Here’s my final project for my Fiction Workshop class, my longest story yet and though it isn’t perfect yet, I think it’s at a point where I’m open to feedback 🙂 I appreciate anyone that takes the time to read this!
The Green Couch
I stay inside.
I stay inside on my couch, the green couch. It reminds me of spring because it’s one of those older couches with the fibers that sprout out like blades of grass. It’s the closest I can be to being outside, laying on the grass with Mary, with a fishing rod in the water, mosquitoes biting us but us letting our burdens go and letting the mosquitoes have their blood because Mary and I were blood, and our blood, as siblings, was a bond, a sibling’s promise not to let our mother or the world or mosquitoes destroy us.
There are mosquitos buzzing inside my skull. Or maybe they’re more like birds. Black birds, crows. They caw all the time. They’re annoying, they won’t shut up, they’ll never shut up. Or maybe they’re vultures, circling, calling their bird friends, plotting, waiting to feast. My thoughts won’t let me be.
My therapist told me to imagine a scarecrow inside my skull, driving away the birds. All I can conjure up is a slumping scarecrow with a torn black-and-grey plaid shirt, with blonde yarns for hair flattened by a dark blue cap, and with only the right black button eyeball intact; the left one was pecked off.
I look like that scarecrow today. I couldn’t get myself to take a shower, so my blonde hair is pressed flat against my forehead. I put on my old Braves cap my dad got me. That cap is spring – the smell of the cut grass of the outfield, the smell of hot dogs in the metal bleachers that dedicated parents would sit on and cheer even though in the bright sun the bleachers stung the back of their thighs, the smell of dirt on cleats that would get ingrained in the car mats, the car mats that I would tap my feet on when Dad would take me to Tastee Freeze after my game, no matter if my team won or lost. We’d always split a “black and white” shake, vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup, sipped through a single green bendy straw. The first time, the cashier didn’t know what a “black and white” shake was, but we became regulars and we didn’t even have to say what we wanted. We didn’t want to change it up, we were comfortable. We were happy. My mother was gone. Life was perfect.
On the way to Tastee Freeze, Dad would always let me sit in the front seat, even though you were supposed to be twelve to sit there and I was only eleven. He had an ’80-something forest green Honda Civic, the kind that had the seatbelts automatically come over your shoulder when the car started. That was one of the best parts about sitting in the front seat. The other was the view. The front seat gave you the option to either look through the windshield or out the passenger window. I loved sticking my hand out the window and feeling the wind tickle the in-betweens of my fingers. Then, I’d cup up my hand to try and catch the wind, and whip my hand into the car to “throw” the wind at my dad. He’d laugh, a full belly laugh, not a snigger, not a sigh, not an eye-roll, not a beating. My stomach wouldn’t even hurt. He loved me.
I loved being able to read the license plates of the cars we followed, noticing the different states, tallying the number of people that came to visit North Carolina. I loved seeing the tree’s green leaves envelop us.
We would always sip our shake in the parking lot of the Tastee freeze, me in the front seat. Some days, I pretended I was an adult, like my dad, but that I was a business person, contemplating taxes I didn’t understand.
“Our stocks are down seven percent, but our bonds are up eight percent, so I’d say it’s even,” I said in the deepest voice I could make.
“Righty-oh, boss! What about our debt? Is it gone?” My dad played along.
“Oh, of course, our debts have been gone since the fiscal year of ’88!” We laughed.
Or, some days, we’d be content looking at the clouds.
“See those little puffball ones?” Dad asked. “They’re cirrocumulus clouds. You can tell because they’re way up in the sky, and they’re broken up.” Dad worked for the local news station as a meteorologist.
“That cloud there, it looks like a bird,” I pointed out.
Dad laughed. “A majestic white bird, like a swan or a heron. Birds are beautiful creatures.”
You couldn’t see all the details of the clouds in the back seat. The front seat was freedom. The back seat was prison. Now is prison.
The closest I come to spring now is the green of my couch. Well, it’s my bed too, but it seems more dignifying to call it my couch. Bright green, like the leaves on the trees, like the lily pads on the top of Aunt Darla’s lake where we used to fish at dusk because the fish bit the most then, even though the mosquitos bit the most then too. The glory of catching a fish was well worth the red bumps that took over my arms for days.
