The Anatomy of Perception

by AJ Rose

  “I’m not going to hide who you are to me while we’re in public here,” I said seriously. “I’m not sure it would matter anymore anyway, with equality gaining leverage every day, but I want you to know the two beds was merely my being a cheap bastard. They wanted another thirty bucks a night for the king bed.”

  Craig chuckled. “I’ve never been here, so I’m going to take my cues from you. If this place is as dangerous now as it was when you were growing up, I’m not going to insist we poke the bear. Let’s do what you came for, but we don’t have to wave a pride flag in everyone’s faces. I don’t expect that.”

  I breathed in relief and kissed his cheek. “I feel disgusting, so I’m going to take a shower.” It was barely four in the afternoon, and after the naps in the car, neither of us was all that tired, but being the middle of January, there wasn’t a lot of daylight left. Given how unfamiliar the landmarks were now, and my rusty memory, I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try to find the cemetery in the dark.

  “You do that. Maybe when you get out, we can call Sherrilyn and see if she’d like to go out for dinner?”

  I nodded, then locked myself in the bathroom. It wasn’t that I needed the privacy; I just needed a minute alone. Was I ready for this?

  We don’t have to do anything I don’t think I can get through, I reminded myself. In fact, the only reason Dr. Rodriguez thought I’d be okay with this weekend was because I’d promised her if it got too big and scary, I’d try again another time, acknowledging that it wouldn’t make me weak. I always had the out. That and the fact that the prison visitation policy forbade face-to-face visits. Everything was done via video conference, and while I’d had to set up the details with the prison to use one of the family booths, the disconnect meant I would never be in danger of him. This and this alone was the reason Rodriguez thought the visit wouldn’t trip my triggers too hard. I’d still see and hear him, but I wouldn’t smell him or see him up close. He would be filtered.

  The shower was wonderful, and the hot water seemed endless, so I took advantage. By the time I emerged, my muscles had relaxed once more, and I wasn’t so sure I was interested in meeting anyone for dinner. Frankly, lying on the bed in my underwear and eating a burger from the chain restaurant down the street seemed like a pleasant evening to me.

  When I reentered the bedroom and found Craig sitting on the bed without our bags on it—his shoes off and legs kicked up and crossed at the ankles, watching TV—I smiled.

  “Thank you for coming with me.” Aside from Holly, he was the only one who’d know how difficult this was and how much it meant. “You’re the only one I really want beside me for this.” I didn’t say how I was hoping this weekend would possibly provide the evidence Craig needed of my commitment to us for him to consider wanting me with him in Oakland.

  “Dane, I’m not doing this as a favor to you. I’m doing this because I care about you, and while I know how important it is for you to see this through, it’s important for me, too. This isn’t a hardship I’m enduring on your behalf. I want to see the place that shaped the man you became. I want to understand as much as I can about you. And yeah, I’m curious, but I’m here for us, not just for you.”

  The warmth of the shower had nothing on the burst of affection in my chest, and I crawled onto the bed beside him, in just my basketball shorts and t-shirt, and kissed the hell out of him. There was more promise in his words than I knew what to do with, and it told me one thing: we were on the same page, seeking a way to make this work, to trust again.

  He returned the kiss enthusiastically, but pulled away before it got too enticing. “I need a shower myself, and if you want space to do so, maybe you can make that call.”

  The room had a small living area which also housed a kitchenette, so if I’d wanted privacy from him for the call, I could have moved rooms, but I appreciated the courtesy anyway.

  When the shower kicked on a few minutes later, I picked up my phone and dialed.

  McGillicuddy’s was nearly as I remembered it, the lone family-owned steakhouse in town with a large central dining room sandwiched between a bustling kitchen on one side and a well-stocked buffet on the other. A person could get almost any southern food they were interested in, as well as a steak cooked to order. The soaring, exposed-beam ceiling gave the place a rustic feel, as did the checkered tablecloths. For a Thursday night, it was about half-filled, mostly with families, and at one side, a long row of tables had been pushed together to accommodate an out-of-town basketball team, who’d come to play and stopped for food on their way back home. It wasn’t a quiet restaurant, but its sheer size meant it wasn’t noisy enough to trip my anxiety.

