed the words 'thank you,' and Sedgewick nodded and squeezed her hand.

The cranky waitress from the previous night hustled up to the table in the middle of the scene, not exactly oblivious to what was happening, but not really caring either. Sedgewick ordered a hot chocolate and Allison waved off anything else, still speechless.

Her eyes were soft and round, a bit red and wet around the edges from crying, but they were full of love and tenderness and yearning. It seemed to Sedgewick they were yearning for the pain to go away, yearning for a better feeling to overcome, but also resigned to it. Sedgewick knew that feeling.

Finally she pulled her hand away from Sedgewick's and reached for a napkin to dab her tear-stained face. She set the crumpled napkin aside and looked at the card again with it's thick cardboard and ragged edges. She turned it over to look at the back and smiled that there was more, and laughed that there was Bran Man beaming and flexing at her.

She read Sedgewick's words--gentle, careful, kind words—and his sign off. She had to read it again. It wasn't the brave and self-assured "Love, Sedgewick." But it wasn't the cold and distant "Sincerely, Sedgewick." It wasn't even a casual "See ya, Sedgewick" or a stiff "Sorry for your loss, Sedgewick."

Instead, in Sedgewick's careful hand, it said "v, Sedgewick." Allison studied it, wondering what the 'v' could possibly stand for. She looked up at Sedgewick, and she could tell he'd been waiting for this, expecting this.

"It's from a poem I remember," Sedgewick started, picking up the discarded straw wrapper to turn it over in his hands again. "Little kids were holding signs with letters on them, but none of them could make it. There was just one little girl holding a sign with a 'v'. She was—she was all of love that could make it that day."

A quiet joy filled Allison's face. She broke her gaze with Sedgewick and her eyes fell on the book she hadn't been reading before. Sedgewick looked at the book, then looked again. His eyes lit up and he reached across the table for the book. Allison started laughing and he smiled a huge smile and shook his head in disbelief.

He looked up and opened his mouth to ask a question, but he could only shake his head in wonder. The book was Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends. It wasn't exactly romantic poetry, but that's precisely why it seemed so appropriate.

"I brought it from home," Allison said, setting the card aside and running her finger over the words one last time. "I was going to do some reading for class but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I pulled this out. My mom… my mom used to read this book to me and my brother when we were little. I haven't read it in so long—years. But I thought that poem sounded familiar."

Sedgewick couldn't believe it either. His Gram and his grandfather used to read the book, and if he remembered he still had a copy on the shelf in his room.

The waitress came and set Sedgewick's hot chocolate down with a clank, coming dangerously close to spilling, and hustled off again without a word.

Allison and Sedgewick sipped their drinks and picked at the half-eaten cinnamon roll ("This is becoming a tradition—an odd, half-eaten tradition," Allison said) while talking about their favorite poems from the book, occasionally flipping through and reading them again, out loud, together. Sedgewick loved the one about the man being swallowed by the boa constrictor and Allison the one about the dancing pants. They both liked the sister for sale, though neither of them ever had a sister.

They laughed and talked and remembered, moving on from that book to others, remembering old tales and stories that used to capture their imagination, perhaps back when it seemed so much easier to get lost in a good story. The cranky waitress returned and left again, leaving the bill and the strong hint that she wouldn't come back. Sedgewick finishes his hot chocolate and the half-eaten cinnamon roll became three-quarters-eaten.

"I needed this," Allison said during a rare lull when they both stopped laughing and had finished telling their stories. "Thank you."

"Any time."

"Will you bring a giant card made out of cardboard every time?"

"I'll see what I can do. But don’t expect a scribbled picture every time."

"But I love the scribble."

"You do?"

"Very much." Their eyes met, and Sedgewick lowered his first. When he decided to do something for Allison he was thinking more along the lines of a bouquet of flowers or maybe a chocolate bar—sometimes his Gram liked chocolate when she was having a bad day. He hadn't expected to sit down and draw something. He never expected Allison to truly like it, perhaps fake it, maybe put on a good show of being touched, but she did like it.

"The memories have been coming so quickly today. It's good to just laugh, to do something besides cry and ache."

"They'll never stop coming."

"I know. But a reprieve is nice. That's all I need once in a while."

