April - The Flood 20 страница

I began to comprehend why painting was easier for him. His language abilities were the skills that were failing first in addition to some of his short-term recall. This was how Jasmine told me (before I had told her to stop) this disorder works. It took the abstractions before it took the material realities. This had been devastating for me to hear at first, because Gerard seemed to deal with nothing but abstractions. Philosophizing and waxing poetic about art, love, and life was how I fell in love with him. I thought that taking away the abstractions would leave nothing here for us to love. I knew then as I watched him paint like he used to, like nothing was even off in any way, just how wrong I had been in my assumption. Abstractions were that empty shell I was afraid would be left behind. There was nothing concrete in language or theory, there was nothing to hold onto, and it seemed to always change meaning. But you didn't need language to paint. There were no theories that really mattered on how paint felt against skin, about how that room smelled of acrylic and maple syrup, and how smooth the shirt he had on his back felt. It was these small details that I fixated on in that room and I realized they were the only ones we had. They were the only things that mattered, and watching him paint, I knew I wouldn't forget the rainbow, either.

Sometimes Gerard would pause as he worked and it would take him a little longer than average to get going. But he got it again, almost instantly. If I hadn't been looking for slight imperfections, I would have never noticed, and so right then, I tried to stop. I just watched as he painted down long strips of each color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violent, and finally pink. Each strip was jagged from the paintbrushes edges and a general lack of precision a human arm had. But he was also deliberately making them shaky as he came down with the brush, I figured, because he wanted to convey the lightning bolt, too. He left white space in the canvas between each strip. He looked at his array of colors, went back and plotted in a few spaces where it looked too uneven, but for the most part his first attempt was his best. When he backed away from it, he looked at us for approval. It was the most simplistic painting in the world, I thought. It required virtually no skill and it had taken him no time at all. It was just lines down a page. But I had seen modern art that was worse than this, that had taken less time than that, and that had way less meaning than this could ever convey.

"It's beautiful," I told him. Jasmine agreed.

"I may be losing my memory but I'm not stupid," he teased us, still finding humor. "I know it's not the best, but I'm not looking to sell it or get any credibility from it. I just want to remember."

We nodded. The three of us stood together, Gerard slightly behind the two of us, and looked for awhile, all of us committing the day - our wedding party - to memory. Gerard broke our triangle first, walking over to the water we had set up and dipping his paintbrush inside of it. Jasmine then followed him to that side of the room, leaving me as the last person to break the focus from the canvas. Gerard greeted Jasmine with a kiss, and then, when I got there, kissed me as well. He held both of our hands in his and smiled.

"We don't have rings," he said softly. He began to dig through his paints until he found the gold. There was barely anything left, but he gave it a few quick shakes.

"Hold out your hands," he said instructed again, and we obeyed. I felt my heart beating in my chest, unable to process what he was up to. He dabbed a little bit of gold on the lid of the paint, dipped his brush in it, and taking Jasmine's hands first, began to paint the ring of gold around her middle finger. We both didn't ask him why the middle and not the ring finger. We just silently let him paint our hands, and then paint his own. He smiled when he was done and Jasmine and I locked eyes. I felt like our hearts were in our mouths. It was the sweetest thing I thought he had ever done.

"There. Now we're all married. At least in art, which is the only authority," he stated. With a satisfied smile, he nodded and put away his paints. Jasmine and I exchanged glances once again, and I broke the space between us by leaning over and kissing her. She kissed me back, more passionately that I had ever felt from her, and then when Gerard returned his focus here, we all exchanged our kisses back and forth.

"Of course," I said, instead of I do, in between each person's mouth.

"Of course," Jasmine went next.

And, "of course," came from Gerard. The three of us huddled together, holding hands and waiting for paint to dry. Three people could not be married - legally. But we had done it that morning. The rainbow canvas leaned against the wall, looking down at us, granting its authority like some absent priest.

