The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories Page 4

  * * *

  I was about to give in for the night and resolve to wake up early when I got another subjectless e-mail in my inbox:

  Hey.

  Thanks for today. I know Brian would be very grateful.

  I’m sorry if I was cold last night—it’s been an extremely hard few days for me, obviously. But I ought to acknowledge this is also hard for you.

  I’ve attached a document with some thoughts you might be able to use tomorrow. No pressure if you’re all set, but I figured I owe you one.

  L

  I opened the attachment. There were lyrics from his favorite songs, a copy of a poem he wrote freshman year. Things he’d said about what he wanted to be when he “grew up,” a link to a funny op-ed he wrote in the school newspaper. There were also bullets she’d written up describing him—endearingly confident, full of a genuine wonder, contagiously enthused.

  I didn’t want to be, but I was grateful. I kept it open beside my other document and began writing. I clicked on the link to his article, listened to the songs she mentioned, and jotted down lyrics. I was so relieved and distracted by the new material that it wasn’t until thirty minutes later that I thought about Lauren for the first time without also thinking about myself. She loved Brian. It was so remarkably, indubitably clear. And whether or not he understood it, he’d loved her back. At first I’d thought it was a favor, some kind of thank-you for picking up the journal. But as I scrolled through her document again I realized it had nothing to do with helping me. Nothing.

  * * *

  I finished a draft of my remarks and took a shower for the first time in two days. My hair was tangled and matted in the back, and it took me nearly twenty minutes to pick it apart with my pruned fingers. Halfway through, I became exhausted and sat cross-legged on the floor of the shower, the water pelting down on my hunched back, echoing up and filling my head with nothing but its steady pounding. When I got out, I put on Brian’s sweater and got back into bed. I was going to tell her. Let her know what Brian had written—let her read it for herself. Just so you know, I would write in an e-mail, he still loved you all along.

  But before I opened my computer I leaned over and pulled Brian’s journal out of my backpack. It was long, enviably full, and this time I opened to a part near the beginning. I was tired and hurt and the headache behind my left eye had never quite vanished—but I read the love story of Lauren Cleaver and Brian Jones until 5:30 that morning.

  * * *

  The service was uneventful. Five or six hundred students gathered on the main green at 7:30 the next night and the chaplain’s office handed out small candles tucked inside paper cups. I wondered if they recycled these from vigil to vigil but abandoned the thought when I was led to stand with William, Adam, and Brian’s parents. They said their pieces and I said mine, his mother struggling to contain herself when she briefly addressed the students and thanked the school. When I took the podium, I was worried people would whisper or wonder why I was speaking, but they didn’t. I’m not even sure they distinguished what I said from the others. I’d spent the first half of the vigil searching the crowd for Lauren’s face but I couldn’t find her and wondered if she’d decided not to show up. But just before I began speaking, I saw her strawberry blonde hair somewhere near the back left—illuminated and glowing from the light of her small candle. When I quoted his article, the audience emitted a small laugh, and when I read from his favorite song, they got quiet. Endearingly confident, I said, full of a genuine wonder, contagiously enthused. I looked right at her when I said that, and she nodded.

  When it ended, they had these bagpipes play, and I waited around with the others as the students slowly blew out their candles, walking over waxed grass to their dorm rooms and libraries. Lauren came to say good-bye to his family but I could see now that she felt as uncomfortable with her role around them as I did.

  I chased her down before she had a chance to leave the gate.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi.” We stood there for a second, silent.

  “Thank you. That was . . . he would have liked it.”

  “Thank you,” I said awkwardly. “For the stuff.”

  “No problem.” She looked down. “I wasn’t sure you were going to use any of it. You didn’t get back to me.” I didn’t say anything. I looked at her and realized that she’d started crying again, silently.

  I thought about the things he’d said about her in his journal. The morning after they first kissed when he’d spent forty minutes writing her a three-line e-mail. The game of bowling where they got high in the bathroom, the way he’d described her collarbone and her smile and the first time he saw her band play in the basement during the storm. The first time they had sex and didn’t use a condom and the first time he came home with her for Thanksgiving and met her alcoholic mother and the discussion they’d had about it afterward. How he’d said he held her and told her it’d be okay and that he’d always be there. The bad poem he wrote for her and the good song she wrote for him. The time they thought she was pregnant and the time his grandfather died. How they’d said how much they loved each other and how they always would. How he worried he loved her more than she loved him and that she had a crush on a boy named Emmanuel. And I thought then of how he’d described things growing old. Growing similar, habitual. How he’d begun to wake up in the morning without rolling over to kiss her. How he’d started to resent the time away from his friends, her nagging habits. How he’d begun to look at other girls and compare her to the hypothetical. How she’d begun to ignore him too and how they’d gone along anyway for another six months, another year. How it’d ended and how he’d felt free and young and energized. But then how he’d begun to miss her. And doubt himself. And worry that they’d screwed things up forever. How he’d loved her, still, whether or not he understood it, and how, when it came down to it, I could never really compare.

