by Eve Morton
“So what are your plans for Christmas?” Julian asked.
“This, honestly. Sherry and I usually have a drink anyway but this took over, and for the better, too. I have a show to do on New Year’s, though.”
“You’re still doing that? That’s great.”
Cosmin wanted to mention it being cancelled, but thought there was no point. “And you?”
“Dan and I are going to see his family after my shift here. Then to Hawaii. Christmas need not be freezing. Even if we weren’t sure about the planes ever leaving Pearson.”
“So they’re up and running again?”
“Oh yeah. Nothing will stop us from taking that flight.”
Cosmin nodded. He’d realized that he’d wanted to go back to his father’s place for Christmas. To possibly see Eric, but he was definitely in Ottawa with his own family now. His parents had most likely gotten their flight and were there with him. As much as the loss hurt him, Cosmin knew he still had some work to do here.
“Do you mind if I go and talk to them some more?” Cosmin asked, gesturing to Cassidy and her parents.
“Nah. And I’ll give you guys some privacy. I’ll be around the corner. I saw you drop off the pie to the nurse, and I’m going to go and scam some.” Julian grinned. He gave a casual wave, then stopped by the doorway before he glanced at Cosmin again and said in a soft voice, “I’m happy to see you again.”
“Yeah, you too.”
When Cosmin stepped by Cassidy’s bed, he realized she had to be barely eighty pounds. The visible space between her neck and the collar of her gown left her pale skin visible and nearly translucent. Her collar bones jutted out, creating shadow where there should have been more skin. No doubt her ribs were like the inside of a boat, hollow and rickety.
Yet, he refused to treat her like a sick person. She’d been getting that for years. Instead, he wanted to treat her like a woman, a teenager still finding her way. It only took two seconds before he knew exactly what he wanted to tell her.
“Mind if I sit on your bed, Cassidy?”
“No, not at all.” She made a gesture to shuffle up closer to the headboard, as if he required a large berth or as if she had somehow managed to take up more than a couple feet at most. Her mother stood by her left side while her father was by her right. Cosmin at the foot of the mattress seemed like a crowd, especially with the amount of books that had also gathered there. Cosmin picked up one of them and read the title aloud.
“White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Interesting.”
“Have you read it?”
“No. Is this for school?”
“No.” Cassidy rolled her eyes as if that was obvious. “The textbooks are for school. I just wanted to read it. The movie came out years ago and I always liked it. It’s about art.”
“That’s nice. Are you in school for art?”
Again, she rolled her eyes. She gestured to the textbooks again. One was for psychology, another for biology, and the last for business administration. “I’m still figuring out my major, but there’s no way I can do art.”
“Why not?”
Cassidy seemed taken aback. She glanced at her mother, who had an impassive expression. Her father, too, seemed utterly confused by the turn in conversation. “Well, because I can’t draw.”
“Have you tried?”
“Obviously. But I’m not good. I never exactly got much practice in high school.” Her gaze darted downwards in a clear shame response. Her first hospitalization had severely interrupted her schooling. She did most of her work in the hospital, which meant that the art teacher had been left behind, along with most of the materials needed to do art.
“That was high school, though. You’re in university now. Isn’t the Ontario College of Art & Design close by?”
“Yeah, but I go to U of T.”
“I’ve taught some great courses there. Good place. But it seems like you’d be happier at an arts college. One that’s more open to design.”
Cassidy made a pained face. She seemed to not want to talk about this—but that was exactly what Cosmin needed. He sensed a story Cassidy was hiding, a narrative she was telling herself that started with I can’t. Whatever it was, it was holding her back—in far more ways than one. People with addictions always had a false narrative about the world. Something they told themselves, over and over, and that they needed to escape.
“When you were seven or eight,” Cosmin said, “I saw a picture that you drew. Your mom had it in her office. It was really good.”
“Yeah? I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I think you should draw again. Maybe another picture for your mom. Or me, even. I think I’d like a card from you.”
“Even if it’s not good?”
“Especially if it’s not good. Because I think that’s a lie.” Cosmin edged closer, pushing some of the books out of the way as he did. For a moment, it was as if he was only talking to Cassidy. Her parents faded into the background. The hospital and the nurses faded into the background. He was talking to her as if it was all inconsequential; as if it was only them and this was a park bench and not an isolation ward. He grabbed her notebook and without reading anything, turned it to a new page. “Draw me a picture. And if you think you can’t, then I want you to write that down.”
“That I can’t draw? And send you that?”
“I want you to write down all the can’ts you think are in your head. I can’t draw. I can’t think. I can’t get out of this hospital. And so on and so forth,” Cosmin said, then grew quite serious. “When you’re done writing it all down, I need you to rip it up.”
Cassidy didn’t answer. Her gaze went to the notepaper, still empty.
“When you rip it up, you make space for something else. You make space for that drawing for me. And then send it to me when you’re out of here, so you can make space for something else.”
“What if...”
“When you’re out of here,” Cosmin repeated. “Not if.”
