The Art of Getting By

The days floated by in a kind of blur—work, school, hospital, work, school, hospital. My teachers and my boss told me I didn’t have to be there, that I could take paid leave and take my assignments home, but what they didn’t understand is that I needed the distraction. There was nothing for me at the hospital but my father in a medically induced coma, tubes hooked into all of his orifices. He was a stranger to me, had been since he first started drinking, but now he was entirely gone, and I didn’t even know who he was. I thought he had removed himself from my life, but that wasn’t the case I soon found out.

Matt had written me letters, years of letters, and my father hated us both enough to keep them from me. The first night I went home, I ransacked our little shack, desperately searching for those notes. I turned up empty handed, until I thought to look in the one place my father knew I would never look. Grabbing a crow bar from the back of my father’s rusty pickup truck that hadn’t been touched in years, I pried the lock to his liquor cabinet. What I found was 8 bottles of whisky and a bent up, brown stained card. Elmo smiled up at me, Happy Birthday written across the top. I cried then, sinking down to the wall, letting the tears fall. Inside, written in sloppily child’s handwriting it said “Happy Birthday, Em. Love your brother, Gabe.”

Something snapped inside of me at that moment and I took those bottles of brown liquor and threw them against the wall, screams escaping my mouth as I did so. It was then that Arlow walked in, with Winter.

“Emi?” Winter’s soft cry called out to me and I turned to face them, the card pressed possessively to my chest.

“He hid them all from me, got rid of them all, but this one. Why?” My voice, which I thought would be strong, sounded flat and frail to my ears.

“I don’t know, sweetie. But I am so sorry that he did.” As I slumped back to the floor, Winter came and sat next to me, the smell and dampness of the floor soaking into our clothes.

“You’re bleeding.” It was Arlow this time, as he came and knelt in front of me. He was right, somewhere in the midst of my rampage I had sliced my palm on a shard of glace, and a little river of blood was gushing from the deep wound. “We should get you to the hospital.
You might need stitches.”

I haven’t talked to him since the kiss, I thought. Intentionally, too. Why is he here?

“I don’t want to go back there.”

“Gabe is there.”

“Matt.” My voice was stronger now, an edge of hostility to it. “His name is Matt.”

“Okay, well he is there. Asked us about you when we stopped by to see how you were.”

“Oh.”

“Please, let me take you.” Looking down at my cut, I knew he was right. I would probably need stitches. The blood flow hadn’t slowed down, and my entire arm was soaked, as were my jeans and shirt.

“Fine.” I stood up and headed the door, and only Arlow followed. “Winter?”

“I’m going to stay and clean up.” So this was why they came to check on me. To get me alone with Arlow after a week of pretending he didn’t exist.

“Oh.” I repeated again, numbness finally taking over the hurt and anger.

“I love you, Emmy.”

“Love you.” I said, my voice a mere whisper. Arlow grabbed my uninjured hand and led me out the door and into his truck.

Arlow was right, like I knew he would be. I stared down at my bandaged hand, the bleeding finally stopped and the slice sutured. Matt was still in talking to dad, because the nurse said he could hear everything we said. I was sitting awkwardly in the family waiting room, Arlow silently beside me. The air was filled with the kiss we shared, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t muster up those warm, fuzzy feelings I had about it in the few minutes it took me to find my dad knocking on death’s door. Now there was only the confusion that had mixed into the sweetness, confusion and resentment. He was just another person to let down, just another causality to add to the list of things that dissipated the moment I felt some ghost of joy towards them.

I was the one to break the silence, not being able to bear the pressure it forced so wildly onto my chest.

“You shouldn’t have kissed me.” This got a start out of him, like nothing else had all day. Not seeing me screaming and tossing my father’s bottles of alcohol around, not letting me grip his hand as they stitched up my hand, not hearing me tell my little brother that I had nothing to say to our father. This one simple sentence is the one he was waiting to hear, to pull him out of his quiet reverie.

“Sure I should have.” He sounded so sure, like he had received some divine text message from the Heavens prompting him to do so.

“No, you really shouldn’t have, Arlow.”

"Why would you think that? I know you've felt something."

“Of course I have.” I turned to look at him for the first time in a long time. “But that doesn’t change the fact that no form of happiness can stay with me. Not for very long. You’re no exception.”

A flash of something, disappointment maybe, flickers in his eyes, and I stare up into my tiny reflection mirrored in their green depths.

“I could be the exception. The constant part of your life that is always there for you. I was once before.”

“You told me that. When we were kids, that you’d always be there for me. You left, then.”

“I didn’t come to the graveyard for one day.”

“But it was enough to prove to me that even the only person you have left still can’t promise they’ll never go.”

“You’re the one who walked away.”

“I was sparing myself the ache of getting abandoned again.”

“Yeah but in the process you abandoned me. Did you ever stop to think that you were leaving me? That you were hurting me in the process of making sure it didn’t happen to you?”

