He didn’t answer. He locked himself in the bathroom for a while and then went back to sleep.
NATE WAS SUPPOSED to leave before eight most days, eight thirty after a big night. But after the wedding, that whole week, he was late.
“Don’t you have to go to work?” I said on Wednesday.
“I’m on a personal morning.”
“Again?”
“Yep.”
He looked thin to me, gaunt around his jawline. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his hair, which seemed to need a wash, was sticking out on the left side.
“Are you still sick?”
“Did you see her last night?” he said.
“Sabine? Did she come by?”
“Mom.”
I must have misheard him. I checked the coffee machine. He hadn’t made any yet. Despite all his time in bed, he seemed to be sleeping even less than usual. The puffs beneath his eyes were colored as if he’d been punched a few times.
“She smelled like vanilla,” he said.
I looked at him. I didn’t remember telling him that. He was so small when she died, Velcro shoes.
“I wanted to talk to her,” he said. “But she wouldn’t answer.”
Would she even have recognized him? I needed caffeine, but there weren’t enough beans for a pot, a couple of cups at most, if I made it weak.
“I thought you wanted to hospitalize me the last time I said that.”
He looked away, somewhere beyond the window. I couldn’t track his gaze.
“But then I guess you did allow for the possibility, that time with the Lucky Charms. So this is kind of huge, isn’t it? You actually think you saw her? What happened?”
“It was only half a second,” he said. “Less than that. But the air felt strange. Did she speak to you at all?”
It would have been a fitting time for her to appear to both of us, to whisper something profound that could set Nate back on track, but all we could hear was the churning of the machine.
“Never,” I said.
“I’m not sure it was her,” he said. “How can you be sure of anything these days?”
He was drifting around the room like a deflating balloon, like all the life were leaking out of him.
“We know what we feel, right?” I said. “We can trust the vibration.”
“I never felt her before last night,” he said. “Not even when I tried.”
“You tried?”
“After Dad told us she wasn’t coming back.”
“You remember that?”
“You don’t forget shit like that. I prayed every night. She never came.”
“Maybe you just weren’t ready to see her before.”
“Why now then? Why here?”
“Comfort maybe. Knowing that we’re not alone without Dad?”
“That’s some bullshit,” he said, returning to his area. “It has to be more than that.”
“She worried a lot, like you do. Maybe she was just checking in.”
He didn’t answer. I wished I had something more insightful to say, but I didn’t, so I left him alone. I couldn’t decide if his seeing her was a good or bad sign.
WHEN I HEARD a creaking noise in the living room much later that night, the hardwood floor moving, I hoped it was Mom. But when I realized it wasn’t, I assumed it was Harry chasing after something.
“Harry?” I called.
“He’s under the bed,” Nate said.
Nate was on his back, his feet tucked beneath the TV stand. He was dripping with sweat, his shirt soaked through to his ribs, pressing against his chest as he finished what looked like an eight hundredth sit-up.
I watched him for a minute, the veins in his arms protruding.
“Did I wake you?” he said.
“Not really.”
He pulled out some free weights from the corner and started lifting with the left arm, slow and steady pulls. Could veins burst? He was sweating, and reddening—a lot.
“Nate?” He had the bigger weight in his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just give me a sec—actually, no, come here. Can you hold this for me?”
I tried to help him lift it from his chest. It worked for a second, but then he started giving it up entirely, and I couldn’t take it, so it slammed to the floor.
He was out of breath, consumed. I looked at him, the bones of him, and remembered how he used to be so solid.
THE NEXT THREE DAYS in a row, he called in sick.
I attempted talking to him, he answered in short utterances; offering him food, he wasn’t hungry; bringing him his guitar, he wasn’t in the mood, not for anything. It was growing unbearable—watching him laze away the days, his underarms yellowing, his face peeling from the ashy undertones of his skin. I offered him moisturizer; he wouldn’t take it. And then he wouldn’t leave his bed.
I knew what this was. I had been here before when I was depressed. Those days when forming simple sentences felt like work, when the thought of getting dressed was too grueling, when the specter of hopelessness clouded every muddled thought. When I was convinced I would never feel any better. Those days were excruciating.
But those days had nothing to do with Nate.
It occurred to me that maybe the real Nate had swooped in earlier and left this pod in his place so he could go off and fulfill some greater mission. How could we know we weren’t living as brains in vats somewhere else anyway? How could I know this person in his bed wasn’t Nate’s vat come undone?
“Do you believe in the Matrix?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
He wouldn’t pick up his phone either, no matter how many times it rang.
“Do you want me to get it?” I said. “I can tell them to stop calling.”
He didn’t say no.
It was Sabine.
“I need help,” I said. “I mean he needs help, but I’m not sure how. He seems broken. Did you do this? It’s okay if you did, but can you fix him? He’s not acting like himself.”
