Help! I'm Alive, page 21
“What’s up? You still sick?”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t open her eyes. “If I said I was, would you leave me alone?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
He’s quiet for a minute. “You mad at me? Did I do something?”
“I don’t know, did you?” she says, still serene.
He doesn’t answer and opens his backpack and takes out a granola bar. “Want half?”
She opens her eyes. “No thanks. Got anything else?”
“Nope, that’s it.”
“Nothing?” She yanks the bag away from him and dumps the contents out. “Nothing at all in this bag that you want to tell me about?” She hands him the box.
“I was going to show you. I was just waiting for the right moment.”
“Where did you even get it?”
“I found it in my mom’s desk when I was looking for cash.”
Winona shakes her head, confused. “Why did she have it?”
“Who knows? I couldn’t exactly ask her.” Ash opens it. “It’s mostly pictures and stuff but there is this.” He hands her the gift-wrapped box. “Probably your birthday present. I thought you should have it, all of it.”
She sets it down and picks up the photo booth pictures. She’s got her tongue sticking out and Jay’s laughing big, eyes squinty shut. “This was last year; we were in the mall just goofing around. Jay stole a roll of security tags and we put them on people as they walked by, laughing when they set off store alarms.” She flips through the rest of the photos and tears up.
Ash leans over and picks up the photo of five-year-old Jay in his Superman pajamas. “It’s weird, these pictures, seeing him as a kid again. It makes you wonder what went wrong. How did he go from this to . . .”
“Dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Who knows? All I know is that everyone keeps telling me to move on. But’s what’s his life worth if I can just move on, acting as if he never existed.”
“I guess for most people moving on is way easier than dealing with it.” Ash gathers the pictures and puts them back into the box.
“He was depressed,” Winona says. “I can see that now. He had these crazy mood swings that usually sorted themselves out. I figured he was sad in the regular way. I mean, everyone’s kind of depressed, right?”
“Proof. Look around. We’re here on a soul’s journey! Trying to walk it off as if being sad is a hangover.”
She laughs a little and goes quiet, thinking of all the ways things could have been different if only she’d been different.
Ash picks up the gift box and hands it to her. “You should open it.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” she says, refusing.
“Come on, he wanted you to have it.” He nudges it toward her again.
She takes it from him and unwraps it slowly, holding her breath as she lifts the lid. “It’s a Free Winona pin,” she says, turning the black-and-white button over in her hands.
“Inside joke?”
“Sort of,” she explains. “After Winona Ryder was arrested for shoplifting, there was this whole pop culture moment, her fans trying to save her from prosecution . . . I always wanted a piece of it — the memorabilia. Jay knew that; he knew everything about me.” She pins it on to her denim jacket, her hands fumbling. She can’t quite get it straight and is overcome with emotion.
“Here, let me,” Ash says and leans in to help.
She glances down at the pin and then at him. “What do you think?”
“Free Winona,” he says, with a knowing smile. “It’s a good look on you.”
“It is, isn’t it.” With her head on his shoulder, they stare out at the water, saying nothing.
Day 92
It’s midnight and Pavan’s sleeping with her phone on the pillow.
Ash’s last text was yesterday and it was a group selfie by the lake, followed by assurance that he was fine. She was relieved to get a message and zoomed in on the photo, inspecting them the way she always did. It started when the boys were little, a primate instinct, grooming and matting down their unruly hair, wiping their dirty cheeks, checking their palms for washed hands. But as they got older, she was looking for something more, some sign of okay-ness, some verification that she had done it all right, but of course there was none and in fact lately all signs suggested to the contrary. Like every other mother, she felt at some point the cause for all their misery but still she tried to be of use. She helped them with schoolwork, science fair projects, and drove them to school so they wouldn’t have to walk the four blocks in the rain. When they were sad or angry she couldn’t bear it; she felt their hurt so keenly she could think of nothing else. For years, the only questions that mattered related to their well-being. Are they happy? Do they have friends? Are they smart? Will they be okay? And in the upset all was lost. She can’t remember the last time she and Peter went on a date, had unscheduled sex or a conversation that wasn’t about the boys. She calls them boys but really they are something else entirely. Not men, not boys, but something in between, something raw and unstable.
She checks her phone again for a new notification, hoping that she might have missed a text or post, but still nothing since yesterday. She scans through the threads, rereading their messages, looking at their pictures on Instagram, trying to see the adventure in it all but all she sees is danger — bears and cougars, hiking accidents, hypothermia — she closes her eyes and tries not to let fear eat her insides. She worries about most things and always has without ever really knowing why. When she was seven she saw a made-for-TV movie about killer bees and was so worried, she wore a netting shroud over her clothes all summer. The only way she could cope with all her anxiety was to plan for every eventuality, but her coping strategies were no match for motherhood.
