Overwhelming Gravity

by Charlie Rogers

I’m eating my breakfast at the back door, mostly trying to stay out of Dad’s way while he putters through the coffeemaking process, gazing out at the old shed poking from fresh-fallen snow, when the doorbell makes us both jump.

It’s my best friend, Andy, grinning on the front step like a mischievous chipmunk, red earlobes peeking from underneath a knit cap my mom gave him two Christmases ago. We always walk to school together—the high school’s at the end of our street—but he’s forty minutes early today. “Snow day!”

“Is it official?” The thin cotton of my pajamas doesn’t do a damn thing against the frigid air rolling in from the open door. I squeeze my arms around my chest and step back to let him inside before I get yelled at.

He gestures behind him—last night’s snow makes it impossible to see where the yard ends and the street begins. “Pretty sure we got the day off, Zeke.”

Andy follows me into the kitchen where I’ve left my half-eaten instant oatmeal—it’s already solidified, an unappetizing gray sludge. Dad’s face brightens when he sees Andy trailing behind me—years fall away from his stern demeanor. “Andrew! Still considering Cornell?”

That’s my brother Jacob’s school, Dad’s alma mater too. Andy’s grades aren’t nearly good enough to get in, but he lets Dad believe it’s still an option. I don’t know why.

“Yes, Mr. Walker.” Andy holds his normally rubbery face very still whenever he addresses my parents—just my dad now. Still not used to that. “Have you looked outside? The plows haven’t even come by yet.”

I’m about to scoop my uneaten breakfast into the sink when Dad grabs my wrist, his rough fingers digging into my skin.

“You finish that.” His narrow eyes burn with impatience. “We don’t waste in this house.”

Sara, one of my sisters, trudges into the room, never lifting her eyes from her phone. A lazy ponytail bounces behind her, as if it’s struggling to keep up. “School’s canceled.”

“Hey, sweetie.” Dad kisses her head, same as he used to with Mom.

My other sister, Becca, marches in as well, her mouth already open to make some proclamation but freezes like a woodland creature in headlights when she spots Andy, a soft blush spreading across her pale cheeks. She swats away Dad’s attempt at affection. “Eww, Dad, boundaries.”

My sisters are identical twins, supposedly, but their heads are totally different shapes, so they’re easy to identify even when they dress alike. They resemble Dad, same as our brother Jacob—thin brows and heavy lips, wide noses and weak chins. I got Mom’s rounded cheeks and delicate features, her Mediterranean complexion. Our last Christmas card photo of the six of us remains pinned to the refrigerator—those cards were already in the mail when Mom went out to the gardening shed and never came back inside—it reminds me how mismatched I am every time I open the door.

“Hi, Andy.” Becca giggles and elbows Sara.

Sara rolls her eyes and stomps towards the sink, where I’m standing. “Move, freak.”

“You’re the freak.” I shovel cold oatmeal into my mouth, annoyed.

“Zeke, don’t talk to your sister like that.” Dad fills his coffee mug and turns to the refrigerator. He pauses with his hand on the door, staring at it, like he’s forgotten what he’s doing.

I set my bowl down—still unfinished, but Dad doesn’t notice—and turn to Andy. “I’m gonna get dressed. Let’s get out of here.”

Once I’m on the stairs, I realize Andy’s following me up. My cheeks flush, even though Andy’s been here hundreds of times—a jittery warmth spreading through me like fireflies under my skin.

*

Jacob’s by the window, so still he could be a mannequin. I know what he’s looking at.

He came home for winter break a couple months ago, same as every year, but when everything happened with Mom, he took the semester off and is back sharing his old room with me.

He squints as he turns to us, scratching his over-muscled chest. “Hey, Baby Andy, what’s new?”

I’ve told Jacob a hundred times to stop calling Andy that, that it’s mean, but I think he does it to piss me off more than he cares to remind Andy of what happened when we were kids.

Andy stiffens, a subtle tensing in his forearms and neck. “Hi, Jacob. How’s Cornell?”

Jacob shrugs and tugs at the waistband of his underwear. “I miss it. Dad says you’re applying there too?”

I move myself between them. “We’ve got a snow day. Andy and I are going out.”

Jacob’s answer is a shrug and a shove that nearly knocks me over, then he lumbers into the hall.

Andy breaks into a belly laugh, busting up over nothing. I grab sweats from my dresser and when I peel off my shirt, Andy’s laugh stops as abruptly as it started while he tracks me with an intense gaze. I wish he’d waited downstairs. My cheeks burn again and I wonder if he sees it.

“Were your family always such dicks?” Andy settles onto my creaky mattress and keeps his eyes trained on me. It’s not that he’s never seen me change before, but he usually at least pretends not to look. Not sure what’s up with him today.

Since there’s nowhere to get privacy in the tiny room and I figure Jacob’s hogging the bathroom, I go ahead and tug down my pajama pants, facing away from him, pretending he’s finally averted his eyes. “Yeah, you just never noticed when my Mom was around.”

