by Annie Jocoby
Then the old Nick was back. “Don’t be a dumb-ass. Something like that doesn’t just evaporate into thin air. God, sometimes you are so fucking stupid. Trust, that passion is still there for both of you. It’s just dormant right now.”
I hoped against hope that he was right. But I had my serious doubts. With every day that went by and Ryan refused to even acknowledge my presence when I went to visit him, I had doubts. With every failed attempt to engage him in some kind of conversation, I had doubts.
What if Ryan never comes back to me? What if he falls in love with somebody else, like willowy Tammy, whose attraction to my husband was extremely obvious for all to see? It seemed that she was kinda getting somewhere in talking to Ryan, in that he said a few words to her every time she attended to him. She would dutifully report back to me every word that he said, and I hung on to her reports like a life raft.
Ryan was there, somewhere. He was being reached. Not by me, which gave me great pain, but by somebody. That gave me hope that maybe someday I could reach him as well.
Then, one day, I went to his bedroom, I found that Ryan was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
Ryan
I snuck out of the house this morning around 5 AM, because there was no way that Iris would've let me leave without rightfully pitching a fit. After all, I was in the ICU not three weeks ago, and I still don’t feel physically one-hundred percent. I haven’t been eating much these days, at all, so I’m feeling pretty weak and nauseated. In other words, there was just no way that I should’ve been leaving my bed to do what it was that I was about to do.
Yet there also wasn’t any way that I could’ve continued to lie in my bed and obsess about the event that had brought me the most shame and darkness in my life. I tried so hard to bury it, and, for years, I was able to do just that. It was easy to sweep my emotions about this event under the rug, because there was always something to occupy my headspace. However, it had become impossible for me not to dwell on this event these days.
After all, I almost died, again.
So it has become impossible for me to stop thinking about the life that should still be in existence, and probably still would be, if not for me.
And now all I could think about was how I could address the problem and meet it head-on. Maybe if I could come to terms with what I did, and attempt to make amends, I could find peace. With some peace, I could go back to my beautiful wife and baby girl and give them both the love that they deserve.
But, with all the self-loathing that I was feeling right at that moment, there was just no way that I could love them the way that they deserve.
So, I was taking a trip to try to apologize for what I did all those years ago, and, hopefully, bring some answers and peace to the family of the girl who died because of me.
∞
It was in the year 2000, shortly before I was locked in the trunk and had my epiphany about my life. So, at that point, I was still pretty bitter about my life, and was still constantly stoned. Rachael Smyth was a girl in one of my classes. It was obvious that she was into me, and, to tell the truth, I was kinda into her as well. She was very pretty, with dark hair and blue eyes and cheekbones that went for miles. When she smiled, her entire face lit up, and she never wore makeup. Nor did she need to.
She wasn’t one of my usual types, though. I usually went for the typical bimbo types – all big hair and fake tits, the kind of girls who competed in beauty pageants and were extremely narcissistic. They’d whine if their father didn’t buy them a new Lexus every year, and they expected no less pampering from the men they sought. They were the kind who would butter up a guy to get some drinks from him at the bar, then high-tail it the moment they were cut off by said guy, then move on to the next target.
I intentionally limited myself, sexually, to those kinds of girls. I figured that they deserved a slam and go, and I secretly delighted when they would stalk me, only to be ignored. I wanted them to feel the pain that they inflicted on their marks - all those men who tried, and failed, to please their voracious appetite for material goods. I felt that I was taking one for the team.
But Rachael was definitely different. She was more the studious type and a natural beauty. She was pre-med, with dreams of becoming a heart surgeon. She was definitely the type of girl that I would have brought home to my mother, if my mother wasn’t locked up in a mental health facility at the time. She was good, intelligent and kind, and had more integrity than anyone I had ever known. She was also guileless. There was just nothing artificial about her.
And she never did drugs, even once in her life.
So, I didn’t pursue her, romantically. There would be no point. I wasn’t good enough for anybody at that time, except for Alexis. And I only felt that I was good enough for Alexis because Alexis and I shared both needles and deep self-loathing. Alexis and I were mirror images of one another, so Alexis was the only woman who I would hang out with on a regular basis.
And I really wasn’t good enough for somebody like Rachael.
Yet, it was clear that Rachael was into me. She wrote a paper for me in a class when I was falling behind schedule in writing it. The reason why I was behind schedule was simple – I was busy getting high and crashing on Seth’s couch, and just forgot to write the paper. She wrote it for me, without asking a single thing in return.
I felt that I had to thank her for doing this for me, so I invited her to a party.
Unfortunately, this party was one of those wild affairs where women rode men like horses in the living room. Not naked, though – they were fully clothed, but there was silliness like that all through the house. Men were being thrown through windows, and a blow-up doll made the rounds.
When Rachael and I arrived at this party on this unseasonably cool April evening, we were greeted with a whiskey bottle being offered by Shane, a buddy of mine. Shane had evidently been drinking extremely heavily, for he smelled like a brewery and hung on me like a cheap suit.
