Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe

by Preston Norton

     ’Cause last I heard, it was God’s List.

  I started walking home from school but I didn’t get far. Tegan’s words gripped the helm of my mind, veering me in a direction that I did not plan to go.

  Technically, it was about the List—but on a much deeper level. It was about the meaning behind the List. Why it mattered so damn much to me.

  Sometimes we get so caught up in the things we’ve got to do…

  …that we forget about the people.

  I found myself on Spinelli’s doorstep. The lawn was crisp and sharp, and the HOA letters had been removed. In addition, the shrubs surrounding the house appeared to have been trimmed into a neat, boxy perimeter. All in all, the place looked civilized. Maybe even nice.

  I knocked.

  I noticed the peephole go dark. Not a good sign. However, before I even had a chance to lose hope, the door opened. Spinelli—against all the lack of motivation in the universe—was wearing pants. So thank God for that. They were pulled up to an indefinite waistline and belted into place, with a blue polo tucked in.

  “I trimmed the boxwood,” he said in a completely flat tone. “So if that’s what you’re here for, you’re out of luck.”

  I didn’t know Spinelli well. I certainly didn’t know anything about his alleged “good side.” But I swear, somewhere—deep beneath his resting grump face—he was smiling.

  I laughed. “That’s actually not what I came here for.”

  “Oh. Well do you wanna weed the shrub bed?”

  “Uh, I mean—”

  “I’m just messing with you. I weeded that, too. There literally isn’t a thing for you to do on this property.”

  “I’m sorry Shane was such a dick to you.”

  I just sort of blurted that out. I mean, it was something I meant to say. I’d just hoped to preface it with an icebreaker. Maybe some friendly banter.

  Spinelli looked at me. Due to the “resting grump face” situation, it was difficult to tell just what sort of look that was. But whatever it was, he looked it hard.

  “He never meant to be,” I continued. “Shane wasn’t like that. He just liked the attention. But sometimes he took things overboard, and I’m sorry if that made things hard for you. I know we all have our own struggles, and all it takes is the last straw to break the camel’s back or whatever. Shane had struggles I never even knew about—struggles I still don’t know about completely—and I just…I’m sorry. Please don’t hate him. He was my best friend.”

  I took a deep breath. That was all that I had to say to Spinelli. I was done.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Uh…”

  “Who am I kidding? Look at you. Of course you are.”

  Apparently Spinelli’s good side and smart-ass side had a broad overlap.

  “Come in,” he said. He opened the door wider and moved aside, motioning for me to enter. “We’re having pizza.”

  I bit my lip. Hesitated. Then stepped inside.

  The interior was the sort of quaint, overcluttered, underappreciated décor you’d expect from someone inching close to the doors of senior citizenship. This was due mostly to the pictures of him and his wife and their children (clearly adults now) and grandchildren. But mostly his wife. They were everywhere—hanging from the walls, on side tables, console tables, the coffee table, and bookshelves—and the images they portrayed and the stories they told were intertwined in every imaginable scenario and phase of life: campouts, vacations, birthdays, weddings, and all of the small, intimate moments in between.

  Mrs. Spinelli had soft sandy hair and a softer smile. Spinelli looked so happy with her—with his family—it was almost difficult to look at.

  Spinelli noticed me noticing his wife. His mouth flattened into a grim line.

  “Helen, meet Cliff. Cliff, meet Helen. She’s dead, too.”

  I followed Spinelli into the kitchen. Spinelli removed a large piping-hot pepperoni from the oven, then proceeded to pull out plates, cups, and a two-liter of Dr Pepper from the fridge.

  “Help yourself,” he said. “We’re kickin’ it buffet-style.”

  I did as I was told. I wasn’t really hungry before, but now—with the hot aroma of pepperoni, cheese, and trans fat overwhelming my better judgment—I became ravenous. I helped myself to four heaping slices, stacking them into a greasy pile. We took our pizza and soda to the dining room, sat down, and dove in.

