Unforgivable

by Amy Reed

  “The cheerleader girl.”

  “Yeah,” she says with a self-hating smirk. “You would have hated her. The cheerleader with the long blond hair and the perfectly nice football boyfriend.”

  “I wouldn’t have hated her.”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  She’s quiet for a moment as she stares at the fountain. “I hate her because I’m jealous. Her life was so simple. It was so easy being her.”

  “But she isn’t you.”

  “Not anymore. Even if I wanted to be her again, I couldn’t. Getting sick changed everything, and I can’t ever go back. I became a different version of me, the dying version.”

  “But you’re not dying anymore.”

  “No, but I accepted that was the last me there was going to be.” She’s growing agitated. Her voice is shaky, angry. She’s talking fast. “But I didn’t die. So I had to become yet another version of myself. Even though I didn’t want to. Even though I was done. So I had to get high to deal with it, just to make it not hurt. And I lied to everyone. I lied to you.” She’s crying now. She leans over her knees, her face in her hands. “That’s the girl you knew. That’s who you fell in love with. But she doesn’t exist anymore either.” I can see the bones of her spine through smooth skin as her body quakes. Fragile, worn, breaking. I fight the urge to touch her. I don’t know if I have that right anymore.

  “I’m not her, Marcus,” Evie cries. “I’m not that wild girl who wants to party. I’m not that girl who doesn’t give a shit about anything.”

  “I never thought you were,” I say, wanting so much to hold her, to make her understand. The girl she’s talking about is not who I loved. That’s who I wanted to save her from.

  Evie looks at me and blinks, like my response was not the one she expected. “You gave a shit about something,” I say. “You gave a shit about me. That was real. I felt it.”

  She sniffles and looks at me, into my eyes. “You were the only thing I cared about,” she says, letting me in, and my heart leaps into hers.

  “Yes.” I take her hand and hold it against my heart. For a moment, it feels perfect. For a moment, it feels like the world is starting again. But then she pulls her hand away. Her eyes turn back into ice.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “Marcus, don’t you see? That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. You can’t be the only thing. You can’t be the thing that defines me.”

  “I never asked to be. It doesn’t have to be like that.”

  “But I don’t know how to do anything else.”

  Neither of us know what to say after that. We sit there for a while, exhausted, surrounded by the dense cloud of our words. Nothing is settled. Nothing is resolved. The fountain continues its circular flow. Coins glisten on the tile bottom, a collection of strangers’ wishes and dreams. I reach into my pocket and pull out a quarter. I cannot hear its splash as I add my dream to the anonymous others.

  “So now what?” I finally say.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So am I allowed to call you now that I have your new number?” I try to make it sound funny, but it falls flat. It belly flops in the fountain. It drowns.

  Evie is quiet for a long time, and the beginning of hope flutters in my chest, my heart a hummingbird. My hand begins to move from its place on the concrete bench, a slight stirring, on the way to find hers where it rests on her knees.

  “No,” she says finally. Firmly.

  My hand stops in midair, sinks back to the hard flatness of the bench. My coin is lost among the other wasted money in the fountain.

  She shakes her head with her eyes closed. “I’m not ready. Not yet.” Then her eyes open and tear me apart. “Maybe not ever.”

  Evie’s eyes bore into me, but I will not look at her. I can’t. “I need you to let me go, Marcus,” she says, and my head is filled with static, loud and grating.

  “Fine,” I say, my voice as cruel as I’ve ever heard it. “Go.”

  She doesn’t move.

  “Go!”

  She stands up. She starts walking. She leaves too easily.

  Stop! I want to say. Come back!

  I wait for her to turn around, to look back, to say something, to make things right, to apologize, explain, anything. But she says nothing. She keeps walking away, holding her bag tight against her body. I sit on the hard bench, my feet heavy on the ground, fighting the rising fire in my chest, the tears in my eyes, waiting for a look that never comes. Just the sound of the fountain, so loud I can’t hear Evie’s footsteps as she leaves me, again.

  you.

  THE DEAD SEAGULL ON THE BEACH WAS A SIGN. I SHOULD have known something bad was going to happen. The rocks crunched beneath my feet as I jogged to keep up with you. As always, I chased you. You had already drunk half the bottle of vodka in the car, but somehow you were still so fast.

  You held court on a stage of driftwood. Your hands waved in the air as you recounted the story that led you to this place. It was impossible to know where to find the truth between your words, which parts were facts and which parts were the stories you attached to your feelings. Emotions have a way of warping the truth, of twisting it around until it is all just a story you tell yourself over and over to keep yourself crazy.

  The scent of decay and dirty seawater was thick as you told me about your life falling apart, about failing school, about your best friend hating you, about your mom and dad disappointed beyond repair. You listed all the ways life was failing you, all the ways you were abandoned, but you said nothing about your own lies, about the drugs you couldn’t stop doing, about the promises you couldn’t keep. You said nothing about your own responsibility.

  I could have kept going along with it. I could have kept quiet about the self-destruction that was becoming more apparent every day, every hour that I loved you. But I was tired, Evie. I was so tired of watching you hurt, so tired of listening to you blame the world for your pain. So I had to say something. I had to finally speak.

