Love & Other Carnivorous Plants

by Florence Gonsalves

  The only reasonable thing to do at a time like this is have drinks with Sara. I mean Sara’s gravestone. The minor obstacles are 1) the cemetery is closed at night, so 2) I have to break in when 3) I’m scared shitless of ghosts, so now I also have to be scared of 4) authority figures. Luckily, I’m angry enough that the adrenaline gets me to park the car, hop the fence, and find my way to her little swatch of earth. Less luckily, when I sit down the adrenaline evaporates and I’m sufficiently creeped out. The trees are so moody and the stones are so grave. I uncap the cheap booze I bought at the only liquor store that doesn’t card and take a few sips. The empty-stomach-to-eighty-proof-vodka ratio makes it so that I’m feeling pretty groovy in a matter of minutes.

  “You won’t believe the fight I just had with my parents,” I start. It’s strange to talk out loud when no one is around. My voice sounds too deep at first and then too high. I can’t stop feeling self-conscious, so I keep talking, self-conscious and all. “I won’t bore you with the details of my unraveling, though. How are you?” I pause and try to picture her response, but when the Spirit of Sara doesn’t speak to me, I go on. “If we’re being honest, I’m scared for you,” I say in a stage whisper. “The way I see it you’re either in heaven being fed grapes by a hundred beautiful men, or you’re in the process of being reincarnated into the future champion of Wimbledon, or, and this is the worst-case scenario, you’re nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.”

  A cricket chirps and I nearly fall over. “Don’t interrupt me, this is very important,” I say to it, then clear my throat, close my eyes (my vision is blurring anyway), and continue. “I think besides my gravestone reading ‘tried and failed to lose the same twenty-five pounds,’ my greatest fear is that when we die there’s nothing, not even a hole to suggest we might have once conducted a mediocre life here. Isn’t that why people try to write epic novels and compose famous symphonies and build monuments and put human debris on the moon? To avoid oblivion?”

  I take another sip while adjusting my smock, in case the spirits might be offended by my heinous undergarments. “Socrates, or some other boring guy in his time period, said we shouldn’t be afraid of death because death is like one of those deep, dreamless sleeps, which everyone knows is the best night’s sleep, so really being afraid to die doesn’t make any sense at all. What I’d add, Socrates, is that if death is just good old oblivion, it’s basically the same thing as drinking so much you can’t remember anything, amirite or amirite?”

  I pour the rest of the vodka into a cup and dump a packet of red Kool-Aid into it. “So here’s to not remembering,” I say, holding the cup up to Sara’s rock slab. “Here’s to death and here’s to dying.” It’s the sorriest cheers to date, but I have to know that oblivion won’t kill us. I drink half the cup for me and half the cup for Sara, then wait.

  Eventually I lie on the ground, mostly because it’s too much work to keep my body upright. It’s kind of wet and I don’t feel any less stupid talking into it, but I’ve come this far; I might as well make my sad apology to the smell of fresh-cut grass. “I should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you any of the things I should have told you. I’m sorry that I sometimes hated you. I’m sorry for not letting you copy my geography homework in seventh grade. I’m sorry for telling you Billy Taylor fingered me on prom night when he didn’t. I’m sorry for leaving you to go to college and I’m not sorry too, if that makes sense. I’m sorry we put so much pressure on each other that we couldn’t tell each other the truth.” I wipe the snot from my nose, which is running down my face and dripping on her grave. I am the most sappy, most sentimental drunk. “But above everything, Sara, a thousand times over, I forgive you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Beeping noises. Why are there beeping noises? It’s not that I’m against the beep as a noise per se, but I have a feeling that being plugged into a vital signs monitor with an IV jabbed into my arm isn’t the best way to start the day.

