EZRA
I ’ M IN THE MIDDLE OF SOME RANDOM D OWNTOWN BODEGA WHEN I finally decide to turn my phone off. The steadily mounting stream of messages from Romy and Caroline is starting to make me feel edgy – I have no idea how many shifts I’ve missed, but I don’t really feel like being officially fired on top of everything else. I’ve missed some calls from Mac, too. Maggie messaged once. Nothing from Edie. Or Audrey, of course.
I yawn as I slip it back into my pocket, picking up a can of ginger beer. The evening bodega run is to stave off the mounting claustrophobia – I’ve spent the bulk of the past twenty-four hours watching TV on the sofa, occasionally getting up to eat a handful of cereal or mix another drink. I’m sure I must have slept, but it doesn’t feel that way. My eyes are painfully dry, my tongue thick and sour in my mouth.
I pay for my ginger beer with a crumpled note. There’s already a water bottle half-filled with whisky in my coat pocket, and once I’m outside I take it out, topping it up with the soda as best I can. My best is bad, it turns out, and I wipe my now-sticky hands on my jumper and toss the can in a nearby dumpster with more force than necessary. Then I start to walk. It’s a nice evening, the darkening sky streaked with pink and gold. The familiar impulse to take a picture tugs at my brain, but I don’t have my camera. Besides, I don’t want to remember any of this.
It isn’t long before I realise that I’m heading towards the Village. It’s weird – I usually avoid it, subconsciously or otherwise, but when I start recognising buildings, I realise that the route to our old street is still etched into my brain. Why not , I think gaily. I haven’t been back there since I first left for school. I was too angry with Dad for selling it, too hurt that I didn’t get to say goodbye, too fucking sad . Only I don’t feel much of anything tonight. Ever since Audrey left, I’ve been observing my life fall apart with the cool detachment of someone watching a natural disaster on the news.
But then I reach our house, and—
Not our house , I remind myself. What used to be our house, only it all looks exactly how I remember it – jarringly so. Black door, stone steps, chrysanthemums in the window boxes – Mum planted those, I’m almost sure. And the lights are on. Another family is probably inside, but I’m gripped with the impulse to knock on the door anyway, just in case she answers.
Instead, I cross the street and sit heavily on the shallow kerb, taking a swig of my drink. I feel a bit nauseous, struck by the sudden conviction that our furniture is still in there. None of it ever materialised in Dad’s new apartment – nothing did. Even the really mundane shit like bedding and cutlery was new, and sometimes I picture the old stuff in its own private landfill, a monument to that life. It can’t be gone. Not Mum’s things, at least not her books and her notepads, her mountains of folders. He wouldn’t have gotten rid of her battered wooden hairbrush, or the chewed-up looking Hush Puppies that she wore year-round. And someone must have kept the photo albums, meticulously chronologised and lined neatly on the shelf above her desk. She liked to keep them in her eyeline, she told me once, but never explained why.
I would have kept it all. The stuff, the house – I lost my shit when Dad wrote to tell me it’d been sold, just days before I was set to fly back for Christmas. To top it off, that Christmas itself was excruciating. Dad was trying so fucking hard to keep things festive, apparently unaware his forced enthusiasm only made everything feel bleaker. He’d even bought a tree for the new apartment, and they’d all waited until I was there to decorate it. But then Dad produced this box of decorations that I’d never seen before, and though I realise now that he probably thought it might be too painful to use the ones that Mum had so lovingly curated, I wanted them. I wanted that much if I couldn’t have her, and I briefly imagined upending the box from his hands, crushing the unfamiliar baubles underfoot, pelting them against the walls –
Instead, I left the room without a word. No one came after me, and when I reappeared for dinner, the tree had been decorated. We never spoke about it again, and we’ve gotten new decorations every year since.
Suddenly I’m on the verge of tears – I roughly paw at my eyes, embarrassed. This is exactly why I don’t like to think about this shit.
‘Hi there.’
