Ulysses, OH

I woke up at ten, cold sweat dripping from my hair, a sour taste in my mouth. The air in the room was stale and damp and I pushed myself up and balanced all the way to the window like a tightrope walker. I fumbled with the blinds and they finally gave way, and I opened my window wide. This proved to be a bad idea. It was already hot outside and the sharp sunlight put an unexpected sadness in my chest. I felt deeply lonely for no apparent reason, cut off from everything and everyone I knew, thrown into this strange, deserted world where the buildings looked like cereal boxes and the sun burned without mercy. I climbed down the stairs, walked into the kitchen for water, almost slipping on the wet tile. I hung around a bit, taking long gulps from the glass, having a hard time swallowing the thick, lukewarm sips. The house seemed deserted, I heard no movement from my father’s room next door – as I would learn a few weeks later, he always drove to Cincinnati on Friday mornings to see his therapist.

I tried to kill some time in the living room, gaped at the TV mindlessly. I cruised through the rerun of yesterday’s local news, CNN and Turner’s Classics, and then started all over again until the remote slipped from my sweaty fingers. I got up, started wandering around again, rummaged through the kitchen cupboards trying to find some Tylenol (but there was nothing, not even a bandaid), took a long, cool shower and finally decided to drag myself out of the house.

I avoided the laundromat – the alternating pastel colors, the mechanical buzz, the carefully arranged artifice of it that would have been comforting any other time made me feel an unexplainable dread today – and headed straight for the street, towards the center of the town.

I walked around aimlessly at first, and then with more purpose, starting to check off things from my mental to do list based on Valentina’s helpful suggestions. I bought a large coffee and took the paper cup to the oddly angled and strangely mute park. I sat down on a bench across the alley from a man in his seventies who was feeding a small group of pigeons, his dachshund sniffing around nearby, dragging its leash on the ground. I checked out the library – heavy doors locked up, only open in the afternoon in the summer – and the bookstore right beside it, oddly bright and spacious, sprawling around comfortably on the ground floor of a beige brick building.

I had to give up my anonymity the moment I stepped in there. The man working the cash register – who also turned out to be the owner, by the way – pegged me instantly as new in town, and it was up to me to tell him my story as succinctly as possible, his curious gaze unwavering on my face until I was done talking. His name was Richard, according to his name tag, and he was wearing a sharply ironed white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the skin on his arms reminiscent of parchment. His hair was long and white and wild, floating around his face like a lion’s mane, but it was his eyes that stirred up a vague memory in me, me crying like the world was ending right here in this bookstore as my mom tried to make me pick out something that would keep me occupied in the heat wave coming up. I couldn’t have been more than six at that time.

This time, Richard helpfully guided me towards the back where the used books were, yellowed paperbacks and oversized vintage hardcovers, their dusty smell warm and comforting. I have been in there for so long now that I felt like I couldn’t get away with buying nothing, so I absentmindedly picked up a Neruda, threads hanging from the spine, pages sticking out unevenly, and handed it to Richard. He rang it up and handed it back to me, and with the book still hanging in midair, I asked on a whim,

“Are you looking to hire?”

Richard’s lips quirked up in half a smile. He always was, he said. I would start on Monday.
The sun was right on top by the time I stepped out, and the heat felt positively cruel. I had little sparks of light dancing in the edge of my field of vision, the corners already going dark. I hadn’t eaten all day and my headache was coming and going in waves, returning stronger each time. With the last change in my pocket I bought a sandwich in the deli I stumbled upon accidentally – plastic cheese and ice cold mayo, the most delicious thing I’ve had in quite a while. I ate it on the way home, and once in the safe darkness of my empty room I fell face down on the sheets and fell asleep immediately.