Again, Cassidy was silent for what seemed like a long time. Cosmin was about to tell her about Eric as a young kid, auditioning for a role he desperately wanted but wouldn’t get—but her nod cut him off. He didn’t need to tell her, because she had decided to embrace it. She started to write out I can’t on the pages, and Cosmin got up.
“Good. Thank you, Cassidy. I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”
She nodded. As Cosmin left, he heard Sherry follow him outside and into the hallway. She grabbed his arm.
“If I overstepped,” Cosmin said, but he said no more. Sherry was smiling. A beat passed before she wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I just hope I wasn’t talking down to her or that I haven’t turned her into a starving artist now.” Cosmin put his hand to his mouth as soon as he realized what he’d said. Starving artist. Oh God that was the most insensitive joke.
He wanted to apologize, but Sherry was already laughing. She grasped Cosmin’s jacket and soon they both descended into guffaws. A nurse walked by and they quieted, but a trace of a smile still remained on both of their faces.
“I needed that,” Sherry said. “Thank you. And I think Cassidy needed that too. You’re right. We need to focus on the future. Not on the past.”
“The past is prologue. All these things have led her here, but she can make a different decision. No matter what the doctors say, even if this is the most deadly mental illness, she is still in charge. She has to know that, but someone needs to remind her.”
“Thank you,” Sherry said after several long moments of nodding. “I don’t think I could have told her. I just hope it’s true.”
“Me too. But there’s no other decision we can make other than to think it so.”
After another slow nod, Sherry carefully looked down the hallway. Spotting no one, she turned back to Cosmin with a more casual
, relaxed expression. “So. Julian looks good.”
“Going on vacation with your husband in Hawaii will do that.”
“Ah. Well, screw them both, except thank Julian for me a dozen times over.” Again, another pause, another long consideration before she asked, “Why did you and Julian break up, anyway?”
“Oh. I never said?”
“No. One day he was amazing Julian and the next you were drinking alone.”
“It’s a long story, but we weren’t good for each other.”
“And things have changed?”
“For me and Julian, no. We’re still not good for one another. My time has passed with him.”
“But someone else, Cosmin.” Sherry grasped his hand. “There should be someone else. Because I have to say, you’re quite good with kids.”
He wanted to say that Cassidy was an adult, not a child, but he didn’t argue. He took Sherry’s compliment, hidden in her words, and understood. He was good with people. He was good at relationships, if only he took his own advice and stopped proffering it at all times to others. He was good at love, when he didn’t mistake it for suffering.
When Hal called Sherry into the room, Cosmin followed. For the rest of the night, the four of them pretended as if there was no illness. As if the hospital room was normal, so much so that when Cosmin arrived home, his condo felt more clinical than all the IV poles and antibacterial soap dispensers on the hospital walls.
He took in a deep breath. He could smell everything: the life he’d had with Julian lived out in fair-trade coffee and mint toothpaste; the scent of pine as he searched for Suzanne’s records and talked to her ghost; and the fetid scent of a plant he’d forgotten to water. A life of decay, a life lived in the margins, a life already predetermined. He closed his eyes and conjured the scent of whiskey, Irish Spring soap, and the rose soap in Eric’s parents’ bathroom. He smelled sex and green tea. He smelled youth. He smelled Eric.
And with a sigh, he finally knew what he had to do.
Chapter Sixteen
“Thank you so much.” Eric held up a black sweater with a V-neck before he added it to an already large pile of clothing adjacent to shreds of Christmas wrapping. “I absolutely needed all of this. Especially since I never packed more than what was on my back before coming home.”
“Oh, honey.” His mother covered her face. “I’m still so sorry you got caught in the storm like that. And that we sort of made you become Santa this Christmas.”
“Shhh. Ex-nay the Santa talk.” Dana held up her coffee cup and gestured to her children who were, luckily, just out of earshot of Eric and their mother’s remark. The twins were in their high chairs and utterly delighted with applesauce while their brother was fixated on a remote control car.
Eric laughed before quickly nodding along. “Yes, yes. Santa is very much real. I was just an elf this year.”
“Now you’re selling it too hard.” Dana sighed but shot them both another smile before it was time for her son to open yet another present from the mysterious man named Santa Claus.
Eric had arrived in Ottawa after a somewhat harrowing drive when the typical three-hour trip morphed into a five-hour one. The ice had been cleared from most major roads, but snow had started the moment he reached his halfway point. He’d pulled off to the side of the road, hoping to rest and maybe even do the last bit of his Christmas shopping, but nothing other than a gas station had been open. Most of his Christmas cards contained rather large IOUs in place of gifts, but no one noticed.
His parents’ equally harrowing trip from Boston with his aunt to Ottawa had been an easy distraction, same with Margo and her husband as they arrived at midnight on Christmas Eve. Now, come Christmas morning, everyone was distracted yet again by the kids as they dive-bombed into all their gifts. Christmas was far more about the children, anyway, and with the amount of presents stacked under Dana’s already full tree, there was no loss felt by the lack of his own.
Though it was only eight a.m. now, the kids had already demolished most of their presents and were now blissfully distracted while the adults caught up on coffee and conversation. By the time Eric got around to opening the gifts from his parents, all talk about the storm itself had become apologies on his behalf.
