by Amanda Stern
While I’ve spent my entire life living in fear, Aram, it seems, has fears as well, and they are in contradiction to mine. Mainly, my problems are too big for him. They frighten him. He didn’t want to hear about Taylor in high school, and he doesn’t want to hear about Taylor now, in the aftermath. Any party I mention I’ve attended or person I’ve encountered whom he wouldn’t choose as a friend threatens him, and he doesn’t want to know. He’s the person I’ve come closest to explaining my terrifying worries to, but whenever a thought or worry of mine is too dark, it triggers in him a fear that my troubles foretell something about me he doesn’t want to know.
“Better left for your therapist,” he tells me, which makes me feel decidedly crazy and not worth knowing. If I can’t share my true self with Aram, the healthiest, safest, and most intelligent person I know, without scaring him, who in the world is left for me to tell? My therapist is nice enough, but she just wants to talk about my sex life, which I don’t want to talk about, so we wind up making small talk while I chain-smoke in her office.
When we got together, when I was a senior and he was off already to school, no one could seem to believe it. Aram and me? Clean-cut, academic Aram? Who won the NEH? He’s with me, the weird, artsy little freak who hangs out with that strange older man? No one could wrap their heads around it. He was so normal; I was so not. While I resented feeling that judgment from the outside world, I never felt it from Aram, but the more time passes, the more I sense that he agrees with them: He is normal and I’m fucked up. I’m tired of hiding who I am to protect others from their distress. Am I going to have this problem forever?
One of our last days in Paris, we’re walking through the Place de la Concorde and we pass a mother with two little girls. One of the little girls, I realize with a start, looks just like Melissa, the way Melissa did when we were kids together. As we pass one another, I turn around to see the little girl has also looked back at me. She’s staring at me with recognition, like she knows who I am. We both walk like that for a bit, staring back at the other, recognizing one another although we’ve never met. Is that Melissa’s blue dress? Did I just see Melissa? Did she come back as herself, but in Paris? I call home that night and tell my mom about the strange encounter, and she tells me that Sharon, Melissa’s mom, moved to Paris a few years ago and has two children; one of whom would be around the age Melissa was when she died.
I can’t stop thinking about this. The last time I saw Melissa, she was not-Melissa. Her face was swollen from steroids. A bandanna snugged around her bald head, dethroned by chemo. I never saw her again as the girl she was, until just now. Only, who was that? And how did she know to recognize me? I don’t believe in ghosts because they scare me, but now I kind of do. Was that girl Melissa? Did she not die? Did she do the thing I feared my mom would do, and pack everything up and move to Europe and not tell anyone? Because here we are now, in Europe, and there she is, not sick at all. Still eight, and healthy, like she’s been given a second chance. I used to think the world should stop when people died. That we should wait until enough time has passed and we’re all caught up with our mourning, but if Sharon—Melissa’s own mother—had two new children, then she continued on; she didn’t wait. She gave herself a second chance at being a mom. She gave Melissa younger siblings, and those siblings grew, which creates the illusion that Melissa grew also. Etan is kept alive by the news and by lore, by age-progression images and new developments, so maybe Sharon is keeping Melissa alive by having new children she could tell Melissa-stories to, and they can carry with them memories of their sister they never met.
When everyone else was moving forward, even Sharon, I waited. Maybe that little girl turned not because she recognized me, but because she saw in me a trapped little girl, just her age. I am twenty-one, but on the inside I am still eight. Everyone else has moved on, even, in some ways, Melissa herself, the person I’ve been waiting for. And here I am, still waiting to be known, to be solved. Aram doesn’t want to solve me. He wants the undiscovered part of me to remain a mystery, but I’m beginning to think the unknown part of me is actually who I am. And I think I want to know her.
The Body
I’m almost done with my junior year of college. Aram and I are still together, but I am dating other people, as he has done, when I begin hanging out with someone I shouldn’t. His name is Carl, and he’s everything Aram is not. Carl smokes, drinks, has secrets, a dark past, plays guitar in a band, and sings like a ragged rock star. He’s a version of the quintessential bad boy, and he’s a bad choice for me, but he makes me feel something Aram never could: normal.
