Birthday(45)

Riding my bike home feels like an eternity of pressure on my busted ankle. What’s left of Main Street streaks by in the night, looking like nothing so much as a succession of desiccated, moonlit corpses. I pass the porches of shotgun houses, where starkly lit clusters of friends lounge with cigarettes and beers, smoke mingling with the cloud of insects above them. All chatter stops as I pass and I imagine how I must look in my torn, bloodstained jersey, my face probably fucked seven ways to Sunday: like some kind of sad, desperate cryptid, the Thebes Ghoul limping out of the darkness on its way from one failure to the next.

Eventually, after I’m not sure how long, I reach our trailer, mount the steps, and unlock the door to the living room. Dad’s still at school, going over tonight’s game with the assistant coaches. I flip the lights on to our normal tableau of piles of laundry and unwashed dishes.

Slam the door. Crouch. Squeeze my head. Breathe rough through clenched teeth as, now that I’m alone again with nothing to do, the unbound memories and unwanted thoughts come flooding back. I look down and find a yellow envelope on the floor, corners faded, familiar looping handwriting punching my chest harder than even William could.

Morgan, Sixteen.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I pick up the letter, stand on throbbing knees, and toss it on the coffee table. Not yet, can’t read it yet.

I limp into Dad’s darkened room and chew my cheeks hard enough to draw blood. The liquor’s under the bed where it always is. I leave the rum by Mom’s letter and take the gin out to the front steps. I start to drink. Time slurs like a truck on black ice.

It doesn’t start as a plan. It just starts as never-ending pain and my brain’s a beehive, but then I lift the bottle for another pull, and it’s empty, and I realize … well, a human liver can only take so much. When I blink my eyes don’t exactly match up. A liver can only take so much, I think again, and my body needs a liver to stay alive and fuck I don’t want to be alive.

That’s the solution. What do you do when you’re stuck underwater and you can’t swim up or down? You relax and you take a big, watery breath.

God, why’d I never think of this before? I’ve thought of not wanting to be alive, but never in an actionable way. I throw the empty gin bottle into the gravel driveway and watch it shatter with vague disinterest, rage, and a loneliness so deep it screams.

Mom’s letter calls at me from inside the house. If I make it to heaven after this, and see Mom again, will she be mad at me? Can feelings get hurt in heaven?

I head inside, flop on the couch while reaching for the rum, and dig my thumbnail under the envelope’s seal. I bet feelings do get hurt in heaven, just not much. Like a skinned knee for your heart. I slide the letter out, but I don’t unfold it yet.

Maybe I’ll be a woman in heaven. Not the first time I’ve thought that, not by a mile, but it occurs to me maybe there are no women and no men there, or maybe the desire to be someone different will get burned out of me on the way up. Or maybe I’ll go to hell.

I unfold the letter, flick on the side lamp, and read. My vision blurs. I close one eye and try to focus. Mom’s handwriting is shakier and fainter than before, like she barely has the strength to go on.

Morgan,

Sixteen years old. What a milestone. This is where things will really start to open up for you, son. More and more you’re going to be independent. I worry to think about it even now, with you watching cartoons in your pajamas in the other room. But I worried when you learned to walk too. That had to happen, and this has to happen. God. I worry, but I wish I could see it.

Anyway. I’ve said all this before. You know I love you. You know I miss you and I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to miss your sixteenth birthday. So here’s your present: I don’t know what your father said in order to leave you alone tonight, but he’s in on my secret. He’s headed to Nashville to pick up my old car from your grandma, where it’s waited for you this whole time. He’ll be back with it in the morning and you’ll go together to register it in your name. Surprise! Drive carefully.

I wish I could see you behind the wheel, a girlfriend tucked under your arm, the man you’re becoming. I wish I was there to see you all grown up. No longer just my little boy.

Happy birthday, baby. I love you.

Mom



I finish the letter and I’m in the hall on the floor, curled around my aching, twisting stomach, sobbing so hard I can’t breathe, my mangled hand over my eyes while I bite down on the knuckles of my left hand.

Things slip out of focus again. There are broken dishes at my feet and I’m sitting in the kitchen, sniffling uncontrollably as I chug cheap cooking wine. Black. White. Points of light floating in and out.

I’m in the bathroom, pills falling through my fingers like sand. What are these? Hard to say, really. I swallow as many as I can. I fall against the tub and hold an empty bottle to my cheek, reveling in the cool feel of the glass, in this last minor comfort. It’s hard to hold onto a thought. Things come and go in flashes.

The last thing I know before things go completely black is that I’m above the toilet, mouth hanging open in a wordless sob, vaguely aware that there’s more red in the bowl than there should be. And I think, with startling clarity given the circumstances: At least I did this right.





ERIC



It feels like there’s something at the back of my throat, something pulling at my ribs like a fish hook. I can’t even name it, but I have to see Morgan right now. I have to.