“I’m still so upset you had to deal with all of it alone,” his mother said. She grabbed at wrapping paper that had started to accumulate in front of the tree. “If we’d known, we would have—”
“Don’t worry about it. Really.” Eric didn’t want to confirm or deny his aloneness, still unsure of how to integrate the Cosmin he knew now with his family’s former image of him. So he picked up another present and tore into it. This one was much smaller and with a tag that said LOVE DAD written in his mother’s writing. His father was in the kitchen, drinking coffee after coffee while talking to Dana’s husband. When his mother noticed what box Eric had, she ushered him over.
Eric’s aunt Berta also edged closer from her spot on the couch. “Oh, I was with him when he picked these up.”
Eric’s finger shook with excitement. If his aunt was involved in the present, it was going to be something either ridiculously expensive or impressively stylish. When he tore the paper, he saw a familiar logo of red and blue. The cloying smell of tobacco also filled his nostrils. He took out a box of cigars.
“I know you don’t really smoke,” his father said. “But these are high quality. They’re an experience, not something to be taken lightly.”
“Oh, these!” Eric opened the edge and peeked at the cigars inside. He instantly recognized them as the ones that filled his father’s humidor. “You have them at your place.”
“Oh yeah. That was your father’s birthday present from me,” Berta said. “And his Christmas one too, quite frankly.”
Eric’s heart rate climbed. They were nice cigars, especially nice when he’d shared one or two with Cosmin. But there were only eight in his box, and only six of them at home when he’d arrived. “How much were these?” Eric asked. “I know I’m breaking a cardinal rule here but—”
“Maybe two hundred or so each?” Berta said the numbers with a shrug. Eric had to grip his chest. Berta could talk like two-hundred-dollar cigars were nothing with her lawyer’s salary. For Eric, though, he’d gone pale realizing he’d basically smoked his rent’s worth while at home during the storm.
“Dad, you should take these back.” Eric handed the box to his father.
“What? Why? I know you don’t smoke but they’re very—”
“Oh, I know they’re nice. I smoked yours when I went home.”
“How many?” his mother asked. “And please tell me you did this while you were on the porch.”
“Yes, on the porch. And, well, let me say that you have two left. So really, you should take these. Consider the other ones an early present.”
“You smoked eight hundred dollars’ worth of cigars by yourself?” Dana practically screeched. Though most of Eric’s family didn’t blink at price tags, Dana and her husband had become fastidious about deals as they moved into their place and started to have kids. As far as Eric was concerned, Dana was the only one here having an appropriate reaction to what he’d done.
“You get trapped in one ice storm and turn into George Burns. Wow,” Margo muttered.
“Not exactly.” Eric bit his lip. He decided he didn’t want to confess sharing his bounty with Cosmin. He shoved the box towards his father again. “Seriously, Dad. Please take this. I already smoked so many.”
But his father held his hands up. “No, no. Don’t worry about it. As far as I’m concerned, if the only thing we lost during that ice storm was a couple of cigars, then we were lucky.”
“Well, maybe the basketball net too.”
“Thank goodness,” Berta said. “I hated that thing.”
Eric had to laugh. He sat back down on the couch with his cigars in his hand an
d his new outfit next to him. This was good, really. Nice. His mother gave him a hug, which he reciprocated and then sought out his father for, too. This Christmas—in spite of the bumps and hurdles to get here—had definitely been a lucky one.
Yet a lump remained in his throat. Each time he glanced at the cigars, Cosmin’s face came to his mind. His memory had not relented. And with a reminder like this following him around, the smell so pungent and so proverbial, he wasn’t sure if it ever would relent.
“Oh relax,” Dana said. She plopped down next to him on the couch. “Let Mom and Dad spoil you. As far as they’re concerned, you’re still a baby.”
Eric nodded. That was exactly what he was afraid of. He sipped the coffee she offered him, though, and let the rest of the Christmas roll by.
* * *
“Merry Christmas to me, indeed.” Eric stared at the email on his computer screen. He’d gotten the part for the audiobook of The Billionaire’s Vampire Baby. Production for it would start in the New Year. The publisher said she’d been impressed with the lack of background noise—a persistent problem in these kinds of deals—so if he could grab the same studio again, she’d be relieved. Eric had already set a quick Facebook message to Valerie to ask if he could come over again, but he’d gotten no response. That was to be expected. It was late evening Christmas day and people were busy.
Except for book publishers. And apparently, estate lawyers.
When a new email alert dinged on his phone, his heart was in his throat. He kept checking both his accounts (one for gigs, the other for personal) and his Facebook in case any of the messages had been from Cosmin. They’d never spoken by text or phone when they were together, mostly because there’d been no phone service and utterly no point in exchanging numbers when the other person was across the street.
The fact that Cosmin’s dad was dead, though, and that house was most likely to be sold meant that Eric’s connection to him was slipping away. There was always the radio show—Eric had googled the directions to the station already—but that seemed so long away. Sleep Alone’s final show wasn’t even listed in the radio broadcast schedule yet, which made his heart seem ever more precarious.
