by Nora Decter
“Where were you last night, Jo?”
I don’t answer. She tries to get between me and the door.
“I was worried,” she says, and I stop. Not because she’s moved me, but because I couldn’t count the number of times she’s gone out and not come home, and her playing the part of the concerned parent requires a full-body eye roll.
“Just come watch some TV with us. Louie made brownies,” Char calls from the couch.
Maggie is still blocking the door. “You got a delivery today,” she says in a different tone, as if she knows something that’ll make me stay. “It’s on your bed.”
“I need to walk Howl. Do you mind?” I say, low so only she can hear.
“You better come straight home, Jolene Tucker,” she says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. She moves out of my way.
The river doesn’t feel the same. I don’t want to sit on the bank and look for proof that time is passing. Time feels different with Ivy and Graham and all of them. I just want to keep my head full of that.
Howl doesn’t roam around the park. She stays close. Follows me around instead.
Where were you last night? she asks.
None of your business.
How original, she says. But really, where were you?
Out. At a friend’s.
I didn’t think you had any friends.
And I thought you were supposed to be my loyal companion.
You need to go home and talk to Maggie. About the thing that came in the mail today.
Fine, I snap. Let’s go home then.
Before we get there I put my headphones on and blast my music. I don’t look in the living room when we walk in. I drop my jacket in the hall and wrestle my boots off. I just don’t look and I just don’t listen, and I go down to the basement where the boxes are.
First I put his posters back on his walls. Then I put his clothes back in his drawers. And his shoes back on his floor in his corner by his mirror, which I am good at avoiding. I take the letter out from underneath the mattress and hold it for a few seconds. Then I put it back and lie down on the bed, close my eyes and hum his tune. Not one he wrote, though I remember those. One I wrote for him. They’re all for him. Not about him. Nothing I write is ever about only one thing. Always three or four or five things. But they are for him.
I fall into sleep. Who knows for how long? Char wakes me, knocking on the door. Knocking and knocking some more. And saying and saying my name. I climb the stairs and sit down at the top.
“Jo?” she says, different this time, so I know she’s heard me settle there.
“No.”
“No what?”
“Just no.”
“Okay, well, I’m leaving a plate of food out for you. You should eat something. You looked pretty haggard when you came in. You should take a shower, honey—you’d feel better. And you should talk about it too. Whatever it is. Whoever he is.”
I stand up to go back down the stairs.
“Jo? There’s something else. You got a delivery today. Louie signed for it. It’s a guitar.”
I go downstairs and play. I play the song I want to play for Graham, because it says everything better than I could. I play it loud, so they’ll hear upstairs and know I’m not listening.
A while later I stop playing because my stomach hurts, it’s so empty. I open the door slowly, carefully, but they’ve gone out. The plate isn’t on the floor anymore, but it is in the kitchen. I take a bite and examine the house for signs. You can tell a lot by reading the traces they leave behind, if you know where to look. Maggie’s signs are easy. Of course, the crowd of empties by the sink and the cloud of smoke are hers. The butts of Char’s du Mauriers mingle with Maggie’s Export “A”s in the ashtray, telltale lipstick marks on each, cotton-candy pink for Maggie and frosted beige for Char. Louie’s signs are subtler. I read him in the well-stocked fridge and the organized shoe heap in the hall. I listen to the messages on the answering machine, hear the ones from school and erase them, though it’s probably too late, then climb the stairs and look in my bedroom door.
There, on the bed, is a guitar case. It’s covered in UPS stickers that declare it fragile.
I stop reading signs. I’m down the hall, I’m closing the bathroom door, I’m losing my clothes, I’m turning the shower on and stepping under it.
I do feel better after the shower and with some food. But then it’s night, and I can’t sleep because I already did. So I go back to the basement and play. I play the old ones and a new one that came from the things I’ve been hearing with Graham. I play them over and over and out.
TWENTY-ONE
In the morning there’s a fight. Maggie gets the door open somehow and comes down, and it’s bad. She sees the unpacking and says what have you done? And Louie comes down and stops halfway and stares, and I’m still a bit asleep and angry. To him I say what are you doing here, what are you looking at, who are you even? And to her I say you horrible mother. I say, it was your fault. I say, everything is always your fault.
And she says he’s gone, you know. And I say how? Do you know? And she says, it’s true, he really is. Gone. And I say you don’t know that, there’s no body. And she says Jo. She looks at me like she’s afraid. Of me. And the tears stream down. And she says, they found it. Him. You know that. And her hand goes out for Louie, and he finds it. Where did that guitar come from, Jo? And I say get out. In the worst voice I can find. Get out of here you’re the one who’s dead to me you’re the one who’s never been there. I can’t wait to get away from you. From here. And Louie says hey now, everyone needs to calm down now before you say things you don’t mean. But we already did, or did we? Nothing makes sense. I was just sleeping and then this. She breaks away from Louie and throws herself up the stairs, crying so hard, and he looks at me for a minute like he wants to say something, but I turn away and hang my head so my hair falls and I can’t see him and he can’t see me, and I stay that way until I hear him go.
