Help! I'm Alive, page 7
* * *
At the end of the session they’re all given pamphlets with mental health information, hotlines and support groups, before being sent on their way. As cheesy as it sounds there is a general sense of community in the room and though Ash doesn’t think it will last, it feels good and he goes along with the instructed high-fiving as the students file out of the gym. He’s at his locker when Winona taps him on the shoulder asking if he wants to hang out.
“Today?”
“Yeah. You live around here right?”
He nods, grabbing a binder from the shelf.
“See you after school, out front.”
Ash watches her walk down the hall as if she’s floating along, as if there’s a thread from the top of her head to the sky keeping her moving just so, immune from the masses.
* * *
She talks the entire walk home. She has a lot to say and normally Ash would be annoyed by her nonstop-ness but he finds himself actually paying attention to what she’s saying. On the short walk home she’s covered climate change, Black Lives Matter and feminism, and Ash knows she has way more to say and will probably cycle through again. As she talks, he glances at her every so often, taking her in bit by bit. She’s nice to look at in a plain white T-shirt, washes-her-face-with-Ivory-soap kind of way, but she’s not his type and he’s glad; he doesn’t need the distraction.
“This is me.” He stops in front of his plain two-story house that, compared to the new gated houses nearby, must look small and regular. But if she thinks this she doesn’t say anything and it makes him like her even more.
Ash drops his bag in the living room and sets up the console.
“Anyone else home?” she asks.
“Probably my brother. But he doesn’t leave the basement much.”
“Interesting,” she says and sits on the couch, scanning the family photos on the nearby table. “This him?”
“Yeah, from a few years back, just after he graduated.”
“So he’s what, like, a hikikomori?”
“A hiko-what the fuck are you talking about?”
“It’s Japanese for people who don’t leave their rooms. They withdraw from socializing, isolate themselves, like modern-day hermits.”
“I didn’t know there was a name for it.”
“Yeah, it’s a real thing. Half a million of ’em in Japan, a lot of them your brother’s age.”
“How do you know this shit?”
“I don’t know. I just know stuff. Usually the isolation is a result of some life trauma. Does your brother have trauma?”
“Fuck, I don’t know. Who doesn’t have trauma?” He hands her a controller. “So you want to play or what?”
“Heck yeah.” She takes it and picks Princess Peach.
“Typical,” Ash says.
“Just wait. I’m gonna kick your ass,” she says and does this weird wink. She’s way better than Ash expected and as she’s playing he notices the small blue whale tattoo on the inside of her wrist.
“Did you do that yourself?” he finally asks, motioning to it.
“This?” She flips her wrist over. “Yeah. Jay and I did it.”
“Cool,” he says, unsure of what to say next.
“It’s not what you think. It’s not what people are saying.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on. I know everyone thinks we were playing some stupid game.”
“And you weren’t?”
“No, all of that shit is fake news.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s like . . .” She finishes her round and puts the controller down. “I saw this image online of a beached whale with garbage coming out of its mouth and it stuck with me. It was an art installation by Greenpeace — a protest piece on plastic in the ocean.”
“So your tattoo is a protest?”
She shakes her head. “It’s metaphoric.”
“Okay,” Ash says, still unsure.
“See . . . it’s like whales are starving to death, because they can’t distinguish plastic from food and are filling up on our garbage.” She pauses, tracing the tattoo with her finger. “I guess the whale reminds me that we’re killing ourselves too. It’s symbolic. We’re full of garbage and we’re starving.”
“That’s intense.”
“Jay thought so too. The tattoo was his idea. A way to remind ourselves to stay real.”
They both go quiet.
“Want to hear what blue whales sound like?” she asks.
“Sure.” Ash waits as she pulls out her phone and scrolls through the music app.
“I looped these together from sound files I found online. Jay and I used to listen to them.” She passes Ash an earbud and they put their heads together, listening to the whale’s mournful call.
* * *
Later that night, when Ash can’t fall asleep, he plays the audio file she sent him. He closes his eyes and zones into the vibration. He imagines that he’s floating in water, in space, and is overcome with a profound isolation, the experience of both a beginning and an ending.
Day 39
Pavan’s sitting in her parked car eating a chocolate bar when she sees Lisa.
Like a scavenger, she’s pulling out cardboard boxes from the recycling bin and Pavan watches this from the comfort of her car, windshield wipers clearing the view every three seconds before she finally drives over and rolls down her window.
“Lisa,” she says, “I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Ashton’s mom, Pavan.” Lisa doesn’t say anything. Pavan realizes now that she should have minded her own business and just gone home to start dinner, but because she’s been thinking about Jay, she took this as a sign. “Are you okay?” She hears herself ask the ridiculous question and wishes she could take it back. “I mean, can I help? Do you need a ride?”
