The Last Time We Say Goodbye
Page 11
I don’t see anything weird. I don’t smell anything weird. I just feel stupid.
His bedroom door is open.
I go to the doorway. The moon is shining through the window. I haven’t been in Ty’s room since we went in to get the clothes he was buried in, but it looks the same as I remember. His desk is cluttered with books and school stuff. Clothes on the floor. Shoes. A partially deflated basketball. A dusty old model airplane dangling from the ceiling that he and Dad built together when he was eleven. Pictures of his friends taped to the walls. Posters of bands and movies he liked and NBA players.
As I step inside, his scent envelops me—not just his cologne but that slightly goatlike aroma he had, and his deodorant, which smells faintly minty. Pencil shavings. Dirty socks. Wood glue.
Ty.
I swallow. It’s like he’s still here, not in a ghostlike way, but like it never happened. If I stay here, if I close my eyes, I can imagine that Ty is just out somewhere and that he’ll be back.
I wish I could cry. That would be the appropriate thing to do at this moment: to remember my brother and cry.
But I can’t.
I turn to go out, and that’s when I see someone sleeping in his bed. The covers are lumped up around a figure on its side, back to me.
My heart starts to pound. I know it’s not Ty, I know it can’t be, but in that moment I want it to be. I want to see him again even if it means I’m crazy. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell Dave, or why I can’t write it down, because then they’ll very definitely make me take the pills and what happened the other night with the phone won’t happen again, and I’ll never see Ty, not ever, for as long as I live, and I don’t believe in an afterlife so I won’t get to see him then, either.
I know this isn’t the best reasoning.
But I still think it.
I creep around to the other side of the bed. I touch the shoulder of the person lying there, and find it warm, moving slightly with each breath.
Breathing. Alive.
It’s not him, I think as I take the edge of the covers and start to pull them back. It’s not him.
And I’m right. It’s not.
It’s my mother. She’s sleeping, wearing a faded red Led Zeppelin T-shirt, an old one of Ty’s. Lines of mascara are dried like tattoo ink down her cheeks, etched into the wrinkles near her eyes, marking the pillowcase.
She looks old. Small. Worn out. I draw the covers back over her, then sit on the bed and watch her for a while, her breathing, the movements of her eyes behind her eyelids. What would she dream about in Ty’s bed, surrounded by his stuff and his smell?
I want to wake her up, to take her out of here, because it’s not okay, her being here. It’s not healthy. But I let her sleep. Because, at least for the moment, she doesn’t seem to be in pain.
Sometimes I wonder if she wishes it was me who died instead of Ty, her snarky daughter instead of her socially acceptable son. I know she loves me. But if she could choose?
But that’s Ty’s fault.
He left her a note. As suicide notes go, it was short and to the point. It said:
Sorry Mom but I was below empty.
He didn’t write a note to Dad. Or to any of his friends. Or to me. He just left those seven little words on a yellow Post-it, stuck to his bedroom mirror. His only explanation.
It’s still there. The police took it down for a while, as evidence, but they came back and returned it to exactly where he’d left it. They’d taken a picture of the room so they would know where. So far neither of us has had the guts to take it down.
I stand up and cross to the mirror.
Sorry Mom but I was below empty.
I reach out.
My fingers have just brushed the edge of the paper when I see Ty in the reflection of the mirror.
He’s standing right behind me.
Ty.
Again, I don’t think about it. I don’t stop to contemplate what a rational person might do in this situation. I don’t calmly investigate.
I run.
I jerk away from the mirror, away from him, away, up the stairs, out the door, and before I know what’s happened I’m outside on the street, my shoes crunching the frozen snow as I run and run and run.
This is not happening is the thought that cycles through my brain. This is not happening.
I get three blocks before I stop, to the edge of a park where Ty and I used to spend every summer afternoon when we were kids. I hunch over, panting, finally feeling the biting cold. I wasn’t wearing a coat when I bolted out of my house, just a T-shirt and jeans, and the winter air against my bare arms is sharp and distantly painful. The moon is bright over my head. The park has a frozen quality to it, the swings hanging perfectly still. Deserted. A car moves along the street, slowing as it passes me. I wipe my nose, straighten, and try to take a full breath. I don’t know what I’m doing.
Ty. In the house. In his room.
This is not happening, I think.
A shudder passes through me that has nothing to do with the cold.
I feel a kind of resignation as I walk back. The front door is half open, waiting for me. I shuffle zombielike down to Ty’s bedroom, where my mother is still sleeping.
Ty is not in the mirror.
I notice immediately that the top right-hand drawer of his desk is open. I can’t remember if it was open before, but now it strikes me as odd, out of place. Was Mom up rummaging around while I was gone? Or was it like that earlier? Or was it someone else?
This is not happening, I think. But it is.
I kneel next to the bed and gently shake Mom by the shoulder. She gives a weak cry as she opens her eyes. It takes her a few seconds before she focuses on my face.