We seem to always be smoking on the steps of the library at the same time every day. Soon we’re doing it together. The more time I spend with Carl, the more I realize that with Aram, the safety I feel comes with a side of judgment. Aram and I bonded over art and ideas, but Carl and I bond over the bad stuff, the hard parts of life that Aram never wants to know. Instead of feeling like the fucked-up one, I feel accepted. As I spill my life to Carl, I realize how ironic it is that Taylor, who once so covetously sought to unearth the dark parts of my life, has become the story he was so anxious to hear. It’s a challenge getting Carl to open up in return, and I savor the rewards of each effort. I don’t feel inferior to Carl, but the more we share, the more I realize I do feel inferior to Aram.
Aram knows about Carl and Carl knows about Aram and neither likes the situation. Aram is secure, healthy, and wholesome. He is smart, self-reflective, has good judgment, and is intellectually engaging, but he’s also so academically focused, he’s become boring. Carl has, in spades, what Aram lacks: edge. It’s this darkness in Carl I’m drawn to, although I don’t know why. He needs someone to take care of him. He’s fragile, damaged (he claims), and needs someone to rescue him, and I recognize these feelings. I’m afraid to spend my life feeling like I’m too much for someone, like everything that makes me me is better left to a therapist. All the things about me Aram thinks are troubled are just basic, everyday, normal things to Carl. My gut tells me I shouldn’t, but I accidentally fall in love with him.
I am issued ultimatums. I must choose. It’s either Aram or Carl. Two entirely different people who offer two entirely different lives, one of which I feel I’m inferior to and the other to which I feel equal. When summer comes and Aram and I are together again, he seems so simple and basic. Nothing like the complicated, secretive Carl. Early on, my gut told me Carl was not my guy, but I convinced my gut to believe otherwise, and now all of me is convinced. Aram is a good boy, and Carl is not. I fall somewhere in between. After four years together, I break up with Aram, with Carl at the ready to lift me up. Going from one person to another makes breaking up seem easy.
I am not that worried about Aram. He and his family are close—too close at times. They have meetings to discuss their feelings, and nothing ever goes unresolved. I find it all so weird and uncomfortable, unnatural even. In my house, nothing is discussed: We just get in fights and apologize when someone cries, but nothing is ever resolved. That type of communication feels natural to me. Carl is my kind of unhealthy. We’re made for each other.
Senior year of college I have my first ever stalker. He’s Dutch, and at first he’s just annoying, constantly inviting me to a play or a concert after I’ve said no thanks, I have a boyfriend. He’s relentless and won’t let up. I tell him to stop asking me. Carl tells him to stop asking me, but he won’t. Before long he’s barging in on conversations, inviting himself to sit down when I’m alone with friends. Then it escalates. He appears places without my knowing I’d been followed: the bank, an out-of-the-way art gallery; and then, he shows up in my classes. I file a complaint with the school, but they do nothing.
This is becoming a familiar pattern. Last year I took driver’s ed; on the first lesson the teacher drove me to the highway, and once we were on it, he said to think of the gear shift as his dick: I should touch it as much as possible. It was a driver/student car with two steering wheels, and somehow, thro
ugh a barrage of lewd suggestions, I drove us home, where he sat in the car, below my bedroom window, for hours. I had no choice but to tell Jimmy, who stormed outside to tell the guy off, but the second he saw Jimmy, he drove away. We called the school and told them what happened; they promised to fire him, and then a week later they sent us a bill. The guy kept working there. I want to call Jimmy now and tell him about my stalker, but I’m too far away for him to scare the guy off.
A month or so after classes have begun, the stalker walks into my art class, eating a peach. He walks over to me and eats it slowly, right in my face, the juice dripping down his chin while he smiles. I flag down the teacher, who tells the guy to set up an easel, because—as I’m horrified to discover—he’s now in this class, too. I file another complaint. The school does nothing. When Carl walks in, I think it’s because he knows what’s happening, and he’s come to drag my stalker away, but instead he tells me there’s been a phone call and I need to call home. Instantly, I am back at camp, being tapped on the shoulder and walking through a dark field toward the end of my life as I know it.
