Pretty Things Don't Break

by Lauren Jayne

  Or when we drove to Bruce Lee’s grave and sat Indian-style, passing a smoke and a Big Gulp back and forth, and she’d said, “Look at this,” as we looked down at the water and the rim of mountains that surrounded the city. “If you’ve gotta do it, this is how you fucking do it.”

  All I could think was, I’ve got to get her out of here, out of this fucked up town, with this fucked up hair. I have to take her with me, or I have to go with her. Those are my only two options.

  With a tap on my shoulder, her dad escorted me up to the front row. When Amazing Grace played over the crackly speakers, the tears wouldn’t stop. My body was acting on its own, sucking in for air like a five-year-old who’s cried for too long and now can’t catch her breath. I held my breath to try to stop my lungs from spasming uncontrollably as the pastor walked to the front of the small room. Looking at his Birkenstock-covered feet, I thought, “Is he really wearing rainbow socks that cover each toe to my best friend’s funeral? Who would wear socks like these to officiate a fucking funeral? Would you wear this outfit to officiate if your mom had died or your sister or your one person?” Well, she was my one person and the fact that he looked like he was treating this like a joke, or a favor, or a check mark on his daily calendar, made me sick.

  As he spoke about her, looking down at his note cards to make sure he said Carmen and not Candice, I drifted away as I felt people pat my shoulders from behind, as if my husband had just died.

  When it was over, I went back to Carmen’s body, hardly able to see through my puffy eyes, and I stood with her. Her mom walked up with her wild blonde curls and said, “Take as long as you want with her, Lauren.” I stood with Ana and Carmen in silence and watched as Ana opened her big bag, took out a pair of scissors and a sandwich bag, and cut a lock of hair from Carmen’s head. Wrapping it up, trying to cover the tears in her shaking voice, she said as she stared down at Carmen’s still body, “Carmen, this is totally unacceptable.” Then we both cried and smiled down at her, and Ana said, “Take as long as you need. When you come down, we’ll take her to the cemetery.”

  I thought, “Take her to the cemetery? No, I can’t let it happen. I’m not leaving her here. I’m not leaving her again, ever.” Wanting to crawl in next to her and start CPR until she popped her green eyes open, I stood and talked to her now that we were totally alone.

  “I’m so sorry. Sorry I didn’t pick up, sorry I didn’t save you like I promised you I always would, sorry I killed you. And I wish more than anything that I could go with you. Please God, kill me and take me with her,” I said to her as I cried and choked over my own tears and snot and sadness.

  I grabbed my bag from the floor, took out the strip of photo booth pictures that we’d taken at Fred Meyer when we were kids, and laid it next to her gray, cold hand. Then I grabbed two lip glosses and all the gum from my bag and said, “In case you get thirsty – you look so thirsty. And your lips – I’m so sorry your lips are dry.” Then I started to bawl.

  I took the note I’d written, telling her how sorry I was that I’d killed her and that I would be with her soon, and tucked everything around her. Then I took the pearls from around my neck and laid them on Carmen’s puffy, hard chest. I brought my face down next to hers, unable to feel her energy or heat, smell her scent, or feel her love, and kissed the air next to her cheek.

  When the door opened and the attendant said, “Just checking,” letting the door close behind him, I knew it was time.

  “I love you, Carmen. I love you. I’m so sorry they’re leaving you here. I’ve thought a million times how I could get you out of here, but I don’t know what to do.” Sobbing over her lifeless body, I somehow hoped she’d react, but her frozen face was motionless.

  As her dad and a few guys I didn’t recognize carried her down the wooden stairs and put her body into the car, I fell into my car, blinking the tears away so I could follow them.

  Pulling up to the gray, dreary, soggy lawn with crosses etched in tombstones and nothing but death surrounding us, we walked to a mound of fresh dirt, the dirt that would soon be poured over Carmen’s coffin.

  After the service, her dad said, “Follow us to the house. Her sisters have something for you.”

  Walking into their house, you couldn’t tell if it was a birthday party or Easter Sunday. With old people I’d never seen before talking about the weather and sports, I wanted to scream and break everything in their perfect house to pieces.

