Clearly Now, the Rain (17 page)

Even though only two and a half months had passed since Jack's funeral, I wasn't prepared for how furiously she was still grieving in August. I expected her to be able to do it like she always had: suck it up and stomp forward and pretend. Not that I wanted for her to do that with me. But when she entered the house crowded with me, Mona, Luke, and Adaline, and dogs, I could see the fault lines and fractures; I knew when Serala went to the bathroom if she was peeing or getting high; I watched her step out to the porch and face the skyline to weep beneath sunglasses.

We spent a quiet and restorative couple of days in the mountains with my mother, watching eagles cut the sky and horses gallop on the meadow's edge. Everyone but Serala spent hours in the cold green water of the Wenatchee River, washing the dust of mountain life away. She didn't even sweat.

The second night there I am scrubbing pots and daydreaming. The sun is making an ornate exit and a breeze is coming up, shivering the pines and combing out the willow tree. As I move to put away a bowl, I gain the view from another window and see that Serala and my mother are sitting side by side on the sagging steps of the deck. The wind is making Serala's hair wild and stealing the ash from her cigarette and my mother is looking at her. I know it with an instinctive gut punch: they are talking about Jack—and, just maybe, people my mother has lost. It might be the first real conversation they have ever had. Serala swigs on a beer and nods and I turn back to the sink, feeling like I've intruded.

So the visit is not a cure, of course, scarcely a Band-Aid maybe, but she isn't doing worse. Her last night arrives and we haven't yet been out for a fine meal, so Luke and I search for clean shirts, Mona and Adaline spend an hour in the bathroom, and Serala waits, already dressed, killing the last of the house's wine.

We find a fancy steak and seafood house on Elliott Bay, the rolling spill of Seattle lights on all sides of us out on the patio. The night starts off well enough with the first couple of bottles: run-of-the-mill talk about food, wine, war, a toast to Jack, et cetera. But then the rain starts, and we move inside the restaurant, and Serala's eyes go darker, and she starts drinking faster and mistreating the waitress, and I know this is not a happy road. And she cuts loose, grief and a nice cabernet stomping all over the nice dinner.

You guys have it all so wrong
, she slurs, referring now to the question of “drama” in a relationship.
If you knew for just a minute what it was like to lose your lover you would feel stupid and small for all the bullshit.

And there I am, urging her on in my head. I want Mona to hear what she has to say. I think Mona might listen, but I am overestimating her willingness to hear Serala in this state. Serala lurches further along the monologue, spilling wine. Other diners slide looks at us, and Mona and Adaline blush and turn away from her.

I might fuck somebody for drugs but so what? I might fuck Jack's brother now because he looks like him, so the fuck what? It's too fucking hard. All there is, all there is, is pain and seconds of escape. And you can't reject anything that brings you a little bit of sweet. Stop wasting fucking love.

A gulp and a deep drag are her punctuation and it is time to go.

At home the chasm yawns wider between me, Serala, Luke, and the two girlfriends. We light candles on my father's shrine and weep; we throw more wine back recklessly. We kneel and talk to my father; we inhabit the chaos of grief, clutching at the opportunity to yank some of it out of our chests. With Serala at my side, I let myself into the space that I ordinarily can avoid: rage. As the flames dance in front of photos, I catch isolated glances from my father on the glossy surfaces. I let myself feel it, then let myself say it, make it as real and present as I can:
He wanted to live so badly, finally, and he was cut down right at the fucking beginning.
Serala makes for the bathroom to get high—again. Resentful and restive, I think about marching to the bathroom and demanding a shot of the relief she has—to point out to her that I don't have any relief. Instead, I march into the bedroom where Adaline and Mona are sort of angrily cowering and pull the .45 from the bedside table.

What the fuck are you doing?
Mona demands, and perhaps it is a very ugly tone or, perhaps not—maybe I just want war.

I'm putting the fucking gun on his fucking shrine
, I spit.
The gun that he just barely didn't use to kill himself.

