Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  But it wasn’t as if words healed us. What good were Rafael’s words? What good were Adam’s words? What good were anybody’s words? I kept thinking about what Jodie said. None of us are ever going to get better. The thought entered into my head that maybe Sharkey had lost his faith in words. Who could blame him?

  On my way to the smoking pit, I walked by the labyrinth. I saw Rafael walking it. His steps were slow and deliberate and I wondered what was in his head. I watched him for a little while. I was hiding behind some trees. I guess I just didn’t want anyone to see that I was watching him. I felt stupid. Why was I hiding? Who was I hiding from? I hated myself sometimes.

  I saw Adam walking toward me. I pretended to act normal—though I wouldn’t know normal if it bit off my private parts.

  I waved hi.

  He waved back hi.

  As he passed me, he stopped and said, “New guy today. He just came in early this morning. So you and Rafael will be getting a new roommate.”

  “Great,” I said. But there must have been something in my voice because Adam didn’t keep on walking.

  “You want to tell me what that great meant?”

  I shrugged.

  “Not having a good day, huh?”

  “I don’t want a new roommate. That’s all.”

  “Where do you suggest we put the new guy?”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “What’s this about, Zach?”

  Adam, he loved to ask that. I hated all the questions he had inside him. “It’s not right,” I said.

  “What’s not right?”

  “What if Sharkey comes back?”

  Adam didn’t say anything. He just, well, he was just thinking. “Can you come in to see me today?”

  “Like I have some place to go.”

  “After group. Let’s have a session. Me and you.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Still mad at me?”

  “Like it matters.”

  “It might.”

  I think I gave him a snarky smile. “See you in group,” I said.

  -2-

  I headed for the smoking pit. Jodie was there smoking up a storm. I liked the way she held her cigarette. She was really into smoking. She smoked like maybe her life depended on it. Well, hell, she was a for real addict. Jodie, she had a couple of other people living inside her. Sometimes, those other people showed up. When one of those other people showed up, I made like a scared rabbit who’d just heard a rifle go off. I just couldn’t deal with that. Adam said it was good to know our limitations. Embrace them. Sure, embrace, embrace, embrace. I wish Adam would get out of my head.

  I smiled at Jodie. I knew by the look on her face that the two other people living inside her were gone today.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi back,” she said. “I’m giving you a big hug right now.”

  “No touch,” I said.

  She laughed. “I can hug beautiful boys with my eyes. You know that, don’t you?”

  “There’s a lot of things you can do with your eyes,” I said.

  “Except have sex.”

  “No talking about sex,” I said. “We’re all on contract.”

  “Who needs sex?” she said. “All I need is coffee and cigarettes—and a new therapist.” She hated her therapist. She’d gone through two of them. She said she’d love to have Adam. She said Adam was “easy on the eyes.” I knew what she meant. But I got the feeling she wouldn’t have liked Adam as a therapist either. She was too rebellious. That’s what I liked about her.

  We both laughed.

  “You been to breakfast?”

  “Not hungry.”

  “Gotta eat, sweetie.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “Finish that thing.”

  I took a drag off my cigarette. “You’re acting like a mother,” I said, “making me eat breakfast.”

  “I’m not making you do anything. Besides, you could use some mothering.”

  “Think so?”

  “Yeah, I do think so.”

  “So now you’re a part of my therapy?”

  “Of course I am, sugar. Didn’t anybody tell you we’re all part of each other’s therapy?”

  “Maybe that’s why we’re all screwed.”

  “You may be right about that, sugar.”

  Sugar. Sugar. I liked that Jodie called me sugar.

  “Nice smile,” she said, “very sweet. C’mon, put that thing out and let’s go see if there’s anything exciting happening at breakfast.” There was always someone acting up or acting out or having a breakdown or crying or emoting or yelling or something. Breakfast seemed to be a good time for throwing your emotions around. Jodie said that at this place emotions were like Frisbees—people just tossed them around all day long like they were at a park.

