Sweet (18 page)

Golden, soft, perfect as my grandmother’s madeleines usually were, I never loved them as much as I loved that first batch of failed and browned cookies I baked with her.

And they bring back another moment, when I brought a package of madeleines home from a twee French bakery hiding on one of the corners near the home I shared with Andy. He was mystified by the delicate things and laughed at my prissy insistence that we make a good pot of tea and use the nice teacups and saucers, dip the cookies and take tiny bites and try to act like civilized people for once (read: not like the busy, irritated New Yorkers we’d become). It was a very small moment in a very big life I shared with Andy, but I still cling
to the memory: that giant man, gamely and delicately holding the little sponge cookie above his steaming cup of Earl Grey, his voice softening as he eased into the quiet meditation of a ritual that was new to us.

This is what it is to be haunted: to stand with one foot in the past and one in the present, always trying to balance oneself between two radically different but simultaneous experiences. It’s perpetual culture shock. It’s always living with dissonance.

So many people I know spend their entire youths struggling to grow away from their families, from the places and people that made them
them.
But once one does manage escape, I’ve learned from experience, one spends one’s time trapped in nostalgia for what’s irrevocably gone—for what one once fled.
It’s like what They say: Leaving only makes you miss what you’ve left; wherever you go, there you are; there’s no place like home.

*

We are certain you expect, by now, this moment, when Jules walks into the apartment to find Teddy perched on the edge of the couch, a few hastily stuffed duffel bags leaning against his legs. The only person who did not see this moment approaching is Jules himself. Torn as he was between looking behind him and keeping his chin up, he didn’t see what loomed in front of him.

Softly, Teddy shrugged. “I’m leaving.” When Jules started forward, Teddy held up his hand to stop him. “Just for a little while,” he said. “I can’t live here with Andy. And you can’t seem to let him leave yet.”

At first, Jules assumed Teddy was talking about the dog, but the long look Teddy gave him, the serious knit of his brow, told him otherwise.

“I’ve let him go,” Jules insisted.

“I read your blog. You haven’t.”

Jules was stunned into silence and then lunged into action, reaching for the duffel bags before Teddy pushed him away and he was left standing empty-handed and exasperated.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jules said.

“Neither do I,” said Teddy, his voice barely wavering. “But we can’t all be here together; one of us has to go. Whenever I get out of the shower, there he is in the mirror. When I make coffee, he pops out from behind the milk in the refrigerator. I feel him staring at us in bed, sometimes; I know he’s there, watching me, even if it’s too dark to see him. It keeps me awake. I’m never alone with you anymore.”

Jules felt the floor seesaw beneath him. He felt as if he were ill or drunk or had missed a step while running down the stairs, and was tumbling down with no hope of stopping himself before the inevitable, painful crash to the ground. There was nothing onto which he could hold, no solidity to grab. He tried to catch Teddy’s eye, but Teddy kept his gaze focused resolutely on the edge of the rug.

“So we’ll get an exorcist or a priest or something! We can move to a new apartment! We can leave the city!”

“I don’t think any of that will work,” Teddy said quietly. “I think
you
have to do something. I don’t know what it is, but I think
you
have to be the one to do it.”

He shrugged, slipped his hands through the straps of the duffel bags at his feet. “Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you just need to be alone with him. Maybe this isn’t right after all.”

“You can’t go!’ Jules shouted, fear welling up in his throat. “You can’t go! And you can’t leave me alone!”

Teddy stood, his bags gathered in his hands, and gently kissed Jules’s chin. “I can’t stay,” he said. “And you’re not alone. That’s the problem.”

The roar of what must have been his own blood rushing in his ears was so loud, Jules barely heard Teddy say goodbye, barely heard him promise that he would call the next day, before the door closed behind him for good.

When Teddy had gone, when the apartment had quieted and gone blue-black with early evening, Jules finally moved from his spot on the couch. He took Andy-the-dog for his evening walk, filled his bowl with kibble, and then calmly turned to face the empty apartment and uproot everything: He knocked every book from its shelf, pulled the photographs down from the walls, threw the shoes from his closet and pulled the sheets from the bed until the whole place was chaos, tornadoed, at once too empty and too full.