Silence stretches between us like the snow coating the lawn. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not just Andy. No one knows what to say when I mention my mother. I wouldn’t, either.

On the way downstairs, we encounter Jacob, who pushes me again for no reason, and then Dad, who acts as if he somehow doesn’t see us, his gaze fixed firmly on his slippered feet.

Then we’re outside, in a world of still and white, and when Andy laughs, the sound of it echoes around me.

*

In the woods, the snow isn’t as deep—to our ankles, not our shins—though every time the wind shifts, the boughs above us dump fresh snow on our heads in mini-avalanches. It lands on my neck and runs down my back in icy rivulets. Andy chucks a sloppy snowball at my chest.

“Oh, now you’re gonna get it.” I grab a chunk of snow, the cold pressing past the thin fabric of my gloves.

“Shit!” Andy runs away from me, loping as fast as his short legs will carry him. In his white puffy coat, he reminds me of a snow bunny.

I didn’t get the easy athleticism my siblings inherited from Dad, but I’m fast. I chase Andy until he stumbles and lands face first in the snow. It’s pretty funny. While I’m cracking up, he takes off again.

“Where are you going?” I shout after him. The wind carries my voice away, dropping more snow-bombs in its place.

Andy slows, shifting into pretend slow-motion, and turns. A grin flashes like lightning.

I’ve known Andy since we were in diapers. We used to spend all our time exploring these woods, climbing these same trees, as if we owned it all, even when we were too young to be left unsupervised. We never talk about the day it all changed, ten years ago—I know Andy doesn’t want to.

After the media circus died down, we’d still spend most of our free time in the woods together—pretending we were scrappy rebels in an epic space battle, secretly smoking cigarettes until we both decided we hated them, talking about our teachers and girls and our fucked-up families. But it’s been a decade since we’ve ventured far enough to lose sight of my house.

I goose step through a particularly heavy drift that rises to my thighs. “I don’t remember where these woods end up.”

Andy gazes up at the treetops. “At the cemetery, I think, on the south side.”

“On. The. South Side.” I affect a robotic tone, cocking my head wildly with each syllable. He shakes his head, not laughing, so I continue. “I don’t want to go there.”

He lowers his chin. “Obviously, dipshit. Like I want to, either? We just won’t go south, okay?”

I pretend to check my pockets, coming up empty. “I didn’t bring my compass, asshole.”

Evergreens tower around us, watchful sentries. Andy points in a seemingly random direction. “This way.”

I follow, pressing my boots into the depressions he’s made.

*

Andy wipes the snow from the fallen tree before sinking onto its sticky, wet bark—it groans, world-weary. “I’m sorry.”

We’re lost. Andy didn’t bring his phone and I don’t have one anymore since Jacob accidentally ruined mine. We’ve been wandering in circles for hours—every time we think we’re forging a new path we end up winding back to our own footprints.

The sun hangs low and heavy in the sky, barely visible behind dense clouds, like it too has run out of patience with this day. That means we’ve been outside for close to seven hours—I’m starving and my feet are cement.

I squeeze in beside him. “We should probably keep going while we have some light.”

Andy sighs. I imagine he’s feeling the same frustration as me. As kids we were masters of this domain, and now that we teeter on the brink of adulthood, it feels different, like we’re intruders.

Andy stands, offering me his hand like it’s the prestige in a magic trick. It’s like gripping a block of ice, but then a current of warmth vibrates into my palm just as he releases my grip. “Come on. Let’s find our way out of these fucking woods.”

*

Andy’s off and running again. We both spotted the break in the woods at the same time, an oasis in this wintry desert, but I’m hanging back. We’ve ended up exactly where we didn’t want to go.

At the far edge of the cemetery grounds stands an old well, a squat circle of weathered brick, long-since covered in plywood and graffiti. The DANGER sign is gone, but everyone in town knows the story of Baby Andy stuck in the deceptively deep well. By the time I reach him, Andy is pacing around it like he’s afraid it will attack him.

“Do you remember that day?” He pauses to glance up at me, exhaustion and fear warring in his eyes.

I don’t answer but wrap my arms around him, gripping him tight even as he resists at first. Slowly he relaxes into my grasp, the livewire tension animating him dissipating into the cold and dark. It was my idea, twelve years ago, to climb onto the lip of the well and pace its circumference. We pretended it was a black hole whose overwhelming gravity we were trying to escape.

What I remember most about that day is the moment after he fell in. My first instinct was to laugh as he tipped over the edge but it took a long time for the splash to follow and I could barely see where he’d gone. I didn’t panic, not at first, because I assumed he’d be able to climb out. It was only when he started to bawl, the sound of his cries echoing up and down the cylindrical structure—I can’t, Zeke, I can’t, I’m scared—that terror set in. That’s the part I’ve blacked out. Where did I go for help? Who did I tell and what did I say? I have no memory of it at all. Next I remember is reporters swarming us like hornets.

