Unforgivable (14 page)

EVIE, I'M LOSING YOU. THE MEMORIES OF US ARE FADING. They're less crisp. Muted. Echoes, wave ripples, expanding orbits.

The place where I keep a home for you is still here, warm, waiting. But there are other places that need to be tended to, haunted rooms that need to be cleaned out. Ghosts that need to be dealt with.

Other memories are taking over. They're bullying their way in, pushing you out. I try to hold on, but your hands are so small. You are doing other things. I can't hold on if you keep letting go.

You are ahead, moving forward, at a steady pace. I am running after you, but we are on different paths. I will never reach you like this. We will never touch by my chasing you.

MOM'S BEEN TEXTING AND LEAVING VOICE MAILS, EVEN after my text telling her to leave me alone. Dad's been trying to talk to me, too. He begged me to join him and Monica for lunch today, and I had to go to make him shut up.

“Isn't this nice?” he says as we walk down Market Street to the restaurant a few blocks away from Civic Center. “Look at us—two professional men going to lunch downtown.” He is artificially jolly. He pretends not to see the guy passed out on the sidewalk in front of us.

Monica has turned out to be one of those people who makes too much eye contact. She hugs me when we arrive to the restaurant. The huge diamond on her engagement ring sparkles indecently. After a few valiant tries to get me to talk, she finally lets me eat my veggie burger in silence while I read the depressing current events on my phone's news app. She and Dad spend the meal deep in conversation, but I don't hear anything they say.

As we wait for the bill and my dad goes to the restroom, she tries one last time. “Marcus,” she says, “your dad says you've been a little down lately. I know sometimes it's hard to talk to your parents about certain things, but maybe it could be easier with someone who isn't family. At least, not yet.” She winks. “Is there anything you want to talk about? Maybe I can help?”

I don't speak for a full minute, I'm in so much shock. I'm not sure if I should be angry at her presumptuousness, or if I should burst out laughing.

“No,” I finally say. I don't have the energy to cop an attitude.

As Dad and I walk back to the office, I listen to the voice mail Mom left during lunch. “Marcus,” she says, her voice tinged with a maternal exasperation she has no right to, “I don't know why you're avoiding my calls, but I really need you to call me back. I'm worried about you. Your father called me and told me he's worried about you, and you know it would take a lot for him to do that—”

I hang up the phone before hearing the end of the message. “Jesus, Dad,” I say, and stop walking. “I can't believe you.”

“What?” he says. We're standing in the middle of the sidewalk on Market Street. An old Asian lady with a cart full of soda cans yells at us as she passes.

“Are you telling the whole Bay Area you're worried about me? Mom's been stalking me, and Monica tried to have a little heart-to-heart while you were in the bathroom. What the hell?”

He sighs. “I don't know what to do, Marcus. I'm trying everything.”

“What to do about
what
? There's nothing to do. I'm fine.”

“I may be pretty clueless as a father, but I can tell you're not fine. You stay holed up in your room whenever you're not at work. You don't go out. You don't see anyone.”

“What I do with my free time is none of your business.”

“I'm your father, Marcus. If you're miserable, it's my business. If you're . . . depressed. If you're in trouble somehow.”

I start walking. “I'm not in trouble.”

“You don't seem happy.”

“What do you know about happy?”

“I know I wasted a lot of my life not thinking it was important. I know I don't want you to do that.”

My stomach is churning with feelings I can't define. I don't know who I'm talking to. I don't understand what he's saying. We walk through the courthouse security and up the marble staircase to where all the offices are located.

“Talk to me,” Dad says in the hallway outside the door to his office suite.

I open the door and walk inside, saying nothing. There's no way Dad will talk about this stuff in here, in front of his assistant. I know he has an important meeting in five minutes. I'm safe for now.

The next four hours drag. The adrenaline of my anger wears off quickly, and I'm left with an empty, heavy weight that makes it hard to lift my hands to type, to keep my eyes open. All I want to do is curl up in the pool of sunlight in the corner, like a cat. As soon as the clock strikes five, I can't get out of the building fast enough.

My phone shows another voice mail from Mom, which I don't listen to.

And then. A text from a number I don't recognize:

This is Evie. We need to talk. Can we meet at your house at 6?

