by Rachel Cohn
Jason decides to confide. “In our two years together, we only had sex five times. When she was on medication, she wasn’t interested. She said she felt completely cold. But when she was interested, it was a dare—because she’d gone off her meds when she wasn’t supposed to. Of course then, I wasn’t interested. Not that way. The price was too high.”
Excuse me, I did not ask to be awoken from the dream.
I could drop the usual clichés to him here:
What happened wasn’t your fault.
You will love again.
It’s going to be okay.
It’s not going to be okay.
He’ll never find another love as beautiful as Laura.
He could have taken better care of her, made sure she took her medication.
Stay inside the dream. Stay inside the dream. No thought police are allowed to exist there.
I need to comfort him, to keep him inside the dream. Don’t wake up, Jason. Not yet.
I reach over and dare a touch on his nose. It’s his one physical imperfection, broken in a lacrosse match years earlier. It was the one spot where Laura could be glimpsed placing an affectionate kiss on her boyfriend. She was not the PDA type. But she loved Jason’s wound.
“Please,” he whispers. “Not there.”
He takes my hand and places it elsewhere, down there. His hand guides my hand’s touch. And that’s all it is—a light, comforting stroke over his jeans.
I sort of want to float outside the dream so I might remember the moves, in case I have reason to use them on a later victim. Maybe on a boy who’d actually kiss me while leading my hand instead of closing his eyes and just letting it happen to him.
But I respect the dream, and Jason’s desire to stay in it.
I think it feels good to make someone else feel good, but I’m not sure.
Since.
We’re sitting outside the bathrooms at a rest stop along the New Jersey Turnpike on the drive back home, the next day, me and Jamal, waiting for Jason and Bex to do their business.
We’re never alone together anymore.
Sometimes when I am alone in bed at night, in the dark, I drift inside my special dream. There, I am allowed to fantasize that Jamal and I are more than just friends. The special dream doesn’t hurt anybody, doesn’t cost anything. Who will ever know? There, I have the freedom to cup his face in the palms of my hands, to place tender kisses on his eyelids, to run my index fingers along the arch of his eyebrows, to rub my lips against his. There, he shares my want.
Here, I have to stand by as he stands tall for Bex. He is proud and liberated inside the power of new love.
“Tell me you like her,” he says.
“I like her.”
“Now say it like you mean it.”
The true feelings I have for Jamal have nowhere to go; they might as well drift along the turnpike—aimless, polluted tumbleweed.
“I like her.” What I mean is, I accept her. Because I love you.
She’s not entirely horrible. She’s a lucky girl to have him.
I’m still a little buzzed. It’s gonna be okay.
I could be more buzzed. I open my backpack, reach in for the baggie.
“Don’t, Miles,” Jamal says. “Please don’t. For me.”
I look up at him. Is he for real? Since when?
I don’t. For him.
Jason and Bex emerge from the bathrooms. “Let’s go,” Jason says. He tosses his keys to Jamal. “I think it’s better if you drive.”
Jason doesn’t look me in the eye, or offer to buy me a Coke for the ride. I understand that what we shared wasn’t an experience so much as grief. I could set him at ease and tell him I will respect the rule: What happens inside the dream stays inside the dream. But I’m not feeling generous that way, to give him the luxury of that security. Once we return home to D.C., I already know I will never see or hear from him again unless it’s by coincidence—and that’s fine by me. This case of Miles-napping, this foursome brought together by one dead girl, was a one-off.
But the Bex and Jamal coupling was not a dream. Wake-up, Miles. Watching them walk hand-in-hand together to Jason’s car, so comfortable and pleased to be together, it’s clear that the relationship that built in my absence will last even after the grief has passed.
Ask Me
SO MUCH IS HAPPENING AND YET NOTHING AT ALL.
I’m bored.
I’m hungry.
Some things remain the same.
I hate summer. It drags on forever. I’m almost looking forward to going back to school, just for something to do.
Legend has it there are cabals of teenage girls who pass their summers in a flurry of chatterbox-squealing, car-cruising, mall-prowling, and bikini-buying for boy-snaring.
