Stone Angels

by Michael Hartigan

  Our motley crew fell into the elevator, and Lindsey hit the button for my floor with her elbow. I leaned back against the metal wall and propped Lily up on my knee. The doors closed and we swayed upwards.

  Lily’s head bounced around too much. The color, or what was left of color, in her face drained completely. Her light pink freckles dissolved. Her jaw drooped.

  Her dinner cascaded out onto the tiled elevator floor and splashed onto Lindsey’s ankles.

  Odysseus’ wax wouldn’t have been enough to muffle Lindsey’s scream. Lily’s full weight collapsed on my knee as Lindsey dropped the piece of Lily she was holding and scampered to the opposite elevator wall.

  I had to laugh; there was no other response, what with the dire straights of Lily’s health. She might not be conscious, but she still knew how to make me laugh.

  Lindsey grunted and huffed at her apparel’s misfortune.

  Our elevator stopped abruptly, the doors opened and I heaved Lily across the rug to my door. Lindsey refused to help and followed behind.

  “What in God’s name is that?” she said, as I reached my door.

  “Huh?” I pushed Lily against the door and leant my body against her to prevent sliding.

  Lindsey pointed at the floor and I followed her finger back to the elevator.

  “That black stuff on the floor. Did that come out of her?”

  Initially hadn’t looked at what Lily vomited in the elevator; I just assumed it was whatever she ate earlier mixed with a lot of booze and stomach fluids. I was wrong. A lumpy puddle of blackish-brown bile pooled on the elevator floor was spread in streaks across the rug where Lily’s feet dragged through the puddle and across to my door.

  Lindsey didn’t realize what was on her shoes and neither did I. I didn’t know what kind of bile came out of Lily, but I knew it was not normal.

  Lily’s head lolled over and her eyes opened. They were limes now, not emeralds. She seemed to be staring straight into me. I wiped some black drool from the corner of her mouth and she smacked her lips. She tried to say something, mumbling only syllables.

  “Shaw, that’s not normal,” Lindsey said. I barely heard her. I was fixed on Lily’s face. She was uttering nonsense but the color gradually left her eyes. The limes were graying. I pulled my sleeve over my hand and wiped her entire face, licking the cloth to wet it. I tried to clean her off. With each pass it was like I wiped her with grayscale. She grew more ashen than before. I was doing no good. I was not helping. I was not saving her.

  “Call an ambulance,” I yelled at Lindsey.

  “What?”

  “Call an ambulance,” I repeated as I lowered Lily to the ground and flung open my door. “Go in and call someone, now!”

  “What? No, why? She’s fine.”

  “Lindsey, what did I just say? Call the ambulance, call security, call an RA, I don’t care. Just get someone!”

  Lindsey wasn’t as worried as I was. But Lindsey didn’t watch the life drift out of Lily. Lindsey took a few steps toward my door and stopped.

  “But she’ll get in trouble,” she said.

  I flipped Lily over onto her side. She lay in the middle of the hallway and I knelt beside her, my hands cradling her still soft hair. But the red had faded and clumped in places were hunks of black bile and floor grime. Her face was smeared with the same sludge and debris from the house party floor, my dorm room floor and the generally disorganized walk. She was a tainted icon, a tarnished statue, perfection smeared.

  “You really think getting in trouble matters right now, Lindsey?” I said angrily.

  “I’m not going to call security and have them write up my best friend for nothing and get her in trouble. She could lose her scholarship or her student government position or something.”

  “We are going to lose her! I can’t save her!”

  My hands trembled underneath Lily’s head. The horror of the situation revealed itself to Lindsey all at once. She leapt over us, Lily on her side across the threshold of my doorway and me, shaking and rocking back and forth on my knees.

  Lindsey was in my room calling Security and the EMTs.

  “I couldn’t save you,” I whispered uncontrollably to Lily. “I tried to but I couldn’t save you. I tried, Lily, I tried. I can’t save you. I just don’t know how.”

