Page 59 of Tap Left
“You don’t say. Feels like yesterday.”
I have no patience for small talk. “Do you have anyone interested in the lot?”
Steve perks up. “We’re willing to make you a reasonable offer for the land itself. The trailer will need to go, but we can take care of that if we work out a good price.”
I rise from my seat and brush off my trousers. “I’ll sign it over free of charge. So long as you agree to demolish the trailer.”
Steve extends his hand and gives me an easy smile. “You got yourself a deal.”
22
Lola
Ryan was laidto rest among some of Chicago’s most notable figures. I’ll never know how his father managed it, but his gravestone seems out of place here. He was too young. An anomaly in the sea of scattered historic remains.
Visitors are scarce because it’s after dark. When I first started coming here, I was afraid of the darkness. I was afraid of being here alone at all. There was an eerie comfort in the presence of other somber souls wandering aimlessly through the weather-beaten stones. But as time went on, I learned to enjoy the solitude. When I’m alone here, I can think. I can process and feel and express myself openly.
Time has gifted me acceptance of his death, but it has never gifted me peace. When you lose someone you love, everyone becomes a philosopher. They will offer you words of comfort.Time will heal. He’s in a better place now. It will get better.These statements are false, but it makes them feel better when they don’t know what else to say.
The only absolute truth in grief is that everyone handles it differently. Some will remain stoic and proud and only cry privately. Others numb the pain with alcohol. And then there are those who just get really fucking angry. When I come here that anger unfurls inside of me like a venomous snake.
Then like a bad cliché, the sky opens up and pours fat, wet tears on me.
I won’t melt, so who cares. Besides, there’s the Jack Daniels to keep me warm. It was Ryan’s favorite. We always toast to him. Except today it’s just me. Daire is absent, and it isn’t like him. But after everything that’s happened between us, it’s impossible to say where his mind’s at right now.
So alone here I sit, thoughts blowing through my mind like tumbleweeds. The grass is squishy, and I’m covered in mud, but it doesn’t bother me. Ryan never cared what I looked like. At least, that was what he liked to say.
It was probably a lie too because if he didn’t care then I should have been enough for him. I think the thing that bothers me most is that I can’t ask him. There is no closure when someone dies abruptly. One minute they are there and you’re fighting with them, and the next they are gone. They leave you to ruminate on sour words and wonder about things left unsaid. I still have so many questions I want to ask him. We had conversations waiting for later that we’ll never get to finish.
There is no later in death, and I didn’t know that then. My answers died with him in the bright blue water of Lake Michigan. It seems that even Daire and Julian have sealed away the memories of that night, never to be spoken of again.
It’s another reason to hate him. Daire refuses to talk about it for purely selfish reasons. He will deploy every defense mechanism in his arsenal to avoid his own discomfort. I suppose that makes it easier to disengage himself from the fact that there are two headstones in this cemetery because of him.
I only found about the girl who was with him that night when the papers released her name. The news reports stated she met him at a party hours before. It’s an odd thing to hate someone you’ve never met. I really have no right to that hate because she was just a victim of Daire’s recklessness too. She couldn’t have known everything that transpired before she joined them on that fateful boat ride. She would have no idea that I’d just laid myself bare and broke myself open for Daire.
The truth is that anything I shared with either of the brothers before that night is irrelevant. What they shared with her is the most intimate thing anyone could ever experience together. Her and Ryan died together, amidst a tangle of crushed metal in Lake Michigan. I’ve always wondered if they shared words in those last few moments. If there was any connection at all. Or if Ryan thought of me for even a second.
I swipe the bitter, scorching tears from my cheeks and take a pull from the bottle of Jack. It’s warm, and it burns all the way down, just like my love for Ryan.
I’ve drank too much, and there’s a brief moment of time in which I question how I’m going to get out of here, but I wash that logic away with more Jack Daniels. Serves me right for thinking I could count on Daire for anything.
He decides to grace me with his presence when the moon is high in the sky, and I’m too far gone to be civilized. The breeze carries the scent of his cologne before I hear the squish of his footsteps in the soggy grass. We are wordless and empty when he sits down beside me, and the only thing I have to offer him is the bottle of Jack.
He takes it but doesn’t drink. His eyes are focused on the headstone that has somehow managed to sum up Ryan’s life into a series of brief words and a dash between the years that were too short lived.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Daire turns to me, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. His eyes are on the side of my face, and I don’t need to see him to know that he’s angry. He’s always angry on this day. Angry at me. The whole world. Ryan. Himself. What I fail to understand is how he can be entitled to those feelings.
“You should know that I would be here,” he answers crisply.
“Should I? Because sometimes I wonder why we still bother.”
He goes rigid beside me, and it makes me feel good to be mean right now. I want to lash out at him. I want to express myself. For years, we’ve been going round and round, skirting the events of that night, but immortalizing it in our minds and calendars.
We have never celebrated the day of his birth. Now we only come here to remember the day of his death. Like that’s the thing to do. Like it will make any difference.
“You don’t have to bother,” Daire says. “You are free to leave and never come back if that’s what you want.”