My little sister Mary, two years younger than me, wouldn’t even whine when the mosquitos attacked. Determined to catch a fish, she’d stand, steadfast, not even wanting to take a break from her rod to put on bug spray. She always caught more than me. I’d swell up with pride, seeing her beam with a green slimy fish hanging from her rod. She’d even remove the fish, flapping like crazy, from the hook herself with the precision of a doctor, and gently toss it back into the pond. She didn’t want to hurt anything. We’d been hurt enough.
One time, Mary got the hook stuck in her finger. Deep. She cried, scrunching up her little nose, glaring at the hook. I held her rod as we walked through the reeds to Aunt Darla’s house. Dad was sat on the screened-in porch with Aunt Darla, both holding glasses of lemonade and my dad holding a cigar. Dad and Aunt Darla were deep in conversation, and didn’t even notice us approaching.
“That boy’s not right,” Aunt Darla said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Arnold. He isn’t right. Have you thought about counseling? I mean, after everything his mother put him through.”
I got a strong pain right by my belly button. I felt sick. Mary whimpered, and I put my arm around her and guided her up the stairs towards the porch.
“Dad, Mary’s hurt!”
Dad shoved his cigar into the blackened, marble ash tray, which was shaped like a bird. You’d tap the ashes into the bird’s mouth. My throat felt like that bird’s, after hearing Aunt Darla talk about me like that. I was suffocating. I was trying to suppress tears, I was trying to keep myself together, because boys shouldn’t cry. I thought of my mother’s voice, “Boys shouldn’t cry, Arnold! Stop crying! You’re a baby!” She always said that after she hit me.
But she was gone. Dad left her. Yet she wouldn’t leave my brain alone.
I had to be strong, though, for Mary, who was now crying much louder than before.
Dad drove Mary to the emergency center, and I tagged along, opting for the back seat just so I could hold Mary’s good hand the whole car ride.
When we got there, Mary didn’t want to go inside.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Dad asked. “These people will make you better.”
“The last time we went to one of these was because of Mom, when she hurt Arnold,” Mary murmured, glancing at me when she said my name.
Dad sighed, then put his hand on Mary’s shoulder.
“These people aren’t your mother. She’s gone, baby.”
Mary nodded.
The doctor inside was an older man, with a grey mustache that wrinkled when he smiled, which he smiled a lot.
“Looks like someone’s a catch!” He winked at my father. “You probably don’t want to hear that for at least another ten years though!”
Mary got two stiches, like a champ, and continued to grow up. In fact, she grew into quite a catch, as the doctor predicted. And she’s officially “caught”, engaged to Steve. They live together only fifteen or so minutes away. He seems nice, over Facebook. Maybe a little nerdy. Maybe a little reclusive, but I’m not one to judge. Sheesh.
Those two get married today. In four hours. And I’m stuck on my couch. My green couch, that reminds me of spring, that I have to reassure myself is a couch even though it’s really my bed. But it’s my couch, my fucking couch. I own a couch. I’m doing alright for myself.
Except that I haven’t left my house in, I don’t know, a year now?
But I’m doing okay.
I mean, there’s a television in front of the couch, one of the old ones with the huge box behind it, not one of those fancy flat screens. The picture is a little fuzzy, and the sound sometimes dips in and out, like waves… no not like waves, I don’t like waves. I hate the beach. More like, sound waves, or something, I don’t know. But either way, the sound sometimes goes away. I’ll never get it fixed.
I always have the TV on. I like the sound. I don’t like the silence; it makes me feel more alone. Usually, I’ll have Comedy Central on in the background. I especially like when they show stand-up comedy specials, because the laughter makes me feel happy, until the commercials come on and I’m snapped back to a reality of eating baked beans out of a can with a spork. I miss people, sometimes. But then I remember how scared people make me.