“Is it my mom?” I ask Carl.
“No,” he says. “It’s Jimmy.” The words sound so strange coming out of his mouth.
Not until that moment had I ever given thought to Jimmy dying, but now that I fear he’s dead, I realize how attached I have always been to him. While he wasn’t the most involved parent, often exasperatingly absent when he was physically present, I knew he loved me and he knew I loved him.
When I call, Kara’s already home. Jimmy’s had a heart attack. He’s in the hospital now, but it sounds like maybe he’s going to be fine. I don’t need to come home, she says. I shouldn’t worry. I’m relieved, but not enough to return to class, or to get up off the couch. I’m glad he’s okay, but I’m still shaken; I’m not ready to lose Jimmy. When I was in high school, Jimmy got a fancy car, and one night while he was driving, some guys jumped in, put a gun to his head, and then pushed him into the street and took the car. He wasn’t hurt, and he joked about it after, but the image of what could have happened stuck with me. I want this to be the same, and I imagine him now, being released from the hospital and regaling us over and over at dinner for the rest of our lives about that time he had a heart attack and we all overreacted and thought he was going to die.
I’m still on the couch an hour later when Kara calls back to say Jimmy had a second, more serious heart attack, and now he probably won’t make it through the night. I need to come home. Mom is too upset to talk. When this second call comes, my roommate is there, but Carl is gone, and I am too confused and overwhelmed to move. My roommate gets me a ticket for the first plane out, drives me to the airport, and, somehow, although I don’t remember even getting on a plane, I arrive at the hospital. It’s late, near eleven, and my mom, Kara, and Nina have all gone back to MacDougal Street to get some sleep. Neon lights dance on medical machines and there is my stepfather, with tubes down his nose and throat. When I notice his eyes are taped shut, I begin to panic on his behalf. The nurse explains that it’s to help keep them moist, since he can’t blink.
I hear my own voice, hysterical. “Well, did anyone tell him that? Does he know why his eyes are taped shut?” The nurse shrugs, and I sit down next to Jimmy; he squeezes my hand to let me know he can hear me. I explain about his eyes and tell him he’s going to be okay. The nurse motions to my Walkman and says maybe I should play him something. I ask if he’d like to hear a song and he squeezes my hand again. I slip my headphones over his head, set them on his ears, and press Play. “Riding on a Railroad” by James Taylor is what’s playing, and he seems to like it. Standing there with my stepfather, the man who did the best he could being a dad to a houseful of kids that weren’t his, I know I’ll never hear this song the same way again.
I sit with Jimmy for a while, talking to him, not knowing whether or not I should be telling him he’s in a hospital and that he’s had a heart attack, but knowing I’d want to know if the situation were reversed. Being with Jimmy like this, with life’s surfaces stripped away, just the two of us, in a life-or-death situation, feels like our most intimate moment. He has always been practical, no-nonsense, and deems my emotions and vulnerabilities silly, but now he is the vulnerable one. He listens as I explain what’s going on, and then I tell him I’m going to get some sleep and I’ll see him tomorrow. He squeezes my hand and I feel it tell me he’s scared.
At home on MacDougal Street, Mom, Kara, and Nina are all upstairs, in Mom and Jimmy’s room. Nina just turned six and is asleep surrounded by all her new presents. Eddie is at his apartment, and Daniel, David, and Holly are at theirs. Kara gives me the play-by-play. The nurses don’t know if he’ll make it through the night. I tell Kara and Mom I played him a song, and he squeezed my hand. I sleep on her couch and when we wake up, we’re relieved the phone didn’t ring. When we call the hospital they tell us he’s still alive. Every morning we go to the hospital, and every night we fear a phone call will disrupt our sleep telling us what we don’t want to hear. After several days he has surgery, and all seems okay, so I’m told to return to school.
The surgery seemed to make things worse for him. Every few days I get phone calls that things look dire and I need to return, and each time he pulls through. One night Mom is waiting on a phone call from the nurse. Kara tells me to keep the phone clear and she’ll call to report. Carl is with me and we’re pacing. When the phone rings I lunge for it.
“Hello?”
“I am going to rape you,” the voice tells me.
