Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  We just sort of sat there and smiled at each other. That was really nice. I wanted to tell Adam that I loved him. I don’t know what was stopping me. I was stopping me.

  And then I heard a cell phone ringing. Adam looked at me like he was really sorry. “I don’t normally keep my cell phone on—but—I have to take this. Is that okay?”

  I nodded. Adam was a real pro. If it wasn’t important, he wouldn’t have kept it on. I was making up that it had something to do with his family. I got that.

  He stepped out of the room and motioned for me to just wait.

  I nodded.

  So I just had this imaginary conversation with Adam. You know, I was really into imaginary conversations.

  “I guess you know, but I wanted to say that, well, I really love you. I mean—”

  “I know, Zach. I know what you mean.”

  “I guess that happens—patients love their therapists.”

  “Yeah, it happens.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No, I don’t mind.”

  “Good,” I said. “Because I think I might love you forever.”

  Adam smiled. And then he laughed. And it was a really nice laugh, a laugh that made me feel really, really good.

  “Sorry about that.” Adam walked into the room again. “It’s one of my sons.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s okay.”

  “Good,” I said. “He’s lucky.”

  “Yeah. I’m lucky too.” He thought for a little while. “You’ve been through a lot, Zach. You didn’t deserve all that, Zach. You didn’t. I told you that you were brave. Remember that?”

  “Yeah. I remember.”

  “I was right.”

  “I know what you’re going to say next.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Give yourself some credit, Zach.”

  “That’s exactly what I was going to say.” He got this really serious look on his face. “I’m happy for you, Zach. You have no idea how happy I am for you.”

  “I think I’m happy too.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. I guess I’m just wondering why Santiago let me live.”

  “Maybe he loved you.”

  “I thought of that.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I only want to believe it if it’s true.”

  “We won’t ever know, Zach. Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes, Zach, all we have is what we make up.”

  “I’ll have to think about that one.”

  “Me too.”

  I looked into his eyes. No gray in them. Not at all like my mother’s.

  I could have stared at his face forever. “Adam?”

  “Yeah, Zach?”

  “Remember my dream, the one where I go off drinking with my father?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I know what my father represents. He represents death. And I know what Rafael represents. He represents life. In the dream I choose death. I want to choose life, Adam. I loved my father. But I have to let him go. Is that okay, Adam?”

  “Yes, Zach, it’s okay. You do have to let him go.”

  “But it makes me feel bad—that I don’t choose my father.”

  “Your father’s dead, Zach. And you know what else? You loved your father. That’s why you feel bad for wanting to choose Rafael in your dream. But that just means you have a heart, Zach. And it works. Your heart works. Imagine that, Zach.”

  Adam. His smile tore me up. In a good way. In a good and beautiful way.

  REMEMBERING

  This is the problem with addicts. They find new addictions all the time to take the place of their old addictions. So this is my new addiction: remembering. I’m serious about this. It’s so strange and odd and weird to want to remember. It feels bad and it feels good all at the same time. It feels bad for the obvious reason that, well, bad things happened. It feels good because remembering is helping me to dump those bad things out of my body. See, this is my new thinking: my whole body, my brain and my heart included, was just this dumping ground for a lot of trash. And now, well, I’m dealing with cleaning it all up.

  Not that it doesn’t hurt.

  I still keep thinking: how many tears does a guy have inside him?

  It’s all good. I keep telling myself it’s all good.

  So I’m remembering. Remembering, remembering and remembering.

  When the gun my brother was holding went off, my heart stopped. And when I opened my eyes, and saw the whole scene, I just went away. I remember running out of the room and I don’t really remember that clearly, but I remember downing a bottle of bourbon. And then rummaging through a closet and finding another bottle. I remember running out of the house. And then I remember turning back and running back into the house and kissing my mom and dad, just kissing them and I was really crazed, and I knew I’d lost it, and I just didn’t know what to do.

  I ran.

  I just ran.

  I don’t remember how many days I walked around lost. Drunk. I remember finding myself walking on the side of a road. I remember feeling that I wasn’t even living in my body anymore. The sun was coming up and there weren’t any cars and it was cold. God, it was so cold. I remember feeling really sick and there was an earthquake in my body and I swear I thought I saw a monster. So I just lay down on the side of the road.

  I remember a hospital.

  And then I was here. In Cabin 9. Bed 3.

  I keep staring at my hands. These are my hands. I keep pressing my palms into my heart. This is my heart.

  I didn’t die.

  Didn’t die means I’m still breathing.

  I’m still breathing means my heart is still beating.

  My heart is still beating means that I’m alive.

  THE WORD CHANGE ON MY HEART?

  -1-

  Group was great. I was the first one to Check-in and I confessed to keeping two secrets: “I read Rafael’s journal when no one was around and my other secret is that I hated my family. I know I said I loved them and that was true but I also hated them. Those are my two secrets. Oh, and I have a third secret—I really miss Rafael.” And I didn’t even look down at the floor.