  Well, not for reasons of being in a crowded place.

  I had, however, suggested it to Sherrilyn as a place to meet because it was familiar to me, and I doubted it had changed much in the years I’d been gone. I’d been right. For a moment, I was transported back to nights when Holly would bring me here for milkshakes and boy talk.

  “Relax,” Craig said, his hands shoved deep in the pocket of his hoodie. He was a fine one to talk, considering he was just as fidgety as I was.

  “I know,” I said, not sure how I would recognize Sherrilyn when she arrived. I’d forgotten to ask her what she looked like.

  Just then, a small blonde woman came in, wearing scrubs beneath her heavy winter coat. As she looked around, I wondered if that was her, and wondered if she worked at the hospital in town. When her eyes landed on Craig and me, they widened, and then she cautiously walked closer, trying not to stare but not being able to help it. I guess I shouldn’t have worried about recognizing her; she recognized me.

  “Dane?” she asked. I realized her scrubs had puppy paws on them, so perhaps she worked in a vet’s office, not a hospital. Good. I wouldn’t feel the need to talk shop with her just to mask the real reason why we were there.

  “Sherrilyn?”

  She nodded, blowing a ragged breath through puffed out cheeks. “You are the spitting image of your brother.”

  “I’ve heard that a time or two.” To my embarrassment, my twang was returning.

  “Shall we get a table?” Craig asked when the moment stretched into awkward territory.

  The hostess led us to a booth away from the basketball team, with high vinyl backs so the families around us wouldn’t seem too close. After briefly perusing the laminated menus on the table, when our waitress came by, we were able to order our entrées. Leaving buffet plates for us, she hurried off to fill our drinks. For the first fifteen minutes, we busied ourselves at the buffet and getting settled in for our meal, then exchanged pleasantries about the drive down and the recently passed holidays.

  “I’m sorry it’s only now that I’m contacting you. I mean, it’s been two years since Dylan’s murder.” At that word, she flinched, and I winced. “Sorry. But it’s been a long time since his death, and I’m probably intruding on you incredibly.”

  “Nonsense,” she drawled, patting the back of my hand before picking up her fork and attacking a bowl of mashed potatoes. With a smile, I remembered this restaurant had some of the best homemade mashed potatoes anywhere. When she swallowed, she went on. “I wanted to talk to you more, but by the time the funeral was over and I called the number Dylan had for you, your phone had been disconnected.”

  I’d reconnected my cell phone after the hospital stay, but during those six weeks on the inside, I’d been strictly regulated on contact with the outside world. My phone had been placed with my other personal belongings on the day of my admission and had stayed there the whole time. I’d had to pay two months’ of bills and a reactivation fee to get my phone turned back on. Because of that, I had no log of missed calls during that time.

  “I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t where I could talk.”

  She nodded sympathetically, and we ate a few bites in silence. “I was sick,” I said when I couldn’t stand it anymore. “And when I got better and got home, I wasn’t totally better, and wasn’t ready
to deal with the reality of Dylan’s death. He’d… always been there for me, and suddenly, when I needed him most, he wasn’t. I think I was mad at him for that, and I knew if I talked to you, I wouldn’t be so nice. Not what you needed.”

  “I was angry too,” she admitted. “Who loses their husband after two months of marriage? It wasn’t fucking fair.” Her hand flew up to cover her mouth, her eyes wide and mortified that she’d dropped the f-bomb in what was supposed to be polite conversation.

  I chuckled sadly. “No, it wasn’t fucking fair. To either of us, but to Dylan most of all. Look, I don’t know how much he told you about our home life growing up—”

  “All of it,” she interrupted, stabbing her mixed vegetables pretty viciously. “He told me everything, from why he left to how he kept going back and everything in between. I knew what I signed up for when I married him. I just didn’t think your dad would ever do anything more violent than call our house and cuss Dylan out when he’d find his mortgage paid up again, or fresh milk in the fridge. Like Dylan’s intervention was an insult or something. It frustrates me that Dylan never gave up on him, but that’s the kind of guy he was, and one of the biggest reasons I loved him.”