  I wanted your pain to stop, too. Can’t you see that’s all I ever wanted for you? I knew what you were doing wasn’t working. What David did hadn’t worked. My mom’s drinking hadn’t worked. So I cried for all of you. I sat there looking out at the water, at the postcard view of San Francisco, and I suddenly knew there was a very good chance that I was going to lose you, too.

  here.

  I WAKE UP KNOWING SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE. I FEEL it in my bones. Before I even open my eyes, the thought burns through the fog in my head, in blinking neon lights: this is the day the bullshit ends.

  My phone dings with a text message.

  Evie told me about your meeting yesterday, says the text from Mom. Can we get together to talk? I want to support you during this difficult time. Love you.

  It is the Hallmark card of text messages. It is empty words.

  Not even awake ten minutes, and I’m already supremely grumpy as I walk downstairs to get some coffee.

  I’m used to the kitchen being empty and silent when I enter it in the morning. I have a routine. I make two cups of coffee in the Keurig and pour them into my giant mug. I make a piece of toast and retreat back to my lair. But this morning is all wrong. I hear laughter before I even get there. I smell bacon.

  Dad is sitting at the kitchen table while Monica cooks. “Morning!” he says, way too enthusiastically.

  “Want some bacon?” Monica chimes in. She’s wearing a pair of Dad’s pajama pants and an old T-shirt.

  “I’m vegetarian,” I say flatly, the only excuse I can think of that could possibly justify saying no to bacon.

  “I just made a fresh pot of coffee,” she says. I can’t remember the last time we used the coffeepot. That would imply sharing. That would imply some kind of coordinated effort. We usually make our own individual cups in the Keurig.

  “Thanks,” I say, and grab a mug to fill as quickly as possible so I can get out of here.

  “Marcus,” Dad says, “sit down for a minute, will you?”<
br />
  “What’s up?” I eye him skeptically.

  “I want to talk to you about something.”

  I look at Monica, who’s smiling as she pats the grease off the hot bacon. Whatever my dad’s about to talk to me about, she’s in on it too.

  I sit and take a sip of my coffee. The proportions are all wrong. As if my day wasn’t sucking enough already. “This coffee’s too weak,” I say.

  “Oh, sorry,” Monica apologizes. “I can make a new pot if you want.” Dad glares at me.

  “No, it’s okay,” I say. I’ll sneak the real stuff when no one’s looking. I don’t want Monica doing me any favors.

  “Marcus,” Dad says seriously. He has his judge face on. “How are you feeling today?”

  I’m caught off guard. “Fine,” I say.

  “I want to talk to you about something,” he says for the second time. He looks down at his hands, and I see a trace of sadness on his face before he hides it, and my heart burns hot in my chest for a painful second before it goes numb.

  “Just say it, Dad.”

  My father, who is afraid of nothing, looks scared.

  “I miss him, too,” he finally says. Monica sits next to him and puts her arm around him. “I miss David,” he says quietly, almost a whisper.

  Time stops and I am stuck somewhere unfamiliar, a different world, a different dimension. This is the first time I’ve heard David’s name come out of Dad’s mouth since the surreal few weeks after his death; the few times he mentioned him, it was always “your brother,” as if he didn’t have a claim to him. But his name was only business then, a problem to be dealt with, a funeral to plan. His name was just a word. But now it is new and tragic in my father’s mouth, with a year’s worth of hidden pain holding on to it, and I cannot take it. I cannot listen. I am suffocating under its weight.

  “I have to go,” I say, standing up.

  “Marcus, wait,” Dad says. “We need to talk about it. About him. We can’t keep pretending nothing happened.”

  “But that’s what we’re good at, Dad. That’s the only thing we know how to do.”

  I storm out of the kitchen without my coffee. I hear the screeching of Dad’s chair as he gets up. I hear Monica’s gentle voice say, “Let him go. He’ll be ready to talk in his own time.” When did she become such an expert on our family? When did she get the right to tell my dad what to do?

  I run up the stairs and down the hall of the side of the house Dad never enters, open the door that no one’s touched in months. Inside the room is very little I recognize. Just storage, just garbage. Random pieces of furniture that have no place in the house. Boxes of stuff no one’s used in years. The only thing left of David’s is the old dresser that belonged to my great-grandfather, which my uncle made Dad promise not to throw away. The walls were repainted soon after David’s death, all of his stuff bagged up and donated to Goodwill. I had barely saved his plants from being thrown away like everything else Dad got rid of without even asking me.

  It was three months ago that I came in here and found an old pack of David’s cigarettes in the dresser, three months since I stole his ashes from the mantel and poured them in the bay, three months since I discovered Evie in the dark of the tunnel. So much has happened in the short time since then, it’d be funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad.

