AFTER GORGING OURSELVES at The Dovey (food tasted good for the first time in forever!), browsing all the shops in the area, and taking a narrated tour of the city, the evening bus dumps us in the misting rain on Menlove Road.
Someone has scrawled the word “head” at the end of the street name in spray paint.
At least there are people in the world less mature than me. Bright side to everything.
We stand at the sign, chewing on peppermints from Henry’s stash. He reaches into his bag to get the umbrella, and something catches my eye as he starts to zip it back up.
“Wait, what’s that in your bag?” I reach down and yank the zipper like that isn’t super rude. Maybe he’s starting to rub off on me. He doesn’t stop me, though. His Union Jack umbrella opens with a little click above our heads, but I barely notice it when I see the hidden thing in his bag.
“I bought the blanket.” He shrugs, looking a little caught. He re-zips the backpack and shuffles it over his shoulder. The blanket from the thrift store. The one from The Dream I Don’t Think About At All.
I squeak more than ask, “Why?”
“Why?” He laughs. “Because it was only eleven pounds. And obviously it means something to you.”
The rain gets a little harder, forcing me under the umbrella, and by default, closer to him. A quick inhale confirms that yes: he still smells good. I take a mental snapshot.
Caption: this is not going to end well
“Why do you care if it means something to me?” I look straight ahead at the sidewalk in front of us.
“Maybe I don’t.” He nudges me with his elbow. “Maybe I like the blanket.”
I button my lip. My eyes well and I blink furiously to dry them out.
He stops. “Hey, are you okay?”
Nope. “Yeah, of course.”
“What’s the significance? Of the blanket?”
There it is. The point-blank question again, and I have no bathroom to duck into.
“I’d really rather not talk about it.”
He looks at me funny but mercifully leaves it alone. We keep walking. I watch my feet move along the sidewalk, creating shadows in the puddles as they go. I try to think about anything else. I’m glad I bought the rain boots, glad I decided to wear them. But I’m worried about the rain. There was no rain in the cemetery dream. Cars pass and we step to the inside of the sidewalk so the tire splash can’t reach us.
“Did you know John Lennon promised his son, Sean, that he’d bring him here someday? But then he died before he could. Yoko had to bring him.”
Henry glances down at me, expression grim. “No. I didn’t.” It’s like he knows I’m talking about me as much as I’m talking about Sean Lennon. But I don’t know how he could know.
When we turn the corner, the red gates stand out against the bleak background. The wall surrounding it is covered in faded graffiti. It hits me all at once that Pop used to live here. He lived at Strawberry Field when the Salvation Army owned it. He came from the place that inspired the song. Maybe that’s why John was his favorite Beatle. (Paul > John, if you ask me. We used to argue about it.)
My throat burns, but I resist the threatening tears as we approach the gate.
“Pretty anticlimactic, really,” Henry says. “It’s been closed down for awhile, but they’ve plans to turn it into a community center soon.”
I run my fingers along the cool, wet metal. Just beyond it, overgrown weeds and shrubs have swallowed the courtyard. It’s a suburban jungle.
“This gate is a replica. The original is in the museum downtown. They replaced it a couple of years before I came here the first time.”
I drop my hand.
“Sorry to be a buzzkill,” he says. “Liverpool’s a little underwhelming compared to the songs about it.”
Negative Ned strikes again. I clamp my teeth down for a moment before I turn to him.
“I think you’re missing the point. This is the town where they grew up. The place they met their best friends and wrote their first songs and fell in love for the first time. It’s where their fates began. That is the magic of it all.”
His eyebrows lift. “Yeah, I guess I could see—”
“They captured the mundane in a way that made it seem special to the rest of the world. Some people may see a plain red gate that’s been replaced, or a suburban lane with a few little shops and think, this is it? But it’s magical in the song because they let us see it through their eyes. Through the context of what it meant to them. What it meant to my pop, even.” Tears well up again. My emotions wriggle a little further from my weakening grasp. What is wrong with me?
“So, your pop grew up here?”
I nod. “Someone dropped him off on the doorstep of this place when he was two years old. He never even knew his parents. He used to joke that he was a changeling.”
Henry peers past the gate like he’s trying to imagine it himself.
“I think that’s why he related to the Beatles. John Lennon was going to garden parties here twenty years before Pop arrived. He grew up in their literal shadow. As a cover band, sure, but he walked the same lanes. He understood their roots. I think that’s what made Walrus Gumboot such a great cover band.”
Henry doesn’t say anything. I search the names written on the concrete columns in multicolored paints and markers, pens and pencils. I know better than to think I’ll see his actual signature on a wall that’s been scribbled over many times in the years since he died. But I look anyway.
“There’s a piece of him still here,” I say. And I know it’s true.
Henry passes me the umbrella handle and then reaches to get something out of his bag. He comes up with a Sharpie and hands it to me.
I stare up at him. “We’re gonna vandalize the wall?”
He bobs his head side to side, faking indecision, then grins. “Nothing to get hung about.”
Dimpled Henry quoting the Beatles is my new new favorite thing.
He takes the umbrella from me and I pop the top of the marker and look for an empty space. I stoop down close to the sidewalk and write I miss you, Pop. Love, Jojo
Henry squats and ducks under the umbrella beside me. I swallow my sadness and pass him the marker.
“I wanted to write something profound, but it looks like someone’s beaten me to the punch.” He gestures to a phrase a foot or so away from my message. It says Percy is a tosser. A chuckle sneaks around my tears.
I know what he’s doing and I’m grateful. He taps the end of the marker against his bottom lip for a few moments before leaning toward the wall with it.
Next to where I signed, in bold all-caps handwriting, he writes: This place is bloody magical. -Jojo (and Henry)
I laugh for real this time. “I don’t think that was exactly what I said.”
“No?” He looks over at me and grins. “I paraphrased. Hence the and Henry.”
He crouches under the umbrella with me, even though the rain has slowed to a sputter. We stare down at the signatures.
“Why did you call me Jojo the first day you met me?” He hasn’t since, until now.
His eyes meet mine. It feels like we’re in our own little private bubble, beneath the red and blue fabric of the umbrella and all the silver wires that hold it together. There’s a sort of purple mist around us. Maybe it’s the colors of the umbrella bleeding together, or maybe his aura is swimming around us both now.
“I dunno.” I watch the way his lips move when he talks, the delicate way they come together and pull apart, then rest when he pauses. “You just look like a Jojo.”
I stare at his mouth too long. I don’t know if I moved closer or if he did. His breath tickles my mouth before I glance up at his eyes, hazy and unfocused. There was no dream to foreshadow this, nothing to warn me. I scramble backward, out from under the umbrella, and stand up.
“Let’s take a selfie!” I blurt, and dig in my pockets for my phone before I remember I put it in my bag. As I unzip pouches and search, he stands up.
“We can use mine.” He clears his throat and pulls his phone out. “I can text it to you.”
He steps close to me again and holds the camera up at an angle. The red gate fills the background. Our arms press together. We both smile, pretending what almost just happened didn’t
almost just happen.