Beyond the Pale Motel (16 page)

He didn't answer.

I texted him.

He texted back,
I'm at a family function. Can't speak now
.
Everything okay?

I couldn't help it; I called again. What an asshole I was being. Jarell answered.

When I heard his voice, I started to cry. Yes, for real. He asked what was wrong. I heard people in the background. I apologized. I told him that I'd had a party and something happened.

He said, “What happened?” His voice was deep and muscular and soft.

I told him that someone gave me cookies and I ate one and got wasted.

Jarell said, “You scared me there. That's all it was? I thought you were going to say someone took advantage of you. And I'd have to beat the shit out of them.”

This made me cry more.

Jarell said, “See, this is what I'm talking about. With your godson. How are you going to teach him to live in this world if you cry like this at everything.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “But my best friend, she's so angry.”

“Listen, I gotta go. Someday you'll look back at this and it won't seem so bad,” he said. Before he hung up.

I had made a mistake about Jarell. Booty call or not, at least he had cared about Skylar. At least Jarell had wanted to see me again. I was the one who had said no. And now there was nothing between us except this humiliating phone call.

There was a text from Bree:
Stop saying you are sorry. You don't have to tell me you are sorry anymore. How about saying thank you for helping me? For staying up all night cleaning my house and making sure I was okay? I can't be there for you anymore. I can't trust you with my son. I won't see you at work on Tuesday. Shana got me a job at this salon her friend just opened.

Sunday night wasn't all that bad. Compared to this, I'd have welcomed an eternity of Sunday nights. Now I know better, I guess.

*   *   *

Shana went with me to a meeting Monday morning. She told me to share, but I could not bring myself to say the words out loud: “I went out. I lost eleven years.” Even if it had been unintentional, I didn't know if anyone would believe me.

After, at Planet Pie, Shana said that Bree had come over on Sunday “completely freaked-out,” and that Shana thought it best for Bree and me not to be in touch for awhile.

I stared into my coffee cup. “But I didn't know.” I looked up at Shana, sitting across the linoleum-topped table. She was tan from a weekend in Palm Springs, and Bree had given her a Brazilian blowout so her hair, straightened, reached her waist. My voice was rising up like bile in my throat. “I didn't know!”

“It's not just what happened at the party, Catt. Your behavior's been erratic and she's not strong enough to handle it. She loves you too much to have to watch you going through this.”

Loves me too much?
I wanted to scream at Shana, scream at Bree. Instead I swallowed it like a pill. But the pill stuck in my throat. And I needed Jack to wash it down.

*   *   *

When I went into the salon Tuesday, Bree really wasn't there. Kendra hugged me and asked if I was okay.

I said, “Why'd you give Stu my address?”

“Shit. I'm sorry. He told me you invited him and he misplaced the e-mail. I wondered why you would have invited him. He said he wanted to apologize for being an asshole.”

I looked up Stu's number and called him. Surprisingly he answered.

“This is Catt,” I said.

“Hey, Catt.”

“Did you bring cookies to my party?” I asked.

“Uh, no. Why?”

“Someone brought weed Monster cookies. THC. Whatever. I'm sober,” I said. “I was.”

“Oh, man, that sucks.”

“It doesn't suck. It's fucking serious. Why did you lie to Kendra about me inviting you? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Man,” he said. “Get some help, will you?” And hung up.

 

#11

 

There was a pall. It was the first time I understood the word. A pall over everything. They were all standing around—Rick and Todd and even Big Bob, who never stops moving, who never just stands there. They were speaking quietly and the music was playing as usual, but very, very softly so you could hardly hear. Some stupid pop ditty, the kind you can't get out of your head; you might even wake in the middle of the night singing it in your sleep. Something about how someone doesn't understand how shining and special you are, and that you are going to go dance in a club and wave your hands in the air and have a “drank” and show everyone the truth! I was thinking that I liked nineties music so much more. And then I saw Scott's photo on the counter.

It didn't make sense. I like Scott's face. I just looked at it, in the photo, smiling.