I treat Mona and Adaline irrationally, poorly. As if by way of not yet knowing the flooring, defacing power of grief, they have betrayed us.

In the morning I stumble up in time to take Serala to the airport. We hold hands in the rich sunlight spiking off the carapaces of jumbo jets. We promise we'll see each other soon—but we do not have a plan.

Twenty-One

Mona's semester started and I settled in earnestly in Missoula: got a job with a family advocacy organization, found the best hikes nearby, started writing short stories, and applied myself to breaking out of the old cycles of conflict with Mona.

Meanwhile, Louis had flown out to New York to spend his birthday—which he shared with Serala—but really to help her stay afloat in the bad season, a season bound to be worse than any before what with Jack freshly dead. Serala and Louis's love pleasantly puzzled me. There weren't characters more different on the surface. Louis was a blessing of humor and levity to everyone in his life, an easy presence, honest and discursive when need be, but definitely agreeable—versus Serala's coarseness, her eagerness to confront and disagree, her appearance of cold and closed. On the other hand, Louis and Serala both loved more profoundly and consistently than anyone I knew, besides perhaps my father. In their respective manners, they both caught loved ones in freefall—all the time. And the ease with which they helped carry others through their rough chapters demonstrated the essence of it, which Serala once said clearly to me:
Love isn't hard—it's the easiest, most natural thing in the world
. And for them it was.

Louis brought Serala medicinal laughter and lightness; he could make her giggle just by slapping on one in a repertoire of goofy faces, or sharing dark humor with her. And Serala offered Louis the inverse, the gift of severity—because of his nature, both as a dependable joker and as everybody else's confidant, Louis sometimes lacked for someone to take apart his own hurt, to remind him to do what was right for himself. And Serala could do that for all of us. Severely.

On Thanksgiving, en route to a party deep in Brooklyn, Louis, Luke, and Serala climb out of a subway station. The night is the absolute dark of autumn. By the time Louis and Luke come out of a bodega with brown bags, Serala is half a block away, fading to nothing with a large man at her side. They catch up halfway before she warns them away with a backhand like a couple of flies.

Don't fuck things up!
she hollers, vanishing down a side street. They wait, painfully conflicted, until she emerges, one mission complete, dedicated to the next.

At the party, where she knows no one, she snatches a plate from the dish rack and marches to a tiny bathroom with it. Luke forces his way in with her just in time to watch her blow a whole bag of black powder off the plate with her thin nostril, five fat ridges, without even testing it.

In the days that followed, Louis spent much time alone in her living room, facing her closed bedroom door, entertaining himself with her vast CD and wine collection. He was conflicted time and again and I imagine he stood at her door indecisively more than once, even raised his hand to knock—sometimes he did. And he'd find her supine, as she'd been for countless hours, getting up only to replenish her system with the ten bags she'd bought. That white curtain would flap with winter's debut gusts, and she'd shiver, and say sweet things to him once the ease was in her veins.

He tells me about the scary drive to the big Thanksgiving bash at her folks' place, which also stands in for her birthday party. After a couple of days in bed with heroin, the turnpikes are an ominous challenge for Serala's motor skills. I can see her—because I'd taken such rides with her—stomping the accelerator casually, racing to over ninety and then dropping off again as she struggles to light a Pall Mall, until she's under the speed limit and getting honked at. She responds with a finger, which distracts her so she floats into the other lane and gets honked at again, which sets her cursing,
Yeah, yeah I see you, you fuckhead
. Louis is white-knuckled and pale, not demanding to drive because he doesn't want to hurt her pride, praying that her pride doesn't kill him. The sprawling city is soon behind and there's more room on the road, and she finds the CD she wants, and she smiles sleepily because there she is, driving, smoking, music and an old friend at her side, the best she ever could ask for—that and the tar that's in her veins.