When it was finished, he looked up to find he’d completely dismantled his quiet little home. He’d broken most of his dishes, the little blue glass lamp was shattered and the curtains barely clung, askew, to the windows. He tripped his way through the rubble to his bed and collapsed onto the bare mattress, too exhausted to undress or find the blankets he’d thrown somewhere, and stared into the empty dark, waiting to fall asleep.

Fifteen

Teddy spent the first part
of the evening wandering. It felt natural, to cast himself out and walk the blackening city with his bags banging against his hip, to speak to no one and to slip, unnoticed, between the cars and people. He could be almost nothing. He could be barely there.

He bought a bitter cup of coffee from the corner store and sipped at it to keep himself going, despite its unpleasant, burned taste—it became, for him, a test of will. He could endure it, even welcome it, watery and awful as it was.

He walked for what seemed the entire afternoon, all the way uptown, through the park near its edge, where he could still hear the groan and squeal of traffic from the streets beyond the stone wall. He liked balancing on the edge like this, between the deep dark of the trees on one side and the flat, lit-up black of the street on the other. His bags banged cheerlessly against his thigh with every movement, so that he was keenly aware of every step he took: With each slap of the duffel
on his hip, he moved farther and farther away from Jules and the warm, blue rooms of the apartment on Jane Street.

When real night started to ease in and the city rhythm seemed to shift to something more frantic and electric, Teddy figured he’d better find a place to be for the night. Too tired to keep walking, too sore to listen to the traffic noise anymore, he called ‘Trice.

*

“Did you have a fight?” ‘Trice asked, pulling the bags from his arms and setting them near the door.

The place was a studio, one large room, which ‘Trice had sectioned off into tiny quadrants—bedroom, kitchen, living room, office—by hanging ratty-looking tie-dyed blankets from ceiling to floor. The whole room had a provisional, improvised quality. The mismatched furniture (beaten plaid couch, milk crate bookshelves, two wooden chairs draped with blankets and pillows for comfort) and the collection of illegibly scribbled
notes decorating the walls, all gave the apartment the atmosphere of a temporary hideout for a half-crazy, unemployed superhero or a whole-crazy, misanthropic conspiracy theorist.

“No, no fight,” Teddy said. “I just couldn’t stay there.”

‘Trice gave him a sidelong glance as she pulled a couple of tumblers from the kitchen cupboard and set them on the counter next to a bottle of whiskey.

“That is the worst explanation in the history of explanations,” she said.

“I promise, ‘Trice, I’ll explain everything, I will, but tonight I am really so shot, I just can’t. Can we just—
” he gestured limply toward the glasses, hoping she would, uncharacteristically, let him off the hook, just this once.

She nodded at him, slopped a little of the brown liquid into each glass and then held hers up and said, “To oblivion and beyond, then,” and sucked the whiskey down in one go.

“Thanks,” Teddy mumbled, and drank.

*

Cleaning the apartment exhausted Jules, but he had to keep moving, to keep sweeping up the broken glass and replacing the books on their shelves. If he stayed still, if he stopped for even a moment, Andy-the-man would move from the corner where he lingered, silently watching, sympathetically cup Jules’s shoulders in his large hands and shake his head sadly.

Jules righted the curtains on their rod, fluffed the pillows on the couch, refolded blankets and soothed the dog, who
followed him around with a focus that was probably more desperation than curiosity. Andy-the-man stood in the corner by the windows and watched him work. With every passing moment, Andy seemed to grow more wooden and solid, while Jules felt his hands slip through the things of the world with watery fluidity.

He knew it was impossible, what he felt happening—that, moment by moment, he was fading, becoming light and air, insubstantial as a memory. Still, he checked twice upon passing the mirror to make sure he was reflected, and found himself there, bruised eyes boring out from his too-pale face, his lips too red, his whole body impossibly present and real.

*

‘Trice wobbled as she held up the half-empty bottle to Teddy. “Another?”

“Too rich for my blood,” Teddy sighed, and covered his glass with his hand—which, he noticed, was wobbling too. He squinted at her. “You look like a Rorschach test, all blotchy.”

“You don’t look so great yourself. Plus, you’re being an ass. No more for you,” ‘Trice said. “We totally ate the worm.”

“That’s tequila.”

