Me Since You

by Laura Wiess

  “Okay,” I say, and then he hugs me again and is gone.

  I should care more, I know, but there’s nothing left inside of me.

  Only pain.

  | | |

  For the second time this month, I’m riding in a limo.

  This time with leaden limbs and boxes of tissues.

  My father is going to be cremated but the viewing is an open casket.

  My mother says people won’t believe he’s really dead unless they see him.

  Maybe she means we won’t believe it.

  I do, when I see him.

  He’s wearing his police uniform, complete with badge, tie clip, ribbons, medals, his valor watch and his wedding ring, which my mother says will all be removed before they cremate him. The funeral home worked hard to patch up his shattered temple, put plenty of makeup over the trauma marks and tried to comb his hair down over the cave-in on the side in a way that would make him laugh if he ever saw it.

  But he won’t and so it isn’t funny, it’s sad, it makes me want to block the casket and not let anyone see him so vulnerable, but I can’t because the place is mobbed and the line to say a prayer over him endless.

  And besides, he has police to watch over him. The place is full of solemn-faced cops sporting black mourning armbands. Vinnie and Lieutenant Walters, both in full dress blues, faces solemn, eyes red and chins high, stand guard at the head and the foot of the casket. They don’t smile or speak, only stand and bear witness, keep watch, pay final tribute and honor one of their own.

  They are beautiful and looking at them makes my heart hurt.

  Nadia comes with Danica and Bree, all dressed in black minis and stilettos, and drape themselves over me, whimpering. Eva comes, looking like she’s a thousand years old, and hugs me without speaking. Terence comes, takes my hand, looks deep into my eyes and says in a low, gravelly voice, “He was a good man,” which nearly kills me.

  Why did he do it? What happened? I can’t believe it. Why, why, why?

  The room swirls with questions, with person after person asking my mother, my grandparents, even me the exact same thing: why?

  We don’t know. There is no answer we can give them.

  It’s exhausting.

  I’m standing up front with my mother, holding on to her arm, accepting the condolences of a vast, weeping blur of people, when an old, vaguely familiar-looking woman comes up, sticks her face right into my mother’s and, with her chameleon eyes bright as a squirrel’s behind her glasses, says, “I’m a friend of your mother’s, dear, and I’m sorry for your terrible, tragic loss.” She starts to move on and then, as if she just can’t resist, pauses, lays a hand on my mother’s arm and adds, “And I just have to tell you that I’m shocked at the Catholic Church for agreeing to provide his funeral mass. My goodness, he committed suicide and that’s a mortal sin, you know.”

  My mother’s eyes widen and she falls back a step, speechless, as if the woman has slapped her right across the face.

  I stand there mute, too stunned to speak, and suddenly the aunts are there edging the old lady out, helping us to our seats and bringing us paper cups full of water. My head is pounding, spinning from the unrelenting scent of the flowers, cool and sweet, the thick, choking heat of milling bodies and the salt humidity of tears.

  The line of mourners shifts as Payton Well walks up. Her handshake is limp and her gaze disconnected. “Sorry for your loss.” She moves on, leaving a trail of whispers behind her.

  “Nicky went to her son’s funeral,” my mother murmurs, mopping her eyes.

  “I know,” I say, and when I look back Eli is waiting in front of me, head lowered in respect, a small gold cross in his earlobe, his dark, bruised gaze holding mine. He’s wearing his navy blue suit, his sleek, black hair pulled tight in a ponytail, a small shaving cut on the side of his jaw, low under the curve where you can’t see it unless you’re looking up at him. I reach for him, our hands fumble and meet, the slight tremor in his anchoring the violent one in mine, and in that joining is recognition of all the wishes that will never come true, the questions that will never be answered and the prayers that will continue unheard.

  He makes this all too real.

  Chapter 34

  The house is empty.

  The funeral is over and everyone has gone back to their lives.

  Except us.

  This is what we have to go back to.

  There is no right direction so we go in no direction at all.

