Real Life(76)

“When I went to middle school, my dad moved out of our house,” he says. “He moved up the road into this other house my brother’s dad had built. It used to be an art gallery or something. A house first, then an art gallery, then a house again. Anyway, my dad moved into it, and he lived there. I wasn’t allowed to visit. He said he didn’t want to see us anymore. I asked him why. And he said it didn’t matter why; it just was. He didn’t want to see us. Me. Anymore.”

Wallace is circling the rim of this old bitterness, can hear his dad’s voice rising up out of the past, that raspy laugh. He shook his head and smiled at Wallace, put his hand on Wallace’s shoulder. They were almost equal height then, his fingers bony and knobby. He simply said, I don’t want you here. And that was it. Wallace was not granted an explanation for the break, for the severing of their family that left him in the house with his mother and his brother—he learned then that some things have no reason, that no matter how he feels, he isn’t entitled to an answer from the world.

His eyes are stinging again. He puts his thumb to the bridge of his nose. The tears are collecting along his eyelashes, their warm salt welling, but they’re holding for now. He can feel the sadness like fiberglass, like cotton stuffed into the cavity behind his face, in his hollow cheekbones.

“And now he’s dead, and I don’t know why he didn’t want me around. I almost never saw him after that. He stayed just five minutes up the road, but it’s like he vanished from my life entirely, just evaporated. Gone. I don’t know why. I’ll never know why. And he was right, you know; it didn’t matter why. There was nothing I could have done to change his mind. There was nothing anyone could have done. It doesn’t matter why he did it, just that he did. And the world went on. It always does. The world doesn’t care about you or me or any of this. The world just keeps on going.”

“Wallace—”

“No, Miller. It’s like I said before, at your house. It doesn’t matter. I’m angry all the time, and it doesn’t matter. People expect me to react. To do something. And I can’t. Because I keep thinking about that—how no matter what I do, it can’t change the thing I’d like it to change. I can’t rewind things. I can’t erase them. I can’t take it back. It doesn’t matter. You did it. It’s a part of us now. It’s part of our history. You can’t pick it up and throw it back like a fish you caught. You can’t replace it like a broken window. It’s just there. It’s permanent.”

“I don’t understand,” Miller says. “I don’t get what you mean. Just because it happened doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it. I think it means the opposite, right? We have to talk about it.”

Wallace shakes his head, the act of which makes him dizzy. He puts the pillow across his face and sighs into it, letting his breath collect in the fabric. He wants to scream. He does not know how to communicate it to Miller, this sensation he has, the pointlessness of these words filling the air. His throat is hot and dry. He’d like to hold his head underwater and drink for an eternity.

“I think that’s the difference between us,” Wallace says. “You want to talk about it. And I don’t see the point.”

“I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

Wallace smiles, slowly, beneath the pillow. “But that’s it, Miller. I don’t need to talk about it to know it happened.”

“Then why aren’t you angrier with me? Why aren’t you pissed with me? Please, something, do something.”

“We already had that fight,” Wallace says. “I’m bored by it now. I’m over it.”

“You’re not. I’d rather you be honest with me.”

“I am being honest with you.”

“This doesn’t feel like honesty, Wallace. It doesn’t feel real.”

Wallace draws the pillow back from his face and sits up. It hurts to move, but he does it. He presses himself through it until he’s sitting up and looking down at Miller.

“You think that, if I hurt you sufficiently, you will feel sufficient guilt to get you through this. Because you feel like a monster. But I don’t owe that to you,” Wallace says. “I don’t owe you any more pain than I’ve already dealt you. It’s selfish of you.”

“It’s not,” Miller says, but he stops himself. He lies flat on his back and puts his arm across his eyes. Wallace lies next to him, their shoulders touching. It’s this minor point of contact that Wallace focuses on as he drifts off to sleep, the world softening and receding until it feels as though he’s drifting on a sea made of soft leaves. The sound of Miller’s breathing comes in and out, in and out; to Wallace it seems oddly familiar, like wind moving through the kudzu.



* * *



? ? ?

WHEN THEY WAKE UP, they are stiff and bruised and covered in dried blood. They climb from Wallace’s bed in the gray middle of the night, the part that turns irrevocably toward morning, and they get into Wallace’s shower together. Wallace leans against the far wall, and Miller fiddles with the faucet until he gets the temperature and pressure right. The water hits his chest, and then after some adjusting it gets all over both of them. The water is hot, turning to steam in the shower, and Wallace closes his eyes, letting it sluice down his body and his face. Miller slides around so that he is behind Wallace, being taller, and he braces his arms against the wall to keep himself upright. The shower is decently sized for one, but for two it’s complicated.