The Art of Breathing

by T. J. Klune

  “That’s the unknown, isn’t it? Life sucks like that sometimes.”

  “I don’t know when you got so smart,” I tell him. Seriously. Remember Bear from back in the day? He’d never have been able to think like this.

  He laughs. “Weird, right?”

  “Way weird.” A pause. “I’ll be fine,” I say. “I think.”

  “Of course you will.” He kicks off his shoes and lies down on the grass, staring up at the sky turning slow pink, rays of the sun streaked against the clouds.

  I lie down beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

  We watch the sky, Bear and me.

  And I’m right where I need to be.

  DOM’S THE last to leave. Everyone else is upstairs settling in for the night. Well, at least Bear and Otter are. I’m sure Corey’s waiting for me to come up and shove a red-hot poker up his ass and wallow in his death cries. I shall have my revenge this night.

  We stand at the front door to the Green Monstrosity. The bulb on the porch light is burned out, and his face is cast in shadow.

  “Sorry about earlier,” I say with a grimace. “Lunch, I mean. It was weird. I made it weird.”

  He shrugs as his voice rumbles out of his chest. “It’s gonna take time, I think.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “We’ll get there, though.”

  I don’t know if I quite believe that, but if he does, the least I can do is try. “Yeah, Dom.”

  “I didn’t….” He stops. Takes a breath. Sighs. “Didn’t know Corey was going to ask that. About your trip. I didn’t mean to shoehorn my way in.”

  I shake my head. “You didn’t. That’s… that’s Corey for you. Besides, it’ll be good.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure. We’ll have fun. You can keep me out of trouble.”

  He chuckles. “I’ll do my best.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but all that comes out is “I better go.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you. Or something.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Why does this feel like the end of an awkwardly bad first date? “Great. That’d be… great.”

  “Night, Tyson.”

  “Bye.”

  I shut the door. Lock it. Press my forehead against the wood. Berate myself for a million things. Like, how I could have sounded so dumb. Or so childish. Or so immature. Or so ridiculous. Or so—

  There’s a knock at the door. Almost like I was expecting it, by the way I pull it open.

  Light spills out onto Dom. He looks nervous. Unsure. He reaches up and scratches the back of his head and looks down toward his feet. “I… I got you something,” he says. “For your birthday.”

  “Oh, hey! You didn’t need to—”

  He thrusts a badly wrapped package into my hands. It’s heavy. Something shifts and rattles inside.

  I look up at him, not knowing what to expect. He nods and then turns, walks out to his car. Gets in. Starts it. Drives away.

  All without another word.

  I watch as the taillights fade into the dark. Eventually, they’re gone and I’m alone.

  I close the door.

  Sit on the floor, my back against the wall.

  Put the package between my legs. Slide my fingers underneath the paper. It tears easily. It sounds so loud in the quiet of the house.

  Inside is a wooden box, carved ornately with little flowers and leaves on the lid, swirling as if they’d once grown but long since died and hardened and became part of the box. The wood itself is dark and smooth, well-oiled and cared for. Brass hinges attach at the rear.

  I lift the lid.

  There’s a note on top, folded in half. I take it out and see the familiar scrawl inside.

  Always meant for you to have this. I guess I thought I’d have more time to make sure you got it. Not your fault.

  I know sometimes these things happen. That’s life.

  This belonged to my mother. It’s one of the few things left of her. You never knew her, of course, but I think she’d like you to have it. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. But I think it’s true.

  Inside is everything, Tyson. Everything about you and me.

  Everything that makes us who we are.

  The note falls at my side.

  I look inside the box.

  It’s our story.

  And it is. Oh my God, it is. Little things. All these little things.

  Here is a ticket stub for the first movie we ever saw together, some horrendous summer blockbuster with special effects and explosions that we both made fun of but secretly loved.

  Here is a page from an awful epic poem I’d written about the battle against that malicious force known as Santa/Satan.

  Here is a tattered photograph of us standing side by side, and I’m so small next to him. Just a little guy. Both our faces are upturned and exploding in color as we watch fireworks burst above us.

  Here is a note I’d written him and left in his car when I was eleven, lamenting my new teacher and how trivial she seemed, and didn’t Dominic think the public school system was failing me? Didn’t he think it’d be better if I was homeschooled? We’ll have to find some way to trick Bear into doing this, I wrote. Or I should just skip to high school and go to class with you. That would probably be the wisest decision. Let us work on a plan tonight.

  Here is a copy of Brave New World, the first thing I’d ever given him. It was new when I bought it. Now it’s lovingly worn, having been read countless times.

  Here is a receipt for Skee-Ball on the boardwalk.

  Here is a pair of broken sunglasses, his that I’d accidentally sat on and smashed.

  Here is the funky pair I’d bought to replace the broken ones, bright green and ridiculous.

  Here are these things. Here are all these little things, inconsequential to others, but everything to me. I find more and more and more. A button. A pin. Notes and stubs and photos and bits of strings and fabric and everything. The farther I dig, the deeper it goes until I am surrounded by him and me, until I am engulfed by everything that made us who we are.

  This tin.

  This test score.

  This birthday candle.