This caught me off guard, and he could see that. He stood to his feet and I followed suit, unsure of what to do or say—not sure I even wanted to do or say anything. He reached his hand out, and it was all I could not to cry as he spoke his next words.

“I really care about you Em. I am sorry that your father is sick. I’m sorry that your brother got taken away. Sorry your mother committed suicide. Sorry that your father ever started drinking. I’m sorry that I missed going to the cemetery that day. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to get you to keep coming back. But most of all, I am sorry that you don’t understand that no one does any of this to you. Your father didn’t start drinking just to create a hole in your lives. Not to spite you, not to get your brother taken away. I didn’t come to see you that day hoping it would drive you away. I didn’t fight harder because I thought you’d be back, not because I didn’t want to play with you anymore. Your mom didn’t kill herself because she didn’t want you anymore. Your father probably didn’t even know that his one drink a night would lead to this. You’ve just got to stop thinking that they do this to you, or that it’s your own fault, or whatever you think it is that happens. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. It has to do with life. Sometimes we are dealt crappy hands, but we are supposed to roll with them. Not succumb to their pressure and push away anything that has the potential to hurt us.”

I was stunned to silence. He sounded so angry, yet so desperate at the same time. More than made me sad or regret that I was keeping him at a distance, it made me angry.

“You and I just started talking again. I didn’t even remember who you were at first Arlow! Why are you acting like I’ve broken your heart? You don’t even know me.”

“Break my heart?” He looked incredulous. “That would have to have involved me being able to love you at all. You broke it once, when we were kids. You were my only friend, the only ally on my side. I thought we could be that way again. There was a time when I held all your secrets and you held all mine. It might have been a long time ago, but it mattered to me. I thought it mattered to you, too.”

They did, I thought, but the words just didn’t come. He was a stranger to me, this new grown up version of my childhood friend. So that is what I told him. Realizing his hand was still on my cheek, he pulled it away.

“You’re gone. The Emi I knew died the day our friendship did.”

I watched him walk away, and watched Matt come around the corner. I could see on his face he had heard all, or at least the major part of our conversation.

“Are you alright?” There he was, this person I didn’t even know, protecting me like he should have been there to do all along.

“No, I’m not.” As I spoke, the first few tears slid down my cheeks.

“He had no right. You were right to point out that he doesn’t know you anymore.” His words were solid, but I could sense something behind them.

“But what?” A confused expression danced across Matt’s features.

“But nothing.”

“But what?” Matt sighed at my continued question.

“But he has a point. I know you’ve suffered a lot in your life, but you don’t let anyone close enough to take it away.” The words hesitantly left his lips, softly spoken.

“I don’t want anyone to take it away.” I whispered. Matt was young, so young, only 15 years old, but within his eyes I could see the shadows of a lifetime of forced adulthood. He had told me about this, the second night at the hospital. How he had an average childhood, but the knowledge of his adoption and a sister out there had tormented into growing up too fast. How he could never fully enjoy things knowing his other family, his real family as he called us, was out there somewhere without him.

“Sure you do.” The hint of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. “You just don’t know it yet.”

December 19, 2010
I’m back at the shack, done spending my nights in the hospital that has seen too much of a breaking in the core of my life. The words of mine and Arlow’s conversation reverberate through the hallways. He didn’t know me. He shouldn’t have expected so much from me. He had no feasible right to be disappointed by my lack of interest when I never showed one in the first place. Those are the lies I’ve been telling myself.

The truth is, is I had felt something and I couldn’t hide it. It was like a spark sizzling in the air between us anytime he got too close. The truth is for mere moments, I wanted him to expect something from me. For mere moments I wanted him to have a right to be angry or upset at my actions tonight. Maybe he did know me, too. After all, he had filled so many of my childhood afternoons with laughter. Now, it was nothing. There was absolutely nothing. My life had crumbled in the halls of our tiny hospital. I was only a fragile shell of the girl he watched walk out of that cemetery.

Matt and I talked for a long time today, about our childhoods. Trying to make up for all the lost years. He was so much like me, but totally opposite at the same time. We laughed a lot, drawing conclusions about all the mischief we would have caused if our childhood was spend together rather than apart. I think in the end thought it only amplified the emptiness of it all. Christmas is coming up, and the doctors say my dad won’t even be awake for it. I don’t know what I am going to do. Winter is going to Aspen with her family. Baby’s family is going to California. All I know is I am alone now, and as much as I thought I would like it, it only makes the winter feel colder than normal.

I remain today,
Emi Raleigh

The first night at my house, I curl up on my bed, under a heap of blankets. I am utterly alone, I realize. Not even Zep is here. And then my heart sinks. Arlow took him home for a few days, while I settled in to living at the shack by myself. Arlow. The boy who probably never wants to think about me again.