Holding his precious face in both of my hands, I said the words that I hadn't voiced since he left me. I told him, "Jesse, I love you."
His eyes blinked open, and he smiled as he recognized me. He said, "Lindsay," and a moment later he was limp, sleeping coldly on my knees. Only when the paramedics came did he speak again, screaming my name as two strong men strapped him down and carried him away from me.
The second was the day we found a small grey mouse in the basement of my parents' house, stuck to a glue trap and struggling violently. I stood lookout as he stole up the stairs with the rodent under his sweater, and together we slunk into the garage, speaking to each other only in hushed tones. I held the trap still as he worked painstakingly slowly to free the mouse, using stolen vegetable oil and his long, gentle fingers.
After what seemed a breathless eternity, when the mouse's head and shoulders were almost loose, he pulled too hard and he broke its neck. The silence was abrupt, and it was deafening.
He stared down at the rodent in his hands. He was fifteen years old, and for the first time in nearly a decade, I saw him give in to tears. I watched with mute fascination as he continued his work, holding the tiny body in his strong hands, the tears dripping from the point of his chin and adding lubricant to his gruesome task. He didn't stop until the corpse was free, resting in his palm as he tossed the trap to the floor and mashed it into the concrete with one foot.
That night was the first time that he wrapped his body around mine, and only now do I wonder if he was contemplating death as he swept away my virginity.
The third was the night that we saw the moths from his front porch. We were only children, fascinated by the insects' heavy, bobbing paths. As we watched, they emerged from the darkness and were drawn to the light; they flew into street lamps, bashing themselves over and over, until they fell to the sidewalk, dead and still. We ran to the lights when we saw them drop, horrified to discover their fate.
Taking matters into our own hands, we found a butterfly net in my bedroom and then hurried back to the street. Very gently, we netted the moths as they approached the lamps, carrying them into the backyard, where we were sure they would be safe.
But every time, they would bob back to the street on their feathery wings. They would return to the lamps. They would kill themselves against the lights, and no matter how many times we tried to save them, they always came back.
Please, he begged, we’re only trying to save you.
And there was nothing more frustrating than seeing them coming back, over and over, killing themselves. No matter how many times we tried. No matter how hard we fought for them.
***
After an eight hour shift, I walk back to his apartment. I make my way up the stairs, moving slowly, my feet feeling heavy. I knock on the frame when I reach the door, and he doesn't answer. Testing the knob, I find the door unlocked. I let myself inside, but the living room is empty; the kitchen, too. With a nervous fluttering in my stomach, I shut the door behind me, and quickly cross the room to his bedroom. Through the open door, I see him stripping the sheets off the bed, and I sigh with embarrassed relief. His thin arms are shaking with exertion, and with silent, morbid fascination, I watch the strain and pull of his wiry muscles. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Jesse?”
He straightens sharply, staring at me in alarm. His eyes are glazed. He is drunker than he usually is at this hour, and my relief is short lived. The sheet he holds before him is stained red, a spatter, and it makes my stomach clench. I check his face, study his lips for a sign of blood, but his hair is still damp from a recent shower; I'll find no sign there.
“What happened?”
He coughs into his fist, a rasping sound. His eyes clench shut with pain. “Nothing, I’m fine.”
“Jesse,” I whisper miserably. I can think of nothing else to say. His throat is hemorrhaging again.
He balls up the sheet and tucks it under his bed, something I know he would never do if I weren't watching him. He holds out one hand, reaching out for me across the room. “Lindsay. Come lay with me. I don't want you to leave, but I'm too tired to sit up tonight."
I feel the tears building behind my eyes, but I don’t want to cry. Who knows how much time we have left. Misery can't be his last memory of me. I slip out of my coat, leaving it on the floor beside my purse. He lies down on the bare mattress and I crawl in after him. I lay down close, not quite touching, and he pulls a clean sheet over us. When he breathes, there is a rattling in his chest, but it clears when he coughs.
After a quiet moment, he asks me,"Do you remember all those kids we knew were going to peak in high school?"
I stare at the ceiling, listening to my heart beating in my ears. "What do you mean?"
"There were those kids, and we just knew that when we came back to visit in twenty years, they'd still be the same people, doing the same things that they always did and working the same minimum wage job they got before graduation."
We judged them all so harshly. We were sure that their lives were destined to be meaningless. We were hopelessly cruel; hopelessly proud. "Yeah, I remember."
"I'm one of them, now,” he says. “I never made it out."
I try to placate him. "You could never be one of them."
He sighs so deeply I can feel the mattress shift beneath us. "I can't believe this is my life," he whispers.
“Please stop,” I murmur gently.
“You should go to school,” he says simply.
“Will you be paying for that?"
“You should go to school, and meet a nice guy, and get married and start a career and have babies.”
I used to imagine what our children would look like. His eyes, of course. His hair. My nose, my chin, maybe my lips. The girls would have my lips. The boys would have his. “I’m a feminist," I say jokingly, hoping to turn the conversation somewhere light. "I don’t believe in having babies.”
“You’re impossible.”