When the rescuers pulled him out, two days later, Andy was different. Scared. He started spending more time at my house, and only later did I understand why. His father ran off with a journalist covering the story and his mom drifted into a pharmaceutical haze. Meanwhile, my mother served us fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at the kitchen table every day, reminding us both how brave we were.

Andy shudders in my arms like he’s stifling sobs. I hold him tighter and glance up the hill that rises past the well and the oldest rows of graves. My mother’s up there somewhere, lost under thoughtless mounds of snow. A new chill slithers in my veins.

I remember this morning, Andy’s hungry gaze as he watched me dress. I wonder how he’d react if I leaned forward to kiss him now, if he’d welcome my cold lips against his or if he’d shove me away in a rage. I drop my arms and step away from him before I’m tempted to find out, and turn towards the hill. He looks away, wiping his face with his wet sleeve.

I start to climb, forging a fresh path in the undisturbed drifts, winding past crumbling crosses and the lumpy mounds of obscured grave markers.

My mother doesn’t have a headstone yet but I know she’s beside a fir tree near the far corner, where the graveyard’s stifling order gives way to the quiet chaos of more woods. I find my way back to her, where I imagine her nestled against its roots, clutching them like a lifeline in the frozen ground.

I thought I might cry on my first visit here, but I’m too cold and too tired to feel much of anything. I wonder if my mother knows she’s hiding under snow now, if maybe that’s all she really wanted, to hide from us for a moment.

Andy breathes heavily beside me. I didn’t notice him following me again. “You okay?”

I fill my lungs with crisp evening air, burning them with the chill, and turn to Andy. “I guess. You?”

“I just didn’t expect to end up back here.” Andy nods, slow and sad, the darkness in his glistening eyes exerting a powerful pull on me. He averts his gaze, first shifting his eyes towards our feet then turning away from me to study the sky behind us.

A surprisingly bitter laugh rolls out of me. “The one place we didn’t want to go.”

*

We barely speak the entire trek back. It’s surprisingly fast, once we know where we’re going, though it feels like lifetimes pass in silence as we soldier through the snow. We’re both freezing and starving and exhausted, and we should celebrate when the shed in my yard finally resolves into view, but neither of us says a word until we’ve breached the treeline.

The back walkway is half-cleared, a forgotten shovel jammed into a tall drift.

Andy trudges towards exposed cement where he pauses to wait for me to catch up. “I had fun today.” He blows on his gloved hands and rubs them against his cheeks.

After the hours spent lost and the unplanned trip to the cemetery and Andy crying at the well, it’s hard to remember the fun part of the day. Maybe that’s the difference between me and Andy. I force a grin and it feels like my skin is cracking like old paper. “See you tomorrow.”

* 

Inside, the house is quiet at first. The sudden warmth, my nerves waking back up, reminds me how cold I really was.

“Dad?” Sara runs down the stairs. Becca’s right behind her. “Oh, it’s you.”

They look more worried than I can remember ever seeing them. Jacob appears too, looking annoyed it’s me and not Dad who came through the back door.

“Where’s Dad?” I shift my gaze across all their faces. Sara is on the verge of tears. Becca’s eyes plead with me, as if I could fix whatever’s happened. Jacob’s shoulders are so scrunched he looks half his normal size.

“We don’t know.” Becca sounds defeated.

“He’s been gone all day,” Sara adds. “We thought he was with you.”

I shake my head. “Why would he ever be with me?”

But I know where he is.

*

The shed door whines on its hinges as I push it open. I shine the flashlight into a corner cluttered with broken terracotta and bags of potting soil. Dad cowers there like a scared animal, his wet eyes bright in the beam of my light. He’s clutching the Christmas card photo from the refrigerator.

“No,” he says, shrinking away from me like a stubborn toddler. “Go away, Zeke.”

I ignore him and grab his wrist. He resists so I have to leverage myself against a raised slat in the floor to yank him to his feet. I expect him to respond with more anger, maybe a smack smarting across the cheek.

Instead he hurls his big arms across me, leaning into me. “You’re just like her, stubborn.”

“I know, Dad. Let’s get inside.”

But he doesn’t move, squeezing me so tight I struggle to breathe, his uneven breaths evolving into silent sobs. I’ve never seen him cry, not even when he told us what Mom had done, not even as we stood under that fir tree, surrounded by other relatives on an unseasonably warm December day.

“I don’t… know… how to do this…. by myself.” He’s bawling hard now, gasping every few syllables, his entire weight against my chest. It’s more than just his broad frame; it’s the heaviness of his grief pressing into me like a melting glacier.

I don’t speak but hold him like Mom used to hold me when I’d wake from a nightmare. I don’t feel his weight anymore, or the cold, and I close my eyes. I see Andy trudging down our street to his house, turning back at the steps to see if I’m somehow still behind him. I picture my sisters and my brother crowded at the back door, grasping hands in silent prayer, awaiting my heroic return. Finally, I imagine Mom curled like a pill bug between the tendril roots of a nurturing tree. The winter passes and her eyes open. She doesn’t speak but she doesn’t need to. I know what she’s telling me.