The Best of Us

twenty nine

DECEMBER 2014

IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when Heaven asked me if I wanted to join her for coffee and I almost said no, but one look around my room was enough for me to change my mind.

Saturday was a dull blade of a day. It had left me jagged and lacerated, wounded and mutilated in my bedroom, my edges all torn. My body was part of the furniture. I hadn't moved in hours.

When her message came through, my phone, thrown on the bedside table, flashed up into the room, a beam of white light illuminating the shadows and shapes of my room. My curtains were drawn open, and so were the blinds, but it was pitch black anyway. The sharp winter night had bled into the room, shards of grey moonlight cutting across the walls and splitting my body up into lunar fractions. The darkness had made a cave of the place.

My bed was unmade and the bedsheets were creased, kicked down and crumpled, twisted between my legs, and my pillow was hard and warm. I was lying on my back, my hands on my abdomen, staring at the ceiling, wondering just how long I'd been there. Hours, sure, but how many?

Time had developed a texture like wet mud. Time moved like a boulder being pushed uphill; it would roll to the bottom and crush me before it could get anywhere. Nothing had passed. It had just gotten darker. The day was a blur.

After Bradley had left, I stayed on the stairs. I didn't have the strength to go up or down. I didn't even have the strength to cry. All I did was sit there, my elbows on my knees, my arms crossed, my shoulders hunched, the blades in my back sharp, staring at a mark on the wooden floorboards until my Dad came home.

It was late morning when he came in holding grocery bags. As soon as he stepped inside, he tossed his car keys in the bowl on top of the chest of drawers, closed the door with his foot and then looked at me, staring with a slightly furrowed brow.

When I raised my heavy, pounding head to look at him, he cocked a brow, looked me over and asked, conversationally, Rough night?

I shrugged, tension wound tight around my throbbing temples, and looked back at him; our eyes locked for an extended, silent moment.

Help me with the groceries, he said eventually and he broke away from me without waiting for a response. Bags in hand, his shoes almost clicking against the floor, he walked to the kitchen.

By the time I finally got to my feet, he'd already emptied two of the bags and was halfway through another, putting things into the cupboards and softly humming My Funny Valentine. I only ended up putting away the bread and the cereal. He did everything else, but he didn't say anything about my poor attempt at helping.

When I took a seat at the kitchen table, slumped and overwhelmed with the thought of returning upstairs, he, singing quietly, came to my side with a glass of water and two little tablets in his open palm. Without question, I took the glass and then the tablets, washing them both down.

He asked me if I wanted breakfast but the thought of food made me feel ill, nausea rising in my gut, so I said I wasn't hungry and he told me to go back to bed and suddenly I wanted nothing more, but I didn't trust myself to make it there so, with all my strength, I pushed my hands down against the table, got to my feet, trudged to down the hall to the living room and got onto the couch. I closed my eyes and hoped I might be able to sleep just because there was nothing else I wanted to do. There was nothing I could stand to be awake for.

I'd been there for a while, restless, when I heard his shoes again, tapping down the hall towards me. Motionless, I kept my eyes closed, my chest slowly rising and falling, my breathing soft and hushed. I was resting my head against one of the cushions, pressed against the arm of the sofa, and was holding it close to me, my face still and blank. He came into the living room and I sensed him leaning over me. A moment later, he was shaking the blanket that was thrown over the back of the sofa and then, carefully, he laid it over me, covering up to my shoulders and adjusting the way it pooled around my feet.