Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “Yeah,” Sharkey whispered.

  “You deserve better. You deserve better than what he gave you. You do know that, don’t you, Sharkey? You do know you deserve better.”

  There were tears falling from Sharkey’s face. “Screw ‘em,” he said. He got this really hard look on his face, this look that said, “Screw them. Just screw ‘em all.” And then he just got up and walked out of the room.

  We all looked at each other.

  “Can he do that?” I said. “I mean, shouldn’t we go after him?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “He forgot his coat. It’s snowing.” I started to get up and go after him.

  “You know the rules, Zach. We all know the rules. No leaving group. If you leave group, then there’s consequences.”

  “But—”

  “Look, he just needs some time.” Adam looked at the group. “We all need to learn how to cope. All of us. We’ve gone over this. Everyone has to do things in their own way. But we don’t do the rescuing thing here. We’ve talked about that.”

  I really wanted to tell Adam to go screw himself.

  “But aren’t we supposed to do something?”

  “What, Zach? What are we supposed to do?”

  “Bring him back to group.”

  Adam shook his head.

  I really hated Adam. I hated him.

  I don’t remember what went on the rest of group. I just kept looking at the floor and every time I heard a noise, I kept thinking it was Sharkey walking back into the room. But he never came back.

  When group was over, we all got in a circle like we always did. We got in a circle and held hands and said the serenity prayer. I was right next to Adam and I had to hold his hand in the circle. And when I was walking out, I watched Adam walking toward his office and I yelled, “Hey, Adam!”

  He looked back at me.

  I walked toward him.

  “I have a secret,” I said. “And I know we’re not supposed to keep secrets.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You want to tell me your secret?”

  “Yup,” I said. “When I was holding your hand in the circle, I wanted to break it.” I shot him a grin and walked away.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said.

  “About what?” I said. And then I just started yelling at him. “You know what your fucking problem is? You keep expecting me to act like an adult. Great. Fucking great! You want me to act all mature and stuff like Rafael, but I never got to be a kid and now you want me to dive into adulthood. Well, I don’t fucking know how to swim, dude! I hate you. I hate you. Do you get that?” And I know I was crying again and I was really getting sick and tired of those tears that were always scarring my face and screwing up my 20/20 vision. And all of a sudden, I felt myself falling on the ground and I knew I’d tripped on something and I just knelt there crying and I was trying to pick myself up. And Adam was standing in front of me, holding out his hand. “Take it,” he said. “It’s my hand. Take it. You can break it if you want to.”

  -2-

  Sharkey just disappeared. I couldn’t find him anywhere. He wasn’t in art therapy and he wasn’t at lunch and he just wasn’t anywhere.

  I went to a breath session with Susan in the afternoon and it was really weird. For no reason at all, I remembered a dream right in the middle of my breathing. My brother and I were in a car and he was telling me how sorry he was for what he did. He had a gun and he kept playing with it. He would point the gun at me and then he would point it at himself and he kept saying, eenie, meenie, miney, moe. And then the gun went off—and I started screaming. Susan kept saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, focus on your breathing, you’re okay.” And I felt her hands hovering over me and her hands felt like the wings of an angel.

  After the session, I told her I was never going to be okay. She smiled at me and said, “You have no idea how brave you are.” But I knew I wasn’t brave. I didn’t even know how to spell the word. “Is a hug okay?”

  Sometimes the therapists thought that hugs were a good thing. I didn’t know what to think about that. Hugs, you know, it’s not something we did in my family. “Sure,” I said. “That would be good.”

  She smiled at me and I could see her aging face and she combed my hair with her fingers and gave me a hug. “Let go,” she whispered. “Let go, brave boy. Let go.”

  When I walked outside, the sun was out but it was bitter cold. The sky looked wild like another storm was coming up over the mountains. I stared at the pieces of blue in between the black clouds. I felt that way, like the sky, cold and stormy and dark.

  When I came back into Cabin 9, I noticed that all of Sharkey’s things were gone. I opened his closet door and it was empty—like no one had ever been there.

  Gone. Just like that, in an instant. Disappeared.

  I could feel my heart and I knew it was panic. That’s what it was. I knew that feeling like my heart was about to sink into a cold, empty ocean. I hated that feeling, that feeling that maybe I wouldn’t be able to breathe or that maybe something really bad was about to happen to me. Sharkey? Where was he? Where? Why? He’d just told his story and he was doing the work and everything seemed to be okay with him and he was writing in his journal and he’d been clean for thirty days and now he was gone and what was it all for and why had he come here if all he was gonna do was leave without finishing the work? I kept breathing in and out. Breathe, Zach, breathe. Breathe, Zach, breathe.

  I ran out to the smoking pit, but he wasn’t there. I asked Jodie if she’d seen him. She took a drag from her cigarette. “He’s gone, Zach.” She seemed sad. She liked Sharkey. They hung out after dinner all the time and made each other laugh.

