April - The Flood 7 страница

"Sure," I told him. "I'll just wait here."

He nodded with a smile, knocking some of his hair away from his ears. He sauntered through the park quickly and the ducked into the city hall office across the street. I sat on the bench, watching the night sky change and reveal itself, and smoking. This time, I took the puff into my lungs.

The bar we went to was small and cramped. It had horrible lighting, horrible music, and the counters looked dirty. But Travis said it was his favorite place to come after work and before he went home to Diana. He even said that she liked going here; he said this with a bit of a challenge in his voice. As if it was a scourge on my masculinity that even a woman could find this place appealing, but I was still hesitant. It seemed that he had found his perfect match, and he told me about his marriage plans and all of his other plans. I was surprised he was being so open with me. Even when he asked when I planned to marry Jasmine and I said it wasn't necessary, he didn't tease me or harp on my decision. He just nodded and then told me more about his own life. I would occasionally enter into the one-way dialogue and tell him about my job and the people I was working for, but it sounded weird. Fake. Like I wasn't revealing all of myself to him or anyone around me because I didn't talk about Gerard - only Jasmine. It didn't feel right at all, and at one point, I got up and told him that I should head back home, but he asked me to stay. He bought me a drink and told me to sit down and not to worry. I didn't really want the drink, but I obeyed and sipped at it idly. Beer tasted funny. It always had to me, even when I was seventeen. I only drank it to get drunk, because I thought that was what I had to do. Gerard had.... I tried to forget, at that moment, what Gerard had taught me about beer, the lesson we had learned from all of this. We had smashed the case together, but that had not destroyed it from the world. This bar had always existed, and always would, no matter what the artist and I had done seven years prior. Travis knocked back another few gulps, drinking as if he was dying of thirst. I wondered how he could keep going and still be able to walk up-right.

I began to feel really self-conscious in this bar. I looked around at the other people who were there. They were all city employees or service workers. I saw a customer that used to come into the drug store; the more I studied the crowd, the more I realized that everyone here had come into the drug store before. I had seen all of them at their worst moments, and now, this was where they came to repair themselves in a different way. I felt the pain that flowed through the bar and out the taps that kept the draft. I saw it in bottles and bottles and bottles. I sipped my beer, and it tasted flat and watery; it was cheap and poor. I didn't want to be here and I felt like I didn't belong here. No one knew about art here. No one was an artist here. They had too much pain coming out of themselves, but no place to put it. I absorbed it like a sponge.

"Hey," I said suddenly. Back in high school, Travis had never clung to me like this. It had always been he and Sam hanging out together and when they got sick of one another, I was called. I was always a training wheel, a default. I was never the main person. I never wanted to be, even before Gerard. Suddenly, I was the main person, and the two of us had not spoken in seven years. Travis wanted to collapse those years and had caught me up on them in a matter of minutes. This was fine, I figured. Time was gone now. Good. We had caught up. But I wanted to know why I had switched configurations to begin with. "Where's Sam?"

Travis had been taking a long drink from his mug when I asked, but he seemed to stop prematurely. He put it down and looked at me. I couldn't tell if he was shocked, or just disgusted at my lack of knowledge.

"What?" I asked, feeling as if this was another challenge on my otherwise precarious masculine atmosphere. I was the best dressed person in here, after all. Was that why most people were staring at me? Was that why Travis was suddenly disgusted?

He swallowed hard before answering. "Dude, Sam's dead. He died two years ago. Where on earth have you been?"

It had been a car accident. Sam was not drunk, surprisingly, but it had been the middle of winter and his car had hit black ice and he had skidded into a tree. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt and his car had been missing the air bag for quite some time. Sam had been a mechanic -- and his accident had been horribly ironic, especially since most of the things that had been wrong with his car that would have saved his life, he could have fixed himself. But he hadn't. Instead he smashed through the windshield and died on impact. It was quick, apparently. He had been twenty-three and left behind an ex-girlfriend with a four year old son. I had no idea Sam even had kids, let alone had died. It was nearly too much news to process. When Travis told me the part about his kid and not being able to recognize who Sam was in pictures now, I had to get up and go to the bathroom. I just had to leave.

