“Do it for therapy. You can go to art school later.”
“You’re a wiseass, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know that.”
I don’t know why I didn’t join the conversation. I just liked listening. I think a part of me was trying to memorize Rafael’s voice. So I could carry it around with me when he left.
“Can I ask you question, Amit?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of these places have you been in before?”
“Does it show?”
“I guess it does.”
“Three or four.”
“Three? Or four?”
“Four. These places don’t work.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I got into some—.”
Rafael finished his sentence. “Legal trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“Drug of choice?”
“Cocaine, heroin, booze. Take your pick.”
“When did you start?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was probably fourteen. Some guy called me a nigger. A few days later, someone spray painted our garage with that nice word on it.”
“So you decided to get wasted.”
“It hurt.”
“I bet it did.”
“Not that you’d know.”
“Not that I’d know.” Rafael took a deep breath, almost like he was smoking a cigarette. “So you got wasted.”
“So I should have wasted him instead?”
“Those your only options?”
Amit laughed, you know one of those smartass laughs that sort of said fuck you. “You like to screw around with people’s heads?”
“Not really. Sometimes, I just like to ask a lot of questions.”
“It’s a wonder you haven’t gotten your ass kicked.”
“How do you know I haven’t?” Rafael was laughing at himself. Again. “What kind of crowd do you hang with that people get violent when you ask questions?”
“Normal people.”
“You hang out with normies?”
“Guess I don’t.”
“Sometimes, when people ask questions, that means they care.”
“You one of those people?”
“Yeah. I’m one of those people.”
Amit didn’t say anything.
“You know, Amit, you can make this place work for you. How long have you been clean?”
“Eighteen days.”
“Eighteen days is good. Eighteen days is great. You know what they say—if you can stay clean for a day, you can stay clean for a lifetime.”
“Who says that?”
“I say that.”
“Bet you were a wine drinker.”
“Bet you’re right.”
“Bet you drank nice wine too.”
“Real nice wine.”
“Bet you drank alone too.”
“The only way to drink. That way there aren’t any distractions.” Rafael laughed. I could tell it was one of those laughs that meant sad. “I quit for a day.”
“A lifetime, huh?”
“I know you’re pissed off at the world. For all I know, you’ve got a right.”
“I live in a fucking racist world.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You live in that world too, dude. And what are you fucking doing about it?”
“I’m talking to you.”
That made Amit laugh. It was a nice laugh. A good laugh. I don’t know how I knew that, but it just seemed that way to me. I didn’t know I was laughing too.
“Are you awake over there, dude?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’re pretty quiet.”
“Guess I am.”
“You like it here, Zach?” I let Amit’s question just hang there. In the air.
“It’s good.”
“What’s so fucking good about it?”
“The food is good.” That made Amit and Rafael laugh. I mean they were laughing. And, well, I just laughed with them.
I don’t know how long we laughed, but it seemed like a long time. And then everything was quiet and still. The only light in the room came from Rafael’s lamp. As I looked across the room, everything seemed like it was a painting. A quiet and strange painting that told a story—and you had to look at the painting a long time in order to figure out what the story was about.
-2-
I liked weekends. This place was a lot like school. Group was homeroom every morning. Then two classes, then lunch, then two classes in the afternoon.
We were angry, so we had anger classes.
We were addicts, so we had addiction classes.
We were co-dependent, so we had co-dependent classes.
Twice a week, we had art therapy. Other kinds of classes too. The ones where we had to act things out, play roles—I hated those. Hated those. In the evenings, meetings three days a week. “Hi guys, I’m Zach, I’m an alcoholic.” Weekends. Time enough to do our homework and hang out and smoke and read. Weekends were good.
When I woke up on Saturday morning, Rafael and Amit were gone. I took a breath and then another and then another. That reminded me that I had another Breathwork session with Susan in the afternoon. I was tired. I wanted to crawl back into bed and just sleep. I looked at the clock. It was 8:20. On weekends they let us sleep in until 8:30—then we had to get up. If I went back to bed, one of the counseling assistants would knock and come in and smile politely and say, “Time to get up.” I hated that.
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to smoke a cigarette first or take a shower first. I decided to take a shower. When I was drying myself off, I looked at myself in the mirror. I stared at my scar just underneath my right nipple. I touched it. The whole scene came flooding into my head, my brother holding me down, a piece of glass in his hand. I could cut you I could cut you and then the piece of glass moving across the lower part of my right chest. I see myself, a boy of six, screaming. I see my father coming into the room and picking me up.
My dad didn’t take me to the hospital. He cleaned my wound, put gauze and that suture tape that worked just like stitches. He gave me one of my mother’s pills. And I slept.
-3-
I knew what I was going to do next. I was going to engage in my new addiction. I was going to read Rafael’s diary. He was leaving. He would take his words and his voice with him, and I would be left with nothing but my own thoughts. I picked up his diary and read his last entry:
I believe that there are defining moments in every human life. In each of those defining moments we experience a death. I died here. It doesn’t matter anymore why I thought I came here. But I did something more important than die here. I don’t know how to say this exactly except to say that I have never felt more alive. Not ever. I have never felt at home in my own body until now. My body is my home. I keep repeating that to myself. To me, those words sound like a miracle.
