Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  I paused, rocking back on my heels and backpedaling a step. At the very end of the flower department, roses sweating with dew had been stuffed fit to burst behind the frosty glass doors of a refrigerator. Standard red roses with baby’s breath horrible gift-givers like me turned to for Valentine’s Day, dusty pink buds that had been snipped before they opened in full flower, pale yellow entwined with eucalyptus spray painted lilac, the kind one would buy for their mother.

  Single roses were kept on the other side of the fridge, and I could only guess that they were sold on their own because of their price. Someone had taken great pains to tend to these, clearly, and I suspected they’d been fed with water tinted with dye, because I’d never seen white roses with inky blue tips, pink ones with bloodred streaks spliced through it, butter yellow roses that looked like they’d caught fire, orange dye staining the lips that had barely begun to open.

  I hesitated at that side of the fridge, my hand clenching the handle, and wrenched it open. One rose in particular had caught my eye, a fragile one of palest pink with rose gold veins that gradually grew white at the very tips of the petals.

  I laid the bouquet at the head of Cathy’s grave and settled onto the blanket Joe had spread out. His gaze was glassy, unfocused, and I had a feeling whatever he was sipping from that travel mug wasn’t straight coffee.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said, not a trace of a smile, handing me a travel mug of my own.

  I leaned over, running my hand over the blades of new grass shooting through the earth on the grave, and wondered if Joe would have made any progress in moving on by the time it was carpeted in grass, thickly green. “Happy Birthday, Cathy. Hope you like daisies.”

  Joe didn’t say anything, just stared at the headstone as though he was trying to divine some otherworldly message from it.

  “Did she have a complex about aging?” I asked, for lack of anything better.

  “She’d make me check her for gray hair from time to time and considered getting Botox before she got sick.”

  “What did you guys usually do for birthdays?”

  “Parties, sometimes. She threw one for my fortieth.” He blinked and focused on me deliberately, his pupils fat and vacuous. “It’s amazing to think about all the people who showed up back then. None of them are around now. I guess they felt awkward after she died? Didn’t know what to say to me? And the longer you go without saying anything because you can’t find the words, the harder it is to reach out. I’m not Joe Lawlor anymore, I’m Joe Lawlor, Widower.”

  I supposed that meant I was the luckier out of the pair of us. I still had Jason and Jackson. Kylie, Alanna. My mom. People who cared. I didn’t know why I should have a handful of people checking in on me when Joe didn’t. Was it the manner of death that had made the difference? Cancer was pedestrian, too common, but murder wasn’t? As far as who was inherently a better person, Joe would win by a landslide. His last moments with Cathy hadn’t been fraught with finger-pointing and nastiness. It had happened the way it would have unraveled in a Nicholas Sparks novel: with a nurse in the corner of their bedroom, not hovering, allowing them an appropriate amount of space and the illusion of being alone as he kissed her, held her hand, told her he loved her one last time. She’d choked when she’d said it back, Joe had told me. And then she’d laughed, as much as she could, and asked whether it counted if it was said through phlegmy congestion.

  I took a sip from the travel mug and promptly gagged, my stomach flipping inside out, tongue coated with film.

  Joe laughed, and I thought it was worth tasting whatever rancid shit was in that mug to break his spell of depression, muffle whatever horrible thoughts that had to be bouncing around like pinballs in his mind. “White Russians were her favorite.”

  “God, that’s disgusting.”

  “She had a strange palate.”

  “What was her favorite restaurant?”

  “Hooters.”

  “For real?”

  “Yeah. She liked their chicken strips. Especially when she was pregnant. After miscarriage number three, we stopped going.” And it was like the drapes were drawn over his eyes, shutting me out, obscuring everything but Cathy’s headstone again.

  “I’ll go with you. I haven’t had wings in a while.”

  “Maybe.”

