There were several people standing around. Someone ushered me into the living room, but I shrugged off their hands and ran into my mother’s office and sat in her chair.
I could hear people talk. I pulled my hoodie over my head and pressed my hands against my ears so that all I could hear was the echo of my inner ears. I could feel people patting my head and rubbing my hoodie. It pulled on my hair.
The coroner walked in and asked me if I wanted to see her one last time. I looked up at her in confusion. I almost asked if they had the ability to bring them back to life once more before they take them to the morgue, but I kept quiet and shook my head. The coroner walked away, and I went back to closing my ears over my hoodie.
My oldest sister, Julia, came up behind me and whispered that I should come upstairs. I passed my mother’s body, still lying in the middle of the living room. I averted my eyes, grabbed a liquor bottle from the cabinet, and ran up the stairs.
We sat around Julia’s old room and shifted between looking at the floor and looking at each other, like each of us had a question no one could answer. My brother-in-law Kevin stole the liquor bottle from me and took a swig.
///
“Would you still love me if I was really fat?” He pulled his belly down to try and stretch away the few extra pounds gently covering his abs.
“Of course. I’d prefer if you were fat, then I wouldn’t have to fight so much for your attention.”
“Cute.” He jumped over the couch and kissed my neck, flipped on the TV, and started to watch Housewives. One housewife was yelling at another housewife and each scene seemed to parallel the other.
L smiled and looked at me. I stared blankly.
“I know you hate these shows.” He smiled apologetically like that would somehow change the channel. I began to clean the dishes, organize his apartment.
“Relax, come watch, it’s terrible.”
///
“I’m worried about your drinking.”
“Frankly, I’m worried about your not drinking.”
///
It was L’s birthday. I asked him what he wanted, but he never responded with a real answer. I was broke, so I started to write him a fantasy novel in which we were all characters. In the story, I had gone missing, and his character was impervious to death.
After several hours of preparation, our friends arrived. K came from behind me and made a crack about my dating an older guy— “He’s so old today.”
“That’s weird. I could have sworn he was eighteen at the most,” I replied.
“Where is the fucker anyway?”
“In his room, changing. Trying to decide which white shirt with blue jeans he’s going to wear today.”
“He’s so pretty.” K sauntered off into the kitchen and began to pour drinks. “To that old fag.”
He walked in wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, his head held down, but his eyes looking up for approval.
“Yes, you’re handsome, we get it,” I mocked him. His sideways look turned into a smile.
///
The next morning, we didn’t move the couch back. We left it an open space, where her body had lain. I was told that my father had pushed the couch back and moved her body to the floor to attempt CPR. She had taken a nap on the couch, and when the nap went on too long, my father called 9-1-1.
I went into her office and noticed the piles of paper she’d called “filing.” There were harlequin novels stacked with year-end reports, invoices mixed with our old certificates from school. I started with the books, pulling them off the shelves and throwing them into a giant bag to be donated. I moved to the paper cabinet, organizing the paper according to size and colour, separating the bank statements from the craft paper, envelopes from the old photographs slipped in between. I organized her notes from most recent to oldest, most of which just had numbers or notes to herself—nothing I could decipher, but they still felt important. I opened three different bags filled to the brim with keys. There was no reason or rhyme to the keys, just piles of them—silver, gold, bronze, oval, square. I put them into one larger bag and set them aside.
My sister tried to pull me into the kitchen to have something to eat.
“Just coffee please.”
///
We sat on the couch. He looked at me and began to cry. My body jumped toward him instinctively and I pulled his head into my lap. I stroked his hair and muffled my own tears to ask him what was wrong.
“I don’t know. I just thought my family would be here,” L said.
“But they said they couldn’t make it, and you said that was fine.”
“I thought it would be fine. I get weird around my birthday.”
I didn’t respond. I felt his head weigh heavily in my lap. I thought about Rogue from X-Men, the way she couldn’t touch skin to skin without taking in all of the other person’s energy.
We fell asleep with the rain hitting the window. When I woke up, he had moved to the bed. I switched over to the bed and we slept until the afternoon. When I woke up for the second time, he was making breakfast and singing and giggling to himself.
“How you feeling today, better than last night?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You were so upset last night.”
He laughed, “No I wasn’t.”
///
I had a dream that went three levels deep: I dreamed that you got a second chance at life. So we flew off to the tropics, and you said it was your dying wish to go down a giant waterslide. So we climbed the stairs—you were tired but kept up—that led to more stairs, that led to stairs. Before we reached the top, we had to get into an elevator. You disappeared. I couldn’t get into the elevator: it kept closing before I could enter. I woke up from that dream into the next and was paralyzed with grief, but remembered you were there. Then I woke up from that dream into the next and was paralyzed with grief, realizing it was a dream. Then I woke up and was paralyzed with grief.
