The Me You See (3 page)

 It’s just Stefia’s room.

It’s just Stefia’s room.

It’s just…

Why can’t I bring myself to turn the damn handle?

“What are you doing?” says a voice behind me, and I turn to
see Aunt Melanie standing there with that look of pity and disgust. “Are you
trying to get into Stefia’s room?”

“You act like I’m breaking into something. It’s just my
sister’s room.”

“She’s not here to tell you to stay out.”

“She wouldn’t if she were here. Stefia always let me come
in.”

“Well, the door is locked, so you can’t get in anyway,”
Melanie says. “Your dad locked it the day after Stefia died. He was paranoid
about the reporters. I thought you knew that.”

I’d known Stefia’s door was closed, but until now, I’d
honestly not tried to get into her things. My hand was still resting on the
doorknob, and I pushed the lever down just to prove to myself that Melanie
wasn’t lying.

“Didn’t believe me?” she asks with a smirk when the lever
doesn’t move.

“The only person I ever believed is dead.”

“Yeah. Well.” Melanie shakes her head, tossing a look
towards me that clearly conveys
you don’t have to be so dramatic.

I shoot her a look back that clearly conveys
you don’t
have to be such a bitch.

“Honey,” she starts aloud, “how are you doing? Has anyone
talked to you about how you’re feeling?”

Melanie works as an RN at the hospital. At some point she
decided she wanted to go back to school as a psych major and she turned into
the family shrink. It has always been mildly nauseating, even more so now that
there is actually something psychologically distressing to discuss.

Or at least try to discuss. Because generally speaking, no
one ever says anything.

“How are you, honey?” she repeats, as if changing the word
she emphasizes will coerce me into answering.

I shrug my shoulders. My phone vibrates in the pocket of my
hoodie with a text message. I decide against checking it.

“Naomi, you can be real with me,” she says with the most
plastic inflection I’ve yet heard from a human being. “Are you mad? Are you
sad? Are you confused?”

I’m tired of her. I’m sixteen and she talks to me like I
would talk to a puppy.

“Melanie, I just don’t know. Okay? I’m not trying to hide
anything. I think it is okay to simply not know how you feel when you’re headed
to your sister’s funeral…”

“It’s okay to be mad, Naomi,” she says, making an effort to
move closer to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay to be…”

If Stefia were here she would know what to say. If Stefia
were here, she’d tell me how to respond. If Stefia were here…

…she’d tell me to speak up.

And then, as if Stefia is standing right behind me,
cheering me on, I explode.

“Mad, Melanie?” I yell, smacking her hand away and slamming
mine down on the railing. “Is that the best word you can come up with? Do you
need a goddamn thesaurus?”

“Naomi,” she says, sympathy washing from her face, “you
don’t need to yell.”

“And sad? Yeah, that’s a big word to explain how I’m
feeling. Sure, Melanie. I’m sad.”

My tone was suddenly mocking and sarcastic and Melanie
wasn’t sure how to respond. She looked down the stairway; I assumed to shoot
some
Poor Naomi It’s so sad what a shame
look to a concerned someone at
the bottom of the stairs.

“Confused?” I continue. “Are we talking to two year olds?
There are better words to explain this, Melanie! Mad is when you crack the
screen on your phone. Confused is trying to figure out Algebra. But this? Come
on, Melanie...”

“I wasn’t trying to be condescending.”

“How about trying to be fucking real?”

“Naomi!”

Aunt Melanie slaps her pink finger-tipped palm over her
mouth, like she’s never heard me curse before. In everyone’s head I’m still
seven-years-old with a missing front tooth and braids playing with My Little
Pony dolls. They all want to know how I feel, but I think they want to hear it
from a seven-year-old—with appropriate, easy to digest terms that can be dealt
with simply and then ignored with a
run along and
play
pat on the
head.

Well, fuck. My sister died. Someone shot her on stage in a
theater.

Fuck.

That’s how I feel.

“I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re looking for,
Melanie,” I continue, with quiet intensity. “I don’t know how to explain how I
feel after someone splattered my sister’s brains all over the same stage she’s
been acting on for all these years. I don’t know how to feel about that,
Melanie.”

Melanie quietly looks at the floor and moves her toe around
inside her high heels.

“Do
you
?” I ask.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, shaking her head. “I’m
really sorry you have to go through this.”

My phone vibrates again and I know it’s someone else asking
how I feel. What they can do. How they can help. What they can bring. And I
just don’t know how to answer because no one has invented the words yet for how
I am feeling. No one has written or spoken or even thought them up. Because
those people who invent words only make up words to describe the feelings for
things that are supposed to happen.

Not things like this.

Melanie turns carefully on her black shiny heels to head
back down the stairs.

 “Numb,” I say, out of the blue.

“Excuse me?” Melanie stops on the stairs and turns back.

“Numb,” I repeat. “I feel kind of numb.”

She nods.

“I guess that makes sense,” she says.

I want to tell Melanie that it doesn’t matter to me if it
makes sense or not. I wasn’t saying anything to appease her, or anyone else for
that matter. The only thing that really matters is what actually is. Because
that’s what Stefia always told me.

Perhaps I should put that up as a meme on Facebook. A picture
of a tree or a sunset or a dog or a snow covered barn with the words
It is
what it is
.

But your sister is dead,
they
will say.
Two shots to the chest and one to the head and she’s dead. Don’t
you even care?