I text back
yes
without thinking.

I could swim across the bay to meet her.

I WANTED TO SAVE YOU. I WANTED TO BE THE SOLUTION TO all your pain. I thought if I could do that, then my life would be worth something. Then I'd have a reason to exist. Your love, your need, would create me. I would be born again, a hero.

But of course none of that is true. No one can ever really save anyone. No one can make you tell the truth or do the things that scare you. No one can force you to go inside yourself with your eyes open. No one can force you to come back out. No love is that strong.

I pulled you out of the water, yes. I kept you from drowning. But that kind of saving is easy. My job stopped there. You took your first breath, then it was up to you to do the rest. And up to me to find something else to do.

You could not save me, either. Did you know I had given you that job? Did I? Did you know you had the responsibility of becoming bigger than David, stronger than my mom, that you
were supposed to be the sun and the moon and gravity and supernovas and dark matter—all of it? How did it feel to know you were expected to be everything?

It doesn't matter, if you knew or if you didn't. Either way, you'd be just as gone as you are now. And I'd be just as alone, just as haunted by the ghosts of my past. You have joined them; you have become a holy trinity—Mom, David, and Evie—the powers that rule me. I am your puppet. You three hold my strings, and it is up to me to cut them. It is up to me to save myself.

But I don't know if I can. I don't know if I'm that strong.

THE DOORBELL RINGS A STRANGE, DEEP, FORMAL TUNE that echoes around the two-story living room, more like a funeral dirge than a greeting. I jump up from the hard surface of the couch, where I've been perched for the fifteen minutes since I've been home, waiting, vibrating with anticipation. I wouldn't call it excitement, but not quite dread either. It's a new kind of fear, one I can't define. I can't tell if it's good or bad.

When I open the door, Evie is surrounded by sunlight. Her hair is in a new pixie cut, more styled than the fluffy, haphazard chemo grow-out of before. She's wearing a light gray tank top and jeans with red Converse tennis shoes. Such a simple outfit, so clean and perfect. A thin silver ring loops around her left nostril.

“You got your nose pierced,” I say.

“Yeah.” She smiles. “Can I come in?”

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah.” I step aside.

“It was a birthday present, from my mom,” she says as she
walks inside. “You should have seen her in the piercing studio.” Evie laughs as she sits down on the couch. “She was trying so hard to act cool, but she was so awkward. It was hilarious.”

I sit down across from her on an uncomfortable white leather armchair. “When was your birthday?” I say. How strange to not know that, to have never known that.

“Last week.”

I can't bring my eyes to look at her face, so I stare at her knees, at her hands resting there, clasping and unclasping, naked of jewelry or nail polish.

“Why are you here?” I say, and it comes out sounding harsh, exactly as I'd intended it to.

She's quiet for a moment, then says quickly, “I met your mother.”

“What?” My head snaps up. My eyes pierce hers.

“At an AA meeting.” She looks more uncomfortable than I remember ever seeing her. Embarrassed, even. She looks down, squeezes her hands between her knees. “This is weird,” she says. “I'm sorry.”

“Come on. Tell me.”

“She introduced herself after hearing me speak. I was talking about . . . you. And she recognized details of my story. And your name, too, I guess. So she approached me afterward.”

“You talk about me at AA meetings?”

She cannot look me in the eyes. “People talk about everything at AA meetings. It's supposed to be anonymous, you know?”

“Except it wasn't.”

“Well, no. Your mom probably broke all kinds of rules by talking to me, but she's so worried about you. She was desperate.”

I can't help but laugh, but there's nothing funny about this. “Yeah,” I say. “Desperate. We're all so fucking desperate.”

“She really loves you. She's scared. She said you won't talk to her or your dad, so she asked me if I'd talk to you. She said she's afraid you might want to hurt yourself.”

The ceiling is pressing down on us. The walls squeeze in. There are no words to speak, no air to breathe, no space to move in. The panic surges in my chest, and I am shaking with the need to run.

“I can't do this,” I blurt out. “Not here. Not in this house.” I stand up. “Can we go for a walk or something?”

“Um, sure,” she says. “Okay.” She grabs her bag and follows me out the door.

That's something I remember loving about her. She calls her purse a bag instead of a purse. She refused to be the kind of girl who carries a purse.