“Duh. Figure of speech.”
‘Trice rolled her eyes. “So, why were you on my doorstep, my darling Stray Gay? Why are you on my couch? Or half on my couch? You’re dripping off there like a sea slug.”

Teddy shifted a bit, so that his shoulders weren’t pressing so hard into the floor, and glared at ‘Trice. “Like you even know what a sea slug looks like. Besides, it feels good on my back.” And, he didn’t add, everything looked a little less horrible upside down.

“Get your feet out of my face and tell me what you’re doing here, dripping off my couch and drunk as a…” ‘Trice waved her hand in the air. “Drunk as an I-don’t-know-what.”

Teddy smirked. “Good one. You must be drunk if you’re at a loss for words.”

“And you must be stalling, if you’re giving me lip when you’re in such a vulnerable position, little one,” ‘Trice growled back, jabbing his unprotected belly with a bony finger. “Spill.”

Teddy sighed and slid the rest of the way off the couch and onto the floor, where he laid on his back. “I don’t think he’s over his ex.”

“Andy?”

“Yeah. Every time he calls his dog, it’s like Andy’s there again.”

“You know he didn’t name the dog after—”

“Yeah, I know.” Teddy sighed. “But it doesn’t make a difference.”

“Well, that’s on you, then. But,” ‘Trice said, and Teddy knew from the furrow of her brow that this would be no platitude, that she would take him seriously. “But, but, but he was completely wrecked when Andy died, I know that. And for months after, it was still always Andy-this, Andy-that.”

“Yeah.” Teddy sighed again. “I knew that.”

“But he hasn’t been talking about Andy since he met you.”

“Believe me, Andy’s still around.”

“He’s always going to be around,” ‘Trice said, patting his thigh. “And Jules is terrible with people. He’s much better with pastries. He has a very good, longstanding relationship with sugar.”

“He belongs there,” Teddy said mournfully.

“Andy? True, he will probably always be there.”

“I don’t—” he started, but quickly bit his mouth shut.

‘Trice waited, then gestured and waited again, but Teddy was silent. “Belong there?” she finished for him. He nodded.

“Cookie, belonging is overrated. It’s just another obligation. A rolling stone gathers no moss, right?” When Teddy responded with a shaky inhalation, ‘Trice changed her tack. “But it probably feels pretty good, anyway.”

“It feels pretty good. And now I don’t have a job, I don’t have a place to live, I don’t have Jules. I don’t have anything.”

Teddy poked absently at the thick weave of the cushion under him, too embarrassed to look at ‘Trice. He heard her shift and settle close to his side.

“You’ve got a couch,” ‘Trice told him. “And tequila, and this girl.” She sloshed the remaining contents of the bottle while pointing to herself and leering slightly.

“I’ll take the couch,” he said. “But that’s whiskey.”

“Worm,” she mumbled cryptically.

Teddy didn’t say anything. ‘Trice’s face had gone watery; her hair was waving softly like leaves of seaweed. In the dark, she looked pillowed and beckoning, so he fell into her chest and closed his eyes
; her dreads clacked gently around his shoulders.

“You’re wavy,” he slurred into her neck.

“You’re drunk,” she shot back. But she still hugged him tightly, and it was long minutes until he fell asleep against her shoulder.

***

For two weeks, Jules crept around the apartment like a spooked child, refusing to look into the mirrors or open the cabinet doors. Andy was everywhere, and if Jules dared to look up, he’d find him leaning against the shower stall or crouching in the back of the refrigerator or sitting still as stone on the couch in the living room. He was always silent, always waiting, though his mouth gaped uselessly, as if he were trying to speak and couldn’t find words. And so, for two weeks, Jules combed his hair and brushed his teeth without a mirror, and fixed his early morning coffee and smoothed his clothes while keeping his eyes trained carefully on his own shoes. His neck began to hurt from looking down.

In the rare moments he managed to drowse, he was quickly awakened by Andy-the-dog’s frantic barking at something—or someone—Jules could never see. Exhausted, he lumbered around like a zombie. Once, he could have sworn he heard Andy’s tuneless singing from the bathroom; once, it was the gentle brush of Andy’s hand at his cheek that woke him. Each time, he would look up wildly to find he could see nothing there at all, not even the dimmest shadow. It seemed as though Andy-the-dog and Andy-the-man were conspiring to keep him awake until he died of exhaustion. His vision swam; his ears rang. His house was too full, yet he felt entirely alone.