Like I said. Bad.
TWENTY-TWO
I wait until they leave, and then I go to school. Not mine. The other one. Yeah.
I go there and I sit at my spot by the escalators, where I haven’t sat in so long. Or it seems so long. I think about going to the bus station and seeing what a ticket out of here would cost today. I think about the wad of cash in my wallet and the other one underneath my bed. I think about the letter that is also there. I think about how I can’t go home and I also can’t not go home. Because at the very least there are things to pack that I’ll need. If I go. I’ll need clothes and the wad and a guitar or two and maybe the letter because I don’t know what it says yet. So I have to go home. Either way. Eventually. Mostly I just hear the things we said in my head in a loop. Then a voice says, “Hey!” in this really happy way, and I look up and it’s Graham. And I’m foggy but happy too.
“I was going to call you last night, but I realized I don’t have your number.” He sits down beside me.
“Oh yeah,” I say, and remember to smile.
He pulls out his phone and hands it to me. “I was going to ask Ivy for it, but this is better, because now you won’t think I’m a dorky stalker for asking your friend for your number.”
I don’t know how to work his phone—it’s fancier than any I’ve ever used. I mess up and somehow enter my name as Jotuck before I hold it out to him. “I can’t make it work. Umm. My hands are too cold from being outside.”
He takes it from me and then touches my fingers to his face. “No they’re not,” he says, but not like he thinks I’m crazy. Like he thinks I’m cute.
“Well then, your phone is just too newfangled for me.”
He smiles. We both do. He puts my number into his phone himself, and I feel the way he makes me feel again. Good and new. “Well, Jotuck, I have to get to class, but what are you doing later?”
“I’m doing nothing later.”
“Want to do nothing at the space with me and Drew? I’ll ask Ivy too.”
“S
ounds good.”
“How’s eight?”
“Eight’s good.”
It’s odd, the way he’s looking at me. It’s the same way he looked at me yesterday. Like he had to drag his eyes away. “I’ve gotta get to class,” he says again.
“Me too.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“See you later then,” he says. “At eight.”
We say bye back and forth twice, and then I stand up, because I’m afraid if this goes on too long, I could get used to it. I gather my notebook, jacket and bag and wave as I head down a hall, any hall. I find a classroom with students filing into it and settle in for a lecture about economics, which I do not hear at all.
The walk down Portage toward Main feels uphill, but there are no hills here. Still. I feel it, like I’m being pulled backward, like my legs might give out. It occurs to me that I haven’t eaten.
Earl sits at the counter where Earl always sits. He looks at me like, Not today, kid, and I look at him like, Do you see me asking? I’m not asking for shit. I go to the back, and I look over each guitar. I look each one in the face before I pick.
I play all my songs, one after the other and then over again. It’s getting so I can’t play songs by other people. I can only play songs by myself. When I stop, Earl is watching. He looks surprised. The clock behind him says I’ve played too long—it’s time to go see Graham. “You’re getting better,” Earl says as I leave.
“Thanks,” I say. And I feel good because it’s so hard to tell.
We meet at the space, and he hands me a pill. Well, first he says hey how’s it going, and I say pretty all right, how’s it going with you, and he says not bad, not bad, and then he hands me a pill. “We took ’em half an hour ago. Quick. Catch up.”
I put it on my tongue, because where else can I put it, and I swallow, because what else can I do? I don’t even need water. It just washes down. I didn’t know I could do that. But I’m trying a new approach. One where I swallow everything.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go up and find the others.” He takes my hand as we walk to the elevator, and I don’t know how to hold it because no one has ever taken it before. He lets go to unlock the door, and I feel better. But there are no others. And I feel worse.
“They must’ve gone up to the roof,” he says, handing me a beer. I drink it fast, like medicine. Better. Then his hand’s on my back. Worse. He gives me a milk crate to sit on, and we’re talking about music, and he says play me your favorite song and passes me his computer, and it’s better, it’s easy, it’s like before.
He takes the computer back and says listen to this song and then that one and I do and some of them I hate and the pressure in my chest of trying not to say it is tremendous, but in this state I know better than to say it because I’m better in this state. And then there are the ones that knock me back, tear at my heart, make me want to hate them like before. What is this? I ask him over and over even though it obviously pleases him when I want to know. I scribble the names he says on the pages of my notebook, or as close as I can get to them. He says you amaze me. He says you’re not like other girls. And I write that down too.
Then the air begins to thrum, and the music is in the room with us in a new way—it’s more with us than I’ve ever heard before. I see a flurry of letters I’m telling my hand to write. I feel a swell of something different in my belly, some new tide, and the edges of objects waver in their stride. Thoughts come to me easily and then melt away, and he sits across from me and the space in between us is shifting in size. But it’s okay, because I know why.
From far away I can see it happening. We go up to the roof and wander around, and I don’t feel scared of anything anymore. I don’t remember why I was. He says look at the sky, and I do. It’s a low, gray ceiling, and his eyes are hot shades of blue.
