Before and Afterlives

by Christopher Barzak

  She can’t believe her mother’s dead; it doesn’t seem possible. This cannot be the woman she’s wished dead so many times in the past, the woman who survived each death wished upon her. She was supposed to be invulnerable. She was supposed to live forever.

  This is when she wants to scream and begin destroying the house all over again. This is when the air suddenly sticks in her throat, and she gasps over and over, suffocating. This is when the inside of her body aches hollow and empty, as if a fire’s been burning her up from the inside out. If she opened her mouth to scream, black smoke would come billowing out. This is when she wants to cry so much, the rims of her eyes prick with pain and tremble.

  But she refuses to do that. She’s promised herself over and over again that she won’t cry. That a dead mother won’t defeat her like the living one did. That she won’t feel anything. Nothing. Not a thing.

  She passes the night in a constant state of waking. It is mere minutes that pass each time she closes her eyes before they flutter open again, and she stares blindly in the dark of the room to find the numbers on the alarm clock glowering at her. “Alice,” she says, softly, every so often. “Alice, are you there?”

  She nods in answer to herself. It is a system devised years ago, when she lived in the other house, the dark one. She based it off the game she and Maureen used to play in the swimming pool. “Marco!” she would shout with her eyes closed tight and her hands searching blindly through the water around her. “Polo!” Maureen would shout back, from a distance that was nearly incalculable.

  In the morning, she dresses for the funeral. She still can’t believe that her mother’s dead and she has an incredible craving for a cup of tea. Sweet mint tea, like her mother always made for her whenever she was sad or sick or upset at something. She goes downstairs to make herself a cup and then remembers that she threw the teapot through the window, and that her mother was in the habit of storing her tea in that pot. She’d given up serving from it years ago, deciding to leave it out for show instead.

  Alice convinces herself to do without it. She knows how to do without a lot.

  At the funeral, Maureen stares coldly from beneath her black lace veil. Alice stands on one side of the grave, and Maureen stands on the other. Their mother is between them. Steven, the insurance agent, has his arm laced around Maureen’s waist and looks briefly at Alice every few minutes. Each time he looks away, he fiddles with his tie. Probably he is remembering the time he kissed her and got slapped. The time he tried to sell life insurance to her and the girls in her dormitory. “Hey, Alice, let’s write you up a policy. Let’s make sure you’re safe and insured.”

  They bent over the paperwork together, almost touching heads. And then he turned to her and, smack, he kissed her. And then, smack, she kissed him back with her hand. She never told Maureen about that, and by the time Steven did, it had become Alice who kissed him. Now that her Mother’s dead, she supposes Maureen and Steven are rich. He has this great way of selling people insurance—he can convince almost anyone that they’ll die someday.

  Her mother is lowered into the ground and Maureen throws a handful of dirt ceremoniously onto the casket. Alice bends down and scoops up some dirt, too. She knows this is expected of her, that it’s time to bury her mother. But her hand won’t budge when she holds it over the grave. All she can think is, I want a cup of tea. I could really use a cup of tea right now. Tea would be good.

  Her hand is shaking. A few clumps of dirt fall over the sides of her palms, dribbling against the casket lid. But those don’t count! Those were dropped by chance, Alice thinks. Chance, I tell you! She clenches the dirt in her hand, shakes her head, and walks away from the mourners, the dirt locked tight in her fist.

  Alice doesn’t go to the after-funeral party at Maureen’s house. Besides, Maureen would probably chase her out anyway. Instead she walks all the way home from the cemetery, which is only a few miles away, along the banks of the creek, which is gurgling over smooth stones and carrying orange and yellow leaves along its current. She carries her high heels in her hands and ruins her stockings.

  When she reaches her backyard, she rushes into the house because she still wants a cup of tea, mother’s famous tea, with lots of milk like the English use, and honey to sweeten it up. She still has the dirt from the grave in her hand; by now she’s molded it round and smooth and sweaty. If she held it in the hot palm of her hand and squeezed it for a long enough time, it might turn into a stone. A burial stone, in which she could drill a hole and thread it on a leather thong. She could strap it around her neck to wear forever.

  But once she reaches the kitchen, she remembers again. The teapot—she threw it out the window, with all of the tea inside it too. She laughs out loud. This reminds her of something her mother used to say. “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!” And how she never knew what that meant. She runs outside again and searches in some nearby shrubbery until she finds the teapot, exhumes it, only to discover it broken open and all of the loose black tea spilled out.

  It blends in with the damp mulch so well.

  She wants to scream again. All she wants is some tea. Is that so much to ask? She goes back into the house and pounds walls and tables, surfaces, with her open palm, the one without the dirt, until it reddens with pain. The house starts to shake again. She plays it for all it’s worth, pounding on the dining room table, slamming her hand against the wall, stamping her feet on the hardwood floor. She curses. Is it so much to ask for some tea?

  She sits down at the dining room table, lays her arms on the cold polished wood, then rests her head in her arms. Last night’s tears and screams boil up inside her. They’re in her throat, foaming. But she won’t, she won’t, she won’t. She’s promised herself that she won’t. Her body shudders under the pressure.

