And so all I got out of the stupid movie in the end was “what’s the fucking point?” Just get on with it and make the best of what you have while you have it.
Turns out my counselor was right about a lot of things.
I sigh and lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees and tapping the fingernails of my right hand against the fingernails of my left hand. I like thetap, tap, tapsound it makes.
When I get stressed, I need my hands to do something. I think it would be easier if I smoked, because they’d have something to do. Plus they remind me ofher.
Of her breath hot on my cheek after we’d made out, and the way the scent of cigarettes would cling to her lips. It made me feel dirty and gross, but she was worth that feeling. Even if I had to brush my teeth ten times to get rid of the taste.
I swallow down the lump in my throat and I wonder where the bus is. It’s late and I hate being late. Not that I’m going anywhere other than home, or meeting anyone other than the cry of empty walls, but that’s not the point at all.
I look down the road, eager to see the bright lights of the bus, but there are none. It’s still dark where I need the spotlights of hope to be.
I think about walking. I like walking; I walked here this morning. But I don’t like walking in the rain, even if I’m wearing a coat. So I stay where I am and I wait for the stupid bus to come, and twenty minutes late, it finally arrives.
*
Back at home I climb the stairs of my apartment building. I pretend I’m climbing the stairs to heaven, only I know that when my time comes I’ll probably be going down rather than up. You don’t have the thoughts that I do—the memories of blood and pain singing in your ears like an old friend—and get to go to heaven.
I don’t sigh or complain. I never do; instead I stare longingly at the broken elevator as I pass it. It’s been broken ever since I moved in, and by the looks of the dust inside it, it had been like that long before I arrived. I guess it’s not a priority in a place like this, for people like us. But it would be nice.
I pass number twelve and hear the husband yelling at the wife, as usual. She’s foreign, and I think she married him just for a visa. I know that’s a bad thing to do, but then I don’t judge because I don’t know what her life was like back in her home country. And my mom always said that you shouldn’t judge people unless you knew their real circumstances because you never really knew what was going on in someone’s lives, behind closed doors and twitching curtains. A whole world simmered just below the surface. And she was right.
Of course my mom turned out to be the biggest fucking hypocrite of them all. But I don’t hold that against her. Not at all. I love my mom, and I know that deep down she still loves me.
She’ll come around, one day.
She’ll see me for the good boy I really am.
I know she will.
She just needs more time, and time is something I have in abundance.
I pause before I climb the next set of stairs, and look back toward the door of the husband and wife. He’s really letting rip on her now. I mean, I know he likes his dinner on the table when he gets home from work (because he’s always screaming that at her), and I also know that he’s a meat-and-two-veg kind of guy (he yells that too). He doesn’t like to wait for any length of time when he gets in, and in some ways I can understand that. He has a tough job, and she’s a stay-at-home mom so it’s her job to make sure the food is cooked and the clothes are cleaned and the house is tidy. That’s what my mom always did anyway.
She ran the house (that was her job) and my dad went out to work (that was his job). It all worked perfectly because they both knew their places in the marriage. And she had me, and she baked and she weeded the garden and she volunteered at the animal shelter several times a month. My mom did it all, so I don’t understand why this man’s wife can’t be like that. Just because you’re poverty-stricken and English isn’t your first language doesn’t mean you’re an imbecile.
So maybe he’s not so bad and not so wrong after all.
Maybe this woman came over here thinking she had an easy way in. Thinking that she wouldn’t need to do jack shit for her husband. And that’s not good. Not good at all.
I know that if I had married Carrie, she would have cooked and cleaned and popped out my babies like a fucking trooper.
She would have been a perfect fucking wife.
I scrunch up my forehead in sadness and frustration at the things I want but can’t ever have.
Not now.
Not ever.
I hear a loud sound that sounds like a slap and then she starts to cry, and I’m back to thinking he’s an asshole again, because there’s never an excuse to hit a woman. Even if your dinner is always late.
I go on up the stairs, pushing the couple far from my mind, my thoughts instead on Carrie and not on the blood I see in my memories.
Back at home I take a long shower because the smell of disinfectant seems to be embedded in my skin. I spilled a little earlier today before I mouthed off to Charlie over the roof, and he threw a fit because apparently‘that shit is expensive and is coming out of your wages now.’
Wait, let me back up a minute there.