No. I have to push those kinds of thoughts out of my head now. All of her little endearing qualities. The little details I fell in love with.

Being outside gives my feelings room to grow. We walk a couple of blocks, and I notice Evie's limp is gone. For some reason, this makes me angry—her healing, her strength, all of it having happened without me, after all the energy and love I invested in her, in us. My anger feeds on the air, on the sun, becomes a monster, and consumes me.

“After all this time avoiding me, why come here now?” I say. “Why do you even care?”

“I care more than you could possibly know, Marcus.” She sounds so patronizing. The way she says my name. The pitying tone of her voice.

“Yeah, you care so much you stopped talking to me.”

“I had to. For a while. I already explained that to you.” We stand at the corner waiting for the light to change. “I have to figure some things out,” she says. “I need some time to clear my head.”

“Yeah?” I start walking, even though the light is still red. A car honks as it barely misses me. “What about
my
head? Did you ever think about how it would affect me?”

“I'm sorry,” she says, running after me to the other side of the street. She grabs my arm and makes me stop. “I thought you were okay. I thought you'd be okay. You were always the strong one.”

I laugh, but there is no humor in it. “It's great you and my mom found each other,” I say. “You have so much in common.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You both think because someone doesn't fall apart on a regular basis or go spewing their feelings all over the place, it means they can't get hurt. You think you can leave and they'll be fine, and you won't have to worry about breaking anyone's heart. Your conscience will be off the hook.”

“No, that's not—”

“Just because my feelings aren't as messy as yours doesn't mean I don't have them.”

“Marcus, I—”

“Yours were so big and loud, there wasn't any room for mine.”

The silence burns as I walk away, and for the first time ever,
she
runs after
me
. So I let her chase me. I want her to know what it feels like to be shut out.

But eventually, I slow down. The truth is, as much as I want to hurt her, I still want her next to me.

“You've changed,” she says.

“Being betrayed will do that to a person.”

She flinches, takes a deep breath. My body still responds to hers, even after these weeks apart. “I've been preparing what I wanted to say to you for a long time,” she says. “But I kept chickening out when I tried to call you. Then your mom approached me, and I figured it was a sign that it was time to talk.”

Without thinking, I have led us to the cemetery where we went on our first date. Where we first made love. I fight the urge to turn around. I walk through the iron gates to the big fountain near the entrance. The sound of the water silences everything around us. I sit on a stone bench facing it.

“So talk,” I say.

After a pause, she says, “You want someone you think is me.”

I don't say anything. The sentence hangs in the air, all alone, without context.

“I'm not her. I'm not the girl you loved. The one you think you want. That girl who acted invincible.”

“What are you talking about?” The water in the fountain falls in slow motion.

“That girl was made out of drugs and alcohol and lies. She wasn't me.”

“You can't tell me you weren't in there. You can't tell me that wasn't you at all.”

“But it wasn't all of me.”

“So show me all of you!” Evie flinches. My hands are shaking and my body throbs with electricity. People look. Dogs sniff the air, smelling something sinister. They think I am the kind of guy who yells at his girlfriend in public. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm more like my father than I've ever wanted to admit.

“I don't know how,” she says quietly. “I don't know who that is.”

I am sick of this bullshit. I'm sick of dancing around the truth.

“Do you still love me?” I say.

“Marcus, don't.”

“Answer the question.”

“You're changing the subject. It's irrelevant.”

“Love's irrelevant?” I hear my father's voice. I hear myself debating like him, asking questions that cannot be answered.

“You're not listening.”

“Why won't you answer the question?”

She's shutting down. Her eyes lose focus and her hands fidget. She's putting up her wall. She's leaving me.

“Answer the question, Evie. Do you love me?”

She shakes her head and says nothing. Her shoulders curl as she closes in on herself.

“Does that mean no? You don't love me?”

She says no so quietly I might not have heard her if I wasn't staring at her quivering lips.

“No, what?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“What?” I say. “I can't hear you.”

“Yes!” she yells. “Dammit, Marcus. Yes, of course I still fucking love you.”

Her body shakes in the silence. I want to take back everything, all my pushing, my bullying. But I can't. Neither of us can ever take back anything we've done to each other.

