Last Night I Sang to the Monster (22 page)

Amit didn’t say anything after that. It was like he’d gone away. He was thinking of something, maybe his sister, maybe something else. I could see someone walking up toward the smoke pit in the rain. I could see the umbrella and as the figure moved closer, I could see that it was Lizzie. When she got inside the smoke pit, she kept her umbrella open, then tried to reach for her cigarettes in her pocket.

“Need help?” I took the umbrella and held it above her.

She took out a cigarette and lit it. “You asshole,” she said. “Leaving group. We didn’t even get to give you feedback. You owe us all an amends.”

I shrugged and looked down at the ground.

“Well,” she said. “I’m waiting.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just—I don’t know what happened.”

“You know exactly what happened. You got scared. And you ran. Been there, done that.” She laughed. “Just don’t do it anymore, okay?” She shot me a smile. It was really beautiful, her smile.

“I won’t.”

“I’m watching you,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I see you too.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

And then at the same time we both said, “I see you.
Yes, I do.”
We laughed and laughed. But what was so funny?
I see you, Zach. I see you.

“What does the road represent?”

“What does any road represent?”

Adam shot me that famous snarky smile of his.

“I know, I know. What does the road represent
for me?”
I stared at the picture of his two kids. They looked happy. I thought of Santiago.

“Staring at that picture of my sons again, huh?”

“Yeah.” I tried to concentrate on our conversation. Sometimes that was hard. “The road? I don’t know, Adam. I mean that. I mean, it’s a road. It’s going somewhere. But I don’t know where.”

“In your other drawings, the ones you do at school, do they have people in them?”

“No.”

“What do you draw?”

“Cityscapes. That’s what Mr. Drake calls them. Buildings and alleys and streets.”

“Empty streets?”

“Yeah. But sometimes lots of cars.”

“Any drivers in those cars?”

“No. Just cars.”

“No people in your cityscapes?”

“Guess not.”

“Guess what cities are full of?”

“Yeah, okay, they’re full of people.”

“But no people in Zachland.”

“I don’t know, maybe I don’t like people.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I’m making up that you like people a lot.

You like Rafael. You liked Sharkey. You like Mr. Garcia. You like Amit—I think you do.”

“Yeah, I like him.”

“You liked Mark. You like Lizzie and Sheila and Kelly and—is there anyone in Group you don’t like?”

“No. I like our group.”

“Any of the therapists you don’t like?”

“Just one of them. He’s a prick.”

“Fair enough. So out of all the therapists here, you only dislike one?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You like people, Zach. That’s not your problem.”

“What is my problem?”

“Well, let’s get to that.”

“You know what my problem is?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“But you have a theory?”

“I have a lot of theories, Zach. My theories don’t matter a damn.” And then he took the conversation to exactly the place he wanted to take it. Like I didn’t notice. “Where did that sketch come from?”

“That’s where they found me,” I said. “By the side of a road.”

“Do you remember which road?”

“Yeah. There’s a road that leads to Carlsbad. An old highway going east out of El Paso. That’s where they found me.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“I was shivering.”

“Were you cold?”

“I was dying.”

“Were you?”

“Yeah. Alcohol withdrawal. Really bad. It can kill you, you know?”

“Yes, I
do
know. Do you remember who found you?”

“A cop. I don’t remember anything much after that. I was in a hospital. I dream it a lot.” I took my eyes off the floor and looked at Adam. “I almost died.”

Every hour or so, I’d wake up and look around the room. It was just one of those nights. I’d stare at the clock. 12:45. 12:46. 12:47 and then I’d fall back asleep. But then I’d be at it again. 1:48. 1:49. 1:50.

Rafael was reading. When he couldn’t sleep, he’d just read. Around 3 o’clock in the morning, Amit was up.
Let me out
, he mumbled.
Let me out
. He looked like he was headed toward the door. It was raining and thundering and being out there in your underwear didn’t seem like a good idea. Sleepwalkers didn’t bother Rafael one damned bit. He got up and gently led Amit back to bed. But Amit didn’t stay put. He sat up on his bed and mumbled, “I didn’t do it. Just let me out.”

“Okay,” Rafael said, “we’ll let you out as soon as the sun rises.”

“Now. Let me out now.” He looked like he was about to get up and out of bed again so Rafael walked over to his bed and shook him awake.

Amit looked up at Rafael, confused.

“You were talking. You were going to get up again, so I thought I should just wake you up.”

Amit nodded. “I didn’t do anything—I didn’t do anything, did I?”

“No.”

“Good. Sometimes I do things that I’m embarrassed about.”

“Like what?”

“I urinate in corners of the room. Embarrassing things like that.”

“You were saying
Let me out.
From where? Do you remember?”

“No, I don’t remember.” He stared at Rafael. “Don’t you sleep?”

“Yeah. Just not tonight.”

“I hate this fucking place,” he said. “They’re overmedicating me. That’s why I walk in my sleep.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You might be sleepwalking anyway—even if you weren’t overmedicated.”

“What the fuck do you know?”

Rafael smiled one of his clear-your-throat smiles. “Sleepwalking can be a symptom of PTSD.”

