Afterward, he said he was glad I came. And I said I was glad he came. He meant to the cabin. I did not.
I wanted to ask if I was doing okay. If he could tell I hadn’t actually done some of that stuff before. I almost spilled our secrets then, about the way you and I used to have sex. How your dysphoria sometimes sent you into a panic when I touched you or even attempted to look at you without your clothes. I loved you I loved you I loved you. I would have loved every part of you, Vivian.
I woke up this morning with my fingertips tangled in someone else’s hair. A hip, warm and naked, next to mine. I kept my eyes closed and imagined it was you. It should have been you. I don’t know why I’m here and you’re not.
Mom told me once that she thought that when you tried to kill yourself you were just tired. You were tired, she said, and you made a mistake. Too small of a word, mistake. Mistakes are the sort of thing that can be fixed with a pencil eraser or an apology or something. They don’t normally end in things like court dates and feeding tubes, do they?
And a girl like you—beautiful and snarky and braver than anyone I’ve ever met—a girl like you couldn’t have ended with pneumonia, right? Stupid word. Silent P. It can’t have happened like that.
Óskar told me how to get to this café, free Wi-Fi so I could check my phone.
There is a message, and I’m ignoring it:
Call home as soon as you get this. We love you, son.
Chapter Twenty
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 22 4:02 PM
June 21 is the summer solstice, the day when Iceland experiences twenty-four-hour sunlight, making the day you died literally the longest of my life.
I eventually called home, because I did actually need to hear someone say it. Mamochka was crying, blubbering and completely unintelligible as soon as she answered my Skype. And then Mom.
Mom was crying, too.
“Just say it.”
And she did.
Then I threw my goddamn phone across the parking lot of the café. Cracked the screen all over again. And when I got back to Óskar’s cabin, I put it out of its misery once and for all. Forgot it was in my pocket when I walked fully clothed into the ice-cold water next to his house.
Is it a lake or a river? The ocean? I don’t even know. But it must be fed by glaciers. It was a cold I’d never experienced before.
Óskar came out the front door and followed me along the shoreline. “Little cold, isn’t it?”
“She died.” I couldn’t speak your name to him. Yeah, he owned one of your paintings, but he’ll never know you. Never meet you, even.
Óskar, smarter than me, stripped down to his underwear before wading in and dragging me out. He undressed me on the porch, because there’s nobody around for miles and there’s no sense dripping all over the house. Your boots were flooded; two or three cups of water poured out when he held them upside down.
I shivered in my dripping wet undies while Óskar ran a bath. We sank into the warm water together, him in front of me. His hips between my thighs.
I stared at his back. His hair was damp and curled at the ends. There was a little constellation of freckles next to his spine. On a towel rack beside the tub, he’d draped his parents’ old bathrobes. They were hand-knitted by someone as skilled as Mamochka. I could only tell by the cuffs, which were stitched up with yarn instead of needles and thread, that they weren’t from a factory.
Suddenly everything in the room seemed to be telling me a story. The stitches on the robes, the condensation streaming down the walls, the curved posture of Óskar’s back. Suddenly I understood Óskar. I heard all the things he’d never been able to tell me out loud.
I touched his shoulder, and he flinched. He must have been off in another world. I whispered, “What happened to your mother, Óskar?”
And he answered, just as softly, “She hung herself in the barn.”
“Who found her?”
“Who do you think?”
Everything made sense. In the most tragic way. I knew then why he’d always been one step ahead of me, how he was always able to predict exactly what I would need. He understood me in a way that maybe nobody else ever will.
Óskar trembled and let out one little sob. I grabbed him around the shoulders and pulled him close. I felt everything then. All at once. Sorrow and anger and hopelessness. His skin against me and my hard cock pressed against his back. I burrowed my face into his soft hair and held tight as he whimpered, but I found that I couldn’t cry.
Because I always tell you my secrets, I must admit what I was feeling then. All of my emotions had come back. Everything I had—and hadn’t—been feeling for the past eighteen months. All at once. It was too much. So, when one hit me harder than the rest, I decided to hold on to it. Just to get me through to the next minute. The next hour.
I fell in love with him.
I hope I can forgive myself someday. For letting it happen so soon after you were gone.
For letting it happen at all.
Much, much later into that never-ending day, we brought a couple old quilts and lay out in the yard. Gotta experience that midnight sun, right?
We drank his bottle of toolbox Brennivín.
Black Death. The irony is not lost on me.
Sandwiched between the quilts, Óskar straddled me and pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket. “Tell me what you Americans call this.”
“Uh, a Sharpie?”
“Magic Marker,” he said.
“MagicK markergh,” I echoed, a little drunk.
“Yes.” He nodded and tugged my shirt up. I leaned up a little so he could pull it over my head. Then he drew this symbol on my chest, a stylized equilateral compass with decorative etchings along the arms.
I traced his sloppy, drunken lines with my fingertip. Right over my heart. I knew instantly what my next tattoo would be. “What is it?”
“Vegvísir.” According to Wikipedia: an Icelandic magical stave meant to guide the bearer through rough weather. “It helps when you are lost.”
