Things I'm Seeing Without You Read online

  We would be together on our first flight, but then we had to part ways. Daniel’s parents hadn’t been too thrilled to learn that their son was suddenly in another country. They were threatening to cut off their share of next year’s tuition if he didn’t come home right away.

  All this came as a surprise to me. Somehow, I had assumed that Daniel would be coming back with me to stay at my dad’s again when our voyage was over. But even as I articulated this thought to myself, I could see it was ridiculous. My father had threatened his life. It was probably safe to say that his couch privileges had been revoked. So we had the length of an international flight to say goodbye.

  Only we didn’t seem to be doing that.

  Instead we were watching bad movies. One after the next, pressing Play at the same time on the touchscreens attached to the seats in front of us, and staring forward like lobotomy patients. We were swilling ginger ales and eating bags of ‘lightly salted’ peanuts. We didn’t laugh. We didn’t cry. We stared.

  Then the movies were over and I was left watching Daniel drool. Grace was somewhere at the back of the plane. When we’d found out there were seats together this time, she’d wordlessly given them to Daniel and me. Maybe if she’d been closer, she could have cut the tension.

  ‘I’ve been thinking . . .’ he said suddenly, ‘. . . about when I go back to school.’

  I had been zoning out. When my vision refocused, I saw he had one eye open.

  ‘Jesus. Don’t do that,’ I said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Just start talking out of a deep sleep. It’s freaky.’

  He opened his other eye.

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘And we have to talk about this.’

  I took a deep breath. I took my earbuds out and he calmly started to talk.

  ‘I’ve been pushing this around in my mind, and I keep coming back to two basic options. And, to be perfectly honest, they both seem a little crazy to me. The first one is that we say goodbye at the airport and that’s it. We said our farewell to Jonah, so our reason for . . . being together is gone if you think about it in one way.’

  I watched his face. It betrayed nothing.

  ‘And the second option is that I go back home, and in a couple of months, back to school, and then . . .’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ I said.

  ‘I have to say it at least once.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Long distance,’ he said.

  ‘Emails?’ I said.

  ‘Among other things. I mean, you have to admit, it’s how we started.’

  ‘It’s how you started,’ I said.

  This stung; I could tell. But he didn’t break eye contact.

  ‘I don’t think I can do it,’ I said.

  He rested his hands on his tray table. His fingernails were chewed to nothing.

  ‘What if there were rules?’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Things to make it more . . .’

  He paused for longer than he needed.

  ‘Real,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. That.’

  He slumped lower in his seat and looked at the screen in front of him.

  ‘What if we can only send one message a day, and the rest is by phone or video chat, so that there’s something more to it. And . . .’

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said.

  ‘Tess.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not trying to be unreasonable. I just can’t do it. It sounds like hell to me. Returning to hell.’

  This quieted him. I hadn’t meant for it to come out so harsh, but there it was. I’d said it. I watched Daniel’s face fall. I took a sip of ginger ale and the bubbles stung my nostrils.

  We both sat there for a moment, until the roar of the engines was the only thing I could hear. Then, eventually, Daniel turned away and I put my earbuds back in, and we sat in excruciating silence for the next hour or so as the plane made its way back to American airspace.

  We landed at O’Hare. We trudged through customs. And we walked through the cheesy neon light thing on the moving walkway that I’d loved when I was a kid. Grace kept her distance – probably as much for her well-being as ours. We were almost to the crossroads of our gates when Daniel finally stopped and just stood there, holding his duffel bag in the fluorescent light of the airport.

  He looked completely drained. I’m sure I did, too. Someday I would have to ask myself why the guys I liked were always so sad. But that was a question for another time. I walked up close to him.

  ‘It’s been nice getting to know you, Daniel Torres,’ I said. Then I paused. ‘Actually, it’s been kind of fucked up and strange. But nice too. Not without its nice moments. Anyway . . . thank you.’

  ‘For what?’ he said.

  He seemed genuinely shocked to hear my words.

  ‘For making all the stupid decisions that made this possible.’

  He just looked at me.

  ‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘Without them, I’m not sure where I’d be.’

  His face turned a little red, and I couldn’t tell if he was going to laugh or cry or maybe just tell me to go to hell. Instead he said:

  ‘I just don’t know yet, Tess.’

  ‘Know what?’

  He took a step to the side and looked down.

  ‘Who we are without him.’

  I met his eyes. There was sleep in the corner of one. I had the sudden urge to wipe it away.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said.

  Around us people were dragging their suitcases past us, going around the two-person obstacle in their path without a second thought. Ours was a movie that played occasionally at airports. Everyone had seen it before.

  ‘We could find out,’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We could.’

  But he didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Letters,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Daniel.

  I wasn’t sure I had really said the word until it came out again.