I had never been that close to Sam. Again, it was mainly The Sam and Travis Show back then with a side appearance of me. If I had been alone with either one of them, it was never on a personal level. For Travis, he and I would be planning the finances around getting drunk or high, while if I had been with Sam, he would be trying to extract information or generally being manipulative. And I had left them behind. I had moved on with my life and tried to do something good with it. Or so I thought. Sam's death hit me hard because, like Travis, he was another mirror to which I could gaze through at other possible futures. He was the same age as me, and I had been so close to having that fate. To a certain degree, we did have the same fate. Sam had been a father when he died. He left behind a family. I could barely breathe as I repeated these facts in my mind. I wandered away from the bar, entered the men's bathroom, and shut myself into a filthy stall. This place was an even more precarious hiding zone than the bathrooms at Mikey's company office. Nevertheless, I sat down on the seat with my pants on. I just needed to rest - I could worry about how gross and filthy I was later or how much vulnerability I was giving away walking into this place. I would have to wash everything anyway because I smelt like smoke. I would probably have to dry-clean these things, actually. Even my clothing didn't fit here, into this space. It gave me away.

Sam had been a father. I put aside my doubts about how good of a father he could have possibly been at nineteen - wow, that was young - and just focused on the facts that actually mattered. Sam's death was tragic, but what was even more tragic were the people that were left behind. His girlfriend, who had been an ex at the time of his death, she was probably okay. I knew it would still hurt to hear about someone you had been close to suddenly dying, but it was different. She was probably already used to viewing Sam in past tense, now those verbs were just a little more final. But the son. It was the son that I was worried about. A son that couldn't recognize his dad. Maybe Sam never actually saw his child and that was why the kid couldn't recognize him. Everyone always became so much more wonderful than they really were after their deaths. He was probably painted as this patron saint of auto mechanics with a heart of steel when he died, whereas I knew how mean and cruel Sam could be. He could make people feel like shit in a matter of moments and then remind them about it again and again and again. Part of me was almost relieved that this kid would never have to experience Sam as a person, especially as a father, because I was sure he probably hadn't changed. I was sure that his viciousness would only become more exasperated with age and power.

But that didn't really matter, I told myself. Sam's shitty personality was not why I was freaking out in a bathroom stall in the middle of a bar that I didn't belong in. This kid never got to find out what a douche bag his father was by himself. He never had the choice of disowning him or following in his footsteps. Instead he was just gone. Even if Sam was a jerk, he had clearly been nice long enough to have a relationship and have it go somewhere. She was an ex, so he probably did learn to fuck it up at some point, but even still. She would miss the person that used to be there, or the person that she thought she could change Sam into. Now there was this gaping hole that people filled with lies and sentimentality. She could probably never miss the real Sam, because the real Sam was cruel and mean and would never ever be venerated the way this Sam would. But who was I to say about any of this? I hadn't spoken to him in seven years.

I walked out of the bathroom, thinking that I had composed myself. I stopped at the doorway, trying to catch my balance and I saw Travis at the bar from where I was. The lighting was bad, but his crooked nose was illuminated in the low hanging lights. I saw the outline of his face, and I saw how sad he looked. He had been telling me about his life for the past two hours and he hadn't seen me in years. I had been clearly expressing my discomfort and wanting to leave, but he had bought me two drinks so far to try and get me to stay. There was either a lot of willful ignorance on his part, or he was so desperate it didn't matter. He wanted to hang out with me, probably because he hadn't hung out with anyone else in two years. He missed his friend. Even if he was a cruel bastard, people missed Sam. Even if it was just Travis. I bit my lip and swallowed hard.

I had been freaking out for my own personal reasons. Even when I was caught up with Jasmine and Gerard's issues, I knew that my own pain centered on worrying about the place those people took up in my life. I worried about them being gone, about things changing. The idea of getting into a car now scared me. I didn't want what happened to Sam to happen to me. It was that moment where I realized how much I knew I had to lose. The statements that Gerard, Jasmine, and I had made to one another, our declarations of everything, and our physical expression of that had actually had weight and validity. Standing in that bar, I did have everything because I felt what it was like to have nothing. I saw it in Travis. I had been feeling sorry for myself, losing my real, genuine, and fucking good life in nostalgia of the past, but even my nostalgia of the old apartment was so much more than Travis had right then.

I felt bad, and looked down at my clothing. I felt as if this wasn't my place to make these speculations. I didn't have a right to be here, and to complain. I was about to leave slowly, but then Travis looked up and around from the bar, spotted me by the door, and his sadness erased from his face. He smiled, something I was not used to seeing. I didn't believe it at first; I thought his crooked nose and the dim light of the bar had obscured him in some way. But I was still trying to make excuses. Travis was smiling, and if he was, that meant he wanted to be with me, and that he depended on me as much as those other people. Travis waved me back over and then looked like what appeared to be ordering another drink.

I looked at the clock. It was past ten. I knew Jasmine would already be in bed ad she wouldn't worry about me. She knew I could figure things out for myself. And Gerard would be fine, too. So long as someone was in the house, if he got too sick, there would be someone to call. He was getting better anyway, and I had a feeling he resented me being so present in his illness. He wanted to take care of himself, he wanted to pretend to be immortal. But Travis... no, he was another story. He was a different one that needed tending to.

