Filed to story: If He Had Been With Me Book PDF Free
“I mean,” I say, “if I really am your friend, can you stop questioning it like that?”
“That’s fair,” Sylvie says, and I’m not sure she notices I was joking. “If I stop questioning our friendship, will you stop falling for Alexis’s bullshit?”
“I?? thought Alexis was your friend?”
“Yes,” Sylvie says. “But she has a lot of growing up to do.”
I know Sylvie well enough to know that there’s no point in reminding her that Alexis is two weeks older than her. Besides, she’s right; Alexis hasn’t matured much in the past four years. It’s such a simple thing, but it explains so much about Alexis, not to mention my relationship with her, that I’m too stunned to say more than, “Yeah.”
“I mean,” Sylvie continues, “you’d outgrown her before junior year had even started.”
We’re on a gravel path now, and I’m matching Sylvie’s brisk pace. Apparently, we’re taking a walk together.
“Yeah,” I say again for the same reason.
This time, she must hear it in my tone, because she says, “Didn’t you notice how all your fights were because you’d said something she didn’t want to admit was true?”
“I’m going to be honest with you, Sylv,” I say. “I never knew what any of my fights with Lexy were about.”
“That’s okay,” she laughs. “Lexy never knew either, but she didn’t know that she didn’t know.”
“It sounds like you outgrew her too,” I say.
Sylvie shrugs and keeps striding forward.
I add, “I’m seeing a lot about Alexis clearly. She’s not always been a good friend to you.”
Sylvie looks at me differently than I think she has before.
“Noted,” she says.
The gravel crunches under our feet.
I feel like I should say something profound, something I can quote from Finn that will make her pain less complicated. If this were a movie, there would be a convenient flashback to tell me what memory to share with Sylvie, but nothing comes to mind.
Suddenly we’re not walking anymore. I had noticed Sylvie pausing, and I’d thought she was taking off her jacket. But she pulls out a computer printout of a map and studies it, brow furrowed.
“Are you looking for, uh, William Burroughs’s grave?” I ask.
Sylvie looks at me blankly.
“The writer? He’s buried here.”
“No.” Sylvie says. “He was a junkie who shot his wife.” She folds the map and puts it into her jacket, which she is still wearing in this heat. “I was going to see Sara Teasdale’s grave. She was a poet.” She continues on at the same brisk pace as before.
“You never seemed like a poetry fan. Like, at all?”
We’re walking on the path again, but she veers off to the right.
“I’m not,” Sylvie says. “Generally I find poetry tedious. But I like Teasdale’s poems. Unlike most poets, she knew how to get to the point. And since I was going to be here anyway…” She trails off as we leave the gravel for the grass.
Sylvie counts the headstones we pass under her breath as I follow behind. I think about a hundred years ago, when these graves were new, how they’d been important, how people had come here to weep and remember. I wonder if Finn’s headstone will, one day, be nothing more to anyone than a marker to be counted to find someone else’s final resting place.
“Here it is. Oh.”
At first, I don’t understand, and then I see it.
Sara Teasdale was born on August 8, 1884.
“I didn’t know her birthday,” Sylvie says.
“Just a coincidence,” I say.
She shrugs and stares at the date.
“What’s your favorite poem of hers?” I try.
She smiles in a way that lets me know that I haven’t changed the topic how I’d hoped.
Sylvie closes her eyes before reciting.
“Now while my lips are living,
Their words must stay unsaid,
And will my soul remember
To speak when I am dead?
Yet if my soul remembered
You would not heed it, dear,
For now you must not listen,
And then you could not hear.”
Sylvie doesn’t open her eyes; she stands there. The heat has finally gotten to her, and her face has a pink and dewy glow that makes her look like she’s been crying, even though I’m pretty sure she’s hasn’t been.
“Is that it?”
Sylvie opens her eyes and blinks at me.
“It seemed complete, but it was so short.”
“I told you she knew how to get to the point,” Sylvie says. Finally, she takes off her jacket. “I found her book on the English language shelf in a used bookstore in Paris. I read that poem and bought the book.” She folds her jacket over her arm and sighs. “I read it cover to cover twice on the train to Berlin.”
“You know,” I’m not sure what I’m about to say, though it feels important. “Finn would love this. You planning to visit the grave of the one poet you thought wasn’t bullshit after his funeral.” I rush to say, “He wouldn’t love that he was…you know, having a funeral.” I can tell Sylvie’s trying to follow along, so I continue. “But if he had to have a funeral, he would love that you were doing this afterward. Are doing it.”
“Because it’s the sort of thing Autumn would do?” She raises her chin and looks me in the eyes.
I shake my head. “She wouldn’t have a map. Or she would lose the map or get lost even with the map.” I wave Autumn’s ghost away with my hands. “But, Sylv, my point was Finn would have loved you having that map in your jacket pocket all through his funeral. He would have loved you saying that, unlike other poets, this one knew how to get to the point. He loved you.”
Sylvie is back to staring at the grave. “But not the way he loved her.”
I can’t argue with that. More than anyone, I can’t argue with it, so I join her in staring at the date on the grave.
The wind picks up, giving some relief. There are so many old trees in this part of the cemetery, and the rustle of the leaves is so loud I can barely hear her say, “Where was she?”