Last Night I Sang to the Monster (23 page)

I knew what I was going to do next. I was going to engage in my new addiction. I was going to read Rafael’s diary. He was leaving. He would take his words and his voice with him, and I would be left with nothing but my own thoughts. I picked up his diary and read his last entry:

I believe that there are defining moments in every human life. In each of those defining moments we experience a death. I died here. It doesn’t matter anymore why I thought I came here. But I did something more important than die here. I don’t know how to say this exactly except to say that I have never felt more alive. Not ever. I have never felt at home in my own body until now. My body is my home. I keep repeating that to myself. To me, those words sound like a miracle.

I don’t know what the exact shape of my life will take–and what the days to come will bring–except I know that I am happy and my heart is still. I know that I have fallen in love with the word surrender and know too that I can no longer live in disappointment. I have lived in disappointment all my life. I refuse the medicine of alcohol. I have taken a crooked road to arrive at the country of manhood. It will take time for me to find myself in the world again. I have a great many difficulties I have to confront. But I’m not running anymore.

I feel whole. I
am
whole.

Before I came to this place I wanted to walk out into the desert and die. Now, I want only to live. I want to write those words again and again. I hear those words and understand them in all their beauty and awesome weight. I want to live. That is all I know today. I want to live.

I knew I was a thief for reading these words, for stealing them. I was ashamed of myself. And yet, I wanted to keep Rafael’s words, take them and keep them and put them somewhere inside of me so maybe I could have what he had.

Rafael had come here nearly broken. And now he wasn’t so broken anymore. Sharkey, he’d left before he could do the work. Maybe it was too hard and too painful and too impossible to do what Rafael had done.

I wondered if I had it in me. I wondered if I could say with conviction what Rafael had written:
I want to live.

I knew I wasn’t letting go. I knew I was still living in a small and dark room. But there was a door to the room. And a window. And I could see that there was a sky out there.

On Monday morning, I waited for Rafael and Amit to leave the room before I got up out of bed. I walked over to Rafael’s desk to look for his journal—but it wasn’t there. It was like looking for one of my dad’s bottles of bourbon, and discovering that all the bottles were gone. I didn’t know what to do, and, for an instant, Mr. Anxiety was back. I hated that guy. I couldn’t breathe and everything in my head was racing. I sat at my desk and forced myself to breathe. Susan said I could calm myself down if I concentrated.

So I concentrated.

I breathed in and then breathed out. I tried to pull my breath out from my feet up into my head. And after a few minutes, I could feel myself calmer. I took out my notebook and began writing:

Rafael is leaving tomorrow. He’s going back to wherever he came from. He lives in LA though he made a joke saying that nobody really lives in LA. Everybody just drives there. It wasn’t that funny a joke. Rafael is leaving tomorrow. Rafael is leaving tomorrow. Sharkey is gone. Maybe he’s dead by now. Mark went back to a sad marriage. Sharkey went back
to the streets. Rafael is going back home. He’s going be sober and he’s going to keep writing. He told me he was going to write a novel. I asked him about what. About this place, he said. But I knew that he was only joking. But I wish he would write a novel about this place because if he did, he would keep me in his head and I wanted to live in his head, to stay alive there.

I shut my notebook. I was too sad to write anymore.

At Group I didn’t say anything. My Check-in was easy: “No lies,” I said. That was a lie. “No secrets,” I said. That was a lie. I don’t know what went on in group. I just kept staring at the floor. Adam asked me if I wanted to give Lizzie feedback about something. I shook my head
no.
I was vaguely aware of the fact that Amit’s drawing of his addiction was being discussed. Adam asked if I had any feedback for Amit. I shook my head
no
.

At the end of group, we held hands in a circle like we always did. When Rafael reached for my hand I shook my head
no.
No.
I don’t want to fucking hold your hand
. That’s the look I gave him. I crossed my arms and locked them in place and looked down at the floor.

I didn’t go to any groups the rest of the day.

I hung out in Cabin 9 and stared at the calendar.

I lay in my bed and tried to make my brain go blank. I could do that. I could be blank. I could make myself numb. I knew how to do that. It was a skill. It was an art. One of the counseling assistants came into the room. “You should be at sessions,” he said. His voice was firm. He waited for some kind of response.

I looked at him blankly.

“You know there are consequences for missing sessions.”

The thought entered my head that I could attack this guy like I attacked the windshields of parked cars. I didn’t need a baseball bat. Hell no. I could just go for the guy. They’d throw me out. I could leave and—and then what?

The guy finally left the room.

I was glad. I knew that none of the therapists would bother me. I closed my eyes and took a breath, then another, then another. Somewhere
along in my breathing, I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was night. Amit was at his desk working on a painting.

Rafael was packing.

I watched them in silence. Rafael looked up and noticed I was awake. “Hi,” he said.

I waved.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“What?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Can I stop you?”

“You’re acting like a five-year-old.”

“Like you’d know.”

“I
would
know. I
do
know.” He had this fierce look in his face. “Refusing to talk—that’s what five-year-olds do when they’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

Amit peered over his desk. “Yes, you are. You’re one pissed-off dude.”

“Fuck you, Amit.”

Amit laughed. “Fuck you too, Zach.”

Rafael shot us both a look.

“Talk, Zach. Talk to me.”

“You are not the boss of me.”

Rafael shook his head. “I’m leaving tomorrow, Zach.”

I turned and faced the wall. I wanted all the words in the world to disappear. I wanted all the faces that had ever made me feel anything to disappear too. All of them.