  Sometimes the most we can do in a day is feed Stripe.

  Eva tells me not to rush, to come back to work when I’m ready.

  I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.

  My grandparents call every day. So do the aunts.

  So do Nadia and Eli.

  Sometimes I answer and sometimes I don’t.

  I just can’t seem to care.

  The only thing I want is my father.

  I say that to Eli and after a long, unbroken silence he says quietly, “Do you want me to stop calling for a while and give you some breathing room? I’m not trying to put pressure on you, Row. Whatever you need me to do. Just tell me. I won’t take offense, I swear.” His voice drops so low I can barely hear him. “It’s bringing a lot of past stuff up for me, too, and now with the dog and all . . . I don’t want to make it worse by putting all that on you.”

  “No, you’re not. I . . .” I what? What do I want? I rub my forehead, trying to clear the fog in my brain and sort his words, but my thoughts are scattered and I don’t know what’s happening. “Wait.”

  “It’s okay,” he says, sounding miserable. “I won’t come by, either. Not till you tell me to. I don’t want to make you feel like you have to see me because—”

  “Wait,” I say again, even more confused. “Are you saying we’re done?”

  “No,” he says vehemently. “But I know what it’s like, having all these people around expecting things and wanting pieces of you when you don’t have anything left to give them, putting pressure on you just by being there waiting. I don’t want to do that to you. I care about you, Row, a lot. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Like Crystal,” I say numbly.

  “No, she was . . . That wouldn’t have lasted, anyway.” He stops and when he starts again, his voice is slow and heavy. “Rowan, I didn’t know what to do when my dad died. I mean, I was lost. Mad. So pissed off that I ran Daisy all over Houston just to wear myself out so I wouldn’t put my fist through the wall. Like I was punishing myself for taking the dog or my dad for sending her home, because there was this 24/7 loop in my head going, What if she’d sniffed out the IED before it blew? What if the only reason he died was because he sent her back to me instead of keeping her there with him?”

  “No,” I whisper, because I’ve been what-iffing, too.

  “Yeah,” he says with a ragged snort. “She was sick with grief and I was running her because I was sick, too. Christ, I’ll never forgive myself for that. It was so fucking hot and now . . .”

  I don’t know what to say, can barely follow his words.

  “Anyhow . . .” He clears his throat. “I stopped running and started partying. Way too much. I just couldn’t take it. My friends had no idea how to deal with any of it. They tried taking me out like two weeks later to ‘cheer me up’—I mean, come on—and when that didn’t work they just ignored it, like if they brought it up I would all of a sudden remember that my dad was dead. Like I was really ever going to forget. And when that didn’t fly, one by one they all just kind of fell away . . .”

  I shake my head and wipe my wet cheeks. It’s all too much.

  “You know how they say never make any major decisions while you’re grieving because you’re not thinking straight?” His voice is tired now. “Well, my mom did. She was crazed. She started packing and donating and handing my dad’s stuff out to all the relatives and I was like, Wait, would you? I don’t even know what you’re getting rid of! but I swear she never even stopped to sleep. It was like she had to
keep busy so she wouldn’t think about it or something. And then the next thing I know the town house is up for sale and I’m like, What’re you doing? and she says we’re moving and leaving everything behind . . . I wasn’t ready for that.”

  “No,” I whisper, wishing he would stop because his words pile on me like bricks, one after another, heavy, crushing, and there’s not enough left of me for this. I’m already buried alive in my own misery and I can’t stand the weight of his pain, too. “Eli . . .”

  “Oh my God,” he says suddenly, sounding stricken. “Rowan, I’m so sorry. Christ, I just did exactly what I said I wasn’t gonna do.”

  “It’s okay,” I say automatically.

  “No, it’s not,” he says. “It’s really not. I’m sorry. I am. I’m gonna go now.”

  “Okay.” I just want to go lie down and be small and quiet.

  “I won’t call you. I’ll wait till you call me. You have to think about yourself now. Nobody else. Do what’s right for you, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say because I cannot wrap my mind around any of this.