She was quiet on the other end.
“Are you there?” I said.
“He hasn’t been himself for a long time,” she finally said. “I was just calling to make sure he’s okay.”
“Well, he’s not, actually. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what? Did you guys have a fight? I think you should talk. Do you want to come over? I’m sure he’d like to see you. I could make brownies. Or you could, if you wanted. I could make tea.”
“Lucy,” she said, “this isn’t about one fight.”
“What is it about then?”
“This is about a fundamental shift in his being. When I first met him, he was so sweet and fun and thoughtful. But he was also so focused. You don’t understand. He was full of all of these plans and ideas. Goals.”
“He’ll have those again. You can’t blame him for having to change course.”
“No,” she said. “You’re right. I can’t blame him for any of it.”
“So help him. Please! Make him right again.”
“He needs more help than I can give him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know it seems like this is my fault, but—this is bigger than me. He knows that. And I have my own issues to deal with.”
She was sniffling on the other end. I could hear her.
“So that’s it?”
She took a minute.
“I just wanted to know that he was okay,” she said. “Can you tell him that?”
“But he’s not okay!”
I could hear her breathing.
“He’s stronger than he thinks,” she said. “When he’s ready, he’ll know what to do.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have to go.”
I had a vision of Nate and me together then, two shrunken corpses on the couch, our bodies sticking to the fabric, sparse hair falling from our head, Harry squished between us. We wouldn’t make it like this.
<
br /> “Sabine called,” I said.
I heard him rustle in his bed, but he didn’t get up.
“She said she’s sorry, and that she hopes you’re okay. Do you want me to call someone else? Byron?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t tell you to answer my phone.”
He got up from bed abruptly then and got in my face. “I can’t have you touching my stuff. Do you understand that?”
I backed away. This wasn’t the brother I knew.
“I was trying to help you,” I said.
“You want to help me?”
“Yes! I do.”
“Fine. Then how about you leave me the fuck alone and give me my space.”
I knew I couldn’t keep my voice calm if I wanted to stave off the tears, so I grabbed my keys, and I started walking.
He didn’t try to stop me.
For some reason, I couldn’t get Mexico out of my head. My mind kept returning to the story of these two trees that were everywhere in that country, the Chechen and the Chaca—one with a poison, one with the remedy. We must have heard the same story seven times, but the way I liked it told best was by an animated tour guide in a forest. He was a natural storyteller who wasn’t afraid to whisper or to shout to please the crowd. He told us that the Mayan legend posited that the trees were once brothers. One of them, a guy who had been scorned, was evil, and the other one, a guy who had everything, was noble. When the evil one was spurned by the woman he loved, he decided to kill himself and cast some spell so he could become a poisonous tree and hurt people for eternity the way he’d been hurt by his lover. But then the moral brother got wind of this and decided that he should kill himself too, and cast a spell so that he could become a tree that would act as a remedy to his brother’s poison.
They were reincarnated in all of these forests, all over the place. And they could always be found within a few feet of each other, so one would always be around to ensure the other one wasn’t doing too much damage.
If we were trees, I wondered which was which.
24
WHEN I STEPPED INTO THE COFFEE SHOP, NATE SLIPPED MY mind for a moment. I’d been thinking about him so much that I forgot about everything else.
After I had my first taste of the house blend, I noticed the way my seat in the back seemed curved the way I’d left it, how the light bounced off the front leg, and the music sailed past. I was beginning to get used to the song rotation there—Jazz Legends Volumes I through IV—and I recognized a couple of the people who came in for to-go cups. It was comfortable, and I felt a little better.
When Enid arrived, I was thrilled to see her.
“You ready to work on Belle?” she said as she pulled up a chair to my table.
“Yes!”
Belle was exactly what I needed then, though I was pretty sure the vague drawings I’d done when she first mentioned the dog were in the sketchbook I’d left in the apartment.
“I’ll tell you something,” she said, drumming the table. “The best things in life always leave before you’re ready.”
I waited for her to say more, but she only sipped her tea.
“You mean the dog?”
She nodded. “That’s why we need to do this today.”
I examined her face. No muscles were drooping, no signs of tremors in her limbs, no yellowing in the eyes. Still, her lips appeared especially wrinkled that day, as though they wished to hide inside her mouth. Too wrinkled to kiss or sip or whistle. I wondered if she used to smoke, or sing, or blow bubbles in her chewing gum. Was she a good dancer? If only I could’ve reached inside her mouth to extract her history.
She looked so shriveled as she sat there, washed out as though her face were going to fade into the white of her hair. I wanted to take a paintbrush to her skin and fill in her crevices with putty. I’d color her hair platinum blond, or black, or fuchsia, to match her lips. She must have been pretty. She’d said that once. A knockout.
