CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Being at Sara’s house with all these people and all this food reminds me of the surprise party we threw for her fifteenth birthday and how when she walked through the door we scared the shit out of her. The sick thing is that I keep expecting her to walk through the door and scare the shit out of us, and I have to keep reminding myself that’s not what dead people do. They don’t walk through doors or attend surprise parties or do anything ever again. They certainly don’t eat six pigs in a blanket (which are really cows in a blanket), like I just did.
“I can’t believe there’s a God if he’d do something like this,” I overhear Kate telling Liz. I feel like telling them God is the adult equivalent of Santa Claus, but I think this is supposed to be a time for us all to “come together.” And I guess it is better than being alone, at least for Janet and Cal and forty of Sara’s closest friends and family. I change my mind when Kate and Liz come over and try to talk to me.
“Oh, Danny, can you believe it?” Liz says.
“Nflsknviowe,” I say, because my mouth is full.
“What?”
I swallow too much too fast and my esophagus freaks out. “No, not at all,” I clarify after I’ve coughed.
“I don’t know how you can even eat at a time like this,” Kate says.
I narrow my eyes at her stupid, skinny face. “I must be an incredible human.”
“It’s so good you’re becoming a doctor,” Liz says. “I can’t think of a better way to honor Sara than by saving other people’s lives. Do you think you’ll be a heart surgeon now or, like, a different organ surgeon?”
I squint at them and try to figure out where the logic in that sentence is. “Probably a plastic surgeon,” I say, because it’s just too easy with them. “Hit me up in ten years if you decide you want a boob job or something.” It’s beyond relieving when my phone rings. “Sorry, gotta get this.” I deliberately take more food with me as I go outside to answer it.
“What’s up, Stephen?” I ask. The night air feels good and quiet.
“Danny,” he says and it kind of sounds like he’s been crying. “I’m so, so sorry about what happened. I saw it on Instagram.”
“Thank you. Thanks a lot.” This has become my stock response. I used the shit out of it back there in Sara’s kitchen, and I’ll probably have many more uses for the double ingratiation in the days to come.
“I don’t know if it’s appropriate, because I only met Sara once, but I know how close you two were, so if you wanted I could come to the funeral. I figured since we were maybe going to hang out sometime this summer that we could do that instead. Not that that’s a fun-hang-out activity,” he adds quickly.
“Yeah, sure you could come. Thanks. Thanks so much.”
“If you need anything in the meantime, let me know.”
“Thank you. Thanks a lot.”
After we hang up I notice a red plastic cup stuffed in the bushes near the tennis court. It could’ve been anyone’s who was at the party that first night of summer, but the sight of it makes me feel uneasy. It’s a relief to go back inside and feel the chaos of so many people talking and eating and crying. Every so often I look at the door, wondering if Bugg is going to show up. Part of me wants her to, but the other part of me thinks that after the whole sex thing happened between us, it’s going to make our dynamic noticeably different. On top of everything else I don’t need people asking questions about Bugg and me, which is why when she comes through the door I feel equal parts relieved and sick to my stomach.
She weaves through groups of people and introduces herself to Janet, who then gives her a hug.
“I was Sara’s friend from yoga,” Bugg says, and I notice she omits the “and I sold weed to her less than five times” part. “I was only just getting to know Sara, but I’m so sorry for your loss.” I can’t help noticing that, unlike nearly everyone else in the room, Bugg looks pretty when she cries.
“Her death was so sudden and unexpected. We can’t believe it—no warning signs or anything,” Janet says. Which is slightly untrue, but I guess we’re all continuously lying for appearances’ sake.
“I feel lucky to have gotten to know her even for a short while. She had the best energy. It was palpable when she walked into a room.”
Listening to this conversation feels like how it would probably feel to watch your parents have sex, so I make a beeline for the bacon-covered scallops and lose myself in the magic that is fatty land and sea creatures combined.
