Authors: Jason Myers
It's tough to believe, though.
She's just too darn committed to me and music and art.
Finally, after an hour, I walk home.
It's probably a thirty-minute walk. I put my earphones in and crank some RZA. I should be halfway through my piano lesson right now. Instead, like ten minutes into my walk, I take my backpack off and pull my camcorder out. There's this piece I've been thinking out for weeks, and I'm pretty sure I've got it down now.
Holding the camera above me, I hit the record button and go for it. . . .
“Her name was Emma and her hair was black like the night and she rode a sick yellow bike with a wood basket and two Nirvana -stickers on it . . . It snowed for a month straight and with nothing to do, she dug an old photo book out of her closet . . . she started crying before she'd even opened it . . . there was a time when she had everything she'd ever dreamed of, yet she never stopped to enjoy a single moment of it, she never even thought to think this is it, this is my dream come true . . . the photos tortured her and broke her heart all over again . . . She vowed to never look at them again, but when she tried to close the book, she couldn't and the pain stung
like a million bees because there she was, the failure she'd come to accept . . . That spring I saw her running down this dirt road in a blue dress . . . Her hair blew in the wind and her body had all grown up . . . The year before I'd asked her for a slow dance at the community center's annual Halloween party . . . I was dressed as the Karate Kid and she was dressed like Snow White . . . The song I asked her to dance to was “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver . . . I'll love that song long after the day I die . . . She declined because she already had a man . . . He wasn't there that night, though . . . He'd been gone for a while, though, even if she didn't care to count the days as I had . . . Someday, we'll all be a thousand years older than we are now and I'm not sure we'll be any wiser when it comes to the heart and when it comes to love . . . This is the story that never changes . . . You mark my words on that . . . A week ago I played a pickup game of basketball and scored twenty-three points . . . Afterward, I jacked off in the park's bathroom and I wrote her name on the stall with my come . . . It's not often that you think about one person so kindly for so long, it's not often that you don't take the memories for granted the way you had the person . . . I once dreamt of driving through El Paso and becoming a drug dealer, it wasn't so bad . . . I need New York like I need a blow job . . . I need San Francisco like I need Oxy . . . the dress she wore that day when she ran down the road was handmade by her mother . . . her mother made all her clothes because they couldn't afford to go shopping for anything new, in fact the last new thing she'd bought was an MC5 T-shirt because they were her favorite and she'd dreamt about being in their band every night for three weeks straight . . . In the end, Emma is just this girl, she's a crush that won't go away . . . And in the end, I'm just a boy, a boy who wishes he could've shoveled that snow for her . . . One day I'll have someone to cook pancakes and sausage for, one day I'll get my slow dance . . . Next spring I'm going to Taipei cos Tao Lin wrote about going there in one of his books . . . Next winter I'm gonna head to the Marshall
Islands and go scuba diving through the remains of all those World War Two battleships . . . Tomorrow I'll eat ice cream for breakfast, then go back to bed; the next day, I'll Gmail chat with a stranger I met on Facebook and make her a shirt, buy her a poster, maybe send her some music . . . It's been a long time since I've seen a bluebird fly . . . The next time I see Emma running, I don't think I'll chase her, I think it's better if Emma just gets away. . . .”
After I put my camera away, I throw my headphones back in and play the M83 album
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
. If I could play one album on a twenty-four-hour loop from some invisible speakers in the sky, it would be this one.
There was this one afternoon where me and that girl, that bitch, sat next to each other on a swing set and ate ice cream cones.
She told me that she wished her parents had named her Emma, and I asked her why.
“It's so beautiful,” she told me. “When you hear that name, all you can think of is how lovely and pretty that girl must be, and I don't feel very pretty even though everyone says I am. I never have, Jaime. So I've always wanted the prettiest name in the world. That way, when boys and girls heard it, they'd get an image of this girl with a pretty face and an amazing smile.”
“Maybe you should ask your parents to change it.”
She smiled and licked her ice cream. “I don't want to ask.”
“Why not?”
“Cos I'll never be Emma,” she said. “And that's fine. Just daydreaming about it is wonderful. And I'd never want to ruin those daydreams by having them become real. When you lose your daydreams, you lose the only place you have where life can actually be perfect.”
What she said that day, it still makes more sense to me than almost anything else I've ever heard anyone say.
I told her she was pretty right after we were done with our ice cream.
She blushed and told me I was cute, then she put one earphone in my ear and one in hers and she played that National song “Slow Show” and grabbed my hand.
That was the first time we held hands, and my palm was sweating so badly.
THE HOUSE IS STILL AND
silent. It's unnerving. Everything is the same as when I left it this morning, except in the kitchen. On one of the counters are four bottles of pillsâOxy, Vicodin, Xanax, and Valiumâand at least forty of them are scattered together in a big pile.
I call for my mother over and over and over, but she never answers.
The way the natural light is pouring in through the windows would be one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen if not for the unsettling feeling looming over the house.
I set my backpack down.
I look over the pills and I pick out an Oxy. Then I turn on the sink faucet, fill my cupped hand with water, and wash the pill down.
I walk upstairs.
It's much darker up here.
The steps creak and moan.
I call her name again.
Wish the Oxy would just hit right now.
I want it so fucking bad. It makes you feel so happy.
I could be on a chain gang picking up trash in 120-degree weather, and if I was riding a wave of baby blue, I'd be so fucking happy stabbing pieces of garbage with a poker.