After our quick marriage, Jasmine and I spent the rest of the morning labelling the colors for Gerard and posting them up by his bed, next to the canvas. Jasmine wrote the colors out in French and English, and I worked on Kandinsky's definition for each of them for Gerard. He was losing his abstractions, and while I now knew that it was never those words and theories which made me love him, those were the things that made him happy. He liked language and philosophy, so we were going to give it to him as best we could. When I got to Kandinsky's definitely of black, I wrote his definition of obscurity, but I also wrote "utter nothingness, utter freedom." I didn't want Gerard to be scared if he ever got to that point. I was more sure than ever that it would never be that bad, but I was preparing. I was taking responsibility, as best I could, for the future. The worst case scenario didn't have to be the worst. The whole time she and I worked, our gold rings shimmered back at us.

Things were better. At least, they were as good as they could have been given the circumstances we were in. Gerard was sick, but he was still Gerard. Jasmine had made sure that he would get medical care if he needed it later on in the future, but it would not be a home. We had promised him that, and even if things got absolutely terrible, we were taking this all on together. We were all married, after all. Though we had recited no vows to one another, the lines of "in sickness and in health" came to me quite frequently in the few days that followed. I had my birthday, but it wasn't a big affair. It had been so close to our marriage that I had just assumed that was my party and gift. It was, really, but hearing Gerard and Jasmine tell me "happy birthday" as I woke up and went downstairs that morning was an incredible sight. I had wanted to cry when I heard those words come out of his mouth. I had heard them before from Jasmine; they somehow didn't seem as precious or as precarious. When I hugged him that morning, he had called me his dove again, too. It was the first birthday we had together. There were no cakes or cards, and I relished every minute of it. I tried to be happy for them both, and I tried to maintain the demeanor that I had had when we painted. It was easy for the first few days. All I had to do when I was feeling down was go to the bedroom again or glance down at my hand and marvel at what we had created. But after the paint wore off in the shower, it seemed like I was going with it. Nevertheless: I did what I could do, and we carried on.

Jasmine was five months pregnant and we were most likely naming our daughter Paloma. We had considered some flower names, especially after our discussion, but having Jasmine and another flower name for our daughter seemed to be too much. And we liked the bird, and the story behind it. Gerard was still calling our daughter Paloma and we were also afraid to change it in case he got confused. So her name became a fact, and I found myself repeating these facts to myself much like I used to do with Jasmine when she was having a hard time and much like we sometimes had to do for Gerard in the morning. I was now repeating them to myself in an effort to calm myself. These were the material facts, not the abstractions, and I needed to keep them in mind. I would often touch or hold things when I became too upset, in an attempt to situate myself in reality. Not abstractions. Abstractions weren't important anymore, I tried to tell myself. I would take ages to eat any food, trying to focus on what was happening so intensely. I touched and tasted and smelled and heard in an attempt to stay here, in the present, and not catapult all around. In spite of the good that had happened and the progress I had made in my own thinking, I was still facing the inevitable fact that this was really happening. That in the future, it may just be Jasmine, Paloma, and I. Gerard would be there like a spectre or a ghost, but it would be the three of us. He would not be able to help because a soucouyant would be taking him in the night....

My name is Frank, I told myself suddenly. Jasmine was five months pregnant, I work at an office job, I am twenty-six years old now, it is almost the end of May, and I need to figure out a way to deal with my problems.

Whenever I was alone and I wasn't careful, I would think about going back to the bar. Some nights when Gerard fell asleep before me and Jasmine was also in bed, instead of reading in my garden like I should have been, I'd think about sneaking out and going to the bar. I'd think about finding Travis, sometimes, too, but he had mostly worn himself out of mind. I never liked being around Travis. I may have felt that way at first because he provided me with some type of safety net and a person who needed me. But now I was needed far too much. I had to go to work every damn day, talk to Mikey about the progress of his brother or worse the business economy, and then actually deal with Gerard. I loved Gerard so much, but the choice of our relationship was no longer there. We were married and that was okay, I still loved him so deeply that this fact was okay to me. But when he had painted that ring on my finger, I thought of back in his apartment. When he told me he loved him, I thought of the apartment. When I thought about him at work, it was a different Gerard, it was that apartment Gerard. I was wishing him away before he even had a chance to fade away. I knew he was unreliable now and that I couldn't trust him, but I loved him, and I tried to reconcile those two emotions.