  “Oh, thank God,” my mom says as I blink my eyes open. She’s hovering over me, and from what I can glean we’re in a hospital room. “Let me text your father. He was getting more coffee. Oh, thank God, you’re all right.” She kisses my face and I try not to let the panic set in. The thing is I had the craziest dream…

  “So, uh, what happened here?” I try to ask casually. My lips are so chapped they burn, and my joints are achy. I have a very bad feeling about all of this. My mom scoots her chair closer and holds my hand. I try to hold her hand back but she has such a death grip on me that I’m kind of losing circulation in my fingers.

  “Your father and I were worried sick last night when you still weren’t home by midnight,” she says, and I register the bags under her eyes. “We were going to call the police because you wouldn’t answer your phone and Janet hadn’t seen you, and neither had Bugg—”

  “How did you even—”

  “—and we had no idea where else to look. But then we got a call from the hospital and they said they’d admitted you. One of the groundskeepers at the cemetery found you passed out in there, and when they couldn’t wake you up they called 9-1-1.”

  “Well, that was a neighborly thing to do,” I say cheerfully. “The world is full of Good Samaritans.”

  “Danny, this isn’t a joke. You had to get your stomach pumped twice. Your blood alcohol levels were four and a half times the legal limit, not to mention that you’re underage. You could’ve gotten into some serious trouble.” My mom starts to cry into the stiff cuffs of her blouse. “You could’ve been really, really hurt. You could have died.” I feel her trying to peer into my soul and figure out if that’s what I was trying to do.

  “I’m obviously too scared of death to try to kill myself, Mom.”

  My dad walks in, and he looks relieved but also worried, which in turn makes me feel stupid. What will become of me, I want to ask, but it’s not the sort of thing they or anyone I know can answer.

  “You fell on your face too,” my mom says, which sounds funny until she hands me her makeup mirror.

  “Dammit.” The universe is definitely not Team Danny. There’s a cut on my chin and my lip is split open and filled with dried blood.

  “We don’t know what to do with you, Danny,” my dad says, and then he starts crying too. Dad tears are the worst kind of tears. They make you want to do a quick operation on yourself, remove all the screwed-up parts, and sew yourself back together real quick. Good as new. Better than new, even.

  The door opens and a nurse with a name tag that reads BILL comes in, asking my parents to leave so that he and I can go over some things. My parents look like they want to reattach my umbilical cord, but with a little coaxing they go. Bill is probably in his sixties and he writes things on his electronic chart with his electronic pen in such an enthusiastic way that this couldn’t be his first career. Men like Bill are the reason people think this country is progressing. He pulls the roll-y stool over and sits by my bed. “So, how are you feeling, Danny?”

  “Pretty exceptional, considering.”

  He takes a read on the equipment. “You got lucky, kid. Two stomach pumps and an IV later and your blood alcohol levels are out of the danger zone. You might get a few second glances with your lip, but other than that you’re relatively unscathed.”

  He goes on to tell me that my parents told him my best friend of fourteen years just died, which is probably why I’m “acting out.” This then prompts him to tell me about all the resources the hospital has, mainly a really depressing-sounding grief support group for teens that has free coffee, free doughnuts, and a biannual grief-stricken dance.

  “Thanks, but I’m more of a go-it-alone-type gal,” I say.

  He caps his pen and touches his white mustache. “Listen, no one can make you take care of yourself or keep you from hurting yourself. Your parents probably think they can, judging by how they’re hovering at the window—”

  I look up and wave and they duck out of sight. Those sneaky bastards.

  “But it’
s up to you. If you choose not to get help that’s fine, but then that’s your choice. It’s not something that happened to you.” He gets up and puts his hand on the doorknob. “Do you see the difference?”

  I nod and he leaves me to the arduous task of gearing up to face another day. Once I have my grass-stained clothes back on, my parents and I walk into the parking lot like a defeated army traipsing back from war. It’s so bright my eyes are bleeding, and it’s rather insensitive of the sun to be shining so insistently on a day like today. A little girl passes us with a neck brace, which means she has to stop and turn her whole body around to stare at me, which I guess means my bloody lip is not as subtle a fixture on my face as I’d hoped it’d be.