  A security guard, the same one from earlier in the SUV, showed up within five minutes escorting an EMT.

  They knew as soon as they saw her. I could tell by the way they quickened their pace and stopped chatting airily about some ballgame.

  Immediately the first EMT radioed out to the awaiting ambulance. Within a minute a second EMT and a second security guard wheeled a stretcher out of the elevator onto my floor.

  “Is that from her?” the second EMT asked as he pushed the stretcher through a puddle of black bile. I nodded. The EMTs nodded to each other.

  “Come on, son, stand over here with me,” the second, older security guard said. I was still cradling Lily’s head and the EMTs obviously needed me out of the way. “She’ll be fine, son, come over here.”

  I looked down into her eyes for the last time. There was a momentary flash of green flame before the lids closed. Something inside me slammed shut as well. I ran my fingers through her hair and gently lowered her head to the floor.

  The EMTs were asking questions but I could barely hear them. Lindsey came out from my room and gently pushed me to the side. She willingly took the brunt of the interrogation.

  They took Lily down in the elevator. I couldn’t fit so I walked down the stairs like a zombie. By the time I got outside the second EMT was slamming the ambulance door shut and ran to hop into the driver’s seat. I stood in the doorway alone and watched the boxy white ambulance pull off the grass and into the Quad’s roundabout then down the driveway to the campus exit. The ambulance’s exhaust smoke lingered and wisped around in the brisk March air, visibly and playfully rising into the night sky like a wild specter searching for its final rest.

  Lily died in the hospital that night during the stomach pump. We didn’t find out until the next morning when the old security guard called my room. The phone call woke Lindsey up. I had been awake for some time. She and I had both fallen asleep almost immediately after the EMTs screeched away. We lay close together atop my comforter, still in the same soiled clothes we wore the night before.

  Doctor’s blamed alcohol poisoning; she had way too much. Her blood alcohol content was over 0.20. But there was something else, the distinct possibility of foreign substances in her system. Someone probably put something in one or maybe more of her drinks: a date rape drug or some bad ecstasy or something else. There were no details, other than whatever it was, it was bad and a virgin user like Lily would have almost inevitably had an adverse reaction. They would have to do tests to find out exactly what illicit substance it was that counteracted the incredible amount of booze she drank.

  But at the one-year anniversary of Lily’s death, none of us on campus had ever heard of any test results, or been told the truth.

  As much as I had tried to be like the stoic, stone angels encircling the campus chapel, for Lily I had succeeded in becoming nothing more than an angel of death.

  Chapter 13

  It rained the morning of Lily’s funeral, but only while people filed into the church. The girls cried. I even saw Shoddy wipe something out of his eye during the eulogy, given by Lily’s father. Shoddy kept putting his hand on my shoulder asking if I was doing ok. I never responded to him and, overall, I said very little that day. I didn’t feel like talking.

  By the time we reached the cemetery, the rain cleared and it became a crisp, slightly overcast March day.

  I placed twelve white lilies on her grave. Shoddy, Lindsey, Emily and two busloads of students, teachers and faculty had gone to Connecticut for the ceremony.

  Lily’s parents introduced themselves to me and thanked Lindsey and I for our efforts to help. Lily must have talked about me at home because her mother hugged me and did n
ot let go, like I was family.

  We drove back to Providence in a silence.

  One month after she died, and every thirteenth day of every month thereafter, I drove to Lyme, Connecticut to Riverside Hill Cemetery. I always went alone. I never spoke. I never cried. Eleven times I stood in front of her, placed a bouquet of white lilies on top of the gravestone and did nothing. My mind was usually empty. My breaths were even. After five, ten or thirty minutes—I never kept track—I would get back in my Explorer and drive back to Providence.

  I always listened to the same CD on the ride back, the Refreshments CD Lily and I bought at the mall. But I barely ever heard the music.

  For the year after Lily’s death a menacing blade of guilt swung over my head, its rope fraying by the day. I hemorrhaged any emotions she had cultivated in me.