  I leaned back on my hands, sinking my fingers into the dirt, watching him as he watched that granite headstone. I wanted to say, look, Joe, this is just one of those hard days we’ve realized we’ll inevitably have, you might feel better tomorrow. You can’t entertain misery this way, you can’t give it the best room in your house and make sure it’s comfortable, does it know how to turn on the TV and where you keep your linens. She’s gone and I’m sorry, I get it better than most people would, but just go to fucking Hooters with me. I’ll pay.

  “We can go tonight. I have a few errands, but I’ll call you afterward.” I ducked my head to find his gaze. “Probably around seven. Does that work for you?”

  He gave me a noncommittal half-shrug. I glanced at Carissa’s headstone as if appealing to it to say something, point me in the right direction. It didn’t. The crystalline winter sun winked off the A in her etched-in name until a cloud slithered past and blocked it out as Joe took another long, slow pull from his travel mug.

  I didn’t know what to make of what I was seeing through the one-way window. Nick grumped around beside me, shuffling his feet, muttering stuff about how this was supposed to be a clean room for fuck’s sake and did they know how hard it was to get plain old dust out of crevices, let alone eyeshadow and shit.

  Carissa tilted Jess’s head back, two fingers under her chin. “Your eyes look bigger without that harsh liner.”

  “You’re the professional,” Jess said. “I’m your guinea pig. Gimme all you got.”

  The corner of Carissa’s lips pulled up as she dusted Jess’s face with whatever powder was on a fat, fluffy brush. “You should own your freckles. There’s no getting rid of them without laser treatments or whatever and covering them up with thick makeup doesn’t get you anything but clogged pores and inconvenient breakouts.”

  “Are any breakouts convenient?”

  “You’ve got a point,” Carissa conceded, snapping up an eyelash curler. “Hold still.”

  “Does she really know what she’s doing?” I asked Nick.

  “Do I look like a makeup artist?”

  “You look like a guy who’s been standing here a hell of a lot longer than me, so I thought you might have an idea.”

  He walked forward so we were shoulder to shoulder, looking through the window as though we were two FBI agents considering our suspect. “She did her own face first. It looks all right.”

  “Did Jess bring the makeup?”

  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t.”

  “You’re very pissy today.”

  He flung his hand at the glass. “There’s over five million dollars of equipment and a very important machine in there. I’m the one who’ll have to answer to the sponsors if shit gets fucked up.”

  “Then why did you sign off on this?” I asked, but I already knew. I could pinpoint all our weaknesses. Jess’s was Nick, mine was Carissa, and Nick’s was his insatiable curiosity. He wanted to know if Carissa would be as skilled at makeup as she’d been in life. I couldn’t see her face as she bent over Jess, but the fact that Jess didn’t look like a mime anymore was promising.

  We sunk into another long silence, watching Carissa work, the way she had to use about a million different brushes that all looked exactly the same but somehow were imperative to get the desired effect. They may look the same to you, but they’re all very different, she’d told me the first time I asked why she needed an arsenal of brushes. You can’t use the same one for each step and call it perfect, because it isn’t perfect with one. There’s a lot of different facets, different shading, do you think Da Vinci used only one brush on the Mona Lisa? No.

  “I think I’m done,” Carissa finally announced, sitting ba
ck in her chair. “What do you think?”

  Jess pulled a makeup mirror closer, tilting her head left and right, sucking in her cheeks, fluttering her eyelashes. “Wow. I look so different.”

  “Different bad?”

  “Different different.”

  “You’ve used makeup to hide what you think are flaws.” Carissa leaned forward, using her thumb to wipe off some blemish I couldn’t see under Jess’s eyebrow. “I used to do that, but it’s better to work with what you have, not cover it all up. You’ve been so busy making sure your freckles are blotted out with foundation, trying to draw attention to your eyes with thick liner, but that thick liner only makes them look smaller. You can still get a smoky effect without a big black winged eye, you see? Purple shadows work well with brown eyes. Even just a hint of violet by the creases can make a big difference.”

  “Are we going in?” I asked Nick.