  “An angel is dead,” I thought. “The only person that has ever known me or loved me or will ever know me or love me is dead, and you are eating deviled eggs?” I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, but I walked around the house looking for any sign of Carmen. The pictures on the mantel – no Carmen. The huge family photo framed like a Norman Rockwell on the wall – no Carmen. She wasn’t anywhere in this house. The anger was suffocating me. How alone did she feel walking into this house and seeing perfect Peggy and Hildy and Tracy on these walls? Just then her bobbed sisters walked up.

  “When Dad went to her apartment it was covered in beer bottles, you know Carmen.”

  I wanted to scream, “She can hear you and I will not say one word about her to you.”

  “Dad said there was a shoe box filled with samples of anti-depressants,” the girls said, and instantly I felt sick.

  “We know you knew her better than anyone. We wish we knew her like you did. We have some things for you from her apartment.”

  They handed me a stiff piece of watercolor paper. On one side, in Carmen’s handwriting in black paint, it read, I AM CARMEN 24 YEARS OLD TODAY JANUARY 6, 1994. NO JOB, NO CAREER, NO EDUCATION, BUT A WONDERFUL FRIEND LAUREN. On the other side was a watercolor painting in blues and greens with a sun in the distance, and blobs where it looked like tears had fallen.

  “You can take this, and here are some photos and notes from you that she kept. We are so sorry.” Then they hugged me, and I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  Turning around and looking up to see Jon’s face, I started sobbing again.

  He said, “She’d hate this party and these people and this whole thing. I gotta get out of here.” He was shaken to his core, and he was right. I wanted to run from that house as fast as I could.

  Driving home in silence, I prayed that a car would hit me. Please don’t spare me, please kill me now. I wanted to stop and write a note telling them where to bury us and to please put us together in our jammies.

  Pulling up to Mrs. Miller’s, the stabbing pain in my heart twisting tighter and tighter with each breath, I sat in the car, knowing I couldn’t see her or hear her voice. I turned around and drove to Ted’s parents’ house in Edmonds.

  “Every word out of everyone’s mouth is wrong and annoying, and I can’t see anyone – no one,” I told him in a monotone voice I didn’t recognize as my own.

  That night we stayed at Ted’s brother Marty’s house in Kirkland, they were out of the country for a month. With my things he’d collected from Mrs. Miller’s on the floor, I sat in the dark and prayed that the pain in my body would be bad enough to kill me.

  At school the next day, Colleen looked at me and said, “Where were you? Oh my God, are you OK?”

  “Funeral. No,” I said, not remembering how I’d gotten to school.

  “Who?”

  “Carmen,” and the tears streamed without stopping onto my tiny desk.

  “Oh my God.” She had heard about Carmen and knew she was like a sister to me.

  As I stood and stared straight ahead, hoping that class would finally end as Tom got up to grab our tests, she said, “Where are your pearls?”

  “Carmen’s borrowing them.”

  Colleen started to cry, leaving a stream of make-up on her cream sweater.

  Tom stood above me, patted my back, and said, “Nicely done,” as he put my test on my desk.

  I grabbed my test and threw it in the can as I walked out the door.

  Driving across the bridge as the water lapped over and smacked my windshield, I wished
it would knock my car off the bridge, drowning me in the lake beneath me. I opened the front door to Marty’s rambler and fell onto the mattress Ted had pulled into the living room. My eyes stinging, a gaping hole in my heart, each passing day the pain got deeper and deeper. Staring at the ceiling, tears welled up in my ears and onto the sheets as I thought, “Never ever. You’ll never pick up the phone and hear her voice again, never hear her laugh. What did it sound like? I need to hear her laugh.” Feeling more alone than I’d ever felt in my life, I knew I would drift away on my island and no one would ever find me again. I was lost at sea forever. Carmen was the only one who could really see into my soul. I only liked my reflection through her eyes. I’d never have another moment of happiness in my life, and I knew it. She’d killed us both.