I can see poor Louis at her elbow, walking into that house with her swaying a little, hours late for the meal. I can feel the knives in Louis's back, the dozens of stares from respectable Indians, sure that he must be the reason for their tardiness—and the sorry shape Serala is in. I can't imagine what they chalk it up to; it doesn't look much like hangover. She is a waif and her smiles are goofy, absent sort of things where they used to be bright. And the way she throws her weight around is a far cry from the tight and reserved way she ordinarily moves. I can see her walking up to a cousin, a hug and an exclamation in Gujarati, careless tug of war with the dog in the kitchen amid precarious dishes. Louis just eats and smiles in a corner, thanks her mother profusely, and tries to look as unconcerned as the rest with her grinning zombie walk and talk. He says to me,
I don't know, man, she really did seem happy.

And I knew why, knew it wasn't just good junk, because that wasn't ever enough before. I knew why, just kept it unarticulated in my heart.

When she first calls me all fucked up on that high-grade shit she is stretching her days with, incoherently rambling, I know she's on an edge. I'm hunched before my computer in the spare bedroom in frigid Missoula, working over a short story. I can hear the TV wonk in the bedroom and Mona's trained laughter. For maybe the first time, I'm not glad to hear Serala's voice. I know the score—I've even been keeping track of how fast she could use up everything she copped at Thanksgiving.

I'm comin' to Seattle, you know, for Christmas and the fucking
new
year,
she slurs. I get up and close the door carefully, knowing that Mona is lurking.

That's fantastic.
I mean it. It's a plan! She's come up with it—I take this as very positive.

Are you going to have sex with me in Seattle?

I answer this with a dismayed silence; it's not just that the subject matter is out of bounds, it also cheapens the prior news, lumps it with the smack-fueled toss offs that will soon become common.

Are you gonna?
I hear a Pall Mall ignite. She can't be that fucked up if she can still light cigarettes.
It's always so nice, you know, Eli, so sweet with you . . . like makin' love and fuckin' all at once.

Hey, look, that's not fair. You know that's not fair. I'm out here giving it my all with Mona and you're supposed to support me.

It seems she doesn't even hear. She's just the talker now. Rambling on.

Jack's fuckin' dead. Lucky bastard.

I want to say,
No, you idiot, he's not lucky, he wanted to live. Now you have to live for him.
But
I don't. I let her go on a while before I make some vague excuse to get off the line, drop the cordless, and sigh. Watch Montana's version of the moon rise in the big sky.

Days later, I'm worn down from a long afternoon of standing outside food banks, trying to get hungry, cold people to sign petitions. I'd gone to kung fu class and been thrown around by my superiors. I have only the television and Mona bathing in its light to look forward to at home. So I stop at the grocery store, to postpone my return and to grab some staple goods. As the automatic door bites closed behind me, my cell rings. I almost don't answer when I see it's her.

Hi.

Hey, love,
Serala says and in those two words there is already all of it: the slur and drag of drug, but also a small tone of sheepish apology. A little brightness, as if she is excited just to rap with her best friend. I grab a shopping basket.
Where you at?

A grocery store, surrounded by the whitest people in America,
I say and she chuckles, a bright strand of sound, maybe a bit out of proportion to the joke.

Ooh, speaking of food—whatcha want me to cook for you boys over Christmas? Hold on, hold on . . .
I can hear the rustle of paper and then something heavy hits the floor and a curse. But she's back on the line after a minute.
I've got a recipe for rack of lamb, raspberry truffles, pork tenderloin . . .

I don't eat swine.

Jesus, that's asinine. I can cook a mean pig, you know.

You are a mean pig, you know,
I say and gain another strand of laughter.

Guess that makes me a cannibal,
she says with drugged-out thoughtfulness.
Maybe I am
.
Haven't you ever looked at a baby's forearms and thought, yummmmm.

I give her a perfunctory laugh. She's been talking about eating babies for years. The line is silent for too long. I poke through a stack of frozen pizza.

Hey, yo! You there?

There's a scrambled sound, fabric pulled over the phone maybe.

You know, Eli, I'm so high. Nice and high.