  He folded his arms across his chest. “You can. I’m staying here.”

  “Just gonna observe today?”

  He answered me with the dimmest glimmer of his usual smirk. “Something like that.”

  So I went in alone, fumbling with my jacket.

  “How do I look?” Jess called, pausing her examination of her face in the mirror. “My makeup artist just finished with me.”

  “Looks good.” A whole hell of a lot better than her usual face, but I doubted she’d appreciate it if I phrased it that way. I slid into a chair opposite the pair of them.

  “What about me?” Carissa asked.

  She looked more like herself, the one who’d had a life outside of these walls. Not the kind of makeup she’d put on for a party, more like the kind she’d wear if we were going for an impromptu lunch at Christie’s. The kind of makeup that looks like you’re not wearing makeup at all, she’d told me once.

  “Very natural,” I offered.

  “That’s pretty much what I was going for. The kind of makeup that looks like you’re not wearing any at all.”

  “Well. A+ then. But it kind of looks like you’re missing something,” I said, testing the waters. Because makeup never gives the proper overall effect if your clothes and hair aren’t done.

  “It’s the outfit, right?” She plucked at the pale blue material of her scrubs. “Makeup never looks right if you’re dressed like a slob. Afraid I can’t do anything about the clothes.”

  You’d look better if you took them off, I wanted to say, my mind wandering back to the dreams. They ended too soon, before the best parts, and I couldn’t stop myself from shuddering every time I thought about how close we’d gotten, how much better the dreams could have been if I’d done myself a favor and fucking stayed asleep just a little bit longer.

  “I saw something at the store that made me think of you.” I stuck one hand in my pocket and suddenly felt idiotic, some lovesick fourteen-year-old boy asking out the homecoming queen.

  She tilted her head, a crease between her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  I pulled the rose out of the inside pocket of my coat, feeling all the blood in my body rushing into my face. “I had to buy flowers earlier, it’s Cathy’s birthday and I met Joe at the cemetery. But I found this one, and it reminded me of you.”

  She accepted the rose as Jess sneezed out a chorus of awws. “It’s beautiful. Thank you. I’ve always had a thing for rose gold.”

  “Nice job, Romeo,” Nick’s voice boomed through the speaker, loud and unearthly, the man behind the curtain, the mysterious Oz.

  “Hey,” Jess called, squinting through the one-way glass as though if she looked hard enough, she’d divine his shape looming through it. “How come I never get any flowers?”

  I looked back at Carissa. The soft curve of an almost-smile trembled across her bottom lip as Jess and Nick bickered, the same kind of smile she’d give me when we were out with a bunch of people and it was too noisy to talk.

  Thank you, she mouthed, twirling the rose by its stem while the fingers on her other hand curled into her palm.

  N ight fell heavily over Joe’s neighborhood, with only one working streetlamp’s haloing buttery light penetrating the thick fog. I knocked on his front door again though it didn’t seem worth it, not when the property itself was dark, dressed in black shadows. Nobody appeared to be home, but his car was parked in the drive.

  I braved the shrubs with sharp edges, skirting past them to get to the windows near the side door, brambles catching on my jeans. I flattened my nose against the glass, funneling my hands on either side of my ears, squinting through to inside, but all I got was a dim view of the kitchen. Making out the labels around the bottles grouped on the countertops wasn’t possible, but I was prepared to bet a month’s salary that they were of the alcoholic variety.

  My breath left a misty sphere on the window as I pushed back and circled the house, the layout of which had bloomed in my mind’s eye. Behind the trellis, snaked through with roses that had long since died, Cathy having been their caretaker, was another window, but not one that would give me an optimal view.

  Peeling white paint and petals with crispy edges fluttered to the ground as I pushed the trellis away and struggled to see through the glass. Half the sectional couch in the living room overtook this window, but I thought I could make out the top of Joe’s head on the armrest.

  I used my sleeve to wipe off the fug of my breath and pressed my face against the glass again. Yes, that was Joe’s head, and he had to be lying on the couch, judging from the angle. I knocked on the window, called his name, but he didn’t stir.

