mean.”
“Um—”
“I’ve never asked for much.”
That’s true, Jamie thought, and you never gave much either. Of all the Dyers, I knew and know Jamie the best. Friendship was imprinted upon us from the start, despite our obvious differences. We were born five months apart (me first) and were nurtured side by side by adoring mothers who embraced their youngest extra tight, though, more important, our nannies were from the same Caribbean island. There are photo albums filled with pictures of Jamie and me in Central Park, at the beach in Southampton, at the zoo holding hands. I was always taller than everyone, until ninth grade, when I stopped growing and soon became the shortest. We matriculated through the same schools in the same years and part of our education was learning that, like our fathers, we could be friends without all the fuss. We were probably closest in fifth grade, when Jamie briefly flirted with my Transformers obsession (I worshipped Megatron), but by upper school it was obvious that he was destined for cooler things, and with each matriculation our relationship became more asymmetrical, so that by the time we finished with Yale our years together had a funhouse-mirror effect. I was the type of student who reinvented himself with each new school, never satisfied with my status as both person and peer. I took thechange of environment as an opportunity to fine-tune my persona, until junior year abroad, where I hit upon earnest dilettante and returned from Paris newly found. I graduated from Yale with a degree in English literature, my senior essay focusing on A. N. Dyer and the kidnapping of identity. It received a passing grade. But Jamie was one of those rare exotics who emerged fully formed, without pretense, it seemed. Everything was always possible for him, so why bother changing. From an early age he stood apart as the most striking in any group, man, woman, or child, blessed with perfect skin and mink-brown eyes and a smile that revealed crowded incisors but crowded in a way that Walt Whitman would have celebrated. You might have guessed he had some Cherokee blood. He was the first to swim in the ocean, the first to ride a ten-speed, the first to break his arm. Parents called him wicked, though they all adored him, teachers included. Jamie was the mirror that brought back the most alluring aspects of youth and everybody wanted to see themselves in his glow. A day in his company invariably produced uncalculated adventure: start in Chinatown searching for fireworks and end up in Queens watching a cockfight with three Chinese kids and a Russian switchblader named Stahn. I myself found these adventures exhausting (and always frightening), but for Jamie it was just another Saturday afternoon. Nothing was out of the ordinary, certainly not a cemetery in the middle of the night.
The almost full moon shone against the snow and created a drift of ghostly light. The last time Jamie was here, the trees were doing their best advertisement for autumn in Vermont. He had stood on that hill and watched his old girlfriend, his first real girlfriend, get planted into the ground. It was like Sylvia was a seed and cemeteries were gardens in reverse. Her daughters, Delia and Clover, had painted flowers and butterflies on the coffin, sentiments of
I’ll Never Forget You
, and
I’ll Miss You
, and
Love
and
Peace
in heartbreaking purple and green, a family portrait done on the lid—the girls, the house, the horses, the dog, Mom and Dad standing hand in hand—the backdrop of Green Mountains rendered by Sylvia herself over the course of a week in August. It seemed a shame to bury such a lovely thing. Nearly everyone was crying as two friends played “We Bid You Goodnight” on mandolin andviolin. Delia and Clover leaned against their father like ponytailed two-by-fours holding up an unsteady wall. Jamie tried not to stare. Ed Carne did not like him. Jamie knew this because Ed told him so. “I don’t like you,”
“Um—”
“I’ve never asked for much.”
That’s true, Jamie thought, and you never gave much either. Of all the Dyers, I knew and know Jamie the best. Friendship was imprinted upon us from the start, despite our obvious differences. We were born five months apart (me first) and were nurtured side by side by adoring mothers who embraced their youngest extra tight, though, more important, our nannies were from the same Caribbean island. There are photo albums filled with pictures of Jamie and me in Central Park, at the beach in Southampton, at the zoo holding hands. I was always taller than everyone, until ninth grade, when I stopped growing and soon became the shortest. We matriculated through the same schools in the same years and part of our education was learning that, like our fathers, we could be friends without all the fuss. We were probably closest in fifth grade, when Jamie briefly flirted with my Transformers obsession (I worshipped Megatron), but by upper school it was obvious that he was destined for cooler things, and with each matriculation our relationship became more asymmetrical, so that by the time we finished with Yale our years together had a funhouse-mirror effect. I was the type of student who reinvented himself with each new school, never satisfied with my status as both person and peer. I took thechange of environment as an opportunity to fine-tune my persona, until junior year abroad, where I hit upon earnest dilettante and returned from Paris newly found. I graduated from Yale with a degree in English literature, my senior essay focusing on A. N. Dyer and the kidnapping of identity. It received a passing grade. But Jamie was one of those rare exotics who emerged fully formed, without pretense, it seemed. Everything was always possible for him, so why bother changing. From an early age he stood apart as the most striking in any group, man, woman, or child, blessed with perfect skin and mink-brown eyes and a smile that revealed crowded incisors but crowded in a way that Walt Whitman would have celebrated. You might have guessed he had some Cherokee blood. He was the first to swim in the ocean, the first to ride a ten-speed, the first to break his arm. Parents called him wicked, though they all adored him, teachers included. Jamie was the mirror that brought back the most alluring aspects of youth and everybody wanted to see themselves in his glow. A day in his company invariably produced uncalculated adventure: start in Chinatown searching for fireworks and end up in Queens watching a cockfight with three Chinese kids and a Russian switchblader named Stahn. I myself found these adventures exhausting (and always frightening), but for Jamie it was just another Saturday afternoon. Nothing was out of the ordinary, certainly not a cemetery in the middle of the night.
The almost full moon shone against the snow and created a drift of ghostly light. The last time Jamie was here, the trees were doing their best advertisement for autumn in Vermont. He had stood on that hill and watched his old girlfriend, his first real girlfriend, get planted into the ground. It was like Sylvia was a seed and cemeteries were gardens in reverse. Her daughters, Delia and Clover, had painted flowers and butterflies on the coffin, sentiments of
I’ll Never Forget You
, and
I’ll Miss You
, and
Love
and
Peace
in heartbreaking purple and green, a family portrait done on the lid—the girls, the house, the horses, the dog, Mom and Dad standing hand in hand—the backdrop of Green Mountains rendered by Sylvia herself over the course of a week in August. It seemed a shame to bury such a lovely thing. Nearly everyone was crying as two friends played “We Bid You Goodnight” on mandolin andviolin. Delia and Clover leaned against their father like ponytailed two-by-fours holding up an unsteady wall. Jamie tried not to stare. Ed Carne did not like him. Jamie knew this because Ed told him so. “I don’t like you,”
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