by Amy Reed
My brother is on the floor, lodged between the wall and the toilet. I wonder how he got there. I imagine him pushing himself into the tiny space, making himself as small as possible. He is so skinny, it would not have been difficult.
For a second, I think maybe it isn’t him. This body isn’t David. Someone else with his arms and legs could have snuck in and replaced him.
It is warm inside the apartment, at least eighty degrees. Warm blood has a unique smell. Like meat. Like metal.
The floor is a pool of red. There is no dry surface left, and it bothers me that I can’t remember the original color of the tile. Was it white? Gray? Beige? It would have to be replaced now, for sure. No way can you get bloodstains out of grout.
He’s in his boxer shorts. Maybe he had been hot. Maybe he didn’t want to get his clothes dirty. His shorts are blue with white snowflakes on them. I have the same ones buried somewhere deep in my dresser. I do not wear them. I thought they were ridiculous when we got matching three-packs for Christmas three years ago, Mom’s last Christmas with us. David and I had woken up late, hungover from a Christmas Eve party the night before. Mom was already drunk on Irish coffees. Dad grudgingly came downstairs. Mom turned on the Christmas music too loud as we opened the presents as quickly as possible. I don’t remember what else we got. I remember the three of us going back upstairs when it was over, David and I to our beds to continue sleeping, Dad to his office to work, leaving Mom by the tree to deal with the mess of wrapping paper.
Who is going to deal with this mess? Whose job will it be to clean this up?
David’s hand rests on his leg, Dad’s gun still in its grip. He could have just OD’d. He could have let himself go to sleep—painlessly, clean.
David never did anything by accident. There was a reason he wanted to make such a mess. There was a reason he needed to use Dad’s gun. There was a reason he went through the trouble of stealing it.
He needed Dad to be here. He needed Dad to know both of their fingers were on the trigger.
The gun is strangely clean, even though everything else in the room is splattered with blood.
Blood. It is my brother’s blood. It is pieces of David’s brilliant, useless brain all over the walls.
I scream into the silence until the police come.
you.
EVIE, I’M LOSING YOU. THE MEMORIES OF US ARE FADING. They’re less crisp. Muted. Echoes, wave ripples, expanding orbits.
The place where I keep a home for you is still here, warm, waiting. But there are other places that need to be tended to, haunted rooms that need to be cleaned out. Ghosts that need to be dealt with.
Other memories are taking over. They’re bullying their way in, pushing you out. I try to hold on, but your hands are so small. You are doing other things. I can’t hold on if you keep letting go.
You are ahead, moving forward, at a steady pace. I am running after you, but we are on different paths. I will never reach you like this. We will never touch by my chasing you.
here.
MOM’S BEEN TEXTING AND LEAVING VOICE MAILS, EVEN after my text telling her to leave me alone. Dad’s been trying to talk to me, too. He begged me to join him and Monica for lunch today, and I had to go to make him shut up.
“Isn’t this nice?” he says as we walk down Market Street to the restaurant a few blocks away from Civic Center. “Look at us—two professional men going to lunch downtown.” He is artificially jolly. He pretends not to see the guy passed out on the sidewalk in front of us.
Monica has turned out to be one of those people who makes too much eye contact. She hugs me when we arrive to the restaurant. The huge diamond on her engagement ring sparkles indecently. After a few valiant tries to get me to talk, she finally lets me eat my veggie burger in silence while I read the depressing current events on my phone’s news app. She and Dad spend the meal deep in conversation, but I don’t hear anything they say.
As we wait for the bill and my dad goes to the restroom, she tries one last time. “Marcus,” she says, “your dad says you’ve been a little down lately. I know sometimes it’s hard to talk to your parents about certain things, but maybe it could be easier with someone who isn’t family. At least, not yet.” She winks. “Is there anything you want to talk about? Maybe I can help?”
I don’t speak for a full minute, I’m in so much shock. I’m not sure if I should be angry at her presumptuousness, or if I should burst out laughing.
“No,” I finally say. I don’t have the energy to cop an attitude.
As Dad and I walk back to the office, I listen to the voice mail Mom left during lunch. “Marcus,” she says, her voice tinged with a maternal exasperation she has no right to, “I don’t know why you’re avoiding my calls, but I really need you to call me back. I’m worried about you. Your father called me and told me he’s worried about you, and you know it would take a lot for him to do that—”
I hang up the phone before hearing the end of the message. “Jesus, Dad,” I say, and stop walking. “I can’t believe you.”
“What?” he says. We’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk on Market Street. An old Asian lady with a cart full of soda cans yells at us as she passes.
“Are you telling the whole Bay Area you’re worried about me? Mom’s been stalking me, and Monica tried to have a little heart-to-heart while you were in the bathroom. What the hell?”
He sighs. “I don’t know what to do, Marcus. I’m trying everything.”
“What to do about what? There’s nothing to do. I’m fine.”
“I may be pretty clueless as a father, but I can tell you’re not fine. You stay holed up in your room whenever you’re not at work. You don’t go out. You don’t see anyone.”