“I miss you,” he told the ghost one night as he sat on the couch and stared at his knees. Andy-the-man sat beside him, unmoving, his legs awkwardly folded underneath him; he didn’t seem to hear. “Sometimes I forget you’re gone, and I half expect you to walk in the door from work and kick off your dirty shoes and get mud all over the kitchen floor and leave your umbrella on the wooden bench, even though I’ve told you a million times that bench is untreated wood and it’s going to warp or split if you do that.”

Andy tilted his head and looked at Jules
balefully.

“You left too soon, and I never got to look you in the eyes when I said goodbye,” Jules said. “And you didn’t even say goodbye to me. You just slept and slept.”

Andy attempted to cover Jules’s hand with his own, but it was like trying to hide a rock under bright starlight, and the gleam on Jules’s pale skin that was Andy’s touch was like a spotlight, and only made his hand look emptier, smaller and more alone. He closed his hand into a fist.

“I miss you, but I think you hanging around is making everything harder,” Jules admitted. Andy looked at his knees and nodded.

“I think you have to go,” Jules said.

Andy simply smiled sadly and brought his hand up to brush
Jules’
s cheek. Jules let it pass, even though he knew it wasn’t much of an answer.

*

Andy didn’t go.

If anything, he clung to the air around Jules. When Jules sat on the couch in the evening to read a novel, with Andy-the-dog flopped
sleepily in his lap, the cushion next to him would sink, a tingling-light
arm would drop around his shoulders, and Andy-the-man would
be curled there at his side. When he pulled back the curtains to let the
sunset’s orange light into the room, Andy stood sheepishly, revealed suddenly, peeping from behind the drapery. When Jules cooked his dinner, Andy hovered near the salt. When Jules showered, Andy slowly appeared through the bathroom steam. When he slept, Andy kept watch.

His house was full, with Andy there, but too quiet; Teddy’s absence stung, like cold water on the gums after getting a tooth knocked out.

Nights were the worst, long and empty without Teddy. The bed was cold, and Jules’s suppers were lonely. In the early mornings, as Jules dressed to leave for the bakery, Andy sat on the edge of the bed, shimmering and gray in the predawn light, watching. Jules could see right through him to Teddy’s empty side of the bed: the sheets tumbled, the pillows askew, everything slightly grayer through the light of Andy’s image.

The morning Jules woke to find Andy-the-man curled against his back in bed, one translucent arm draped across Jules’s waist, was the last morning he could endure Andy’s strange and silent presence-not-presence and the gap left by Teddy’s absence. He sprang up with a shout of fear, frantically brushing the clammy feeling of Andy’s not-quite-touch from his arms. But when he looked around, Andy was still there, silently cowering against the head of the bed, staring at him with huge, dark eyes.

Terrified and sad as Jules clearly was, Andy still would not go.

***

“Short stuff! Half-pint! Volkswagen Golf!”

“Golf?” Teddy asked, peering out from behind the newspapers under which he was buried.

“It’s a compact car,” ‘Trice said, roping her locks into a knot on top of her head. “I was doing a thing.”

“Brilliant,” Teddy said dryly. “You know, I’m not short so much as you are gargantuan, you sky-scraping Godzilla.”

“Genius. I’ve never heard anyone comment on my height before. Plus, very bitter.”

“Sequoia,” Teddy said. “Empire Snot Building.”

‘Trice sighed. “Go on, I know you’ve got more. Get it out of your system, my
pipsqueaky pocket-gay.”

“Giraffe,” he said. “Lesbian Lamppost.”

“Done?” ‘Trice asked, throwing herself down onto the bench by the door.

“Jerky Green Giant,” he said and then sighed. “All done.”

“Good. Why are you under all that paper?” ‘Trice struggled into a pair of heavy black boots that were a bit ridiculous for the weather.

“Jobs.”

She cuffed him lightly on the back of the head as she passed on her way to the front door. “Don’t look in the
newspaper,
you dork! What are you, ninety? Is this the Great Depression? Should I leave you a penny to buy a loaf of bread? We’re a paperless society in this modern world! I thought you only
looked
like a man of 1922!”