  My theory was that conflicts at this place were unavoidable. When you get a lot of people with issues in one big group, well, there were going to be serious explosions. Jodie loved to watch the explosions. Me, I don’t know. It sort of embarrassed me to see people engage in unhealthy behaviors in such a public way. I liked to keep my unhealthy behaviors to myself. You know, like secretly reading Rafael’s journal. Or like drinking bourbon all by myself.

  When Jodie and I walked into the dining room, Rafael was sitting there reading the newspaper. He had a way of ignoring all the commotion. Not that he wasn’t social, but sometimes, well, he just wanted to read his newspaper. Jodie and I sat next to him. “What’s new?”

  Rafael looked up and smiled at Jodie. “The world’s falling apart. It says so right here.” He pointed at the headline.

  That made us all laugh.

  Jodie looked up, her eyes surveying the room. I mean, she loved studying all the other clients. That’s what we were—clients. I wondered why we weren’t patients. Sharkey said we were clients because we could leave anytime we wanted. “Patients can’t leave. Clients can.” Sharkey had an answer for everything.

  Jodie nudged me and pointed her chin at Hannah and called her over. “Where’s the bus?”

  “What bus?”

  “The one that ran over your ass. You look like crap.”

  That made me laugh. Hannah sat next to me and gave me the eye.

  Rafael just kept on reading.

  Hannah reached over and tugged at the newspaper. “What is it about newspapers that you like so much?”

  “There’s a world out there, Hannah. Anybody ever tell you that?” Rafael smiled at her.

  “That world almost killed me.”

  “Oh, so it’s the world that’s doing you in?”

  Hannah shot Rafael a fake smile. “You should smile more.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “What was your favorite drink?”

  Hannah was sort of flirting with Rafael. I could tell. But, well, in a good way. I mean, I could tell she liked him. “You planning to take me out to some bar?”

  She tapped her temple. “In my dreams, sweetie.”

  “Red wine,” Rafael said.

  “What kind of red wine?”

  “Always liked a good cabernet.”

  “Ever hit the hard stuff?”

  “An occasional Manhattan. What about you?”

  “Very dry Martinis. About ten a night.”

  “How could you tell how dry they were?”

  Hannah and Jodie broke out laughing.

  Hannah shook her head. “God, I miss drinking. Miss it like hell.”

  “Me too,” Jodie said. “Sometimes, I just wanna scream.”

  “Me too,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. Not that it wasn’t true. I did want to fucking scream.

  Hannah studied my face. “I have a son your age.” Her voice got real soft and that really tore me up because she could be so tough. She patted me on the cheek. “I know, no touch. No touch.” She laughed. “Bourbon. Wasn’t that your drink?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I hope you never touch it again.” Then she burst out cryin
g. “Or you’ll wind up worse than us.” She took a deep breath. “This place is making me sad. God, we’re all so sad.”

  “That’s not true,” Rafael said. “We’re just sorting things out, that’s all.”

  “You’re a sweet man.” Jodie was wearing a crooked smile.

  “Am I?”

  Rafael smiled. And right then he looked old and beat-up and I knew he was going through something and I wanted to ask him about that. He had to make it. Somebody had to make it. Rafael seemed like maybe he would be the one. Sharkey, he’d given up. Rafael had to make it. Please, God, please. I was praying to a God I didn’t get along with.

  -3-

  I could tell it was going to be different in group. I don’t know what it was, but the anxiety thing was visiting me again and it was really making itself at home. I had the urge to go away. Numb out. Disassociate. I seriously wanted to do that. But I was trying to make myself stay focused.

  Sharkey was gone and I kept staring at his chair. He always liked to sit on the same chair. The new guy, Amit, was doing his paperwork so Adam said he wouldn’t be in group. Sheila and Maggie were out sick and Kelley, no one knew where she was. Sometimes, she just isolated, didn’t want to go near anyone, see anyone, talk to anyone. I knew what that was like.