  ‘Letters,’ I repeated. ‘I would like you to write me letters.’

  His lips parted. I kept talking.

  ‘I want you to use a pen and write things to me on a piece of paper,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter what kind. And then put that paper in an envelope and put a stamp on that envelope. And send it to me. And I’ll do the same thing. For you.’

  His eyes narrowed.

  ‘I haven’t written a letter since I was a kid,’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘So you know how.’

  He looked at his phone. He needed to get to his gate. His next flight would be boarding soon.

  ‘What if they’re terrible?’ he said. ‘What if they’re so terrible, I can’t send them?’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Then you can’t,’ I said.

  We looked at each other one more time. This was the part in the movie where we were supposed to fall into each other’s arms. But I guess we didn’t get the script because he just turned and walked off towards his gate.

  I watched him join in with the other travellers. Some were walking like the undead. Others were seated at gates nearby, tapping screens, watching real movies, reading books. They were staring wide-eyed at the stories they’d chosen, looking for a way to pass the time, until they arrived at their final destination.

  The morning after I returned from Sicily, I woke before dawn in my father’s empty house thinking about my own funeral. The death of the universe was too big. It would have to wait. Instead, I’d made a new promise to myself to keep my worries in the realm of things I could control. Thus: my funeral. There were so many options, though. That’s what had me thinking in the predawn hours. And my current ideas were too varied to be of any real help.

  I could be incinerated into dust, for example.

  Or mad
e into nutrients in the soil.

  I could be fireworks in the night sky.

  Or particles in a memorial reef on the ocean floor.

  There was even a company pressing people’s ashes into vinyl records, so someone could play a Beatles record made out of me, and sing along to my tiny bits. I could be embalmed and placed on a motorcycle like a man in Michigan. Or be posed in a boxing ring like a guy in Mexico. I could be frozen. I could be shattered and planted beneath a tree. And this was all just the first step in the process. There was so much to consider.

  I walked downstairs and found my father gone; I didn’t know where. He had barely spoken to me since I got home. I’d been waiting for a reaction from him since I first dropped out of school, and now I finally got one. Stony silence. He didn’t say much at the airport. Or at the baggage claim. It was only on the car ride on the way home, where he temporarily opened the floodgates.

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m not angry about this, Tess,’ he said. ‘Because I am. I really am.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I could hardly tell by your brooding.’

  He gave me a look that told me sarcasm wasn’t going to be a good strategy here.

  ‘But mostly I’m just hurt,’ he said.

  I looked at his tired face. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and his jaw was shadowed with stubble. He’d told Grace he hadn’t slept while I was gone.

  ‘I thought we were fixing things,’ he said.

  He blinked into the early-morning sunlight.

  ‘I thought you were actually going to tell me what was going on in your life. I wanted to be that person. I was ready. But I guess that’s just not going to happen with us, is it?’

  I was starting to prefer his silence.

  ‘I know I’ve made mistakes,’ he said, ‘I get that. And I know you think I sabotaged our family. But it’s not that simple, Tess. You don’t know everything. You’re old enough to understand some complexities.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not worth talking about.’

  ‘Then how do I know you’re not lying?’

  He sighed.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘There were certain indiscretions.’

  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Will you stop speaking in code? If you want to tell me something, tell me.’

  ‘Your mother was having an affair,’ he said.

  I felt my mouth close tight.

  ‘With that guy she’s seeing now. And I wasn’t entirely in denial, the way you think I was.’

  He opened the lid on a thermos, and the smell of his burnt coffee filled the car.

  ‘It’s easy to imagine that since I was so zoned out, but the truth is I was in mourning. There’s a difference. I knew my marriage was dead, and I couldn’t help grieving for it. It swallowed up everything else, and I walked around in a fog. For years I guess.’

  ‘But you were trying out all those jobs . . .’

  ‘A distraction,’ he said. ‘A way to get away from home.’

  ‘God, I can’t believe her,’ I said.

  He took a sip of coffee.

  ‘It wasn’t just her, Tess. You don’t need to make her your supervillain. I wasn’t the world’s greatest husband.’

  I looked in the rear-view mirror and watched the road disappear behind us.

  ‘She didn’t even come to get me,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘In Sicily. I thought maybe she’d show up to bring me home.’

  My dad was quiet for a moment.

  ‘That was never going to happen,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  He took another loud sip of coffee.

  ‘Because I never told her you were there.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I paused to let that sink in.

  ‘How do you think it makes me look?’ he said. ‘The one time you’re with me in the last two years and you flee the country. I knew there was some tension between us, but I didn’t think it was this bad.’

  ‘It was for a funeral,’ I mumbled.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That makes it even worse! Funerals are what I do!’

  ‘Dad . . .’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want to hear anything else now. I just want to let you know I’ve made a decision. And I’m afraid it’s a final one.’