I do care. I care more than anyone would understand. But it
is what it is. And without a time machine or some magical wand, what’s happened
can’t be changed.

And so we deal with what is.

And this is what is.

Melanie turns to walk back downstairs and I return to my
closet. I choose a long black pencil skirt, a black shimmery tank, and a black
sweater with sequins.  Everything hangs on me. Nothing fits right anymore. I
pull on black boots. Black hoops. I set a black hat on my strawberry blonde
hair.

I can almost hear Stefia teasing me. I went through a phase
awhile back when I would only wear black. Stefia would always shake her head
and say
looks like you’re headed to a funeral.

Well…ha.

I don’t mean funny ha.

I mean, ironic ha.

Headed to a funeral.

As put together as I’ll ever be all day, I descend the
stairs to find that everyone who was in the house before are already in their
cars and steering out of the driveway. Dad is waiting for me in the car with
Aunt Melanie.

I told them last night I could drive myself, but they
wouldn’t hear of it. They were too concerned with how I felt. How I was
handling things.

It is what it is.

I adjust the waist of my skirt and check myself in the
mirror before grabbing a coat to shield me from the chilly March air. Then I
turn back.

The caramel rolls.

I backpedal into the kitchen and reach for the pan baked
with love and given in discomfort. I wrap my fingers around one of the sticky,
gooey rolls. The pan smells divine and I’m glad I remembered they were there.
Because honestly, after a month of not eating more than a Kit Kat, a few dollar
buns, and a slice of pizza, I’m hungry. And people need to stop ignoring how
they feel.

And then they need to speak up.

I remember when I found out my wife was dying.

It seems like just yesterday when Lindsey felt mostly fine,
but a little dizzy. She waved it off as dehydration from our hiking trip. A
week later the headaches began. Then she couldn’t see out of her left eye.

“Maybe you should see a doctor,” I suggested.

Cancer.
That’s such an ugly word. How
do you get terminal cancer when you’re 38? How is it that you’re on a rock
climbing adventure in June, and in July you’re given six weeks to live?

Six weeks.

At first we pretended nothing was happening. I have no
shame in admitting that because I know everyone lives with their own secret
elephant that they completely ignore from time to time. Like, you know your
elephant is there, because—let’s face it—it’s an elephant. But after a while,
it’s almost as if you no longer see it. You cling to some stupid idea that if
you just close your eyes long enough, you can be powerful enough to wish it
away.

After that stopped working, we did the same thing every
couple with a terminal half does: we went around doing all the things we wished
we would have done before we realized time is finite and runs out.

We went to a boys’ choir concert at the mall, and a rainy,
cold ball game at the new field with lights so bright they looked like
spaceships descending upon us.  She got her hair cut short and dyed it purple
so it would look cool in case it started to fall out. She bought pieces for a
quilt she’d never finish.  She went to church. She sat up late eating pickled
fish on crackers. She treated herself to giant mugs of full-fat hot cocoa.

One morning about four weeks after her diagnosis, she sat
next to me with her fingers curled around my thigh and said, “I want to go see
the play that my niece is in.”

Normally, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Under any other
circumstances, seeing a play would have been just one more adventure we
attacked full force.

“I thought you hated the theater,” I said. Like it mattered.

“I do,” Lindsey responded, “but I love Stefia.” Because it
did matter.

Lindsey hadn’t seen Stefia in almost four years. Drama
sparked by the so-called
elective disappearance
of Stefia’s
mother—Lindsey’s sister—had unintentionally mushroomed into a discomfort
between everyone in Stefia’s extended family. At first, no one knew what to say
to Stefia or her sisters. And then, well…you know how it is. The longer you go
without saying something, the less you have to say. And four years later, after
no one has said anything, you realize how much those Elephants can mess things
up without even trying.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll go to the show.”

And so I bought us tickets for
Taken by the Reigns
at the Crystal Plains Theater and we dressed up like we were seeing the
President. I rented a tux and she wore a formal. It would be a night to
remember. Everyone stared when we walked in but we didn’t care. Because you
just don’t when you know that time is running out.

Now, I don’t profess to know much about anything, least of
all theater. The only play I’d ever been in was the Christmas pageant at church
when I was six and I was so nervous I threw up all over the baby Jesus doll. So
I don’t know if the show we went to see was amazing or mediocre or what. It
didn’t matter. What I do know is that the show made my wife happy, and that was
worth ten times the cost of the tickets. She smiled. She laughed.

My wife was happy.

Driving home that night, Lindsey said, “You know, most of
the time I was watching the show, I forgot I was even watching someone I knew.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I think that’s how you know someone is a good
actor. If they can make you forget that you know them. That you’re not watching
them thinking
oh, I’d better say they did a good job because otherwise Christmas
will be uncomfortable
. You actually want to tell them they did a great job
because they really did.”

We hadn’t celebrated Christmas with Stefia’s family for
almost four years, and I knew that had cut Lindsey’s insides apart. Elephants
are destructive, you know; their tusks pointy and sharp.

As the days went on, my wife grew quieter. She still smiled
and her health seemed to be good relatively speaking, but it seemed like
Lindsey was talking less. Growing more introspective. Perhaps contemplating what
was to come.

One night I lay down next to her in bed as she shook. I
panicked. I thought
oh god this is the end, this is really it. She’s been
doing so good and now I’m going to lose her
. But then I realized she was
shaking because she was crying.