Pictures of You (8 page)

             
I managed to write in my diary once during this bout of depression:

Dear Abby,

             
You suck for leaving me! I hate you.

             
(Okay, you know I don’t hate you.)

***

              I dreamed of Abby every night. Three times I dreamed of her, John and me looking down the mouth of the Grand Canyon. They would take each other by the hand and jump, falling, for what felt like forever, down the endless red abyss, leaving me behind, alone. Each time I woke up screaming, followed by violent sobbing. They left me. They were gone. I missed John, but mostly I was mad at him. But I ached for Abby. Sometimes I missed her so much, it hurt to breathe.

             
When my Twinkie stash ran out, it gave me the much needed kick in the butt to finally rejoin civilization, because I decided I wouldn’t be able to quit cold-turkey. I’d have to buy more.

             
I took a long, tepid bath, using aroma therapy oils. I shaved my caterpillar legs. I gave my pores a deep cleanse with a Dead Sea black mud mask. The
dead
part comforted me. No sharks would be popping out of the jar. I stocked up on all sorts of fruits and veggies from every color of the rainbow. Mom would be proud. I went to see my therapist. “You’re having panic attacks,” Rose said after I told her about my breathing problems. She scribbled a prescription for generic-brand anxiety pills. I started doing squats and lunges to undo the binging damage—the bathroom scales smugly informed me of a six pound weight gain. I called NYU, where I’d planned to start my secondary education this fall and told them I wouldn’t be able to attend until January and would that be a problem? Because I needed to sort things out. I even bought a nice bamboo plant housed in a ceramic elephant to sit in the living room windowsill.

             
When my last minuscule paycheck arrived in the mail, I knew it was time to go job hunting. I still had the check from my car insurance stashed away somewhere, but I knew if I cashed it, it would be gone in no time. I decided to hang onto the money until I collected the courage to drive again, which would be soon (hopefully). My electric and phone bills loomed over me like giant, hungry spiders and I was dangerously close to losing my apartment. And then there was the roommate issue I managed to largely ignore up until now. The truth: rent was killing me. While I did live in East Williamsburg, an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn, a place starving artists and musicians flocked to, attracted to the cheaper rent, I still struggled to scrape by and that was
with
Abby paying half the rent.

             
Just as I began looking for a roommate in the classifieds, there was an eerie knock on the door. It was very Edgar Allan Poe. My first thought was: It must be Hannah. She was back to claim the scrapbooks and guitar I’d stolen. I never would’ve guessed, not in a million years, who was on the other side of my grimy apartment door.

             
“Mary?” There she was: Abby’s
other
best friend, my arch enemy, armed with an old suit case, a grocery sack crammed with clothes, a sleeping bag and a pillow. Her zebra hair—alternating chunks of black and white—was tied back in a messy knot and heavy crimson lipstick colored her pretzel shaped lips.

             
“Hello, Abby’s friend,” she said, dropping the sack of clothes. She smelled faintly of hairspray, musky perfume and pot.

             
“Having you been smoking pot? What are you doing here?”

             
Tiger strutted into the room, wondering the same thing, his pale green eyes inquisitive. Tiger remembered Mary. Mary was around a lot. Usually when I was gone, at work or out with John.

             
“I don’t do pot. My roommates did. Drugs are stupid.” She squatted in her black velvet dress to greet Tiger on her level, scratch his furry neck. Tiger purred in appreciation. Mary purred back.

             
“Okay, okay. Good. But what do you think you’re doing here? For Abby I’ll let you stay for one night, okay? Just one—”

             
“I’m moving in.”

             
“Excuse me?”

             
Mary grabbed the sack and brushed past me, sneaking in like a yucky street rodent.

             
“Tiger, there’s an invader in our home. Attack!” I said. Tiger looked bored with the idea and curled up in a perfect circle on the recliner, ready for another nap. Maybe I needed to get a dog. A watch dog.

             
Mary wandered down the hall, her boots clunking against the wood floor, peeked into Abby’s old room, backtracked to my old room and dropped her stuff inside the door. “You moved things around.”

             
“What happened to your old place?”

             
“Got kicked out,” she said nonchalantly, plopping down on the couch. 

             
Should I have bothered to ask
why
they kicked her out? “Um, you can’t live here.”

             
She shrugged, made bored clicking noises with her tongue. “Sure I can.”

             
“No, you can’t,” I said firmly, hands on hips.

             
“You need rent money, don’t you?” She began digging through her purse.

             
“Yeah, I guess.”

             
“Okay, then.” More digging. She began tossing things onto the couch. Dark lipsticks. Tissues. A wallet covered in lace and metal studs. An old iPod. Scissors. Hair spray. A little
Emily the Strange
doll. How much crap did she keep in there? She was worse than Abby.

             
I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out. Rent money. I needed some pronto. I guessed it wouldn’t hurt to let Mary stay for a few days. “Do you have money? I’ll need some up front.”

             
She found what she was apparently looking for. A white envelope. She ripped it open, pulled out some cash. Counted the weathered bills and handed it all over. I wasn’t going to ask how she got it. “There’s more where that came from. Just give me a few days.”

             
“Fine,” I said, snatching the money.