Lisa looks around and then down at the pile of cardboard. “Paul was supposed to meet me with the truck.” She checks her watch. “We’re moving.”
“Oh. That explains the boxes.” Pavan pauses, unsure of what to say next. “Well, if you want, I’m going that way. I can drop you off.”
Lisa checks her watch again before agreeing. Pavan gets out of the SUV and opens the hatch and helps Lisa load the boxes in.
“Thanks,” she says and slides into the passenger seat. Her T-shirt is soaked through and she’s shivering, shoulders curled in like a small injured animal. Pavan turns on the heater and adjusts the vent toward her.
“You’re still in the same apartment?”
“Yeah, same one. It’s hard now. Being there.”
Pavan wishes she knew what to say but instead lets the silence linger. She imagines that Lisa’s life is full of this silence now, this quiet of not having the right words, or enough words to occupy the time. She turns on the radio, switching from pop to classic rock to oldies, but it all seems wrong and she switches it off.
“So, you’re moving?”
“Yeah, up north actually. My mom lives in Terrace and Paul’s got a job lined up, so . . .”
Pavan waits, thinking Lisa will say more about it but she doesn’t.
“How’s Ash?” Lisa asks.
“Oh, he’s alright,” Pavan says. “You know how kids that age are.” She wants to take the words back as soon as she hears them come out of her mouth. She didn’t mean to sound so cavalier, so stupid. “I’m sorry.” She pulls into the apartment complex.
“Don’t be. It’s fine.”
“Jay — he was a really great kid.”
“Thanks.” Lisa stares straight ahead. The rain has stopped and clouds rush across the sky, unspooling silver threads. “Well, I should go. Thanks for the ride.”
“Let me help — with the boxes,” Pavan says and gets out of the truck.
“If you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” She grabs an armload of boxes and follows Lisa inside.
The lobby of the building is sterile, a few chairs and plastic plants clustered together in a sitting area. It reminds Pavan of the utilitarian medical offices she used to clean when she started Clean and Tidy. Those offices made her feel hopeless, as if the sick of all the patients was lingering, clinging to her as she mopped the floors.
“The elevator’s broken. We got to use the stairs. Nothing around here works right.”
Pavan follows her up the five flights, the flat-packed boxes tucked under each arm, shifting and slipping along the way. She’s winded after two flights and can feel her blouse clinging to the small of her back but Lisa seems unfazed and climbs with ease.
“This is me,” Lisa says, dropping the boxes to push open the door. “Paul!” Lisa calls out but no one comes. “I thought he might be home.” She checks the time. “He probably took overtime.” Lisa catches Pavan looking around. “Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess. Packing and all.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Mess is what I do for a living.”
“Oh right, I’ve seen your mini cars around town.”
“If you need some help, I could arrange —”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t afford that. Things are pretty tight, especially with the funeral and everything. It’s . . . I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m saying that. Let me get you some water. You must be tired after the walk up.” Pavan follows Lisa into the small galley kitchen. The walls are mint green, the oak veneer cupboards are chipped and the sink is full of dishes. “Sorry about the mess. I said that already, didn’t I? Jay always said I repeated myself too much. ‘Mom, I heard you the first time.’” She sighs and seems to drift away for a moment. “I started packing here but then I got sidetracked. I always get sidetracked. So much stuff to go through.” She sees Pavan looking at the photo of Jay held up by a magnet that says “World’s Best Mom.” “He’s nine months old in that one, had just started walking. Can you believe it? Advanced for his age.” She fills up a glass of tap water and hands it to Pavan.
“It must be hard — moving that is.” Pavan takes a sip of water.
“It is. Jay grew up here. We lived here since he was a baby. First steps, first words. All of it, right here.” She walks by Pavan and into the hallway. “Right here, we’d mark his height every September on the first day of school.” She runs her fingers over the dates, toward the most recent. “Leaving is hard but staying is hard too, you know.”
Pavan doesn’t know what to say and just stares at the height marker, the smudged pencil lettering.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m talking like this.” She wipes her eyes as if she’s been crying, only she hasn’t.
“It’s okay. It’s good to talk.”
“So they say. Doctor has me going to a support group at the church. Says it’s good to talk to people going through the same thing. But I don’t know, hearing them talk about how much they miss their kid, how mad they are, how sad they are — I don’t know that it helps all that much. Besides, I’m not much of a talker. Jay was the talker. Always talking. I’m sure you remember that about him. Your boy Ash and him. They were good friends.”
“The best,” Pavan says, choking down the moment.
