The Me You See Read online

  “Naomi,” she says. “You of all people should know not to discredit the lives of the people who died at the theater…”

  “I’m not discrediting anything. I just wish people would call it what it is.”

  She looks as though she has mixed pity and disgust in a bowl and painted it on her face. I hate the way she glares at me, like she wants me to believe she hasn’t already made up her mind how to feel about my reactions.

  I look away from her judgmental stare and wish for Stefia to be at my side. I wouldn’t have to explain myself to Stefia. Stefia would know what I meant. Stefia would be able to say it better.

  Aunt Melanie didn’t get it. Nobody did. I took a deep breath and remembered that Stefia told me once most people just need to talk and make noise to deal with what happens. They need to spout off words to sort out things they will never understand. It’s just how most people cope.

  The problem is noise doesn’t ever change anything that’s already happened.

  Melanie offers a weak smile and turns from me to sit with dad. She mumbles something as she rests her hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t say anything.

  He never says anything.

  **

  Just three months ago on Christmas Eve, as Stefia and I hung stockings and lights on the banister of our open staircase, I cringed at Gabriella’s empty stocking hook.

  Gabriella, never happy in Granite Ledge, had dropped out of high school in October. In her quest to attain more than the black sheep status she’d earned here, she moved to Virginia with Adam, the supposed love of her life. Adam was nineteen and already a four time published author and he was going to rescue her from the dull life she led in small town Minnesota. Dad never even told her not to go.

  Dad never said anything.

  Bing Crosby’s White Christmas played in the background while Stefia twisted strings of multicolored lights around the banister and into slats and out again, turning our home into a twinkling paradise heavy with the scent of pine and snickerdoodles.

  She saw my eyes fall on the spot where Gabriella’s stocking should have been hanging. I took a sip of hot apple cider, sucking the warm tartness across my tongue.

  “You know,” Stefia said, “human beings seem to have a big problem with how they view life experience.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, most of them believe in the very bottom of their hearts that there is a way things should be.”

  I took another long sip of cider, the steam collecting on my cheeks and mixing with tears I wasn’t fast enough to blink away.

  “People want to believe there is some sort of equation for how life is supposed to go,” she continued. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “That’s bullshit, Naomi. There really isn’t a way things should be. There’s only what happens and what we do about it.”

  I stared hard at the hook that was supposed to hold Gabriella’s stocking, remembering how years before I’d stared the same way at mom’s empty hook.

  “What happens, and what we do,” she repeated, “is all there is.”

  **

  I gawk at the caramel rolls. I’m hungry. But no one else is eating them; the pan stands like a glass display for looking but not touching.

  No one would care if I ate one. No one would notice if I ate the whole pan. No one would even raise an eyebrow if I took all the rolls and threw them out into the snowbank. They’d just stare at me thinking, Poor Naomi, It’s so sad, What a shame.

  Oh, they would stare. But they wouldn’t say a thing.

  I decide against the rolls and walk back up the stairs, tracing my fingers along the banister and remembering how when Stefia, Gabriella, and I were all younger we dared each other to slide down the banister. None of us would ever do it, but we decided that sitting on our butts and bumping our way down the stairs would be safer and probably just as fun. So we’d run to the top of the stairs and bump our way back down, sometimes racing, sometimes crashing into each other at the bottom. We’d pull ourselves up from the rug, grabbing at the post with the swirly top that looked like a frosted cupcake, oblivious to the fact we were loosening it from the floor a bit more every time we pulled.

  Those were fun times.

  Dragging my toes along the carpet with each lazy step, I arrive at my bedroom closet. I slowly thumb through hangers trying to decide—but not caring about—what to drape over my body for the day. There will be media, there will be photographs taken and news footage shot. And I don’t even care what I’m going to wear.

  I could wear something from Stefia’s room.

  I could.

  Even though she’d been blessed with the beauty in the family—God had placed all his eggs in one basket on that deal—Stefia and I had technically been able to wear the same size. We had always traded clothes back and forth. Always.

  I knew that if Stefia were here, she’d have lent me anything I wanted to wear.

  Of course, if Stefia were here, I wouldn’t be going to a funeral.

  Without even realizing I’d left my room, I find myself suddenly standing in front of Stefia’s door and I hold my hand on the knob.

  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.

  -Shawn-

  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 rente
d 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.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked and brushed the pad of my thumb under her eye to wipe away a tear.

  She sniffled and then coughed and when she recovered said she couldn’t decide if she was angry or sad.

  “What about?”

  “Wasted time.”

  I held her and she blew deep puffs of air at my chest, hiccoughing on tears and snot as they came faster.