I miss Mary the most. And Dad, of course. Of fucking course. I want to hear his voice – maybe a little raspy from the occasional cigar, but with the twinge of a Southern accent, and with the confidence that can be heard but can’t be put into words. I want to hear him go on and on about clouds and weather patterns, just one more time. He hadn’t done that since I moved out. When I left, I pretended I was okay, that I was an adult, like the one I aspired to be in the parking lot at the Tastee Freeze. I wasn’t okay. But he thought I was, and I couldn’t let him down. So I pretended to not be broken anymore, and to not need him. I need him now more than anything, though. And now it’s too late.
At least I still have Mary, and I still get to hear her voice. She calls me twice a week: Wednesday’s at 7:30 at night, Sunday’s usually around 1:00 in the afternoon, when she has gotten home and changed from church. She still goes religiously, pun intended, every week, just like we did when we were kids. I didn’t really stick to the whole church thing, but maybe I should reconsider. It’s horrible thinking that Dad is just in the ground, decomposing. I I’d like to think he’s swimming through the big cumulonimbus clouds, the ones that bring rain. Church makes Mary happy, which makes me happy.
When we went to church together as kids, my mom would make me wear a button-up shirt and the same black clip-on tie that scratched my neck. Usually, I’d take it off half-way through the sermon, and my mother would put her fat finger up to her reddened lips and get a lipstick stain on her finger. Then, she’d snatch my wrist, yank the tie out of my hands, and slam it back onto my neck, all with the silence of a museum robber. She was always a bitch.
My mother, or Louise, is still a bitch. I haven’t talked to her in years, though I did see her a year ago. Ouch, my stomach.
I don’t blame my dad in the slightest for leaving her cottage cheese ass. They split up when I was seven, Mary was five. Dad got custody. I vaguely remember sitting in a courtroom, having to lift up my shirt to show the scar by my belly button. It’s still there, but faded. It’s hurting me now because I’m thinking about it.
Mary has a scar too, on her wrist. Not from my mother. From herself.
I never knew why. I mean, I know why, it’s the same reason why I’m afraid to leave the house. Well, partially, life is more complicated than that. But I never knew any of the other reasons. I never talked to Mary about it. Mary and I pretend our scars don’t exist.
Mary got her scar when she was eighteen, a senior in high school. Mary did that to herself the night after Louise dumped red paint all over Mary’s new car, her graduation present. We can’t prove it was Louise, but we know. She’s psycho. She keyed “piece-of-shit daughter” into the hood.
Mary, stunning in her green graduation cap-and-gown, bubbled over with excitement before Dad took off the tarp to her car. Louise must have meticulously replaced the tarp, as Dad couldn’t tell the tarp had been replaced in the first place. Mary collapsed in the driveway when she saw what had been done to the car. Her green cap fell off her head. I covered the car back up as quickly as I could, while Dad sat down by Mary’s side.
“Baby, I didn’t know, I’m sorry,” he kept repeating, though it didn’t calm Mary down.
Dad went to get the car repainted that afternoon. I went with him, Mary stayed at the house, which in retrospect was stupid. We should have forced her to come with us, but she wanted to be alone. I wasn’t there for her.
When we got back, Mary’s green gown was crumpled in the hallway. The bathroom door was locked, the water was running, but we heard Mary wailing. Dad busted through the door to see her, wrapped in her purple blanket that was now covered in blood from her wrist. Mary kept saying she was sorry, crying that she didn’t want to die. I called 911, Dad held her until the ambulance arrived.
I kept thinking of the time she got the hook in her finger, how her nose crumpled. Her nose was crumpled in the same way now, as she sobbed, and I was numb. And I was confused. Mary doing that to herself meant Louise won. I didn’t want Louise to win. I don’t think Mary did either. Mary broke down, though. Now, I’m the broken one, because Louise wins every day that I don’t leave my house.
I hope Steve has helped make Mary better, because I sure can’t. I can’t even bring myself to be there on her wedding day.
On Wednesday, Mary called me to make sure that I was still going to her wedding. She even offered to come pick me up beforehand.
“I’ll bring the limo to your house, Arnold, I don’t care, I just want you there.”
