Chapter 4
It seems like everything makes me cry these days.
I’ll be sitting on the couch in our home, staring off into space, not watching the television but it’s on. I’ll hear a few words. Dead animals or cancer patients or womens rights or fires. I don’t even know how it sets me off anymore. But it all relates to you, somehow, all of this. Every teardrop is you.
Every clenched stomach, every day gone uneaten, every tiny granule of tooth scraped off in the anxious dark.
I haven’t cried this hard since you first left. Since you disappeared out of my life. I haven’t cried this hard since I was born. I’ve never cried this hard. Nobody has.
And when I’m not crying, or sleeping (when that happens), or working, or eating (when that happens), I’m stone and cold. I spend every open moment just sitting there. Just dying. I can feel my life seeping from me and out of my pores. I don’t need the air conditioner anymore. It’s all just cold already.
And I’m in one of those moods.
And I have my phone off.
And I sit on the couch with the television on.
When the door makes sound.
At first there’s no response in my mind. I sit slouched against the sofa, half pretending I don’t hear it, half not hearing it at all. I stand up.
Then I open the door and there’s a man with a black hat on, big wide black hat and he’s going to step inside, at least he looks like he’s going to. I don’t know what he’s doing there but I’ve been sitting on the couch in my half-awake coma for so long now that I don’t blink, and he just stands there, and neither of us speaks a word for what seems like an eternity.
Then he says, “Hi.”
What is he doing here?
“I’m looking for Elias?” He looks behind me into the house.
You left so long ago, and I don’t know where you are. But what is this man doing here? Looking for you?
“I need to see him about… business.”
What sort of business is the man in, what is Elias involved in? I try to remember what it was you did, and I can’t. Maybe I never knew. Maybe I did know, but I can’t recall because all I can think about is maybe you’re dead.
“If you see him give him this.”
I put the envelope the man gave me on the table and sit back down. I turn off the television, and in the dark while my eyes are still adjusting I think I see your ghost shimmering through the room to the kitchen. And I think you’re going to get a sandwich and I almost ask you to get me one, but I know that ghost isn’t real because my eyes finally adjust and the shadows that creep along the wall are as normal and natural as the envelope on the table.
And then I grab the envelope and I am about to tear it open but instead I swipe my hand across the surface of the table and knock everything off it. The glass of water I wasn’t drinking, the vase of dried flowers, the box of weed and the stack of magazines. The carpet quickly darkens in one big spot and I drop the envelope onto the empty table and turn to the bedroom.
For three nights afterwards I dream you’re in Chicago.