The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(87)

A fresh round of shaking gripped his limbs. He tried to laugh. “This is just really weird.”

“Sometimes our brains forget but our bodies remember.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you lose friends?”

“My girlfriend was shot,” he whispered.

“Oh, Erik. I’m so sorry.”

He should have clarified what he meant, should have explained Daisy was shot but she had survived, she was still alive.

They all died. You are left.

Then he was weeping, crumpled over in Janey’s lap and she was holding him. An arm around him, her hand stroking his head, rocking him, consoling him, as if for the death of a loved one. Clasped in her calm, firm embrace, Erik was horrified by the idea of it being easier to do this, infinitely easier to grieve for the loss of Daisy if she really were dead.

I wish she had died, he thought with a passion.

Then right on the heels of that came, I wish I had, too.

Which was terrifying in its cold, clinical certainty. He thought it again, tried it on for size, like jacket off the rack: I wish I were dead.

He raised his arms, felt the fit of the sleeves, smoothed down the lapels, buttoned a button. I wish I were dead.

It fit well.



*



Janey came by his place, bringing some pasta salad. And a business card.

“I don’t feel comfortable counseling you, Erik, we’ve been socially involved for too long.”

“Of course.”

“So what I say now, I say as your friend: you need to talk to someone.”

She asked if he had ever seen a therapist, if he was on any antidepressants or had ever taken any meds for the stress. He lied and said he had been in a support group at school for a little while. He fabricated a prescription, he forgot the name now, but he hated the way the pills made him feel, and stopped after a few months. With the taste of fraud in his mouth, he took the proffered business card and thanked her.

“It’s a colleague of mine. She’s excellent with PTSD cases.”

“All right.”

“In both my personal and professional opinion, you’d benefit from counseling. Traumatic events can stick around in the folds of your brain for years afterward, and the most innocuous of things can trigger them.”

“I know.”

“You have quite the arsenal of two-word responses, don’t you?”

Janey was no fool. Her eyes swept him head to toe, front to back, and he nearly cowered, feeling exposed.

But she was kind. “You’re an adult, Erik. I’m giving you this card, and I won’t check on you. But…” She stepped to him, and cupped his chin in her hand. “Promise me.”

“What?”

“If you ever feel you are going to hurt yourself, you call me. You wake me up at two in the morning. You bang on my door. If it ever comes to that. Do you understand?”

“I will,” he said, then smiled sheepishly. “I will call you if it gets to that.”

“Promise me.”

He promised, and with the best of intentions he tacked the card on his bulletin board.

But of course the next day he felt better, and when you feel better, it no longer seems as urgent to take steps to maintain feeling better. He began to string better days together. A week of feeling good. It was so much easier to be reactive than proactive. Two weeks. The episode was long ago and far away now, no longer meant for him.

He left it behind.

He pumped up his basketball and hit the court. He sat down at the piano, picked up his guitar. He whistled. It was getting lighter in his head. He’d dodged another bullet. He was fine.

Soon enough the business card was tacked over with layers of this and that, buried on the bulletin board, and Erik was back to letting the months go by.





I’m Done Now


Erik graduated in December of 1994, the same time the Kellys left Geneseo—Miles had landed a new job at SUNY Brockport.

Erik braced himself for a bereft depression after they were gone. Truly Miles had been his closest friend. Perhaps, he had to admit, his only friend. But instead, time went into one of its surreal elastic phases. Erik was busy. He was now working full-time at the playhouse.

Besides doing set and lighting design for the seasonal productions, he was the mastermind behind a partnership with the public school districts, devising a student theater program. Classes and workshops ranged from elementary through middle grades, with internships for high school students.

Erik taught lighting, set design, basic stagecraft. He coached basketball at the Y, gave guitar lessons, played piano at a few watering holes. He had a few girlfriends. Nothing serious, just females to keep company with. He kept his thoughts and feelings at bay. Most of the time. Occasionally he went through cycles of depression and anxiety but he did his best to ignore or tough out the dark spells. On a couple of bad nights he toyed with the idea of going for counseling. Inevitably the light came back around and the need for help was dismissed.

Time left him alone. It passed quietly if he didn’t pay too much attention.

Two years passed. And one April night, Daisy called.

She hadn’t reached out by phone in a long time. Long enough to make him relax the vigilance on the caller ID, plus he was distracted tonight, too much on his plate. Getting home late from a rehearsal, combined with burning dinner, no clean gym clothes, and a broken shoelace making him late for a basketball game. The phone rang and he didn’t check the little box, he just picked up.