This makes me smile. “I liked him, too,” I say. Inhale deeply, cough out the smoke. Ash my cigarette. God, this is good. I missed smoking with Mel.
She taps the book. “I gotta tell you, Sharon. This is some of the best work I have ever seen you do. I know that’s probably not the most appropriate thing to say, in these circumstances. But this shit is amazing. I mean, really incredible. It was enough to make sleep difficult for a few nights.”
That does it. This hits me in the very solar plexus of my weepiness. Another side effect of the stroke. I’m a regular Weepy Wilma. I fall apart over the stupidest shit. ASPCA commercial? Out of tapioca? Missed the toilet on my last piss? Cry, cry, cry. But it feels so good to have someone else know about this. To not have it jammed up inside me, clammy and tight. To talk about it, and to talk about other things as well. As if it were normal. Just another topic.
The crying is loud and sudden and I don’t cover my face. I just crumple up and bawl it out.
Mel is horrified. She freezes, smoke in the air.
“It just feels good to—” I take a deep breath. “T-t-talk.”
“I—yeah, man,” she says slowly. “I mean, we always could have talked about this. I wouldn’t have judged you or anything. It would have been fine.”
I shake my head. No, I want to say. We couldn’t have talked about it before. I wouldn’t have known how.
All I can manage is to gasp, “It hurt.”
Mel grinds her cigarette, lifts her arm, and gathers me into a gentle noogie. “Yeah, dude. That’s a hurtful thing. Anyone would hurt.” She coughs. Wavers falsetto, “Everybody hurts—sometimes.”
I sock her in the gut.
—
The next week is a revelation. Talking about the List, Honus Caudill, the pictures—it’s our new normal. We talk about it like we talk about what we need to pick up from the store. It’s not something I ever imagined I could put into words.
But Mel, as it turns out, has plenty of them.
“I mean, I knew you used to draw your guys, back in the day,” she says. “I always thought it was, like, this revenge exercise or something. But holy hell, that, like, compendium of stuff, this deluge, no blank space whatsoever? It’s like another universe. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
We’re out on the porch again, in the evening, Florida fug lifting in time for twilight. Blue into indigo. I’m squeezing my hand clench, gritting my teeth against the strain.
“But what I love about it,” she says, “is that it’s not about the dudes. It’s about everything around them. It’s like what it must be like to be inside someone’s head. All your memories and figures sort of running together. It’s about you.”
I rub a mosquito bite on my forearm. I’m getting anxious. Mel’s moving too fast for me to keep up. I have a suspicion about where this is all going. “Not a big deal,” I mutter.
“Oh, but it is a big deal.” She unfolds her legs from under her and crosses them thoughtfully, propping her head on an elbow. “You’re no time-waster. Nuh uh. You wouldn’t have put so much time into it if it wasn’t important.” She narrows her eyes, gazing into the swamp. “You were charting something. That’s what I think. Like some sort of fucked-up measuring wall where you put the kids to see how tall they are.”
What I most remember about my stroke is the strange way my quiet and my active brains seemed to blur, crushing the levee between night and day. Those first few months of recovery seemed like a steady flow of dream, punctuated by moments of crystal-clear pain. I often wasn’t sure whether I was asleep or awake. I found myself muttering private thoughts aloud. Which is how I open my mouth and say crustily, “How deep the hole goes.”
Mel looks at me, face lit. She puts both hands in the air with a grin. “You said it. How deep the hole goes.”
I cover my mouth. She puts her hands down. Pauses, then says, “I can’t help but wonder what it would look like moving.”
There it is. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “No no.”
“Oh come on. Don’t say no yet.” She rises from her chair. “Getting a pop. Want one?”
She steps inside. I lean in and prod at the numbness in my leg, irritated. I wonder if I lie down, act like I’m going to sleep, she’ll leave me alone. There are two hammocks on the deck. After a single sweltering night on the threadbare couch, I sleep out here, with Mel. It’s nice—the locusts, the sound of trickling water, frogs.
She emerges with a Coke and an unlit joint hanging from her lips. Looks to me questioningly.
“No,” I repeat.
She nods thoughtfully. She was expecting this. “Can you tell me why?”
“I have re. Reh. Shit.”
“Reservations?”
I nod.
“Can you explain?”
I wish I had it together enough to cut the problem to its center. To lure the secret things with which you coexist out of the shadows of your brain, revive them, try to shape them: It’s too dangerous. Mel, of all people, should know this. And I’m no Mel. What might it do to me?
What I come up with: “Too hard.”
She looks down, nods again. Scratches her chin with her wrist. The chiggers are out.