With a sigh, I walked back to the bar and tried to give a good smile.

"Hey, Frank! Everything okay? I thought you had fallen in there for a second," he greeted. More drinks were placed on the table. He told me he got me something different, since beer did not seem to be my strong suit anymore. It was a jack and coke, and I thanked him.

"You staying out a little longer, or do you have to head back to the old ball and chain?" he teased. "Diana has a softball game tonight, so there is no worry for me."

I tried to maintain my smile. I touched Travis' arm in a playful way. I did not want to punch or slap, even in a joking manner. "Nah, no worry for me either," I assured him. We held our drinks up together, and I placed it to my lips. I drank and drank that night, listening to Travis tell me things about his life, about how he had gotten kicked out of police training (drunk driving arrest, it looks bad when you're training to be a cop, especially if it happens more than once), and about anything he wanted to, really. He told me about things that he had been keeping to himself for two years. He bought me the drinks and I drank them. He talked and I listened. We had our roles, and things made sense. While he didn't seem to be affected by the alcohol, I felt my head rush. It was the first time I had gotten drunk in nearly seven years.

I just didn't care anymore.

Chapter Five

It was just going to be the one night with Travis, I told myself in the morning. Now I had done my civic duty to my past alliances, and I could get on with my life. I had needed to get out that last bit of immaturity and have my last drunken stupor in order to go on being an adult about things. It was just how things had to be, I had convinced myself, and now, having done it I could reconcile a truce between my past self and current self. I was well aware of the way my life could have gone, I had grieved it, and now I could look forward. Although I had to pry myself out of bed the next morning in order to make it into Mikey's car in time for work and my head pounded the entire day, I was pleased with my decision. I kept up appearances quite well and no one seemed to notice that I had been completely smashed the night before at work. There was something good about wearing a uniform like a suit, and blending in the way I did in the department. Everyone got up at the same time for a smoke break, and so long as I followed the crowd and puttered around on my computer, I put on a convincing show.

Jasmine hadn't come home at all the night before. She had also lost track of time with Hilda and the two of them stayed together in her apartment. The next time I saw her, my breath was better, and my clothing had been dry-cleaned (I had figured out, with some of Mikey's help, how to find the local dry cleaner and get that done. I was convinced this was proof of my adult responsibilities). Jasmine didn't ask what I had done the night before, and I didn't pry into what she and Hilda were doing, so we got to keep our own little secrets from one another for a while. Gerard had been fine by himself. When I went up to see him, on the to-do list beside his bed was "take medicine and then make food stuff" and I smiled. He knew how to take care of himself, and as far as I could tell, was getting better. My hangover, his sickness, and Jasmine's depression all now gone from our separate rooms and bodies, we were left to go back to life as we would normally spend it.

My walks after finishing work began to detour into the park with more frequency. I realized that instead of sorting through my complex emotions, I had been veering myself towards Travis' work. He smiled anytime I showed up, as if he expected me, and we began to have his lunch break together. We never talked about much, but each other’s presence seemed to make a difference. It was that strange bond from high school. We had that perspective in common, we had that same vision of the world from that point in time, and that was all that mattered. Our stark differences now didn't seem to be what was on our minds. When we were together, we were still seventeen. We began to talk and act like it too, and I even got high with him one day after work. It had been so long since I had done it. I felt good, too; less worried, less tense. I felt young again. That was what I had really wanted to feel. Young and in control. I eventually stopped trying to convince myself that I was just going to the park to see him. This had been for myself, it always had been. Each day I would be the adult I needed to be, but as I walked, I would try and go back in time to get some relief from the responsibility on top of me.

"You know, pretty soon I'm not going to be able to come here. I'll have to start working full time," I told Travis. I was trying to give us both a warning that this wouldn't last forever. Travis had shrugged, not showing his feelings though they were plainly visible. I had been so used to dealing with every single feeling and emotion that came up; his approach to things was so foreign at first. Then I began to grow to like it. Expressing every last fear I had would have been overwhelming. It became so much easier to just ignore.

"We better make these days last, then," Travis remarked. And that night he had taken me out to the bar again and I had drank so much that I passed out. I woke up on his couch at four in the morning and had to walk home in the freezing night during a rainstorm. I left him a note that said thank you, but that I was starting work full-time tomorrow and he wouldn't see me for awhile.