I start, glancing upwards. There’s a woman looking down at me with obvious concern, a little kid with fluffy hair and a solemn expression clinging to her hand.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks gently.
‘Yep,’ I say quickly, getting to my feet. ‘Fine. Thank you.’
And then I’m striding away, hands tucked into my pockets, abandoning my bottle on the kerb. I don’t deserve pity, especially not from a stranger. What’s more, it’s jarringly familiar. Mum would have done the same thing, because that’s the kind of person she was – interested in everything, kind to everyone. And I don’t exactly remember when things started to get really bad, but that was part of it. The shape of her days didn’t change but it was almost as though there was less of her, somehow – I saw that, but I never tried to talk to her about it. I’ve always been a shitty son, apparently. I don’t even know where her grave is. I’ve never visited.
I don’t know where her grave is.
The realisation rattles me, and I stop by a streetlight and fumble in my pocket to turn my phone back on. I call Caroline’s number without looking at any of her messages – she picks up after the first ring.
‘Ezra?’
‘Hey,’ I say, clearing my throat. ‘How are you?’
‘ Worried , Ezra. You’ve been AWOL for days. What the fuck is going on?’
‘Not much. Uh – weird question, but where’s Mum?’
‘What?’
‘I mean – where’s her grave? Which cemetery?’
She’s silent for a moment. I can hear Romy in the background, whispering. I’m probably on speakerphone.
‘Where are you, Ezra?’ Caroline finally asks.
‘Just walking. I thought I might take some flowers.’
‘That’s a really nice idea. Come over. You can stay the night and we can both go tomorrow morning.’
There’s a lilt of unease in her voice. It occurs to me then then that I might be drunker than I realised.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Just tell me which one.’
‘It’s late, Ezra. It can wait.’
‘Obviously. I know she’s not going anywhere.’ I laugh, but it’s a flat, awful sound and an awful thing to say. I’m on the verge of an apology when a sob escapes my throat instead, and then I’m crying, and laughing because I can’t believe that I’m actually fucking crying, but the laughter just sounds like more crying. It’s humiliating, and I keep trying to pull in enough air to tell Caroline that I’m sorry but the breaths are too small, too shallow – I lower the phone, sink back down towards the kerb and put my head between my knees, trying desperately to calm the fuck down.
But it’s not working.
It’s not working, because this is never going to get better. I’ve pretended otherwise for so long but the hole she left is going to keep getting bigger, and bigger, and eventually it’s going to swallow me whole. I know it. I’ve always known it, from that first night when we were waiting for the phone to ring, except the doorbell rang instead, and Dad stood up—
I can hear Caroline’s voice coming from the phone. She’s not on speakerphone, which means she must be shouting – I raise it back to my ear with a trembling hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I manage. ‘I—’
‘Where are you, Ezra? Tell me where you are.’
‘I’m not – I’m at the house.’
‘Whose house? Tell me the address.’
She sounds so scared. I know why, and it absolutely kills me.
‘I’m fine,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t have to – I’m not—’
‘Don’t what, Ezra? You’re not making any sense.’
‘Don’t act like I’d do something, because I wouldn’t,’ I say in a rush, voice hoarse. ‘I wouldn’t. Even though I’m – I’m so fucking bad at this. And she was good. She was so good …’
Another sob escapes my throat then – I feel my face crumple and hide it with my hand, chest hitching. Shit.
‘Come home,’ Caroline says, her voice breaking – she’s crying too, I realise dimly. ‘Just get in a cab and come home. Please?’
‘I’m – I don’t know where that is any more,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t think there is one.’
‘There’s me,’ she says. ‘There’s always me.’
Caroline insists that I stay on the phone during the cab ride. When it finally pulls up outside her building, she’s waiting for me on the street in zebra-print pyjamas, her hair askew. I’m barely out of the car before she yanks me into a hug so tight that it hurts and I’m grateful, for that. For her.
We stand there in silence for a moment, just holding each other. Then she leads me inside, and out of the cold.