It was hard. Whenever I wasn't around someone to keep me company or grasping whatever objects were around until my knuckles went white, my thoughts would overwhelm me and I would automatically default to the bar. I would shut down internally, not letting anything inside of me and not letting anything out. When I shut down like that, I felt empty, like a failure, and the only way I could make that horrible emptiness go away was to drink. Drinking was putting things inside, it was loosening the hold my mind had over me, and it made me black out large chunks of time. It made me fill time that I would normally use to think. If I could avoid thinking, I could avoid being overwhelmed. When I avoided thinking, I was bored, and when I was bored I felt empty, like I had wasted my time and my life, and to make the emptiness go away I needed something to fill me up. So I needed to drink. All of it added up and pointed to drinking and that bar. But Travis needed me too much to just walk into that bar. I was past the nostalgic social drinking, the meandering through old wounds, and having Travis kill the boredom. I just needed to drink until I could do nothing else. I hoped that Travis got back together with Diana and I wished him well. But I didn't need to be reminded of Sam's death - his foolish and selfish death - and the fact that everyone seemed to want to rip me apart and swallow me whole they needed me so much. I needed things too. I needed to just not be here for a moment. I wanted my thoughts back to myself, and I wanted to stop being cannibalized each and every day. I wanted to fucking drink.

I had been good enough, I told myself. I had been so good recently, actually. It had just been my birthday, so why not celebrate? My plan came to me, like a ringing in my ear, and I set to work to make it happen.

I told Jasmine I was getting groceries for us, and I did end up doing that. I got the groceries she had put down on the list, including the weird spices that I needed to go to an Asian Grocery Store for. I read the ingredients on the products and knew she could have them. I even got gas. Things were going well. But when the thought of driving back home entered my mind, I pushed it away. When the thought of going to the bar entered my mind, I pushed it away. I considered driving and never coming back, but what good would that get me? It wouldn't change the situation that was here and I needed to be here. I wanted to be here, and that was what made this urge so much worse. I loved these people and I didn't want to hurt them by leaving, but I needed to find a way that I could be present but not actually there. Just for a little while, I promised myself. I was making a lot of promises. I didn't know how many I could keep anymore.

I drove to the old liquor store, parked in the parking lot for the old building that I used to live in, got vodka, and sobbed in the front seat of the car as I drank it. I realized that I had bought gum while I was at the supermarket, something not on the list but I had gotten unconsciously, knowing that I would end up in this place, and I cried again. I had been planning on doing this all along. I had bought gum so I could do this and possibly get away with it. No matter how hard I thought I was fighting this, I was itching to do it all along. No matter how often I told myself this wouldn't happen again, it would. I knew it would. I had tricked Mikey, I had tricked Jasmine, and I knew I would find more people to trick. I just didn't want to be here anymore, but I had everything to lose if I left. I was so confused, and so worn out. I kept drinking the vodka, a few gulps, even though I was so disgusted with myself each time I did it. I eventually closed my eyes so I didn't have to watch my hand do it. I figured I had already failed - I had bought the bottle - so why not just get rid of it? I was already getting buzzed, and my logic was making no sense. It was an alcoholic's logic, I knew it was. I had seen it in play years ago. Only it never got this bad, I thought to myself. Was this what I was waiting for when I was seventeen?

