If He Had Been with Me

My parents are at their marriage counselor. When they come back, we will go out to dinner and they will ask me questions. We do this once a week now. It was my father’s idea. He calls them Family Dinners. This confused me at first because Family has always included Angelina and Finny before this.

I’m supposed to be ready to go as soon as they come, so I am waiting by the door. The sun is setting outside, but I cannot see it from the front window. The sky is gray. The leaves are falling early this year.

I am looking forward to eating out tonight. I wrote three poems today and copied them into my blank book with the fountain pen Jamie gave me. I used the violet ink and I am feeling virtuous and giddy. My homework is done and tomorrow is Friday.

A car goes down the road, and the headlights briefly illuminate a lump further down on the lawn. It’s nearly as tall as me and three times as wide. It only takes a moment to recognize, and then I wonder how I could have possibly not noticed it before.

I open the door and run down the lawn. I’m not wearing a jacket, and the air chills me. Just before I leap, I wonder if the leaves might be wet, but I make the dive anyway. The leaves are deliciously dry and crunchy. I am completely surrounded by their dusty smell, even over my head. I laugh out loud and the scent tumbles down my throat. I burst out of the top and the pile shifts sideways over the grass. I pick up handfuls and toss them in the air. They fall around me like snow and I throw myself onto my back and look at the fading light in the sky.

When we were small, Finny loved autumn, not because it began with our birthdays, but for the leaves. Finny built us forts by covering cardboard boxes with piles of leaves, and he would try to convince me to stay inside all night with him. I was less enthusiastic about the fallen leaves; they meant that my enemy, winter, was drawing near. The bare trees made me think of death, and back then I had every reason to fear death.

I did love jumping into the leaves though; Finny could always persuade me to do that. While I waited, he would create monster mounds of them, taller than our heads, until I was too impatient to wait any longer, and he would say to wait because there were still so many leaves in our huge yards and he could make an even bigger pile, but I would leap anyway and Finny would have to join me. Sometimes we took turns, and sometimes we held hands and jumped together. We jumped and jumped until the pile was flat again and the leaves were scattered over the yard. Then Finny would go back for the rake and say that this time he would make an even bigger pile, which I would ruin before he was finished. We would pass whole afternoons this way.

I leap out again, scattering more leaves, and run up the lawn again to take my second jump. I aim more carefully this time, hoping to land on top as queen of the hill instead of buried in the middle. I jump, and in my moment of flight I hear his voice.

“Autumn!”

The crunch of the leaves momentarily drowns out all sound. I slide sideways and am buried again. My left leg hangs out, and I draw it in toward my body, instinct telling me to hide even though I know it is silly.

“Autumn?” His voice is close now. I want to burrow deeper and wait for him to leave, but I know that that will not work. I shift upward so that I am sitting in the pile.

Finny is standing three feet in front of me, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s frowning at me.

“I spent all afternoon raking both yards,” he says. I look around. I’ve scattered half the pile on to the grass again.

“Sorry,” I say. His anger both fascinates and frightens me; I see it so rarely. For a moment, I study his stance, his narrowed eyes. I carefully remember the tone of his voice when he spoke. Everything about him is important. There is a beat of silence. He rolls his eyes and sighs.

“It’s fine,” Finny says. One corner of his mouth turns up. “That’s what I get for putting off bagging until tomorrow. I should have known an unguarded pile of leaves would be too great of a temptation for you.”

I have to look away now. It hurts for him to smile at me like that, a friendly, easy smile that says nothing in particular, and therefore tells me everything I need to know about his feelings for me.

I thought that I would have spent the rest of September, the rest of my life, avoiding Finny, but I have not. Nothing has changed. I loved him the very first morning I stood at the bus stop with him and every night I sat across a dinner table from him. It does not matter that one of us now knows; it doesn’t change anything.

“I’ll fix it,” I say. “I’ll even bag them up for you.”

“No,” he says. “It’s fine. Really.” When I look up at him, I see that his brief anger has evaporated, and his face is clear of anything but amusement. “What’s the thing people say?” Finny asks. His brow furrows again but in a different sort of way. “The more things change, the more they stay the same?”

I stumble up and try to brush myself off; suddenly I am itchy and cold. “I should clean up. I’m supposed to be ready to go when Mom and Dad get home.”

“You have leaves in your hair,” Finny says. “And in your tiara. And everywhere.”

I raise my hand and run my fingers through my hair and he does not move. The sun is gone now, and the evening shifts around us as cars’ headlights throw their light at us and pass on. I see his handsome face and his half smile and the golden lock of hair hanging in his face.

I love you, Finny, I think.

“Where are you going?” he says. I cannot help my frown.

“Family Dinner,” I say.

“Oh,” he says. My next words surprise me, but Finny does not seem startled at all.

“My father’s decided he wants us to be a regular family,” I say.

“Sounds familiar,” Finny says.

“Oh,” I say. “I heard about that.”

Finny’s father invited Finny and Angelina out for dinner. It’s scheduled for next month.

“It’s okay, I guess,” he says, and I’m glad. Okay means he isn’t hurt or resentful. Okay means he isn’t pinning too high of hopes on the man. A bit of the burden I’ve carried eases. But it won’t last forever. There will always be something I cannot protect him from. Sylvie may break his heart again. The tendons in his legs could tear at his next soccer game. Someday someone he loves will die.

My parents’ headlights flash across us.

“Have a good dinner,” he says.

“You too,” I say, and I think that he understands what I mean, because he nods. We turn away from each other without saying good-bye. I hear the crunch of the leaves under his feet fade away as I walk the long lawn toward the car.

“Were you and Finny jumping in the leaves?” Mom asks when I slide into the back seat. I look over myself to see if I’m still covered in leaves.

“No,” I say. When I close the door, the lights shut off, and I see what she must have seen—back in the shadows, someone tall and lean is pulling himself up out of the leaves and dusting himself off.