I don’t think many people understand what that was like for her. Sharon and Mel had each other. No spouses, no partners of note, no close family members. They were each other’s family. Of course she’s not the same person. When something like that happens to you, you move a little slower, a little more cautiously. That’s what you do when you’ve been wounded. I think stopping work, for her, is a protective mechanism. If this is what you do, it’s part of who you are. It’s as natural as walking or breathing. I definitely got the sense that Mel was the one who had the big ideas, and Sharon was the one who kind of kept things moving.
I wince before I remember that Danny is watching me.
Who wouldn’t be just totally lost after something like that? No one knows if she’ll ever draw again. It would surprise me, in fact, if she did.
I have to stop and put the book down, it hurts so bad. Oh God. Please, let this be Brecky on a bad day. Just Brecky running her mouth, ruminating, and not Donnie. Please not Donnie. Because that would finally do it. That would lay the last, lethal hairline fracture on my heart.
I close the book and hand it back to Danny, careful not to look at him. Pick up the screwdriver, now slightly warm. “When I got up this morning,” I say, “I wouldn’t have given two fucks about somebody flapping their jaws in some stupid book. But now that it’s ruined my day, someone’s getting the boots.”
“This is something you love,” Danny says quietly. “Sharon. Look at me. You think I don’t know that this was your life, before we met? You think I don’t see you not drawing anymore? I see it. It’s an omission, and I can see it. I can see the gap, in you.”
I shrug.
“If you’ve given up something you love so much,” he says, “and you haven’t said a single solitary word about it, I take that as a sign that something is very wrong. It makes me worry about what might be happening to you on the inside. It makes me worry that you might regret what you’re doing with your life right now, later. How that regret might spread to other parts of your life.”
He goes quiet. The silence in the room is unbearable.
I say, “What. You wanna hear more Penthouse Forum stories about me fucking in the abandoned Funlands? Is that it?”
He leaves the room.
Danny’s right. He knows nothing. I’ve kept it all from him—the terrifyingly fossilized middle of me that used to spread and contract like a living thing, when I sat down to work. About Mel. My memories are disintegrating, slurring together. I watch an interview of us online from years ago, both of us college-sprung and round-faced, babies, and I hear her say the words, “I’m Mel Vaught,” and it raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I’m forgetting the sound of her voice. The way she coughed. Her footfalls. All sensory evidence that she’d even been a person, evaporating. A part of me can’t help but crawl deeper inside in response. I can’t take another part of myself grinding to a halt.
This is the first real fight I’ve had with Danny. It turns my stomach inside out. Some of the worst vomiting since the stroke, so much so that Danny breaks his silent treatment to stick his head in and grudgingly ask if I’m all right.
I find him in our bedroom at midnight, hunched over his laptop. I sit behind him and rest my forehead into his back.
I say, “Okay. Ready?”
I tell him everything. I tell him about going to Florida to identify Kelly Kay’s body and I tell him about the fight Mel and I had in the Times Square subway station. I tell him about the stroke and the hospital and about Teddy and about my mom. I tell him about Mel and me and the cold, dirty, lonely year we put in on Irrefutable Love. I tell him that meeting him felt like waking up from a long, dark sleep. It’s the longest I can remember talking in months.
I show him the sketches Caroline Palik gave me. He pages through them slowly, nodding as if it confirms something for him.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. We’re lying on our bed, holding hands. It’s two in the morning now. We will turn off the lamp, I will climb on top of him. The sex is where we really forgive each other; the compromise that can only happen when he is inside me. “I’m not the greatest at talking about myself. Irony enough, considering what we made our stuff about.”
“I think you should do something with Mel’s project,” he says.
We both understand that I am not totally forgiven. But for now, I have been given concession.
—
I call Donnie. “There’s something I need to show you.”