I looked down at my phone. There was a text from Steve. How are you doing? he wrote. My roommate Julie must have told him what happened. FINALLY, someone asked me how I was doing! I almost burst into tears. The kindness, the humanity of the question shocked me. No one had ever asked me that before. Or at least it had been a long time. I didn’t write anything back to Steve, I thought it would be more mysterious that way, he would be forced to interpret my silence. When I looked up, I noticed the paper landscape was covered in a fine film of dust, and I was compelled to use my masturbation towel as a duster. As I went about the room and began to wipe things down, I started to feel sick. I could hardly breathe, all of the fucking dust molecules flew into my lungs, poisoning me, making me feel nauseated all over again.
I fled from the junk room, coughing, and into my adoptive parents’ suite, and once inside the bathroom, I helped myself to a tiny cup of water. Next to the bathroom was a door to a gigantic walk-in closet, which they shared. I opened it and went in. I walked along my adoptive mother’s side. It was the size of my side of the shared studio apartment. Her clothes, most of them plain, a few colorful and cheerful blouses, took up an entire side. There was a shelf near the floor with a jewelry box, empty, and above it, a faded, tattered copy of the French Impressionist painting SUNLIGHT STREAMING THROUGH PINK FLOWERS. I touched the paper lightly, and that light touch caused it to rip off the tack, then it fluttered to the floor, where I left it.
My things were in my adoptive brother’s bedroom, I remembered. It’s simple; just go in there, I thought, go into there and get your things. I went out into the hallway and marched up to the door. I pictured myself opening the door, and then what would happen? I would turn into dust; I would see all of my enemies; I would walk into a white oblivion.
The strip of light was gone; someone must have turned off the light. What if that person was still in there? I wondered. I put my ear to the door: silence. Was it a mistake to go into his bedroom? Mistakes have been made before. I have made plenty of them. Was it too soon after the death? No one was around me to ask. Everyone had gone to bed early; everyone had set their alarms for 6 a.m. I had heard them talking about the funeral in the kitchen, it was scheduled for tomorrow morning, even though no one directly asked me to go, not even my adoptive parents. I’ll show them. I’ll just show up and sit in the front row of the church, right in front of Chad Lambo, and everyone will see me and my sisterly mourning, I will create a mourning spectacle of myself.
I opened his bedroom door. With the hallway light on, I saw a small desk light, I went in, turned it on, and closed the door. I looked around the room, which was sparsely furnished, even sparser than my own. Then I turned on the ceiling light. There were no knickknacks, one shelf, one desk and metal chair, one twin bed with a metal frame. I recognized on the shelf a book I purchased during a period of teenage decadence, How To Stop Time, a memoir about an elegant and sophisticated female heroin user who kept her heroin in glassine envelopes. The image of the glassine envelopes stayed with me for almost sixteen years. He snuck into my room and stole things, I said to no one. He took my things. I sat down on the bed and I ran my hand across the bedspread, then I stood up and lifted it off. Because of my fear of bedbugs, I knew exactly how to examine a bed. I ripped off the top sheet, then the fitted sheet. With all my strength, I lifted up the mattress. What was I looking for? I wondered. Everything was freshly laundered; the sheets were sparkling white with a faint bleach smell, the mattress spotless. I inspected the pillowcases: no traces of blood or drool or bedbug feces.
It wasn’t physically clear a human had ever occupied this room. The desk was situated in front of a large window. It was too dark to see out, but I knew there was a large tree outside, the tree that depressed him. A large houseplant was placed upon the desk, blocking the view of the tree. Instead of looking at the depressing tree, he must have looked at this depressing plant.
I went over to the closet and opened it; I braced myself for a tremendous odor. Of course, I had spent a lot of time imagining what was inside it, days and days of visualizing that landscape, and when the material reality did not match up, I was, for a second, astonished. Someone, most likely my adoptive mother, had cleaned it out and remodeled it. To clarify, my adoptive mother paid someone to clean and remodel it. She paid someone, a professional closet designer, to rip out the rotting wood with the dead animal and replace it with shiny and smooth pieces of plywood, to build in drawers and shelves, to add an adjustable rod with cedar block hangers and assorted places for shoes and hats and ties. A ceiling light switched on automatically when the door opened. There was a floor-length mirror that reflected back the bed. I saw I had a puzzled expression on my face, which became even more puzzled when I realized there was one item of clothing in the entire wardrobe. My puzzlement turned to joy when I realized it was my black ribbed turtleneck. My black ribbed turtleneck! I took off my shirt, and slipped the turtleneck over my head, and I saw in the mirror it was a perfect fit. I decided I would sleep in it, which would cut down on the time it would take to get ready in the morning. My adoptive mother must have put it in the closet, along with my suitcase and traveler’s kit, which were on the closet floor. I took a pill to calm myself, to make the information I took in rational. All of my things were lit up in a yellowish light. It was nothing short of a great pleasure to be reunited with my objects, and there was true comfort in them. But there was nothing of his. He left behind almost nothing, not even a pair of socks. It occurred to me how quiet it was in the room. The silence shocked me, causing a sharp pain to needle up and down my legs, which forced me to sit down at his desk. I realized I had not paid enough attention to what was on the desk.
Someone had turned off the desk fan, the ever-persistent desk fan that provided background noise and peace, his lifelong companion. The fan had been unplugged and someone had wrapped the cord neatly around the neck. As I sat at the desk, I observed that the room did not appear to be a crime scene. I did not see