I shivered and shook all the way home and when I got there, Jasmine was still up. She was sitting at the kitchen table and when I came in, she stayed there. She watched me with her lips tightly pursed, her hands over a mug of tea. Even though I was practically hypothermic and my head was pounding, she didn't get up to see if I was all right. When I eventually got my jacket and shoes off and came in to see her, I noticed that she was crying. She hadn't been a second ago, but now she had started. She made no noise as small tears ran down her pale face. I groaned internally and wanted to scream at her, " Now what? " but I didn't. I just sat down at the table and asked what was wrong.

"You smell like cigarettes and alcohol," she stated.

"So? You knew that I smoked in college and I was just around some people now. So what? And the drinking isn't anything. I just started tonight and got out of hand. We used to drink wine, you remember that. How is that any different? It's not like I'm coming home drunk every damn day..." I rambled on, but the sheer fact that I was rambling about it confirmed her point: it wasn't the type of fun drinking that one did around friends. In spite of me being around people when it was done, this was not a sociable thing. It was the type of drinking that needed an explanation. I knew from years ago that when this much effort went into an explanation of behavior, something else was going on.

"I hate that I'm crying," she said. "I do. It's the hormones. I hate saying that, though. But Frank, you are worrying me."

"This hasn't been happening a long time," I told her, begging her. I wanted to explain that I had already told Travis I was never coming again, that I had lied and said I started full time work tomorrow (when it was really next Wednesday) and that I would never walk over that way again. It felt as if I had gone into the twilight zone. It hadn't lasted long, but it was long enough to feel the difference in the house when I walked inside. I never felt this anxious and bored and angry at the same time. This house was amazing, it was mine, and Jasmine was the most beautiful person I knew. The other most beautiful person I knew was upstairs. And I had refused to acknowledge that he existed, and I had refused to let Jasmine exist in the place she was meant to exist in my mind. Travis shoved us into heterosexual normative coupling with his comments and I had never done anything about it. I just drank. I was realizing the power of silence as well as the power of confession, and I wanted to just tell Jasmine everything that had hurt me like everything that had hurt her. I wanted there to be a Men's Studies, so I could figure out how to talk about what I felt right then, instead of hacking away at my past even more.

"Sam's dead. You don't understand, Jasmine, I don't know if you can. But Sam is dead and he had a son and I just can't explain it. I can't tell you how I'm so afraid because I may be like that, that we are the same because we're men, and men hurt things, they break things, but I am not like that and I can't be like that and I'm so fucking scared," I gasped. I was so broken. I felt as if everything had been seizing up inside of me and suddenly the bolt was kicked loose. "I'm sorry. I'm just..."

"It's okay," Jasmine said. She pulled her chair closer to mine and wrapped her arms around me. I smelt like cigarettes and Travis' apartment and I was sure she wanted to vomit because of the smell and her heightened sensitivity, but she clung to me. She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me over and over again. Her hands were small and soft, her skin smoother because of the hormones and the way her body was glowing. She was radiant, beautiful, though so many things had tried to break her, too. "I'm so sorry Frank. I didn't know."

I bit my lip and tried to not cry. I had just begun to perfect the art of not feeling. Why did I have to step into a house, into a world, where I seemed to feel everything?

"I'm so lucky," I said. It was all I could think of to express this. I hated that I could walk into this house and cry because I had never been allowed to do that. For weeks now, I had not allowed myself to feel how horrible it was to be this tall, structured, and disciplined individual. I had never been allowed to express my emotions, let along express creativity in anywhere that I had been before these two people came into my life. I hated walking in here, because it made me face myself. I had been hiding from that self for so long. The parts of me that almost failed, and almost became Sam or Travis, and the parts of me that sometimes got too scared to do this. It was exhausting feeling this much emotion, even if it as good emotion. I had just needed a break. A small, small break. But I was back now.

"I'm so sorry," I apologized deeply. I knew I had hurt her. I was coming into this house, like cigarettes and alcohol, like her father. But she clung to me, she loved me. She could tell the difference in men even when I acted the same, if only for a moment. "I don't want to leave ever again," I told Jasmine, squeezing her tight. She hugged tighter as well, and I felt her stomach touch mine between the two of us. This was what did it, feeling the child between us. I began to fully cry.

I heard the stairs behind us and Gerard came into the room. He was disoriented from being awake, but saw that I was upset and came to sit down. He had no idea why I was crying, but he began to rub my back and kiss the top of my head. He told me it was okay. I turned around and hugged him, and then Jasmine touched my back. My god, I thought. I have two people to do this with. I had absolutely everything to lose, and in a blink, I saw how close I had come.