His bedroom door is open.
I go to the doorway. The moon is shining through the window. I haven’t been in Ty’s room since we went in to get the clothes he was buried in, but it looks the same as I remember. His desk is cluttered with books and school stuff. Clothes on the floor. Shoes. A partially deflated basketball. A dusty old model airplane dangling from the ceiling that he and Dad built together when he was eleven. Pictures of his friends taped to the walls. Posters of bands and movies he liked and NBA players.
As I step inside, his scent envelops me—not just his cologne but that slightly goatlike aroma he had, and his deodorant, which smells faintly minty. Pencil shavings. Dirty socks. Wood glue.
Ty.
I swallow. It’s like he’s still here, not in a ghostlike way, but like it never happened. If I stay here, if I close my eyes, I can imagine that Ty is just out somewhere and that he’ll be back.
I wish I could cry. That would be the appropriate thing to do at this moment: to remember my brother and cry.
But I can’t.
I turn to go out, and that’s when I see someone sleeping in his bed. The covers are lumped up around a figure on its side, back to me.
My heart starts to pound. I know it’s not Ty, I know it can’t be, but in that moment I want it to be. I want to see him again even if it means I’m crazy. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell Dave, or why I can’t write it down, because then they’ll very definitely make me take the pills and what happened the other night with the phone won’t happen again, and I’ll never see Ty, not ever, for as long as I live, and I don’t believe in an afterlife so I won’t get to see him then, either.
I know this isn’t the best reasoning.
But I still think it.
I creep around to the other side of the bed. I touch the shoulder of the person lying there, and find it warm, moving slightly with each breath.
Breathing. Alive.
It’s not him, I think as I take the edge of the covers and start to pull them back. It’s not him.
And I’m right. It’s not.
It’s my mother. She’s sleeping, wearing a faded red Led Zeppelin T-shirt, an old one of Ty’s. Lines of mascara are dried like tattoo ink down her cheeks, etched into the wrinkles near her eyes, marking the pillowcase.
She looks old. Small. Worn out. I draw the covers back over her, then sit on the bed and watch her for a while, her breathing, the movements of her eyes behind her eyelids. What would she dream about in Ty’s bed, surrounded by his stuff and his smell?
I want to wake her up, to take her out of here, because it’s not okay, her being here. It’s not healthy. But I let her sleep. Because, at least for the moment, she doesn’t seem to be in pain.
Sometimes I wonder if she wishes it was me who died instead of Ty, her snarky daughter instead of her socially acceptable son. I know she loves me. But if she could choose?
But that’s Ty’s fault.
He left her a note. As suicide notes go, it was short and to the point. It said:
Sorry Mom but I was below empty.
He didn’t write a note to Dad. Or to any of his friends. Or to me. He just left those seven little words on a yellow Post-it, stuck to his bedroom mirror. His only explanation.
It’s still there. The police took it down for a while, as evidence, but they came back and returned it to exactly where he’d left it. They’d taken a picture of the room so they would know where. So far neither of us has had the guts to take it down.
I stand up and cross to the mirror.
Sorry Mom but I was below empty.
I reach out.
My fingers have just brushed the edge of the paper when I see Ty in the reflection of the mirror.
He’s standing right behind me.
Ty.
Again, I don’t think about it. I don’t stop to contemplate what a rational person might do in this situation. I don’t calmly investigate.
I run.
I jerk away from the mirror, away from him, away, up the stairs, out the door, and before I know what’s happened I’m outside on the street, my shoes crunching the frozen snow as I run and run and run.
This is not happening is the thought that cycles through my brain. This is not happening.
I get three blocks before I stop, to the edge of a park where Ty and I used to spend every summer afternoon when we were kids. I hunch over, panting, finally feeling the biting cold. I wasn’t wearing a coat when I bolted out of my house, just a T-shirt and jeans, and the winter air against my bare arms is sharp and distantly painful. The moon is bright over my head. The park has a frozen quality to it, the swings hanging perfectly still. Deserted. A car moves along the street, slowing as it passes me. I wipe my nose, straighten, and try to take a full breath. I don’t know what I’m doing.
Ty. In the house. In his room.
This is not happening, I think.
A shudder passes through me that has nothing to do with the cold.
I feel a kind of resignation as I walk back. The front door is half open, waiting for me. I shuffle zombielike down to Ty’s bedroom, where my mother is still sleeping.
Ty is not in the mirror.
I notice immediately that the top right-hand drawer of his desk is open. I can’t remember if it was open before, but now it strikes me as odd, out of place. Was Mom up rummaging around while I was gone? Or was it like that earlier? Or was it someone else?
This is not happening, I think. But it is.
I kneel next to the bed and gently shake Mom by the shoulder. She gives a weak cry as she opens her eyes. It takes her a few seconds before she focuses on my face.