  “I’m sorry about Shane,” said Spinelli.

  I glanced up from my pizza.

  “That’s something they never teach you,” he said. “Not in high school, not in college. How do you deal with something like that? How do you cope with the loss of someone you love?”

  My hunger disintegrated.

  “You know,” he said, “Helen was like Shane in a lot of ways. She was an insufferable prankster. Smart as a whip, too. Got me every April Fool’s Day. Mayonnaise in the toothpaste bottle, cupcakes frosted in mustard…One time, she froze Mentos in ice cubes and put them in my Coke. I was halfway through drinking it when the thing went Pompeii on me. Scared the shit out of me. I think that was her goal: to make her husband shit his literal pants.”

  I laughed—mostly to defuse the immense pressure building in my tear ducts.

  “It’s too bad I met Shane after she died,” he said. “I think my sense of humor passed away with her.”

  Spinelli glanced up at me from his pizza, and there it was—a single tear—trickling down the creases of his cheek.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is…you’re not alone.”

  Something in me broke. Suddenly, I was sobbing—so hard, I felt like my chest was folding inside out. I was a rainstorm. My body was shaking, and my face was crumbling, and I hurt so much because of a hole that could never be filled.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” said Spinelli. “Stop that. Come here.”

  Spinelli didn’t even wait for me to come. He met me instead—moving around the table, reaching out, pulling me into a hug. I hugged him back.

  “It’s going to be okay, Cliff,” said Spinelli. “You hear? Everything’s going to be okay.”

  I didn’t know if it would be or not. I didn’t even know what that meant, really. Okay? What exactly qualified as okay? Who was the asshole that invented such an ambiguous word of reassurance?

  And yet, something in Mr. Spinelli’s presence told me that it would be.

  I made a decision: I was going to move forward with the List—with or without Aaron.

  The sunset bled through the clouds. It was a rust stain on the cold metal horizon. A playful storm was flitting past the mountains—swollen and bloated as it collected along the ridge. It hadn’t reached town yet, but you could already smell the rain—like lilies and memories and rebirth.

  Spinelli offered to drive me home, but I told him I needed some fresh air. Truth was, I wasn’t ready to go home. Not yet.

  If I was tackling the List solo, I needed to remind myself of something. I needed to recharge my zen.

  I called Tegan. She answered on the first ring.

  “Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

  “I want to take you somewhere special.”

  “Special?” She sounded more surprised than flattered—not completely unwarranted. I was hardly in a state to pretend I was Romeo McSuavepants.

  “Disclaimer: it’s not romantic,” I said. “But it’s special. Believe me. Meet me at Hideo’s Video.”

  In broad daylight, Hideo’s was a shabby white building trimmed in red. The neon lights were turned off, diminishing the flashiness factor astronomically. Honestly, the place looked like more of a shithole than I remembered. But maybe that was just my state of mind?

  I walked in, and a bell chimed. This garnered the attention of a single person in the entire store. And he wasn’t my mom.

  “Oh, great,” said Hideo. He leaned forward on the checkout counter and shook his head. “You here to rent more shitty American robot movies? I recommend Transformers 5. It sucks ass.”

/>   “Where’s my mom?” I asked.

  “You just missed her. She’s on her lunch break.”

  “Oh. Well do you have 2001: A Space Odyssey?”

  Hideo leaned back and scratched his chin, as if to reevaluate the situation. “Wow. 2001, eh?”

  “If you have it.”

  “Maybe your shitty taste not so bad after all. 2001 is greatest robot movie of all time.”

  “It was Shane’s favorite.”

  “Yeah.” Hideo nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, Shane did like it, huh. Hold on.”

  Hideo weaved around the counter and strode into the sci-fi section with determined force. “Let’s see, 2001…2001…1984…12 Monkeys…ah, here we go.”

  He raised it above the shelves for me to see.

  “You know,” he said, carrying it back to the register, “I say it’s greatest robot movie, but it’s not actually about the robot.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s it about?”