The quiet seemed to get quieter. A vein twitched in Bob's neck. Rick stepped closer. I didn't want to hear what he was going to tell me.

“What?” I said anyway.

“Catt, Scott died,” Rick said. His voice had slowed way down and it sounded too deep.

I stepped back. I moved away from them. I had to be away from them. I tried to walk to the door to leave, and then I circled back and kept walking around and around.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I just saw him. He had the flu.”

“Early this morning. He called an ambulance and he died at the hospital,” someone said.

I think it was Rick but I couldn't tell. They were all mumbling. Todd had his hands folded in front of him as if he were trying to keep them from running away.

“He called an ambulance? What was wrong? He didn't call me. I was going to bring him dinner tonight.”

I couldn't breathe. I walked back to the door so that the bell chimed a warning, and then back to them. “What happened? He had the flu,” I said. I might have been screaming.

Todd took my hand and walked me outside, past Scott, smiling in the picture. In the cruel sunlight Todd was pale under his spray tan. There were some palm trees. They were too tall and ragged. I wanted to climb up and trim them properly.

“He had leukemia,” Todd said.

“What?” I said. “He wasn't feeling well. He had a flu.”

Todd tried to touch me and I had to keep myself from hitting him. I backed away. He said my name. He had bags under his eyes like he hadn't slept.

“When did you find out?”

“They called us at two in the morning. It was too late.”

“They called you. They didn't call me.” I said it as if it were just a bunch of words that didn't mean anything. That didn't mean
Scott is dead, he had leukemia, he didn't let me know, he didn't call me to take him to the hospital, he didn't have them call me, they called Todd and Rick, he died alone.

“It was too late. He could hardly get to the hospital. Everything had shut down.”

I walked back inside the gym as if I would find him there with his hands in his pockets, laughing at himself. Rick said, “Catt?”

“Scott had leukemia,” I said.

Rick said, “Nobody knew except his mom. He found out a year ago but he didn't want to tell anyone. He didn't want to upset us and he refused treatment.”

I looked at Scott's smiling picture. Someone had downloaded it from his Facebook profile. It was an old picture because more recently he had been looking a little thinner—peaked—and he didn't like having his picture taken. He said his immune system was down a bit. He had had the flu. I was going to bring him food. I was going to make it and bring it over to his house. I had taken the picture at a Dodger game we'd gone to with Skylar, Bree, some guy she was dating, and Rick and Todd. Scott looked tan, muscular, wearing a Dodger cap, the field bathed in purple summer-evening light behind him. His jawline was defined. He had a nice jaw. He wasn't smiling too widely, hiding his teeth, though he had good teeth. But at that moment I couldn't remember his teeth.

That day Scott and I hung out at his place after everyone else had left. Dash had a band rehearsal and I didn't feel like being alone. We were sitting on the couch, wearing socks, watching TV, and eating Chinese food out of cartons that we handed back and forth.

“See?” he'd said, gesturing around the tiny apartment, which was bigger than the studio he'd moved into. (
To die,
I realized.) “If you'd married me, you could have had all this.” He was smiling but only with the edges of his mouth.

I put my hand on his chest without thinking about it. “I could have had this,” I said.

“You have that anyway. You always will.”

Not anymore.

What Scott had was leukemia and he hadn't told me. It made me feel that I didn't know anything about him; he was someone gone whom I had never known. Underneath the photo it said,
Our Friend Scott Steadman: In Loving Memory.

I went back outside again. I couldn't stop moving around, up and down the street in front of Body Farm. No one followed me this time. I took out my cell phone and called Bree. She didn't answer. She never did. Even then.

*   *   *

My mom died of cancer, too, but at that point we were estranged. I heard from a family friend that she died alone in a hospice.

Sometimes I remembered how, when we lived in the apartment in North Hollywood, after my dad left, my mom would call me into her bed, saying she was afraid to sleep alone. There might be murderers out there, she had said. Serial killers like Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, who broke through windows and raped and murdered women when I was a little girl. Her pale skin was clammy and her breath stank of alcohol.

