Things I'm Seeing Without You Read online

  ‘I remember attaching each of those stones,’ she said. ‘I did each one by hand.’

  I felt my eyes widen.

  ‘You made this?’

  ‘My mom taught all of us to sew. I thought I’d save a buck. I made all my own gowns. This one was my favourite, though. I wore it the last time I performed.’

  I moved closer to her and watched Mamie reach a hand out and touch the material. She closed her eyes as she rubbed it between the thumb and forefinger of the hand without the polish, maybe envisioning her last dance, maybe just relishing the sensation of the glossy fabric.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’ I asked.

  ‘For the funeral party.’

  Her voice was so soft now I could barely hear her.

  ‘We haven’t had it yet,’ I said. ‘It’s in three days. Remember?’

  Mamie’s eyes closed again, and she smiled.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I was there. It was wonderful.’

  I stood there and watched her slowly drift to sleep. Moments later, a nurse barged in and shooed me out. She said they were moving Mamie back to the hospital. Something new had shown up on the CT scan. I asked to come along, but I wasn’t allowed. So, I could only watch from a distance as they loaded up Mamie on a gurney and wheeled her away.

  I remembered I was still wearing the dress on my way back to the parking lot, which explained the odd looks I got from the staff. My other clothes were left behind in Mamie’s room, but it was too late to go back and get them now. So I drove home in a decades-old burlesque costume, this time getting goosebumps from the breeze through the car, as the blue sky and fields blurred around me.

  In the house, I found my father sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich. He gave me a double take in the dress, but made no immediate comment. There was a guilty look on his face, and his clothes looked a little dishevelled. I poured myself some burnt coffee from the pot that had likely been on all morning. I could feel him watching me.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said.

  I wasn’t able to speak for a moment. There weren’t clear words for what I was feeling. The closest I could come was: ‘There’s no such thing.’

  My dad’s mouth was still half open. There was a small piece of lettuce between his lower front teeth. He put his hand on my shoulder and then took it off again.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Closure,’ I said.

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, but it didn’t help. The tears were coming now, like it or not, and I was quickly becoming a slobbering fool.

  ‘We can’t do a living funeral for Mamie,’ I said. ‘And I just wanted it so badly. She deserved it. But it’s not going to happen.’

  My face was smashed against my father’s sweater now, against the rough fibres that scratched against my forehead. His arms were around me. They were long and clumsy, but I was happy to have them there.

  He didn’t ask me any more questions. He just sat absolutely still and let me cry for the next few minutes. It was something he had always been good at, knowing when not to say something. When I removed my face from his shoulder there was a damp spot there. I looked up at him and calmed my voice.

  ‘There’s not really any closure,’ I said. ‘Is there?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tess,’ he said.

  ‘So, then what’s the point of what we do?’ I asked. ‘If we can’t provide that.’

  ‘Well . . .’ he said. He handed me a napkin for my tears. ‘Maybe part of it’s just to reaffirm to people.’

  ‘Reaffirm what?’

  He looked away and scratched his chin, covered in black and grey stubble. Then he met my eyes again, and for once he didn’t look like a sad clown. He looked serious.

  ‘That we don’t need as much closure as we think we do.’

  Mamie Lee died a day and a half later. When she fell, she had fractured her skull above the ear and torn an artery. Her brain was beginning to swell even when she spoke to me that last afternoon. By the time they brought her in for surgery the swelling was irreversible. She died in a coma, and later that day my dad was notified that she had left money behind for her funeral and she wanted his business to plan it.

  ‘Tess,’ he said when he showed up to my room, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Say you’re sorry.’

  ‘For what exactly?’

  ‘For not taking Mamie seriously,’ I said. ‘And please just tell me you want to do this right.’

  He leant against the doorframe.

  ‘OK. How is it going to work?’

  I told him about Harry Palmer’s.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You went to that place by yourself?’

  ‘Harry is a shrewd businessman,’ I said.

  ‘I wish you would have told me,’ he said.

  ‘I bet you do.’

  Eventually Dad apologized and acquiesced to my demands. We would fly Mamie’s old friends in and fix up Palmer’s to look like a New York burlesque club. If it took all the money she set aside, then so be it.

  So, in the days before the funeral we painted the walls red and put up silk curtains in the strip club. Then my dad hired a handyman, and they built a makeshift runway with a few theatre seats around it. The only illumination came from footlights to accentuate the legs of the performers. ‘They’re the last to go!’ proclaimed Candy, an ageing dancer with hair dyed the colour of a blood orange. She showed up from the airport at five in the morning.

  Because of the short notice, the crowd was smaller than I’d hoped. Besides the old burlesquers there was only me, my dad, Harry Palmer, and a few of the younger strippers from his club. And, of course, the body of Mamie herself, displayed in the corner, bathed in a magenta spotlight.

  She was in the rhinestone dress, and we’d hired one of the best make-up artists in town to make her look like she was about to go on stage. She had dark-lined cat eyes, long spidery lashes, and glittering bright-red lipstick. Her white Betty Page haircut was side-swept along her face in waves.