I coughed. I put down the vodka and coughed a little bit more before I regained composure. I looked up at the apartment building and I tried to envision myself behind its walls again. I needed to exert my own authority. I was being eaten alive, and I was convinced that I needed to fight the one that had first eaten me alive and gotten me used to this treatment. I wasn't that drunk. My crying and shaky hands had prevented me from getting too drunk. I threw the bottle under the seat and turned the car on again. I drove around the corner and made my way towards my parents' house.

It was almost dinner time when I got there. I knew Jasmine would be pissed and would probably send Mikey out to look for me if I wasn't home by six, so I knew I had to make this quick. I knocked, unsure of what exactly I was going to do. I had put gum in my mouth when I first started to drive, but took it out as I waited for someone to come to the door. I figured I would be doing a lot of yelling, and it would only get in the way. After some shuffling, my mother opened the door. She was dressed in her normal cords and cardigan, and her hair was tied back. She looked as if she had just gotten it colored.

"Frank! Did you call? Should I have been expecting you?"

I shook my head. "I was driving by. I wanted to see you."

She opened the door more and gestured for me to come inside. At first she had been happy; her eyes were bright and her gestures open and caring, but when I stepped into the hall light and she got a better look at me, she wrought her eyebrows in confusion. She seemed to smell the vodka too, as if she had a sixth sense for it by now."Is everything all right? Is Jasmine okay?"

For a minute I didn’t realize why on earth she was asking about Jasmine. Of course Jasmine was okay; the person people should have been worried about was Gerard. Then I recalled the last news my mother had had from me was about the pregnancy. I nodded.

"We're having a girl," I added.

I walked further into the house, eyeing the corners of the house to see where my father was. I didn't take my shoes off as I wandered, but I didn't think my mother noticed. She was too busy gasping with delight that she was going to have a granddaughter.

"A girl! A girl! That's wonderful, Frank. You should... we should... really tell your father, you know, soon. I've been dying to."

I shrugged, my eyes now fixed ahead of me. I was about to walk into the living room, where I could see my father at the back, watching TV. "I plan on telling him a lot of things."

Nothing went the way I had planned it going, possibly because I really didn't have a plan. I just wanted someone to yell at and someone to take all the anger that I had boiling up inside of me, and I needed someone who I thought vaguely deserved it. Jasmine and Gerard were completely harmless and they were doing the best they could. Travis was too pathetic, and everyone else was not involved enough for it to feel worth it. Vivian was the other person I considered yelling at, but she was also the one who would fight back the most and I stood losing more to. My father had been the only person in my mind who deserved to be yelled at, and who I thought I could win against in a fight. Not because I was bigger than him now, but because I had no issues about hitting him anymore. I was ready to do whatever I needed to. What little alcohol I had consumed had cooled my nerves and anything was game.

But when I walked in front of the television set and called his name in a challenge, he stood up before me and I crumbled. He looked at me up and down, and then smelled the vodka with an upturned lip, and I lost it. I began to cry again, the stench of alcohol and the burning sensation of it in my stomach coming back up. I told him I hated him for what he said to Gerard, for making me feel like I had to hide that part of my personality forever, for making me scared of talking about how I really felt.

"See? Now I have to get drunk to feel things, and then to not feel anything at all!" I told him, trying to blame my pathetic behavior on him. I remembered back to when I was younger, almost too young to really remember and recognize what was going on, when he fell into the Christmas tree, when he 'worked late' and when he used to smell like I did right then. "I learned from you this was the only way to do things. Either you're silenced forever and play the rag-doll martyr, or you drink away the pain and take things away from people."

I felt bad, leaving a jab in there for my mother, too. She couldn't help those years where he had been a terror and drank all of his time away. She had absorbed all of his harsh words, as if she could somehow absorb his own drinking problem. She played the martyr so well then, but I had not needed a martyr. I had needed a mother, and even though my father's own drinking maybe lasted a year at most, her silence had been an after-effect that never quite went away. I was sick and tired of her still being the same rag-doll around him. She needed her life back just as much as he did from his drinking. But what was even more bizarre to me was that my father was even scarier when he was sober. Alcohol had actually cooled my father's temper; it had made him lethargic and passive. It was not drinking that made him this booming force in front of me, staring down at me with contempt.