I was woken up by a chime and a buzz, coming straight out of my pocket. I pulled out my phone to look at it, but the screen refused to come into focus. so are you coming over today ? the text message from Leo Tremblay said. For a few moments I couldn’t figure out who he was or what he wanted. And then, “oh,” I said out loud as it hit me. He had neglected to tell me his last name yesterday, but he helpfully tacked it onto his name when he typed his number into my phone. I rubbed my eyes one last time to make the blur – physical and mental – go away, and texted him
back, what time? and where do you live anyway?
liz is coming over at 8ish but you can come earlier if you want, the reply came, and then three more texts in quick succession
in fact you can come over right now
oh and its 32 ford st, call me when you get here bc the doorbell freaks me out
oh and maybe you could bring some wine

I sat up and stretched a little. It was a quarter to six right now, and I haven’t felt this well rested since I set my foot in Ulysses. There was no reason not to go right now.

see you there, I wrote back. I packed up my guitar, pocketed my phone, my cigarettes, my keys and a ten-dollar bill, and set out to find thirty-two Ford street. The American dream. I couldn’t help but smile on the way.

I found it on the first try, after a fifteen-minute walk – everything seemed to be exactly fifteen minutes from everything else here. The Tremblay family home had a front yard not unlike my father’s – ours – with the grass just as patchy and lame, maybe a little bit greener. The house itself looked much more like a house, though, with a tasteful stone trim and textured walls painted in a warm, earthy tone. It had angles and windowsills and no neon sign and no humming washing machines. I looked up to see Leo leaning out of an upstairs window, balancing almost dangerously, his hair hanging into his face.

“Hello, Jude Henry Foster! Are you not hungover?”

“I slept it off,” I replied, laughing.

“Well, let yourself in, the door’s unlocked.”

I did – I waded through the cluster of shoes in the hall, nearly knocked down a full-length mirror with the guitar, and after just a peek into the living room – not exactly untidy, just looking like a place where people live – I headed up the stairs. The door to Leo’s room was hanging ajar, and I pushed it open all the way. Kneeling on his massive double bed, Leo was still leaning out the window, the smoke of his cigarette blowing right back into the room from the draft.

“Hi,” he said, turning back inside, pushed the window halfway closed and with the same movement pushed himself off the bed.

“Hi.” Not knowing what to do, I handed him the wine – unsure of his preferences I went with white as I couldn’t really stomach red wine lately. He glanced at it, smiled absently and set it right down on his desk, among various clutter. Between haphazard stacks of books and magazines there was a deer skull that looked 3D printed, an old Pentax camera, a tin can doubling as an ashtray, scattered ball point pens and crumpled paper, a little Buddha statue of shiny wood. Black and white photographs were hanging from the bottom of the bookshelf, attached to a hemp string with wooden cloth pegs. There were pictures of actors and directors, of Allen Ginsberg, of Eliza, of various people I’ve never met, friends of Leo probably, and a photo of a beautiful girl with a black bob who was undoubtedly Leo’s sister – the resemblance was striking.

My gaze wandered back to Leo who was standing there expectantly, and he reached out for something with an excited grin. I realized he wanted to take a look at my guitar, and the moment I handed it to him, he pulled it out of the case impatiently. He whistled in appreciation as he slid a hand along it, feeling the curve. He balanced it on his knee and plucked at its strings, right as it was, unplugged.

“She’s beautiful,” he said softly. I found myself smiling proudly.

“She is, isn’t she.”

He set it down and leaned it against his desk. He ran a hand through his hair as he started to explain,

“We usually rehearse down in the basement, but we can stay in my sister’s room tonight. I like it better upstairs anyway, there’s more light and you can actually breathe. My dad’s still at the diner so we won’t bother anyone.”

“What about your mom?” I asked absentmindedly, my eyes back at the bookshelf packed dangerously tight, examining the spines of the books closest to me. Leo drew in a sharp breath, and my head snapped back to him.

“Oh,” he said, and he looked surprised, but just for an instant. “She’s dead.”

Shame coursed through my bloodstream like a bad cut of some backstreet drug. I felt like I had just ruined everything.

“I’m sorry,” I said dumbly.

