by Jeff Zentner
It’s clear she’s trying to step up and take the lead more in this show because she knows she won’t have me around to help her. I can tell she wants me to know everything will be okay without me.
I can also feel her heart breaking, and it’s breaking my heart too.
Her endings, including this one, haven’t always come with new beginnings.
* * *
•••
“Anyway, Ryan, thanks for writing! Obviously, I’ll miss Rayne too. But her new blood bank internship is too good to pass up!” Delia says.
“Well, that does it for letters for this week,” I say wistfully. “I wanna thank you all so much for—”
Arliss pops up his hand with Frankenstein holding one more letter. “Hold your horses! You got one more!”
“What? Frankenstein, you’re normally so eager to finish up mail corner!” Delia says.
Arliss turns Frankenstein and hands the letter—a real letter, not a printed-off email—to me. “Yep. Well, I guess today’s special.”
I take the letter hesitantly, nervous about what Arliss has cooked up. I read the first few lines to see what I’m getting into. As I read, I put a shaking hand over my lips.
“Don’t keep us in suspense, Rayne!” Delia says.
“Um.” I shake my head. “Sorry, Delilah. Okay. I—Okay.” I clear my throat and begin reading in an unsteady voice.
Hello, Delilah and Rayne,
My name is Jacob Waters. I live in Topeka, Kansas, and I’m a fan of your show. When I was in high school, I had a best friend named Erica. We used to love to watch cheesy horror movies together. We would make jokes about them and pretend to be scared. We both went away to separate colleges, but ended up returning to our hometown. When she was diagnosed with cervical cancer she developed after contracting HPV, I would bring my laptop to the hospital and we would watch movies. It hurt her to laugh, and she had a hard time staying awake through them toward the end. She died a couple of years ago. She was only twenty-eight. I miss her every day.
One Saturday night a few months back, when I was randomly flipping through channels, I happened upon your show, and it immediately transported me to hanging out with Erica. The goofy jokes. The way you two obviously love each other’s company. The movies that are too funny to be scary. Your show felt to me like what it would have looked like if someone had filmed me and Erica. It made me feel loved and safe. It was a bright, warm fire, the way Erica was to me in—
I start to lose it entirely. My voice cracks and fails me. I look over at Delia, and tears are coursing down her face. I offer the letter to her.
“Don’t look at me,” she chokes out, cry-laughing. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
I clear my throat and take a deep breath. “Whew. Okay. All right. I’m going to try to get through this. Sorry, everyone. I guess there’s no chance of another take, is there, Frankenstein?”
“Good enough for access,” Arliss says.
“Of course that’s what you’d say. Here goes nothing.” I start reading again.
…the way Erica was to me in my coldest, darkest midnights. I had a hard time in high school. There were a lot of times when I felt like I wanted to stop living. There were times when I wanted to give up. There were times when my light went dim. Erica was there for me then, and I tried to be a comfort to her during her most painful days.
Randomly finding your show on public access reminded me that there are small troves of beauty and moments of human connection in the most unexpected places. So I watch your show with Erica’s spirit by my side. I know she’d have loved you two also.
You don’t know me, and I doubt we’ll ever meet. But know that I’m your friend, and I’ve loved pretending like you’re mine as I remember one who’s gone. You have given me a great gift with this show, and I’ll always be grateful.
Your fan and friend,
Jacob Waters
PS: I don’t care that you call your puppet Frankenstein. I think it’s fine.
There’s a long silence when I finish. A silence that you can hear. The kind of silence you rarely see on normal TV because it’s way too long and awkward. Good enough for public access, though.
Delia sighs. “Well.”
“Wow, right,” I say.
“Yeah, that was…a really great letter.”
“Yes, it was. Thank you, Jacob. Truly. This means more to me than you’ll ever know.” I hold the paper in my lap and turn. “Frankenstein?”