"Frank, this is not how you greet us. Your mother said you had good news, and I highly doubt this is it. Shut up and tell me, or don't tell me at all," he said. He moved out of the living room and went to the kitchen. I followed him and tried to taunt him and become the aggressive drunk that he never was, but my insults paled in comparison to his force. He went to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice and slid it over to me.

"Drink it," he told me.

"What's in it? What are you trying to do to me?"

"I'm trying to get your breath better than it is. I'm going to make coffee too, so you can sober up and tell us your news, though by the looks of things, it doesn't appear to be a happy affair right now." He swung himself around and began to fix things in the kitchen. He opened cupboards and began to get the filters ready for coffee. My mother was watching in the doorframe, still technically in the hallway and not the kitchen.

I took a drink of the orange juice, then put down the glass angrily. This was not fair. He could not tell me what to do. Why was he not yelling back at me? Why were we not punching? He was angry and upset, and his words had a cutting edge to them, but he was not fuming like I expected him to be. We had fought more in high school! Now he just seemed disappointed. He seemed to think I was this sick and demented little puppy that he begrudgingly had to take care of lest it kill itself. That was not me, hell no. He didn't get to be on his high horse just because I came in here the one time and I was drunk. That was not fair. He had done the same thing, and his had lasted so much longer. He did not get to criticize me. I was working a full time job and supporting people. I was a fucking adult. He didn't deserve to treat me like a child.

"You fucker," I told him. "I'm doing well for myself. I have a job. I'm having a kid. And I live with Gerard and Jasmine," I felt like I was repeating facts to myself again, but I didn't care. "You need to respect that."

He turned around, the coffee machine gurgling. "You need to respect yourself. Then maybe I will. Show me how adult you've become, don't just strut in here, drunk, and treat me like shit."

"You treat me like shit. You insulted Gerard."

"That man had no authority being in your life."

"That man is my life!" I shouted, then broke down again. I heaved a few wailing sobs. "He's sick, dad. He's so fucking sick."

"He didn't get you sick, did he? I don't want that in my house," he said. His eyes widened as his jaw clenched, breathing hard through his nose.

"No, for fuck's sake. Think about something other than your damn self now and how right you were. We don't have AIDS, or anything like that. He's just... sick. He's forgetting stuff. He'll get worse and worse and then I have to take care of a baby with Jasmine and I work so much all the time and I haven't picked up a camera in months and I'm so fucking scared."

It all came out of me, and when it was done, I was surprised. It really wasn't that much at all. I had been keeping it inside, never telling anyone. Even when Travis was talking to me and telling me his woes, I had never really articulated mine out loud. Saying them all then felt good. It felt better. But then the nausea came back in my stomach, now added with the rest of the orange juice, and I had to run from the room before I could even see how my father reacted.

I used the hall bathroom, and when I was done I could smell coffee. I wanted to have a cup and get the burning taste of stomach acid and citrus out of my mouth and nostrils, but my parents were talking. They were amicably talking, as if they were working out something. I had no doubt it was about me and I didn't want to be around for it. Forgoing the coffee, I snuck around to the front hall again and went up the stairs into my old room instead. Even in the seven years since I had left, it was still the same. My mom wouldn't let my dad get rid of my things or turn the room into something else. Though he acted like it was this huge sacrifice, he probably liked it this way. I was their only child; getting rid of the room meant they would have to dismantle my presence in their life in some way. It was nice to have a reminder of what they had done with a good chunk of their lives.