“What I do with my free time is none of your business.”
“I’m your father, Marcus. If you’re miserable, it’s my business. If you’re . . . depressed. If you’re in trouble somehow.”
I start walking. “I’m not in trouble.”
“You don’t seem happy.”
“What do you know about happy?”
“I know I wasted a lot of my life not thinking it was important. I know I don’t want you to do that.”
My stomach is churning with feelings I can’t define. I don’t know who I’m talking to. I don’t understand what he’s saying. We walk through the courthouse security and up the marble staircase to where all the offices are located.
“Talk to me,” Dad says in the hallway outside the door to his office suite.
I open the door and walk inside, saying nothing. There’s no way Dad will talk about this stuff in here, in front of his assistant. I know he has an important meeting in five minutes. I’m safe for now.
The next four hours drag. The adrenaline of my anger wears off quickly, and I’m left with an empty, heavy weight that makes it hard to lift my hands to type, to keep my eyes open. All I want to do is curl up in the pool of sunlight in the corner, like a cat. As soon as the clock strikes five, I can’t get out of the building fast enough.
My phone shows another voice mail from Mom, which I don’t listen to.
And then. A text from a number I don’t recognize:
This is Evie. We need to talk. Can we meet at your house at 6?
I text back yes without thinking.
I could swim across the bay to meet her.
you.
I WANTED TO SAVE YOU. I WANTED TO BE THE SOLUTION TO all your pain. I thought if I could do that, then my life would be worth something. Then I’d have a reason to exist. Your love, your need, would create me. I would be born again, a hero.
But of course none of that is true. No one can ever really save anyone. No one can make you tell the truth or do the things that scare you. No one can force you to go inside yourself with your eyes open. No one can force you to come back out. No love is that strong.
I pulled you out of the water, yes. I kept you from drowning. But that kind of saving is easy. My job stopped there. You took your first breat
h, then it was up to you to do the rest. And up to me to find something else to do.
You could not save me, either. Did you know I had given you that job? Did I? Did you know you had the responsibility of becoming bigger than David, stronger than my mom, that you were supposed to be the sun and the moon and gravity and supernovas and dark matter—all of it? How did it feel to know you were expected to be everything?
It doesn’t matter, if you knew or if you didn’t. Either way, you’d be just as gone as you are now. And I’d be just as alone, just as haunted by the ghosts of my past. You have joined them; you have become a holy trinity—Mom, David, and Evie—the powers that rule me. I am your puppet. You three hold my strings, and it is up to me to cut them. It is up to me to save myself.
But I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I’m that strong.
here.
THE DOORBELL RINGS A STRANGE, DEEP, FORMAL TUNE that echoes around the two-story living room, more like a funeral dirge than a greeting. I jump up from the hard surface of the couch, where I’ve been perched for the fifteen minutes since I’ve been home, waiting, vibrating with anticipation. I wouldn’t call it excitement, but not quite dread either. It’s a new kind of fear, one I can’t define. I can’t tell if it’s good or bad.
When I open the door, Evie is surrounded by sunlight. Her hair is in a new pixie cut, more styled than the fluffy, haphazard chemo grow-out of before. She’s wearing a light gray tank top and jeans with red Converse tennis shoes. Such a simple outfit, so clean and perfect. A thin silver ring loops around her left nostril.
“You got your nose pierced,” I say.
“Yeah.” She smiles. “Can I come in?”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.” I step aside.
“It was a birthday present, from my mom,” she says as she walks inside. “You should have seen her in the piercing studio.” Evie laughs as she sits down on the couch. “She was trying so hard to act cool, but she was so awkward. It was hilarious.”
I sit down across from her on an uncomfortable white leather armchair. “When was your birthday?” I say. How strange to not know that, to have never known that.
“Last week.”
I can’t bring my eyes to look at her face, so I stare at her knees, at her hands resting there, clasping and unclasping, naked of jewelry or nail polish.
“Why are you here?” I say, and it comes out sounding harsh, exactly as I’d intended it to.
She’s quiet for a moment, then says quickly, “I met your mother.”
“What?” My head snaps up. My eyes pierce hers.
“At an AA meeting.” She looks more uncomfortable than I remember ever seeing her. Embarrassed, even. She looks down, squeezes her hands between her knees. “This is weird,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“Come on. Tell me.”
“She introduced herself after hearing me speak. I was talking about . . . you. And she recognized details of my story. And your name, too, I guess. So she approached me afterward.”
“You talk about me at AA meetings?”
She cannot look me in the eyes. “People talk about everything at AA meetings. It’s supposed to be anonymous, you know?”
“Except it wasn’t.”
“Well, no. Your mom probably broke all kinds of rules by talking to me, but she’s so worried about you. She was desperate.”
I can’t help but laugh, but there’s nothing funny about this. “Yeah,” I say. “Desperate. We’re all so fucking desperate.”
“She really loves you. She’s scared. She said you won’t talk to her or your dad, so she asked me if I’d talk to you. She said she’s afraid you might want to hurt yourself.”