She puts the phone on the bedside table and watches as the screen shuts off, returning the room to darkness. She sits up and punches at her pillow, readjusting it before tucking it tight under her neck. She stares into the dark until her eyes adjust and she can see the shape and outline of the door, the window, the reading chair in the corner. How small it all looks in the night and how small it makes her feel. Helpless. Yes, that’s the feeling. Unlike the worry that courses through her, this helplessness is like a tiny blade at her neck — don’t move, or I’ll cut you.
“Will everything be okay?” she asks aloud, hoping that Peter will stir in his sleep and reassure her the way he often does. He doesn’t and she’s left on her own to answer.
After another ten minutes, she gets out of bed, takes her phone and wanders down the hallway to the basement, turning on lights, double-checking the locks before heading back upstairs to Ash’s room. The room is cold with the suspended animation of his hurried departure. She opens his dresser drawers and closet, looking through his things, but finds nothing. She’s not sure what she’s even looking for until she pulls down the toy bin from the top shelf — a half-assembled Lego set, a tin of Pokémon cards and a broken Transformer. “There it is,” she thinks, proof that he, her little boy still exists. For a moment she’s satisfied, but then she remembers all of Jay’s toys and trophies, all of his clothes that he’d grown out of, all of the things she packed up — all of him. Disappointed, Pavan puts the bin down.
She pulls back the bed covers and gets into bed, lying right in the middle just as Ash would. She imagines him now, sleeping under the stars next to Anik in the cold night. “They have each other,” she thinks, remembering how inseparable they were as children. She scrolls through her photo gallery, through their childhood, in single swipes. She clicks on an imported video clip of them playing in the sandbox when they were just five and ten years old. She watches their past selves come to life, their little voices — the sweet timbre breaks her heart. She hears her own voice in the background — they’re trying to show her something but her “good job” response is distracted and empty. Her mind was elsewhere. How could she be so careless? Why wasn’t she paying attention?
She shakes her head and checks her messages again, but there’s nothing and this leaves her wanting. She wants what all mothers want. She wants what Lisa wanted. She wants them to be okay. She wants them to come home. She wants them to find a way to live in the beauty of the world, to leave the harshness to lesser men, but for now all she can do is wait. Pavan hears Peter in the darkened hallway.
He opens the door and peeks in. “Pav, are you okay?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Was I snoring again?”
“No,” she says and switches on the lamp. “You’re fine. It’s just me, worrying.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, his face in shadow. “I worry too, you know.” The room feels small with the two of them there, a closeness in the half-light.
“I know.” Her nod bounces the way it does when she’s thinking, only she’s not thinking, not really; her mind is just a back-and-forth of wait and see. He switches the lamp off and lies down next to her, both of them staring at the ceiling.
She takes his hand in hers and it’s enough.
Day 93
Anik is the first to spot the ocean through the trees.
The silver beach, the hazy layers of blue sky and ocean like something in a storybook, magical and pristine. He stops and watches from the edge of the highway before making the decision to hike through. He knows it’s farther than it seems and the out and back will add more time to this last leg of the journey, but it’s a primal calling. Rose parks the car and the four of them hike the forest trail, the sound of their breathing drowned out by the ocean.
They drop their bags on the beach. The sun is so bright that it can’t be seen and Anik squints, shielding his eyes in salute. The shoreline stretches for kilometers and the sand is cut in soft gray ripples with ribbons of seaweed and debris scattered by the ocean’s last push.
“This is it. You did it!” Ash turns to his brother. “How does it feel?”
Anik closes his eyes, face to the sky, arms outstretched. “Fucking awesome.” He unlaces and kicks off his hiking boots, stretches his shirt over his head and throws it down as he runs toward the water. It’s farther than he realizes and he pumps his arms and legs harder, pushing himself further still. The others catch up and together they run into the water, screaming and laughing, their voices barely audible above the ocean roar. The tide rolls in and uproots them. They hold hands and count down, catching the jump end of each oncoming wave.
* * *
After they dry off, Anik sends the others on their way, watching until they fall out of sight. It’s his idea to walk the last leg alone, to have time to reflect on what, if anything, he’s learned. He combs through his thoughts and chuckles. So much of his wisdom has been reduced to tweetable sentiment. Life is not a straight line, solitude is a state of mind, noticing is an act of courage, love is many things and being is enough. He shakes his head, amused that after walking hundreds of kilometers, all he has is one-liners that Rose would love and he wonders how much of the journey is about who you’re with.
As he treks along the highway he notes the Tsunami Evacuation Route signs and wonders how long it would take to get to higher ground. If an earthquake triggered a wave, there would be no real escape. He saw the 2004 tsunami on the news, saw the waves break over a tropical holiday resort, saw the aftermath and ruin of what was left. How quickly something became the worst sort of nothing, the emptiness of a place ripped away from itself, mutilated and mangled, laid to waste. There he was sitting in the living room, building the Lego set Santa gave him, when somewhere half a world away, everything had been washed away. He had nightmares after that. Asleep in his bed, he was awakened by a steady drip of water from the ceiling onto his face. When he opened his eyes, the ceiling fell open, and he was immersed in water and night. He swam out a window, kicking his legs like a frog, but there was no end to the water, nowhere to take a breath. Panic stricken, he clutched at his chest and his heart burst open, filling the water with tiny red Lego pieces. He woke up gasping and flailing at least once a week.