  I nodded, understanding. “He was the quiet superhero.”

  “He was,” she said softly, bowing her head. When she looked back at us, her eyes were shiny. “He was so proud of you, Dane.” She gave me a wobbly smile.

  The words hit me like a punch to the solar plexus, and I couldn’t breathe, looking away sharply. But she didn’t stop.

  “He loved you so much, and he always told me about his brilliant brother the surgeon. I think I heard the story about you stitching up his arm twenty times. Each time, he showed me how tiny the scar was. ‘That’s how good my brother is,’ he’d say. ‘He can do stitches like a plastic surgeon.’ What kind of surgery did you specialize in?”

  Beneath the table, Craig squeezed my knee.

  “I never made it to my fellowship. When I left the residency program, I’d been considering oncology, but that takes a certain kind of person. I didn’t know if I was selfless enough.”

  She nodded like that was appropriate. “Well, if you’re anything like Dylan was, you’d have made a fine surgical oncologist. Me, I’m just a vet tech. But me and Dylan, we were pretty simple.”

  I reached across the table and took the hand not holding her fork. “Dylan loved you, so no, you’re not just a vet tech.” I couldn’t get out more words that wouldn’t sound like grief’s usual platitudes, because I didn’t know enough about her to justify the assumptions I was making, but I felt it in my gut. This woman had made Dylan happy, for however short a time they’d had together.

  “I miss him,” she said, her chin trembling. “I haven’t even looked at another guy since, because I know no one will measure up. I know Dylan would have wanted me to move on, and maybe wherever he is, he’s looking down on me, disappointed because I can’t let him go yet, but your brother, Dane…. He was the best.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “He was.”

  We moved on to other topics then, something a little less swelled with heartache, a little happier and comfortable for two people who knew nothing about each other. By the time the waitress asked if we’d left room for dessert, we were all full to the gills and unable to think of much more to say. Craig insisted on covering the bill, so while he went up to the register, I walked with Sherrilyn out to the wide sidewalk in front of the doors.

  “I’d like to stay in touch,” I said hopefully. “Get to know you. If that’s okay with you.”

  “Absolutely,” she said with an enthusiastic nod.

  When I handed her phone back after adding my contact information, I hesitated. “There’s one thing, though.”

  She shouldered her purse better and shoved her phone in her coat pocket. “Okay.”

  “That guy in there paying for our dinner?” Her gaze followed my thumb as I hooked it over my shoulder in Craig’s direction. “He’s my boyfriend. And as much as I think you and I could be like family, if that’s a problem for you, it’s not going to work.”

  She waved a hand and smiled widely. “I knew that the minute you introduced him as Craig. The stitches story, remember? Dylan said that was the first time you’d shared anything about your personal life with him since you left home. He kind of loved that you told him so matter-of-factly that you had a boyfriend.” I could only stare at her, mouth slightly ajar. “I’m glad to see you’re still together. Must be love.”

  Craig pushed through the doors then, and I saw him hesitate as he walked up to us, so as not to interrupt a moment or make the wrong move if it could be mistaken. Reaching out, I took his hand and grinned at her.

  “It is.”

  We bid each other goodnight with promises to call in the coming weeks. I’d left out that I wanted to see my father while I was in town, and I think perhaps she knew anyway and was grateful not to have to talk about him more than she already had.

  As Craig and I drove back to the hotel, holding hands in the dark car, he left me to my thoughts, which were numerous and happy.

  “My brother was really, truly loved,” I finally said after I’d parked the car.

  “By more than one person,” Craig pointed out.

  “Yeah. That’s something.”

  And it was.