“You a fucking therapist or what?”

He picked up his book. “Nope. It’s called reading. You should try it.”

“Fuck you.” And then Amit got real quiet. “Are you serious? Sleepwalking? It can be, you know, a part of this trauma thing?”

“The guy before you, Sharkey, he was a serious sleepwalker. So I read a book about it.”

“You still have the book?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you let me borrow it?”

“Sure.”

“Will you teach me how to paint?”

“Just paint.”

“I’m not any good.”

“Do it for therapy. You can go to art school later.”

“You’re a wiseass, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know that.”

I don’t know why I didn’t join the conversation. I just liked listening. I think a part of me was trying to memorize Rafael’s voice. So I could carry it around with me when he left.

“Can I ask you question, Amit?”

“Yeah.”

“How many of these places have you been in before?”

“Does it show?”

“I guess it does.”

“Three or four.”

“Three? Or four?”

“Four. These places don’t work.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I got into some—.”

Rafael finished his sentence. “Legal trouble.”

“Yeah.”

“Drug of choice?”

“Cocaine, heroin, booze. Take your pick.”

“When did you start?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was probably fourteen. Some guy called me a nigger. A few days later, someone spray painted our garage with that nice word on it.”

“So you decided to get wasted.”

“It hurt.”

“I bet it did.”

“Not that you’d know.”

“Not that I’d know.” Rafael took a deep breath, almost like he was smoking a cigarette. “So you got wasted.”

“So I should have wasted him instead?”

“Those your only options?”

Amit laughed, you know one of those smartass laughs that sort of said
fuck you
. “You like to screw around with people’s heads?”

“Not really. Sometimes, I just like to ask a lot of questions.”

“It’s a wonder you haven’t gotten your ass kicked.”

“How do you know I haven’t?” Rafael was laughing at himself. Again. “What kind of crowd do you hang with that people get violent when you ask questions?”

“Normal people.”

“You hang out with normies?”

“Guess I don’t.”

“Sometimes, when people ask questions, that means they care.”

“You one of those people?”

“Yeah. I’m one of those people.”

Amit didn’t say anything.

“You know, Amit, you can make this place work for you. How long
have you been clean?”

“Eighteen days.”

“Eighteen days is good. Eighteen days is great. You know what they say—if you can stay clean for a day, you can stay clean for a lifetime.”

“Who says that?”

“I say that.”

“Bet you were a wine drinker.”

“Bet you’re right.”

“Bet you drank nice wine too.”

“Real nice wine.”

“Bet you drank alone too.”

“The only way to drink. That way there aren’t any distractions.” Rafael laughed. I could tell it was one of those laughs that meant sad. “I quit for a day.”

“A lifetime, huh?”

“I know you’re pissed off at the world. For all I know, you’ve got a right.”

“I live in a fucking racist world.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You live in that world too, dude. And what are you fucking doing about it?”

“I’m talking to you.”

That made Amit laugh. It was a nice laugh. A good laugh. I don’t know how I knew that, but it just seemed that way to me. I didn’t know I was laughing too.

“Are you awake over there, dude?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You’re pretty quiet.”

“Guess I am.”

“You like it here, Zach?” I let Amit’s question just hang there. In the air.

“It’s good.”

“What’s so fucking good about it?”

“The food is good.” That made Amit and Rafael laugh. I mean they were laughing. And, well, I just laughed with them.

I don’t know how long we laughed, but it seemed like a long time. And
then everything was quiet and still. The only light in the room came from Rafael’s lamp. As I looked across the room, everything seemed like it was a painting. A quiet and strange painting that told a story—and you had to look at the painting a long time in order to figure out what the story was about.

I liked weekends. This place was a lot like school. Group was homeroom every morning. Then two classes, then lunch, then two classes in the afternoon.

We were angry, so we had anger classes.

We were addicts, so we had addiction classes.

We were co-dependent, so we had co-dependent classes.

Twice a week, we had art therapy. Other kinds of classes too. The ones where we had to act things out, play roles—I hated those. Hated those. In the evenings, meetings three days a week. “Hi guys, I’m Zach, I’m an alcoholic.” Weekends. Time enough to do our homework and hang out and smoke and read. Weekends were good.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, Rafael and Amit were gone. I took a breath and then another and then another. That reminded me that I had another Breathwork session with Susan in the afternoon. I was tired. I wanted to crawl back into bed and just sleep. I looked at the clock. It was 8:20. On weekends they let us sleep in until 8:30—then we had to get up. If I went back to bed, one of the counseling assistants would knock and come in and smile politely and say, “Time to get up.” I hated that.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to smoke a cigarette first or take a shower first. I decided to take a shower. When I was drying myself off, I looked at myself in the mirror. I stared at my scar just underneath my right nipple. I touched it. The whole scene came flooding into my head, my brother holding me down, a piece of glass in his hand.
I could cut you I could cut you
and then the piece of glass moving across the lower part of my right chest. I see myself, a boy of six, screaming. I see my father coming into the room and picking me up.

My dad didn’t take me to the hospital. He cleaned my wound, put gauze and that suture tape that worked just like stitches. He gave me one of my mother’s pills. And I slept.