  When I’d drift into sleep I’d see us: on Mandi’s hill in her Bug, as she taught me to drive a stick, on the dock with her head down and her arms in a V as she peeked through the hole and laughed and said, “We’re not going home ‘til I see you dive.” I felt us laying in bed together, laughing in our jammies as the sun came up and went down, then I’d be laying next to her in her coffin with the gray face and hands, puffy and frizzy and cold. I’d feel her, lifeless and freezing, not radiating anything but death, and I’d sit up and sob. It will never end. This will never ever end.

  Every day he’d say, “Need anything?”

  And every day, I would shake my head back and forth at him and fall back onto the mattress on the floor. Calling my mom on her birthday was my first call since the funeral.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “What do you mean? My best friend is dead.”

  “Wasn’t Mandi your best friend?” Mom said, and I hung up the phone.

  When the storm came and closed both bridges, leaving Ted stranded in Seattle, I knew he was dead too. When he walked in, hours late, relief washed over me, and I realized it was the only other emotion I’d felt in weeks. I started to fear that everyone around me would die and that Noah or Ted or my mom would be next. I couldn’t stop the world from spinning. As Ted sat and I lay on the mattress, surrounded by candles in Marty’s cold, dark house, I thought finally the world is reflecting how I feel. As the 90 mph winds ripped through Seattle, I hoped that this was the end.

  Chapter 33

  Sometimes We Have to Completely Break to Truly Come Back Together

  Racing across the bridge from a double at work, my shoulders felt like they were up to my ears, my feet too big for the shoes that were a perfect fit this morning. Of all days to be stuck in traffic on 520. My heart raced. With each passing moment, it felt harder and harder to breathe; my legs stuck to my seat as the air conditioning in my car seemed to blow hot air.

  As I sat on the stopped bridge, my mind was going in overdrive, spitting out list after list after list. I’d told Deanna I’d not only be there, but I’d help set up before her apartment-warming party that was all the way down off of East Lake in less than two hours. Fuck, now that I’m sweaty and sticky, showering is not an option. I pulled my mirror down to see what damage the humidity had done to my hair. Seeing Simba’s mane from The Lion King in my reflection, I slammed the mirror up so hard it was facing the ceiling. Now I’d have to wash my hair, too. I was ripped out of my frenzied state as the OIL, GAS, and Check Engine lights started flashing and dinging like a winning slot machine in Vegas. Looking down at the gas gauge shot terror into my already racing heart. I’d never actually seen the gauge below the orange empty area until now.

  After pumping the three dollars I found on the floor of my car and the bottom of my bag, I sped out of the 7-11 gas station and down to Mrs. Miller’s. Getting out of the car, the heat felt like opening an oven that was on broil. As I ran up the cement stairs, I tripped on one of the cat’s toys, and now both knees were bleeding, which I barely looked down at.

  The second the water touched my hair, I knew I should’ve just pulled it up into a bun. Now that it was wet, there was not going back, and panic set in. I stood in the tiny bathroom, dripping in steam and sweat under a hot dryer. My heart sank when I wiped the mirror off. I’d never seen my hair bigger or frizzier in my life. I ran out to my room and saw the clock that appeared to be screaming, you’re late! My heart rate jumped. Deanna needs me to help set up, she’s counting on me. I promised I’d be there since her shift at Beppo didn’t end until thirty minutes before her party started. I was supposed to have bought snacks, beer, and everything to make sangria and also have time to spruce up her tiny apartment. At this pace, I’d be late to the party myself.

  I ripped through my closet, all of my clothes were either dirty, or I hated them. I paced back and forth, bashing my toe into the steel foot of my bed, lifting my toenail up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I started ripping clothes off of hangers and throwing them across the room, handful after handful, pulling so hard that the wooden pole was bending. Tripping and stomping over the heap of clothes and hangers, I stumbled to my desk and pushed all of the framed pictures, textbooks, and stacks of paper onto the floor.