  The morning dawned foggy and freezing, with gray clouds pressing down on the landscape in somber seriousness, matching my mood as we drove along Highway 50 to the other side of town where the cemetery dozed, manicured and solemn as a funeral suit. It was early, the light barely an hour old. Steaming cups of coffee rested in the cupholders on the console as Craig drove, my cup untouched. My stomach was too unsettled to ingest anything, let alone the bitterness of gas station blend.

  Oddly, the well-kept cemetery soothed my raw nerves. It was a beautiful piece of ground—one I’d avoided at every turn when I was a kid. It used to be the place that had swallowed up my mother, responsible for taking her away from me, though as I got older, I understood the true culprit in that loss. The cemetery had trees three times my age, graceful and secure as they stood sentry over the dead. In their stoic shadows, memories were suspended, cherished. Loved ones no longer fought. People valued what they’d known and lost. Tears were shed, but many of them cleansed.

  That’s what I was hoping for with this excursion. I needed some absolution for being the daily reminder of my father’s crime.

  It was his bad decision-making that had put my mother in the ground. It was his addiction that had ruined our family. I wasn’t only not responsible, I was justified in being angry. However, such anger required energy, and I had held on too long to inappropriate emotions requiring energy: fear, insecurity, blame, and self-hatred. I had no more energy, even though those inappropriate emotions took less and less of my reserves than ever before.

  Craig found a parking lot near a building at the front that housed ash crypts, where people who’d been cremated but hadn’t wanted to be separated from families could be interred, if not in the ground, at least nearby. The side of the building also sheltered a sign, neatly labeling the cemetery’s layout. Before leaving New York, I’d called the front office and had gotten the plot number where my mother and brother were laid to rest. The sound of our car doors slamming echoed over the hills of headstone markers, eclectic yet somehow all complementing each other. Large or small, there was beauty in their steadfast duty, marking the final resting place of people who mattered to others. We were the intruders, no matter the gifts we brought, but they welcomed us, told stories of those we passed, and said nothing of our momentary presence in this timeless world. I could see why people found cemeteries beautiful. Despite having feared them—especially this one—from a young age, I was coming around on the subject.

  Craig and I walked around a curve and up a side path designed to cut through large groupings of graves so people could walk comfortably around those interred, and after a moment’s hesitation, I slipped my availab
le hand in his. Speaking of stoic, uncompromising beauty….

  He squeezed my fingers. “You okay?”

  I sniffed, my nose a little runny in the cold. It was in the midtwenties, and there wasn’t a sound to be heard. It would only have been quieter had snow blanketed the landscape, muffling the existence of the world. Looking around at the space, I judged it. A little mound so there was a view, a carefully planned line of trees to provide shade and dignity, grass that would green up beautifully come spring, but was at least uniform brown in the dead of winter around the markers, I found the location suitable. Pleasing even. It would be nice to sit here at sunset, see how the colors played over the grays and blacks of the marble pillows at the heads of people’s final beds.

  “I’m okay,” I assured him with a ghost of a smile. “It’s really nice here.” My words were inadequate, but I only knew what I felt, not always a genius at articulating that.

  “It is,” he agreed. “You want me to go with you?”

  My eyes slid to the left, and with a deep breath, I squared my shoulders. “Maybe give me a minute at first. Then you can come say hello.”

  He nodded and let my hand go, and then I was walking over crunchy grass, several rows into a grouping of graves, until I found them. The headstone was only a couple years old, and not what I was expecting at all. It spanned the two plots, and clearly was one slab of marble. I wasn’t sure how Sherrilyn had paid for such an elaborate grave marker, but my chest swelled in gratitude. She had honored them both beautifully.

  In the middle was carved a bouquet of gladiolus, and the only reason I knew that was Holly always loved those, so every year on her birthday, I got her some. I’d have to ask her if gladiolus meant something in particular to have prompted Sherrilyn to carve them on the headstone. One side bore the dates of my mother’s birth and death, and the words “Beloved mother” denoted her plot. The other depicted my brother’s details with the words “Fierce protector.” Between the two at the bottom, the simple words, “Peace be with them,” hit me hardest of all. Such a simple idea, peace, yet so powerful. If there was anything I wished for my mother and brother, it was peace.