“That's not the problem,” Evie says. “That's never been the problem. I just . . . how can I trust my love for you when I don't know who I am? How can that love possibly make any sense?”

“Maybe love's not supposed to make sense.”

She shakes her head slowly. “I lost myself somewhere,” she says quietly. “I used to think I knew exactly who I was. I never questioned it. I didn't have to. There was this version of me that existed before the cancer, some girl I don't even recognize.”

“The cheerleader girl.”

“Yeah,” she says with a self-hating smirk. “You would have hated her. The cheerleader with the long blond hair and the perfectly nice football boyfriend.”

“I wouldn't have hated her.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

She's quiet for a moment as she stares at the fountain. “I hate her because I'm jealous. Her life was so simple. It was so easy being her.”

“But she isn't you.”

“Not anymore. Even if I wanted to be her again, I couldn't. Getting sick changed everything, and I can't ever go back. I became a different version of me, the dying version.”

“But you're not dying anymore.”

“No, but I accepted that was the last me there was going to be.” She's growing agitated. Her voice is shaky, angry. She's talking fast. “But I didn't die. So I had to become yet another version of myself. Even though I didn't want to. Even though I was done. So I had to get high to deal with it, just to make it not hurt. And I lied to everyone. I lied to you.” She's crying now. She leans over her knees, her face in her hands. “That's the girl you knew. That's who you fell in love with. But she doesn't exist anymore either.” I can see the bones of her spine through smooth skin as her body quakes. Fragile, worn, breaking. I fight the urge to touch her. I don't know if I have that right anymore.

“I'm not her, Marcus,” Evie cries. “I'm not that wild girl who wants to party. I'm not that girl who doesn't give a shit about anything.”

“I never thought you were,” I say, wanting so much to hold her, to make her understand. The girl she's talking about is not who I loved. That's who I wanted to save her from.

Evie looks at me and blinks, like my response was not the one she expected. “You gave a shit about something,” I say. “You gave
a shit about me. That was real. I felt it.”

She sniffles and looks at me, into my eyes. “You were the only thing I cared about,” she says, letting me in, and my heart leaps into hers.

“Yes.” I take her hand and hold it against my heart. For a moment, it feels perfect. For a moment, it feels like the world is starting again. But then she pulls her hand away. Her eyes turn back into ice.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Marcus, don't you see? That's not the way it's supposed to be. You can't be the only thing. You can't be the thing that defines me.”

“I never asked to be. It doesn't have to be like that.”

“But I don't know how to do anything else.”

Neither of us know what to say after that. We sit there for a while, exhausted, surrounded by the dense cloud of our words. Nothing is settled. Nothing is resolved. The fountain continues its circular flow. Coins glisten on the tile bottom, a collection of strangers' wishes and dreams. I reach into my pocket and pull out a quarter. I cannot hear its splash as I add my dream to the anonymous others.

“So now what?” I finally say.

“I don't know.”

“So am I allowed to call you now that I have your new number?” I try to make it sound funny, but it falls flat. It belly flops in the fountain. It drowns.

Evie is quiet for a long time, and the beginning of hope flutters in my chest, my heart a hummingbird. My hand begins to move
from its place on the concrete bench, a slight stirring, on the way to find hers where it rests on her knees.

“No,” she says finally. Firmly.

My hand stops in midair, sinks back to the hard flatness of the bench. My coin is lost among the other wasted money in the fountain.

She shakes her head with her eyes closed. “I'm not ready. Not yet.” Then her eyes open and tear me apart. “Maybe not ever.”

Evie's eyes bore into me, but I will not look at her. I can't. “I need you to let me go, Marcus,” she says, and my head is filled with static, loud and grating.

“Fine,” I say, my voice as cruel as I've ever heard it. “Go.”

She doesn't move.

“Go!”

She stands up. She starts walking. She leaves too easily.

Stop!
I want to say.
Come back!

I wait for her to turn around, to look back, to say something, to make things right, to apologize, explain, anything. But she says nothing. She keeps walking away, holding her bag tight against her body. I sit on the hard bench, my feet heavy on the ground, fighting the rising fire in my chest, the tears in my eyes, waiting for a look that never comes. Just the sound of the fountain, so loud I can't hear Evie's footsteps as she leaves me, again.