Giving Up the Ghost (28 page)

In between bites of an open-faced turkey sandwich during our last post–
Rocky Horror
diner visit, Jamie the corset boy declared that all music began and ended with Bauhaus. Vikki laughed and nodded in agreement. It was the kind of thing you say to be provocative in the midst of a provocative conversation with the hope that no one asks you to explain yourself.

“What about Tones on Tail? Have you heard of them?” Laura asked.

“Of course I have,” Jamie dramatically snapped back.

“Well, Eric saw them play in Cleveland.” She then looked at me like I was supposed to say something.

“What?” I said.

“Tell him about the show,” she said.

“You were there, too. Why are you asking me to tell him?”

Laura told a girl from Mansfield that I had just finished reading
Animal Farm
(which she had loaned me). When she overheard this older guy named Tom talking about the movie
Eraserhead
(which Laura and I had seen together at least three times), she tried to get me to share some of my observations. It was like Laura was trying to turn herself into the Eric PR Department.

I realized what was going on. She was matchmaking. Laura was trying to find someone—or some people—to replace her in my life. She wanted to find people to help take care of me after she left. She was trying to help me find my tribe. To find a group of people I’d fit in with. She didn’t want me to be alone.

I had been dreading this night all week. Not simply because Laura was leaving for New York in a few days, but because she was handling this night exactly like I feared she would: by not telling anyone anything.

After breakfast in the diner that morning, everyone gathered in the parking lot to say goodbye and good night. It was late August, and everything was cool, crisp, and moist with dew. Laura didn’t tell any of our crew that she wouldn’t be back again. She just said goodbye to them like it was any other Saturday that summer. So typical, I remember thinking. She just flits away without telling anyone the truth, then leaves me to come back the following week and explain everything she should have said before. When we’d driven up earlier that evening, I’d asked her if she planned to tell anyone that she was leaving. She didn’t respond directly, just saying something about wanting to enjoy the moment.

“Well, while you’re enjoying your moment,” I said, “you should realize that you are pretty much lying to everyone by not being honest with them.”

“How is that not being honest?” she protested. “I haven’t told anyone anything that isn’t true.”

“But you haven’t told the truth,” I said. “Which, trust me, is worse.”

When we got into the car at the end of the night, she pulled out a bottle of wine that I didn’t even know she’d been carrying around all night. She started taking drinks from it, occasionally passing it over to me. As we were just about to get off
the highway, she told me that she wanted to go out to the gas well before we went home.

“You should keep hanging out with those guys,” she said. “They are good people. Fun.”

“Maybe,” I said.

We were quiet for a few minutes as the rising sun began to brighten and color the horizon.

“I was reading this article that was talking about New York clubs,” I said as I spread the green felted blanket out over the gas-well gravel. “You know, they charge you
five dollars
for a beer there?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I hope you weren’t planning to drink beer in clubs. There is no way you could ever afford that.”

“Eric, you need to stop it,” she said. “Because you just go on and on because you think it’s important to tell me stuff like that, and it isn’t. It’s small to do that, smaller than you.”

She took a long pull off the bottle.

“I still just don’t get it,” I said, plopping down on the blanket.

“Why do you have to
get
anything?” she said. “It’s what’s happening. That’s all.”

She lay down on the blanket and curled up next to me. I was staring up at the sky trying to make out the fading stars.

At some point, I felt her kiss my cheek and move closer to me. Then she started to kiss me on the mouth and pull me on top of her. She ran her fingers through my hair as we kissed.

“I want you to make love with me,” she said.

“What?”

“I want you to make love with me,” she said.

My heart started pounding in my chest, my fingers started shaking.

I wrapped my arm around her and started kissing her. I pulled away for a moment and looked at her eyes. A moment later she slowly opened hers and had trouble focusing, then her eyes rolled half back into her head before she told me to kiss her again.

I sighed and rolled over.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“I can’t do this,” I said. “You’re drunk.”

“So?”

“No, it isn’t right.”

“I thought you’d …”

“I do, but it’s not the way I … we can’t.”

She could barely sit herself up. “But I want to,” she said.

“How do I know that?” I said. This wasn’t the way I’d thought it would be. Everything was wrong.

She sighed and lay back down on the blanket. The sun was about ready to peek above the horizon.

“Do you want to go home now?” I asked eventually.

“Yeah.”

We were already supposed to get together the following night—our last time together before she left. In a rare moment of advance planning, Laura had set aside this night among the packing and preparation and family dinners and other farewells. When I asked what she wanted to do, she suggested we go out to the gas well one last time. We even swung by Lake O’Dea on the way, for old time’s sake.

We lazily chatted as we drove out. The sun was close to setting. I badly wanted to bring up the night before but had no idea how. At a quiet point, I just let it spill out.

“Do you remember what happened last night? What you said?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“At the gas well? You really don’t remember?”

Laura looked out the passenger window and stared at the buildings rolling past. “I was a little drunk, I think,” she said.

“Do you want me to tell you?”

“Go on.”

“We started kissing and you said you wanted to make love.”

Laura’s eyes got huge.

“You don’t remember this?”

“Umm … no,” she said, returning her eyes out the window.

“Oh.”

From there, everything was idle chatting, as if nothing had happened or was happening. We watched the sun go down and just sat next to the gas well talking, with the car windows rolled down, playing tapes loud enough so we could hear. Inside, I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell that I felt like she was deserting me. Inside, I was still reeling from the night before. I wanted to pull my hair out and kick and scream so loud because I just felt like she wasn’t willing to hear me otherwise. I just tried to push it all out in a big sighing breath.

“I’m really going to miss you,” I finally said.

She smiled. “Let’s not,” she said.

“Let’s not … what?”