When Bugg’s done talking, she comes over to me and puts her arm around my waist, which I then turn into a hug so that no one will get suspicious. I give her a look that clearly says Please Don’t Act Like You’ve Interacted With Me Naked and she whispers, “Sorry. I thought you might have changed your mind about PDA.”
“No, not even a little bit. If anything, it’s more imperative than ever that we keep this whole thing under wraps,” I say, licking the bacon dribble from my fingers. I’m a little annoyed she’d even bring it up at a time like this.
“Whatever you need, Danny.” She helps herself to bacon-wrapped scallops.
The whole time we’re talking I can feel Kate and Liz’s eyes on us, not because I’m paranoid but because they’re actually staring at us. I’m not psychic or anything, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a problem. I break away from Bugg under the pretense of having to console Ethan, who is literally soaking the cheese and cracker plate with his tears. As I hold his muscles awkwardly (because we’re hugging, not because I’m suddenly into jocks), I make a note to keep my Bugg life as separate from my other life as humanly possible. Unfortunately, Sara has made it exponentially more difficult and if she were here, I’d let her know what an inconvenient time it was for her to go and die.
It hasn’t rained once all summer, so when it pours for a few days there’s a sense of relief in the air. Water drips steadily from the gutter, and I feel something pool inside of me too. I should probably tell Leslie about it during our sessions, but my parents are concerned enough for the three of us, not that they know what’s percolating in my screwed-up headspace. What they’re reacting to is the full residency I’ve taken up in my bed, with the AC on the Antarctica setting.
“Are you okay, Danny?” my mom asks the day before the funeral. She’s standing in my doorway rubbing her arms for warmth. I’m in the middle of an epic journaling session, after having asked Cynthia to e-mail me extra prompts.
“I think so.” I roll onto my side and pull my Harry Potter blanket up to my nose. “I think as long as we all stick to the facts we’ll be fine.”
“What facts, sweetie?”
“That Sara is dead. Sara died on Saturday at twelve fifty-three p.m. Sara died of a heart attack. You know, the facts.”
“I think you’re in shock, Danny, and that’s okay,” my mom says, inviting herself in and turning my AC down.
Well, of course I’m in shock, I want to shout. But the thing about being in shock is that even if you keep saying I’m in shock, I’m in shock, I’m in shock, it doesn’t make you less in shock.
“I’m fine. I just need to focus on writing this eulogy. My friend from poetry class said she’d help me, so I’m going to shower, then go to her house.”
“The pretty one who came over a few days ago?” my mom asks.
The problem with living with your parents is you can’t easily sneak people in and out unless you use the window, but that starts to get dangerous, what with all those statistics about ladders and broken tibias.
“Yeah. She went to Brown.” I know how to get my mom to want me to keep a friend around.
“Oh, excellent! What year did she graduate? It’d be so great for you to have a sort of mentor.”
Shit. “Um, I forget.” I quickly change the subject as my mom pauses with a pile of my clothes in her hands. “I can do that, Mom. Leave my sweaty smocks where I left them.”
“You need to clean up in here, Danny. A tidy room reflects a tidy mental space.”
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“Fine, you stay and I’ll go. I have to shower now or I’m going to be late.”
She hands me my towel, looking hurt and confused.
When I get to the doorway I turn around. “There has to be one part of my life that gets to be messy, that nobody else tries to clean up. Even if you do my laundry and put my clothes away this one time, it’s not going to stay that way unless I keep it that way. Okay?”
She nods but still clutches my clothes. I wouldn’t be surprised if I came back and found her on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor.
Bugg and I try to make out on her porch swing for a while, to get me inspired, but it feels wrong. Every time our tongues touch I remember the last time I saw Sara, which obviously wasn’t the finest hour in our friendship.
I ask Bugg to read her “September” poem to me, the one that ends with “but their scent / is there any scent as sweet / as dying leaves?” I think she meant leaves as in the plant, but I like that it can be read as leaves as in “left behind.” More things should be open to interpretation like that. It’s nice to have something feel up to me.
