Like I said, when you’re a depressive you’ll close your eyes to almost anything if it means a little bit of comfort. A touch of human warmth. A shred of joy. So, I stayed over that night. We slept together on the wide, soft couch. No, not sex, although I think she wanted to do… something. But the idea of touching her in that way was too much. The thought of being fully exposed, flesh on flesh. Repulsive. Instead, we cuddled fully-dressed and let ourselves sink into sleep and the psychotic’s dark realm of troubled dreams, our heads thick with anti-depressants and tequila, with only a late-night comedian’s monologue to escort us.
FROM THERE IT became a sort of ritual.
Every time we went out, or nearly so, we’d end up on the couch watching television, drinking ourselves into submission, an unspoken agreement between us that I would inevitably stay.
But, man, if the evenings were odd, the mornings were downright bizarre.
I’d wake, open my eyes, and see her brown eyes staring back at me. Focused. As if willing me to wake up, to sense her heightened awareness of me and miraculously become alert to the strength of her desire.
I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. Usually her hair would be matted, the straw-like fiber knotted or smooshed against her head by whatever product she’d pumped it full of the night before. Her face was puffy in the mornings, pale and lined, facial powder crusted in the creases. Her lashes, more often than not, were clumped and gluey. One morning I couldn’t help but stare into an eye that was half shut, the right-side of the eye’s lashes clinging to each other in desperation, a mock bridge keeping the thin flesh of the lid sealed in a sloppy, perpetual wink.
When Stan watched television during the experiments, they’d strap a device around his bicep that monitored his heart pressure. Some of the stuff on the television was silent, some of it turned up very loud. Gangster movies. Old news footage. Cartoons.
Stan once confided to me that he thought every day was a “placebo day” because he never felt a goddamn thing.
After shock therapy, Charlie drooled in a wheelchair during meals and never ate.
Sarah tried to kill herself again. She snapped a pool stick over her knee and ripped the flesh of her wrists with the splintered tip. Wrists to elbows.
INEVITABLY, HER MOTHER would make us coffee and toast, or bagels, and we’d all sit at a small table in the kitchen, foreign early morning light slanting into us as we nibbled and sipped. The older woman would constantly study me with laughing eyes over her cup, all but bumping me with an elbow in a glee usually reserved for those cultures that displayed bloody sheets to an entire village, the marriage consummated.
“I’m so glad Crystal has you,” she said one morning while Crystal excused herself to go brush her teeth, put her clumped hair in a ponytail and unglue her sticky lashes. “You like being here, I can tell,” she went on, while my eyes darted toward the hallway where my friend had vanished, hoping she’d bounce back any moment to disrupt the moment.
“She’s very nice,” I’d say awkwardly, then lamely add something along the lines of: “Thank you for breakfast.”
Upon my release, I’d stumble out the door into dewy morning light, a strange platonic version of the walk of shame, and drive myself home. I wondered nearly every time why the hell I ever stayed over there in the first place.
Why didn’t I just go home?
OCCASIONALLY, I WOULD ask about her father, who apparently lived with them and was wildly adored by both mother and daughter. They spared no praise when speaking of his generous nature and supermodel looks, but despite my numerous visits and extended overnight stays, I never once saw him. Further, there were no portraits of the family anywhere in the house, and the one time I asked whether she had any siblings she laughed so loudly it made me want to scream.
Once, she mumbled something about having a brother, but did not elaborate. My curiosity, however, had been peaked.
During a pre-sleepover evening her mother had stayed to sit with us, all of us drinking from what she described as a “very nice bottle of red.” I repeated my inquiries – both about the absent husband / father and the mysterious sibling.