I was shaking, having just been outside to throw out my trash. A mosquito bit me, and it gave me a panic attack. Having this conversation with Mary wasn’t helping.
“I’ll try my best, sis.”
“Arnold, you don’t understand. I don’t know where my big brother is anymore. When people ask about you, I don’t know what to say. I just pray every day that you’ll get better, and I want to help, but I don’t know what to do. Help me help you, Arnold.”
“I’m still here, Mary, I’m always here for you,” I blubbered.
“Don’t cry, Arnold, don’t cry,” Mary consoled me. She was the mom I never had.
“I – I dunno, I’m so scared.”
“You can leave during the reception, you can leave whenever you want. The place we rented out, you know the farmhouse and reception hall I told you about? I didn’t want to tell you this until you got there, but I should tell you now. It has a special room, and that room says “do not enter”. But you, and I, are the only people allowed in there. And you can go in there and be alone anytime you want. It even has a green couch in there, Arnold! I know how much you love your couch. When I saw that couch, I knew it was a message from God. He wants you there. I want you there, no, I need you there. Please Arnold, please, you can do it, I know you can.”
Her confidence in me made me cry. And I’m crying now. My tears taste like salt water, like the ocean, like the ocean waves, waves filled with granules of sand that get in your eyes and mouth. I hate the ocean. I hate myself for not leaving my house.
Yesterday, during our weekly video chat, my therapist told me that a good goal for me is to get to the beach, eventually. No rush, she promised. She said the sun would be good for me. That made me think I should get a new therapist. But she’s one of the few willing enough to video with me, and she vows never to come to my house, and she vows to never force me to leave my house. Not that anyone has forced me to leave my house. But she just wanted to reassure me. She wears red lipstick that reminds me of Louise. The therapist is sweet as hell too, that’s the scary part. Even the things in my life that shouldn’t scare me end up scaring me.
Sometimes, the things my therapist says scares me. She says, “You’re anxious.” I hear, “You’re broken.” I’m a broken creature, without a mother or a father, only a younger sibling that calls twice a week. My therapist wants to fix me. But she’s no zoologist, no biologist. She doesn’t even know what I am.
I don’t even know what I am. WebMD tries to tell me I’m suffering from PTSD. That’s a big chunk of what I do with my time – analyze myself, analyze my past, try to fix what’s broken, research for a solution. But I’m too scared to go onto a prescription, because I’m scared to change, and if I wanted to change enough I’d just leave my god damn couch. But I can’t. Instead, I just sit here, surf the internet, watch documentaries with Comedy Central on in the background, or look on anxiety forums or WebMD, forcing myself to eat one of the hundreds of cans of food I have laying around so I don’t get more sick.
I live in a studio apartment. There’s the box TV, a coffee table filled with tissues and soda cans and scrunched bottles of water, a green couch that has a bed pillow on it without a pillowcase, and a standing lamp. There’s the kitchen, which has piles of cans where a table should be. Only a ceiling light in the kitchen; no need for more lights, because I’m hardly in there. All I go in there for is food, twice a day. Grab the next can in the pile, open the drawer to get the can opener, open the can, open the cabinet to get a bowl, dump the food into the bowl, microwave for 1:45. Lately, I’ve gotten lazy and have been eating things out of the can that don’t need to be heated. I’m losing the desire to do anything. While my food is heating, I’ll grab a fork or a spoon, and stare at the clock as it ticks down, or I’ll stare out the window and think. But I make sure to stop the microwave before it goes off. I hate the beeping. It’s alarming, it’s scary. It reminds me of the hospital, random beeps and sirens. Louise has ruined me.
As, clearly, with many things, I hate the beach because of Louise. Louise, Mary, Dad and I went to Myrtle Beach for a week some summers. We lived three and half hours from there, in Charlotte. I remember how Louise and Dad fought as they packed up Louise’s car, the shit-brown mini-van with the single rusted tire rim.
On our last trip to the beach, their fight began about the cooler.
“Put today’s lunch in the big cooler,” Louise demanded. Dad was rummaging through the refrigerator, while Louise was smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table, wearing a black t-shirt and black khaki shorts and black flip flops. I was standing in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room, while Mary was playing with a Barbie on the floor next to me.
