“And here he is!” Mom said, when the door shut behind me, and I knew that tone of voice, and I rushed in without stopping to take off my boots, tracking in dirt, stomping like Frankenstein, because the happiness in her words meant Mom was talking to Maya—
Which she was. But when I burst into the kitchen, arms already raised for a hug, tears already halfway out of my eyes, I found that Maya wasn’t there. Only her voice, on the phone, which was better than nothing, but not as good as my sister, my whole entire fearless amazing sister, which is what I wanted, what I needed.
“Hey!” I said, taking the receiver. “Lucky timing!”
“I’ve been calling every ten minutes waiting for you to get home, so, no, it wasn’t luck, it was stubborn persistence.”
“That’s good, too,” I said. “Happy Christmas, nonbeliever.”
“To you, too.” Her voice was rough and ragged, like she’d had a cold or been smoking too many cigarettes or screaming or singing too loud. Or all of the above. And there they were again, the waves in the background. She was near the beach. In real life. “Did you and your boyfriend have a nice date?”
“Shhh,” I said, looking over at Mom, who was washing dishes with a deep beautiful smile on her face.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Mom can’t hear me. So? Did you? Have a nice date.”
“Yeah. How did you . . .”
“Mom said you were with your ‘friend’ Tariq.” She let out a ragged breath. “Listen, brother. I gotta confess, I was kind of a jerk. Tariq told me he liked you. I never passed the word to you, ’cause I was pretty crushed out on him myself. It was stupid. You should forgive me.” I had missed this so much: my sister, the bossy older sibling, the one who always made up the rules, still deciding where the conversation went, when I had so many questions I needed to ask her.
My head hurt with questions. Why did you do this to us? Are you with Dad? What’s he like? Can you two come and take me away? When are you coming back? What’s up with that status update that said your band broke up? How could you abandon me? Instead I said, “How are things going?”
She sighed. “These people are just not serious about music,” she said. My supercharged hearing heard waves crashing and wind blustering through the wires. “But I’ve been able to get a lot of work done. I’m writing some really good songs, I think. Getting away from everything has been so, so good for me.”
“Well, maybe not so good for your schoolwork and chances of getting into a good college and entire future. According to Mom . . .”
“She makes some good points.”
“We need to see you,” I said, looking over at Mom, too scared to mention Dad as long as she stood there. “I need your number. I need to call you again.”
“No,” she said, and she said it sadly, but she said it in that Maya way that meant there’d be no arguing about it. The Matt of a month or two ago would have dropped it right there. But I wasn’t that Matt anymore.
“Why not?”
“We definitely need to talk. I know that. I want to. But I can’t.”
Short pause. “Why not?”
I heard her through the phone. The conflicted whispers of her thoughts. Her own pain, almost audible, every bit as real as mine. In the end, she chose silence.
“Fine,” I said finally. “But call me. Soon. On my cell.”
“Maybe.”
“I miss you,” I said.
I pictured her, conjured her up as she had been before she left. Brown hair cut pixie short, probably getting shaggy by now, eyebrows arched somewhere between skepticism and amusement. Maya was not beautiful, but not beautiful in the way the Mona Lisa or Virginia Woolf were not beautiful—my sister was beyond beauty, beyond convention. Her ears were multiply pierced. Even seated, she looked tall and strong. She wore a studded jean jacket and corduroys. She wore them with ease and grace, and she was not afraid of anything.
“I miss you, too,” she said.
My stomach whimpered. I shut my eyes against the ocean-pull of words I wanted to say. I’m dying. I need help. I can’t stop. I want to stop. But I can’t. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I prayed she could hear them in my voice, that I could project through the phone lines the depth of my fear and my hurt. “I need you. Okay? Please? Come home?”
She took a long time before she said, “Soon, Matt.”
Later, when I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, I heard my mom sobbing in her room. I wondered if Maya was crying, too, in that house by the sea near Providence, or wherever she was, and whether it meant anything that we were all three crying together, apart.
RULE #43
You are never alone, no matter how alone you think you are.
DAY: ∞; A BRIEF CIGARETTE BREAK, OUTSIDE THE TIME/SPACE CONTINUUM
I realize I don’t know who you are anymore, Reader.
In the beginning, you were me. I started out writing this Rulebook for myself, messages sent into the ether in the hopes that they’d reach a younger dumber version of myself, someone so desperate for guidance that he’d turn to anyone, even someone as messed-up as a marginally less-messed-up version of himself.
Somewhere along the line, I realized I was writing for boys in general, especially the lost lonely isolated ones, the boys with no one in their lives to teach them The Rules, or the boys who had to settle for less-than-perfect guidance from exploitative or predatory men who know hunger when they see it and know how to use your hunger against you.
Then, before I knew it, in my twisted starving mind, the audience I imagined was everyone, all the millions who don’t fit into neat boxes, everybody who got bent or broken on the way to becoming a grown-up, who Ideates Suicidally, who is at war with their own body.
But then I realized I am as flawed as any guide can be. And now I know that anyone looking to me for rules to live by is sort of screwed.
I don’t think this is a rulebook at all. It might be what the therapeutic professions call A Cry for Help. It might be a road map to how to get to where you know you need help.
I started out thinking I had so much to offer. But I’ve got nothing to share but the hope that my pain can be helpful to someone.
RULE #44
Your mommy really can make everything better.
DAY: 34
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 200
“Did she tell you anything?” I asked my mom the next morning. “When you talked, before I came home? About . . . anything? Why she left, when she’s coming back?”
“No, honey,” Mom said. And smiled at how strong my coffee was. “Do you think she’ll come home soon?” I asked, staring at Maya’s shut door, aware of what a ridiculous question I was asking, because of course Mom had no idea, of course I was being a little boy looking to his mommy to make him feel better about something out of everyone’s control.
“Of course, honey,” Mom said, and believing her felt good. Standing in the hallway felt good.
Back in my room, I turned off the lights and stuck my head out the window, smelling the winter air, feeling the wind on me, but the cold winter air still told me little.
He was out there, somewhere. My father. I would know his smell when I found it.