  “Alice!” her mother scolds. “Stop this right now. It’s unattractive! Not like a lady at all.”

  Now her mother’s hand is on her back, rubbing it. This feels really good. Alice lifts her head to find the teacup, the last of the teacups, sitting in front of her, empty.

  “Cry into it, dear,” her mother coos into her ear. “Your tears are hot enough.”

  She nods and nods, like a good girl, and she does. They slip out fast and hot down her cheeks and drop—drop one or two at a time—until the cup is full and the hand-painted house at the bottom is drowned beneath them. Enough tears to flood the entire house. Chairs and picture frames float down the hallways, and the walls collapse like a deck of cards. When she opens her mouth to breathe, a tiny squeal rushes out. Her cheeks and eyes are left streaked with mascara-tinted snail tracks.

  “Drink,” her mother tells her. Now she’s kneading her shoulders. Alice looks into the cup to find a darkness appearing inside, spreading through her tears like octopus ink.

  “Drink, love,” her mother urges.

  So she does. She drinks it. She almost chokes on the first sip, though. It is hot and bitter, not sweet at all. But she swallows and swallows, until every last drop is gone.

  Born on the Edge of an Adjective

  “I was born on the edge of an adjective,” Neil tells me from San Francisco. He’s calling on his new cell phone. He bought it because he thought it would add a little something to his image, but now he’s not so sure. “Everywhere I look, people have these stupid things,” he says. “I didn’t realize till I had one of my own.”

  “You were what?” I ask.

  “I was born on the edge of an adjective,” he tells me. “That’s for you,” he says, and pauses to drag on his cigarette. “For your next song. At least a line, if not the title.”

  Neil’s calling from a bar called the Shamrock, which he’s frequented since leaving Youngstown behind. In the background of his voice, the crack of pool and the sound of eighties music. I can almost smell the smoke, see the haze. Neil hates eighties music, so I’m wondering why he’s there. I’m wondering why he isn’t here with me.

  “That’s a great line,” I say. I don�
�t tell him that I don’t write songs anymore. That when he left, the music went with him, that I haven’t written since. “You should write it,” I tell him, and light a cigarette for myself.

  “That’s your thing, Marco,” he says, and it still sends a thrill through my body to hear that name, instead of just Marc or Marcus. Only Neil calls me something different from everyone else.

  “So when are you coming back?” I ask, then immediately revise my question. “When are you going to visit?”

  “You know I can’t, Marco,” he says. “I can’t come back, at least not for a while. I have to find out who I am. Ohio only obscures it. We’ve gone over all this before. Besides, I’m unboyfriendable. You need someone better than me. Someone solid.”

  I nod in agreement, even though Neil can’t see. He went a thousand miles away to find himself, which sounds lame as a talk show conversation, but he did it, and I still can’t help but ask when this self-imposed exile is going to end. Neil might not know himself, but I could tell him. I know who he is, he’s just not listening. But when do any of us listen to what others have to say? I don’t write music anymore. I only listen. If Neil asked me, I could sing him his song.

  “I have to get going,” Neil says impatiently. There’s the click of his lighter and the exhale of smoke. “I have a date with this woman. I need to meet her on the other side of town.”

  “A woman?” I ask.

  “She’s cool,” Neil says. “A dancer, real light on her feet. It’s like gravity has no effect on her.”

  “So she floats? That’s pretty amazing,” I say.

  “Seriously, Marco, she made me practice lifting her for her next recital. It was like picking up a teacup. An empty teacup. You would like her. Don’t be a cynic. She’s our type.”

  “That’s great,” I say. I tell him, “Call me soon,” and put the phone down on its cradle. I turn up the radio, thinking she is not our type, not mine at least, and I wouldn’t like her. I already hate this woman, Neil, and she’s probably a bad dancer. Her legs are skinny like a flamingo’s, and her hair is most likely blonde. Also, she floats. People who float aren’t people. It’s like a law or something. No floating for humans.

  Neil likes his men different from his women. He prefers his men quietly smoldering, with dark eyes and thick hair. He likes his women blonde and loud as ambulances, with legs up to their chins. He used to read books with grand plots and lifeless characters. Now he reads books without plots that have grand characters, who think a lot throughout most of the book.

  Take my hand, I want to tell him. Let me lead you through the hall of mirrors. I know your way. If I were alone, I’d be lost myself. But with you, I see the way clearly.

  He wonders who he is, what it means to live in this world, how he’s supposed to be. I’ve seen him clap his hands over his ears, as if the world grew too loud suddenly, and he sank down on my bed and curled into a fetal position. He wants to know what he’s like, where he’s going, where he’s been. He’s a blank slate, he tells me, atabula rasa. But this is not true. A more accurate description is possible.

  He was like a book left behind by some weary traveler, in a country where no one knows how to read.

  Take my hand, I want to tell him. Even though I’m blind on my own, I can see your path clearly.