My first impulse when I got inside was to trash the place. I hated the person that I was when I lived in here, and I hated the person I was becoming now. I felt as if I was regressing. This constant turning back towards alcohol was this constant turning back of the clock. I was driving back to places in my past and meeting people again from my past. People everywhere kept dying from then, too. Vera, Sam. And then the other. The other that had not happened yet, but probably would, someday in the future, hopefully not too soon. So much of my past defined me, but I was realizing it only defined me because I had left it behind. It was the distance that gave me perspective. Coming back to it, again and again, and doing the things I used to do left me confused and weary. I was angry when I stepped into the room and I wanted to destroy it, but I was overwhelmed because that meant destroying myself. I could not destroy my past, because it had already happened and had gotten me to this point. I could only leave it behind. I had to move beyond it. Then maybe I wouldn't feel so empty.

I went over to my closet and began to search through the items. I found old clothes, running shoes, school books, and then - the big deal. I found my guitar; not the one I had smashed, but one that my father repaired later on and given back to me. It had been his form of apology after the Bernard incident. I picked it up and held it like I used to, but all I felt was guilt. I had pretty much stopped playing after Bernard had left, and tried to focus on photography. I was never really going to be good at guitar, but that didn't mean I had to stop did it? Couldn't I just play it when I wanted that taste of nostalgia? I didn't have to drink to get that old feeling. I could just go through my closet.

I put the guitar down on my bed and began to go through the rest of the contents. I nearly started to bawl again when I found the old Black Flag t-shirt that I had. It was the red one I had been wearing the first day I had met Gerard. It was still paint stained after all of these years. I sat on the bed with it and held its crusty surface in my hands. This was so surreal, so foreign. It was all of me, transferred into this one item. I never thought I would see it again. It had never occurred to me, yet again, that when I was sad and nostalgic, that I should just come here. That I should hold and touch this shirt when I missed Gerard. I always knew that he was coming back to me, so why bother coming here and living in the past? But when the future looked bleak for us, when it could only get worse, when it could only degenerate... This shirt was what I had needed. This shirt would stay the same, and never get old, and never forget.

I put my face into it and I started to cry. It smelled like smoke, his smoke. I sobbed and sobbed into this shirt and then I moved my tears away from it just in case it made the paint come off. I didn't want to lose, even an ounce of what this shirt was. I used my hands to finish drying my tears, and then put the shirt on the bed with the guitar. These were my artifacts of my old life. I would take them home with me tonight. I was about to get up and take my things and leave this train wreck of a house when I saw my mom standing at the door.

"How long have you been there?" I asked, feeling violated. I had left the door open, but I was crying in what I had thought been confidence.

"Not long," she assured me. She walked inside slowly. "But long enough to know that you're hurting."

I looked away and then sat back down on the bed, to have her join me shortly thereafter. My mother had never been good with affection for me, especially in my teenage years, but she tried to break down the barrier we had set up. She touched my shoulder gingerly. I did not move or push her away, and I did not encourage it either. I was still so tightly wound up in myself, my own issues, and my past lives.

"Tell me about him," she requested.

I sighed. "I'm having a girl, mom. I don't really know what else to say. Jasmine is five months pregnant."

"No," she corrected me gently, hand still on my shoulder. "Tell me about him, about Gerard. How bad is he?"

I made eye contact, gauging how emotionally involved she was in asking me this question. Was she asking me because she had to, or because she really wanted to know? I didn't want to open the floodgates if it would end up being for the wrong person. But she was there, honest, and even a little sad too.

"How much is he forgetting?" she asked, and then it all came out. Every last thing I had been keeping inside and not wanted to say about Gerard. About losing him, about not knowing where I was in my life and how I was supposed to recover from this. If he could not teach me anything anymore, how on earth was I supposed to go on? He had prepared me for his absence a long time ago, but things changed. And when he prepared me, he didn't exactly take in fulltime jobs, kids, and an illness into the mix. I was just as lost as I had been at seventeen right then, and though I knew so much from him, I also knew absolutely nothing. And he couldn't help me get through it. That was the worse part.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14