I fell back asleep.

I dreamed that Rafael was sitting at the foot of my bed. He was singing softly and I had my eyes closed. But when I opened my eyes, I was awake. And Rafael wasn’t there.

I got up, put on my shoes and made sure I had cigarettes in the pocket of my coat. I walked out to the smoking pit. The wind had picked up and it was cold and I wondered if there were more storms left in this year’s winter. I wondered where Sharkey was and wondered if he’d gone back
home or if he was going to jail for stealing his father’s money or if he was out in some pool hall, conning some poor sucker into playing him a game of pool.

I wondered where Rafael was going.

I wondered why I couldn’t make myself talk to him.

As I reached the smoking pit, I noticed someone was standing there. For a second, I thought it was my brother and my heart started beating faster. I stopped, then moved a little closer. It was Amit. My heart grew calm again.

I took a cigarette and lit it. “You’re up late.”

“Yeah, couldn’t sleep. So you’re talking now, huh?”

“I’m not much of a talker.”

“You did okay when you told your story.”

“I don’t like to talk. I’m, well, you know, inarticulate.”

“That’s bullshit, Zach. You’re killing me.”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“Yes, it is. You just don’t want to talk about what’s fucking inside.”

“Oh, like you’re really good at that.”

“I suck at that. I suck at talking about what’s inside of me. But you don’t, Zach. You just—I don’t know. You just don’t want to, I guess. Ah, what the fuck do I know?” He lit another cigarette. “You want to know what I think? I think you don’t know how to say goodbye to Rafael. I think that fucking scares you to death, Zach. That’s what I think.”

“Thanks for the feedback.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

This is what I wanted to tell him—these are the words I wanted to say,
I’m a five-year-old boy who doesn’t know how to sing and the only songs I have ever heard, the only real songs I’ve ever heard, came from Mr. Garcia’s trumpet and Rafael’s voice and they didn’t teach me how to get at my own song. They didn’t. And I hate them. I hate them for loving me. I hate them for leaving me. They sang to me. And now I’m more alone than I have ever been. Yeah, Amit, I’m fucking scared.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t mean to be an asshole.”

We smoked the rest of our cigarettes in silence.

I have been keeping another secret.

I have imaginary conversations with people.

Sometimes I talk to my mom. I ask her why she’s so sad. I ask her if she ever tried not being sad. I ask her if there was a time before the sadness came and stayed. I ask her if she and Dad ever had a normal life, if they laughed and held hands and took walks. I ask her what it’s like just to live inside her head. I ask her if her head is big place or a small place, a scary place or a beautiful place. I ask her why she wanted to touch me like a husband. I ask her if she knew what she was doing or if it was the medications. I ask her if she loves me and I always feel bad when I ask her that because it makes me sound so desperate. I ask and ask and ask.

She never answers.

I talk to my dad. I say, “Hi, Dad.”

He is sitting in a chair with a drink in his hand. “Hi,” he says. His voice sounds dull and far away.

I ask him, “What would it be like if you didn’t drink every day? What would it be like inside you?”

He just looks at me.

He doesn’t answer me either.

And I talk to Santiago. “What made you have all that hate inside you?”

“Mom and Dad are all fucked up—haven’t you noticed?”

“Yes,” I say. “Are you getting back at them?”

“Something like that.”

“But what about me? Why do you
hate me?
What did I do?”

And then I hear him say, “You were born.”

I am remembering having all these imaginary conversations. If they’re not real, why do they make me so sad?

I’ve lived eighteen years in a season called
sadness
where the weather never changed. I guess I believed it was the only season I deserved. I don’t know how but something started to happen. Something around me. Something inside me. Something beautiful. Something really, really beautiful.

Adam took the copper medal out of a small box. Time to say goodbye. To Rafael who’d been here for sixty days, Rafael who had been my roommate, Rafael who had calmed me down from all my bad dreams and sang to me, Rafael who had stayed alert for Sharkey and Amit, the sleepwalkers.

I stared at the medal that Adam was dangling from a string. And then Lizzie took the medal and started talking. “I press into this medal all my…” I couldn’t listen. I was half aware that people were talking. I kept staring at the floor. I felt Maggie nudging me, handing me the medal. I kept my eyes on the floor.

I looked at Rafael. Then I moved my eyes back to the stain on the carpet.

The room was quiet. I heard Adam’s voice but the words were jumbled and I could hear a distant echo in my ears. And then his voice disappeared and I felt alone, like I was in a dark and silent room and there was nothing in the world except the darkness. I was a just a shadow. But Adam’s voice pushed itself in the room. The voice felt like a hand that was tugging at my arm. “Zach? Zach?”

I was in the room again even though I knew I’d been there all along. I looked at Adam, then at Rafael. And then I heard myself say, “Do I have to say something?”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

“I can’t.” I kept focusing on the stain on the carpet. I wanted to find a bat and a windshield. That’s what I wanted.

“I’ll miss you, Zach.” Rafael’s voice was softer than it had ever been. I wondered why he was speaking because that wasn’t in the goodbye rules. The goodbye rules were that you listened to what everybody was pressing into the goodbye medal. Rafael was breaking the rules and I wanted to yell at him and I opened my mouth to speak but it seemed like it had been sewn shut. Rafael smiled and whispered, “I love you, Zach. You know that, don’t you?”

He said that in front of the whole group and it just wasn’t right and my lips kept trembling and then I swallowed real hard and made myself talk because I wanted my voice to be stronger than my trembling. “You don’t. You don’t love me.”