Chapter 11
Missing and Dismissing
Sometimes, going back to the places where you’ve been happy is all you need to stitch up an open wound.
Grandpa Henry’s home is a tiny oasis in the center of town.
Between these four walls, I can go back to being the girl who used to hide there when her parents were away, where I dreamed of gliding across the ice.
It was easy back then to fill the void with a new doll or some candy, but as the years passed, the stitches started to pop off and all I could do is learn to live with the wounds.
The sun’s up.
I stay in bed a long time, groggy, contemplating the sky of what promises to be a bright and sunny day.
“I’m here,” I tell myself. “One more day, or one less.” Is everyone else aware that every time they scratch a day off the calendar, that’s one more opportunity to live, to die?
Does it make sense that I know this and yet the days just keep piling up like a row of dominos somebody’s tipped over?
I turn around and go back to bed.
When I open my eyes a second time, it’s 11:00 a.m. The familiar scent of Grandpa’s detergent still wafts from the sheets of the bedroom he set up for me years ago and that I barely use anymore. I go down to the kitchen, make myself coffee, take small sips, listen to the ticking of the clock.
I miss Grandpa.
I miss Dad.
I miss Mom.
I miss Olivia.
I miss Lucy.
I feel like that’s all my life really consists of: missing and dismissing.
I see my existence like a train and some of the cars are empty and others are full of people I just don’t care about.
Loneliness eats away at things. Everyone talks about how it’s good to be alone, but does solitude by choice have anything to do with solitude when you’re resigned to it?
It’s the same word, but that’s as far as it goes.
Entering the garage that Granddad turned into his workshop, I feel like I’m in a small space that time hasn’t altered. The ground is covered with sawdust and wood shavings. On the shelves and tables are wooden gewgaws, not just figurines but pieces of furniture and other things I can’t identify.
Sometime later, I dress in a pair of tattered jeans and a sweatshirt before going to Anne Rogers’s house to walk her dog. When I get there, I find her in her living room.
“I thought you were away,” I said.
“I canceled at the last minute, but I need you to take care of Mr. Fluff because I’m really busy. I’ll be in my office upstairs. Are you in the mood for a juice?”
“Sure.”
In the spotless white kitchen, I grab the glass Anne slides across the marble counter. The silence that follows is uncomfortable. I doubt we have anything in common, but I try to break the ice.
“Nice lamps.”
“Thanks.” She takes a sip, elegant and prudent, as if there were something embarrassing about feeding yourself. “How’s your mother?”
The question surprises me. “You know her?”
“I do. Quite well. Or at least, I used to. We worked for the same real estate company. We started together, but Rosie was always a step ahead of me. The boss loved her and all the rest of us tried to imitate her. Then the tragedy happened, and she quit working, and we talked less and less. Now we just wave from a distance if we see each other in the neighborhood. But even that hasn’t happened for quite some time. ”
“She doesn’t go out much.”
“I imagined.”
“I should go ahead and take Mr. Fluff out, Ms. Rogers,” I say, drinking my juice in one gulp and trying to end the conversation.
“Before you do: Are you looking for more pets to take care of?”
“Definitely.”
“I have some friends who’d like you to walk their dogs. I’ll give them your number so they can call.”
“Thanks so much.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The walk feels good, so I stretch it on longer than I’m paid for, and when we reach a cozy area with a bench, I sit there with the dog, throw him a stick to catch, and watch the people walking around.
I don’t know why, but I remember a teacher from high school who told me once something like, “It’s such a shame that you waste your talent, Greta.
” Looking back years later, I wonder if he was talking about my natural gift for walking dogs.
Ms. Rogers talking to her friends about me could be the beginning of my pet service empire.
The thought makes me laugh. The memory of the teacher too.
How ridiculous, a woman like that, who barely knew me, thinking something about me was exceptional.
That afternoon, I stop in front of the door to the dining room when I see my mother hypnotized by the TV, eating something out of a can. I don’t know if it’s canned meat or what, but it looks gross and gelatinous.
“Do you know where Dad is?”
“Mm. No. At work maybe.”
I doubt his office is still open, but I don’t say that. My parents’ marriage hit the rocks a long time ago, and there’s barely anything left of what it used to be. But no one in their right mind would ever dream of getting involved in that mess.
She seems surprised when I sit next to her.
“Speaking of work, I started walking this woman’s dog. She says she knows you, that you used to work together in the real estate office. Her name’s Anne Rogers.”
“Yeah, Anne…”
“She’s nice,” I say.
“We got along well.”
I want to ask her what happened, why she stopped hanging out with her, if her idea of friendship is as screwed up as mine, but the glow of the screen on her eyes makes me think better of it. Have you ever wanted to pet a dying animal but been too scared it will bite you?
I leave. That’s the safest thing. I climb the stairs to shower and take refuge in my room. Not long afterward, Taylor calls. I don’t want to pick up, but I do.
He’s done at the garage and wants us to meet on the corner for a smoke.
It’s a warmer night than the previous ones, as if the summer is trying to assert itself and say, Hey, I’m almost here.
“Well, well, well,” he says when he sees me.
I’m wearing the sweatpants I put on to hang around the house, a jacket, and a sweater so old I can’t let go of it because it’s almost part of the family. I normally put it on before bed.
“How was your day?” I ask.
“Good, good. And yours?”
“Same as always.” I shrug.
That’s about as far as our conversations usually go, so we’ve learned to cope with the silence—not that there was any option.