Silence overcame the booth, and Sedgewick swirled the glops of hot chocolate in the bottom of his mug that never completely dissolved.

"Do your memories still come?"

"All the time," Sedgewick set his mug down. "Some days it's a little tiny thing, an image, maybe a scent. Other days it's just a passing thought you welcome and beckon towards you. After a while it doesn't hurt so much."

She started telling Sedgewick bits and pieces of stories about her mom that had come to her during the day, some welcomed and some not.

"I remember riding my big wheel in the driveway," she had to pause and explain what a big wheel was, the molded plastic tricycles that sat low to the ground and had huge front wheels and streamers coming off the handlebars. Allison's was pink and the back wheels clicked as they turned, louder and faster the faster you pedaled. "My mom would stand there and watch, holding my baby brother in her arms."

"I remember books, like the Shel Silverstein, and others, like Dr. Seuss and that little worm guy—Richard Scarry—and one about lots and lots of cats. I remember a brontosaurus a little boy kept as a pet—I always asked my mom if I could get one. I remember wild things and older books, books I read myself, but my mom would take me to the library to check them out. Books with annoying little brothers who were somehow cuter than my own brother. Books about soccer teams and mice that drover cars and strange schools and a great lion."

She stopped, realizing she'd been rambling.


"I like books," was all Sedgewick said.

"And I remember my first sleepover, when I borrowed my dad's old sleeping bag and my mom dropped me off and I was so scared." Some stories she finished, and others she didn't, letting them just hang there.

"I remember birthday presents I picked out for her, and other years when I copped out and just gave her a card from the store. I remember trips to visit our grandparents and summers on vacation and little league games with my mom sitting on the sidelines with a folding chair and a travel mug of ice tea."

Sedgewick didn't say much, instead letting her roll with the flowing memories. He noticed that she wasn't breaking down, that she was able embrace each memory. He realized what strength she had, how far she'd already come.

"And I remember dandelions…" this story trailed off and Sedgewick realized she'd gone as far as she could go with out being overcome. He reached out and took her hand, just like she'd taken his earlier, and they held hands across the table in Perkins late on a Tuesday night.

"Do you remember anything of your mom?" Allison asked after a pause.

Sedgewick shook his head slowly from side to side.

"She left when I was really young. Sometimes—sometimes I think I have memories, I think I remember something, but I'm never sure if it's a story Gram told me or something I'm reconstructing from a picture or if it's an actual memory."

"And you still miss her?"

"Some days, yeah. I wonder why she left, I wonder what it would be like if she came back. She's still my mom, but it's not quite the same," Sedgewick looked her in the eye, and she nodded, understanding. Sedgewick didn’t have a life time of memories to rattle off, didn't have as much to miss or as much to grieve over. It didn't mean it was something to dismiss, it just didn't compare.

"What about your dad?"

"Do I remember him? Yeah. It's still hard to tell what's firsthand and what's secondhand, but I remember a lot more of him." They were still holding hands, leaning across the table towards each other and speaking in quiet tones.

"He was an artist."

"Your dad?" Sedgewick nodded. Allison squeezed his hand and gave a knowing smile.

"I remember his studio. I remember I'd lay on the floor and color pictures with crayons while my dad would paint." Sedgewick looked down and grew quiet.

"I’m sorry, I didn't mean to ask you so much all at once."

"No, it's okay. There's a few of his paintings hanging up around the house."

"Really? That's cool."

"Yeah. I remember Gram saying that some friends had told her and my grandfather that they should take down the paintings, after my dad—after my dad died. But Gram refused."

"I can see that."

"She always said that life had denied me my father, but she wouldn't do it, too. She couldn't bear to do it." Allison admired her strength, and could see her standing up for little Sedgewick despite her own loss. She wondered at Sedgewick's grandmother.

Finally they both quieted, their stories told and their questions asked, for now. They were still holding hands across the table, and they just sat like this in the late night semi-quiet of the restaurant. There eyes would shift from the remains of the cinnamon roll, to the other tables throughout the restaurant, to the quick pace of the always cranky waitress, and then back to each other—somehow always at the same moment, always that same feeling of surprise and wonder and warmth.