Unexpectedly at home

Billy stomps in the door from the bus stop. His jacket and backpack are in a pile in seconds. No amount of gentle pleading or the occasional sharp bark from his parents can get those items on hooks. He goes into the kitchen without so much as a word to his Mom who’s buzzing around doing miscellaneous tasks. Mom never sat down in those days. At 13 years old, he’s moody. All the fondness for his parents has worn off, not to return until he has kids of his own some decades later.

He sets up a frozen “Celeste Pizza for One” atop its silver microwave disk and programs the timer for two minutes 30. He’ll be the proud recipient of a floppy thin pizza as hot as lava soon.

“How was school, son,” asks Mom.

“Fine.”

“Yeah? Whudja do today?”

“I dunno.”

Kids hate the school recap. Parents would love a little sneak peek into the day.

The microwave calls out three shrill beeps. Billy pulls it out and slips it onto a plastic plate that is crisscrossed with old knife marks. He’ll scorch the roof of his mouth soon.

“Ma, can you drive me over to Dane’s?” He asks with a mouthful of lava. He uses the more upbeat tone that kids switch to when they want to increase the odds of hearing yes.

“Who?”

Billy rolls his eyes.

“Come on, Ma. Dane. My friend from school, I’ve told you about him [he hasn’t]. We’re gunna skateboard and practice guitar for a while.”

“Oh. OK. Will his parents be there?”

“His Mom will be there.” [She won’t. In 1997, before 5:30pm on a weeknight there was no parental oversight in small town Massachusetts. You let yourself in and ate a snack. Someone would be home around dinner time. The expectation was that you could keep yourself alive and not commit any felonies for 90 minutes . Dane’s Dad lives somewhere else but they never talk about it.]

And then they’re off to one of the tree streets [Oak, Elm, or Birch]. Billy in the passenger seat with his skateboard, finishing off the last two bites of the cardboard pizza, back of his hand for a napkin.

Dane is the kind of thirteen year old friend that is with you for a phase. A phase for you, but something longer for him. He’ll continue on this path without you. Nine inch Nails T shirt, huge baggy jeans, and skateboarding. Billy begged his folks for t-shirts of bands that he didn’t listen to. He grew out his hair and parted it in the middle to look more like the skater kids at school. An effort to try and mirror his buddy, Dane. The skater kids seemed mysterious and a little dangerous to Billy. Getting sent to Asst Principal Shaffer’s office was cause for a hat tip. Kids whispered about “in house” suspension sentences like they’d done a tour in ‘Nam. Dane was working hard to break into this group.

The skater phase also featured clinging to first girlfriends and the corresponding avalanche of chemicals coursing through teen bodies. Plus hanging out with punk kids who were always in trouble with parents, school administrators, and local law enforcement. Getting picked up by too fast drivers who would screech the tires of their Mitsubishi Eclipses leaving your cul-de-sac.

Billy had never known anyone else called Dane. Billy begged his parents for a guitar because Dane had one. Billy’s Mom would drop him off so that they could build cinder block and plywood ramps to launch their 13 year old bodies off of. Rewiring the factory settings of their fear. During breaks from skating they would switch off trying to play '“Come as you are” or “ironman” or “secret agent man” on Dane’s red fender that he kept in his bedroom.

[cut to]

Billy’s in his 40s now, with his own small kids. He’s bustling around a kitchen that he’s having trouble affording. He’s learning that kids hate a school recap from the other side of the table. He thinks of his parents during the Dane days. What harrowing days. Billy’s parents worked themselves burnt; to send Billy and his brother to Catholic and private schools. He can see the appeal. Those places produce more predictable outcomes.

Billy wonders about the people that his own kids will meet and the ghosts that will haunt chapters of their lives as they try to figure out who they are. He fears that he’ll white knuckle his way through challenging phases like his own folks did. Billy wishes that he had crossed an artist back in those days. Instead, he felt drawn to people who had a streak of unlived darkness in them. He was drawn to kids who stole cans of Michelob from their drunk dads’ garage fridges.

On quiet nights after the kids have found the deep, untroubled sleep of youth, Billy will find himself on facebook, searching for the old ghosts. He’s hoping to find peers who have lost hair and found bellies. He’s hoping to find evidence of occasional joy in their photos. The evidence is not always there. Sometimes he finds neck tattoos and shirtless selfie profile pics. A posting history that signals that maybe things didn’t turn out the way we all hoped.

He types in his old skateboarding friend’s name and the first page is littered with funeral home links.

“died unexpectedly at home”

The phrase is funeral parlor code for a life chopped short. It’s a placeholder for any number of unspeakable endings. The obit continues: he loved the outdoors, hiking, and camping with his rescue dogs. The official copy of the obit makes no mention of a wife, girlfriend or partner.

Billy wanted the truth from obituaries, no matter how selfish that sounds. Lines like: Charlie lost his battle with addiction. Susan lost her life to suicide. These lines would bring him to his knees, but they were honest.

He navigates to the condolences page that the Funeral Home still kindly pays to host on the web. People have checked in as recently as October of 2024. Like a nosy detective, he scans the virtual guest book for clues of how things might have been for Dane. The online funeral parlor guest book is where you go to have your heart broken.

People that wish they had stayed in touch.

Beloved Aunts who have lit “virtual” candles for years and write that they will “carry you in their hearts forever.”

And then you find the entries from the girlfriend who isn’t mentioned in the copy of the official obituary. The one who the family secretly blames.

The one who writes “you didn’t deserve the pain you went threw” and “I tried so many times to help i know you know that even if no one eelse does.”

Billy wallows in the despair for too long. He should go to bed. Before he does, he will cleanse the palate by visiting other ghost profiles he’s found before. Ones that feature proud parents of little leaguers and dancers.

Eventually, he tip toes past his kids’ room and pauses to listen to their even breathing. He can see the outline of their comforters rising and falling. He sneaks in to look at them. Their foreheads unwrinkled, free from worry. Their small mouths cracked slightly open.

He knows at some point that Dane’s folks basked in the gift of spying on their sleeping baby. He thinks of them now.