             
“What’re you eating?” She grabbed my box of cold chow mein noodles and finished them off, making soft growling sounds. Noises of contentment.

             
Reluctantly I sat beside her on the couch, keeping plenty of space between us. I flipped on the TV. The nature channel filled the screen, specifically animal’s mating rituals. Mary laughed her loud obnoxious laugh when a male white rhino mounted the female.

             
Ten minutes into the show Mary looked over and said, “I miss her.”

             
It surprised me. Mary and I weren’t in the habit of swapping feelings. Actually, over the years we’d exchanged few words. Less than a teacup full. I sighed, shoved my hands under my thighs. “I do, too. I miss her a lot.”

             
“It, like, literally hurts here,” she said pointing to her chest.

             
“I know. For me, too.”

             
“You know she ultra loved you, September. She talked about you
all
the time.” She dangled the last noodle in the air and let it fall into her mouth.

             
“Really?” All sorts of emotions rushed through me like a waterfall, too many to name. Abby was great that way. She tossed these amazing compliments at you like candy at a parade. She recognized the good in others and was confident enough to say something. I’d kill to hear all the things she’d said about me. Knowing she spoke of me so much to her other best friend eased my longtime jealousy—just a little. Suddenly I didn’t hate Mary so much.

             
“Really. She went on about you so much, it made me puke,” she said, making a face.

             
What did she say? I wanted to ask, but stopped myself.

             
She said, “I still can’t believe she’s dead.”

             
“Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

8

              Three months after Abby died I found a job as a janitor at a stuffy office building in Manhattan. Judge if you must, but I’m not above cleaning toilets. A musician once sang, ‘It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it.’ And anyway, a job is a job.

             
At the interview an enthusiastic man eating Red Vines said I would be cleaning two dozen restrooms each night. I couldn’t help but notice the huge wet marks under his arms and yellow beads dripping from his head. I did my best not to stare and politely laughed at all his jokes. He was skeptical of my job application.

             
“Cashier at Anderson Art and Frame. Dishwasher at Jo’s Brewery. Hotel Clerk at Comfort Inn. Flower Delivery Person at Basketful of Love…Looks like you don’t keep a job long,” he’d said around a mouth full of red candy. It was true. My personal record was five months. Being a free spirit and all, I got antsy if I stayed any longer. Work just seemed to suck the creativity out of me like a zealous vacuum. Ideally, I’ll become a well-known, highly collected photographer and I’ll quit working on the side all together. Despite my sketchy past, I was hired on the spot. “You’ll be working with Chris. Be here tomorrow at five and he’ll show you the ropes.”

***

              If you could overlook some acne scars, Chris, who was around my age, was a pleasant looking guy. Kind of cute, even. He was big-boned but not fat and he kept his butterscotch hair pulled back into a ponytail. Something about his demeanor reminded me of a super hero—I’m not really sure why. He wore a blue jumpsuit that played up his wide shoulders. I couldn’t help but stare at them as he mopped.

             
“September, huh? That’s a name you don’t hear every day. Artsy parents?” Chris said, dunking the mop into a yellow bucket and then wringing it out. The room smelled of urine and coffee and Pine-Sol.

             
“Far from it. My parents are actually pretty boring. They named me and my sister, April, after the months we were born in. I had a brother named December. He died at birth.”

             
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, staring at my shoes. I followed his gaze, wondering if I stepped in dog crap or something.

             
“They considered naming us after our grandmothers, but Fanny and Dorothy were a stretch,” I added, mumbling now.

             
Chris unlocked a closet and tossed at me a blue jumper, one like the one he wore. I slipped it on over my clothes. It smelled of chemicals but thankfully not of sweat. I’d take it home and wash it first thing. Chris and I got a real kick out of my little body drowning in endless blue fabric. Apparently it previously belonged to a short guy who weighed nearly three hundred pounds. I’d have to wear it until the company got around to ordering me a smaller one, which could be never, Chris warned. Wearing it made me feel like a big blue Martian.

             
Armed with some heavy duty cleaner, Windex, a scrubby thing and a rag, Chris said, “Let’s start with the sinks. It’s not geometry or anything, but there’s a cool trick to making them sparkle.”

             
We talked and talked and talked while we worked and it didn’t take long for me to notice Chris was the nicest guy in New York City. You hear that about people, but with him it was actually true. On weekends he worked as a volunteer at an animal shelter, one that refused to euthanize unwanted pets. As a result, he had a handful of dogs and cats at his place at any given time, giving them a comfortable home until he could find permanent placements. Animals were his passion. He was currently attending NYU to become a vet. He recycled religiously. He opened doors for me—to all twenty-four restrooms—and said “please” and “thank you” excessively. He had a sweet, shy smile that made me melt like caramel.

             
“September, you have sad eyes,” he said to me on the third day.

             
“Do I?” I stopped wiping the mirror for a moment to study them. I guess they
were
sad. I didn’t realize I was that transparent. I mean, most days I tried to cement an all-is-well-with-the-world smile on my face. But apparently my eyes were a dead giveaway. I may as well have been walking around with a florescent orange tag on my forehead that read:
Hi, my name is September. My best friend died AND my boyfriend cheated on me with my sister
.
So yeah, you could say my life basically sucks.