Arliss pops up Frankenstein. “Sorry for making you wait so long to hear your letter, Jacob. Frankenstein saved it for a special occasion.”
“You purposely made us cry, Frankenstein,” I say. “You’re grounded.” I leave a beat for Arliss to put in some sad slide-whistle sound effect or a rim shot. “No, I don’t mean we’re putting you back in the ground, Frankenstein.”
Arliss doesn’t say anything but makes Frankenstein pat my shoulder. I pull him in to me and hug him hard, until he squirms and goes, “All right, enough already.”
* * *
•••
“Well, manticores and woman-ticores, banshees and ban-hees, that’ll do it for this week’s show,” Delia says.
“Lemme say something real quick, Delilah.”
“Go for it, Rayne.”
“I wanna say thank you to all of you who’ve supported and watched our show, who’ve taken the time to write such nice letters.” I’m starting to slip. My composure is crumbling like a muffin being squeezed in a fist. “Being on TV has been my dream since I was little, so doing this show has legitimately been a dream come true. Thank you.” I manage to finish relatively intact.
“We’re gonna miss Rayne here at Midnite Matinee—especially me.” Delia reaches over and takes my hand. We grip tight.
“I’ll still be making guest appearances,” I say.
“I hope so, Rayne. So tune in next week, folks, because the chills and thrills aren’t over. I’ll be back along with Frankenstein, and who knows what’ll happen?” She suddenly sounds unsteady and faltering.
“Until we meet again,” I say, smiling and waving with my free hand.
“Until next week,” Delia says, waving with her free hand.
We sit, still and quiet, until Arliss says “Cut.”
But we stay seated there for a while, holding hands. I take in the small, dark studio of TV Six. Arliss, switching things off and winding up cords. Our makeshift little set. The dark camera lens. The plastic skull and candelabra on the table next to us. The knowledge that my image and voice will travel to the homes of people I’ve never met and never will meet, and I’ll be a small part of their lives and never even know. I’m not just leaving Delia behind. I’m leaving a piece of myself.
In my mind, I say, Remember, remember.
In my heart, I say Thank you over and over. Thank you, show. Thank you for being a part of the twilight of my childhood. Thank you for giving me my best friend and my boyfriend. Thank you for being the first step on my path to realize my dreams. Thank you for being something I helped build with my own hands and heart and mind.
Gripping me inside too is the profound ache of nostalgia for something that’s not even a part of my past yet.
Sometimes small and unspectacular things can be a universe.
* * *
•••
We walk slowly, reluctantly, down the corridor to the door, carrying our decorations and costumes. Neither of us speaks. Arliss follows us, an abnormal occurrence.
Before he opens the door to let us out (another uncommon gesture), I set down the things I’m holding and give him a bear hug. He smells like cigarette smoke, warm cotton, and clean dog. It’s a comforting combo.
He stands there for a second while I hug him. Then he awkwardly pats the back of my head a few times like I’m a cat resting my butthole on his keyb
oard and he’s gently shooing me away. “All right. Good luck with everything. Don’t forget us when you’re famous.”
“Thanks for everything, Arliss. I know it wasn’t easy,” I murmur.
“Or fun.”
“Right. Or fun. Anyway, thanks for putting up with us.”
He grunts kindly and gives my head a couple more quick pats. “Okay, kid. Go be a TV star.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Yep.” He closes the door behind us.
Now it’s just me and Delia. My heart slides down the wall of my chest like a raindrop down a window.
I was trying to think of things to say—the right way to express something I can’t express—and kept coming up empty. Fortunately, I don’t have to say anything. As if we planned it, Delia and I drop our things without a word, sink down together, sitting on the top step, and hug ferociously. Like a yawning, bottomless chasm has opened up beneath each of us, and we’re the only thing keeping the other from tumbling down it.
I breathe in Delia’s smell of incense and the kind of vaguely fruity lotion that’s no one’s favorite smell but that you buy in agreement with someone else because you can both live with it. I try to imprint it onto my brain, to summon up on some bleak day when it feels like no one loves me.