  So it was just me and Rafael and Lizzie and Adam.

  Adam handed the Check-in card to Rafael. Rafael took it. Today he didn’t smile. He always smiled—even when he was feeling bad. But not today. “I’m Rafael. I’m an alcoholic.” And we all said, “Hi Rafael.” He paused for a moment, then looked at the card, then set it down. “I’ve been keeping a secret,” he said.

  Adam didn’t say anything. He just waited.

  “I killed my son.”

  Adam got this very serious look on his face. I could see a look of surprise—then it was gone. “When you say you killed your son—what do you mean, Rafael?” His question was soft, not like an interrogation.

  Rafael had his eyes pasted to the floor. “He was seven—” He stopped and hit his chest softly. He kept hitting it.

  “Breathe,” Adam said. “Just breathe.”

  Rafael took a few deep breaths. In and out. Inhale. Exhale. It was like I was breathing with him.

  “Rafael, it’s okay. Take your time. You can do this.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. Rafael, you can.”

  Rafael nodded, then shut his eyes. He spoke just above a whisper. “I was driving. I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about the screenplay I was working on. I had my son in the car and I didn’t keep my eyes on the road. And then, all of a sudden, something hit the car and I went skidding out of control and then—I don’t know. Everything was spinning and—Joaquin screamed, he screamed—and the next thing I remember is that I woke up in a hospital room. And I kept asking for Joaquin. Joaquin? Joaquin? Where’s Joaquin? I knew by the look on my wife’s face that he was—.” He stopped. It was like he just couldn’t say the word dead. He just couldn’t.

  “My wife, she didn’t even have to say the words. I killed him. He was seven years old and I killed him.” He kept whispering Joaquin between his sobs. And he kept hitting himself in the chest and he was more like a wounded animal than a man. And I hated it, seeing him like that and I was torn up to hell and I just couldn’t take it. Joaquin, Joaquin, Joaquin. I don’t know, it was like he’d let go and there was nothing but his pain and he was living in that pain now. All of him, his heart and his mind and his body and he fell on his knees and he kept hitting himself and I looked at Adam and my eyes were telling Adam to make it all stop and I don’t know, I just grabbed hold of Lizzie’s hand and I could see that tears were rolling down her cheeks and I wanted it all just to stop.

  I never knew that hurt in a man could sound like that. It was the saddest song in the world. And I knew that Rafael was broken, that he had fallen and reached the very bottom of a dark hole and I wondered if he had it in him to climb back out.

  And then I saw Adam reach for Rafael and pull him up from the floor. He stood him up and sat him back down on his chair. I don’t know how long Rafael cried. The whole world had gone quiet and there was nothing in the entire universe except for the sound of a man breaking in half. And finally, Rafael grew quiet and still. I could tell that he’d gone away and now he was trying to come back. He reached for the box of tissues that was always in the center of the circle. He took a deep breath, then looked at Adam. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  He looked at the floor, then looked back up into Adam’s face. “I haven’t spoken his name since his funeral. Eleven years.”

  He looked at me.

  “He’d be eighteen.” He gave me a crooked smile.

  And I wanted to say, I’ll be your son if you want. I will be. I’ll be a good son. But I didn’t say anything. I just tried to smile back at him.

  “My life fell apart after he died. He was adopted. My wife, I don’t really think she wanted to go through with the whole adoption thing. But she went along. I guess she could see how much I wanted to have kids. I think she knew I loved him more than anything in the whole world. She felt left out. She was left out. When he died, she moved on. I think I hated her for moving on. She hated me back for not moving on. She grieved too. But she couldn’t live in all that sadness. Me, I just drank. After a year, she left me. But I’d left her long before that. I don’t forgive myself.”