I don’t know what the exact shape of my life will take–and what the days to come will bring–except I know that I am happy and my heart is still. I know that I have fallen in love with the word surrender and know too that I can no longer live in disappointment. I have lived in disappointment all my life. I refuse the medicine of alcohol. I have taken a crooked road to arrive at the country of manhood. It will take time for me to find myself in the world again. I have a great many difficulties I have to confront. But I’m not running anymore.
I feel whole. I am whole.
Before I came to this place I wanted to walk out into the desert and die. Now, I want only to live. I want to write those words again and again. I hear those words and understand them in all their beauty and awesome weight. I want to live. That is all I know today. I want to live.
I knew I was a thief for reading these words, for stealing them. I was ashamed of myself. And yet, I wanted to keep Rafael’s words, take them and keep them and put them somewhere inside of me so maybe I could have what he had.
Rafael had come here nearly broken. And now he wasn’t so broken anymore. Sha
rkey, he’d left before he could do the work. Maybe it was too hard and too painful and too impossible to do what Rafael had done.
I wondered if I had it in me. I wondered if I could say with conviction what Rafael had written: I want to live.
I knew I wasn’t letting go. I knew I was still living in a small and dark room. But there was a door to the room. And a window. And I could see that there was a sky out there.
-4-
On Monday morning, I waited for Rafael and Amit to leave the room before I got up out of bed. I walked over to Rafael’s desk to look for his journal—but it wasn’t there. It was like looking for one of my dad’s bottles of bourbon, and discovering that all the bottles were gone. I didn’t know what to do, and, for an instant, Mr. Anxiety was back. I hated that guy. I couldn’t breathe and everything in my head was racing. I sat at my desk and forced myself to breathe. Susan said I could calm myself down if I concentrated.
So I concentrated.
I breathed in and then breathed out. I tried to pull my breath out from my feet up into my head. And after a few minutes, I could feel myself calmer. I took out my notebook and began writing:
Rafael is leaving tomorrow. He’s going back to wherever he came from. He lives in LA though he made a joke saying that nobody really lives in LA. Everybody just drives there. It wasn’t that funny a joke. Rafael is leaving tomorrow. Rafael is leaving tomorrow. Sharkey is gone. Maybe he’s dead by now. Mark went back to a sad marriage. Sharkey went back to the streets. Rafael is going back home. He’s going be sober and he’s going to keep writing. He told me he was going to write a novel. I asked him about what. About this place, he said. But I knew that he was only joking. But I wish he would write a novel about this place because if he did, he would keep me in his head and I wanted to live in his head, to stay alive there.
I shut my notebook. I was too sad to write anymore.
At Group I didn’t say anything. My Check-in was easy: “No lies,” I said. That was a lie. “No secrets,” I said. That was a lie. I don’t know what went on in group. I just kept staring at the floor. Adam asked me if I wanted to give Lizzie feedback about something. I shook my head no. I was vaguely aware of the fact that Amit’s drawing of his addiction was being discussed. Adam asked if I had any feedback for Amit. I shook my head no.
At the end of group, we held hands in a circle like we always did. When Rafael reached for my hand I shook my head no. No. I don’t want to fucking hold your hand. That’s the look I gave him. I crossed my arms and locked them in place and looked down at the floor.
I didn’t go to any groups the rest of the day.
I hung out in Cabin 9 and stared at the calendar.
I lay in my bed and tried to make my brain go blank. I could do that. I could be blank. I could make myself numb. I knew how to do that. It was a skill. It was an art. One of the counseling assistants came into the room. “You should be at sessions,” he said. His voice was firm. He waited for some kind of response.
I looked at him blankly.
“You know there are consequences for missing sessions.”
The thought entered my head that I could attack this guy like I attacked the windshields of parked cars. I didn’t need a baseball bat. Hell no. I could just go for the guy. They’d throw me out. I could leave and—and then what?
The guy finally left the room.
I was glad. I knew that none of the therapists would bother me. I closed my eyes and took a breath, then another, then another. Somewhere along in my breathing, I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was night. Amit was at his desk working on a painting.
Rafael was packing.
I watched them in silence. Rafael looked up and noticed I was awake. “Hi,” he said.
I waved.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Can I stop you?”
“You’re acting like a five-year-old.”
“Like you’d know.”
“I would know. I do know.” He had this fierce look in his face. “Refusing to talk—that’s what five-year-olds do when they’re mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
Amit peered over his desk. “Yes, you are. You’re one pissed-off dude.”
“Fuck you, Amit.”
Amit laughed. “Fuck you too, Zach.”
Rafael shot us both a look.
“Talk, Zach. Talk to me.”
“You are not the boss of me.”