I was never going to be one of those girls. Me, I got a dilettante father in a dilapidated trailer and a rich old guy smoking companion for the summer. Oh, and random, drug-addled boy encounters that don’t count in real time.
Nobody’s bothered asking me why I’ve stopped passing time at the bookstore. The reason is simple. The bookstore literally closed overnight: owner filed for bankruptcy, property sold, padlock on door.
I’ve lost so much more that’s important to me lately, so what’s losing a part-time job matter? It’s just one more thing.
I read all the books in there already, anyway. I was the store’s primary customer.
I’ve taken on a new mission to fill the hole in my free time, something to hopefully add to my losses: crash diet. Without Jamal to flank me at school, I’ll need to present a whole (lot less) new Miles next school year.
Here’s how the diet works: Don’t eat. Smoke a lot. Cokes are unlimited, as are Junior Mints. Avoid weed-toking as this can lead to hunger pangs.
But, Miles, one might ask, why not just do speed to drop the pounds? Why do you always have to make things so difficult?
Thank you for asking, One! The reason is simple. Heart rate-raising forms of artificial stimulation like speed or cocaine scare me. I don’t want that much life. I prefer to be numbed out rather than amped up.
If I could just sleep through this summer, I would, but it’s challenging when your stash is running as low as your disposable income, and your stomach, running on empty, gnaws at you in extreme hostility.
Jim finds me in the garden at lunchtime. I’m alone in my favorite shaded spot, engaging in my old favorite activities, smoking and reading, as well as my new favorite activity, not eating. Buddy is away on sandwich ministry. Bex and Jamal—I don’t even know where they are today. I’ve stopped asking.
I assume Jim will join me for a smoke, but instead he asks, “Want to come with me to see Miss Lill? I realize it may be hard for you to set aside reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, but . . .”
“Sure,” I say. I set the book down on the bench. I can only do so much Holocaust in a day.
Miss Lill was the longtime housekeeper at Jim’s house—she practically raised him. Now she lives in a nursing home. “Lives” may be the wrong word. She exists in a nursing home, waiting to die. She’s nearly a hundred years old and has mild senile dementia. She’s amazing, though—doesn’t look a day over eighty.
A trip to a nursing home is just what the doctor ordered (if One had asked). The longer I can stay engaged, the longer I can hold out on food. So far today I’ve chugged two Cokes and nothing else. Yesterday I held out the whole day until Buddy came home. Then I couldn’t help myself. I ate a cheese sandwich. It was good. So good that I was able to chew it for taste, but spit out half the sandwich when he wasn’t looking. The black dress that wouldn’t zip up the back for Laura’s funeral is now loose on me. Pride.
With Laura gone, we’re allowed to smoke in Jim’s car. She smoked, but only in secret, and only in open air spaces; she didn’t like the smell getting into her clothes or hair—for the smell to reveal her. But she’s not here now to pass judgment. Once we’re in Jim’s car and winding through the streets of Georgetown, I place two cigarettes
in my mouth and light them with the car’s electric lighter. I pass one to Jim.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Ask me.”
“How come you never offer to light my cigarettes for me? Like, I can be sitting right next to you while you smoke with a lighter in your hand, but when I take out my own cigarette, you will hand me your lighter, but you never light my cigarette for me. You know, like gentlemen did in those old movies.”
Jim chuckles. “I never realized you noticed.” He opens the sunroof over our heads to let out the smoke. “As hypocritical as it may seem, I don’t light your cigarettes for you because, in many ways, I still think of you as a child. I can’t stop you from smoking. I shouldn’t even be doing it with you. But extending that light to you seems like it would be an acknowledgment that not only am I condoning our bad habit, but that I’m seeing you as an adult. Which you’re not.”
“That wasn’t an insult, was it?”
“It wasn’t.” He takes a drag. “I haven’t noticed Jamal coming by lately. Everything okay?”
I start to say something that would involve the lie of the word “fine,” but instead I say, “He’s lost to Bex. It’s true love. Supposedly.”