The ceiling is pressing down on us. The walls squeeze in. There are no words to speak, no air to breathe, no space to move in. The panic surges in my chest, and I am shaking with the need to run.
“I can’t do this,” I blurt out. “Not here. Not in this house.” I stand up. “Can we go for a walk or something?”
“Um, sure,” she says. “Okay.” She grabs her bag and follows me out the door.
That’s something I remember loving about her. She calls her purse a bag instead of a purse. She refused to be the kind of girl who carries a purse.
No. I have to push those kinds of thoughts out of my head now. All of her little endearing qualities. The little details I fell in love with.
Being outside gives my feelings room to grow. We walk a couple of blocks, and I notice Evie’s limp is gone. For some reason, this makes me angry—her healing, her strength, all of it having happened without me, after all the energy and love I invested in her, in us. My anger feeds on the air, on the sun, becomes a monster, and consumes me.
“After all this time avoiding me, why come here now?” I say. “Why do you even care?”
“I care more than you could possibly know, Marcus.” She sounds so patronizing. The way she says my name. The pitying tone of her voice.
“Yeah, you care so much you stopped talking to me.”
“I had to. For a while. I already explained that to you.” We stand at the corner waiting for the light to change. “I have to figure some things out,” she says. “I need some time to clear my head.”
“Yeah?” I start walking, even though the light is still red. A car honks as it barely misses me. “What about my head? Did you ever think about how it would affect me?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, running after me to the other side of the street. She grabs my arm and makes me stop. “I thought you were okay. I thought you’d be okay. You were always the strong one.”
I laugh, but there is no humor in it. “It’s great you and my mom found each other,” I say. “You have so much in common.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You both think because someone doesn’t fall apart on a regular basis or go spewing their feelings all over the place, it means they can’t get hurt. You think you can leave and they’ll be fine, and you won’t have to worry about breaking anyone’s heart. Your conscience will be off the hook.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Just because my feelings aren’t as messy as yours doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”
“Marcus, I—”
“Yours were so big and loud, there wasn’t any room for mine.”
The silence burns as I walk away, and for the first time ever, she runs after me. So I let her chase me. I want her to know what it feels like to be shut out.
But eventually, I slow down. The truth is, as much as I want to hurt her, I still want her next to me.
“You’ve changed,” she says.
“Being betrayed will do that to a person.”
She flinches, takes a deep breath. My body still responds to hers, even after these weeks apart. “I’ve been preparing what I wanted to say to you for a long time,” she says. “But I kept chickening out when I tried to call you. Then your mom approached me, and I figured it was a sign that it was time to talk.”
Without thinking, I have led us to the cemetery where we went on our first date. Where we first made love. I fight the urge to turn around. I walk through the iron gates to the big fountain near the entrance. The sound of the water silences everything around us. I sit on a stone bench facing it.
“So talk,” I say.
After a pause, she says, “You want someone you think is me.”
I don’t say anything. The sentence hangs in the air, all alone, without context.
“I’m not her. I’m not the girl you loved. The one you think you want. That girl who acted invincible.”
“What are you talking about?” The water in the fountain falls in slow motion.
“That girl was made out of drugs and alcohol and lies. She wasn’t me.”
“You can’t tell me you weren’t in there. You can’t tell me that wasn’t you at all.”
“But it wasn’t all of me.”
“So show me all of you!” Evie flinches. My hands are shaking and my body throbs with electr
icity. People look. Dogs sniff the air, smelling something sinister. They think I am the kind of guy who yells at his girlfriend in public. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m more like my father than I’ve ever wanted to admit.
“I don’t know how,” she says quietly. “I don’t know who that is.”
I am sick of this bullshit. I’m sick of dancing around the truth.
“Do you still love me?” I say.
“Marcus, don’t.”
“Answer the question.”
“You’re changing the subject. It’s irrelevant.”
“Love’s irrelevant?” I hear my father’s voice. I hear myself debating like him, asking questions that cannot be answered.
“You’re not listening.”
“Why won’t you answer the question?”
She’s shutting down. Her eyes lose focus and her hands fidget. She’s putting up her wall. She’s leaving me.
“Answer the question, Evie. Do you love me?”
She shakes her head and says nothing. Her shoulders curl as she closes in on herself.
“Does that mean no? You don’t love me?”
She says no so quietly I might not have heard her if I wasn’t staring at her quivering lips.
“No, what?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“What?” I say. “I can’t hear you.”
“Yes!” she yells. “Dammit, Marcus. Yes, of course I still fucking love you.”
Her body shakes in the silence. I want to take back everything, all my pushing, my bullying. But I can’t. Neither of us can ever take back anything we’ve done to each other.
“That’s not the problem,” Evie says. “That’s never been the problem. I just . . . how can I trust my love for you when I don’t know who I am? How can that love possibly make any sense?”
“Maybe love’s not supposed to make sense.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I lost myself somewhere,” she says quietly. “I used to think I knew exactly who I was. I never questioned it. I didn’t have to. There was this version of me that existed before the cancer, some girl I don’t even recognize.”