  ‘What decision?’

  ‘I don’t think we should work together any more,’ he said.

  He said it low and quiet, like it was hard to get out.

  ‘It was an irresponsible idea to begin with, and it has now run its course.’

  I expected to feel nothing after he said this. After all, I had been helping him. I was doing the favour. But there was a pit in my stomach after he spoke, and I felt it all the way home. I felt it when I went to bed that night. And I still felt it when I woke up thinking of my funeral.

  When my dad finally came home, I found him making business calls at the kitchen table. After he got off the phone, I asked him if there was a new funeral he was planning, but he didn’t answer me.

  ‘C’mon,’ I said. ‘What is it? A funeral for a stray cat? A marmoset?’

  Silence.

  ‘Just give me a hint.’

  More silence.

  Eventually I went upstairs and called Grace. I asked her if I could come over for a little while. Surprisingly enough, she told me to pack a bag and stay for a few days.

  ‘Your dad just needs more time to get over it,’ she said.

  ‘Over what exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘His heartbreak.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  So I showed up with a backpack and sat on Grace’s balcony while she went to work. There was an egg-shaped wicker chair hanging outside of her small, stylish apartment downtown and I claimed it for my own.

  It had been a while since I lived with a woman and the perks were pretty awesome right off the bat. Cleanliness, for one. Grace did a natural deep clean of her entire apartment every weekend, she told me. And she used a fancy cider vinegar that made the whole place smell like apples. Also, there were no freakishly long pubic hairs on the toilet seat, so that was a plus.

  Another perk was the grocery shopping. Grace’s fridge was stocked with organic produce, and I was given full access. I began to eat fruits and vegetables like a sailor staving off scurvy. And finally, there was the library, mostly composed of books about the alternative death movement. After spending some time just scanning the shelf, I began to read through them, taking in large gulps of information about backyard burials and nature cemeteries.

  That evening, Grace still wasn’t home, so I ignored my best instincts and went into her home office. I only had to look in two drawers before I came across the baby pictures. Grace appeared in one after the other, along with a man with the same blue eyes and turned-up nose as the child. And, of course, the closer I looked, the more the baby girl resembled Grace, too. Her hair was an identical shade for one thing. And her top lip curved in just the same way.

  Later that night, over vegan lasagna and a glass of wine, I asked her if I could volunteer at Greener Pastures the next day. Grace looked surprised, but only for a few seconds. She finished chewing a bite of lasagna, and simply said, ‘I don’t know how your dad will feel about that.’

  But I showed up the next morning and she didn’t turn me away. So, for the next week, while I waited for my dad to talk to me again, I went to Grace’s office in north-east Minneapolis. Mostly, I helped with record-keeping and answering the occasional phone call while Grace’s assistant was at lunch. But a few days in, I began to keep a blog, writing short entries about hand-carved stoneware urns, funeral photographers, recycling pacemakers, and finally, on day five, I began an extensive entry about how to remove deceased family members from social media.

  I started it with no trouble, writing about proof of authority and login information. It was only when I felt the urge to comment on the topic that I froze up. By the end of the morning, I broke down and visited Jonah’s Face
book page. The page had not been taken down like I thought. Instead, in the time since I’d last checked it, it had become a full-on memorial page.

  ‘Missing you, J!’ wrote a former classmate. ‘Had a dream last night that you were still here, man. Wish it were true.’ ‘Your birthday’s coming up, soon. I didn’t forget!’ Extended family were present, too: ‘We’ll be setting a place for you at the lake this year, Jonah. Be sure to pay us a visit.’ ‘Hope you’re enjoying your journey.’ ‘Your cousin just graduated high school. I know you’d be proud!’ I scrolled down the page.

  Since I wasn’t a ‘friend’ any more, I didn’t have access to all the pictures, but I was surprised to find that I still had most of them memorized. There were so many times I’d used them as placeholders to picture him when I hadn’t seen his face in months. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been staring at the screen when Grace tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  I didn’t answer, and Grace looked at the screen over my shoulder.

  ‘There’s a food truck down the street with decent tacos. You ready for lunch?’

  It would have been so easy to say no, to say I was almost finished with my blog post. But I darkened the computer screen in front of me and stood up. I followed Grace out the door and out on to the street. Summer was here in earnest and I was sweating the instant the hot sun hit my neck.

  ‘You’ve been doing some nice work on the blog,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve gotten a lot of compliments.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘I think it’s time to start paying you for it.’

  I heard myself laugh.

  ‘I’m eating all of your food,’ I said. ‘I live in your house.’

  ‘That can’t be a permanent arrangement, Tess. You understand, right?’

  The information didn’t entirely register with me. I didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘But I’d like you to keep the blog going,’ she said. ‘I think it will be a good part-time job when you go back to school.’