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The days had started to blend into each other. I ignored my phone, which rang incessantly with professors and friends, people I’d blown off when I left that night. When the call came from the care nurse: Come home now. Evelyn won’t make it through the night. I hopped the BART to Richmond with little more than the clothes on my back and my pathetically near-empty wallet. Almost two hours later, I arrived home, too late. Evelyn had passed away before I could say good-bye.
Professors wanted me to come back to class, to take the final, to graduate. I listened to exactly three out of twenty-two voicemails. Molly: Hilary, what the hell happened to you? Just call me. And then, Hilary, you have one final, that’s it. Please don’t throw it all away. Call me, we’ll make arrangements for you. That was Dr. Gupta, her delicate accent floating through the line, comforting only in its familiarity. I almost called her back, the one person who seemed to have some empathy, who had always been a presence for me, an ear. I sat with my finger on the button, thinking, but eventually hit delete. Hilary, if you don’t come back this week and take your final exam, you will not earn your degree. This is the last time I’m calling you. Dr. Peterman. Asshole prick. I deleted them all. It all felt so hopeless.
I couldn’t scrabble for money from within the walnut walls of an exam hall, especially since if I had any hopes of passing, I’d need to study. I had two weeks left to bury Evelyn, before the state intervened. But I had no real way of getting my hands on any money. I tried to apply for a credit card, but with no history, I’d been denied.
I went to see Evelyn’s “estate” lawyer, a thin, rumpled sort of man who operated from his damp basement in Elmwood, and he’d laughed at me. There was nothing but debt. I had to pay the debt before I could pay for Evelyn. I was stuck in this quasi purgatory, hopeless and bottomless. The self-loathing felt like a thick, wet blanket. The haze of alcohol dulled the sharp edges. Just a little.
“Here’s what will happen,” he explained to me, his twitchy fingers ashing a cigarette so frequently, so nervously, he lost the cherry more than once and had to relight. “The state will do what’s called a state-funded burial. It’s not actually a burial. They’ll cremate the body. You have time after that to claim the ashes, but then you owe the funeral home fees, as well as the state. Then they dispose of the ashes how they see fit.”
A wave of intense nausea overtook me. “Dispose?” I squeaked, breathing through my mouth. His breath smelled like fish.
“I don’t know the protocols. The funeral homes generally have individual protocols.”
I left him in his office, the ashtray tilted up to his face, chasing the red hot ember around the glass with a broken Camel between his teeth.
Mick came back to Max’s a week later, throwing a dirt-streaked manila envelope in front of me, thick with bills. I sat in the same chair, with the same drink, the same shoes, the same hatred on my tongue.
“There’s a thousand there. I’ll get more. How much time do we have?”
“Four weeks from the day she died, so that’s only two more.” I flipped the envelope back and forth between my index and middle fingers. “Don’t even bother.”
He sat on the stool next to me. “I failed Evelyn a lot. I failed you.”
“You don’t owe me shit, Mick.” I needed to stave off some kind of misplaced daddy syndrome, which churned my stomach.
He ordered a whiskey. Then another. He clasped my shoulder and the gesture seemed almost paternal. Caring. He bought me another drink. I felt the tear work its way down my cheek, splashing on the bar top, and under his thumb he slid the white pill across the bar top. It didn’t feel like exploitation. It felt like friendship. It melted on my tongue, acrid and bitter, and when I closed my eyes, I floated. That night, Mick took me home, left me in Evelyn’s apartment, a three-story walk-up on Market with peeling paint and a useless front lock. I slept on her bed, in her nightgown.
When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t feel bad. No real hangover, just the faded memory of happiness. It wasn’t a high like I’d ever known, back in college we’d tested E, a warm liquidy pooling between my thighs and a bursting in my chest like we were in love with the whole world. This time, there were no hallucinations, no real elation, just a lighthearted easiness that I hadn’t felt in months. I wanted it back. It tugged at me like physical craving, but as innocuous as caffeine.
I hung out at Max’s every day after that, waiting for Mick, but telling myself otherwise. I’d turn and look at the door every time it opened. Truth be told, I was starting to like the smell of the place. Evelyn’s apartment smelled like expired Calvin Klein. When he came back, the envelope in his hand was thin. He tossed it down and sat with a grumbled sigh.