  “I’ll be thinking of you though and if you need me . . .”

  “I’ll call,” I say, closing my eyes.

  “Christ, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he mutters as if to himself, and then to me says, “Okay, well then . . . good night, Row.”

  “Good night,” I say, reeling.

  I hang up, curl into a ball and cry myself to sleep.

  Chapter 35

  Nadia doesn’t give me that kind of space.

  She and Brett have broken up and now she wants movement, improvement, answers, action and girl time, and so two weeks later I find myself sitting in her house drinking and smoking weed while her parents attend a weekend college reunion out of state.

  Big mistake.

  I don’t remember much past throwing a bottle of beer at her when she suggests I slow down but when I come to I’m curled up on her bathroom floor with puke in my hair, my shorts soaked with pee and my eyes swollen to burning slits from crying. The door is shut and when I crawl over and fumble it open, Nadia’s sitting out in the hallway on the floor. She looks like she’s been crying too and has a long, fresh, nasty-looking scratch down her nose.

  “Stop,” she blurts, scrambling to her feet. “Stay there.”

  “What happened to you?” I say thickly, squinting up at her.

  “You did,” she says, and stares at me like she doesn’t even know me.

  It turns out I got hysterical, cursing Corey, blubbering about how he started it all by jumping and killing Sammy, and then my father killed himself because he couldn’t save him, and now it was a cycle that was never going to stop and I didn’t save my father so why should I still be alive when he’s dead . . .

  “And then you ran to the door screaming and I tried to stop you but you were fighting really hard,” she says, and, pausing, turns her bare leg sideways so I can see the huge, ugly purple bruise forming on her thigh near the bottom of her shorts. “You were really out of it, Row. You scared me bad.” Her big blue eyes are wounded, pissed, shining with tears. “I didn’t know what to do so I just held on, and that’s when you really kicked my ass.” She wipes her eyes on the back of her hand. “You grabbed my hair and scratched me and dragged me down to the ground and said you hated me because my father’s still alive. You punched me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble, stomach churning. “I don’t hate you.” But even as I say it, I know it isn’t true. I do hate her now—hate her normalness, her happiness, the fact that she can still say good night to both of her parents, that she’s still so sure of her life. I want to tell her it isn’t personal, that I hate everyone who has two parents now, that I’m so jealous it makes me physically ill, but the words won’t come.

  “Yeah, well, it sure looked like it.” She touches her fingers to the bridge of her nose and, wincing, gingerly traces the vivid, scarlet furrow. “I mean, look what you did to my face. What if it leaves, like, this big gross scar and I have to get plastic surgery? It’s almost summer, Row. How am I supposed to go down the shore looking like this?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, peering blearily up at her. “You can’t really see it.”

  “Oh my God,” she says, falling back against the wall with a thump and gaping at me in disbelief.

  “What?” I say, bewildered, and let out a deep, sour, rumbling burp. “Ugh.” I wave a sloppy hand in front of my face to disperse the fumes. Catch her look of disgust and feel something deep inside of me twist. “No, listen. Don’t be mad. Look.” I gesture at myself, feel deep sorrow at the sight of my puke-clotted hair, my peed-in shorts. “Please?”

  “Okay, all right, I’m not mad, but look, Row, you can’t do this again. I’m serious. I mean I know life sucks right now and I want to be there for you but honestly?” She pauses, biting her lip, and then says in a rush, “I wish your father hadn’t done it, okay? I’m so mad at him for hurting you guys. And I wish he’d left you a note or something, so you knew why. You were asking why a lot,” she adds, searching my face. “It really bothers you.”

  “Yeah.” My head is spinning, pounding. I grab the countertop, pull myself up to my knees, and wobble to my feet. “Oh God,” I groan, and, turning, heave a smelly, stinking mess into the bathroom sink. Slide back down and kneel there with my head against the vanity door, blubbering. “I’m sorry.”