“I’ve already packed some of the weekly foods in the big cooler. I’ll put our lunch in the smaller cooler,” Dad replied.
“Did you hear what I said?” Louise asked, slamming the cigarette into the ashtray.
“Yes, dear,” Dad sighed.
“Unpack the big cooler.”
“No.”
“You never do what I say! You’re the biggest piece of shit ever,” Louise shrieked.
My throat felt tight. I reached my hand down to scruff Mary’s hair.
“Mary, let’s go outside to play,” I whispered. She nodded, stood up, and we slowly walked towards the front door.
“Don’t you two even THINK about leaving unless you carry something out to the car!” Louise shouted. She had the ears of a hawk.
“Yes ma’am,” we replied. We marched back to the kitchen, grabbed some assorted bags, and walked outside.
“Who is that WHORE in that magazine you packed?”
“It’s a Rolling Stone magazine,” Dad said, “So I dunno, some singer probably.”
“Throw that shit away, you dick! Who do you think you are, bringing that blasphemy onto this family? And having the audacity to pack our lunch in the small cooler. What am I, a rabbit? I need my food, I need my space, you’re suffocating me!”
“I’m suffocating you? Ok, you’re being ridiculous. Let’s go enjoy a lovely time at the beach with our children.”
“How do I even know their my kids when you’re reading magazines with whores in them? They’re stupid little fucks.”
“Don’t you dare talk about our children like that! Jesus, Louise! I don’t know who you’ve become. Come on, let’s go.”
“I don’t want to go.” Louise said.
“We’re going, and we’re going to have a great time, and you’re going to snap out of this rut you’ve been in. This isn’t Mary’s fault, you know.”
Mary had been pretending not to listen, but I saw her eyes flick towards the front door when Dad said her name. She attempted to recover, to zone back into her Barbie world, but I remember seeing tears slide down her cheeks. Mary has a mole down on the right side of her chin, and a tear would get caught there, and slowly drip, drip, drip off, down onto her pink one-piece bathing suit, or onto her green security blanket nicknamed “Greenie” that Louise told her she should get rid of because a five year old shouldn’t carry a blanket, or onto her Barbie doll, or onto her own purple bruised legs. Louise made Mary tell Dad that those bruises were from falling off the swing in the yard. I wish I had spoken up. I could have fixed us sooner, it didn’t have to come down to me getting stabbed in the stomach, it didn’t have to result in Mary cutting herself, it didn’t have to lead up to me being stuck on my couch. I fucked up. That vacation was a milestone, a step towards our temporary happiness, but that happiness was tainted with the rust of Louise. She never left any of us alone, even when she wasn’t in the picture. She was always lurking in the background, in the rafters, smirking with blood red lips. She permanently fucked us all.
Dad had finally coaxed Louise into the car, but that didn’t stop the fighting. As they fought, Mary pretended to be asleep, but I could see her neck bulge out a little when she swallowed, and I could see her shaking. From the back I stared out the window; sometimes, I’d reach over and squeeze Mary’s hand, but mostly I was stuck in my own head. I’m always stuck in my own head, with these thoughts, these regrets. I’m stuck.
I should go to Mary’s wedding. I was there for Mary once, I can try to be that decent big brother again. I can fix this. Mary’s so good to me, she told me she needs me, she needs me just as much as I need here.
Yet I can’t go to Mary’s wedding. I’m scared. That’s all there is to it. I’m terrified. I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I’m always thinking. I’m lost.
I’m lost in a shitty apartment. I’ve never opened that one closet door, by the front door, the one where you’d put coats of guests. I never have guests. And I don’t have a heavy coat. You don’t need a heavy coat if you don’t go outside. Besides, it doesn’t get that cold here.
Instead, I’m always on this couch. My couch. Not my bed, my couch, you dick. You fucking bitch, Louise, don’t yell at me for never coming out of my room, because I didn’t want you to hit me, because I didn’t want to see you make Dad or Mary cry. Christ, I’m 25 years old and you’re still haunting me, still making me feel like a little boy. Why can’t I get past you?