  I sit in the middle of the floor, still in my pajama pants and faded Nirvana T-shirt. I look at the dresser, trying to channel him, trying to feel something, anything of David. I close my eyes and try to picture him, try to see his face lit by the sun, try to see his smile. But all I see is a distorted, broken version of him, his features misplaced like a Picasso painting. I squint and force them back to where they belong, but his face becomes a mess of black and brown and gray. It swirls into itself until all I see is a black hole where his face should be.

  I don’t remember what my brother looks like.

  I am sitting in this soulless room trying to conjure a ghost. He’s gone. He’s been gone for a long time. But I keep carrying him around with me like a curse.

  I jump up. I run to my room. Even without my morning caffeine, I am suddenly buzzing with energy. But it is not the kind of energy that feels good, not the alert high of caffeine, not the rumbling excitement of being at a punk show, not the hot thrill of sex. It is something dark. Destructive. Like a lightning strike. Like electrocution.

  The summer morning light shines in sharp lines through the blinds, cutting my bedroom into thin pieces. I want to grab the beams and throw them. I want to whack them against the wall and hear them shatter. David’s plants sit in pots scattered throughout my room, droopy with fatigue from my desperate attempts to keep them alive. They knew when to give up. They knew when to let go even if I didn’t.

  I pull the string of my window shades and sunlight pours into my room, an avalanche, a tidal wave of light, everything exposed. There are no hiding places. I push open my window and breathe in the last evaporating particles of dew, before the brief freshness of the morning is lost and replaced by the grime of the city.

  I grab the nearest plant and throw.

  The pot smashes on the brick patio beneath my window. Dirt and shards of pottery go flying. I throw and throw and throw. Ivy, succulents, ferns, spider plants, a bamboo palm, a peace lily. When I lift a five-foot-tall ficus in a thick clay pot, I feel a familiar twinge in my shoulder, but it doesn’t even slow me down.

  There’s a tornado inside me and it’s spinning out of control. It’s been gaining momentum for months, for years, but only in the past weeks has it touched ground and made its destruction known. I thought it was about Evie. I thought it was about David, or Mom, or Dad. But the storm rages on regardless of what they do, regardless of their cruelty or kindness or indifference. They don’t touch it. They are not strong enough to make the weather.

  I am the only constant in this storm. I am the only one who can stop it.

  The plants are all gone. I am the only visible living thing left in my room.

  I go to the box in the back of my closet where I kept my treasures as a young boy, then my drugs, then my razor blades. It is empty now except for one thing.

  I take out the smaller black wooden box inside. I open it to make sure everything is there, to make sure the gun has not been stolen by some rival ghost, to make sure it still belongs to the proper thief.

  I pull on a pair of jeans crumpled on my floor. I throw the box in my backpack. I run out of the house without tying my shoes. The tornado follows.

  here.

  I am driving. The route is burned into my memory. Evie is the last person who sat in the passenger’s seat.

  there.

  The house is louder after Mom leaves than it was when she was in it. Workers in heavy boots stomp in and out, a human conveyor belt made out of strangers, carrying furniture, art, bags and boxes of Mom’s things she didn’t take with her. Out goes the homey stuff I grew up with; in comes the furniture that is meant to be looked at but not touched, sharp and shiny and starkly beautiful. My father’s choices.

  you.

  You tasted death, then came back from it. How many people can claim that kind of magic? How many people can say they conquered cancer?

  You heard death calling you, luring you back to it with candy. You tasted it, devoured it, then spit it back out just in time.

  But now what? What do you hear? Can you hear anything besides your own voice?

  You never asked to be a miracle.

  here.

  The water crashes below me. Just a rail between me and the sea. A gun in my backpack, already claimed by death.

  there.

  Blood. So much blood.

  you.

  Not blood. Water.

  here.

  The air is so hot. The metal is so cold.

  you.

  Hospitals, coffee shops, beaches, cemeteries. Hills, grass, space, and stars. The places you made your home. Basements, tunnels. My life, my heart.

  there.

  Dav
id’s initials, the skeleton of his name, carved into my body. The pain keeps the tears from coming. I choose blood instead of tears.

  here.

  A scar, one year old. No longer the pink of new skin. No longer tender to the touch. Just smooth raised lines the color of myself, but bleached.

  DL, and the date this gun last fired. These self-inflicted rips in my flesh are all that’s left of my brother.

  you.

  Cold. Wet. Barely breathing. Barely holding on.

  there.

  Silence.

  you.

  Breath.

  there.

  Nothing.

  you.

  The light in the darkness.

  here.

  I am all I have left.

  now.

  I AM STANDING ON THE NEW BAY BRIDGE, LOOKING AT THE concrete skeleton of the old bridge. Cormorants and other birds have reclaimed it as their home. They swarm close, like bees around their hive.

  The wind screams in my ears. Cars speed by on the freeway, with only a thin fence separating me from several lanes of traffic. Waves crash far below and the birds screech their displeasure at the cold spray. But up here, the wind is hot and the sun beats down on my skin. It is so loud, no one would hear me if I screamed. I am an unnamed stranger among so many unnamed strangers. If I disappeared, I would not be missed.

  I cannot see our beach from here. It is on the other side of the bridge, where there’s no place for pedestrians, just cars, just traffic.