  “Gone?” I just looked at her.

  “Yeah. He must have called for a cab because he got in one about half hour ago.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “See you out on the streets.”

  “That’s what he said?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. He was smiling. Sharkey’s got a helluva smile.”

  “But how could they just let him go?”

  “They can’t make you stay here, Zach.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s not the way it works.”

  “But, he’s—,” I stopped. I didn’t even know what I was going to say.

  “He’s what, Zach?”

  “He’s not okay yet.”

  “He never will be, Zach. None of us will ever be okay.”

  She just looked at me and took another drag from her cigarette.

  “Then what’s it all for, Jodie?”

  “God, you’re just a kid.”

  “Fuck you, Jodie.” That’s all I said before I walked away. God, I wanted some bourbon. I wanted some real bad. Real, real bad. I walked around like a nervous cat. Man, I was nervous. The anxiety had me all wigged out and I swear I was going to go completely mental. I kept chewing on my finger nails, not that I had any left. I started gnawing on my knuckles. God, I’d never been this wigged out. I didn’t know what was happening with me. I don’t know, I was walking up and down the grounds like a crazy man. And then all of a sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder and that hand scared the crap out of me. I made a fist and turned. I found myself staring into Rafael’s brown eyes. My fist was aimed at him.

  “You okay?” I hated that his brown eyes were so soft.

  “No, I’m not okay. If I was okay would I be hanging around this place?”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened? Fucking life happened, Rafael. That’s what happened.”

  He kept his hand on my shoulder.

  “This is a no-touch facility. Didn’t you know that?”

  He kept his hand on my shoulder.

  I pushed his hand away.

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  “Sharkey left.”

  The news hit Rafael like a punch to the stomach. I could see that. But he just stood there. “That makes me sad,” he whispered.
/>   “He was gonna make it. He was gonna make it, Rafael. And now what’s gonna happen to him?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it, Zach.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “We can’t live other people’s lives for them, Zach. You know that.”

  “Adam just let him leave.”

  “It wasn’t Adam’s choice.”

  “Screw Adam.”

  “This isn’t Adam’s fault. Don’t do that, Zach. This is about Sharkey. Sharkey, he just couldn’t take it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t take it either.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No. I can’t. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “Let’s walk,” he said. I don’t know why, but I walked with him. Not that we said anything. I just sort of walked next to him. And then, as we’re walking, he pointed to a tree. “See that tree?” It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted.

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “It’s my favorite tree.”

  “It’s not that great a tree,” I said.

  “That’s it. That’s exactly it. It’s like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again.” He sort of smiled at me. “But, Zach, it didn’t die.” He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn’t. “It’s alive.”

  “Maybe it should have just given up.”

  “That tree didn’t know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?”

  He was waiting for me to ask what he’d named it—but I decided I didn’t want to ask.

  “Zach,” he whispered. “The tree’s name is Zach.”

  “Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it!” I knew I was starting to cry and I was so sick, sick, sick to death of all those sad damned tears I had inside me. How could I have so many tears living there, in my body? How could they fit? When was it going to stop? When?

  We just sat there, Rafael and me. We sat there for a long time.

  Then I heard Rafael’s voice and his voice was asking me a question. “You love Sharkey, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “I love him too.”

  “Then why didn’t he get better?”

  “Love doesn’t always save people.”

  “Then what’s it good for?”

  Rafael smiled, then laughed—but I thought that his laugh was more like crying. “If I knew the answer to that question, I’d be God.”

  We sat out there until it got dark. It started snowing again.

  We walked back to the cabin in silence.

  There weren’t any more words living inside us.

  -3-

  So I’m lying here trying to figure out this day.

  I just can’t figure it out.

  Everything is a knot.

  I can hear the wind outside.

  I wonder if Sharkey is out there somewhere, walking around, stoned out of his mind. This cold could kill him. I hate winter with all my crooked heart. The only thing that winter can’t kill is the monster.

  The monster will live forever.

  REMEMBERING

  When I woke up this morning, there was a note on my desk:

  Zach,

  You told me that remembering was the monster. I think you’re wrong. I think it’s forgetting that’s the monster. I just wanted to tell you that.

  Love,

  Rafael

  I kept staring at his note. And then I just kept staring at the word love. I was trying to remember if that word had ever been pointed in my direction. I couldn’t remember. Was that because I had amnesia or because nobody had ever told me they loved me? Maybe to be loved you have to have something written on your heart that tells other people something good about you. Maybe there’s nothing good about me. Maybe there is no monster. Maybe I’m the monster. Maybe that’s what God wrote on my heart: monster. God and I will never be friends. Not ever.

  I took a shower, and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. As I walked to the smoking pit, I saw people waving, “Morning, Zach.”

  Yeah. Morning.

  At the smoking pit, I kept expecting to see Sharkey.

  But he was gone.

  HOW CAN YOU LIVE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO SING?