Sometimes I would imagine her dying, then. How I would have to hold her hand until her heart stopped beating, how I would have to change her clothes when it did, what her corpse would feel like in my arms. I had never held a corpse in my arms, but I would have held Scott. I would have undressed him and put him in fresh clothes. I would have combed his hair. I would have kissed his mouth. I would have slept next to him all night until they made me let them take him away.

That night I got his mother's number from Rick, who had Scott's cell phone. I was surprised when she answered.

“This is Scott's friend, Catt,” I said. “We spoke on the phone before.”

“Hello, Catt.” Her voice was strained and hoarse but she wasn't sobbing. That Midwestern stoicism always amazed me.

“I loved him so much,” I said. “Once he told me that the way I was with my friend's son reminded him of how you were with him as a kid. It was such a high compliment.”

She thanked me.

I wanted to ask more about the illness and why he kept it a secret, why he refused to treat it, but I couldn't bring myself to ask. If she cried, I was afraid I'd start sobbing.

“I'm so, so sorry.” I stopped to swallow back the lump congealing in my throat. “Please let me know if there's anything I can do.”

Of course, there is never anything anyone can do.

She thanked me again, told me to take care, and hung up.

Take care of yourself.
What I couldn't seem to learn to do. The lump in my throat exploded into a shuddering gasp. Where was Scott? It was as if he had been cut out of me with a dull kitchen knife.

*   *   *

I tried to put together the pieces of the puzzle of his illness. The mysterious surgery he'd had on his leg in his early twenties, the fevers, the fatigue, the breakup with Emi, the way he had distanced himself from me and Bree and even Skylar. Why hadn't I pushed him to tell me more about himself and what he was going through?

Scott's funeral was going to be in Ohio and only the immediate family was invited, so Rick and Todd had a reception to honor him. They lived in a large Spanish house in the hills. We walked up the steep stairs to the terra-cotta-tiled patio decorated with potted palms. The hot desert winds had kicked up, running fingers through the fronds. Past French doors a lavish brunch buffet was spread on a heavy oak table. No one seemed to have much of an appetite. I stared into the flames of the gardenia candles burning everywhere and wondered where Scott had gone.

Bree and Skylar hadn't come yet. Emi was there, looking whitewashed, like someone in chronic physical pain. She was wearing Scott's death like a black coat that was too heavy for her.

As I hugged her gymnast's body, I felt a slam of guilt that I'd been jealous when Scott and she first hooked up. I'd secretly disparaged him for picking such a young woman. But I hadn't wanted him for myself (stupid me), even if I was single at the time and he had pursued me, so what right did I have to judge his choices? She was lovely; I could see why he'd picked her. And I knew that he had broken up with her because he hadn't wanted her to deal with her boyfriend dying. That any distance he had created between himself and me was probably nothing to do with her and all about his own gradual withdrawal from the world.

“He never told me,” she said, shaking her shiny black ponytail from side to side. “Did he ever tell you?”

“No. Only his mom. I'm so sorry, Emi.”

“Do you know how I found out? No one called me. The day after it happened I went on his Facebook page to see if he was dating someone and I saw all these posts.” Tears slid down her high, rounded cheekbones. “Leukemia?” she said. “Who does that? Lets themself die of leukemia? Doesn't get treatment. He was so selfish. So vain. Was it because he didn't want to lose his hair or something?” She started to sob and I held her until she quieted. I'd thought the same thing about Scott, at first, but I knew it wasn't that simple. He hadn't wanted to cause anyone any trouble, and what bigger trouble could he cause than getting cancer, going through the treatments, and then maybe dying right away anyway? I didn't tell all this to Emi, though. It would be easier if she believed Scott was selfish and vain, at least for that day.

Emi left soon after, and Todd called for us all to gather in the living room and told a story about how when he first met Scott, everyone assumed he was gay. “Because he was so well groomed, sensitive, and thoughtful.” Everyone chuckled. “Then I realized he was just an amazing person and that everyone should be more gay.” He read the last text Scott had sent him.
You're doing so great with your workouts. Keep it up, buddy. Love you, man.