I know exactly what she means, because Dad doesn’t just play the drums, he slams on the skins like he wants to flatten them into pancakes. “So what was it? What made him like that?”
She squirts cleaner into the dresser drawers and she soaks up the wetness with a paper towel. “He loved it,” she says, wiping with soft circles. She wipes in the same spot for a long time and it looks like she might have forgotten what she’s even doing, which is what people do when they daydream.
“What’s going to happen with that dresser?” I say.
Mom finally moves the paper towel to a new spot. “We’ll see if the new tenants want it. The bed and the nightstand too.”
I hope I never meet the new tenants because they’re never going to be better than the guy who was just here. I stare up at the ceiling and I replay some of the memories Gavin and I had together: us on the train, on The Mindy Love Show, at the kitchen table earlier that morning when he was babysitting me. I keep going back, seeing everything again: eating pizza, walking through New York City, searching around Jersey City for clues about what Sydney was doing. I see him listening so closely while I tell my stories and I see his surprised look when I draw my picture of Sydney’s face. I see his boxy stomach when he’s wearing no shirt and his clear leg hair when he wears shorts and the way he used his right hand to write lyrics and his left hand to drink coffee or wine.
I watch him give me a plain bagel, hold my hand across the street, lift me onto his shoulders, do his blackbird signal, and run his fingers through his bouncy hair. I listen to him sing my melody and I remember his words: “A good song is a good song”; “It’s just about relaxing and not overthinking things”; “It’s too painful to remember”; “It’s even more painful to forget”; “Fuck Mandy Love.”
The memories are so clear and they make it hard to be here in this empty bedroom, but I don’t know where else to go. The memories are with me wherever I am.
I go back to the studio and Dad is sitting in his roller chair with his arms crossed. He’s staring at all the boxes like they’re trying to talk to him but he can’t understand what they’re saying. Now Mom is standing next to me and she’s watching Dad too and for once I think Mom is feeling what I’m feeling because she walks over to Dad and squeezes his shoulders. This room will never look the way it does in my memory and I hate when that happens, when the way things are and the way things were look totally different.
“I’m out of boxes,” Dad says. “I have to take a trip to Home Depot.”
I hear him say it and I know right away what I have to do. “I’m coming.”
“Really? You hate that place.”
Yes, but it might be the only choice I have left.
The glass doors open for us and Dad and I walk through. It’s not so scary until I see the orange shopping carts and I start smelling the wood or whatever that smell is. That’s when I start to feel super-sleepy like I want to be home and hiding under my covers.
But instead of running away, I do the opposite. I bend down and touch the floor. It’s hard and cold and it reminds me of when I used to lie on the kitchen tiles with Pepper because he liked it there and I liked him. I wish dogs could get wrinkles just like people so you’d know when they were getting old and it wasn’t such a surprise when it was time to say good-bye.
I catch up with Dad. While he’s looking for his boxes, I’m looking for a good jumping spot. The ceiling is so high that a giant could shop here without bumping his head, and the shelves are full of shiny packages that look a lot like toys. Toys for dads.
Dad stops to talk to a worker with an ugly orange apron. Now seems like the best time because there’s a tall stepladder waiting in the aisle. I start climbing up before I can think about it too much, but it’s really hard not to think about everything. I wonder what my memory is really good for, anyway, because the only people who seem to care about it are people like Dr. Robert and Mindy Love and they’re not the nicest people.
I reach the top of the steps and I look down. I have to hold the rail because I’m so high up.
“Joan! What are you doing?”
Dad and the worker are staring up at me. Dad’s eyes look like they’re about to leap out of his face and I think the worker is saying something rude about me into his shirt microphone.
“Don’t move,” Dad says. “I’m coming up.”
There’s a little crowd now. An audience. Dad comes up the stairs and makes me sit down with him on the platform. He tries to get me to look at him, but I can’t.
“Joanie, please. What’s going on?”
“I’m tired and it’s not the sleepy kind.”
“What are you saying? I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I want everything to go back to the way it was.”
“I know, honey.”
“No, you don’t, Dad. You’ve forgotten.”
“No, I haven’t. I swear I haven’t.”
I look up. I want to believe him.
“Come here,” he says, and he hugs me hard.
A Day in the Life
36
I tap his face. Syd. Stop playing around. Wake up. I listen for a breath, feel for a pulse. I blow into his mouth. Press his chest. Hold his nose, blow again. Press his chest, harder, harder. Try to lift his head, his body. So heavy. Find a phone. Call 911. Answer the dispatcher’s questions, follow his orders, do everything he asks. Hang up. Go to the porch, listen for sirens. Come back inside. Shake him, scream—
I open my eyes, wake from the nightmare. But I can’t turn it off fully, not when the nightmare really happened.
It takes a minute to remember that I’m in Veronica’s house on her foldout couch.
I sit up, throw the afghan aside, wipe the sweat from my forehead. The window is open, but there’s no air blowing in. My feet welcome the cool kiss of the tiled floor.
The last few nights, my dreams have been frighteningly vivid. Memories and images that I had evicted from my mind have been breaking back in. It’s as if I’m living my life in delay. He died months ago but it’s only hitting me now.
I find a note stuck to the coffeemaker: It’s Friday! We’re going out tonight!
The boyish handwriting reminds me of Joan, who I’ve missed rather intensely since leaving Jersey. Though she and Veronica are wildly different—the former quite serious, the latter rarely so—I’ve united them in my head as part of one family for which I feel responsible. I hope my littler sister is doing okay without me.
In the week I’ve spent here with Veronica, we’ve gone out every night but one. It would seem every day is Friday in her world. Unless this never-ending party is all for my benefit.