Jim’s face gives away no reaction other than an exhale of smoke.
I add, “Bex thinks Dr. Turner doesn’t like her because she’s white. But that’s wrong, right?”
His face still gives away nothing, but he doesn’t dodge the question. “There might be something to that,” he says. “Dr. Turner is from a prestigious D.C. black family whose history in this city goes back to before Civil War times. She graduated Spelman, got her Ph.D. at Howard. And as an educator in the D.C. public system, I’m sure she’s seen too many promising young black men lost to incarceration, and the women—mothers, daughters, sisters, girlfriends—that get left behind. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d prefer that the outstanding young black man she raised be reserved for an outstanding young black woman.”
“So Dr. Turner isn’t a saint, then?” She’s as prejudiced as the rest of us. It’s almost a relief to know.
“No one’s a saint, Miles. And Dr. Turner loves her son. She’ll respect any choice he makes, ultimately. But come on now, he and Bex are way too young to be serious. I’m sure this will all pass.”
I’m sure it won’t.
“How would you have felt about it if Laura had dated someone who wasn’t white?”
This is what is happening as time passes—it feels less heavy to speak her name casually.
“The same way I would have felt if she’d chosen to date a woman. Love is love. I’d hope she’d choose a good person, not a race or a gender. I’d hope the same for you.”
What if no one ever chooses me?
No one ever chose Miss Lill.
She’s almost a hundred years old, and in not one of those years did a man step up to marry her, or to make babies with her. When Miss Lill passes, the only family at her grave will be Jim, the old man she raised, who will bury her.
“Botany,” Jim would explain to Laura and me when we asked why Miss Lill had no family. She was a loner by nature, more interested in tending nature than in finding a partner. She designed and maintained the lavish gardens at Jim’s house when he was growing up; the gardens were the family’s gift to her. She would have spent all her time out there if she could, according to Jim. He used to tell us that if Miss Lill had been born a generation later, she’d have followed a path more like Dr. Turner’s—maybe she’d have pursued a doctorate in plant science, then gone on to invent plant cures or sculpt the famous botanical gardens in some famous European city—something truly grand and worthy of her brains.
The B-word curse.
Books. I’d probably spend all my time alone and lost in books if I could. It’s easier that way. But while I presume this path will lead nowhere in terms of a career, at least I know opportunity exists for me—if I choose to seek it.
Blueberry bellisima. It’s the name of the succulent tart made in the bakery down the street from where the bookstore used to be. My hunger is shooting bullets through my body. No boy will ever want me if my body is a balloon.
B-cool, Miles. Maintain. Look up at the blue, blue D.C. sky, don’t think about beseeching belly.
Miss Lill lives in a nursing home in northeast D.C. The city is divided into four quadrants: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast. Miss Lill came from Anacostia in Southeast—the slums of D.C., right under the Capitol’s nose. Jim would have paid for her to retire and die out anywhere she wanted. She could have stayed in Northwest, where the majority of white people live, on Jim’s Georgetown estate and with round-the-clock care, or I bet he’d have paid for her to ride out her last years in the poshest nursing home in the South of France if she’d asked. She didn’t ask. But Miss Lill did choose, when she was still able to make that choice, the old folks’ home in northeast, home to D.C.’s black working class. By the time she moved there, she’d graduated from regular old assisted living needs. Miss Lill went directly into the Alzheimer’s wing of the nursing home.
As Jim and I pass through the corridor, many of this wing’s residents sit outside in wheelchairs. Their faces are ancient and fascinating and I want to inspect them more closely, linger, but the mouths on the faces make too much noise, groaning and calling out nonsense words—“STOP!” “Here, kitty!” “ERRRRRRR!” “Go away yesterday!”—that I am too intimidated and freaked to do anything besides keep my head down and be grateful that Jim directs us immediately into Miss Lill’s room rather than stop us to say friendly hellos to the Demented Ones.
Miss Lill is sitting up in her bed when we arrive, arranging a vase of flowers in her lap. Her hands shake, so a nurse holds the vase steady for her.