“I can’t believe we didn’t get to resolve anything,” I say when she finishes reading, and I make the swing rock with my foot. The rain has stopped, but it smells like it’s still raining around us. “This eulogy is my only chance to apologize to her. It has to be everything.”
Bugg lights two cigarettes, one for her and one for me, then puts her arm around me.
“If you put that much pressure on yourself, you’re going to shit your pants.”
“I don’t wear pants,” I say, wondering when I started to like smoking cigarettes.
“Ultimately, you have to forgive yourself. You already know Sara would.” Then she pulls a pen and paper from her bag and ashes the cigarette over the arm of the swing. “Let’s take down some ideas.”
The things that come to mind are clichés that don’t do Sara any justice. “She was a light in people’s life” or “Her smile lit up a whole room.”
“I don’t want it to be one of those eulogies that lies, you know? The ones that say so-and-so was practically an archangel who descended from heaven by the grace of God’s thumb, and we were all so lucky to be graced by her superhuman presence while we trudged through our mortal, shit lives.” I take a long drag, proud of myself for not coughing. “Sara wasn’t more selfless or loving or kind than anyone else I know,” I say through the smoke. “And a lot of times she was less. But what was great about Sara was that she was exactly Sara all the time. She knew what was important to her, and she didn’t care if other people thought it was shallow or stupid or self-absorbed. She didn’t act all heroic when she got cut from the team, she lied about it, because she was human and being human is way better than being anything else.”
I sigh and watch the ash accumulate on the end of the cigarette. I can’t say any of those things in front of a crowd of hysterical people who want to hear about how Sara was the brightest star in an otherwise dark, bumfuck galaxy, but it feels good to say them to myself anyway.
“I feel you,” Bugg says. “You don’t want to put her on a pedestal just because she’s dead.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, what if you talk about who Sara was to you? If you keep it specific to your relationship, you won’t have to worry about making any grandiose statements about her superhumanness.”
“But,” I say, and my lip trembles against my will, “it was such a shitty time for her to have to die. Our friendship was coming apart at the seams.”
“I don’t believe that,” Bugg says. “What about friendship being like a river? You were experiencing a drought is all.”
“I don’t know.” I get up from the swing and rattle the chains so hard that the birds roosting above us scatter from the roof and disappear into her perfectly manicured backyard.
“Well, hey, so what if it was coming apart?” Bugg gets up and stands next to me. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t have a good run of it. Or that you didn’t love each other and give each other your tiny worlds while you could. Nothing lasts forever,” she says, reaching the end of her cigarette and stomping on it.
“But we had The Plan,” I say, rubbing my eyes and feeling a headache coming on.
Bugg shrugs. “You made a plan when you were kids, and it was sweet and a little weird, but isn’t it also what started to destroy you? You gotta say fuck The Plan.”
“It’s not that easy to say fuck The Plan.” I lean my elbows on the rail of the porch, as if it’s suddenly too much effort to hold myself up. “We had our whole house built, and while I totally appreciate the words of wisdom even though you’re only, like, two years older than I am, I think I should figure out the rest of this myself.”
Bugg bites her lip and tries to put her hand on my hand, but I move it out of reach.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I know it all. Obviously I don’t know everything about your relationship with Sara.”
“No, you don’t. You came into it in the last two months. We’ve been going at it for the last fourteen years. I shouldn’t have asked for any help with this. The eulogy is between Sara and me, and since it’s the last thing between Sara and me, I have to get it right and I have to do it alone.”
I don’t know why I’m so angry, but I leave Bugg’s house crying, which is getting exhausting at this point.
In an attempt to make everything better I stop at McDonald’s. Something somewhere in my body is so hungry that it’s threatening to make me crazy unless I eat every forbidden nonfruit in my fast-food garden. Six dollars later I take my burger to the ocean and eat it while the tide moves in and out.