  My friends bore the brunt of it, mostly Lindsey. What she wanted, what she deserved I could no longer give her. I pretended, but any love I had to give went the way of Lily’s last breaths, intermingling with the ambulance muffler’s exhaust rising into the cool March night.

  Everything went behind the wall in my head, which had been braced and solidified. I learned to feign things like fun, excitement and desire. Internally I was numb: numb from the pain, numb from the guilt. I urged Lily to drink more that night. I made the choice to carry her across campus. I could have called an ambulance right there at the house party. But I was selfish. I wanted to save her. I tried to be in control when all the circumstances were spiraling wildly the other direction.

  Was there something in her drink, roofies or something more sinister? Maybe. Probably. But I was the one who challenged her to consume more booze. It was my responsibility to keep watch, to prevent such evils from intruding upon my friends.

  I was mostly numb inside from knowing that someday the guilt would overcome me. When it did, there would be a shockwave. There would be consequences.

  Chapter 14

  I had been told my whole life, in various formats and from various optimists, about true love. From Hallmark to HBO, my parents to rock and roll, my brain was inundated with that age-old idea that a soul mate was lurking out there in the world just waiting to be serendipitously bumped into on a subway.

  The problem is, when it happens, how do we know we got it right? Or that we didn’t?

  We tend to rely on two interdependent things: instinct and feedback. The former comes from us; the latter is frequently in the form of our closest friend. In my young life I found that unless both of those things match up, you could put ten bucks on things not working out. Sometimes we use our own thoughts to justify the opinions of our friend. But sometimes the two come together independent of one another. Thus begging the question, which person is really your soul mate?

  When Marcus Shodowski arrived on campus after transferring from a university in New Hampshire, everyone called him by his full last name. He showed up right out of a Nirvana music video. His longish blonde hair fell over his face. He had an extensive collection of old t-shirts that he frequently wore underneath button-downs and not tucked into faded jeans. At 5 foot 11 inches he was slightly taller than I was as a freshman. He wasn’t much of a gym guy but he was in good shape—Shoddy liked to workout in his room, following a routine of pushups and sit-ups his older brother created. Despite that he had a genetically round face and a slightly crooked Polish nose.

  When he arrived that first year Shoddy was technically a sophomore. But many of his credits wouldn’t transfer, basically making him a freshman all over again. Had he stayed up north he would have graduated a year before I did. His move south allowed him to essentially spend an extra year in college and he would be graduating with my class. He started the year living in our freshman-only dorm building, a few rooms away from me and my two freshman year roommates, Ben and Duncan. Shoddy moved into my room about midway through that year when he and Duncan switched places.

  I was in my room alone studying one Friday night in October of freshman year when Lindsey showed up and called me a dork. She had with her seven cans of Milwaukee’s Best, Twister and her roommate, Emily. I tossed my Intro to Psychology book up into the elevated bed above my desk and dug out the half empty bottle of Bacardi Limon my older cousin gave me as a going-to-college present.

  Seven Milwaukee’s Best and three shots of rum later I was spinning while two drunken girls reached for left foot green. Not a bad Friday night, considering it started off prepping for a Psych midterm.

  I remember yelling, “Right hand red!” just as my mostly-closed dorm room door swung open and crashed off the yellowing concrete wall.

  Shoddy stumbled in and spilled onto the couch.

  “Dude,” he said very close to my face, “I called you earlier to go out.”

  He had called me earlier. I never answered.

  Prior to that call, my experience with Shoddy was limited to Psychology class. In the first two months of school we never spent time together elsewhere, despite our close living proximity. In class, though, Shoddy and I were a tag-team.

  Our psychology professor was fond of the pop-quiz method. Shoddy frequently questioned his motives. On one such occasion, when the professor surprised us with a quiz, Shoddy leaned over to me, leaving plenty of space for his words to easily escape privacy. He loudly expressed his theory on the teacher’s sadistic love for student failure. A nervous chuckle rustled through the classroom, eliciting a smirk from the teacher. The professor had a student pass out the quizzes but personally delivered one to Shoddy.