  Rafael’s tears were like little rivers. And then Adam did something I’d never seen him do. He took Rafael’s hand and held it. Then he just looked at Rafael. Looked him right in the eyes. “I think you can forgive yourself. I think you know it’s time.”

  Rafael looked down at the ground, but Adam didn’t let his hand go. “I used to sing to him when he was a baby. All the time. I stopped singing the day he died.”

  There were tears falling from Adam’s face. That was the first time I saw Adam as a man, as a human being. Before that instant, I’d only seen him as my therapist. He was only a guy whose job it was to help us. To help me. But he was more than that. Everyone in the world was more than anything I ever imagined. I felt small and stupid. We all sat there quietly, the four of us. And finally Adam let go of Rafael’s hand and nodded at me and Lizzie. “What’s coming up for you, Zach? Lizzie?”

  “It was an accident,” Lizzie said.

  Rafael nodded. He wanted to believe. But he didn’t. Not quite. Almost.

  Adam looked at me, a question in his eyes.

  “I want to remember,” I said. I didn’t even know I was going to say that. “I think the monster will go away if I remember. It’s like—.” I stopped and looked at Rafael. “It’s like you saying your son’s name again. It hurts. But it’s not stuck inside you anymore.”

  Rafael gave me a smile. I swear it was the most beautiful smile in the world.

  And then I heard myself say: “Don’t hate yourself anymore, Rafael. Please don’t hate yourself.”

  -4-

  After group, I sat on the steps outside Adam’s small office and waited for him. I wondered what he and Rafael were talking about. For some reason I remembered the conversation at breakfast. When Jodie had said I have a son your age Rafael had winced. Almost as if someone had punched him in the stomach. Now I knew why he had winced. Now I knew why he was so kind to me. Because I was his son’s age.

  I thought maybe Rafael didn’t see me.

  Maybe all he saw when he looked at me was his son.

  That thought really tore me up all to hell. See, that was the thing about my mom and dad. I think that most of the time they didn’t see me. My mom and dad, they didn’t even see themselves. I hadn’t thought about them in a long time. I wondered why.

  I heard Rafael’s voice as the door opened. “Your turn,” he said. He was smiling and the sun was out and it wasn’t so cold outside. Not today. He sat down next to me. He didn’t say anything. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. What about you?”

  “I’m good, Zach. I really am.�
� He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out. “God, sometimes I wish I still smoked.” He laughed. I think he was laughing at himself. He did that a lot, laugh at himself. I thought that was a good thing. You know, a healthy behavior. “Have you ever been in a summer storm in the desert, Zach?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “They just come up on you—the wind and the thunder and the lightning and the rain begins to pound. And you think that the world is going to end. It’s this overwhelming apocalyptic moment. And then, just like that, it’s over. And the world is calm again. And the air smells clean and new. And smelling it, you want to be alive again.”

  “Yeah, it’s like that,” I said.

  “That’s how I feel, Zach. Like the desert after a storm.”

  -5-

  Adam was on the phone and his door was open. He motioned me to sit down. When he hung up the phone, he nodded and asked, “How you doing, buddy?”

  He liked the word buddy. I liked it too. “I’m kind of stunned out,” I said.

  “You mean about group this morning?”

  “Yeah. That was a big secret Rafael kept.”

  “Yeah. You know, the secret thing, I know you guys think it’s just this little bullshit thing, but secrets are killing you guys. That’s why it’s on the list. You have to let them out. They really are killing you guys. They’re killing all of you.” Then he looked at me. “You have a lot of secrets you don’t talk about.”

  “Guess I do.”

  “When are you going to let them out?”

  “I’m not as brave as Rafael.”

  “I’m making up that you’re as brave as they come.”

  I wanted to tell him that God didn’t write brave on my heart. “You’re giving me a lot of credit.”

  “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Zach. You never have. You know, it was a beautiful thing, what you said to Rafael, that he shouldn’t hate himself. You should take your own advice.”