  I caught a glimpse of myself, my eyes narrow and darting, my face bright red, I punched the mirror in disgust. Glaring at my reflection with gritted teeth and a dry tongue, I screamed in a voice I’d never heard come out of me, “You stupid, ugly, idiot––look at you! Fat, disgusting, worthless bitch!” I pulled at my tangled hair as I continued to scream myself hoarse. I started smacking my cheek as hard as I could again and again uncontrollably, my hands and face stinging. In an instant, as if someone pulled the plug on the swirl of chaos and anger that was surging through my body, I dropped to the floor, onto a pile of clothes and paper. My body was limp, my mouth so dry it was hard to swallow. I started to feel the pain in my hands, face, scalp and throat. With my head face down in the mint green carpet, I started to sob and didn’t stop for what seemed like forever.

  With the enormity of what had just happened washing over me like a tidal wave, I pulled myself up from the carpet and brushed the tears from my face. I felt humbled and embarrassed. I realized that while in that state, there was no way I could have controlled myself, no matter what. I forced myself to swallow the jagged pill: had I been a mother, I may just have beat the life out of my kid. I started flashing back on all of my smug, judgmental thoughts: people need to educate themselves, they need to have control and not act like animals. How could a person hit a child, an animal? How? In that moment, for the first time, I knew.

  My entire life had been dedicated to controlling myself and my environment. With every thought, action, choice, I wanted – needed – to be different from my parents, who seemed to live on instinct, desire, and impulse. I had been watching the world around me since I was a baby, keeping a running list of exactly how I wanted to live, but more so, how I didn’t want to live. I’d educated myself by focusing all of my studies at the University of Washington on deviant behavior, crime, and sociology. I wanted to understand how and why people behaved how they did. I figured if I knew why I could help others. But deep inside, I wanted to know why so I could make sure I wouldn’t be-come one of those people. I had my dad’s deviant blood running through me, and I thought I’d done everything in my power to make sure that I didn’t turn into him: a self-indulgent, violent, lunatic. But, I just had.

  I questioned everything and felt a wave of empathy and compassion for my parents wash over me. I knew what it felt like, for the first time in my life, to be fueled by something outside of myself. To have something take over. To snap into auto pilot. In that moment, I realized that no matter how much I educated myself, no matter how badly I wanted to be different, no matter how many hours, days, years of list-making about the kind of person I wanted to be, in that moment where auto-pilot took over, I became what I had seen, heard, and felt for my entire life.

  I vowed that day that I’d never have kids, not until I could prove to myself that I could control the part of me that snapped from out of nowhere. In that moment, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep with the covers over
my head until the shame of what had just happened was wiped clean from my memory. Instead, I sat at my now empty desk, reached down to the floor for my notepad, and started to write, as fast as my hand would move. Mounting stress, feeling out of control, body stiffening, rapid breathing, dry mouth, pacing, stomping, screaming, world spinning, heart racing, pounding in my chest, teeth clenched, jaw tight, fists closed so tightly that my nails dug into my palms, eyes narrow and darting. I wracked my brain for every clue, every emotion I’d just felt, and wrote it down while it was still terrifyingly fresh, before any of it started to fade, before I could rationalize it away. When my body lost all steam, and my hand was cramping, I fell onto my bed and drifted into a middle state, the one before sleep. My mind was still too active to let go completely. I was afraid, too. Afraid that if I let myself fall asleep, somehow when I woke up, the beast would be gone, hidden inside, and I’d forever live in terror of when I’d see it again, when I’d lose it again, who I’d hurt next time. I had to be able to make sense of it all.

  I prayed and begged God to forgive me. I was afraid at first to talk to him at all, embarrassed and sad that He’d seen me that way. And in that moment of sadness, I felt like I was being wrapped in a warm blanket. I could feel God around me, but not like before. This time, it was a stronger grasp, almost physical. When I closed my eyes, I saw myself as if from above. I was walking along my favorite beach in Maui when I came upon a stream that had been carved out by the water above it and plopped down in the sand next to it. I felt like my entire life had been a blur and now, in this moment, in a place between day-dreaming and sleep, I could see it. I hovered over the mountains behind me and the ocean below, and I could see how the water coming down off the mountain and through the sand was creating a path. With every trickle, the path got deeper and deeper, reinforcing the now clear stream to the ocean.