In an attempt to change his association, Pavan bought him sea creature books and took him to the aquarium, and over the course of a few weeks his anxiety about the ocean was driven out by facts and knowledge. “It’s the unknown that’s frightening,” she told him on a trip to the beach. “The ocean is a beautiful thing teeming with life. Close your eyes and listen,” she said. “Do you hear that?” She breathed in and out, matching the tide. “That is the sound of life.” He closed his eyes and followed her rhythm until the two of them fell in sync.
* * *
The sun is just a half slice on the horizon when Anik arrives. He drops his pack on the gravel driveway and stretches his arms wide as he looks at the house. When Rose suggested they pool their money to rent it, he balked at the expense but now, after weeks of walking and cold-ground sleeps, the prospect of a warm bed and a hot shower is a relief. He stares up at the cedar A-frame, all lit up and cozy, and watches Ash, Rose and Winona from outside. From where he’s standing, it looks like they’re dancing or playing a game and for a time he watches their grand gestures and soundless clapping, the familial way in which they move around each other. He shakes his head, in his soft wizened way, acknowledging his own arrival. “I’m here.”
Day 96
Winona hasn’t slept much these last few nights.
The sound of the ocean’s ebb and flow matches her mind’s back-and-forth and she can’t stop thinking. Insomnia. It’s a side effect of her antidepressants along with nausea, anxiety, dry mouth, constipation, dizziness and a whole lot of other fine-print disclaimers. Whenever she can’t sleep she tries to focus on her breath, to meditate and let go the way all the stupid self-help posts say to, but she can never quite get there. She had a moment of letting go the other day in the water, when her feet lifted off the sand and the ocean swirled around her. She can picture that moment as if it was happening to someone else. The sun cast itself into millions of pieces, the water rose and fell, crashed and toppled over them, water dripped from the ends of their hair, teeth-chattering laughter, all of them so awake and alive. She was overcome by it and when she walked out of the water, she was crying, later explaining her red eyes as saltwater sting. The only one who suspected was Rose who, on the following day when they were driving back to pick up the repaired van, asked if she was okay.
Winona turns in the king-sized bed and puts her arm around Rose. It feels nice to be near someone and she snuggles in. Rose’s pink hair smells like vanilla and it reminds Winona of the carnival, of holding her mother’s candy-apple hands on the Ferris wheel. The wheel had gotten stuck, and they sat in the top bucket for half an hour and though heights made Winona nervous she hardly noticed. Her mother never let her look down.
“Can’t sleep?” Rose asks.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
She turns on her back. “No, I was up thinking,” she says in a half whisper.
“About what?”
“Everything. This trip. Anik’s Way. My own journey.”
“Oh.” Winona doesn’t know what to say. “That’s a lot.” She’s quiet and stares at the ceiling before asking. “When did you know you wanted to be a girl?”
“You mean, when did I realize I was a girl?”
“Yeah, sorry. When did you?”
Rose turns toward Winona and pulls the blanket under her chin. “Grade two. All of the boys started hating girls and I didn’t get it. I liked everything about them, the way they looked, the way they smelled, the toys they played with; they were everything I was. I’d even take stuff from their backpacks when they weren’t looking.”
“Like what?”
Rose smiles and laughs.
“Tell me, what did you take?” Winona asks, nudging her.
“It was pretty innocent at first, just hairbands and sparkly pencils, but in grade four I was suspended for stealing a Bratz doll.”
“Hard-core.”
“I know, right. My mom freaked, said that I embarrassed her. Not much has changed. I’m still an embarrassment. Something for her to be ashamed of, her only living son, a girl.”
“Do you think she realized?”
“That I was a girl?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it was in her realm of understanding back then. I mean she does try, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that she’d still rather have me be her son than her daughter. She still calls me by my deadname sometimes. I know she doesn’t mean to but still . . .”
“I’m sorry. That must be hard.”
“It is but what can you do? Life sucks and then you die.”
“That’s intense.”
“Yeah, but so is life. No one gets out alive, so we may as well stop pretending to be what we aren’t. With Anik — the walk, and everything — I realized I needed to stop punishing myself, stop proving myself.” Rose reaches for Winona’s arm and traces her birthday cut line. “Pretending isn’t worth the pain.”
Winona pulls her hand away. “I’m trying to stop. I don’t know why I do it.”
“Sure you do.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, you do it to feel something. That’s why any of us do anything really.” She eyes the faded scars on Winona’s arm. “But there are better ways than that.”
