Tatum’s eyes go wide. “Those go for a lot. Like three or four thousand.”
“More. But we got this one cheap.” I draw back, finger the shirt. It’s M?tley Crüe. One of Mel’s. I bring it to my face, smell. Mildew and sweat and every empty day that’s passed since. “Use it,” I tell them.
Ryan is scuffling along the edge of the room, looking at our cork wall, peering out the windows. The Sharon Wall is at the end, still concealed by the bedsheet. He lifts the sheet, peeks underneath. Goes still. I hear him curse softly to himself.
I walk upstairs into the living area. Bedrooms. I stick my head into Mel’s. The sheets are ones she slept in, the pillows tossed against the wall—we were packing, late getting to LaGuardia. Later, I hadn’t wanted to move anything. There was half a hope in my mind that if I left the studio long enough, she would be there when I returned, twiddling at her drafting board. That when I came in, she’d glance up and say, “Well, where the fuck have you been? Yore tardee.”
I go back down. “Bedrooms are up top. We gotta clean them.”
Mom emerges from the kitchen with a bulging Hefty bag. “I’m gonna call that place that brings cleaning stuff. And you best be callin an exterminator or a damn exorcist or something. I never seen so many cockroaches in my everlovin life.” The door bangs shut.
I take the opportunity to ask, “So. How’s Teddy. How’s Ted.”
Ryan and Tatum exchange a look, do a mutual shuffle. “Uh,” Ryan says.
“He’s good,” Tatum supplies.
“Yeah, he’s pretty good.”
A big, fatty pause. I put out my hands. What.
“He’s getting married,” Tatum says.
When I hear the words, my entire diaphragm goes cold.
In the two years since Louisville, I’ve put Teddy through the same old paces I put them all through, nursing a weird little fantasy scenario I acted and talked out, all those Xanax nights, a prized and private delusion: a we’ll-go-through-hell-then-figure-it-out-and-end-up-together-with-killer-dialogue-and-a-charged-gasping-sex-scene narrative. I hadn’t decided on exactly when I’d planned on reaching out to Teddy and implementing this reunion plan. But I was convinced that it would happen. In the infinite future, there is always time.
Old habits die hard. He had become less Teddy and more my brain’s construction in the months between, but was still so palpable to me I could almost forget his real-life counterpart was out there in the world, living a life. If anything, it was a sign of further bounce-back from the stroke, a return to my old self. I could still make a Frankenstein. It was the only good news to be found. You forget, I tell myself bitterly. Anything vital and alive, even the way someone loves you, could never survive the hotbox that is your head.
The boys look on guiltily, Ryan wagging his dreadlocks in his face, when Mom bustles back in. “I just saw that homeless lady take a crouch in some gravel. In broad daylight.” She stops when she sees me. “Sharon. You’re all gray. What’s the matter.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “I just need to take my pills.” I put my head down and beat a fast track to the bathroom.
We clean until midnight. I collect Mel’s Post-its, her cigarette butts, pencils bearing her specific chew marks, and put them all in a box in her bedroom. “Just leave them for the time being,” I tell the boys. And they nod, they don’t ask questions, and they don’t look at me.
I’m seething. I keep seeing Teddy’s face everywhere I look. All of this happened—Mel dead, my arrest, the spiraling out of everything I’ve ever known—and he knew about it. It’s not that hard to track me online. Ryan and Tatum knew, obviously. It was news. And not even a phone call? In my hour of need, nothing from this man, who occupied an entire world in my mind, even when we weren’t speaking? I could still feel him so strong, for Christ’s sake. He was with me all the time. And his life is proceeding without me, as if we had never happened?
Mom is sent back to Park Slope in a taxi. I take Ryan and Tatum to get tacos from a truck on Troutman and Knickerbocker. We’re in the middle of Ryan trying a cabeza taco, then being told what cabeza means and losing his shit, when Tatum’s phone rings. It’s Teddy. We all know it. Tatum plays it cool, cocks his eyebrow, holds up a finger—just a sec—then ambles down the street, glancing at us over his shoulder.
We go back to the studio, picking up a bottle of Four Roses on the way. When I inevitably outdrink the boys and they collapse, I pick up Tatum’s iPhone from where it rests next to his head and, with only a slim moment of hesitation, access the history and dial up.
Teddy’s voice is fuzzy, craning upward from sleep. “Dude, it’s late. You better be wounded somewhere.”
I can’t speak.
I hear him sigh. He’s processing it. Knows who it is. Says low, “What are you doing?”
“You weren’t going to call. What was I supposed to do.”
He sighs. There’s a murmur in the background. Someone beside him stirring, asking who it is. I feel a pang in my chest.