“I’ll miss you so much when you’re in Knoxville,” Delia croaks. “I know you’ll do great.”
“Promise you’ll come visit.”
“I will. Swear we’ll stay best friends.”
“Until we both die.”
“Even after that.”
“Our gross flyblown corpses will be friends. We’ll pick maggots out of each other’s eyeholes and paint each other’s yellow nails black and laugh about how we smell like dumpsters.”
“Deal.”
We both laugh, but it quickly dissolves into crying.
It suddenly hits me, more raw than it ever has before: everything ends. Some things last longer than others, but everything ends. Childhood feels like it takes forever when you’re in the midst of it, but one day you wake up and you’re eighteen and going to college. That basset hound puppy with the bow around his neck? You’re going to see his whole life pass. You may find someone you love and get married. And it might last a long time, but it ends one way or another. Maybe you’ll be together for fifty or sixty years, but one of you is going to get left behind. I’m glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them.
There’s nothing worth having that doesn’t die.
Delia and I hug for a long time, our heads pressed together so hard it hurts, but not as much as it would hurt to not share one more moment of connection. We only stop when we startle at Arliss opening the door behind us to leave.
Walking into the studio feels like walking into a mausoleum, except I’d surely be happier walking into a mausoleum. I’d rather see the bones of strangers than the slow death of something I created. I’m already dreading seeing Josie off tomorrow morning. I’m doubly dreading doing the show alone for the first time.
I make it a couple of echoing steps inside when the armload of puppets and decorations I’m carrying slowly slips from my grasp. It’s twice what I normally carry.
Quite an omen. It’s probably not great that I already want to cry.
I swallow down the stiff knot in my throat, gather everything, and keep struggling my way inside.
Arliss has our stage ready. The end table. A solitary chair. Josie’s chair sits off to the side of the stage. Empty. I feel like I’m sliding down wet grass toward a muddy pond. I don’t know how I’m going to do this.
Arliss is setting up the camera.
“Hey,” I say to him.
“Hey,” he says.
I walk over and hand him an envelope. “I’m sorry. I only have thirty bucks today. Our car broke down last week and Josie’s not around to split the cost, so—” Part of me wants him to say, No, deal’s a deal. Fifty bucks or I walk. Then I would have an excuse to give up.
Arliss takes the envelope. Holds it for a second, taps it with his index finger, then hands it back. “Don’t sweat it.”
“I can get you the rest, I promise. I just—”
“Don’t sweat it,” he says softly but firmly.
“Take what’s there.”
“I don’t know how many more ways I can say don’t sweat it.”
“Okay.”
I give Arliss the cue sheet and tell him about this week’s movie. He keeps setting up, and so do I. I finish a couple of minutes before him and sit quietly, jitters winding between my ribs like snakes. I check my makeup and make a few adjustments. I think about doing some vocal warm-ups like Josie used to do, but I can’t remember hers. I recall some of the things I planned during my solo preshow planning session.
Arliss finishes and gives me a thumbs-up. I give him a frail smile and return his thumbs-up. He raises his hand, fingers splayed, and starts counting down. “In five, four, three, two—” He points at me.
I suddenly feel an overwhelming, palpable solitude. It’s terrifying to be alone when all eyes are on you. It’s like realizing you’re standing on the highest branch of a tree. This is not like my dad leaving me, when at least my pain was private. Everyone who watches our show can see. But not my dad. Now I know he doesn’t watch.
“Hey, ladies and goblins, it’s time for—sorry, I mean maybe—” I stammer with forced brightness. “Ugh. Cut. I screwed up already. Can we—”
He nods. “In five, four, three, two—” He points.
I take a deep breath. My head swims. I had no idea how much I depended on Josie for strength until this moment. I had no idea how much I depended on the faintest glimmer of a possibility of my dad seeing me until this moment.