“Let’s not talk about this,” she said. “Let’s just leave it with you knowing that I am always there for you. You can call or see me anytime you need to. All you have to do is give the word.”

“So if I tell you that I need you, you’ll come back from New York?”

“If need be, yeah.”

“Well, what if I told you I needed you right now,” I said. “Would you stay and not leave?”

She sighed and looked away.

“Let’s not … okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “How about you just spill the beans about the Poem instead?”

She just shot me a stare.

I walked over to the car to light a cigarette on the car lighter.

“Oh, by the way,” I said. “Here’s your book back.”

I pulled her feathered copy of
Slaughterhouse-Five
out of the car.

“Did you enjoy it?” she asked.

“Yeah, I … no. To be honest with you, I never even opened it.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, you can keep it if you want …”

I had no interest in reading it. Since she’d given it to me, I’d become a bit perplexed by her insistence that I read
Slaughterhouse-Five
. It had become somewhat like the Mystery Poem to me. She wouldn’t tell me
why
she had wanted me to read it, but she really, really wanted me to read it. She had asked about it several times. To me, not reading it had become my own little passive-aggressive touché fuck-you. If she wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of knowing why it was so important, then I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of reading it. In fact, I avoided the book for years afterward, under some false idea that it still mattered.

“I doubt I’ll have time to read it,” I added. “I have my own life to get on with, right?”

I handed the book to her. Sticking out of the top of its pages was an envelope. The envelope contained a letter I’d written earlier that day. I was hoping she’d notice it but not right away. Maybe when she got home and put the book away, she’d see it there and wonder what it was.

We both knew it was time to go.

“Goodbye, old gas well,” she said, reaching out to pet the corroded steel. “May you pump lots and lots of gas and have a happy life.”

She got into the car and we started back toward her house.

About halfway there, she reached over and took my hand, holding it for the rest of the drive.

When I parked the car across from her parents’ house, I turned to her. “Look—” I said.

“No … don’t,” she said, putting her finger across my lips. She kissed me, then held me close. “Don’t say anything. Not a word. Please, let’s just not do this.”

Not do what? I thought. Leave? Be apart? Fight? Stop being friends? Amen, sister, I thought. I’m right with you.

Then I realized that what she didn’t want to do was say goodbye. What she didn’t want to have to deal with was the truth: This was the end of us. Maybe not forever, but at least for now. She didn’t want to say how we felt. She didn’t want to heal anything or hear any apologies. She just wanted it to be done.

I nodded to show I understood. She kissed my forehead and then touched it to hers.

Then she opened the car door, picked up her bag and the copy of
Slaughterhouse-Five
wrapped around the letter I’d hoped she’d notice, and left.

In the letter, I told her, again, how hurt I was by her leaving. I told her how, to me, the Mystery Poem was the epitome of our relationship. I told her how frustrating it was that she always kept me at a distance, cloaking herself in deliberate ambiguity and vagueness, and never considered letting me get as close to her as she insisted on being to me.

I thanked her for being my friend through the past year. I told her that no one had stuck with me except her and that I’d never forget that.

Then I told her that I loved her.

I told her that I didn’t need her to love me back. I told her that there was nothing we needed to do about it. I just wanted her to know that I felt that way. I told her that just saying that was good enough. I knew we would always be friends, no matter what happened.

I asked her to forgive me for not being a better person. I told her that I was glad I made her a little happy and how much I wished I could have made her happier. I apologized for being so much work. I told her that I knew she’d always be there for me. And I told her that I knew she would do well at school and have wonderful experiences in New York, things I could never even dream of.

I’d written the letter earlier that afternoon, but I’d known since she told me she was leaving that I’d have to confess all this to her. Almost every night I’d promised myself I’d do it, but I always chickened out. I’m not sure if it was because I thought she’d laugh at me, or be scared of me, or maybe I was actually scared that she’d tell me, just before leaving for New York, that she loved me too. There was no doubt in my mind that she loved me in some manner. I guess my biggest fear was that the way she loved me was far different from the way I felt for her.

The thought of letting her know I’d written a letter was terrifying. So I’d hidden it in her book. But not too well, I hoped.

The next day I stayed near the phone all day. I allowed myself to hope that she’d notice the envelope, get curious about
it, read the letter, call me immediately, and cancel her plans to leave for New York—or at least delay them so we could have another chance to talk.

By around seven that evening, about twelve hours before she was supposed to leave, I still hadn’t heard from her. I was pacing the floor in the makeshift bedroom in my parents’ house, telling myself the envelope in the book was such a stupid idea. She was so busy getting ready to leave that she probably put the book on a shelf without even noticing. I had to go over there. I had to come clean and share my feelings. I’d open the letter and read it to her myself. She always wanted the truth, and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t tell it to her.

Her mother answered the door and said that Laura was out for the evening. “She’s out with a group of friends,” she said.

“Oh, right, yeah … right. They all went out tonight,” I said, pretending that I knew this. “I think I know where they’re heading. I’ll go meet them there.” It was probably some of her friends from school. People I probably knew as well, but people who had never even seen Laura and me together, let alone people who would think to include me in anything they had planned. They were her real friends, I thought.

I thanked Mrs. Patterson and headed back to the car.

A week later, I’d receive a postcard from Laura with a painted street scene in New York on one side, and on the other, “Here. No time to write. I’m sorry.”

A few days after that, I’d walk into Dr. Chang’s office and place all my medications on his desk, leaving them there after telling him we would never be seeing each other again.

“If you do this,” he’d warn me as I got up to leave, “you will live a life of misery.”

Soon after that I’d simply stop going to my appointments with Blumfield. He’d leave one message inquiring if I was
planning to come back. I’d never hear from or see him again. A week after that, my dad would help me move into my dorm room at Kent State. Then I’d start my new life. A clean slate.