Not Anything (18 page)

“you know, you do this little thing with your nose when you
get mad.”

“I do not.” I shake my head, but it’s true.

“Yes, you do.” Marc brushes sand off his hand. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I reply automatically. I roll onto my back and stare at the sky. I love the beach during December.

“You’re worried about skipping class,” he says.

“No,” but the truth is I am partially upset about skipping—again. It seems like all Marc and I do is miss more and more class. I’m running out of excuses to tell my teachers. You can say you’ve gotten your period only so many times before they get suspicious. So why am I here?

“I shouldn’t have left. I only had two classes left. I could have stuck it out.”

The thing is that school has become completely unbearable for me. Still, I can’t afford to miss any more school. If Marc were a better friend, he’d know that.

“Yep,” Marc said. “But how’s that fun?”

“Do you always have to be fun?” I ask, annoyed with him.

“No, I just have to be invisible. I can’t be invisible if I’m present. That’s why I’m here.”

And that’s why we’re friends. Ever since Marc and Sheila broke up, Marc wants to be invisible, just like me.

“I’m invisible,” I tell him sarcastically, “yet somehow you always manage to find me.”

“Of course.” He scoots next to me and wraps the blanket from the back of his pickup truck over my body.

“Is this thing even clean?” I ask grumpily.

“Yep,” he says, “as clean as the back of my truck.”

Underneath the blanket, he wraps his arms around my waist. He buries his face in my neck. His stubble brushes along my cheekbone. It kind of hurts. I twist my head away, but Marc misinterprets my movement as interest. He blows an air bubble on my skin. In his own way, I guess he’s being sweet, but all I can think of is that I hate the smell of his cigarette breath. With the blanket wrapped so tightly around us, I feel as if I am about to suffocate. And that feeling makes me want to scream,
What am I doing here with you? What am I doing with my life?
But of course I don’t. Instead I say, “Do you ever pretend that I’m Sheila?”

His back straightens, and I feel like telling him to forget the question.

“You don’t have to say, if it makes you feel uncomfortable.”

“I don’t pretend you’re anything. Do you pretend that I’m Danny?”

“But you miss Sheila?” I ask, avoiding his question.

“Yeah, kind of. But you know that.” He scoots a little bit away from me. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”

“Why not?”

“You know, you’re really making me glad that I invited you here.” He pulls out a cigarette and attempts to light it, but the wind blows it out. “Fuck, this wind bites.”

“You smoke too much anyway,” I tell him.

“Yep, and you complain too much.” He pulls the covers over his head and seconds later emerges with a lit cigarette.

I stare at him, and it suddenly becomes apparent that at this moment we officially don’t like each other. Not like we keep trying to pretend that we do.

“I think we should go,” I tell him standing.

“I think I just got here,” he says without budging.

“Well, I want to go. I want to go, Marc,” I tell him louder.

“Fine,” he says, but he doesn’t stand up. He couldn’t care less. “Fine, let’s go. I’ll take you back to school. What with traffic it’ll take us about an hour to get back and then school will pretty much be over. But I’ll take you back because that’s what you want. Right, Susie?” His voice is monotone.

I sit back down. It frustrates me that he’s right. “Fine,” I tell him. “We’ll stay.”

“Good. Fuck, this cigarette went out again.” He pulls the cover over his head and once again emerges with the cigarette lit. “This wind really bites.”

“You smoke too much anyway,” I tell him again.

“And you,” he says with a sarcastic nod of his head, “complain too much.”

on christmas day, my parole officer and i visit my grandparents.
My grandfather has prepared one juicy, but dead turkey, plenty of homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, yams smothered with marshmallows, corn on the cob, stuffing, and three different types of pies. My grandmother had also done some hard work that day. She made Jell-O-rama. My father and I are almost afraid to see it, but she insists that we both have a slice.

“I’m kind of full,” I tell my grandmother. “I’m really stuffed.”

“What a coincidence,” my dad chimes in, “me, too.”