“Jim!” It’s a good day. Miss Lill remembers his name. She smiles and passes the vase off to the nurse to take away, then turns to look at me. “Miss Laura, what did you do to your hair? What a terrible color.” Maybe not such a good day.
Jim steps over to kiss her cheek, and I follow suit. She whispers in my ear, “Laura, honey, no more sweets for you.” She pinches a fold of fat on my stomach.
From anyone else, the remark would make me feel hot and shamed, but not from Miss Lill. I wish I had senile dementia. There’s no accountability—you can tell anyone exactly what you think. It’s awesome. Plus, there’s less of me to pinch now. I’m a size down from last time we visited Miss Lill. With Laura.
The secret to visiting really, really old people is to understand in advance that there’s nothing to actually do while you’re visiting them. It’s not like you can take them out for a movie. It’s not like you can discuss what a waste living is. Mostly, you sit around, maybe talk about the weather and the cafeteria food; or, if you’re Jim, you can drag out the topic of orchid plants for twenty minutes—I don’t know how he stays awake. And when all other topics dry up faster than the dendrobium, you watch TV—very, very loud TV. The important part of the visit is already accomplished: showing up.
Laura and I used to like passing the time with Miss Lill by sitting on either side of her bed, massaging her dry hands with lotion, then applying nail polish to her cracked fingernails. This is how I pass the Miss Lill time now, while she watches the Home and Garden channel with Jim and they don’t talk about what we’re not supposed to talk about with Miss Lill: Laura—the real one, not me, the chubby one.
Hey, Miss Lill, I don’t say now, Did you know Laura and I learned to use off your stash?
A Laura secret: Miss Lill kept Laura in pills long before we realized there was a dealer we could hit up (Laura was too polite to stoop that low, anyway—but not me, though only for emergency situations). We were fifteen and Jim had coaxed us into a weekend project—to tend to the long overdue task of cleaning out Miss Lill’s quarters at his house, where she’d resided for half a century before moving over to the nursing home. Of course Jim had more than adequate resources of other people to take on the project, but I suspect he’d noti
ced Laura and I spending less time together since starting high school, and he wanted to provide an excuse for she and I to connect. He never made the connection that what we bonded over that weekend was Laura’s discovery of a medicine case full of painkillers that had been prescribed for Miss Lill’s years of back and neck problems.
If Miss Lill is lucky (and I hope she is), Miss Lill will die peacefully in this nursing home. She’ll die in her sleep, the same way Laura chose to go.
I’m pretty sure Laura’s passing was peaceful but no one’s told me for sure. It’s not like I asked to read the autopsy report. My brain works extra hard to block out the fact that one was even filed for Laura.
Jim flips to the History channel when the Home and Garden channel goes to commercial. “Mr. Churchill,” Miss Lill announces. “Not a very handsome man.” The face on the TV screen is actually Hitler’s. I want to tune out, focus on the hand massage at hand, but I can’t. Apparently I can tolerate more Holocaust today—the television hasn’t given me a choice.
In ninth grade, my History class took a field trip to the Holocaust Museum—we didn’t have a choice about that, either. (I mean, you could not go. But how much of a jerk would that make you look like?) And the pictures and films at that “museum,” the skeletal parade of victims, the gas chambers, the mass burial grounds—it’s not like something that could be blocked out. I see Hitler on the TV screen now, but it’s the images I’ve seen of what he caused that blend into my mind’s view. And I’m not even high. I don’t want to be, either. But I feel it in my veins the way I feel the hunger in my stomach: I need to be high. To deal.
When I look, sober, at what humankind is capable of doing, I completely understand the path Laura chose. It almost seems logical.
Miss Lill takes her left hand away and places her right hand in mine, for more lotion. The right side was always Laura’s to tend; Miss Lill doesn’t want it neglected.
What would Miss Lill’s hands have done if they hadn’t been held back by prejudices beyond her control? Genocide isn’t on par with the evils of racism and sexism, I know that, but I have to consider: Miss Lill’s color and gender may have denied her job opportunities, may have relegated her to the back of the bus, but was she one of the lucky ones?