  On stage was Lillian Orlando. She was telling a story about the time she and Mamie caused a car crash, crossing the street to get Chinese food in their stage costumes. Then her song came on, and she did a memorial fan dance to a big band tune. For ten minutes she eclipsed two black feathered fans across her body, strutting above the floodlights, ending the number entirely hidden behind the plumes of her veil.

  It was all really beautiful, I guess.

  I mean there’s something undeniably soul-lifting about elderly exotic dancers shaking it for their fallen comrade. But I couldn’t quite slough off my sadness. The fact remained: Mamie never got to see this. She died without a reunion, without a chance to be who she most wanted to be again.

  After a while, I decided to escape to the bathroom for a minute to catch my breath. When I approached the restroom door, however, it swung open and out walked a woman in stylish mourning gear. Even without getting a good look, I knew instantly who it was.

  ‘Grace,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Grace fiddled with her hair and looked around the room.

  ‘Attending the burlesque funeral of Mamie Ann Lee,’ she said. ‘I heard you did most of the planning on this one. Congratulations. It looks great.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  Oddly enough, I was glad she was there. If I was being honest with myself, some of her advice from that day at her office had guided me. I was about to say something when she looked around again with an anxious gaze.

  ‘Did you know Mamie?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said.

  Her eyes were still scanning the room. I waited until her eyes came back to me.

  ‘Then how did you find out about this?’

  ‘Your father,’ she said.

  She spoke quickly, and I almost didn’t hear her.

  ‘What about him?’

  The skin around her freckles was turning pink.

  ‘He i
nvited me. We’ve been . . . corresponding a little.’

  My father came across the room just then.

  ‘Grace,’ he said. ‘You made it!’

  Then he turned to me.

  ‘Tessie,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I thought Grace should get a look at the competition, now that we’re ramping up our efforts.’

  He smiled his charming, goofy smile, and rested his hand on her forearm, ever so briefly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just need a moment.’

  The humid club was closing in on me. It seemed very clear, suddenly, that Grace had only taken an interest in me to get close to my supposedly dreamy, single father. So I walked away from the restrooms and stepped outside into the cool of the evening in order to be less aware of this fact for a moment.

  Still it stung. Was I going to go the rest of my life thinking anyone who showed any interest in me was my best friend? Was I going to be the last person to understand what was actually happening to me every time? An entire life like that seemed like the most exhausting thing imaginable.

  Harry Palmer’s was by the railroad tracks, and there was a large freight train inching by about twenty feet away. Each car’s graffiti was more vibrant than the last’s. It was an unending colourful sentence full of odd words I didn’t understand. j-fish. bowler. nada-nada. fugue. I wondered for a moment if it was a message just for me. My phone buzzed.

  Don’t go back inside.

  I stared down at the sentence from Daniel. My heart started beating in my ears.

  Inside where?

  The train clacked by, but it sounded like it was running inside my head.

  I think you know.

  I looked up from my phone, and in the space between the cars, I saw the outline of a figure. I waited until the last car had rumbled past, and then the person was walking towards me. It was a person that, up until now, I had only seen naked. Today, he was in a T-shirt and jeans, a backpack hanging off his right shoulder on a single strap, and a worn baseball cap on his head.

  He took his time moving across the tracks. Then he stopped a few feet in front of me. His face was expressionless. He was more striking in person; his brows framing deep-brown eyes with flecks of yellow. A few black locks of hair had escaped his hat and brushed against his forehead. I watched him lick his dry lips.

  ‘No more phones,’ he said.

  He was a real person, standing in the same physical space that I was in.

  ‘No more phones,’ I said.

  I reached out a hand.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I’m Actual Tess.’

  He took my hand and gave it one brief shake. His palm was warm.

  ‘Actual Daniel,’ he said.

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  I was staring, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to look away, but it was impossible. I couldn’t believe he was actually here.

  ‘What, you weren’t expecting a brown guy?’ he said. ‘I sent you a picture.’

  I looked away.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone,’ I said.

  We were by the open door of the club, and there was a change in the music. All day there had been a steady blast of horns and rolling pianos. Raucous old music that brought raucous old women to the stage. Then suddenly, there came the soothing sound of Bobby Darin’s voice. A song I remembered from the Oldies station my grandma used to listen to. ‘Beyond the Sea’. All of the dancers started to gather on the stage.

  ‘How did you find me?’ I asked Daniel.

  I still wasn’t sure that he was standing next to me. But I could smell the soap on his skin.

  ‘Magic,’ he said.

  I looked at him.

  ‘I called your dad. His number’s online.’

  I turned back to the stage and listened to the song.

  Somewhere beyond the sea. She’s there watching for me.

  The old dancers had been drinking most of the day, and now they were in various states of undress. Lilli was still in a corset from an earlier number. Candy was in a shimmery purple evening gown with a giant boa wrapped around her neck. Another woman, Maggie L’amour, was topless, her drooping breasts covered only by nipple petals the size of silver dollars.

  ‘This is what you’ve been doing since you dropped out?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said.

