Speak of Me As I Am

by Sonia Belasco

  “I can do this,” I say. “I want to do this part.”

  I need to do this part.

  Mrs. McAvoy places one hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “All right. Let’s do it then. And Damon?”

  I glance back at her.

  “If you ever need to talk,” she says, “you let me know.”

  The truth is I want to talk to Melanie, even though I don’t know exactly what I’d say. But that doesn’t feel like an option right now. Not yet.

  Everyone tiptoes around me throughout the rehearsal, glancing at me with wary eyes as if I’m some kind of wild animal who might attack at the slightest provocation. It reminds me of the way people looked at me at Carlos’s funeral: sidelong glances stolen between eulogies and prayer, everyone apologetic and confused. There’s the boy . . . there’s Carlos’s friend. That day I couldn’t even cry. The loss was too recent, too raw. The world felt darker, and every touch and hug and comforting word felt like a lie, unfair and undeserved.

  That’s he that was Othello. Here I am. . . .

  I am not sorry neither. I’d have thee live,

  For in my sense ’tis happiness to die.

  I remember my lines and blocking, but everything blurs during the final scenes. My mind goes milky blank and each motion is studied, a sequence of actions, a line said. When the words are out in the air I’m glad to be rid of them. I collapse in feigned death and don’t rise until I feel Lacey’s hand on my arm. She’s looking down at me, lips curved into a frown.

  “You’re amazing,” Lacey says.

  “Thank you,” I say, and wish I felt grateful or proud.

  • • •

  The next day is Friday, and we have no rehearsal. I’m about to head home for a long, exciting evening of nothing when my phone buzzes at my hip. I swipe it open to see the text: you got plans?

  It’s from Tristan. At first I think: No, too tired, but then I realize that being around Tristan never makes me feel tired—quite the opposite, in fact, because Tristan has enough energy for ten people. Tristan is exactly the person I need to see.

  not really, I text back, and get a smiley face in return, along with: let’s do something then. meet me out front, 15 min.

  Tristan tumbles out of the school doors a few minutes later, looking quite dapper in his well-fitting gray dress pants and collared shirt.

  “You’re very dressed up,” I say.

  “I’m in rebound wear,” Tristan says. He hitches his backpack up on his shoulder and frowns. “Let’s go to my house.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good—”

  “Whatever.” Tristan waves me off. “My dad will probably be thrilled I have a guy over I’m not trying to fuck, and you’re very butch.”

  “More butch than Bryan?” I ask.

  “Point,” Tristan says. “But the truth is nobody’s home most of the time, and my house is bananas. You’ll love it.”

  Tristan’s house is indeed bananas. Many of the houses in Tenleytown are modest and small, vestiges of an earlier era when the population was more working class than white collar. These days it skews toward upper middle class, part of D.C.’s gentrification. This basically means families pay more money for the same tiny houses.

  Tristan’s house, however, is not tiny. It’s huge, with giant white columns out front and lots of stacked red brick. When Tristan pushes open the creaky, towering front door he reveals a hallway tiled with what looks to be marble, and everything—everything—matches. Beige walls, beige couch, beige curtains. I feel like I am actually standing inside a pair of khakis.

  “My mother had money,” Tristan says flatly.

  “And your dad works for the government?” I ask.

  “Senate, a legislative assistant,” Tristan says. “He, like, helps make laws or something. But he doesn’t make that much money, relatively speaking. Most staffers don’t. It’s mostly my mother.”

  “So why do you go to—”

  “Public school?” Tristan tosses his backpack onto a chair and gestures for me to do the same. I carefully lower my bag to the floor. “It has a lot do with Melanie’s mother, actually.”

  Tristan leads me into a cavernous kitchen with dark granite countertops and wrenches open the fridge.

  “A glass of chardonnay would be lovely, thanks,” I jest, and Tristan shoots me an evil look over his shoulder.

  “You don’t know how many times I’ve considered that over the last few weeks,” Tristan says. “But being drunk doesn’t usually work out that well for me. I get really sad or slutty, or slutty, then sad . . . it’s a bad situation. In that way I may be more like Michael Cassio than I’d like, to be honest. ‘O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!’”

  “Sounds dangerous,” I say. “I’ll have a glass of water if you can spare one.”

  “I can indeed,” Tristan says, and pours me a glass from a Brita filter.

  “So what did Melanie’s mother have to do with you being in public school?”

  “She was a teacher, you know: art. She always taught in the public schools. At first my parents put me in public elementary school because they were like, ‘It’s little kids and learning their letters, how could they screw it up?’ Also, my dad’s sort of a cheapskate. But they were going to switch me into private school for middle school and her mother was like, ‘You should keep him in public school, it’d be making a statement.’” Tristan closes the fridge door and hops up on a bar stool. “My dad likes making statements.”

  “That did it, huh?” I say.

  “Well, she convinced him it would be a big deal because nobody on the Hill sends their kids to public school,” Tristan says. “I didn’t complain because it meant I got to stay in school with Melanie.”

  “Melanie hasn’t told me much about her mom,” I say.