I ease closer to him, awkward at first, but then I gingerly rest my head on his chest. His arm creeps uncertainly around me, and we exist together in a strange state of mingled comfort and unease.
After a moment, I can't help but speak. “Jesse?”
“Hm?”
"Why did you leave me?" This is a question I have never found the strength to ask. At first I'm afraid he won't answer, but then he says in a small voice…
"I was scared."
It is not the answer I've expected all this time. "Scared of what?"
He struggles for a moment. "Of all that I felt for you. We've been friends forever. Literally forever. I just didn't know what to do when it was more than that. And then everything got so serious… We were barely eighteen years old and it was like our entire lives were already planned and scripted. I couldn't do that. I loved you, but I thought I needed something that I could only get without you. I had all these big dreams…" He sighs, and then says bitterly, "I've clearly done so well at making them all come true." He squeezes my shoulder and kisses the top of my head, but his touch is like a brother's. "I know how wrong I was now, Lindsay, and I'm so sorry for what I put you through. It's always been you. But it's too late now. I ruined everything."
"You didn't ruin anything, Jesse."
"Of course I did," he says, his voice too tight for the casual tone he's trying to adopt.
"What are talking about?"
"I ruined my life, Lindsay. I've disappointed everyone, or at least everyone who actually mattered."
"None of us are disappointed in you."
"Of course you are. You should be. I know I am. I ruined everything I could have had with you, and I did it so spectacularly that I know I'll never get another chance. I screwed up so bad in school that I ruined any shot I had of going to university, and I know my mother is disappointed in me. I never even made it out of this city; I've never done more than work on the goddamned assembly line. I'm nothing. I'm everything I swore I wouldn't become, and I hate my
self for it. I know you're ashamed of me. I know my mom is ashamed, my family. And I know I've never met my father, but I'm sure he'd be ashamed of me, too."
His words can't break my heart, but they work their way through my bloodstream, leaving hot, barbed clusters in each ventricle and atrium.
"You know what the worst part is?" He whispers; "I tried so hard. It just didn't happen. And now no one believes me. No one ever believes how hard I tried."
For a time, there is silence. I don't know what to say.
“Jesse?”
“Hm?”
“Why don’t you ever tell me that you love me?”
He turned his eyes to me, perplexed. “I didn't think I was supposed to. Not anymore.”
“I still say it. Why shouldn't you?”
“I don't know. It doesn't seem right. Even if I don't say it, you know it's true.”
I shake my head. “That’s not the same. Why can’t you just say ‘I love you, Lindsay’?”
“I love you, Lindsay.”
“You’re just repeating me now.”
“I love you.”
“Do you?”
“I love you.”
Closing my eyes, finally satisfied, I whisper, “I love you too, Jesse.”
There is more silence, but we don’t need conversation. My eyelids are getting heavy, sleep is creeping in on the edges of my vision. But I don’t want the night to end yet.
I know that he’ll be gone soon, but I'm sure that it won’t be tonight. The doctors have told us that he doesn’t have much longer, but I know that he has tonight. And tomorrow, I’ll be sure that he has one more day. And the next. The fact of death is a blade between us, worn dull by now. It’s always there, but it can do no harm. It will always threaten, but there is no real danger. At least, that is what I think.
“Everything will be fine,” he says to me, as if he can read my mind. And maybe he can, I’m not sure anymore.
“I know.”
He pauses. “You’ll be fine too.”
I nod, because I know that I can’t speak.
I love him. That is all that matters. I will be fine. I love him.
***
I left at midnight. Sometime after that, Jesse ran a bath. He stripped off his clothes and brought a bottle of sleeping pills with him. His mother found him in the morning, floating, dead, peaceful.
There is no funeral. His mother and I take his ashes to a forest where we used to play as children. We navigate through the trees together, the way that Jesse and I used to, thorns and branches catching my sweater and her skirt. I feel insects skittering across my toes, and I try to identify them by the feel of their tiny feet. I run my hands over the trees, pressing my fingers into the grooves of the bark, trying to remember all the things that he taught me.
I expect to cry. I do not.
We take handfuls of ash and spread them where we wander. We leave him on the path, amongst an untamed tangle of nettles, rubbed into trees, dusting leaves. When it rains, I tell her, the ashes will be carried into the earth. They will bind with seeds and grow into new life. They will be eaten and passed on, nourishing the world. They will be the start of some perfect cycle, something that he would have appreciated. Something he could have loved.
My hands starting to shake, I reach into the bottom of the plain urn. I run my fingertips along the smooth sides, brushing the bottom clean, making sure no part of him is left behind. I hold this last handful above my head and let the wind steal it away, bit by bit, carried on a breeze. His mother locks her arm around my waist, leaning her head onto my shoulder.
I open my hand. I spread my fingers wide as the zephyr kisses my palm, until the last trace of him is gone. I expect to feel something, some part of him. Something that says he is still here with us. I feel the hollow in my chest that he has left behind, and nothing more. The memories are all that Jesse has left for us.
He is not here.
##########
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A Different Kind of Beauty Page 2