“Okay, okay,” my grandmother laughs. She has no clue who we are. She’s been doing the
I see dead people
thing all day. “They don’t want the Jell-O-rama,” she tells her dead father. She laughs again, and I feel sorry for her. Even though it’s absolutely disgusting with its wobbly green body and chunks of Snickers bars, marshmallows, and Reese’s Pieces, it’s still what she spent the entire day working on.

“I’ll take a slice, Grandma. There’s always room for Jell-O-rama. Right, Dad?” I kick him hard underneath the table.

“Right,
Daughter.
” He shoots me a dirty look, and for the first time in nearly a month, we aren’t exchanging glares.

“Good.” She hops off her chair and skips to the counter to retrieve her cake knife, which is surprising. I mean, that someone in her condition would be allowed to handle a knife. But whatever.

“Are you really going to eat that?” my dad whispers while she’s gone.

“Yes, and so are you,” I tell him with a wicked smile. “Every last piece.”

“Okay.” He slumps in his seat and loosens his belt. “You know, I really am full.”

“Save it for someone who cares. You’re eating it.”

“Fine,” he says, accepting my challenge. “You win.”

“Finally.” I half expect him to glare at me in disapproval.

“Finally,” he repeats and then lowers his head, the corner of his lips reaching what might almost be considered a grin.

despite the smile, my parole officer and i drive home in
silence. The radio is on but the volume is off. The lights behind us burn a hole in the rearview mirror that my father isn’t using. Tonight, he’s driving on autopilot. Not surprising.

I sneak a glance at the backseat and marvel at how we were able to fit all my gifts into the car. My grandfather went overboard this year, and probably maxed his JCPenney card in the process.

I let my hair down and press my head as far as I can into my headrest. I imagine that if I press really hard, my head might disappear and then I won’t have to see the look of defeat splashed across my father’s profile.

Rain shimmies down my window pane, and I try to recount all the things about my grandmother that I can remember. I remember the way she called teenagers “teeny boppers.” How an ankle bracelet meant you were headed for a life of prostitution. How she ran my grandfather in circles if he didn’t follow her advice. These are the pieces of my grandmother that are being erased. And they’re the pieces that we all miss.

when we get home, i head straight for my bedroom. my
head is throbbing. I want to talk to someone, anyone besides my dad. I debate calling Marc, but lately things have been pretty uncomfortable between us.

“I want to show you something.” My dad flicks my bedroom light on. “Dad, I just want to go to sleep.”

“I know.” My dad stares down at me curled up on my bed. “I’m tired, too.” He pauses, like, forever. “You know, Susie, I’m aware that I don’t understand you. I thought that if I stayed strong, that would be enough for you, which,” he says, seeing my quizzical look, “doesn’t make any sense.

“I’m not sure if anything I’ve done in the last six years makes sense. I don’t remember half of it. I get up. I get dressed. I wake you up. I work. I write. Those are the five things that I committed myself to managing. Everything else seemed unimportant.” His entire body sighs. “Susie, I’m sorry.”

He’s at the door. His hand presses against the plate of the light switch. His breath is shallow. His shoulders shake, the way a tree shakes when a storm is approaching. I’m not sure if I want to stick around for this. I want to leave, but I don’t. I sit on my bed and watch. I watch as he becomes a mirror of what I feel inside. And it’s hard as hell, because I’m so scared. I’m so scared.

“I’m sorry,” he says, coming to me, sitting with me, rocking me. “I’m so very sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I whisper, eager to forgive him.

“But it is,” he says into my hair. “It is.”

I stay silent. I’m not sure what to say. For a long time, I felt as if my father were as lost as my mother, as lost as my grandmother. But maybe the entire time he was lost, he was trying to be found? Maybe I had never noticed. I had never noticed because I had been so lost, too.

we sit in my room, holding each other. for the most part, i
feel small and fragile in my father’s arms. I feel weightless—the lightness of being. After a while, I drift off. My head grows heavier and heavier. I try to stay awake. I do everything I can. I count the number of hairs that coat his forearm. But despite my determination, I fall asleep.