  I had their story in my bag. The secret that he, too, had never let things go. Had it tucked inside his journal with a note I’d slipped inside. Thanking her. Telling her I didn’t want to talk to her again because it would be too hard. But I looked at her then, with the tears dripping slowly down her thin cheeks, and I knew, in the end, it’d be better if I kept it. Better if she never knew.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could get out. “I’m so sorry,” I said. And walked away.

  * * *

  That night I went out again. Charlotte, Kyle, and I went to a party down on Pear and I saw this guy named Marshall, who I knew from my Russian lit class, when we were both on the fire escape, getting some air. I usually don’t smoke but I bummed a cigarette off him and when he gave it to me he half smiled. Marshall was handsome. Smart. And suddenly, more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life, I wanted him to love me. I stayed out there with him for nearly an hour and we talked about a lot of things and moved closer and closer together. Eventually, we were both shivering and he asked if I wanted to go back to his apartment with him. I did. I’d never wanted anything more. But as I watched him smile back at me and zip his coat, I saw everything in the world build up and then everything in the world fall down again.

  Winter Break

  I was stoned when I saw the eskimoed figure crunching down the street with a flashlight and a cocker spaniel. The iced trees hung in on the road and my dazed synapses made suburbia look like a cave. The figure trudged ahead as I flexed my stiff fingers, watching mutely from my hot box of dry heat and public radio. I’d forgotten Michigan’s stillness while I was at school—the way houses slept and trucks made patterns in the snow. So I turned off the speakers and let my car slow to a stop. All that moved was the yellow beam of my mother’s flashlight, flicking up and down as she walked, jerking my dog away from pinecones and driveways and someone else’s pee.

  I told my parents I’d be getting in at ten so I’d have time to visit Sam before they knew I was home. When I got t
o his house we went straight to his room and got in bed with our clothes on, pressing our faces together without even kissing. “I’m here,” I said, and we curled in disbelief. It was our first long-distance reunion and I finally understood the addiction of self-deprivation.

  We stayed there for an hour before I dragged myself out of bed and back into my car, lingering with him in the passenger seat as the windows frosted and we passed a thin joint. “Don’t leave,” he said, biting at my shoulder. “You’re always leaving.” I exhaled slowly and leaned my head against his neck. The thought of sleeping in his bed tore at the image of my mother waiting in the kitchen with baked goods that were already cold.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, squeezing his hand and sitting up. “I have to spend my first night at home.”

  For a while, she didn’t see me. I’m not sure why I waited in my car but for some reason I didn’t feel like moving. Winters turned our town into a black-and-white wonderland and I liked watching my mom pad through its tunneled core. She was overdressed, peering out from an astronautic parka, two scarves, and a pair of thick leather mittens. Yet she managed a kind of mid-road grace, unconcerned that a car could disturb her migration. She did it three times a day. Strapped up my spaniel and circled the block. When my brothers and I begged for the dog, we’d sworn to switch off in rotating shifts. But by the time it was big we were busy with homework or friends or that project we had to start now.

  I rolled down my window and felt a flood of cold air on my face. My dog let out a small howl, twigs cracked in the woods, and something about the stillness or my state of mind reminded me of the world’s remarkable capacity to carry on in every place at once. I thought of my mother circling suburbia while I drank in dim fraternities or video-chatted with Sam or slept lazily in my dorm while it snowed out my window. I loved her at that moment in a way that twisted my stomach.

  “Mom!” I shouted from the side of my car. The dog barked and she snapped around, frozen like a deer in my car’s white light. She stared for a second, struggling to see through the blinding headlights. I saw something then that I hadn’t seen before, or if I had, I’d chosen to ignore. There was a frailty to her posture, a thinness in her cheeks. She looked tired and cold for the instant before she lit up in motion, jogging slightly toward the hum of my car. But I didn’t think about it because I was happy and I loved her and for the most part, I don’t like the kind of revelations I have when I’m high.

  When I woke up the next morning, my mom was in the basement sorting socks. I was glad to be home and it was nice to be reminded of the places our floors creaked. My semester at school had been decent but I’d missed home in a new way I could only attribute to Sam. We’d met that summer while working at the lake, and I’d romanticized Michigan so much that it hung on our phone calls. My dad liked to say we were in the center of the center, but upstate Erie wasn’t exactly downtown. In August, Sam and I took the eighteen-hour train to New York, curling on window seats and sharing an iPod. After that I craved the camaraderie of cities. Energy and art and all-nighters. When I told my dad he said New York was cheap and my parents laughed about never going back.

  But this was the time when I found everything romantic. I granted the world a kind of strange generosity. Ideas convinced me and ordinary activities had an almost giddy newness. Part of it was probably the pot. Smoking before anything gave an excuse for a good time. We could go skating or bowling without feeling lame. So we passed bowls in the back of my car and alternated between overanalysis and blank stares. In July I’d get home late and my dad would be in the kitchen, drunk and finally eating.

  Microwavable sausage links, cold cuts, tubs of ice cream with the ring of measuring spoons. Sometimes I’d warm up some pasta and sit with him as he watched CSI. But other times I’d ask him why he was up at three and smell his sodas while his head was in the fridge.