“Ryan, my boy,” Shane said. Then he whispered in my ear “Rachael Smyth, huh? Classing up the bimbos, I see.”
“It’s not like that. We’re just friends.”
“Uh huh. Like you could ever be just friends with a chick. I’d like to see that.”
I whispered back “as you said, Rachael isn’t a bimbo. Therefore, there will be no action between us. I brought her here to thank her for saving my ass in Hadley’s class. Girl wrote a 15- page paper on the possibility of common currency in the GCC countries in just under a day. Have to hand it to her – she’s as brilliant as she is beautiful. But me looky and no touchy.”
In the meantime, Rachael was standing in the threshold, looking around. She looked a little bit intimidated, and I wondered why.
“I, uh, have never really been to a party like this before,” she explained. “I really haven’t had much of a social life, I’m afraid.”
“Well, then, you came to this party with the right tour guide,” I said. “And you have to be initiated with a shot.” At that, I handed her a shot from the whiskey bottle that was proffered by Shane when we walked through the door.
She reluctantly took it, making a face when the liquor went down her throat. “Yuck!” she said. “How can anybody like the taste of that?”
“Nobody likes the taste,” I said. “Well, most people don’t dig the taste, anyhow. But the feeling you get is what’s important. So take another one, and loosen up a bit. Let’s have some fun.”
Just then, Matt, another buddy of mine, pulled me aside. “Got some China White,” he whispered. “You interested?”
I blinked. I really wasn’t planning on doing the smack that evening, because I wanted to be somewhat coherent for Rachael. It wasn’t fair to go to la-la land and just leave her stranded with a bunch of drunk and stoned fools that she didn’t know.
But China White? How could I pass up heroin that pure?
“Where’d you get it?”
“My supplier got his hands on some. You won’t find a high
er grade. Period.”
It had been so long since I was able to find China White, so I ended up in the bathroom with Matt and a few other guys, and I came out of the bathroom in a euphoric state such that I hadn’t ever experienced.
I was so high that I hardly noticed that Rachael was in the middle of the room with some other kids doing what was called the Power Hour – taking a shot of beer every minute for an hour. I had no idea how she got involved with that group, but, I figured, if she was hanging with them, then I didn’t have to entertain her after all.
So, I sat down on one of the couches and closed my eyes.
Rachael came up to me, evidently soused after doing her power hour. “I need to go home, Ryan, please. I don’t feel so good.”
I just looked at her. There was no way we were going anywhere.
“We can’t leave,” I said, pouring another shot of whiskey for her to drink. “Take this, and you won’t want to leave. Trust me on this.”
“No. More alcohol is the last thing I need.”
“Ok, then, be that way. But we aren’t leaving, so I suggest you take this shot and relax with me.”
She took the shot, not making a face this time. “There,” she slurred. “You happy?”
“Yes, very. Now, take another one and then another and another until you feel okay to stay. Alright?”
So, Rachael took another shot, then several more in rapid succession. “Showed you, huh? You didn’t think I could do it, huh?” she slurred.
“I knew you could. Now take some more.”
Rachael took several more, then sat down on another couch next to me. I couldn’t really see her all that well, but she seemed to be swaying and laying her head off the edge of the couch. “I need to go upstairs,” she said. “Come with me, please?”
I shrugged. I was at the point where nothing bothered me, and I really didn’t care what I did, as long as I didn’t leave that house. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll go upstairs with you.”
So, we headed up to one of the bedrooms that had about a hundred coats laying on top of the bed. Rachael laid down on top of the coats, and I laid down next to her. Within seconds, she was passed out.
I sat down on the floor, with my head and body against the bed, and just drifted off to my happy place. I could hear loud music downstairs, and louder talking and laughter. Couples opened the door several times, thinking that this would be a good place to screw, then quickly left again when they saw that the room was occupied.
“You can come in here,” I said to one couple. “I don’t mind watching.”
At that, the girl just giggled and said “you join in, and we gotta deal.”
I shrugged. “Nah, not in the mood. But, seriously, go ahead and fuck here, with the lights on. I totally groove on that.”
The girl looked gung-ho about the prospect, but the guy, not so much. “Come on, Alecia, let’s go find someplace else.”
“But that guy is so cute!” she said. “Let’s try to get him to join us.”
“Three’s a crowd,” he said. “Let’s find someplace else.”
And so it went. I found it all so humorous.
The party went on until about four in the morning, at which point I was finally ready to leave. I was coming down a bit off my earlier high, so I felt ok to drive.
I stood up from my position on the floor and nudged Rachael to wake her.
“Rachael,” I said. “Let’s go.”
But she didn’t move.
I shook her, harder this time. “Come on, let’s get out of here before they throw us out, Rachael.”
Still, she didn’t move.
It was then that I noticed that she wasn’t breathing.
I felt a bit of panic, but I was still high, so the panic wasn’t as acute as it should’ve been.
I felt for her pulse, and found none at all.
So, I went downstairs to find Brett, the party host. I found him, passed out on the couch, his hand on a whiskey bottle that was on the floor. I nudged him, and he woke with a start.