As I sit on the hood of my dad’s car, the burger and fries go about the task of filling up my arteries. It’s a tasty process until I bite into an onion and think about how Sara only liked caramelized onions and how weird it is that she’ll never be annoyed by regular onions again. I feel the hot itchiness establishing itself, and soon it’s too itchy to handle. Three-Part, I start to say to myself, but I can’t remember the rest of it. All I can think about is how I have to get this food out of my stomach or I’m going to burst into a million pieces. Besides, it’s about progress, not perfection. Isn’t that what Leslie keeps telling me? Throwing up one time in three months is much better than throwing up after every meal. So really I’d be proving my recovery by throwing up a tiny bit in this trash can over here, because no one is around and if a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it did it make a sound and similarly, if I throw up just this once and no one is around to police it…
It’s not that the act itself is particularly pleasurable, especially because nothing is digested yet, which sometimes makes it feel like you’re going to choke on your own bad decision, but afterward… well, afterward it’s this sense of emptiness and peace, and even though you need to brush your teeth, you feel a hell of a lot better than you did before. Really, you can handle anything. Even writing something as fucked up as your best friend’s eulogy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In the hours before the funeral I let myself have carte blanche in the bathroom. It makes the time pass very quickly. You have to understand that these are difficult circumstances and being gentle with yourself is imperative. At least that’s what Leslie told me this morning because my mom booked an emergency appointment with her. Since then I’ve been avoiding human contact. Kate and Liz wanted me to come to Sara’s with them, but I’m too busy tending my garden of screwed-up eating rituals to really make time for group activities.
I’ll see you guys tomorrow, though, I text them. It’s very weird to be in a group text with the two of them and not Sara. It’s one of a hundred million things that feel wrong.
I also get a lot of texts from Bugg asking how I’m doing and apologizing mostly. It’s not that I’m mad at her, it’s that I don’t want to talk to her. When I start indulging the hot itchy feeling, I don’t want other people around because then they might notice and
then they might put me on the first bus back to You-Know-Where.
Her last text is about the eulogy. I’m sure you have a lot written—(I have nothing written)—but in case you get writer’s block Cynthia always tells me to write the worst possible thing I can that way I’ll at least have something to work with. You can always do something with words. It’s pretty hard to face a blank page. Thinking about you.
I can’t think of a good response. It’s too stressful having my cell phone on me. Whoever thought it’d be a good idea to be reachable at all times?
“Danny, come eat dinner. I made vegan lasagna,” my mom hollers through my closed door. I don’t have the heart to tell her veganism has gone shit out the window lately, so I join her in the kitchen and act delighted. It’s all fake meat and fake cheese, but it’s surprisingly delicious. Well, the first bite is delicious and the fiftieth bite is much less so, which makes me think that all of life is a series of diminishing returns.
“How are you holding up, sweetie? Your dad got stuck with students, but he is hurrying home,” she says, cutting bite-size pieces of lasagna and moving them from her plate to her mouth.
“No worries. I’m fine. Still have a lot of this eulogy to write, so I should probably get back to it,” I say, inhaling massive quantities of food.
“Leslie seemed a little worried.”
“You talked to my therapist?” My fork clanks down on my plate too loudly.
“Danny, you know that’s part of the deal we made when you were released on medical leave. The therapist, your dean, your father, and I have to be in communication so we can all be certain that you’re healthy enough to go back. She’s allowed to contact your father and me if she thinks she needs to.” My mom pauses with her fork in the air.
Obviously I know this is part of the deal. It’s the biggest reason why I don’t tell my therapist anything. I could’ve mentioned that I don’t feel okay at all, that the hot itchiness is taking over my body and I don’t care because I sort of want to make a bag of popcorn and curl up inside it until all of this stops hurting so much. But that is not the sort of response that gets a girl back to college in the fall. In fact, that’s the sort of response that lands a girl back in treatment.
Love & Other Carnivorous Plants Page 13