  “I think it’s hard for her to talk about it,” Tristan says. “She’s good at hiding it, but she’s in a pretty shitty place right now.”

  I swallow.

  “You and Melanie have been friends forever,” I observe.

  “Forever and ever.” Tristan takes a sip from his own can of Coke.

  “She loves you a lot,” I say.

  Tristan’s face softens. “I love her a lot too. She likes you too, you know. A lot.”

  “I do know,” I say. “And I like her. Maybe more than she knows.”

  “If you’re trying to get me to tell you how to make up with her, I can’t,” Tristan says, fixing me with a steady gaze. “I will say that if you like her, you should tell her. She’s really confused on that front right now.”

  I feel like such an asshole. I’m sorry, I want to tell her. I’m sorry I’m so fucked up. I wish I wasn’t. I wish you hadn’t been standing so close.

  I can feel my hand shaking. I set down my glass.

  “I had this friend,” I say. “We were really close, like we never had to explain anything to each other. You know?”

  Tristan’s eyes are bright. “Yeah, absolutely.”

  I stop and take a sip of water to have something to do.

  “And you had to change schools?” Tristan says. “That sucks, not getting to see him as much.”

  “He died,” I say.

  Anytime I say that—and now I’ve said it exactly twice—it feels wrong. It’s so passive. He died. Like he just lay down and went to sleep and wasn’t around anymore. That’s not what it was at all. He took his own life. Like Othello. Claimed it. Took it away.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tristan says.

  He rises from the stool and closes the distance between us, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me into a hug. I’m not usually terribly touchy-feely, but for some reason I don’t ever want to say no to Tristan. There’s something completely honest about Tristan’s affection, like he just wants to give it, and doesn’t expect or need
anything in return.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Tristan says, “but I’m still sorry.”

  Me and Tristan hang out until late in the evening, sprawled out on the huge leather couch in the pristine living room, watching horror movies and eating popcorn and getting it everywhere. Tristan is positively gleeful about making a mess. He’s also the most entertaining person to watch horror movies with, ever. He makes bitchy comments about everyone’s clothes and throws things at the screen when people do dumb stuff like creep down into dark basements by themselves or take long, suspenseful walks through abandoned buildings.

  “Why would you do that?” Tristan yelps. “There is practically a sign on the door of that house that says, ‘I’m keeping a serial killer in my closet. Ask me how!’”

  “I can’t tell whether it’s more or less stressful watching horror movies with you,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, I’m really committed,” Tristan says around a full mouthful of popcorn, and grins.

  • • •

  I wake up late the next morning and find a new text from Tristan. thanks for protecting me from the monsters, it says, and is followed by a trail of tiny smiley faces. I want to tell Tristan that he’s the one protecting me from my monsters, but I think, Not yet. Instead I text back: anytime, buddy, and turn my phone off.

  I find the bedrooms and the kitchen empty—not everyone is as lazy as I am on Saturday morning, it appears—and leave a note on the kitchen table that says, Be back later, gone out for walk.—D.

  And then I do just that—I walk. The second my feet touch pavement I know where I have to go.

  As long as I allow myself to be afraid, this play will always be my own personal horror movie: scripted, overwrought and filled with inevitable terror. There is only one way for me to own that stage and command it so I can tell Othello’s story, and that’s for me to feel comfortable on it. This means spending time there, more time than rehearsal provides.

  It’s a Saturday, but there are sports events and meetings on weekends. The school doors are open when I get there. The auditorium doors are unlocked too. There’s nobody inside. My steps echo on the wood as I walk across the stage, pacing it, feeling it under my feet.

  Carlos, man. Help me out.

  But Carlos isn’t there, not even in ghostly form. I’m alone up there on that stage.

  I’m alone.

  This is what Othello felt too. The isolation, the betrayal, the strangeness.

  I wander backstage and stand in front of the backdrop of the castle, staring at the stone walls and spires and turrets. I don’t know if this is what a castle in Venice would have looked like back then, but then again, Shakespeare probably wouldn’t have known either. The man constantly wrote about foreign lands he’d never seen. Writing about places he’d never been must have been a bit like acting out things he’d never done: The real comes from realizing there is a bit of everything in everything, a drop of everywhere in everywhere else.

  I stare at the scenery, narrowing my eyes, and the castle walls smear and blur gray, so gray, they’re almost green. The longer I stare, the more the images transform before my eyes, and I wonder if that’s what this feeling is: the vertigo that comes from looking at something so long and so hard, I can no longer see it.

  The scenery looks different today. I squint. It always looks different, evolving each time I look at it, gaining dimension and color and levels, but this time—

  Something has been added. Something is new—

  I reach out and trace my fingers over a gnarled tree, branches webbed together like tangled fingers, twisted and twined but beautiful. It looks like the tree in the—

  My heartbeat quickens.

  No. No, she didn’t.

  But Melanie did. In one corner of the backdrop, tucked away so it’s barely noticeable, is an exact replica of that spot in Rock Creek Park. The spot where I took her when we were just beginning to get to know each other, the spot where she first told me about her mother dying, the spot where I told her that Carlos was dead.