“Oh, it’s okay,” Leo said, jamming a finger in his mouth to chew on a nail. “It was a while ago.”

“When?” I asked without thinking, and then mentally kicked myself again.

“Three years ago? We left not long after. It was, um, a car accident,” he said, and he sounded almost embarrassed instead of sad. Three years is not a long time, I wanted to say, but stayed silent. As if sensing my objection, Leo went on.

“Don’t worry, we’re fine now. Dad’s got the diner, which is a lot of work, but it takes his mind off the whole thing. Business is going great and I swear we’re a functional family for the first time in a while.”

I dug into my pocket for a cigarette. Leo was quick to reassure, but I wasn’t feeling any less uncomfortable and gloomy.

“It was the hardest on my sister,” he said, signaling with his thumb towards the photograph I was looking at just minutes ago. “But she’s really doing better. She’s up in Vermont now, in grad school, can you imagine?” And he was smiling again, eyes brightening with pride, and I felt a little warmth finally stir in my stomach.

“Really? What does she do?”

“Art history,” he said. “She can tell you all about it, she’s supposed to come home some time next month. You’ll really like her, I bet. Look, I think we should open this.” And with the bottle of wine under his arm he opened his midcentury armoire and rummaged through it, and resurfaced with a corkscrew, a wine glass and an empty mason jar.

“My dad doesn’t like it if I drink,” he explained, “so I have to be crafty. Pick a hand,” he said, hiding the glass and the jar behind his back, his trademark smile still sitting comfortably on his face. I couldn’t help laughing, and on a stroke of luck I picked his right hand, the one holding the proper wine glass.

We were half drunk by the time Eliza arrived, and since she brought ample refill, we didn’t play much music that night. Leo couldn’t keep his hands off my guitar and Eliza let me try out her little keyboard, laughing with her head thrown back whenever I butchered a simple chord, bottle of Corona hanging from her left hand, cigarette wedged between the knuckles of her right. We talked a lot instead and listened to Frank Zappa and competed for a spot by the window where the air was sharp and cool and breathable. Eliza, so guarded at first, was now talking animatedly about William Blake (coincidentally, her asshat of a boyfriend was also called Blake), reciting disjointed fragments as they flashed into her mind and were promptly forgotten, and she laughed at herself generously when she stumbled upon her words. And there I was, still anxious, still fidgety, but drunk and warm and a little hopeful. We were all leaning out the window now, desperate for the precious oxygen, and I could feel Leo’s chest warm against my back, vibrating with laughter, and Eliza’s elbow digging into my arm as she was trying to roll a cigarette, her saliva glistening in the moonlight as she licked it closed. And for a moment, and only for a moment, I allowed myself to think that I wouldn’t have to be all alone.
Eliza left not long after midnight, as she always did, according to Leo. She kissed him on the cheek and whispered something to him that sent him into hysterics, and then pecked my cheek as well, although with much less affection. And then she was out the door, with her keyboard folded on her back, maintaining her equilibrium with all her willpower. I wasn’t in the mood to go just yet, I was worried that if I left, everything would go back to the way it was that morning, the way it had been for quite some time now.

“Let’s finish this fucking album already,” Leo said with newfound determination as he closed the door behind Eliza. I fell down on his bed, awash with gratitude, and lay still, almost unmoving, for the rest of the record, while Leo was sitting heroically on the edge of his bed, staring blankly at the screen of his laptop precariously balanced on his crossed knees. When it was time to leave, he walked me to the front door. I was plenty tired myself, but he had a hard time keeping his eyes open as he reached up to ruffle my hair.

“You know,” he said softly, stifling a yawn, “if you’re ever too lazy to walk home, you can always stay the night.”

A little wave of giddiness washed over me. This wasn’t just an invitation. This was a promise that there would be more nights like this, with laughter and cheap wine. I found myself mirroring his smile.

“Thanks,” I replied. “But I really should go now. I haven’t seen my dad all day.”