  “We’re going to discuss altruism,” our professor said at the outset of class the next day. “It’s part of a small section in the next chapter, which we weren’t scheduled to start until next week. It’s a bit ahead of where we are supposed to be. But since Mr. Shodowski insisted upon questioning my motives, I think we can take a few moments to delve into psychological theory. What do you think?” Even though his gaze rested on the class as a whole, his words snaked directly towards Shoddy.

  “Now, Mr. Shodowski,” he continued, not waiting for a response. “Yesterday you mumbled under your breath that I enjoyed seeing you all suffer at the hands of my little pop-quiz. I would argue that I actually did it for quite opposite reasons. I administered such a task out of the goodness of my heart and only want the best for all you. In fact, it creates more work for me, so it was a totally selfless act. It was altruism.”

  Shoddy and I were the only ones who chuckled. I decided to defend him.

  “There is no altruism, professor,” I said without raising my hand. A girl across the room asked the professor to explain altruism. Again, Shoddy and I were the only two who chuckled.

  “Let’s say I’m walking by a rushing rapid river one stormy afternoon and I spot someone splashing around and calling for help in the water. I feel like I should do something so I dive in, despite the incredible danger to my own wellbeing and save the drowning person. Some might say that was an altruistic act, a totally unselfish action,” he explained.

  “Others,” he nodded in my direction, “would disagree that anyone can ever be truly altruistic and that all actions have some selfish benefit, whether it be consciously or unconsciously known to the Good Samaritan.”

  “That’s just stupid,” the girl said. “Of course people do good deeds without benefit to themselves. You jumped in the river and could have died, what’s more selfless than putting your own life at risk to save another?”

  I had a psychology class and a philosophy class in high school. I had done my reading. And I was cynical and ready to pick a fight. I raised my hand.

  “Shaw?”

  “Like I said, there is no altruism. You made the point yourself, professor. You felt like you should do something. Let me ask you, when you emerged from the water in this hypothetical scenario, did you still feel like you needed to do something?”

  The professor smiled. He knew where I was going and apparently he enjoyed the freethinking debate.

  “No, of course not,” he said matter-of-fa
ctly.

  “And when you said you, ‘felt like you should do something,’ was that feeling making you uncomfortable?”

  “Well, I suppose so.”

  I aimed my next question at the girl across the room, who was now sighing.

  “What about you, if you were in the same position, how would you feel as soon as you saw the person drowning?”

  “It would make me sad,” she replied curtly.

  “So, you wouldn’t like that feeling?”

  “Obviously not.”

  Shoddy jumped in. He also knew where I was going.

  “Then that proves altruism doesn’t exist,” he said. “End of story, can we get out early Prof?”

  “Maybe you should explain yourself for Ms. Brant, first,” the professor said.

  “The simple fact that you felt discomfort over what you saw and then you acted to remove that discomfort proves that your action was definitely not totally selfless,” Shoddy explained.

  “Whether you knew it or not,” I said, “you jumped in that river because you had a bad feeling in your gut and you wanted it to go away.”

  The girl across the room had her mouth wide open. The professor was still smiling.

  “Not bad, gentlemen. Cynical beyond anything I’ve heard in a while, but not a bad argument.”

  “Yea, cynical is putting it mildly,” Ms. Kerry Brant huffed from across the room. “Do you two have any sort of faith in humanity?”

  “No, especially not when I’m looking at you. Since you’re being all high and mighty and last weekend I saw you leave a house party with three hockey players and one of ‘em had his hand up your . . . ” Shoddy started to say. I cut him off before he could get himself in trouble.

  “What he means is that even though altruism doesn’t exist, that doesn’t take away from the fact that a good deed was done. So what does motivation matter?”

  “Shoddy, go to Hell. Shaw, I’m sure he’ll save you a seat down there,” she rebutted. “So for you two, the end justifies the means? Yea, that’s made a ton of sense in the past.”