He also told me it’s tradition after the solstice to roll naked in the morning dew. I think what we did probably counts.
This morning, we went back to the café for breakfast and Wi-Fi. He borrowed some guy’s phone and spent half an hour trying to find me a flight back home, while I did the same by poking around on my iPad. Nothing available for a couple of days. Tourist season, and all.
I called home, and Mom told me I didn’t have to come. That maybe it’d be best for me not to be there when your parents buried you under the wrong name and in a suit.
“That awful church is coming to picket,” she said. “Just stay there.”
I was too fucked to disagree. I don’t know if it’s wrong or right for me to skip your funeral. It looks bad, I know. But I’m kind of through with caring what the rest of the world thinks.
It’s hard to describe how I’m feeling now. It’s funny, this impending sense of . . . calm? The threat of your death, the burden of protecting you, of failing to save you, of finding some way to honor you—before yesterday, those things were always in the back of my mind. And now sometimes my mood will twist. I’ll find myself worried and worked up again, only to realize that my worst nightmares have already come true. There aren’t any more dark corners for my anxieties to hide.
I feel empty, but more in a blank canvas sort of way. What’ll I do with myself now? Who am I if not the guardian of your hospital tubes and all that red thread?
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 29 3:42 PM
Óskar asked me if I wanted to continue my loop around the Ring Road. I guess he figured it’d take my mind off of things. So we left the cabin that we’d only just settled into, got another tent, and drove. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past six days. Sightseeing and sex. I think I fucked Óskar in every corner of Iceland.
Until it just wasn’t the answer anymore.
After a while, things . . . imploded. I think it was t
he day we were at the glacier lagoon and I got caught up taking a million photos of the ice floating in the water, scattered on the beach. It doesn’t look like ice, V. It’s like glass. Little sculptures. The way the colors swirl into each other, translucent into opaque, light into dark. Of course I got preoccupied.
And Óskar got bored. After I put my camera up, I turned around, and he was gone. Empty beach. Not a soul to be found. I looked around for him forever. I started to get worried he’d somehow gotten carried off into the sea. Eventually I thought to check the car, and there he was stretched out in the back seat. Headphones on, napping away.
I woke him up and growled at him like he was somebody’s toddler, but he shrugged me off. “You found me. What is the problem?”
The problem was that he didn’t think it was a problem.
The problem was that losing him for twenty minutes on a barren, icy beach was just a portent of things to come. He has been my compass lately (and I’d like to think maybe I’ve done the same for him). Who knows if I’ll get lost again the second I get home?
And the problem was that I couldn’t say any of that out loud because it’d only make both of us feel like shit. So I just got in the front seat and drove.
Wrong move. I had tugged the wrong Jenga block, and the whole tower came crashing down. After that, the anger settled in, and I let it stay. I took it out on him because I thought it would help me find a way to pull myself away from him and remain intact.
I tried to make myself forget that he was struggling, too. He and Jack had been together way longer than you and I. But every time Óskar would mention his name, or try to relate, I would so cruelly snap back about how Jack wasn’t dead.
I’m a monster. I’d thought things were getting better, but I’ve become a monster instead.
By the time our little trip was nearing its end, I hated Óskar and Óskar hated me. Furniture assembly, ha! The true test of emotional endurance is camping and car rides.
When we finally circled back around to the southern coast, Óskar requested to be dropped off at his family’s home. We arrived a couple hours later. I pulled into the driveway and shut off the car.
“The, uh, flight package thing my parents bought includes a trip to the Blue Lagoon. I guess I’ll be doing that tomorrow morning before my flight.”
“Tourist trap,” Óskar said. “But do what you must.”
“Uh, well, I’ll be there tomorrow, and I mean, if you wanted to—”
“Don’t.”
“Okay.”
And then he did something he hadn’t before. He reached for my hand. We sat like that for a while in complete silence. Then he grabbed his pack out of the back seat, got out of the car, and walked up to the house.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t kiss me. Or even look back.
I waited, watching, until Karl answered the door and invited him in.
And, just like that, my chapter in Óskar’s story was over. I got a paper cut from turning the page.
He didn’t show at the Blue Lagoon this morning, of course. So I ended up alone, soaking in the milky ice-blue waters of Iceland’s most romantic geothermal spa. Without his presence, though, I’m starting to feel like myself again. Dorky and self-conscious, but, yeah . . . me. When I was wading through a shallow part of the lagoon, I spotted a pretty girl, and we grinned at each other. Then I hit a ridge across the uneven bottom and fell face first into the water, spilling my drink. Yep.
And now I’m in that great glass airport, soaking up my last few moments in this place. Some idiotic part of me can’t help but stare at the gates and imagine a boy with a backpack and a bun crashing through into my arms.
Not gonna happen, but I have a few more minutes to pretend.
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 29 9:03 PM
I time-traveled today, gaining back the six hours I lost at the beginning of my trip. I think Mamochka was supposed to pick me up at the airport in St. Louis, but my best friend was there instead.
“’Sup?” Brian said, leaning on a pillar, giving me the guy nod.
“Oh, don’t fucking do that,” I said, throwing up my arms. “Gimme a hug.”