  This Christmas ornament.

  This PETA flyer.

  This broken bracelet.

  It’s all us. Every bit. Every piece. Every part.

  Eventually, I reach the bottom. My face is wet, and I do nothing to wipe my eyes, even as they blur. It’s not as hard to breathe as I thought such a thing would be.

  There’s one last thing in the box. Another folded note.

  I take it out. Open.

  I meant what I said that day when we first met.

  It’s inevitable, Tyson.

  Your friend, always,

  Dom

  I place the note back at the bottom. I pick up all the pieces of us and place them back into the box. Eventually, it’s all inside and I put the first note back on top. I close the lid. I trace over the leaves in the wood.

  This belonged to my mother. It’s one of the few things left of her.

  His mother, who had died so unfairly at the hands of his abusive father. Dom tried to stop him. Had even stabbed him a few times. But it was already too late.

  He’d screamed then. He’d screamed for hours, until he could scream no more, his vocal cords ruptured. It went on for hours and hours. He only stopped when it became physically impossible for him to continue.

  And now he’d given part of me to her. Her name had been Crystal, I think.

  I don’t… no.

  It doesn’t matter now. How I feel. How I don’t want to feel. What I did. What he did. What we didn’t do. None of it matters.

  He’s Dom. I’m Ty.

  We’re inevitable. That’s all that matters.

  Part Three: Just Breathe

  I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart:

  I am, I am, I am.

  —Sylvia Plath

  19. Where Tyson Goes to Helena Handbask
et’s Sex Dungeon

  “YOU SURE you have everything?” Bear asks me for the billionth time. He looks into the back of Otter’s SUV worriedly, apparently sure he’s going to see that I’ve somehow missed a pair of socks or one of the four hundred tiny little bottles of travel shampoo he thought I needed for some reason. “You don’t want to forget something on the road. Who knows when you’ll be able to stop next?”

  “Because there are obviously no stores between here and Tucson,” I tell him. “I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do when I find out I don’t have enough shampoo to last me for the next fourteen years.”

  “You’re not helping,” he says with a scowl.

  “You had to get a completely separate bag just to hold all the shampoo,” I remind him.

  “This should probably stop before it escalates,” Otter suggests. “Because, knowing you two, it will.”

  “He’s the one who made me take all of it!”

  “Oh sure! Blame me for wanting to make sure you had clean, shiny hair that didn’t flake! I’m so sorry!”

  “And it escalated,” Otter sighs.

  “You can come with us,” Corey says to him. “Leave those two here. Are they really arguing about shampoo?”

  “They’re just going to miss each other,” Otter explains. “This is them showing it.”

  “Oh gross,” I moan. “That’s not even remotely close to what’s going on right now. This is about my American right to not take six thousand shampoos with me on a week-long trip.”

  “Miss him?” Bear says incredulously. “For the first time in I don’t know how long there’s going to be an empty house with just the two of us, and you think I’m going to miss him?”

  “I give it an hour before he starts bitching how quiet it is in the house,” Otter says.

  “I don’t bitch!”

  “You kind of bitch,” Dominic says.

  “All the time,” I agree.

  “Not that you’re any better,” Dom says to me. “Or, rather, you didn’t used to be.”

  “He’s still that way,” Corey says. “Trust me. When they both get going, you’d swear they were just making high-pitched noises and not forming any actual words.”

  “Fall off a cliff,” Bear and I both mutter at the same time, as if we needed any more evidence that we’re essentially the same person. How fucking annoying.

  “Are you two done?” Corey asks. “It’s too early for this, and I’d like to get on the road so I can go back to sleep and let you two chauffeur me like the help you are.”

  “That’s so reverse racist,” I tell him.

  “I’m black,” he snaps back. “Consider it recompense.”

  I’m not even going to touch that one. “Good-bye!” I say loudly, going toward the car. “Later! Good-bye, house! Good-bye, Otter! Bite me, Bear!”

  “You stop right there,” Bear says.

  And I do, for fuck’s sake.

  He stands in front of me. I glare at him. He glares right back.

  “You have fun,” he says, even though he sounds like he doesn’t mean it at all.

  “You too,” I reply. “You know, with all that quiet.”

  We hug each other stiffly.

  “You going to be okay?” he whispers so the others can’t hear.

  “I think so,” I whisper back. “Can I… can I call you? If I need to talk? Or whatever?”

  “Day or night.”

  “You’re going to do pretty good at this parenting thing. If you don’t screw them up completely.”

  “There is always that,” he says.

  “Thanks, Papa Bear.”

  “Always.” He pulls away and raises his voice again. “Now get out of here so I can turn your room into an office.”

  “You better not touch my stuff,” I warn him. “If I come back and anything is missing, I will burn you to the ground.”

  He rolls his eyes, but I see the little smile on his face as he brushes past me. He stands next to Otter, who watches him with a goofy smile on his face, like he’s not fooled by any of this bluster. And he’s probably not.

  “What?” Bear snaps at him.

  “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all.” He wraps his arm around my brother’s shoulders and pulls him close.

  “And on that note,” I say.