  Sheila and Maggie and Lizzie and Kelly all started clapping. You know, like a little applause. And I said, “Hey, what’s with the applause?”

  And Lizzie said, “You’ve never admitted to having any secrets.”

  “I have lots of them,” I said.

  “Yes, you do,” Lizzie said. And we both laughed.

  And then I said: “I’m sorry I’ve been such a shit in group.”

  Adam was real quiet but when I looked at him he was smiling. That guy could smile.

  That was the first time I had a really good time in group. A really good time. I had never had a good time in group. Not ever. Maggie brought in a bunch of drawings and I really liked them and I guess I was talking a lot, you know, giving her feedback. And it was good. It was a good group. We all talked and laughed and made jokes and Adam went to the board and wrote HAPPY MOMENTS.

  I kept trying to think of a happy moment and I began thinking about things, my friends I used to get shitfaced with and the good times we had and I thought that they weren’t really such good times. I saw their faces in front of me and their names ran across the messy floor of my mind, that floor that was still cluttered with little pieces of papers, Antonio, Gloria, Tommy, Mitzie and Albert. Maybe I’d loved them. I guess maybe I did in my own way—not that I knew anything about love and how to go about handing that love out to people.

  But the thing is, I didn’t make my friends happy and they didn’t make me happy. All we did was get stoned out of our minds. That didn’t have anything to do with happiness. I’d never thought of that before, how I just didn’t have that many times when I was really happy. I tried to come up with a list and these are the things that entered in my head:

  My seventeenth birthday when my dad and I went hiking in the desert

&nbs
p; The first time Mr. Garcia played the trumpet for me

  The night Rafael sang Summertime

  The day I told Adam my whole story

  Those were the four things on my list of HAPPY MOMENTS. Four things. I was only eighteen so maybe I was doing okay.

  Okay wasn’t great. I knew that.

  I looked at the list Adam had on the board about HAPPY MOMENTS. No one had a long list. But everyone had something. Everyone knew what happiness was. Even sad and torn-up people know what happiness is. And then Adam looked at the list and sort of smiled. “Okay,” he said, “let’s do some numbers.” That Adam, he was a real numbers guy. “Scale of 1 to 10 on the happiness scale. How happy are you? Ten being very happy, I being, well, not very happy.” He looked at Amit.

  “Let’s see,” Amit said, “I’d say a 4.”

  Adam put a “4” next to his name.

  “Lizzie?”

  “7.”

  “7? Good job. Kelly?”

  “Depends on the day.”

  “Fair enough. What is it today?”

  “6.”

  “Is 6 a good day for you?”

  “6 is an excellent day for me.”

  Adam nodded and put the 6 next to her name. “Maggie?”

  “4.”

  “4? You working on that?”

  She shrugged.

  “Annie?”

  “An even 5.”

  “5? Okay, 5.”

  “Zach?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m getting better I think.”

  He waited.

  “6. Yeah 6.”

  6 went up next to my name.

  “You notice something?” Adam asked with that sort of snarky smile on his face. “No 8’s, no 9’s, no 10’s.”

  “Well, we’re in here, dude. What did you expect?” Amit said.

  “Yes, you are in here,” he said. That kind of made us all laugh. And then he wrote across the board: WHAT DO I NEED TO GET HAPPY?

  “Good question,” Lizzie said.

  “I didn’t come here to get happy,” Amit said. “I came here because I’m an addict.”

  “If you were happy, would you be an addict?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m making up that you do know.”

  “No one’s happy.” Everyone looked at Kelly.

  “What do you mean no one’s happy?” Adam waited for an answer.

  “I mean just that. No one’s happy. Why should we be any different?”

  “So happiness is impossible?”

  “Happiness isn’t in the cards. Not for me.”

  “You know that, do you?”

  “I don’t care about happiness.”

  Adam was thinking. “Anybody else not care about happiness?”

  I held the question in my head. “I care about happiness,” I said. But I didn’t say it out loud. And then I wanted to say, “I used to be a 1. Now, I’m a 6. I’m better.”

  I thought about Rafael. I wondered how he would have answered the question. I pictured him saying “9. I’m a 9 on the happiness scale.” And then I pictured him telling Kelly, “It’s not true what you’re saying about happiness. Happiness is the most important thing in the world.” I wondered why I was having an imaginary Rafael talking to the group. Change is hard.

  -2-

  I took a walk and found that my feet had taken me to Rafael’s tree. The tree he’d named Zach. I studied the tree. Crooked and scruffy as hell. But really beautiful. I got an idea. I walked back to Cabin 9, got my sketch pad. I spent all morning in front of the tree, sketching and sketching. And then it was done.

  I would send it to Rafael. That’s the thought that entered into my head.

