The Tragedy of Dane Riley

by Kat Spears

  “You want to talk about it?” she asks.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Not really,” I say. But then I do talk. I tell her about the conversations I’ve been having with Mom and Dr. Lineberger, and about the way I felt when I found the coyote dead on the side of the road, and how I’m angry, so angry, all the time, and it makes me exhausted. I just don’t feel like I belong in the world anymore. Or, maybe, that I never did.

  “I feel like that sometimes,” she says as she gathers her books and stacks them on the coffee table. “You know, the other day, when you were talking about your mom and how mad you are at her, it reminded me of something that happened when I was younger. It’s hard because you don’t know my mom, and I can’t really explain her to anybody who doesn’t know her. She can be so charming, and funny, and she’s really smart. She comes up with the craziest stories, makes every experience more interesting because of her imagination. I could never be as creative as she is. But most of the time, she’s unreliable, and unpredictable, and … confusing.” She pauses as her forehead creases at some thought she doesn’t articulate. “Anyway, the house where we lived when I was little was really small. Her bedroom was on the first floor, where the only bathroom was, and upstairs there were just two small bedrooms. One time I was upset with her and she came upstairs to talk to me. And I started yelling at her, really screaming. I don’t even remember what she did to make me so mad. Probably she spent all of our grocery money on wine, or she’d left me home alone all night to go out with some random guy. I don’t remember. But I was so angry, I was yelling at her. And then she turned around to go back downstairs and, somehow, she tripped on one of the top steps and she fell, all the way down the stairs. It was so horrible. I can still see it if I close my eyes.” As if to illustrate, Ophelia closes her eyes and faces the horrible memory of her mother falling. “And I was a kid, you know? Though I don’t think I ever got to be a little kid. Not really. I was always taking care of her. But when she fell, it felt like I had caused it. Like my anger with her had made her fall down the stairs. I imagined that the fall could have killed her, or seriously injured her.”

  “Was she okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Yeah, she was okay. But I wasn’t,” Ophelia says with a small, humorless laugh. “It felt like because I had let my anger out, had said all of these terrible things to her, it was as if I had pushed her down those stairs.”

  “I get it,” I say with a nod.

  Ophelia looks up and across the room and I follow her gaze to see Colonel Marcus standing there, his hands folded in front of him, resting in the at-ease posture. I hadn’t even heard him come back into the room, have no idea how long he’s been standing there listening. His face holds no expression, but he and Ophelia lock eyes, communicating without speaking.

  “It made me feel,” Ophelia says, her eyes still on her dad, “as if it is never okay to say what you feel, to tell anyone what you truly thought of them if you were angry or upset. If you say what you feel, it hurts people in ways that you can’t take back. Somehow, I knew that from then on, and I could never tell my mom that I hated the person that she was. I’ve felt sorry for her from that very minute, and I’ve never been able to feel anger toward her without feeling terrible about it since then.”

  A quiet descends on the three of us and I realize the room has gotten dark as we have sat.

  “Your mother loves you,” Colonel Marcus says to Ophe-lia. “Sometimes people can’t help themselves, the way they are. And we’re all afraid, all the time, that we’re going to disappoint the people we love.” He’s speaking to Ophelia, but his words feel like they are meant for me, too.

  Ophelia nods at this and takes in a deep breath before she sighs. The feeling in the room is powerful in its confusion. So many emotions mixed up in the same space. It hasn’t occurred to me before the kind of struggles that go on behind the windows of my neighbors’ houses. But inside this space I feel safe, and like it’s okay to say off-the-wall shit about how I feel.

  “Anybody hungry?” Colonel Marcus asks. “I think I might run out to get a pizza.”

  “Sure,” Ophelia says with a smile.

  We are left alone in the house as Colonel Marcus goes out for a pizza, which surprises me, but doing anything other than talking with Ophelia is the farthest thing from my mind. Late into the night we sit on the couch talking and eating pizza and Colonel Marcus leaves us to go upstairs to his room at some point. The way we talk to each other, Ophelia and me, it’s the same rhythm as it’s always been, but there’s something different now. Instead of talking about the world around us, we talk about us and how we feel and who we are. And it feels good. The way you would want it to feel if you could really open up and say the true things to a therapist, or to your parents.

  * * *

  I hang out at Ophelia’s house until Colonel Marcus comes to tell us it’s time for me to go home. Ophelia tells him she’s going to walk me to the driveway and he gives her a look but doesn’t object. I suppose her grounding extends to at least the property line.

  We stand in the driveway of my house and I lean against Chuck’s car as Ophelia slides her arms into my hoodie and rests the weight of her body on mine.

  “I’m glad you came over,” she says. “See? My dad isn’t nearly as frightening as you think.”

  I put my hand under her hair, against the warmth of her neck, and she kisses me. I’m glad she takes the lead because I don’t really know how. Her arms around my waist feels good and I feel like I’ll never be able to get as close to her as I want to be.

  I suppose I am thinking about sex as we are making out. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t. But the way I feel as we’re kissing and our hands are moving over each other it’s more than that. I feel as if I could drink her, take her in like a tall cold bottle of Gatorade and feel her make the trip down my esophagus and settle into my stomach.