And that’s what we’re doing now: sharing the same air, the same asphalt, the same geographic coordinates.
And yet, paradoxically, the distance between us is impossible to bridge.
Taylor takes a pull off his cigarette and looks at me. “You seemed weird last night.”
“Is that out of the ordinary?”
“Not in the least,” he says.
What would happen if I stopped making excuses and just said what I was thinking without sugarcoating it? Could it be as easy as it was with Will? Was there any chance that if I grabbed a thread and pulled and pulled, the truth would come out, and we could be real with each other?
“I got bored, you know? The same old people; alcohol, which in all honesty grosses me out; trivial, futile conversations; and worst of all, having to listen to stories I know by heart. So I left.”
“What the hell does futile mean?”
“Did you have fun last night?”
“Hell yeah.” He throws down his cigarette and crushes it with the toe of his boot. “But I’d have rather ended the night with you. At home. In my bed. With no clothes on.”
“I get it. You don’t need to fill in every single blank.”
He seems irritated by my tone. I don’t blame him. We both know what we have, there’s never been any doubt about it, so I don’t have the right to complain that he’s never given me what I wanted.
He looks exasperated just before he goes for the throat. “Did you ever stop to wonder why you didn’t have any friends in high school? When you act all snotty and use those big-ass words from the dictionary, you come across like something’s wrong with your head.”
“You’re an idiot, Taylor.”
Here we go again.
I walk home. Unsure what else to do, I crawl into the window and sit on the sill to look at the dark purple sky that will soon be full of stars. There’s nothing more pleasurable than watching the end of the day from the roof like a lazy cat.
I think about the word affable. Lucy was always like that: kind, agreeable, so much so that she came across as naive.
It probably had something to do with her life, which she only got to live halfway, always fluctuating between sickness and health.
Most people think being affable is a good thing, but I never believed that.
In a world full of starving hyenas, you can’t call it a virtue to be a field mouse, ignorant of all the dangers around you.
Lucy was so sweet that everyone instinctively wanted to protect her.
I spent my whole life watching my parents do that, and then, when I grew up, I did it too.
It was a mistake. The only one who held his ground was my grandfather.
Even toward the end, I was still trying to smooth things over, as though I could convince her it was no big deal that my life had hardly begun and hers was over.
“It’s nothing special” was the phrase I always used when I talked to her about something that had just happened or was about to.
“Don’t you ever dream of going far away from here?
” she asked me one time when she found me sitting on the roof and settled down next to me.
There was almost no space, so we were smashed together.
“The world’s so big, Greta, the idea of crouching in one corner of it just seems stupid.
I think sometimes about how great it would be to just catch a plane without planning to, and tomorrow I could be standing on a glacier, or in the desert, or on the beach, or surrounded by skyscrapers in a big city. ”
I kept looking at the cirrocumulus clouds that were like a wrinkled sheet after a night of lovemaking. Then I took a breath. “I doubt it’s all that special.”
I’d uttered that go-to phrase so many times that I didn’t really know what I meant by it anymore.
Like, who was I saying that for? Lucy or myself?
And was it really true that I wasn’t excited by the idea of traveling, seeing a concert, having a boyfriend, going to college, ice-skating?
Isn’t it possible that I repeated that mantra to myself for years until I wound up convincing myself it was true?
Because nothing that required me to leave my sister behind and go out on my own was viable.
I was born to save her—to save her, not to abandon her.
So how could I know what I liked if I never stopped to think about it, if it’s always been easier to tell myself that nothing’s all that special?
I go to the bedroom and grab a notebook and a pen off the desk.
When I settle down again between the window and the roof, it’s almost totally dark out.
I go back over my conversation with Will the night before.
For me, that conversation didn’t finish, and I go backward in my mind, trying to think of all I didn’t get to tell him.
I’ve always had a good memory, but I don’t know whether that’s a blessing or a curse.
Grandpa’s always said we need to forget to be able to breathe. I start at the beginning:
Rainy days. Butter melting in a hot pan. The persistence of flies. Chewing grape seeds. Weird movies. Love in films. Making up conversations that never happened. Purple.
And then:
The texture of stones. The scent of Magic Markers.
Putting glue on my fingertips, letting it dry, and then trying to peel it off in one piece.
Looking at another person’s goose bumps.
Iridescent crystals. Dried flowers in the pages of a book.
Underlining books and making them mine, all mine.
Winding staircases that feel like they’ll never end.
Walking barefoot. Speeding up on my bike on a long, straight street like I wanted to stare down death.
Asking Death why he didn’t take me instead.
Bright-colored wigs, even if I’ve never worn one.
Literature. Art. Classical music, especially delicate piano music, when it sounds like someone’s touching the keys to my soul.
I pause, and when I start writing again, my hand seems moved along by someone else. I’m not even aware of when I stop thinking about the present and start thinking about the future.
I’d like to learn all the constellations. Walk on the streets of Vienna at sunset. Take a train without knowing what station I’m getting off at. Skate on ice and think about nothing, nothing, nothing.
When I stop writing, I have the shakes. The night is so dark, I can barely see the ink on the page.
I take my time watching the neighborhood prepare to go to bed: the lights turning off, someone taking the dog for one last walk, a girl out jogging with headphones on, the moon over the trees.
I wonder what their lives are like. If all of them feel as empty and full, as blissful and sad, and serene and deeply lost as me.