  Mamie’s friends wobbled and kicked, arms around one another like a last-ditch chorus line. And as the song picked up steam, moving into that revved up orchestra part, Candy led them in Mamie Lee’s trademark shimmy. One at a time, they lay down on the floor and raised their legs straight up in a full-body quake until it was all wiggly thighs and Bobby Darin singing:

  Happy we’ll be beyond the sea. Never again I’ll go sailing.

  ‘Is this actually happening?’ asked Daniel.

  I could feel him watching me out of the corner of his eye, shyly taking in a face he’d only seen in pictures. His proximity was unnerving, but my heartbeat would not slow down. I had no idea where things were supposed to go from here, so I just kept staring at the stage.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  It was the best I could do.

  Then Daniel Torres was living in my house.

  One day, he was a line of text, a disembodied voice, and the next day, he was sleeping on a couch in my living room.

  Well, my dad’s living room technically.

  When I approached Dad after the funeral, to ask if Daniel could crash for a few days, he chose that very instant to pretend he was a real parent. Probably because Grace was standing there, he asked what he thought were real parent questions.

  Did Daniel’s guardians know he was here? (Yes.) Was he on drugs and planning to steal things from the house? (Probably not.) How did I know him? (Friend of a friend?) I could see him trying to think of additional, better questions, but in the moment, he seemed to draw a blank.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But he sleeps on the sofa.’

  Daniel was fine with this, but he seemed to take it to mean that he was confined to the couch exclusively for the duration of his stay. So for the first few days, he sprawled out there with a laptop balancing on his small belly. Meanwhile, I flitted in and out of the room and made sorry attempts at conversation.

  ‘How did you get here, anyway? You never said.’

  ‘The bus.’

  ‘Huh. The bus. Interesting.’

  ‘Yeah. There was a guy in the back guarding the toilet.’

  ‘No kidding.’

  ‘Totally. He wouldn’t let anyone use it. He said it was an infringement on his rights.’

  ‘Hmm. Weird.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  And that was the best we could do.

  We couldn’t seem to get anything going. And I thought, on numerous occasions, that I’d made a terrible mistake by implying he should come here. I couldn’t understand why things were so strained. After a couple of days of relative silence, there were still no signs of improvement.

  Then he showed up at my room.

  At night.

  Just a half hour before he appeared, I had gone down to the kitchen to get a snack. I’d heard him shuffling and twisting around on top of the cushions, taking small, frustrated breaths like a baby. I couldn’t sleep either.

  So I was awake when I heard the knock. I got up slowly. I assumed it was my father at first, come to ask me what the hell was going on with the odd teenage boy on our couch. Instead I found Daniel standing in the dark hallway, blinking at me.

  I hadn’t closed the shades, so there was enough moonlight in the room that we could see each other. He was wearing a baggy T-shirt, and his hair was matted against his forehead. He looked my way, and a sudden wave of self-consciousness broke over me. I was wearing ripped boxers and a tank top. Not exactly ready for prime time.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asked in a whisper.

  I considered this a minute. What were a gentleman caller’s intentions when he showed up at your bedroom in the middle of the night? When I looked
at his face, though, it didn’t seem especially pervy. It seemed pensive and vulnerable. Also, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t try anything sketchy with my father snoring down the hall. It probably wasn’t the world’s most cautious decision, but I let him in anyway.

  He walked over to my bed and lay down with his eyes open. I waited about half a minute before I sat down on the other side, with a gulf of bed between us.

  ‘I didn’t think it would be this weird,’ he said finally.

  I sighed. On the one hand it was a relief to hear him say it. On the other, it confirmed that things were weird for both of us.

  ‘Maybe you don’t want reality,’ I said. ‘Have you ever thought of that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How could the real me actually be as good as the hypothetical one? Maybe real me kind of sucks. I mean comparatively, of course. In most ways, I’m fucking awesome.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But real you doesn’t suck.’

  I felt myself blushing in the dark.

  ‘Should I go home?’ he asked.

  I didn’t answer him because I honestly didn’t know. And for the next minute, we just lay there on opposite sides of the bed like siblings in a hotel room.

  ‘What do you do all day?’ I asked eventually.

  I wasn’t looking at him, but I heard his head shift towards me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘On the couch?’ I said. ‘When you’re just sitting there with your computer. What do you do?’

  He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘I can show you if you want,’ he said.

  I nodded, and he immediately crawled out of bed and disappeared back down the stairs. When he returned a couple of minutes later, he was carrying his laptop. He unfolded it, and the glowing screen lit up the room.

  He opened his browser, and the homepage for Twitter appeared on the screen. I saw a familiar face in the little white Twitter frame. I sucked in a quick breath. It was Jonah. The same photo that he had used on Facebook for as long as I’d known (and not known) him.

  It had been a while since I’d encountered the picture, and seeing it again was both gratifying and unnerving. It was an image that I used to love, one I kept myself away from these days for a reason. I looked at the most recent post on the feed and immediately felt a familiar sense of uneasiness. I turned to Daniel.