  “It’s about evolution. It’s about what’s next for mankind. It’s about transcendence.”

  “Transcendence?”

  “Becoming God.”

  “God?” This had become an unfortunate trigger word for me.

  “Or, at least, becoming more than man.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Hideo chuckled. “Most people don’t. That’s why Michael Bay makes Transformers 5.” He scanned the movie, printed the receipt, and handed it to me. “Here. It’s yours to keep.”

  I started to take the movie, but my brain stalled at the to keep part.

  “Huh?” I said. “You’re giving it to me?”

  “Store has two copies,” said Hideo. “I’m giving you the shittier copy. I was gonna give it to Shane, but I guess you’ll have to do.”

  I didn’t even have the words to express how grateful I was. So I just nodded. Hideo nodded back. He seemed to understand.

  I glanced past the counter at a small stack of portable DVD players available for rent. I pulled out my wallet and opened it—still filled with the two twenties Aaron gave me to ask Tegan on a date.

  “How much for one of those?” I asked.

  Frankie’s redneck-mobile rolled up to the corner of Gleason and Randall, delivered Tegan, and rolled out, sending plumes of dirt clouds in its wake.

  “So,” said Tegan, clapping her hands at her side. “Where’s this nonromantic place?”

  I slung my backpack onto my shoulders—slightly heavier than before—took Tegan’s hand, squeezed it, and forced a smile. “Follow me.”

  I led her down Gleason Avenue, all the way to Gosling. To say that I knew what I was doing would be giving me undue credit. I only knew certain actions—certain steps—needed to be taken. Where those steps led was wildly out of my control.

  At last, we reached the Monolith.

  It used to remind me of a silhouetted middle finger, flipping off the world for allowing horrible, tragic, shitty things to happen. It was a reminder of the shittiest day ever shat out of the rectal sphincter of existence. It was a seven-story tombstone.

  The sun was slipping beneath the mountains, growing orange with distance. At this time of day, the sun was probably a spark on the horizon of the Kerguelen Islands—also known as the Desolation Islands—one of the most isolated places on Earth. I knew this because I googled it. And I googled it because I wanted to know where the exact opposite place on Earth was from Happy Valley, Montana. The Kerguelen Islands were it. I sometimes daydreamed of escaping there—to this place that I knew literally nothing about—just because it was the farthest point from Happy Valley and yet was connected. If only in a spiritual sense. Because who can really run away from their home and never look back? I, for one, was way too stuck in the past. I would always look back. I would always wonder.

  “Here it is,” I said.

  “Behind the old abandoned building?” said Tegan.

  “It is the old abandoned building.”

  “Wow,” she said. “You weren’t kidding when you said it wasn’t romantic.”

  “It’s where my brother killed himself.”

  Tegan just looked at me. “Oh. You really weren’t kidding.”

  The Monolith was a labyrinth in ruin. I had its mazelike corridors mapped out in the scars of my soul. It only felt right. Tegan and I navigated past peeling, graffitied walls, stepped over broken boards, through trash and debris and caked layers of dust, and ascended a long, square spiral of stairs. The flimsy metal railing was bent and broken in sections, so Tegan chose to hold on to me instead.

  Each step I took was like an ice-cream scoop out of my insides. Maybe it was because the Monolith felt like a gateway. It was my own personal door to the other side.

  What was on that side? I had no idea.

  At last we reached the open mouth of the Monolith. It was almost obscenely picturesque—this watercolor mural of oranges and pinks radiating across the town—as if the universe felt this morbid need to beautify the moment.

  My gaze drifted from the opening to the dark, abysmal corner. A corner that sucked life and light like a tangible black hole.

  Tegan eyed me, visibly confused as I approached the corner. Then she followed my lowered gaze and her jaw detached.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Is that blood?”

  It was, indeed, blood. Blackened. Decomposed. Forever etched in the concrete. There were two splotches: (1) on the wall where Shane stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his brains out of his skull, and (2) on the floor where his cerebral leftovers formed a pool—a red halo around his head. Two black holes unspooled on adjacent planes. Like an interstellar passage between dimensions.