Ivy sneaks up behind me, grabs my head in her hands and yells, “WHAT’S GOING ON IN THERE?” in a tragicomic way. We laugh and laugh, but I don’t think at the same thing.
“What time is it?” Drew asks like the answer will be outrageous, but then nobody knows, and no one reaches for their phone.
Finally Ivy looks and laughs. “It’s not even bedtime for people who aren’t on drugs.”
I am saying something. I was trying to make a point, and then there wasn’t one. No matter. We are perfect. We are all alive, and I never want to go inside. There’s no sky in there.
The walk from the space to his apartment happens like one moment sliding to the next. I sit on the floor and consider the green tape on the ceiling that no one tore down when the paint dried, and the drip in the corner where one wall ends in another, and nothing looked like this before. I can see all my imperfections. All the flaws I am. The glass of water beside his bed. The lines of it. I don’t need anything. Not one thing. I don’t even need objects to still be there when I turn away from them. I take note of everything in equal measure. The rubber band around my wrist, the redness of my thumb where winter rubbed it raw and the circle of skin, moon blue, beneath the nail. Nothing looked this way before.
I go motor-mouthed, telling him things. Like how when I’m drunk I can sing, but when I’m not drunk I only sing silently. He asks me where I learned to play, and I say from my brother and from myself, and I tell him the story of the blues guitar and how all the strings snapped when we tried to bring it home. I tell him about the sound they made and how I like to chase it when I play sometimes, that sound. Then he says where’s your brother now? And I say, oh, he’s dead. He died.
“I’m sorry.” He says it so fast. Rushes to meet it.
Nonono. My heart comes in like a drum. I say this song is great. I love the guitar sound. And I say do you ever feel too tall for landscapes like these? You know, because it’s so flat. In every sense. It’s almost obscene. And I say could you show me how to mix sometime? And I say I wonder where Ivy went and how long have you lived in this apartment and do you mind if I ask what the rent is and I put distance, distance between us and the thing.
He hands me his guitar and says, “Play.” I take a deepish breath and do. I play the only song I can stand. The problem is that sometimes I want everything in front of me—I want everything around me. When I stop he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t say anything for so long that I cover my face with my hands. He stands, so I do too, and then he’s kissing me, and it’s not the right answer, but I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, and it feels good from far away, and the rest doesn’t feel good, doesn’t feel bad, doesn’t feel anything. It’s just a thing that happened. It was bound to happen sometime.
TWENTY-THREE
His arm is on me, and his breath screams in my ear, and I don’t like the way skin feels on skin. We’re too close by far. I am still, and I count. The thing I can’t stand is being heard. And seen. And felt. That’s the thing. I get to ten, and I can’t be in this bed, but it’s so heavy on my chest, the arm. I don’t know how to extricate myself from it, and I’m caught in these sheets, but I slip out a few inches, go slow and then fast, and I’m free. I can’t find my clothes—I’m not wearing any. At the foot of the bed is a pile, so I grab it and go through the door. I find my jacket and find my bag and don’t find my sweater and don’t find one sock, and I stuff one foot into boot and then the other, and I leave, the way I’ve been practicing. The muscle must be getting stronger now. My head, on the other hand, feels a way it’s never felt before. And also my heart. Other parts of me also.
TWENTY-FOUR
I go home and find a glass to fill with water and empty it three or four times, and then I go to the basement, lie down and try to sleep until it’s time to work. You can’t tell morning from afternoon from night down here. That’s one of the best things about this place.
But I can’t find sleep, or it can’t find me. So I find a pen instead and write Groves her list of all the reasons I’m a bad person.
I don’t always recycle recyclable materials. I take bus fare from Jim without asking first
and I don’t go to school when I say I will. I never answer the door when activists or Jehovah’s Witnesses or kids selling chocolate come knocking. In fact, I’ve dropped onto my hands and knees to keep them from seeing me in the window on more than one occasion. Sometimes I see something that needs to be done and don’t do it, like emptying the dish rack or saying, Everything is going to be okay. When I walk by homeless people on the street I speed up and try not to look, and I have secrets. I don’t floss and I tell the dentist I do and then act genuinely perplexed when he says I’ve got decay on the enamel between my teeth.
There must be something I’m missing. I could have sworn I was guilty of everything.
He calls in the afternoon. I pick it up when it goes to the machine, and his voice is in the room with me.
“This is a land line,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You live at home,” he says.
“Yes.”
He waits, and when I don’t say anything he says, “Can I see you tomorrow?”
I say yes because everyone knows yes has always been easier than no.
“I don’t want anything from you, Jo,” he says before he hangs up.
But you’ve already cost me.
Only Howl can hear me now.
“You look like shit,” Tina announces when I walk into the Cal.
“And also to you.” I bow for some reason.
Benny is at the bar, drinking a coffee and making his produce order. “Sixteen lettuce, twelve cans tomato, two bags potato,” he says, then repeats it like an incantation. When he hangs up, he too compares me to shit and then grills me. “What did you drink and when did you stop drinking it?”
I mutter something along the lines of I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just under the weather.