I hang up fast, stare at Carl, then look at the curtainless windows, sprint to the door, double-lock it, and burst into tears. Carl doesn’t know what to do. Jimmy, I know, would. He’d have someone put in an alarm system and hang blinds. He’d have dealt with the external danger, even as he’d leave the internal world to someone else.
That weekend Carl drives me to the city. Because my stalker’s portentous phone call struck me as particularly apocalyptic, a sign of bad things to come, I pack not just my favorite things, but items I’ve imbued with false power and luck: the gris-gris necklace Jonathan gave me to wear on planes so they won’t crash (which I still carry, though Jonathan hasn’t spoken to me in three and a half years), some earrings Aram gave me, a shirt I love, my journal, and a worry stone. I’m hoping these things will commingle their power and keep Jimmy alive. In the car down to New York, I wonder what I would have done had I been given the opportunity to come home before Melissa died. Would I have been brave enough to sit with her in the hospital, hold her hand till the end? Would I have tried to save her, and would I be a different me if I had, knowing that she died anyway? All weekend long, I sit with Jimmy at the hospital. Nina is there, sitting on the radiator, kicking her legs against it and playing with an American Girl doll. My mom is chasing down doctors, taking notes, and gathering information. Holly knits in the waiting room. Daniel and David are walking around the neighborhood looking for roast beef sandwiches. Eddie is in and out. Kara is at home answering the phone and making calls. Jimmy has bedsores, and he is sedated. There are no more hand squeezes. He’s a shade of beige-green that matches the hospital lighting. I hate it here. Although the nurses are nice, I’m afraid of all the sickness. The smell reminds me of the nursing home they put Baba in and the urine he left on our couch cushion. In the waiting room, Holly won’t stop knitting. She looks like a little girl, scared and alone, and I can’t stop thinking that if Jimmy dies, she, Daniel, and David will all be orphans. Even if they’re in their twenties.
The morning that Carl and I have to head back to school I want to stop quickly and see Jimmy one last time, so we park the car outside the hospital and hurry upstairs so I can spend one more minute with him, in case it’s my last. Carl comes up, too, and stays in the waiting room. I duck into Jimmy’s room and sit beside him, studying his motionless face. Without Jimmy, I wouldn’t have stepsiblings; there’d be no Nina. He’s the Lego piece that connects our family. Without him, will we still be a famil
y? Even if we fight and not everyone gets along, we’re all we have. How much will we lose if we lose Jimmy?
Carl is motioning to me from the waiting room; it’s time to go. I tell Jimmy I love him, give him a kiss, and say I’ll see him soon. When we get downstairs, there’s glass on the sidewalk. The windows on the car have been broken, and all our stuff has been stolen: Carl’s guitar, my bag with all my good-luck charms, and every last one of my favorite things. I’m too in shock to know what action to take. Carl goes to buy garbage bags and tape to cover the windows, and I stand next to the car, feeling unrecognizable to myself. Those good-luck things not only kept me alive, they kept me connected to the people who gave them to me. Now I feel pulled apart from Jonathan and Aram, and from my own self, and from all the luck I ever thought I had. My charms have instilled me with the confidence of someone protected by the Secret Service, and now how can I trust the world? I know this means that Jimmy is going to die. I recognize this for the bad omen it is. Am I still connected to Jonathan and Aram without the things they gave me? We drive seven hours back to Rochester, freezing, the car empty of our possessions, windows covered with garbage bags.
Thanksgiving is a few days away when Kara calls again, and I understand that this truly is the end. I need to get there before he goes. I want a chance to say good-bye, so he can know I appreciated him, even if I didn’t always show it. But when I arrive my mom’s body is flung over Jimmy’s, and she’s baying and howling. I missed it. I missed saying good-bye, and I feel oddly left out of an experience I’m not sure I even wanted to have. Nina doesn’t have a father. She’s just turned six years old, her siblings are all in their twenties, and her father’s just died, which means she doesn’t have a mother now either, at least until she’s done grieving. His body is waxy and skinny. His face has lost its shape, melted into an expression I’ve never seen. Like a sculptor is trying and failing to replicate him.