From The Desk of Chester Hunter III
Marna began trying to work me back into their lives. It was very sweet to watch. She touched David’s thigh and said, “He has, like, three interviews with different agencies out there—”
“Four,” David corrected.
“Impressive.” I nodded to let them know that I was up for all of the reconnecting.
“And it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m going to be working for a nonprofit in the city,” Marna continued. “They’re just figuring out salary right now, but what we do is find new-looking, professional clothes for homeless people and teach them how to wear them confidently. Then we set up job interviews.”
“Just tell him the name,” David said.
“Okay, so it’s called Person-All Style,” Marna apologized. “Which I know is a stupid name, but—”
David and I laughed in unison. I mean that our actual pattern of laugh-sounds was in unison, which I found amazing, considering that there’ve got to be billions of different laughs in the world.
There was a group of seniors dancing in a circle near us, veering a little too close to David’s sphere of personal space. A girl’s elbow eventually brushed up against his back, so he turned around, basically inserting himself into the ring, and said, “If you want to dance with me, guys, you should just ask instead of trying to get me to notice you. You don’t have to be so immature about it”
Everyone in that circle gaped at him and began backing up toward the left. I just remember thinking, “That’s my David.”
He finished his drink in one swig and then threw up his arm in exasperation. I remember watching a last drop of wine going flying through the sky. When I’m drunk—and how weird it is to realize that you’ve never even seen me drunk—I get fascinated by the smallest images. “No one has any integrity anymore,” he said. “Hey, speaking of, did you hear that the police think they’ve caught the guys who did your knees and my head?”
“What do you mean? When did that happen?” I asked.
“This morning. It hasn’t been released to the public yet, but they called me. They probably didn’t know how to reach you. Get this—it turns out that it was a group of bullshit semiotics kids doing these attacks as part of a ‘piece.’ That’s what they called it—‘a piece.’ What incredible assholes, right?”
“A piece for what?”
“They wanted to see if they could create orchestrated class warfare between Brown and the working people of East Providence. Yeah, good luck.”
“But how did the police find out about them?” I asked.
“One of the geniuses turned in his senior thesis confessing everything. Except it was written in the third person, so it was supposed to seem fictional. But the kid’s advisor turned it over to the cops.”
“This is incredible,” I said. “For this I spent my senior year crippled?” I was sick (not to use the word glibly, but it’s the best one for the situation), discovering that I had only been a pawn in someone else’s pointless game. I had been a speck in a larger whole that wasn’t even a whole that represented anything important I was so disgusted. So over it all.
“You know what?” I said. “Let’s not talk about this anymore.” And here’s the most astounding thing, El. Just saying that, I felt the incident being commanded farther away. I hate to bring up my soul twice in one letter, but really, it was like the memory was lifting from my body like a separate soul. And instead of the extra soul hovering around me, it went down and burrowed itself into the ground at that dance. It stayed buried in that spot in the middle of the field, a spot capable of holding on to the phantasms of injury and death that I knew I couldn’t carry around anymore.
I like to believe that it’s still there.
“Tonight’s for celebrating the things that are yet to come. Let’s have an authentic toast,” I said.
We all raised our cups, even David, whose was empty. “To tomorrow!” I said.
“To tomorrow!” Marna and David repeated.
“So,” I started, wanting to lead by example, “you two are going to San Francisco?”
Marna nodded. “Anyway, that’s our plan. You’re still moving home?”
“Yeah. My dad’s friends with the mayor, who talked to him about this position they’re trying to fill, and my name came up—”
I turned my head to glance up the lawn. That’s when I saw a backlit figure moving like a grasshopper would if it could stand up straight. Every part seemed to move in accordance with different instructions. The top bobbed from side to side. The left side raised and jerked as the right side dropped. I watched as the figure approached me (and I remember grasping, me, that figure is approaching me) and all I could think was “There is something very wrong with that person.”
And then I realized that it was you.
(I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.)
You came under the next row of lanterns, and they lit you up, lit up your face. You were jabbing your cane into the plywood covering the lawn, raising up your body as far as you could. And then you’d keel and lurch forward again, completing another step. I know that you could not see yourself, El.
As I was packing up in the morning, you reminded me, “Don’t forget the books you were keeping in the fireplace.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I would have walked out of here without them.” I glanced up to smile at you, and as hard as this is to own up to (I know that at least some small part of me is terrible, and I’d do anything to change it), I was alarmed by how you looked. I thought that you might be getting thinner. That was probably why you seemed stranger somehow, I guessed. And I know this is the shittiest thing to tell you, but in the spirit of total honesty, I remember thinking it was like aliens had sent you as a replacement while they took their time prodding my real girlfriend.
I only tell you these things now because I would be more terrible not to.
I zipped up my bag and then panicked for a second because I realized that I had nothing else to do with my hands. I was just standing there, lost, in the middle of the infirmary. So I said, “This is the last time I’ll see this room. It’s hard to believe.”
“I’ll send you a picture,” you said.
And what I told you next was all true. I swear to God, to whatever I have to swear to. “There’s a part of me that wishes I could pack up this infirmary, everything in it—” I know I looked at you. “And take it with me. On road trips I used to see trucks on the highway transporting entire houses. Have you seen that before?”
“No,” you said.
I am fairly sure that I said something very stupid like “Oh.”
I knew the only thing left for me to do was to pick up my bag, since that was the last action available to me. I told you I had to get going—my parents were waiting for me. That was also true.
“Okay,” you said.
I kissed you on the forehead and I had trouble breaking away. I told you to take care of yourself and I fucked up the words. I hope you have the same memory of that minute because, at least in my head, it was tender.
At the door I looked back, and I’m still not sure, but I thought that I saw some tears in the corners of your eyes. I really couldn’t tell if your eyes were just tired and watering, like I’d seen before, or if you were about to cry. Like an idiot, the song that immediately popped into my head was “No Woman, No Cry,” and I was going to sing that part to you. But now I know that if I was going to be a fucking, insensitive idiot and sing anything at all, it should have been the part of the song where Marley just repeats over and over again, “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
I had almost shut the door behind me when you suddenly yelled “Bye!” at the top of your lungs. It was almost a scream. And in that moment I had to decide whether I should just run out or look back in. I looked back in because I had to know.
“What was that!” I asked you.
And you said, “A proper good-bye.”
You could say that this letter is mine. And maybe that’s why it had to be ugly in places, because I knew you’d just be all the more disappointed in me if I didn’t do it right this time. I tried to follow your example. That letter to me changed my life, you know. The tragic thing, at least to me, is that now, looking back, I’ve realized it changed me in a direction that led away from you. It was after I read that letter that I began to feel like I could go back outside.
What else could have been done, El?
WHAT ELSE?
I believe it had to happen. Or I should say that I have to believe that, or I’ll be torturing myself forever. It’s only been a week since I left, but I know instinctively the feeling would last forever.
I think of you often. I think of you with the strangest kind of love.
Sincerely,
Chess