  “Joe!” I pounded the window harder this time, rattling the glass, the shutters on either side of the frame shuddering with the force of my fist. He didn’t move, and I honestly hadn’t expected him to, so I rounded the house again but at a run this time, vaulting over the low fence and into his backyard. He didn’t always remember to lock his back door, and this time I got lucky, pushing inside through the basement. And I didn’t know how it was possible for despair to have an odor, but it did, it stank of dust, mildew, and desperation. I groped for the handrail on the staircase which led up to the kitchen, where I found I had been right, thinking all those bottles had been filled with alcohol at one point.

  Turning into the living room, I threw the light switch, cringing as my eyes adjusted, and called Joe’s name again. I crossed the room in three strides after receiving no response and snapped up the bottle on the coffee table. Over the counter sleep meds. Only a handful remained in the bottle, but I didn’t know whether he’d taken them all in one sitting, so I flung a hand into his chest and yelled his name again. This time, his lashes twitched.

  “Joe.” I shook him by the elbow, looking around the room for proof of…what? A suicide note? I couldn’t be sure suicide had been his endgame.

  He jerked slightly and turned toward my voice, sleep still seaming his eyelids together, mumbling something unintelligible.

  “It’s me,” I said, sitting back onto the floor. “What the hell have you been doing?”

  He struggled to sit up, and it took him a while to find words, then it took him a while to actually voice them, his lips forming the right shape but no sound escaping.

  I rattled the pill bottle in his face. “How many of these did you take?”

  He bowed his head, rubbing his fingers vigorously over his eyes. “I don’t remember. More than a few.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  His lids peeled apart, his brown eyes a little glazed from the drugs, but wonderfully present. “I just wanted to sleep, Ben. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I don’t sleep so good anymore. Sometimes I need some help.”

  I blew out a hard sigh. “You weren’t sleeping well because you drank your weight in alcohol. Alcohol messes with REM cycles. Carissa could never sleep well as it was, but if she’d been drinking, she was lucky to get in an hour or two.”

  “I just can’t turn my mind off.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “I keep wondering if I used that time I had with her w
ell, or if I’d pissed it all away.”

  I leaned back on my hands, breathing in air that was humid, thick with inarticulate grief. I couldn’t dream up any platitudes to recite, because I felt the same way. It was one of the wonderful things about Joe and me, how I could relate so wholly to him, understand the intricacies of his every grief-tinged thought. Trauma bonding, I’d heard it was called. But it wasn’t necessarily a good thing, two people wallowing, treading water in the same pain. It could drown you both if you weren’t careful, if you didn’t try hard enough to swim ashore.

  “I know what you mean,” I said carefully, like I was speaking a foreign language and wanted to pronounce everything properly. “I’ve thought the same thing, how fucked up it is that the past has already been written. The ink’s dry. I can’t go back and change what I’d like to. There are so many things I’d want to do differently.”

  “It’s not your fault you left home that night.”

  It was, but I didn’t correct him. “Not that, exactly, though I wish I hadn’t left. But the last thing I said to her was horrible. You can drive yourself crazy with the what ifs, should haves…I don’t know how to tell you to stop thinking those things. I don’t know the answer, myself. I wish my goodbye had been more like yours and Cathy’s.”

  He sat back against the brown couch cushions, kneading the blue veins at his temples with shaky fingertips. “Sorry I gave you a scare. I’m wide awake now.”

  So was I. What the hell had I been doing while Joe was home in obvious distress? Sitting in the bowels of a creepy old mill, watching a machine apply makeup and wishing I could strip her naked. I’d known from the second I’d joined Joe at the cemetery that he wasn’t right, that something was off, he’d been teetering on the razor edge of a bottomless pit of emotions he couldn’t have possibly coped with alone. I’d been spending so much time with the dead that I’d neglected the living; my plastic life had eclipsed everything else.