  I keep thinking about the song I was writing when I used to get wasted with my friends. What’s wrong with me? Why would I want to write a song? I don’t even know how to sing. I don’t even believe that I have a song inside me. But there has to be something else inside me besides really bad dreams.

  WHEN RAFAEL STOPPED SINGING

  -1-

  Cabin 9 was a lot quieter with Sharkey gone. So was the smoking pit. Sharkey took up a lot of space. I guess I liked that about him. Now there was just more empty space in the world I lived in. Two days after Sharkey left, I was lying in bed. Thinking about my dream. All I could remember was my brother’s face. He must have been in my dream. I don’t know why but I spelled his name in the air.

  The air can hold a lot of things. But it couldn’t hold my brother’s name.

  I sat up on my bed and studied the familiar room. Rafael had put up one of Sharkey’s drawings on the wall. It was a drawing of a boy on fire playing a piano. Rafael had told him it was a beautiful drawing. “Imagine a young man who could draw such a beautiful thing.” I don’t think Sharkey heard what Rafael was trying to tell him.

  I walked over to Rafael’s desk and stared at the painting he was working on. It was a self-portrait in different shades of blue. His hair was a little wild and he was crying. It was the saddest painting I’d ever seen. I just stared at it for a long time. I think I was looking for all of the things that were making Rafael sad. But there were so many things in the world that could make a guy sad. The list was like this winter—it just went on forever.

  Then my eyes fell on Rafael’s journal. It was right there. I’d seen him writing in it the night before. He always wrote something in it—even if it was just a few lines.

  Then I found it in my trembling hands. It was like I just found it there. I read the words he’d written on the cover: And here I am the center of all beauty! Writing these poems. It was from a poem. He’d read the poem to me. He told me the poet’s name but I didn’t remember the name of the poet. He’d laughed when he read the poem. “He’s being ironic and sincere all at the same time.” I got that. Rafael would have gotten along with Mr. Garcia. They would have understood each other perfectly.

  Rafael had so many words living inside him. I guess he just had to empty them out sometimes. At first I thought I was just going to stare at the words, you know, like they were paintings on the walls of a museum. I wasn’t actually going to read the words. I was just going to look at them. But that’s not what happened. I knew it was wrong. My heart was beating faster, but I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t. I turned to the last entry:

  I just finished painting my first self-portrait. I don’t think I intended to paint myself. It just happened. Not that anything just happens. Adam believes that everything happens for a reason. I think he may be right about that. The problem is that most of us are too lazy or too scared to think about all of the reasons for the things that “just happen.”

  I don’t really know what I was thinking when I started painting. But then I realized I’d painted a face. And it was me. At fifty-three maybe it was time to paint myself. I didn’t even have to look in the mirror. Now that I think about it, I’ve never really enjoyed looking at myself in the mirror. Sometimes it just hurts too damned much to look at yourself, to see what you’ve become. To look at me. To see what I’ve become.

  I just sat here and painted myself from memory, trying to remember what I looked like. It’s strange, how the hands and fingers remember. They take a brush and paint and remember and your face appears on the blank sheet of watercolor paper.

  Maybe I’m just try
ing to re-invent myself or re-create myself. Maybe I’m just working on another piece of fiction. I’m good at fiction.

  This is what I’m telling myself right now: This is you. Rafael, this is you. I’m trying to tell myself who I am. I lost myself somewhere. And that’s a very sad thing. Losing yourself is sad and heartbreaking. Fucking sad and fucking heartbreaking. Losing yourself isn’t like losing a key to your house. It isn’t like losing an expensive pair of sunglasses or even the only copy of the greatest screenplay you’ve ever written.

  I’ve been talking to myself a lot lately. That doesn’t bother me much. I have a feeling I’m trying to talk myself into existence. I’m trying to listen.

  It’s time I start listening to my own voice.

  Sometimes I find myself laughing.

  Sometimes I find myself crying.

  Friday night, I was at an AA meeting and I was in the back of the room and I started crying. I didn’t bother to think about why. But I just let it happen. The great thing about a room full of alcoholics is that people emote all over the place. Crying is the least of it.

  So my first self-portrait is of me crying. Maybe that’s not a bad place to begin.

  I wanted to sit there and get drunk on Rafael’s writing. That’s what I really wanted to do. I looked around the room, you know, like guilty people do when they’re stealing something. I put the journal back. I have to stop doing this I have to stop doing this.

  I was beginning to understand what Adam meant by addict behavior.

  I took a quick shower. I kept thinking about that idea of talking yourself into existence. I wondered if that was possible. I didn’t know how to do that. Maybe Rafael didn’t either. He seemed sadder than ever and I wondered if he was really going to get better. But, at least, he was trying to get at what he felt. Maybe he could do that because he was so at home with words. I mean, he worked with them. They were the tools of his trade. Mr. Garcia had always told me I was good with words too. But I felt inarticulate—and reading Rafael’s journal, I don’t know, it made me feel even more inarticulate.