“Uh, Brett, you have to call 911. My date, uh, I think she’s dead.”
“What?”
“Go upstairs and see.” I realized that I was being entirely too calm for the situation, but that’s what high grade heroin does – it numbs the negative feelings.
Brett went upstairs, then came right back down and grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911.
The ambulance came within a few minutes, and brought Rachael downstairs on a stretcher, a sheet covering her head.
A cop questioned me, Brett, and the other stragglers who were at the party. All of us went to the station to answer intense questioning. But the whole thing was ruled as an accidental death from acute alcohol intoxication, and none of us got into any kind of trouble.
I never told anybody about what had happened. I was surprised that Nick and Alexis never found out about it. I mean, the entire school knew about her death. Everybody was talking about it for a few days after it happened. But somehow Nick and Alexis never associated her dying with me, so I was relieved about that.
And, from that moment on, I tried not to think about what happened to her, and I never considered it to be my fault. I didn’t force her to do a power hour, after all. She was a big girl, and she was responsible for herself, I reasoned.
I wasn’t responsible for her dying.
∞
But now I knew that wasn’t true. A beautiful, intelligent and full of life girl was in the ground because of me. There was no escaping that fact. It had taken a near-death experience for me to finally experience that epiphany, and, ever since I had come to terms with this fact, I had been obsessed about my role in her death.
So, I was heading to Brooklyn, where Rachael’s parents still lived. There really wasn’t much that I could say to try to make things right at this point, so I didn’t really know why I was going there. It was just something that I felt that I needed to do at that point. I needed to own up to what I did and try to apologize to them from the bottom of my heart, and then go from there. There wasn’t anything that I can do to make things better for them, let alone bring their daughter back, so there was a part of me that felt that this visit was futile.
Yet there was another part of me that felt that it was necessary and way, way, way overdue.
Still, I couldn’t just leave Iris without letting her know where I was going. I remembered well when she went missing, and how much of an awful panic I was in because of that. I couldn’t do that to her, so I left her a letter on her nightstand before I left.
The letter said:
My Dearest Beautiful Iris,
I needed to write this to you, because I don’t want you to panic when you see that I’ve left. I’ve not left for good, I promise you this. I could never, ever leave you for good. You’ve been the brightest spot of my entire existence, and what I feel for you is indescribable. Simply put, you brought me out of darkness and into the light, and there is no way that I would ever give that up.
But the darkness has returned, and it has nothing to do with you. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the shooting, either, except for how the shooting has made me examine my life and what I’ve done. The people I’ve hurt. And there is one episode in my life that shames me more than anything else that I have ever done.
There was a girl, around 13 years ago, who was put into the ground because of me. Because of my carelessness and drug habit, Rachael Smyth no longer exists. What kind of a life would she have led if I didn’t take her to a party that fateful evening? With her brilliance, she could’ve been a surgeon, healing others. That was her dream. She probably also would be raising a brood of equally brilliant children, who might have grown up to change the world. But she never got to do any of it because of me.
For years, I swept my feelings about this event under the rug. I wasn’t responsible for her death, I reasoned. She made her choices that evening, and she would’ve died with or without me.
No, that’s not true. Th
at’s never been true. It’s just a lie that I’ve been perpetually telling myself to avoid the truth, which is that I am directly responsible for her death. It’s a long story, one that I don’t want to explain in a letter, but I’ll explain all to you when I get back.
And here’s one thing that you really need to know – I’m still passionately and completely in love with you. My feelings for you have not dimmed, even one iota, despite the way that I’ve been treating you these past few weeks. I’m sorry for shutting you out, but I’ve been so filled with black self-loathing that I just can’t bring myself to be with you and give you the love that you deserve from me. That’s why I left – I need to seek forgiveness, redemption and peace. I need to find out if there is anything I can do for Rachael’s family that might bring just a measure of happiness to them. There’s no way I can bring Rachael back, of course. But I, at the very least, need to own up to what I did. I don’t expect them to forgive me, but that is still my grandest hope.
At any rate, I hope to come back from Brooklyn and be the husband that you deserve. I love you, beautiful. You are my world, and you always will be.
I will see you soon.
Love always and forever,
Ryan
I prayed that Iris would see the letter and, hopefully, understand that I have to do this. I also pray that she doesn’t worry about me too much. I had to admit that I wasn’t feeling entirely well, so I was slightly worried about my physical well-being. But I was hoping that by the time my plane touches down at La Guardia, I would be feeling strong enough to face the people who were devastated because of my actions.
At least that was my hope.
Chapter Sixteen
Iris
“Nick! Nick! Nick!” I cried, upon seeing Ryan’s bed empty. “Come here!”
“What is it?”
“Ryan. He-he-he-he’s gone!”
“Calm down. He’s probably around here somewhere. Maybe on the grounds. I’ll go and ask everybody if they’ve seen him. He can only stay cooped up for so long, you know. It’s good for him to get out and get some fresh air.”