The Other Side(40)
When I set down my backpack on my sleeping bag, my gaze falls on the graduation invitation on one of my shelves. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Marilyn is these days, would you?”
His eyebrows pull together in confusion at my random change of topic. “Nope, haven’t seen her in years. Why?”
I snag the envelope off the shelf and hold it up like it explains my madness. “I need to mail her this.”
“What is it?” he asks curiously.
“My graduation announcement.” I’m going for aloof, but the resentment in my voice wins out.
He nods solemnly. “Give it to me. I’ll ask around.”
I’m reluctant to surrender it to him, but at the same time it will be a relief to get it out of my hands, so I make the decision to hand it over. I almost say thanks, but I stop myself because Johnny likes being thanked for anything about as much as I do, so I skip it.
It’s then that I notice the light isn’t flashing on the answering machine. “No messages?” I ask.
“Nope, Curtis Street called earlier and I took care of it. And Mrs. Bennett called a little while ago and said her dog needed to be walked. I didn’t remember them having a dog, but I went down to her apartment anyway.” I can see in his eyes that the severity of her decline had escaped him these past few years and he feels bad about it. Life went on in this big, old house while he was somewhere else ignoring it. “They don’t have a dog,” he says somberly. “It’s sad, isn’t it, watching her memory fade away?”
I nod because it’s beyond sad. “I’m going to start my homework.” I don’t have any homework, but I need to get away.
“Okay,” he agrees, and just like that, I have the night off.
I sit in my room all night and draw and listen to my New Order tape, only taking a break to make a couple of bologna sandwiches. And I think about Johnny and hope he doesn’t fall off the wagon. But because my faith in everything is woefully lacking, I wonder how long it will take before he does. My pessimism honestly answers my own suspicions, I give him two weeks, tops. I can’t help but agree.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Present, April 1987
Toby
There’s a teacher workday today, which means no school for us. It’s rare that I accept idle downtime. When I’m not busy my mind takes over and the depression always wins the mental wrestling match, and I submit, but my work is done, and Alice knocked on my door and invited me to come outside with her.
So I did.
Because I can’t seem to say no to her.
We’re lying side by side on our backs on the small patch of crabgrass in the backyard of the Victorian. It’s warm today and the sun is directly overhead. The shocking rays force my eyelids closed and the backs of them look like molten lava, a fiery red.
“Why are you so sad all the time, Toby?” Alice asks out of the blue.
I wear my depression like a winter coat, zipped up tight to my chin and bulky—a barrier that smothers out the rest of the world. No one has ever asked me about it because I hide it. I like to think that people are layered and if you don’t care, if you don’t get to know them, if you don’t question, you can’t peel back the layers and find out what’s deeper. And when your outer layer is entirely made up of asshole, no one digs deeper to see the depression just underneath. The depression and the asshole are explicably linked—cause and effect. Effect and cause…and effect. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I don’t know how to answer this question. I don’t want to answer this question.
So, I lie. “I’m not sad.” Or maybe it isn’t a lie, depression is different than sadness. Sadness is melancholy. Depression is a black hole of despair. I always imagine it’s like drowning. There are short bursts of fresh air, like Alice, but the past, the hopelessness, the guilt, and self-loathing is a pair of lead shoes that always pull me back under.
Finding my hand, she slips her fingers between mine and squeezes hard. So hard that her fingertips seat between my knuckles with purpose and the tendons on the back of her hand tauten under the tips of mine. I know she doesn’t accept my answer. She lets her face drop to the side until her cheek is resting on the grass and she’s facing me. She does this a lot when she says something important, even though she can’t make eye contact, she attempts it. I wonder if the gesture is habit or voluntary.
And then she says something that raises goose bumps on my skin. “You know what I miss most about losing my eyesight?” I don’t answer because I’m not supposed to. “Looking people in the eye when I talk to them. Because looking people in the eye achieves many things. I can gauge if what they’re saying with their words aligns with how they really feel. Mouths can lie, but eyes can’t. There’s intimacy in eye contact. Not creepy level intimacy, but human level intimacy. You know what I like most about losing my eyesight?”
Again, no answer from me but mostly because I’m hanging on every word in stunned silence.
“Truly hearing what people say when I talk to them. Strike eye contact and sight from a face-to-face exchange and it forces me to listen to words, tone, and inflection. It’s added dimension that I didn’t pay much attention to when I had eye contact to lean on. Contradiction in words, tone, or inflection is telling. It’s information-gathering. I like that. All that being said, Toby, you’re a terrible liar. Your sadness is deep. It’s old and aged and I can’t begin to hear where it began. But it isn’t permanent.” She squeezes my hand tight again and whispers, “I’ll help you slay it.”