  Where are you going? Where have you been? These questions were our constant conversation. The first time we met, we were both at The Blue Note, one of the bars where the band I wrote songs for sometimes played. They still have an ongoing gig there, but I don’t stop very often. They leave messages, various members of Winterlong, the lead singer, the bass guitarist, the piano player, Harry, who always says they’re going downhill and need an injection of something new and different. “Give me a call, Marcus,” he says. “Let’s get together on something.”

  Neil was standing at the bar, in front of an empty stool, drinking from a pony-necked bottle. I sat three stools down. Finally, after the band took a break, he walked over, sat beside me, and, without looking at me, said, “The songs are good, but they need a new singer.” I laughed involuntarily, almost spitting out a mouthful of beer.

  “Really?” I said, grinning.

  “Most definitely.”

  “And the songs? What makes them more deserving?”

  “They’re full of raw emotion. The lead singer doesn’t know how to get that across.”

  It was something I’d heard other people say about someone else’s music. Something you might read in a review, or hear on a college campus amongst earnest but not so humble students. But Neil was flattering. This quality is a necessary attractor. I was attracted, I cannot lie.

  We went home that night together, after the band stopped playing, after closing down the Blue Note, and when we woke in the morning, him lying on his stomach, me flat on my back, his arm flung over my chest, I told him that I was the song writer.

  “I knew that,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you knew I knew. Really, don’t act so innocent.”

  Neil works irregularly, odd jobs, temp work when he’s desperate, and sometimes he’ll tend bar. He did university for a few years, but he quit a semester before graduating. “It wasn’t fun anymore,” he explained. He’d been a Psychology major, a Philosophy major, an English major, as well as dabbling in Anthropology until it became too concrete, too biological, for his tastes. He switched majors every few semesters, and would then travel through the previous departments again, a phantom of academia.

  “I’ve an insatiable mind,” he told me, after we’d been seeing each other regularly for several weeks.

  “I believe that,” I said. And I did believe it. I believed him as much as is possible when you’re beginning to know someone. It’s a sweet period of discovery, and you can only take what the other person says as reality. Or not. Skepticism is possible. But then, why would you be there, listening, taking in another person, only to disbelieve them?

  “You’re a fool if you believe me, Marco,” he said.

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “But isn’t being called a fool somehow more hurtful?”

  “Hmm.” I thought for a moment. We were eating dinner at my apartment, drinking merlot and lapping up spaghetti. I wiped a napkin against my mouth, then looked at him and said, “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On who calls you a fool.”

  He grinned, then frowned quickly, looking down into his glass of wine.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, concerned, ready to soothe him. I was very ready to do that then. I still want to do that sometimes, soothe him, but I refrain from doing so. I might expect something in return. I might think Neil letting me care for him means something.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “That’s the problem. Nothing is the matter. With me. There’s no me to have a matter about.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, swallowing the last of my wine.

  “It is, Marco.” He scraped his chair back, stood up and removed our plates, the glasses, to start the washing up.

  I stood and went to him by the sink and put my arms around his waist, rested my chin on his shoulder. The heat of him, the scent of him, something a little like salt and a little like honey, the unbelievable solidity of his body was amplified by Neil’s claim of not-being.

  “You’re here,” I said. “And I may be a fool, but I definitely see someone where you’re standing.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t mean physically. I mean inside. Inside my head.” He tapped two fingers against his skull.

  “That’s naïve nihilism,” I answered, slowly removing my arms from his waist. I turned to leave him to the dishes, his forearms submerged in soapy water, and then he asked what I saw in him. Right then, at that moment.

  “What do you see?”

  What did I see? I didn’t know if I’d be able to tell him, but he was calling my bluff. Had I really been payin
g attention? He stood before me with a plate in one hand and a dish rag in the other, waiting for my answer, which I found was ready on the tip of my tongue. Sometimes I surprise myself.

  I told him he was outlandish, a loner, a hothouse flower who would wither if removed from his greenhouse. “This city,” I said, “is your center. From here the sun can reach you. You rely on its depression, its darkness, its anonymity to the rest of the world. People don’t even know this place exists. Some of those people live here. I’ve made up a slogan for Youngstown,” I told him. “Youngstown: Why fix it if it isn’t broken?”

  But it was broken, is broken. No money, no jobs. This is what you call an economic depression. An economic depression means there’s no money, and people are depressed about it. Buildings haven’t been updated since the seventies, since the steel mills closed down. Sidewalks buckle, graffiti looms, vacant lots appear daily, filled with patches of yellow-brown grass and shattered beer bottles, and still the city will not change. Here, entropy is the golden rule. For some people that’s attractive.

  Neil didn’t say anything. He continued washing up, sulking silently, his back bent over the sink, his head lowered, his entire body a question mark.

  How to tally, to compose, to bring together answers? And what to do with them once they’ve been found?

  “Are you working?” I ask when he calls me.

  “I’m doing some carpentry for the dancer,” he says.

  “Is she paying you?”

  “Of course she’s paying me, Marco. I’m not a fool.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I will.”

  “Good.”

  They’ve been seeing each other for two weeks now, maybe more, Neil and the flamingo. Her name, he’s informed me, is Margaret Stanbottom. Not quite what I’d imagined for a dancer, but I can never predict who Neil will drag home. Or in this case, who he’ll follow home.