Rafael shook his head. “I’m leaving tomorrow, Zach.”
I turned and faced the wall. I wanted all the words in the world to disappear. I wanted all the faces that had ever made me feel anything to disappear too. All of them.
I fell back asleep.
I dreamed that Rafael was sitting at the foot of my bed. He was singing softly and I had my eyes closed. But when I opened my eyes, I was awake. And Rafael wasn’t there.
I got up, put on my shoes and made sure I had cigarettes in the pocket of my coat. I walked out to the smoking pit. The wind had picked up and it was cold and I wondered if there were more storms left in this year’s winter. I wondered where Sharkey was and wondered if he’d gone back home or if he was going to jail for stealing his father’s money or if he was out in some pool hall, conning some poor sucker into playing him a game of pool.
I wondered where Rafael was going.
I wondered why I couldn’t make myself talk to him.
As I reached the smoking pit, I noticed someone was standing there. For a second, I thought it was my brother and my heart started beating faster. I stopped, then moved a little closer. It was Amit. My heart grew calm again.
I took a cigarette and lit it. “You’re up late.”
“Yeah, couldn’t sleep. So you’re talking now, huh?”
“I’m not much of a talker.”
“You did okay when you told your story.”
“I don’t like to talk. I’m, well, you know, inarticulate.”
“That’s bullshit, Zach. You’re killing me.”
“It’s not bullshit.”
“Yes, it is. You just don’t want to talk about what’s fucking inside.”
“Oh, like you’re really good at that.”
“I suck at that. I suck at talking about what’s inside of me. But you don’t, Zach. You just—I don’t know. You just don’t want to, I guess. Ah, what the fuck do I know?” He lit another cigarette. “You want to know what I think? I think you don’t know how to say goodbye to Rafael. I think that fucking scares you to death, Zach. That’s what I think.”
“Thanks for the feedback.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
This is what I wanted to tell him—these are the words I wanted to say, I’m a five-year-old boy who doesn’t know how to sing and the only songs I have ever heard, the only real songs I’ve ever heard, came from Mr. Garcia’s trumpet and Rafael’s voice and they didn’t teach me how to get at my own song. They didn’t. And I hate them. I hate them for loving me. I hate them for leaving me. They sang to me. And now I’m more alone than I have ever been. Yeah, Amit, I’m fucking scared. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t mean to be an asshole.”
We smoked the rest of our cigarettes in silence.
REMEMBERING
I have been keeping another secret.
I have imaginary conversations with people.
Sometimes I talk to my mom. I ask her why she’s so sad. I ask her if she ever tried not being sad. I ask her if there was a time before the sadness came and stayed. I ask her if she and Dad ever had a normal life, if they laughed and held hands and took walks. I ask her what it’s like just to live inside her head. I ask her if her head is big place or a small place, a scary place or a beautiful place. I ask her why she wanted to touch me like a husband. I ask her if she knew what she was doing or if it was the medications. I ask her if she loves me and I always feel bad when I ask
her that because it makes me sound so desperate. I ask and ask and ask.
She never answers.
I talk to my dad. I say, “Hi, Dad.”
He is sitting in a chair with a drink in his hand. “Hi,” he says. His voice sounds dull and far away.
I ask him, “What would it be like if you didn’t drink every day? What would it be like inside you?”
He just looks at me.
He doesn’t answer me either.
And I talk to Santiago. “What made you have all that hate inside you?”
“Mom and Dad are all fucked up—haven’t you noticed?”
“Yes,” I say. “Are you getting back at them?”
“Something like that.”
“But what about me? Why do you hate me? What did I do?”
And then I hear him say, “You were born.”
I am remembering having all these imaginary conversations. If they’re not real, why do they make me so sad?
ANOTHER SEASON
I’ve lived eighteen years in a season called sadness where the weather never changed. I guess I believed it was the only season I deserved. I don’t know how but something started to happen. Something around me. Something inside me. Something beautiful. Something really, really beautiful.
THE MONSTER OF GOODBYE
-1-
Adam took the copper medal out of a small box. Time to say goodbye. To Rafael who’d been here for sixty days, Rafael who had been my roommate, Rafael who had calmed me down from all my bad dreams and sang to me, Rafael who had stayed alert for Sharkey and Amit, the sleepwalkers.
I stared at the medal that Adam was dangling from a string. And then Lizzie took the medal and started talking. “I press into this medal all my…” I couldn’t listen. I was half aware that people were talking. I kept staring at the floor. I felt Maggie nudging me, handing me the medal. I kept my eyes on the floor.
I looked at Rafael. Then I moved my eyes back to the stain on the carpet.
The room was quiet. I heard Adam’s voice but the words were jumbled and I could hear a distant echo in my ears. And then his voice disappeared and I felt alone, like I was in a dark and silent room and there was nothing in the world except the darkness. I was a just a shadow. But Adam’s voice pushed itself in the room. The voice felt like a hand that was tugging at my arm. “Zach? Zach?”
Last Night I Sang to the Monster Page 17