I could be hanging out with some dumb girl who's drunk on Fuzzy Navel wine coolers and playing me the worst songs ever. Songs from bands like Kings of Leon or that awful Gotye shit
or Macklemore tunes. But if I've entered the glass castle, if I've dropped a blue dream down my throat, I'd have a big, fat, fucking smile on my face. I wouldn't cut her down the way she deserves to be cut down. The way anyone who gets into that bullshit deserves to be shredded and bled.
A cool draft blows through the silent hallway.
I call for my mother one more time.
Still nothing.
I turn the handle on her bedroom door and push it open.
I fall back a couple of steps. My body shakes.
Sprawled in the middle of the bed is my mother. My beautiful fucking mother.
And she's covered in vomit and blood.
Her eyes are closed.
There's a frown on her face.
Her face is white like the snow, and her hair is spread out underneath her. It looks so perfect too, the way she's lying, she looks like a wrecked angel.
She looks better than a wrecked angel.
She's wearing her ballet dress. The one she wore during her final run in New York when she was considered to be one of the finest talents.
I run to her.
I'm not even sure I feel anything.
I'm just moving.
I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her to me.
I'm cradling my mother like a baby. She's still warm. The blood and vomit are wet and gooey and stick to my skin. They smell like iron and whiskey and hate.
I shake her. “Just wake up!” I scream again and again and again.
Look around the room, there's pills everywhere. Three empty bottles of red wine and a half-empty bottle of vodka lie on the floor and the nightstand beside the bed.
“Mom!” I yell. “Please, wake up! Please.”
But there's nothing.
Tears slide down my face. I lay her back down and put my fingers against her neck.
Finally, I find a pulse.
It's light and weak but it's real.
I whip out my cell phone and call 911 and beg them to hurry.
“I can't lose her,” I tell the operator. “She's all I have. She's my best friend. We listen to records all the time together.”
The phone drops from my hand.
I'm so fucking confused and angry.
And then I see it. It's a note. It's lying on top of a pillow.
Reaching over my mother, I grab it and read.
I hate what I've become, Jaime. I'm so sorry for what I did to you last night. I hurt you so bad and then stood there as you lied to protect me. And I let you do it. I can't face you again after that. You were right. I think it's time you met your father. I love you so much. Don't ever forget that. I'm in a better place now. A place where I can't hurt you anymore. My baby boy, my life. I tried my best. I really did. But I'm not good for you. Please keep being amazing. I love you so much, and I know you'll take the world by storm. It's better
that this ends now. I can't live with myself knowing I hurt the only reason I have to live. God, you are so much better than I'll ever be. Take care, my beautiful boy. I'll see you in the good place a long time from now. I'll be watching you always. . . .
Part of me thinks that this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. The other part of me thinks it's the most pathetic thing I've ever read.
Either way, no one can ever see this letter. This was an accident. That's all. She just partied too much. I'll never let anyone find out she tried to kill herself, because if they do, they'll take me away from her, and I won't let that happen.
I rip the note into pieces, then run into the bathroom and flush them down the toilet.
After that, I sit down next to my mother. The first wave of baby blue crashes over me as I take out my iPhone and play New Order, which is my mother's favorite band of all time, while we wait for the ambulance to show up.
MY MOTHER DOESN'T DIE. HER
stomach gets pumped. She wakes up. She gets questioned. She gets sedated. Now she's resting peacefully in a room that I'm not allowed to enter.
So I sit in the waiting room and read Rimbaud's
A Season in Hell
(I grabbed it from my room while the paramedics were putting my mother on the stretcher) and listen to
The Year of Hibernation
on my headphones.
This album continues to help me and give me comfort.
And I've always felt this almost, like, spiritual connection to Rimbaud since the first time I read him.
I've read
A Season in Hell
at least eight times. The first time was when my mother was sleeping with this twenty-one-year-old girl named Simone.
Simone was majoring in English at the University of Saint Francis. The two of them, they'd do cocaine a lot. They smoked lots of pot, too. And drank tons of wine while they listened to records in the living room. My mother has always slept with women here as far back as I can remember, but I've never seen her as happy as she was with Simone.
I walked in on them once.
That was the last time I'd seen my mother in that same ballet dress.
Simone had my mother bent over the grand piano in our music study at our house. My mother's dress was hiked up to her waist while Simone fucked her.
They never saw me that day. My dick got hard. I hid behind the couch in the living room and slid my hand down my jeans.
Less than five seconds later, I came.
Guilt and embarrassment and shame immediately followed.
I ran out of the house and washed my hands off with a hose in our neighbor's yard. After that, I climbed a tree in a nearby park and sat there till it got dark. I don't remember what I thought about while I was up there, I just remember how calm and quiet it was there.
When I finally did go home, my mother was smoking a joint in her bathrobe and listening to the Magnetic Fields on vinyl. She didn't say much to me, but I knew she was happy.
I made a sandwich and ate it in my room.
Later that night, while my mother was asleep, I went downstairs and played two Sonic Youth records,
Daydream Nation
and
Washing Machine
, to practice guitar.
This is when I saw the book. It was sitting on the piano. The cover sucked me in. A black-and-white figure had its arms raised in the air, as if it was asking to be saved.
I opened it and began reading. I fell in love on the spot. And for the next two days, Rimbaud saved me from everything normal and boring I had to live through.
SO HERE'S THE DEAL, AND
it's a terrible one, it's absolute bullshit. The doctor who takes care of my mother in the ER tells me I won't be able to talk to my mother or see her at all tonight.
There's also a child welfare service representative and a cop standing on each side of him.
He says she's under way too much duress. And that she's confused and scared. And that she's too emotionally unstable right now, and that seeing me might push her back over the edge.
“You really think you pulled her back from it?” I ask.
“She's more stable now,” the doctor answers.
“What does that really mean?” I snap.