  Her phone calls lessen after that, and the one and only time we go out in public together is to some senior’s graduation party at the end of June.

  I go with the vague, hazy notion of seeing if Eli is there. I saw his name in the newspaper’s list of graduates, so I know he made it. I have no idea what I’ll say to him if I do see him though, besides congratulations. The night of the prom is distant, blurred, like it happened a million years ago, and to two completely different people.

  The party is a fiasco.

  I know the minute I walk into the backyard and see all the happy people eating, drinking, laughing and splashing in the pool that I don’t belong here. Nadia re-dressed me before we left her house, horrified at my thrown-on jeans and T-shirt, and now the black halter straps dig at the back of my neck, and the white shorts, her shorts, too short and too tight, ride right up my butt. The music makes my stomach jitter, the mingled scents of beer, chlorine, sizzling beef and weed nauseate me, and the raucous noise fractures my thoughts. The whole scene spins in my mind like a kaleidoscope, throwing me way off balance.

  “Oh my God, this is going to rock,” Nadia says excitedly in my ear. “How does my nose look?”

  She means the scratch, of course, scabbed over and buried beneath a hearty layer of concealer that almost but not quite matches her tan. “Good.”

  “Good,” she says, beaming. “Want to get something to drink?”

  “I guess,” I say, stomach sinking, and follow her toward the keg and the coolers. There’s bottled water and I take one, wait as she gets a beer, then follow her through the crowd and around the pool, stopping and waiting, numb, as she laughs and flirts and talks and shoots me increasingly anxious looks.

  “Are you okay?” she says finally, pulling me aside.

  “I’m fine,” I say automatically.

  “You don’t look it,” she says, searching my face.

  “Nadia,” I say, my jaw aching from being clenched so tight, “my father just died and I don’t give a shit about any of these people. I’d trade them all in a heartbeat just to get him back. All I’m doing is trying not to lose it.” I see the hurt cross her face, know I caused it and don’t care. Can’t feel it. It’s small, so small compared to the finality of death. Everything is small compared to that, so what does any of it matter, really? “I’m doing the best I can, okay? I don’t know what else you want from me.”

  “Nothing,” she says, straightening and taking a step back. “God, I’m sorry I even brought you here. I just thought it’d be good for you to get back out for a while, you know? I mean it’s been a month already, Row, and
it’s summer. I was hoping you’d have some fun, maybe think about something other than . . . you know. But you’re not even trying.” She says it like it’s a personal slight, like I’m insulting her by rejecting some fabulous gift she’s given me, like I’m purposely refusing to be a good sport and just buck up, pin on a smile and dance the night away.

  She doesn’t even get that one month is nothing compared to forever, nothing, and that it’s taken a monumental effort just to get up, get dressed and come here with her.

  An effort that’s been a huge mistake.

  “So, what do you want to do?” she says coolly, lifting her chin, tossing back her hair and crossing her arms in front of her. She stares past me, mouth tight and the beer in her hand vibrating with anger. “Do you want to leave?”

  More than anything, but I know she wants to stay. “Not yet, I guess.”

  “Well then you’re going to have to try a little,” she says, still not quite forgiving me. “Open up. Talk to people. God, at least smile. You look like a zombie.” She stops, bites her lip and looks around. “Hey, there’s Danica and Bree. Come on. And smile.” She grabs my arm and leads me through the crowd to the pool house, where Danica and Bree are doing shots and flirting with some senior guys.

  Our arrival—my arrival—casts an immediate pall over their high spirits, and I hear one of the guys mutter, “Isn’t that the chick whose old man just offed himself?”

  I stand there looking at him until he glances my way, meets my stony gaze, realizes I heard, flushes, mutters something to his buddy and wanders away.

  Danica whispers something to Bree and they both shoot me dirty looks.

  “What are you doing?” Nadia asks me, scowling.

  I shake my head, heartsick, unable to speak.

  “Do you want to go?”

  I nod. “You stay. It’s okay.” I turn and head blindly back through the crowd, around the house and out to the street.