  It’s weird, really. Driving away. For some reason, as I watch the Green Monstrosity and Bear and Otter shrink in the rearview mirror, I get a little lump in the back of my throat. It feels like I’m driving away for a lot longer than a week. Part of me almost wants to go back and hide behind Bear and Otter. But that’s not what I need.

  It’s only a week. Nothing’s going to change during that time. Everything will be the same when I get back. I’ll figure out what to do with this mess of a life then.

  Ten minutes later, as I turn the SUV south toward the desert fifteen hundred miles away, Corey starts snoring in the background, and I say what I should have said sometime during the past two weeks, what little I’ve seen him. “Thanks.”

  Dominic looks out the passenger window out to the ocean. It looks like a storm is coming in off the water. “For what?”

  “Our story.”

  A pause. Then, “You’re welcome.”

  I can’t find anything else to say.

  Yeah. Nothing’s going to change at all.

  TWO DAYS later, I’m trying to understand just how it is that people can live in Arizona.

  “It’s all flat and boring,” I say morosely, staring out the window as Kori drives through the outskirts of Tucson. Dom’s asleep in the backseat. I’ll have to wake him up soon. “Where the hell are all the trees? I don’t think it’s possible for people to live without close proximity to trees.”

  “They’re right there,” she says, pointing out the window.

  “That’s a cactus.” A very phallic one at that.

  “Same thing.”

  “You can’t hug a cactus.”

  “You shouldn’t really be hugging trees, either. That’s just weird.”

  What a sad woman Kori is. “When are we coming up to the unconstitutional checkpoint where, if I were any darker of skin, I’d probably be detained for being a suspected illegal immigrant even though there’s no proof?”

  “I told you already, those aren’t really a real thing.”

  “Oh, really?” I scoff at her. “Tell that to Jan Brewer, the evil head witch who runs this barren, treeless place.”

  “I think her job title is actually ‘governor,’ not evil head witch.”

  I wave her off. “Same thing.”

  “She was promoted after Janet Napolitano left. She was reelected after that.”

  “They did the same thing with Stalin,” I say. “Look how well that turned out.”

  “I didn’t say they were smart people,” she says. “You’re in a red state now with your tiny blue self. Think of yourself as a Smurf standing on the sun.”

  “That is surprisingly visual and so very, very sad. You guys have a lot of dirt here.”

  “It’s called a desert.”

  “It’s dirt.”

  “You know, there’s a hugely varied ecosystem here that survives—”

  “Nice try,” I tell her. “You almost had me there appealing to my scientific side, but then my phone just buzzed with an extreme heat warning.”

  “What, 110? That’s nothing. It’s a dry heat. Remember the humidity in New Hampshire? That was excruciating.”

  “Where are we?” Dom asks from the backseat, his voice rough with sleep and extraordinarily hot. Damn fucking feelings and hormones.

  “Almost there,” Kori says. I can’t tell if she sounds happy about it or not. “Another ten minutes and we’ll be at Sandy’s. He should be off work now, so we should be good to go directly to his house.”

  “You excited to be home?” I ask her. I don’t know what sort of answer I’m expecting. Hopefully a reasonably honest one. I know Corey and Kori. I know Kori comes out when Corey’s nervous or scared or wor
ried. Kori is comfort. Kori is safe and warm. Kori is who Corey turns to when things get hard. I don’t think it’s him hiding behind her, more him putting on a different face against the world. Kori may be quiet and may look frail, but she’s got steel in her bones. I’m worried that she’s made an appearance now. I don’t know how coming home to Tucson might be for her. I can imagine, though, especially if it’s anything like coming back to Seafare was.

  Something flashes across her eyes, but I can’t quite catch it. It almost looks like anger. Or fear. But it’s gone too fast. “Sure,” she says. “Should be great.”

  I don’t believe her in the slightest.

  SANDY LIVES in an adobe house in a quiet neighborhood. There’re some potted plants hanging outside (probably gasping their final breaths as they’re baked in the fiery sunlight) and a birdbath in the front yard, but so far nothing that says the best drag queen in the history of the world, as Kori touted. Granted, I suppose that because a person is a drag queen doesn’t mean the outside of their house has to look like a drag queen too. After all, I don’t look anything like the Green Monstrosity. At least I hope I don’t.

  There’s a sensible electric car (I approve) in the carport, and the license plate says QWN4LFE (which I approve of immensely—why can’t Bear have a license plate that proclaims him a queen for life? It would certainly make sense). As we get out of the SUV, the front door opens and I almost expect there to be an explosion of glitter and feathers from a pink boa. Instead, a slight man walks out, thin and tall. I could say he’s blandly handsome, with his short blond hair and brown eyes, but the smile on his face has a wicked curve to it, and I can see the glint in his eyes.

  It seems Helena Handbasket is never too far under the surface.

  “Baby dolls,” Sandy says warmly. “I am so very happy you made it okay.” He walks over to Kori and hugs her tightly, lifting Kori off the ground and twirling her around. He whispers something in her ear, something meant for just the two of them, and I see Kori stiffen for a moment. She shakes her head and shrugs as Sandy kisses her cheek. “We’ll figure it out,” he says.