Wonderful,
I say flatly and move on to the bread aisle.
When do you get in to Seattle? I've got plans to make and two mean mountain passes to cross.

The line goes dead. I listen to the buzz for a moment, then call back. I get her voice mail immediately. I select a loaf of country potato and head for the checkout.

Two nights later, with a bottle of Shiraz and Kaya at my side, with old Beatles playing on the box, I feel emboldened and serene and without much forethought I write the sentence and click the mouse and send it, buried in the context of other shit, like so much between us:
I think you need to understand that I'm not afraid of you dying.

That this comment hits her inbox while she lies in a hospital bed does not surprise me. She hasn't called in two days or responded to my emails. Finally she calls and tells me (though she hasn't told anyone else) what she ingested: three bags of the Thanksgiving junk, triple the lethal doses of Valium and phenobarbital, and two bottles of wine. I say:

Jeez, you'd think that'd do it.

And she says,
Yeah, you sure would.

She'd put enough food out for Knox for two and a half days—how long she knew it would be before her mother would come. She'd researched the lethal dose of all three drugs and tripled it. And again she does not die. And again she does not fall asleep. This time, a neighbor hears her hallucinatory screams, her skull cracking a kitchen tile.

She tells me all this in a whisper because the docs and her folks and the shrink that she loves, even, don't know it all. She's watching
Rocky II
from her hospital bed and she's enjoying it.

A great fucking movie,
she says to me before we hang up, her pledging to still make it to Seattle.
Just gotta get my liver working again—gonna need it for the fuckin' holidays.

See,
I say to myself, tossing the cordless onto the bed,
I don't feel a thing. I have peace.

I liked Missoula; I did well there. I got in shape; I had beautiful hikes within a ten-minute drive. I had little watering holes with tons of character like the Union Club. I had a beach cruiser bicycle to take me everywhere. I had the dogs to run with through the leash free parks. I wrote lots and lots of decent, creepy fiction. I found great short-term jobs. But it wasn't enough to mask the wretchedness of me and Mona.

It's a Sunday morning, bright in that way that only winter and Montana sky can be, and we're walking the dogs. Somewhere along the banks of the Clark Fork, we've managed to mire ourselves again into an argument about the future. She's badgering me about giving notice to Louis that he'll have to move out of my father's house in a year and a half—when she finishes grad school and we move back to Seattle together. I look up at the Big Sky and feel trapped anyway. I can barely breathe.

At that moment a stick-thin black lab with mange and wounds on his face trots around the corner. Our dogs bark furiously, but Mona soon coaxes him over. He wears no collar, no tags. She uses her purse strap to leash him into our pack and we continue on. She must have that whip-smart intuition working while I am silent, because she suddenly says:

If you can't commit to the future with me right now, then you should leave. I'm almost thirty-one years old and I'm tired of fucking around. So, please, do the kindest thing and leave if you can't commit to forever
now
.

But she didn't think I'd go. I didn't either, actually. But something final had broken.

Serala wasn't there to box up my books and slide all my papers and photos into envelopes. She couldn't keep Mona at a safe distance or wipe away my tears. But I would not have made it out that door if I hadn't known that soon—days, in fact, so soon that it didn't make any sense to drive to New York—I would be in Seattle in Serala's arms and she would make me feel right, and sane.

In twenty minutes I was lurching out of the driveway in my haphazardly stuffed truck. I cast one last glance back at the door, where Mona stood in disbelief, and then roared off behind hysterical tears into the cold sunlight, plotting wildly where to go and what to do with my wrecked self, knowing that after four years of limbo and drama and a deeply flawed love, this was the end.

I stayed on the road for a spell, carving highway circles in Oregon. Serala and I finally spoke, late on a Thursday night while Pacific waves hissed and exploded outside my window and Kaya lay next to me in the motel bed. Serala was home, back at the scene of her latest crime. Despite her damaged liver, the proximity of her latest attempt at death, her voice was like a long pull of good bourbon to me. I knew that the holidays would be not only bearable this year, but a fucking blast.

And God, we needed it.