“Hey, ladies and goblins, I’m Delilah Darkwood. Maybe you noticed”—my voice starts to quaver—“it’s just me this week.” My heart feels like it got elbowed in the boob. My composure collapses. I feel my face crumple into itself. I cover my mouth with my hand and tears pour hot over it like a river flooding over a spillway. I have to keep going. This is take two, and I’m all out of takes—good enough for access, as Arliss would say. But I can’t gather myself. I start sobbing. Full-on Honey, are you okay? Do you need me to call someone? Are you sure? But are you sure you’re sure? sobbing. I look up through the blur and see Arliss walking over. I shake my head. I can’t. I’m sorry for wasting your time, I try to say with my head shake.
He veers right, to where Josie’s empty chair faces away from me. He grabs it, drags it over so that it’s facing me, and sits.
I try to tell him I’m sorry, but I can’t talk. My heart is splitting.
Arliss reaches out and puts a warm, heavy, strong hand on my shoulder. I make blurred eye contact with him but still can’t speak.
He readjusts his baseball cap and slowly nods. “Let me tell you what I know about getting left behind,” he says, more quietly and gently than I’ve ever heard him.
“That sounds like a fun conversation,” I manage.
“I’ll forgive the sassmouth this time.” He strokes his beard and looks at the ground for a second, and then back up at me. “Woulda been 1998. You weren’t even born yet. I was having a real good time. Lord. I looked cool. I had a sexy, wild girlfriend who was three years older than me and had a tattoo of a rose right above her—Well, anyway. I played a mean bass. Was on the road with Cole Conway. That’s where I picked up my girlfriend. Cole was supposed to be the next big thing in country music. The next Garth Brooks, they said. I’d acquired a little bit of a heroin habit along the way, but it wasn’t any big deal, I thought. Just put me in a good mood, right? I ain’t always in the best mood.”
I shake my head and wipe my eyes with my pinkies, trying not to smear my badly smeared mascara any more. “Hadn’t noticed, really.”
“So I’m flying hi
gh. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one having a good time. That girlfriend of mine had been having a little fun of her own, and so had Cole. Fact, they’d been having a little fun together.”
“She sounds cool and nice,” I say.
“You could say that.” Arliss sighs long and deep. He averts his eyes, but before he does, I see the hurt flickering in them like a dying candle flame. He clicks his tongue a few times, in the way of someone trying to buy time before doing something painful. “Well, I take the news…hard. I start using a lot. We pull into a truck stop outside Jackson. I walk into a restroom stall, stick a needle in my arm, and wake up all alone in Madison County Hospital. And that’s where the party ended for me. I spent a little while in the hospital, and then they transferred me to an inpatient drug rehab center so I could clean up.
“They discharged me, and I had nowhere to go. No job. No money. I’d finally realized I had a problem. Cole and his new girlfriend were kind enough to leave me my bass and amp when they dumped me at the ER, and I pawned them for a month’s rent in some roach-farm flophouse in south Jackson. So here I am. No skills other than playing bass. No education other than the road. I get work washing dishes out at Cracker Barrel. And I start trying to figure out how to live a life. I see a job posting for a janitor here at TV Six. I get the gig. They figure out I have some technical know-how from my music days, so they put me behind a camera and an editing console. I wake up one day and it’s twenty-plus years later, and here I am still.”
He pauses for a moment. “That’s getting left behind. And even then, you can have a decent life. You know why I’m still here? It’s because I’m content. Maybe even happy. I found my path. My life is simple. I wake up in the morning. I eat my Cheerios, drink my coffee, think my thoughts. I go home after work and sit on my back patio and pet my dog and listen to music and myself breathing. It feels good to be alive and exist. Most things haven’t worked out for me—especially love—but that’s all right. I’m not as pretty as I used to be. More of my life’s behind me than in front of me. Who knows how many years I took off it while I was partying. But I’m a lot healthier now, if you can believe it.