///
“You never told your mom you’re gay?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She was so sick, and the doctors said she couldn’t handle much shock. Her heart was so bad. I couldn’t tell her. I was afraid that if I told her, it would break her heart, and I’d be the last person to break it.”
“Oh, Daniel.”
“It feels like all we ever do in this world is break each others’ hearts.”
///
It hit me while driving home. The sense that every breath was the last one. That while driving I would quickly fade out. That my breath was too short to sustain me. At any moment I would drop dead. I would lose control of the car. If I made it home, I would die on my bed, and no one would find me for days. My body would quickly turn to mush; my roommate would find me days later and be traumatized for life. There are only a few moments left. This is it. My last days, and the feeling of sorrow as the only memory before I go. What if I’m right, and there is nothing after death? What if I’m wrong, and the last moment you have is the memory that will be imprinted into you for eternity? What if I spend an eternity feeling like this?
I got home and pushed my face into the cold leather of the couch. I thought about how none of this was real, it was just a blip—this is what my dad called being “sick.”
///
“It’s like J not believing in dinosaurs,” she said.
“You don’t believe in dinosaurs?” I hollered.
“It just doesn’t make any sense: who put them there?”
We looked over the different types of thank-you cards to choose from.
“How does an old man building a giant boat hoping to ship dinosaurs in them to escape a flood that lasted thirty days make sense then?”
“I don’t know, it just does. Fuck off, Daniel.”
We stared at the cards, each a nature scene, each a thank-you for lifting the body and helping to place her into the earth.
///
“People just die,” my father said. “Tha
t’s what they do.”
///
The lights were blaring in my eyes. He was high on MDMA and trying to get me to drink more.
“C’mon, just have another drink.”
I sat quietly, legs crossed. A young flighty kid walked up to him and started to flirt. I sat back and watched as he let the kid take his phone and add his number.
He asked me to go to the dance floor. Techno music began to quake inside my stomach. He ran off to dance when I declined. I stood there for half an hour until he returned. He mumbled something about hating this kind of music.
The flighty kid found us again and asked for his number, too drunk to remember he’d already had this exchange.
“Why didn’t you say you had a boyfriend?”
“It just never came up,” he shrugged.
///
“Sounds like your mother was always busy with work. So who mothered and fathered you?” Therapist was looking at her notebook.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Who were the parents, if your parents weren’t around? What were you doing if they weren’t home?”
“I dunno. I used to just play in our basement. It was a big, open cement space, unfinished with plywood and boards sticking out. I used to just stay down there and make up worlds.” I stared at the floor. Something felt as if it was twisting me at both ends of my body and I couldn’t move.
///
“Another round,” he hollered at the server; he was five beers in. His eyes were glazed, his smile was moist from saliva. He looked at me. “Why aren’t you drunk?”
“I’m just n—”
“M’s here!” He waved him over.
M sat down and began to sarcastically chant, “Shots, shots, shots.”
A round of shots arrived at the table, and we bit down limes to stifle the tequila. And shots arrived at the bar, and we bit down limes to stifle the tequila. And shots, shots, shots.
When the restaurant closed, we moved to the Cobalt—a former punk bar that had been renovated and taken over by a young gay scene—and shots were taken, and limes were bitten. He was too drunk and needed to go home. I was too drunk and needed to sleep. We walked home because we needed to sober up or the morning would be unbearable.
He mumbled something, and I couldn’t understand him. He repeated, “You don’t like me anymore.”
“What?”
“You don’t like me anymore.”
The blood rushed to my head, and I became inexplicably angry. “The real problem is that I like you more than you will ever understand.”
He stopped talking and walked ahead of me.
///
I dreamed that night that my mother was still alive. She was very sick, and I needed to take her up to her hospital room. I held her frail body, and she began to vomit on my jacket. She apologized. I told her it didn’t matter. We kept going up and up and up. We couldn’t get off the elevator. We knew the building was empty. She looked at me, confused. I told her that I was just dreaming. I told her that she wasn’t sick anymore, but that she was already dead. She apologized.
///
I was in bed; I felt feverish. He jumped into the bed, threw his arm around me mechanically, as if his arm remembered how it would always fall around my chest. His breath shot a whiff of alcohol in my direction.
“What’s wrong? You’re mad. I can tell you’re mad,” he slurred.
“You don’t like me anymore,” I whispered.
His body shook. He went quiet. His arm slipped away from me. “I just can’t do this anymore.”
///
I slit another letter open and froze. My hand was stuck. My body couldn’t move. I began to panic. S entered the office. I breathed deeply and closed my eyes until my arms could move again.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” I lied, and ducked out toward the exit.
I pressed my forehead against the elevator as it slowly moved toward the ground floor. He was standing next to me, telling me I deserved this.
When the elevator doors opened, I ran to the bathroom, locked the door, and breathed into my palms until vomit took the place of air.