“Jay always said real nice things about your family. You should know that. I want you to know that. Until I met Paul, it was just me and Jay, and well, him being able to spend time with your family was good. I wish I could have given him more.” She drops her gaze for a moment.
Pavan wants to tell her it’s okay and that loving her son was enough and all that he needed, but she doesn’t say this because they both know it’s not true. Love was not enough, it never is.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Here you are helping me and I’m just blathering.”
“It’s fine.” Pavan fishes her keys out of her pocket. “I should get going and leave you to your packing.”
Lisa smiles, her mouth a weak straight line. “Actually, before you go, I have a box of some of Jay’s things that I thought maybe Ash might want. Do you want to take a look?”
Pavan follows her down the narrow hall to Jay’s room. The gray walls are covered in posters, and the entire space feels cold and dark even with the lights turned on. The air is heavy and she resists the urge to slide the windows open the way she would if she was cleaning. She looks around, cataloging the preservation of time. The single bed is unmade as if he’d just woken up. There are clothes on the floor and textbooks on the bedside next to soda cans and Pop Tart wrappers. The record on the turntable is covered in a fine layer of dust.
Lisa opens the closet and pulls down a box. “I haven’t opened it. He always said it was private.”
“Are you sure?” Pavan asks, taking it from her. The cigar box is covered with overlapping images, a collage of cut-out letters that spell his name.
“It doesn’t seem right to open it now.” Lisa sits on the bed. “This room is the hardest. I don’t know where to begin. I haven’t touched a thing and now we have to be out next month.”
“I’d be happy to help. If you like I can send a team in to pack everything up and label it for you.”
“I really can’t afford —”
“It would be no charge. Please let me do this for you. Jay was Ash’s friend. I want to help.” Pavan can tell by the way Lisa looks down that she’s not used to accepting help and so she insists, not out of charity or pity but as a means to find her own way forward. “That’s settled then.” She tells Lisa that she’ll call to arrange a time and sees herself out.
When she gets home, she hides the box in her bottom desk drawer and doesn’t tell anyone where she’s been. When Peter asks how her day was, she only answers with the routine “fine” and sets the table for three.
She takes a tray down to Anik and leaves it outside his door as she does every night. She stopped asking him to eat with the family months ago because he’d just sit and look at his plate, making comments on how distracting their chewing noises were.
Ash is quiet now too. Ever since Jay died, he spends more time alone. Pavan hears him late at night, awake and online, keystrokes and whispers, imagines him sitting inside the cone of a backlit screen in the dark of his room. She tries to ask him how he is, drops small questions about his day, but no matter how benign her inquiry is, he answers her with silence or hostility. She’s not sure what she did to aggravate him but he’s made her tentative and, perhaps like an animal that smells fear, he knows it. Sometimes she worries that she’s lost both of her children, that they have moved deep inside their shells, like some prehistoric creatures hiding from unseen dangers.
As she and Peter engage in idle supper talk, Ash moves his vegetables around his plate for twenty minutes before asking to be excused. Peter says that it’s fine and Ash leaves his food virtually uneaten. “I don’t know what to do.” Pavan picks up his plate and scrapes the remains into the trash. “God, I hate that I said that, that I always say that,” she says, piling the dishes in the sink. “I’m worried. He’s not seeing his friends anymore, he’s just in his room doing I don’t know what.”
“Just give it time,” he says, clearing the table. “He’ll be fine.”
“And Anik, will he be fine too?” she says this with an edge, more cutting than she meant, but she’s tiring of his wait out the storm mentality in all things. His calm, which she once loved, now seems apathetic and unsettles her.
“Yeah, he will,” he says, ignoring her tone. “It’s his journey. We have to let him experience his own life.”
She nods, eyebrows up, gnawing on his Tony Robbins–esque morsel. His fans may be satisfied by his charming quips but all she wants right now is to spit his words back at him. What use is wait and see when everything is falling apart now? When she reconnected with him all those years ago, she’d recently embarked on her own self-help journey and she thought it was admirable that he’d left law to pursue life coaching. He’d gotten tired of seeing people at their worst and wanted to help people be better, wanted to empower them, but now, to her, this desire to help, to simplify, to demystify, reeks of superiority.
She leans against the counter and exhales. A confession. “I saw Lisa today.”
He’s doesn’t answer. He’s busy, head down in his phone.
“Peter?”
“Hmm, what?” He still doesn’t look up. “Sorry. Just reading an email about the workshop in Toronto. Apparently it sold out in an hour.”
“So great.” Her tone flatlines.
“My agent’s talking about adding a second date.”
“Fantastic.” She flashes a fake smile. “Hey, can you finish this? I have some work to do.”
“Yeah, I got it. You go,” he says without ever looking up.
* * *