  “Mommy, look,” she says, and I glare at her. Kids can be real assholes.

  My parents have to go to work, so they drop me off in front of the house. “Please have a quiet afternoon, okay?” they say, and I half expect them to call a babysitter for me.

  “I will.”

  “Promise?”

  I’m about to roll my eyes when it occurs to me that I forfeited the right to sass them indefinitely. “Yes, I promise.” Looking at them, I wonder when they got so old.

  “We have lots to talk about at dinner,” my mom says, and my dad nods.

  “Can’t wait,” I mutter.

  As they drive off I hear a flapping sound in the garage, and since I have nothing better to do I go see what’s up. “Shit,” I say under my breath. One of the birds that comes regularly to my dad’s feeders is trapped inside, fluttering against the window and frantic to get out. The sound of its feathers against the windowpane is like nails on a chalkboard. I try to get closer to it, but its skittish movements make me skittish too. “Would you cut it out?” I hate birds, which is yet another way I probably break my father’s heart every day.

  It rests on the windowsill for a moment and I grab the broom to try to point it in the direction of the free world, but it seems dead set on keeping itself a prisoner. I look at it helplessly as it flaps against the glass, getting a few feet off the sill, then landing with a stomach-turning thud.

  “You know you belong out there, don’t you? It’s where you want to be, isn’t it?” I ask, ignoring the fact that I’ve officially lost my last marble. The problem is that the bird’s disoriented, too close to see that the glass of the window is an illusion and not really the way out. “It’s a trap. A barrier disguised as freedom,” I say, but I’m clearly not the bird whisperer.

  I can’t watch it bang its body against the glass anymore, so I get my mother’s gardening gloves and sneak up behind it. The next time it lands on the sill to catch its breath I clamp my hands around its body in my stealthiest maneuver to date. It tries to flap its wings and the movement against my hands makes me think I’m holding a beating heart.

  I run into the yard, crouch into the grass, and open my hands. At first it looks at me stupidly, and for the first time I notice the tiny swatch of red on its wing. “Well, go on,” I say. It takes to the sky uninjured—a little shaken, but alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I can’t say much on behalf of those who die, but I hope they don’t suffer as much as we do. Being left behind is like being one of those rare isotopes of nitrogen that you hope scientists never unearth because it could blow up everything south of the sky. Not to mention that this is the worst hangover of my whole life, which I know I’ve said about my last two hangovers, but it gets truer every time.

  I’ve drawn a cool bath to try to combat the hot itchy situation that has become my whole body, and I’m entirely submerged except for my right hand, which holds a stick of salami, and my mouth, which receives said salami. The salami helps for a minute, but then the black hole in my stomach yawns even wider. I’m midbite when the bathroom door opens, and I drop my precious salami in a frantic attempt to whip the curtain closed and salvage my dignity.

  “Jeez, ever heard of knocking?” I say, fishing the salami out of the tub and giving it a mini eulogy in my head.

  “Sorry, your mom let me in.” Chills take over my body and a lump develops in my throat. I peek my head out from around the curtain, careful to keep my lip concealed. I hadn’t expected to hear Bugg’s voice. “That’s the biggest bathtub I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, you can basically host a frat party in it. So whatcha doing here?”

  She’s wearing suspenders and a mustard-colored skirt and I’m trying to tell by the look on her face if we’re still in a fight. I’m not mad anymore, but she’s my Achilles’ heel whereas I’m not sure if I’m part of her anatomy at all.

  “Your mom called me last night and said you were missing, which scared the shit out of me. I don’t even know how she got my number.” She leans against the bathroom counter, and the mirror reflects the frizziness of the back of her hair. It’s weird to have her in the bathroom, and I feel hyperaware of the fuzzy toilet seat cover and how it probably smells like vanilla and poop (scented spray never de-scents perfectly).