  I went down and sat on the rug next to my mom. My trash bags of dirty dorm clothes were already folded in neat piles by the shelf. She looked young for fifty—thin, blonde, and still able to twist her legs behind her while she searched for striped blues, Green Bay greens, and the nuances of whites. We talked for a while about classes and food. At little party things or parent-teacher meetings, people would tell us our expressions were the same. I’d never really noticed it on my own—I just thought the way she smiled made sense.

  “So tell me about Sam,” she said. I knew we’d land on it eventually. “I hardly got to meet him before you left for school.”

  “Yeah you did,” I said, rebraiding my hair. “We hung out here all the time.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe, yes.”

  “Okay, yes.” She opened the dryer and eased some sheets into a basket. “But you know what I mean. What’s he like?”

  “Um, he’s great,” I said. “He studies astronomy at Eastville, but might drop it and just do something with reading.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. He’s pretty smart. It’s nice, we actually talk about real stuff. Not like Chris.”

  She smiled. “And you stayed together all semester? You didn’t even . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Uh, no,” I said affirmatively. I waited for a second to see how she’d react. “I’m actually offended that you said that.”

  “Addie, I didn’t mean to be offensive, I’m just saying that’s a long time without seeing each other.” I realized then that it was a genuine sentiment. I traced back through the fragments I’d heard of my mother’s life before my dad, trying to remember whether long distances had been involved.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “Did you get together with anyone at school?”

  “No. Mom, I don’t want to talk about this, it’s not like that. And don’t say ‘get together.’ ” She looked hurt and I already felt bad.

  “Okay. ‘Have a crush.’ Sorry, I didn’t realize how serious it was. That’s great, honey.”

  “Yeah.” I waited for a second, wondering if it was fair to continue. “It was really nice to have someone around all the time, you know? Not around around, but like, texting me and thinking about me when I was in class or like, at some party.”

  “That’s romantic.” Again there was a genuineness in her eyes that I felt in my stomach.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Asleep.”

  “He’s asleep? It’s like ten A.M.”

  She shrugged. “You should try to play with your brother at some point. He’s been asking when you’ll get home.” She liked this. Her children were spaced such that they all got along. My brothers and I never had a chance to beat each other up—we were always too young or too old.

  My family was like anyone’s, just functional enough to be functional. It wasn’t until college that I really realized everyone’s house had its own messed-up stories. (Kaylie’s brother did coke and Max’s dad was secretly gay.) We had nothing like that. Perhaps the problem was we didn’t have much at all. My older brothers worked in Chicago, and Kyle was the only kid home. Our parents didn’t fight in the conventional way, mostly because I don’t think they thought it was worth it. For as long as I can remember, my mom woke up at six to work out and on her ten thousand projects. She ate lettuces and soy things but cooked real food for the rest of us. My dad had a job in car sales and was really skinny. My brothers and I hardly recognized the muscular man standing next to our mom in their wedding photos. I knew it bothered her. The problem was that he meant really well. That’s the thing, he just meant really well.

  As for me, I didn’t know what I wanted. Cigarette holes had started spotting the sides of my skirts and the semester had granted a profundity to the world that I could photograph or turn into a bad poem. Everything seemed worthy of retelling and I’d struggle to stop stories before I started. But my professional ambitions were still switching with the channels of my illegal downloads. Wide-eyed and coiled in bed, Sam and I would be
convinced by the dramas of forty-six minutes—idealizing the pursuits of doctors, politicians, astronauts in space. Bored or exhausted with regularity, we’d envy House and Law and Order, cuddling away our apathy until we were reminded that all we really wanted was to lie in bed. I was in love for the first time and my mother could tell.

  I passed my little brother Kyle’s room on the way back upstairs. He didn’t have any lights on and was buried with headphones in a game of World of Warcraft.

  “What’s up?” I said, leaning in his doorway. He didn’t hear me so I said it again. “What’s up, geek?” He turned around in his swivel chair.

  “Hey.”

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked. He’d gone back to the game, shooting some blue whirlwind of a spell out of his character’s hands.

  “Nothing.”

  “But didn’t you just get out for winter break?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.” I stayed leaning in the doorway, remembering the basement parties I’d attended in eighth grade. When we’d sip on Evian bottles of vodka and gag through truth or dare.

  “Do you want to jump on the trampoline later?” He was still facing the screen, sliding and clicking his left hand as he typed hard with the right. “I got all the snow off on Tuesday.” I looked at his mop of brown hair, glowing slightly green from his monitor.

  “Ugh, I can’t,” I said, walking toward his desk. “I promised Sam I’d go over.”

  “Okay.” He took a swig from a root beer by his keyboard.

  I couldn’t leave. “Wait, so who are you fighting? Is that a troll or something?”

  “It’s an Ogre. But my usual character is a Blood Elf.”

  “Nice,” I said. “That dude reminds me of Avatar.”

  “Not really,” he half scoffed. “Are you going to be here tomorrow?”