“You’re not dying are you, because I don’t think I could handle that right now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m healthier than you are. I told you to start drinking that tea.”
“You’re probably right. Actually, do you have any more advice for me? Because I could really use some of that today.”
She took a minute.
“Enid?”
“I’m thinking. I’m not a knowledge dispensary.”
“Fine,” I said.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said.
“I wouldn’t want to bother you with my troubles.”
She went to the counter for more hot water, and when she came back, she handed me a napkin for a spill I hadn’t noticed.
“You have something on your mind, say it,” she said.
“I’m worried,” I said.
She looked at Frank.
“Not about him, about Nate. My brother. He’s not himself lately, and I’m scared he’s getting worse. Do you have any brothers?”
“I had a sister,” she said. “As girls, we were inseparable. We shared everything.”
She took some time to finish steeping her tea bag before carefully placing it on her saucer.
“Then she married Howard, a buffoon, and moved to California. We wrote letters at first, tried visits on holidays. But our priorities changed, and one of us, or it could have been both of us—who knows—ran out of things to say.”
Nate and I were different from each other from the start, different from other siblings. Maybe that was better.
“Do you ever see her now?” I said.
“She’s gone.” She looked into her cup. “They all are. That’s what I was saying before. That’s why you have to learn to take care of yourself.”
“How do you do that if you’ve never done it before?”
“You just do,” she said. She tapped her finger on the table and adjusted her posture. “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”
“Is that another famous quote?”
“George Bernard Shaw. Mrs. Warren’s Profession.”
“I should read more plays,” I said. “How do you know so many plays?”
“Running lines helps,” she said. “I auditioned for that one twice.”
“I knew you were an actress.”
“I wanted to be Ethel Merman when I first got here. But I didn’t have the voice, the chops, or the right look. I wasn’t good enough, plain and simple. Though I didn’t want to accept that.”
“So you persevered and became great in spite of yourself?”
“Of course not. I wasted my time failing. But then one day, I was sitting for an audition when a girl came in crying. Her dress was ripped. I pulled out a sewing kit (I carried that little pouch everywhere), fixed the hem, pinched in the waist, and pushed up the bust—did a hell of a job all around. She got the part because of me, and all the other girls in the room knew it. Could I help them with their dresses next, where did I get what I was wearing, had I altered my look myself? Before too long I had my own business.”
“A costume designer?”
“A seamstress. The best in the neighborhood.”
“I can’t sew,” I said. “The needles are too small.”
She rolled her eyes. “The story isn’t about sewing. The story is about life.”
“I know,” I said. “Finding your strengths in the face of adversity. Going through windows when doors close, all that stuff Dad loved saying.”
“Sounds like a smart man.”
“He was,” I said. “And he always took care of me.”
She looked outside.
“When you have no choice, you find a way to get things done,” she said.
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing. You don’t dwell, you just do. And when you do, you realize lots of things take care of themselves. You’d be surprised. You spend too much time thinking about what could have been and what
might be, and before you know it, you’ve missed what is.”
“I think I need more coffee,” I said.
I looked at Frank again, and this time he noticed, taking it as a cue for refills.
“Thank you, Franklin,” Enid said. She took a sip. “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“A special discount?” he said.
“When are you going to spotlight your girl’s art on the wall?”
For a second I worried this was an ambush. Was this Enid’s idea of forcing open a window?
Frank was rapidly flushing, and increasingly uncomfortable.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said.
“What don’t you know?” I said. “You don’t think I’m good enough?”
“No, but . . . I thought that was just a hobby.”
“A hobby?”
“You never really work on it, so . . .”
“So what?”
“So, I’d have to ask my father first.”
Enid looked at me. “Show him what you’ve done so far on Belle! He’ll think differently when he sees it.”
I didn’t have Belle. I wasn’t even sure what I’d done with her.
“Well?” she said.
“It’s not done.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said. Her eyes were closing in. “You lost it?”
“No! I’m sure it’s at home. I’ll finish next time.”
She didn’t respond.
“Enid?”
“You know what your problem is?” she said eventually. “You don’t even know what you want.”
“That’s not true, I don’t think. I want to work at the zoo one day, I hope, if it’s at all possible, and I want to finish that portrait of Belle, and have the old Nate back. It’s just—with my frontal lobe—I have trouble prioritizing sometimes, and—it’s not that simple for me.”
She enclosed my hand with her own wrinkled grip, free from jewelry, chilled and soft. Inside those hands, there was power—balled-up bits of strength. I tried not to move.
“What if it is?” she said. “What if you and your excuses make everything too complicated?”
I gave it a second. “Was that a rhetorical question?”
“When you’re ready to work, you can let me know,” she said.
She turned quickly and headed for the door, her square heels clomping against the floor.
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