///
“I remember I used to sit under my mom’s desk when she was working and would pull on the phone gently enough so it didn’t fall from the receiver or her hands. I would wrap the curled cord around my finger then pull it tight like a finger trap … I don’t know, I can see it all, I can see all these things connecting. It’s on a spectrum. These little moments—my mom, these memories—I can see them on a map in my brain. They connect, and it feels like too much for me.”
///
When the files were all in order, I went to Staples and purchased file folders and as many sorting trays as I could find. I brought them back to the office and began to reorganize the shelves.
My sister brought in dinner, and I ate pizza while deleting old files in the computer and creating new folders for the old photos we’d uploaded to the computer. There weren’t that many files, just some documents that she constantly reused. She seldom saved a file; every letter she typed on the computer was erased by the new one she wrote. There was a photo she had saved on her desktop: her with Julio Iglesias.
///
“I’m working on this story about after my mom died, and you’re in it too, obviously. I just need to ask this because I don’t even know if you remember it, but do you remember our first kiss?”
“Of course, we were at B’s. I waited until the elevator doors closed and kissed you.”
“We spent the entire day together, and you kept flirting with me. We had agreed we wouldn’t date, that it was too soon for you. You spent the evening looking at me with a gleeful face, and your brother could see it too. We had Italian. My mother made us cannelloni, and I made us a cheese plate. Me and my mother made us a tiramisu: I wanted so badly to impress you. After dinner, we left. You, on the way to the elevator, pulled me in and kissed me. And we couldn’t stop. We kissed all the way down the elevator. I didn’t want to get out of the elevator. I didn’t want to hit the bottom floor.”
“How could you think I could ever forget that?” he asked.
“Because I needed you to be a monster.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to write short stories about breakups?”
“I guess. My friend suggested that the only way a short story should end with a breakup is if the ex just flew away.”
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” he smirked. It turned into a frown.
I laughed.
///
I took the old family vacation photos that were in boxes and put them in binders according to date. We put duplicates into envelopes for family members whom I thought would enjoy them. My mother had even triplicated some photos. I sat at the desk and looked at the cheque statements, flipping through them in reverse so that her signature went from erratic to smooth.
When I finished organizing the last shelf in the office, I looked around for anything else that needed attending. I had gone through every cabinet, through the computer, and even through the attic. There were boxes of recyclables ready to go. There was nothing left to organize.
I collapsed on to the floor, unable to breathe. The words came again. “She’s gone.”
///
One day I went through her phone messages and emails. I was hoping to find anything I didn’t know—a secret affair, someone I’d never met, anything—a narrative to keep her alive. There was nothing.
///
“I was reckless.”
“I know. And I know you wanted to leave me, but there was no right time.”
“You miss her?”
“When you left me, I would go and sit with her, and she couldn’t really figure out why I was so sad all the time. She thought I was tired. And I was. I still hadn’t told her about us, about you, about me.” I began to inhale the dark. “Whenever I felt like the world was getting to me, I would go to her home and just lay on the couch. Now, when I fe
el like I’m falling apart, I’m afraid I will.” I looked up to see him covered in tears. “Stop crying.”
“I can’t help it.”
///
It was New Year’s Day. I felt the pull from the night before, of MDMA taking me down. I spent the night at my ex-boyfriend’s. You met him once—you liked him, not knowing he was more than just a friend. Not knowing that the bed we were moving out of your house would be shared by him in the future. When I woke up, he was showering and said he had to leave to be with another guy. I begged him to stay, taunted him for leaving me yet again, but he was always leaving, and I was always begging him to stay.
I felt the pull of MDMA again, the pull that is the opposite of the push into happiness that it can create, the one that creates love for everyone around you. This dark pull had you at the other end, had him leaving me once more.
I thought about how I couldn’t remember the sound of your voice anymore. The oils of your skin no longer leave a scent in the air. That day I brought your grandson into your room, he pulled at my beard, trying to understand why my face had hair at both ends and he began to giggle. I laid him on your bed and rested beside him. He grabbed at his feet and smiled; curling himself like a little crescent moon, he reached toward the bright lights, as babies do.
You’d never met him before. But I asked him to tell me a story. The way you used to. The way you asked me to tell you a story, before I learned the way narratives break.
///
“She’s gone.”
///
I was hanging my head over the bed. The phone was slick from the sweat of my hand. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said. I could hear L breathing deeply into the phone. “I love you,” I added, knowing it was the only thing left to say.
“Okay.” There was a long silence, and then a change in the silence, one that let me know he’d left.
I imagined the night he left, the night he admitted it was all over. I stared at his luggage. I held his hand as he cried himself to sleep. Then I imagined that he floated away. Not slowly, like a balloon in the sky, but all of a sudden, like gravity had reversed its pull on him and shot him straight into the sky. He never returned.
Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person Page 12