  Now we are just standing, me still leaning against the side of the car, the length of her body pressed against mine. She buries her face in my neck and her breath warms me.

  “What time will we break up?”

  “How do you mean?” I ask with a frown she can’t see because her face is still buried in the warmth of my neck.

  “I mean,” she says, pulling back a little, “we’re going to break up the day before graduation; does that mean it ends at midnight on that day? Because if you leave it at all ambiguous it would be hard to know. Do I just wake up that morning and I never hear from you again?”

  “Instead of setting a time, which would be weird, we should just end at whatever point we go to sleep that night.”

  “Even if it stretches into the next day?” she asks. “So, say I fall asleep at one in the morning, that would be our end point?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Okay,” she says with a nod. “So, the night before graduation. Whenever we fall asleep that night, that’s it. No talking or seeing each other after that.”

  “Okay,” I say, thinking somehow we have just resolved something, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.

  * * *

  The senior prom is being held at a private club that overlooks the Potomac River. Against my wishes and better judgment, I agree to go. By some miracle, Colonel Marcus has agreed to let Ophelia go and to ride in my car. I guess even Colonel Marcus has to accept that at a certain point, Ophelia is going to be grown-up and not under his control anymore.

  Of course, he’s probably only letting us go together because he has signed up to chaperone. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

  I leave the house when it is still light outside, trying not to feel self-conscious about wearing a tuxedo, which makes me feel like a kid playing dress-up. To make things worse, Mom is walking over with me to pick up Ophelia so she can get a picture of us together before we leave. I explain to her that Ophelia and I will probably get a formal portrait taken at the dance, but Mom insists that it isn’t the same thing.

  Colonel Marcus answers the door. He’s we
aring a suit and tie, his shoes shined to a mirror finish. He offers Mom a glass of wine while we wait for Ophelia to make her entrance.

  Mom and Colonel Marcus are sitting in the living room talking as they drink their wine. Colonel Marcus has great manners, is on his best behavior for Mom. They talk and laugh and I think about what it would be like to have Colonel Marcus as a stepfather. Not so terrible, I decide. And then I entertain thoughts of Mom and Colonel Marcus dating, and him giving surprise inspections of my room. And it doesn’t all seem so terrible because at least Colonel Marcus doesn’t know all of the gory, horrible details of how the inside of my mind works the way Chuck does. But if Mom and Colonel Marcus got married, then Ophelia and I would be stepsiblings, and even though we have already set a date and time to break up, I am still hopeful we might have sex before that time. I’m not sure I would be cool with having Ophelia as a stepsister, even though our breakup would definitely happen well before Mom and Colonel Marcus got married. Ophelia would be eternally out of my grasp, so pretty much the way things are right now.

  I am standing at the back of the couch, trying to find something to do with my arms that doesn’t feel awkward, when Ophelia walks into the room.

  Her dress is light purple, a color that would look terrible on anyone else, but against her black hair and complexion it is perfect. Her hair is loose and falls in perfect ringlets. If I’m being honest, I prefer the way she usually looks, in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair tamed into a braid. I prefer it because when she looks like she normally does, even though she is still beautiful, it’s easier for me to look at her. The way she looks right now, it almost hurts to look at her. The weight of her beauty is like an ache so deep inside you can’t rub it.

  “Wow,” Mom says, breaking the silence, which is a good thing, because I don’t have it in me to speak.

  “You look beautiful, sweetheart,” Colonel Marcus says with the casual manner of someone who gets to look at her whenever they want.

  Then everyone turns to me, waiting for me to say the right thing.

  “It’s good you don’t usually look like that,” I say. “No one would be able to do anything else but stare at you.”

  From the look on Ophelia’s face, I know I’ve said the right thing. Maybe for the first time ever.

  Then Mom is posing us by the fireplace and on the front porch for pictures and my collar is starting to itch.

  We hold hands on the drive to the prom, and on the walk from the car to the entrance, where a committee of people waits to check everyone’s ticket. We stop to pose for a formal picture and I’m sure that the camera has captured only a goofy smile from me that looks more like a grimace under the harsh lights. I’m sure everyone must be thinking what I am … what is that gorgeous, insanely smart and talented woman doing with that complete tool?

  Ophelia has to make the rounds among her friends. She is so confident and comfortable among people. And I am not. Eventually, feeling unnecessary, I drift from her side and walk out onto the terrace, to contemplate the lights of Washington, D.C., shimmering on the river. For other people I think that the size of the world represents experiences and possibilities and for me it just seems too large and too frightening to ever make sense of one person, one squirrel, one coyote. I realize I have never felt more like a squirrel than I do right now, with the din of my classmates behind me, ready to take on that horizon that will always feel too distant and huge to be considered a destination.

  I am surprised when Ophelia comes to find me and slips her hand into mine.

  “Here you are,” she says, and her words feel important because of the way I have been thinking.

  “Here I am,” I say. She laughs at the seriousness of my tone.

  “I figured I’d find you out here, away from people.”