This moment, I’m the craziest I’ve ever been. It’s official. I can’t pull it together to go to my sister’s wedding?! What the hell, Arnold?!
My mom would yell that at me. “What the hell, Arnold?!” Now, I’m yelling it at myself. I’ve become her. I’ve become a horrible person, wrapped up in my own world, making my sister’s life shit because I’m the worst brother, just like Louise was the worst mother. Maybe soon I’ll crave the madness, crave the pain of others. Sometimes, I wonder if I force myself to stay inside because I want myself to be hurt, because I deserve it, because I didn’t stop Louise when I could have. Instead, I had to wait for her to stab me, and for her to vow vengeance on us all. And now I’m hating myself, which is like vowing vengeance on myself, which is like turning into Louise.
That’s a stretch. Thank goodness. No I’m not Louise… right?
If I’m not Louise, I’ll be able to go to my sister’s wedding.
Ugh, fuck!
Maybe I’ve always been this crazy, and now I’m starting to recognize it, which is a step towards normal, right? Or is it a step towards more crazy? I should call my therapist now, this is a fucking revelation.
Or, or, or… it’s not a step, not a revelation, but a fall. It’s a freefall. It’s like having the floor pulled out from under me, and I fall, like at that magic show we went to on that beach trip where Mary had the purple legs, that magic show Louise took us to because it was too rainy to go to the beach and Dad was at the grocery store, when the magician pulled out the green tablecloth from underneath the fine china plate settings and the plates were all supposed to stay in place but they didn’t – fuck no they didn’t – they fell and clashed everywhere, and everyone gasped except for me, because I laughed, because his act was falling apart, just like my family, and Louise dragged me outside and yelled at me and prodded at my belly with her shit-brown van’s car key so hard that it broke my skin and I had to go to the emergency room to get stitches, and when I was getting those stitches Louise told me never to tell my father what happened, and when the doctor put the needle into my stomach Mary screamed louder than I did at the pain that Louise had brought onto us all, and I was falling apart, in a freefall, like those plates, and I never felt crazier.
Until now.
“Don’t you even think about taking off your shirt, you little prick!” Louise barked as we walked down to the beach. I was carrying Louise’s lounge chair, the cooler, and the blanket. Louise was holding her cigarette. “If you take off your shirt, your father will see. And if he sees, you’re dead, you hear me?”
I nodded. And I was terrified. But it was so hot, blistering hot, with that white and green striped t-shirt on. And I could feel the sweat pour out from the nape of my neck, and under my scrawny armpits. And it hurt when I bent over to build a sand castle with Mary.
So I took off the shirt.
Louise had walked to the bathroom, but Dad was still there. He needed to see, now, while she was gone. That was my chance… that’s it, that was my chance! I did save us! I was the one who saved our family!
Why do I still feel so guilty?
I should have said something sooner.
When I took off my shirt, I asked Dad to put sunscreen on my back. He put down his newspaper, with a smile.
“Sure thing Arnol…” He trailed off as I saw his eyes focus on my stomach. “Arnold, what happened to your stomach?”
“Uhm, I, uhh,” I faltered. Louise was walking back, I could see her in my peripherals.
“Arnold, please tell me.”
“Well, funny story,” I chuckled, cringing, my stomach killing me.
“Daddy, it was Mommy! She poked him really hard.” Mary had been standing behind me, I hadn’t even noticed. But I noticed Louise, and she noticed me without a shirt, and she noticed my Dad’s flabbergasted face. And she thought that that was the end of her game, her constant torture of us.
Dad took us away from Louise that night, and began planning the divorce papers.
But that’s when Louise’s games truly begun.
That’s why I hate the beach.
Maybe I should love the beach, because it got us away from Louise.
Every single time I imagine the beach, I imagine a key in my gut, and the pain of bending over, and I imagine being outside and I’m afraid, afraid of being stabbed, of being attacked, of being lost, of being hit by a car, of being hurt again.
Dad got hurt last year, and he died because of it.