  “My mom belongs in the CIA. I stashed my phone in a drawer after Sara died, and I think she went through my contacts then. She’s overinvolved like that.”

  “No kidding.” Bugg starts rummaging through the top drawer and helps herself to some of my deodorant. As she swipes it on, little white balls stick in her armpit creases and I decide we are officially not in a fight. “So are you okay?” she asks. “You’re still hiding behind that curtain.”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you?”

  She starts to nod, but then it becomes a slight shaking of her head. “Not really. I’ve felt off since the funeral and it got worse after our little tiff. The blinders came back in the corner of my eyes.” Her voice is flat and she doesn’t sound that much like Bugg.

  “What blinders?”

  “It’s a darkness in my peripheral vision that happens when I’m starting to spiral down. You were right when you smelled alcohol on me at the funeral. I’ve been drinking again.” She sounds embarrassed, but I’m confused.

  “What do you mean ‘again’? I didn’t know you’d ever stopped drinking.” I feel the frustration rise in my voice. “I don’t get what you’re supposed to be doing or not doing with alcohol.”

  “That makes two of us.” She helps herself to my makeup too, turning around and swiping mascara onto her lashes with her mouth slightly open. I watch her reflection so long my fingers and toes start to wrinkle under the water. “I was supposed to be sober for the first couple of months after treatment, but it’s so boring. I thought that if I could distinguish between when I was drinking to have fun and drinking to hurt myself, then it’d be okay.”

  “But it’s not okay?”

  “I don’t think it’s okay.”

  “I don’t think I’m okay either.” I peel back the shower curtain and show her my lip. At first she gasps, but then she starts laughing when I tell her how it happened.

  “That is nasty,” she says. “I bet you woke up in the hospital feeling like quite the idiot.” Then she tells me about the stupidest thing she did when she was drunk, which was the time in college when she peed in her roommate’s bed because she thought it was the bathroom.

  “No wonder you never went back.”

  “Seriously. Can I join you?”

  “Yeah, but lock the door so my mom doesn’t wander in.”

  She takes off her shirt and I watch her ease her bra off. Her nipples are pink sunsets and I’m curious what the night could hold. I scoot to one end of the tub and our toes touch when I extend my legs.

  “Let’s make it hotter,” she says, turning the faucet on and entirely defeating the purpose of my cool bath. As the water is running she moves closer to me and I grow new nerve endings. I close the distance between us and her mouth tastes like nicotine and coffee.

  “Ugh, I can’t do this, Danny,” she says abruptly, pulling away and scrunching her eyes closed.

  “What do you mean? You can’t get in the tub with me and then decide two seconds later that you can’t. W
atch, it’s easy.” I kiss her more.

  “Look at us. We’re hot messes.”

  “We did meet in the loony bin, but that’s a good thing! We kinda get each other’s crazy.”

  She takes a deep breath and puts her head under the faucet, then turns the water off and I listen to her hair drip into the bath. “It’s one thing to get each other’s crazy and another thing to impose my shit on you.”

  “It’s not imposing. I want to be imposed on by your shit.” A tear makes itself known on her lower left eyelid. I will it to go back where it came from because there’s nothing to be sad about because she and I are completely fine.

  “It’s too much shit,” she says, and I don’t know if she means my drinking or my emotions or her drinking or her emotions or generally the clusterfuck of doom we’ve found ourselves in. “I know myself well enough by now to know when I have to go back to treatment.”

  The emotional iceberg hits hard and my heart starts its epic, Titanic sink.

  “You can’t leave me,” I say selfishly, looking at the soggy piece of salami and wishing my entire life up to this point was different. “What if I quit drinking too? I promise I can handle whatever shit you think I can’t handle. What I can’t handle is you leaving me.”

  “I’m not leaving you. I’ll still be here for you, but as a friend. A friend at St. John’s.”

  “We’ve never been friends.”