  Ophelia steps in to me for a hug. She puts her arms around my neck and, for once, I don’t mind that she is as tall as I am in her high-heeled shoes. Her face is even with mine and she kisses me deeply. Every nerve in my body feels a spark as she presses herself into me. After our kiss, she puts her face in the side of my neck, her breath tickling me.

  “You didn’t have to leave your friends to come and talk to me,” I say.

  “I’m not here tonight because I want to be with them. I want to be with you.”

  “For at least a few days,” I say.

  She laughs at that. “They’re all fucking squirrels, Dane. All of them, except for you and me.”

  “You’ve always been the only one,” I say, because I feel safe saying it with her so close that she can’t see my face, and maybe she can’t even hear me over the sound of my heart.

  “Took you long enough to say it,” she says.

  “Maybe it will be the only time I can.”

  She pulls her head back and looks me in the eye and I have to fight the urge to look away in embarrassment. “Once is enough,” she says.

  * * *

  “Hello, Dane,” Dr. Lineberger says, gesturing to the seats in her office.

  “Hello.”

  “So, your mom says you’ve stopped taking your antidepressants completely. Is that right?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it until that moment, but Dr. Lineberger is right. I haven’t taken any of my antidepressants in over a week. No, maybe two weeks. “I guess you’re right.”

  “What about the Klonopin? Have you taken any for anxiety lately?”

  “Maybe here and there. Habit, I guess. I took one before I went to the prom. I didn’t expect to be that nervous about it, you know? It was my first time going to a dance.”

  “How was it?” Dr. Lineberger asks.

  “Pretty lame.”

  “That sounds about right,” she says with a knowing smile.

  “At least there wasn’t a whole lot of dancing. That part worried me the most. Did you go to your prom?” I ask.

  “Oh, yes,” she says as she nods. “That was a very long time ago.”

  I tell Dr. Lineberger about how Colonel Marcus was at the dance as a chaperone and she laughs as I imitate him strolling along the edge of the dance floor like a soldier in parade formation.

  For all my worry about being forced to dance at the prom, we really didn’t do much dancing. We went on the dance floor during slow songs and stood as close together as we dared under Colonel Marcus’s watchful eye.

  “So,” Dr. Lineberger says, clasping her hands and placing them on her knee, “have you had a chance to think about our conversation from last time?”

  “Ye-es,” I say, easing in slowly.

  “And, do you think maybe you are in a place where you can start to forgive your mother for being human?”

  “I suppose. I’ve been trying to be nicer to her, to not say the mean things that I think.”

  “Well, that’s a start.”

  “I want to forgive her. I do. It’s just hard. Every time I think I can just forgive her and move on, she does or says something that sets me off.”

  “Well,” Dr. Lineberger says, holding up her hands in supplication, “being irritated with your parents when you’re a teenager is just normal. Nature has its own way of encouraging you to leave the nest. If it was easy for grown children to get along with their parents then nobody would ever move out or get a job or start a family of their own. It’s totally normal.”

  “It’s nice to hear that something about me is normal.”

  “It’s nice for anyone to hear that,” Dr. Lineberger says. “We all go through life thinking that our problems or our feelings are unique. But I sit in this chair every day listening to people talk about their family challenges. There’s no such thing as normal. There’s a famous Russian author, a dead one, named Leo Tolstoy. Have you heard of him?”

  “I think I was supposed to read a book by him last year and didn’t.”

  “You should give him a try. Russian literature is probably pretty relatable for someone as in tune with your feelings as you are. Anyway, in one of his books Tolstoy says that happy families are all the same
, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I find that to be very true. At least the part about unhappy families. Though I can’t say if it’s true that all happy families are the same. In my work, I don’t meet a lot of happy families.” Her eyes roll back in her head a little as she says this last part and I think that maybe not only would I be qualified to be a therapist at this point, but also maybe it would be kind of interesting. Like watching a reality show.

  “You know what I think?” I ask her, because I really want her to know what I think. “Sometimes I think there’s nothing wrong with me. I think there’s something wrong with everybody else. I think about how sad I am to have lost my dad—all the time I’m sad. But I think that’s normal. I have this kick-ass girlfriend, and, I mean, she’s not going to be my girlfriend for very long, only until graduation, but she’s the best. I totally dig her. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Like, why shouldn’t I be crazy about her? Why should I feel ashamed to say that I’m crazy about her? Everyone around me, they think I should take pills so that I don’t feel too this or too that. That’s what’s crazy. All this time I’ve been looking for a reason to live, and it’s right here. Just … feeling something.”

  “Being sad isn’t the problem,” Dr. Lineberger says. “Being crippled by sadness is what’s the problem. You have to find something that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. For some people, they have to search for that thing every day.”

  “It’s just a lot easier to find things to be unhappy about,” I say. “There’s so many things that can make you unhappy, if you think about it.”

  “And so many things that can make you happy, too.”

  “I guess.”

  * * *

  It’s lunch period and I’m headed to Ms. Guinn’s classroom. This time, she actually asked me to come. I can’t imagine why. I’ve been staying on top of my work lately, showing up for class. Maybe she wants to congratulate me for doing the bare minimum that is expected, but I doubt it.