He was hit by a car. A fucking car. A car just hit him, and drove off. Like he was road kill. He was road kill. Even though he was on the sidewalk, he was road kill. Dad walked every afternoon after work, always looking at the sky… but then he became road kill. He was more than that, he deserved more than that.
I wonder if any vultures ate his body before he was found.
They don’t know who hit Dad, but I’m willing to bet it was Louise. I don’t know how, but it was her. I know it. I have a gut feeling. Like the pain in my gut, but stronger. She’s crazy, it only makes sense. But I’m crazy too…
And I know Louise did it because at the funeral, she showed up. No one invited her. But she just stood in the back corner, wearing all black, with a flowing cape, like a witch, like a raven, like a fucking crow. And she stood back there, tapping her fat heel into the ground, with her red lips twisted upwards in what can only be described as the cruelest grin. I didn’t have the balls to tell her to leave. I should have, for Mary. But I didn’t. I didn’t say a word to Louise. Instead, Mary and I made eye contact when we saw Louise walk into the room, and we nodded. We didn’t fight under the guise of not causing a scene. But the real reason we didn’t fight was because Mary and I were too weak to fight Louise anymore.
Oh, and Louise had a new car. A brand new car.
And I can’t even leave my house. I’m scared. I’m scared of getting hurt, of getting hit by a car, of losing my mind. I’m scared of loss. I’m scared of Louise.
I need to leave, but I can’t. Not even for my sister’s wedding. And my life has turned to shit.
Life with Dad was great. I went to community college, lived at home until I was 24. Dad was more than okay with it, as was I. Â Then, I moved out and got my own place. Did I want to? Not necessarily. But Dad only lived fifteen minutes away. And I wanted to prove to myself, more to Dad, that I was okay.
I guess, even with Dad, I never recovered from Louise. There’s a mark on my stomach from her, for fuck’s sake. I’ve never trusted women, well other than Mary. I’ve never trusted anyone, really. Except for Dad. And Mary.
Mary’s getting married today.
Dad dying was what made me really stuck. And the suspicions around it, those crows… I crumpled. After his funeral, I drove to the grocery store and bought hundreds of dollars’ worth of canned foods. Peas, and carrots, baked beans. I bought frozen food too, lots of it. I had a huge freezer in my apartment, and it would be filled to the brim. I bought cleaning supplies, too. And other shit that I’d need just to survive. I don’t even know why I wanted to survive. But I didn’t want to leave the house, that was for damn sure.
That was a year ago. I’ve only left the house to take the trash out to the dumpster, twenty yards away. Once a week. I’ll do it right before Mary calls, on Wednesday. That way, I have something to calm me down. I’m too scared to even opened the window. I have it automatically set up to pay all my bills online. I quit my job, and have been living off of Dad’s inheritance.
Wouldn’t he be disappointed if he saw the shell I’ve become? Or would he understand?
Who am I kidding?. Of course I want to go outside. I want to feel the rain, the blades of grass, cup the wind in my hand and throw it. Valiantly. I want to see all the different types of clouds. I want to be a functioning adult. I want to be there for my sister. I want to be me again. Unless I’ve always been crazy. Then, I just want to be.
I’m going to open the window. I’m scared, but I’m going to do it. I want to smell spring, real spring, not the fabricated spring of my couch. The couch that I sleep on and sit on all day, so much so that now that I think about it, I don’t know what it looks like other than that it’s green.
I want to walk outside today, to my sister’s wedding, and be the big brother she’s lost.
But breathe. One step at a time. Open the windows first. Don’t panic. You can do this.   B r e a t h e. Inhale… exhale. That’s the lock, it needs to be turned to the right. Ouch, my stomach. Okay, lock is turned. Now, push up. Pushhhhhhh… fuck. It’s stuck. It hasn’t been open in so long. Okay, take two – one, two, threeeee PUSH! Ahh, damn it! Shit, that hurt my ass. And my stomach is churning, and an imaginary key held by a too real Louise is stabbing it.
I fell, but I opened the window. I’m okay. And a breeze is coming through. It’s spring. It’s really spring. I can smell it.
There’s cirrocumulus clouds floating overhead.
Thanks, Dad.
Feel the Erin My Lungs 