He hugged me, and dwarfed me, all six and a half feet of him. I thought of Óskar, how he must’ve felt standing next to me. And then I imagined Óskar and Brian trying to carry on a conversation. A stepladder would have to be involved.
When we got out of the noisy gate, he asked me about the trip.
“It was . . . I mean, I . . . you know . . .” I said. “Not sure about the words . . .” Already I was back to being my usual introverted self. Not the guy who blurts out his life story to strangers anymore.
He laughed. “Oh yeah, forgot who I was talking to for a minute there. Okay, Miles, tell me one thing about your trip.”
“One thing?” I raised an eyebrow and tried to figure out how to sum my Icelandic experience up into one act that a bro from Missouri would appreciate. “Well, I made out with Björk.”
“Hell yeah.”
Then it was time to talk about you. He said since we were in the city, he could take me to the cemetery.
“I’m not ready to do that.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “But let’s just do it like a Band-Aid, right? Real quick.”
“No.”
“Damn it, Miles, I told Mamochka I’d take you. I’m tryna score points with your hot mom here, okay?”
I smiled because that felt normal, Brian and his schoolboy crush on my mama.
I tried not to think about the specifics of the situation. Of you and of death. It was easier to consider it as a favor for Mamochka, an errand. Just a quick trip to a graveyard, right? Like he said, quick like a Band-Aid.
The Missouri heat and humidity struck me in the face as soon as we left the terminal. I stripped off my hoodie and stopped to toss it in my suitcase.
Brian studied my new clothes, shaking his head. “I thought we agreed never to become hipsters, man.”
“Oh shit.” I started patting my pockets like I’d lost something. For a second there, Brian looked genuinely concerned. “Where did I leave my mustache? My pipe! Oh, wait . . .” I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out the old one-finger salute. Brian cackled at me.
That felt normal, too.
It’s a nice place, your cemetery. A pretty swell place to be dead. Gates and trees and whatnot. Thinking back on it, it’s not the sights that I remember so much as the sounds. The buzz and drone of the cicadas. A lawn mower nearby. And beyond that, traffic sounds and city.
I didn’t cry, like I thought I would. I knelt at your grave, this mound of freshly dug brown earth. I traced the letters of your name—the wrong name—with my fingertip. That’s all I could think about, how thoroughly fucked it is for what’s left of you to spend eternity captioned incorrectly.
It’s fucked, but I’m not angry. I can’t hate it, or myself, anymore. What’s done is done.
So, there I was, having this intense internal monologue, when I heard a sniffle from behind me. I thought that was weird, because obviously Brian was never your biggest fan. I looked over my shoulder to tease him a little, but . . .
The sniffler wasn’t Brian.
And then they rushed me. My Camp kids! My moms, too! Arms everywhere, a gigantic rolling hug in the graveyard dirt. The campers should’ve gone home yesterday—I hadn’t thought I’d see them at all! But Mom and Mamochka rented a couple of vans and took them up to St. Louis to see Vivian’s grave.
And every single one of them had on red shoes. Cheap canvas shoes decorated with spray paint, glitter glue, red fabric paint. The hashtag lives on. And, in a way, so will you.
That’s when my tears started. They don’t hate me after all. They aren’t mad. Sure, there probably always will be people like Frankie who think I did you wrong, but the people who loved me before still love me now. They don’t blame me for your headstone bearing the wrong name.
Oh, wow. Wow. That’s how simple it was, to turn something so
horrible, a visit to your grave, into the sweetest homecoming of my life.
Miles Away to Vivian Girl
June 30 4:32 PM
I can smell my house. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but it’s true. It’s like when you go to a friend’s house and it smells like THEIR house, then you go home and try to smell your own house, but you can’t. Well, I am home, and I can smell my own house. It’s difficult to describe, this mythical smell. It reminds me of when I was little and I’d sniff all the silk flowers at the craft store downtown. They don’t have scents, but I sure thought they did. Mamochka would kneel down beside me and play along. She liked the tulips, and I liked the tiger lilies.
The other thing that’s strange is that I have too much stuff. After living out of a suitcase for a month, all my belongings seem extraneous. Like . . . why the hell do I still have that clay teapot I made in fifth grade? It’s a shitty-ass teapot, man.
God, now I’m thinking about electrrrreK Kayh-tuls.
But, anyway . . . some of this stuff is yours. I think Mamochka is friends with a lady who runs a clothing swap for trans kids, so maybe it’ll be okay for me to donate to that. I’ll keep some of your favorites to give to the kids at Camp.
There are things that I need to keep and things to let go of, as well. I’m only beginning to sort that all out.
Speaking of clothes, a few hours ago, Mamochka offered to do my laundry, so I just dumped the contents of my suitcase into my laundry basket and let her have at it. She came back with the clean stuff a little bit ago and was like, “You’ll have to explain these things to me sometime.”
She had my bloodstained Tourist T-shirt in one hand, and a pair of obviously-not-mine teeny-tiny men’s briefs in the other.
They were bright red. And so was I, I’m sure.
I swiped them from her and stuffed them underneath my pile of clean clothes. “Uh, maybe sometime.”
Miles Away from You Page 19