  The spot where I first saw Melanie. The spot where—

  When you shall these unlucky deeds relate—

  I breathe.

  That tree has seen a lot of comings and goings. Many people have passed under it, walked by it, spent hours talking near it. I forget that, sometimes: how many people came before.

  Melanie. Melanie was one of those people.

  I look around the theater, so dusty quiet. There is nothing here but air and silence, and nowhere to go but the one place I always do.

  • • •

  The spot in Rock Creek Park is the same as when we were here a few weeks ago: quietly lovely, branches waving gently with the late afternoon breeze. The sun is low in the sky and it’s shadowy under the trees, dark and waning light crisscrossing the mossy green.

  There I am. And there she is too.

  “Melanie,” I say.

  Her head jerks up. “Oh. Hi.”

  “Did we—”

  I almost say “make plans,” but I know that’s not right. This is one of the things I love most about being with Melanie: how wherever we look, we keep finding each other.

  I want to touch her. I want to hug her, and I wonder why it’s so much harder for me to do that with Melanie than with Tristan. Maybe because both me and Melanie wear such thick, metal-plated armor. No give.

  But I’m ready to give.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m kind of fucked up.”

  Melanie looks up, and there’s a bit of a smile in her eyes. “You think?”

  “A little,” I say. I lift my hand and pinch my fingers together, leaving about a half inch of space between them. “This much.”

  “I think we’re both fucked up,” Melanie says. “I think . . .”

  She pauses, scratching the back of her wrist.

  “The scenery,” I say. “You painted—”

  “Yeah,” Melanie says. She gestures up to the tree. “Look close. That’s what you said. Right?”

  She listened.

  She wants to listen.

  Carlos left me his pictures. He left me the pictures I put up on my wall, but he left me other ones too.

  He left me one picture I will never stop seeing, and it exists only in my mind.

  Maybe it needs to exist elsewhere too.

  Secrets can be safe, yes. I can keep them shut up inside in boxes fitted with a thousand locks. I can pretend. But what good is that? No matter how many locks I use, they’re still there, dormant and waiting, like those photographs in that box. Still there, even if no one ever sees them.

  I think of a fortune I received at a Chinese restaurant one week after Carlos died: Ships in the harbor are safe, but that is not what ships are for.

  “I think you should talk to me about Carlos,” she says.

  My first thought is, Oh God, she knows. How does she know?

  But then I realize, no, no. She means—she means my dead friend, the friend I lost. Passive. Because this is what she already knows.

  I did not lose him, and I do not want to let him go.

  “Carlos killed himself,” I say.

  Melanie gazes at me with wide eyes. “He—Carlos killed himself?”

  I can’t say it again. I sit down on a mossy tree stump and bury my head in my hands.

  I can feel Melanie beside me, her hand flat between my shoulder blades. “Damon, please keep talking. Please?”

  I think of all the times, in this spot, that I’ve come to talk to Carlos, to ask him questions. But Carlos never cared that much about words. He wanted pictures. He wanted it right in front of him: no filters, no lies.

  But pictures can hide too, push something out of the frame, edit it out. Pictures are puzzle pieces, and sometimes they don’t fit together. Sometimes they are just
pieces, fragments without a frame, and sometimes we look and we don’t see.

  “We were supposed to hang out that night,” I say. “But he called me and he was acting all weird, talking about how he was dizzy, how he couldn’t see, and I—I tried to find him. I went everywhere I could think to go, and I kept calling him, and I got through but he wouldn’t tell me where he was, and then I lost the signal, and when I finally got it back . . .”

  I stop. This. This is the part of the story I’ve never told, never said out loud. This is the part of the conversation I’ve never even had with ghost Carlos, because I was afraid.

  “I went to his house and I found this stuff in his room,” I say. “His camera and a box of photos, and I took them. Carlos used to say: Photos are stories, man, they’re what we leave behind. And I’d say that was morbid, that he shouldn’t talk like that, that we were young and shouldn’t be thinking about our . . . legacy or whatever. He’d get angry, tell me I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.”

  I sigh. I can feel Melanie’s fingertips press into the back of my neck.

  “He was right,” I say. “I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.”

  I’m silent for a moment, my thoughts melting together in my mind.

  “But when you tried to call again, you couldn’t get through?” she prods.

  “No, I did get through,” I say. “I had all this shit going through my head, crisis training and first aid and I don’t even know what else, and all he said was, ‘I’m in the park, come to the park.’ And I knew. There was this place we used to go sometimes after crew practice. It was beautiful, quiet and green and the opposite of the city and—”

  “It was here,” Melanie says suddenly. “You came here.”

  Now. Now she knows.

  A bird flies overhead, its cry hollow and sad. I can hear the whir of traffic. No matter where you go, other people are never that far away.

  I take in a deep breath.

  “I went to the park,” I say. “It was raining, and I ran and ran, and I tried to keep talking to him, tried to keep him on the line. He kept drifting in and out, saying crazy stuff like, ‘I don’t need this, I don’t need you, I don’t need you.’ It was like talking to a wall, because he didn’t give a shit what I said.”