Although I needed some time to rest after that, I was not going to get long. I still had to go to work in the morning. My only saving feature was that I had half a day and could sleep in the afternoon. Jasmine said she would call me when I came home, just to make sure I was around. I hated the fact that she was checking up on me. Not that she was doing it, but that I actually needed it. Apparently Gerard had contacted Mikey as well, and when it came time to have lunch and then go, Mikey told me he was giving me a ride. I felt so infantile and stupid having people look after me and I resented it the entire time. But as soon as he dropped me off and I closed the door I felt this huge weight being lifted from my chest. I had needed a ride home. I needed someone to physically place me where I knew I wanted to be because, for some reason, I just couldn't trust myself to get there. It was easier to go and see Travis and get high instead of dealing with my life. It was easier to sit around in a bar and drink away the feelings and the ambiguities of living in the real world. My job was boring and dull, but it wasn't the worst thing in the world that could have happened to me. I shuddered, thinking of the alternatives; thinking of Sam and his son. Getting this job and being around Mikey was one of the better things that had happened to me. I had begun visiting him on my breaks instead of going downstairs with everyone else, and he and I were becoming good friends. I had friends, real friends, who understood me and would take care of me.

In the car on the way home, he told me that I had been playing that caretaker too much recently. It was okay for that stream to go both ways, for people to take care of me as much as them. I seemed to have forgotten that reciprocity in our relationships, and I was glad to have Mikey, an outside participant, remind me of that. "You're doing a good job taking care of my brother, but you know, he can take care of you, too. And he is, in his own way," he assured me, and then shut the door and drove back to work. When I stood inside the house again after my half day of work, I went into the kitchen. I sat in the same chair as I had the night before and just breathed in and out. Jasmine and Gerard were taking care of me now, the way I had with them. A damn had burst, and the walls had come down. We were all fucking broken people and we were just making it up as we all went along. We had to take care of one another, because if we didn't, I knew the alternative.

The phone dazed me out of my thoughts and I rushed towards it, knowing it was Jasmine. I wanted her to know I was here and that she didn't have to worry. I had people to worry about me. It wasn't ownership, I knew; it was caring. Jasmine didn't demand that I be home for her own benefit. She wanted to make sure I was in the best possible place, and that happened to be at home.

"Hello? Frank?" she said on the other end. "Are you all right?"

"Hey, Jasmine. It's me. Thank you. Mikey gave me a ride," I told her. "I'm fine, but tired. Thank you."

"You're welcome, Frank. Don't even mention it, okay?" She paused. I heard some keys going on her computer. "Do you have anything to keep you busy?"

I thought about it. Honestly nothing captured me much more than sleep right about then. My head was still pounding and my body was still wobbly. It was not as easy to recover from this hangover. I told her I was probably heading for a nap, and she told me that Gerard was home and that maybe I should go and sleep in his bed. She was hinting, but not fully telling me, that I should not be alone right then. Not this close after what had happened. Her way of telling me her concern, the implicit and not direct commandments, made me more willing to listen.

"Yeah, that sounds good. It's been awhile. I miss him," I confessed.

"I do too. He told me he was feeling better and we could start drawing again," she informed me. She told me to have a good nap and to rest up for tonight.

"Oh? What's tonight?" I asked, hoping that she hadn't told me and then I had blacked it out.

"It's a surprise," she replied.

I had already begun to decipher her code. Surprises were about the baby, usually. I felt my grin grow wider on the other end of the phone. "Oh really? Aren't you just full of surprises."

"Trust me, I'm just bursting," she said, and then, in a hushed tone. "I'm telling everyone tomorrow. No more sweaters for me. But tonight I'm celebrating my last night of secrecy with Hilda and I want you to meet her."

I nodded and told her it all sounded fine. Great, actually. Like things were back to normal again. "Rest up, Frank," she told me, only a slight tone of seriousness affecting the situation and reminding me of the history. "I need you strong and alert tonight. Hilda is hard to keep up with."

"I need you too, Jasmine," I said, without realizing how emotional I had become. Jasmine was quiet for a moment.

"I know," she replied quietly. "I know. Me too."

Gerard was upstairs in his room. He had pens and pencils in his mouth as he leaned over his desk, and at first, I thought he was smoking. It was grunting as he was moving around and trying to get his art supplies rearranged, and then seemed to be extremely frustrated with how the whole project was coming out. I knocked briefly though the door was open, and then declared myself when he didn't seem to hear me.

"Hey, Gerard. What's up? Are you okay?"

He grunted again, this time getting up from his stool, the pens still in his mouth, and began to look behind his bookshelf. He looked under his desk and when he finally saw me, he nodded, looked under the bed, and then turned back to me. "Did you take my charcoal?"

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14