  I lay down on the ground and looked up at the sky. I was happy and I didn’t even know why. But I was scared too. Maybe happiness was scary. Or maybe I was scared because I didn’t know where I was going after I left this place. Where would I go? Back home? By myself? I didn’t know how to live by myself.

  I had one aunt. I remembered that. She was my mom’s sister and she suffered from agoraphobia, same as my mother. She had a really nice house but she never went out. I didn’t know anything about her except that she didn’t much like people. I’d only met her once. We went to visit her when I was a boy. She looked at me, then looked at my mother and said, “Well, at least he doesn’t have fleas.” That’s what she said.

  I knew my aunt would never take me in. I thought of Rafael who said his uncle and aunt just took him in because they felt sorry for him. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. Besides, I was eighteen. I was a man. Yeah, okay, like I was really a man. I hadn’t even finished high school. My plan about going to college was all shot to hell. God, I was working myself up. I could feel my friend anxiety entering my body again. Breathe, Zach, breathe.

  -3-

  I painted a self-portrait. In the painting, I was standing in front of the tree named Zach. I was looking up at the sky and I was singing. And there was a coyote right next to me. The coyote and I had become friends—and he was singing too. In the corner of the painting, you could see that a monster was going away.

  I liked my painting.

  I took out my journal and wrote:

  These are things that I know to be true. Or, as Adam would say, these are things that fit under the category of THINGS I KNOW:

  • My brother killed my father and mother

  • I miss them, my mother and my father and Santiago

  • I am definitely an alcoholic

  • I’m scared of leaving this place

  • I wish Rafael was my father

  • I wish Adam could be my therapist forever

  • I love being sober

  • I want to let myself be touched

  • I wish Sharkey would come back and do the work

  • I want Amit to get happy

  • There are beautiful words inside me

  • Winter is not the only season

  • I didn’t die

  • I am alive

  And these are questions I have. Maybe they fall under the category of THINGS I DON’T KNOW. Maybe they fall under the category of THINGS I DON’T KNOW THAT I KNOW or maybe they fall into the category of THINGS I’LL NEVER KNOW. The last category is not Adam’s category but my category. See, this is what’s entering my head right now: I NEED TO HAVE MY OWN CATEGORIES. So these are the questions I have:

  • Why did my parents allow my brother to own our family?

  • Why did Santiago kill my mother and my father?

  • Why did Santiago let me live? Was it because he loved me?

  • Did God write change on my heart?

  • Did Adam write change on my heart?

  • Did Rafael write change on my heart?

  • Was it me who wrote change on my own heart?

  • What am I going to do about this thing called touch?

  • Is Sharkey alive?

  • Will Amit stay? Or will he find a reason to leave like Sharkey?

  • Is Rafael happy? Is he sober?

  • Why are so many of us so fucked up?

  -4-

  “So, Zach, you’ve still never asked about how you got here.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said.

  “So tell me about what you’re thinking.”

  “Well, I have this idea that maybe my aunt is involved.” I was trying to see if I could read anything in Adam’s eyes.

  “Tell me about your aunt.”

  “Well, I don’t know that much about her. She’s my mom’s sister. Her name is Emma Johnson. She lives in a big house. It’s really a nice house. She’s rich, I think. She’s the opposite of my mother, in some ways. She runs some kind of business and she has an office in her house and she has a secretary. But she never leaves the house. She’s an agoraphobic—just like my mother. I guess there were some bad genes on my mom’s side. I think their mother killed herself.”

  I glanced at the floor—then looked up. “Let’s see, what el
se do I know about my aunt? She doesn’t really like people—but she really loved my mother.”

  “How do you know that—that she loved your mother?”

  “She called every week. Like clockwork. Every Wednesday evening at 7 o’clock sharp. Weird, huh? And I just knew that she wasn’t the kind that called people. I got the feeling that, aside from her business, she just didn’t call anyone.”

  “Did she love you?”

  “No. I was her sister’s son. You know, that’s how she saw me. I mean, I don’t think she hated me. She was, you know, indifferent. She hated my brother, I’ll tell you that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When my mother couldn’t talk, she’d ask me things. Talk to me a little bit. She said my dad should throw him out of the house. I told her maybe he could go live with her. I remember she just laughed and said, ‘Where did you get that sense of humor, young man?’ Really, that’s all I know about my aunt.” I looked at Adam. “Did she send me here?”

  “Yes.”

  “She paid for it?”

  “Well, in a way. Apparently, she took care of some financial matters for your mother. And she was your parents’ executor. Your mom and dad had some money.”

  “A lot?”

  “No, not a lot. But some.”

  “Enough to pay for this place, I guess.”

  “Apparently. Your aunt handled all the arrangements.”

  “So she got me here?”

  “Yeah, Zach. She got you here.”

  “How did she know about this place?”

  “She’s been here.”

  “As a client?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Years ago.”

  “Were you here then?”

  “No, I don’t know your aunt.”

  “I need to thank her. She saved my life.”

  “Well, she helped.”