  I was the one who found Shane’s body.

  For better or worse, the entrance and exit wounds of the bullet didn’t damage his face. I still remembered his lifeless expression, frozen in a moment of fear. Pure and raw and unadulterated. It was fear that choked, blinded, and stabbed in every vulnerable place. In that final moment, Shane was the most vulnerable thing that ever lived.

  “Cliff?” said Tegan.

  It wasn’t until she said my name that I realized I was crying.

  It reminded me of a year ago when I thought I would never stop crying. For weeks, it was my perpetual state of existence. I was so tired of crying. It was exhausting. I just wanted to glue my eyelids shut and let the tears fill me up and drown me from the inside. Surely that would be better than all this goddamn crying.

  “My greatest fear is that I’ll actually complete the List,” I said, “and when everything’s said and done, I’ll realize that it never made a difference. Not for Shane.”

  “Cliff…”

  Tegan didn’t try to dissuade me. Perhaps she knew I was right.

  “I just want it to be enough,” I said. “But it’s too late.”

  “Cliff, stop it. You’re fighting, and that’s what’s important.”

  “Fighting what? He’s gone, Tegan. He’s gone forever. It’s like he doesn’t exist anymore. You can’t fight something like that.”

  My insides were collapsing. I couldn’t breathe, so I gasped harder and faster, scraping for something that would keep my lungs from imploding.

  “And it’s not just him,” I said. “It’s all of us. We’re all dying. We pretend we’re living, but really, we’re just dying slowly. All it takes is just one moment, and then bam! We don’t exist either—”

  Tegan slapped me.

  “Shut your fucking mouth, Cliff. You think you’re the only one hurting? You think you have a monopoly on pain and suffering? Well guess what? Everyone’s hurting. That’s life. And the more you hurt yourself, the more you hurt me, so just shut the fuck up, because I don’t want us to hurt anymore, I don’t want us to give up on living, I don’t want us to die, dammit!”

  Tegan sniffed. Her rage storm melted into a gentle rain, trickling down her tender cheek.

  “I don’t want us to die,” she said.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I crumbled to pieces. Tegan took me into her arms, an
d together, we fell against the wall. My face became wedged between Tegan’s shoulder and the black-hole bloodstain on the wall. I painted the wall with my tears, trying so hard to absorb the little bit of Shane that hadn’t been buried. His death felt so real again, like I was experiencing it again for the first time, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I miss him,” I said, sobbing, choking on the infinite void that might never be filled. “I miss him so much.”

  “I know, Cliff,” said Tegan. She pressed her teary cheek against mine. “I know.”

  We stayed that way for a moment—holding each other, neither one daring to let go. I needed her, and she needed me, and that was enough for both of us.

  The sadness ended like one season bleeding into the next. Slowly, we let go of each other and breathed. We breathed like it was an important task. Sat down, pressed our backs against the wall, basked in the shadow and moonlight, and breathed.

  “What am I fighting for?” I said.

  “The same thing we’re all fighting for,” said Tegan. “Hope.”

  Maybe that’s what the List was—among a slew of other things. Maybe it was far-fetched. Maybe it was crazy. Maybe it was even impossible.

  “What do you hope for?” I asked.

  “Me?” said Tegan. “I hope for lots of things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for starters, I want to be a spoken-word poet.”

  “A spoken-word…poet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a thing?”

  Tegan rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s a thing. I love poetry. But the rhythm of poetry rolling off the human tongue? Man, that carries power. All the greatest rappers are—first and foremost—spoken-word poets. The music is just an aesthetic.”

  “Can you recite one for me?”

  “No.”

  “C’mon, please?”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s embarrassing,” said Tegan. She was actually blushing. “Besides, I’m not that good.”

  I bit my lip, and poured all of my energy into having the biggest, most pleading puppy dog eyes ever.

  “Put those puppy dog eyes away. Save ’em for someone who cares.”