When I awake, there’s light outside my window. My shoes are still on, and I immediately kick them off. I pull my hair tie out and place it on the table next to my bed, and that’s where I find it—the tattered yellow notebook, my father’s journal.

I pull it off the table and bring it close to me. I open the torn cover and start to read. It’s there—all of it. My mom, my dad, me. I can’t stop reading. I read the entire day. I absorb each word, lock it into my memory so that I’ll never forget. I wear its essence like a mist over my skin. I read and I read until the words waver and laughter leaves a little kink in my stomach, which turns into a heartbreak that can’t be described.

during the rest of my christmas vacation, i sit in my room,
write songs, and think about Marisol and Danny. I start to separate myself from Marc. We don’t hang out, not because I think that Marc has no place in my life, but because I know that the place he occupied doesn’t belong to him. One day, I’ll let him back in. But for now, I need to be alone.

The missing doesn’t start suddenly. It’s probably always been there. I know what it’s like to miss people. I miss my grandmother every time I see her. I miss my mother every time I walk through the empty halls of our home. I miss her the most when I see her picture over the mantel in our living room or at night when I remember those moments when our breath shared the same space. Like I said, the missing has always been there. Only now, I am ready to face it. I’m ready to face everything.

Not being around Marisol is like being cut in half. She’s the missing person with whom I have imaginary conversations. I tell her how my next-door neighbor Mr. Godfrey is out of control with his bronzing lotion. I tell her how my garden isn’t living up to expectations now that it’s chilly. I tell her why I cut out Marc and how I miss Danny. Even though Marisol isn’t here, I still tell her everything.

Danny is different.

I don’t talk to Danny. I guess that’s because I didn’t really talk to him that much when we were together. Danny is that guy. That guy who was almost my friend, almost my boyfriend, almost my everything. In my mind, that’s the place that he’ll occupy throughout the history of my life—my almost everything. Still, I miss him.

after christmas day, my father starts to open up to me. he’s
hesitant, I can tell.

“Did you read this book?” he asks one day.

“No.”

“Good book,” he says, “I really liked it. You should read it.” He leaves the book on the table and walks away.

And then on another day he says to me, “I don’t understand why they would offer tenure to a professor who’s written seven books that are largely ignored by the mainstream because of their extreme verbosity.”

And then the next day he says, “My editor is driving me crazy with these revisions.”

Finally, we get to something important on New Year’s Eve. “Do you miss Marisol?” he asks me.

We’re sitting at the breakfast table, eating pancakes and sausage. My father has abandoned eating breakfast in front of the computer to make a rare early-morning appearance.

“Yes,” I say.

“Me, too,” he replies.

We stare at each other over our orange juice.

“Do you miss Leslie?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says rather bluntly.

“Oh.” I go back to my pancakes.

“Does that bother you?” he asks a couple of minutes later.

“I don’t know…” I respond slowly. “Maybe.”

“Okay.” He picks absently at the last of his sausage.

“We’re not too good at this talking thing,” he says, laughing.

“No,” I tell him, smiling. “We’re not, but we don’t totally suck either.”

“No, we don’t suck,” he agrees, and for that moment I love him completely.

“I love you, Dad,” I blurt out.

“Yeah.” He looks at me for a long moment. “I love you, too.”

It’s a funny thing when someone says something you’ve been waiting to hear for a good portion of your life. It’s like suddenly it doesn’t feel like it took so long for them to say it, because in some way you always knew that they meant to and eventually one day they would get around to it.

“Well, I better get back to those revisions.” He stands up, but hesitates as though unsure if we still have more to say to one another.

“You can call Leslie,” I tell him.

“Yeah. Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure she’d like to hear from you on New Year’s Eve,” I tell him.

“And you? Are you going to call Marisol?”

Touché.

“I’ve tried that.” And I have. I’ve been calling her all morning, but she hasn’t picked up her phone. Damn Caller ID. “I think I’m going to have to apologize in person. But you go first.”

He chuckles. “Okay, I’ll do that.” He shuffles down the hallway, whistling underneath his breath.