I Loved You More (53 page)

Me, I can't tell the difference between the kale, the papaya, or the scrambled egg. I'm just eating food. I know I should say something back to Hank but that's the thing about depression and this new antidepressant. I know that if I were a regular person I'd be saying this or that. I mean, my response is in my head, but my body just won't let me say it. Other times it isn't even that lucid. I just look over at Hank. I know he's just said something that I should say something back to, but I've forgotten what he's said. Or if what he's just said to a normal person the say back is easy but there doesn't seem to be any point in answering.

“How about those Trailblazers?”

I wouldn't even know what to say to that if I was still normal.

Here's the real deal:

You've been running a jackhammer all night for years and doing speed but you need to sleep so you take a downer. You sleep because of the downer not because your body knows it needs sleep. When your body wakes up, the jackhammer's still going all through your body. Especially in the arms and shoulders. And the neck. The neck is real bad. No bright overhead lights. Bright overhead lights can shut the entire system down. The thought of food makes you feel sick but you eat food because you know you have to.
Healthy
food, but it might as well be sawdust. The ringing in your right ear has taken over your head. Don't get up too fast or you'll fall over. Forget about bending down.

But most of all, more than anything, is that a part of you is
well enough to know how fucked up this is. But that well-enough part is bound and gagged, and all that's left of you, the filament flickering flickering, is really really afraid for any fucking reason you can possibly find. This morning it's because there's another body in the room next to you. Even though it's Hank's body. Fuck. How when his body moves what your body does.
Donnie Darko
is two years down the line. But that
Darko
shit is happening right there in your kitchen that morning. I mean every morning.

So you take a deep breath. You take a bite of egg, or kale, or papaya. Whale blubber. Whatever it is. You really hate Hank for his fucking cup of fucking coffee.

IT WILL BE
three years before this gets any better. One day in 2002, maybe 2003, you're walking down the street and it's spring and you see a tree, a pink blossoming plum, and your charcoaled soul actually sees the tree and remarkably the tree sees you. In that moment, you bless the moment and in the blessing there is a transformation.

Bam, just like that, you start to come back to life.

BUT NOT YET.
Not this morning with Hank.

“Gruney, man,” Hank says. “Gruney, you all right?”

“I've got yoga class at eleven,” I say. “You want to come?”

“What kind of yoga?”

“Hot yoga.”

“On Christmas Day?”

“They're not Christian.”

“Nah,” Hank says. “The doc says nix on that.”

AFTER YOGA CLASS,
I'm back in my body as much as I can be. I'm in the shower at Bikram's when suddenly it becomes real that my best fucking friend Hank is at my house. I hightail it home and when I open my kitchen door I really do wonder if I haven't scared Hank off altogether.

Hank's right there, though, in the living room in the big
chair under the window. Sunshine. Of course it's sunshine, Hank Christian is here and he's writing in his leather notebook in the sunshine. The sun through his hair and Just for Men. Purple.

When I speak, my voice is way too cheery.

“Hey, Hank,” I say. “How about a sandwich?”

TUNA SALAD SANDWICHES
for the both of us. I'm just putting the sprouted wheat bread in the toaster, just mixing in the mayonnaise into the canned tuna, when I say:

“Hank, I'm sorry if I weirded you out this morning.”

Hank has that half-smile of his on, like on the back cover of his book. He's dressed all in black again. The same clothes as far as I can tell.

“It's the depression,” I say. “It's hard to explain.”

In the daylight, Hank's eye looks like he's been punched. And the punch left a scratch that hasn't quite healed. One crooked line down from the middle of his eye. Like a blood tear.

“I've been a little depressed myself,” Hank says. “And I came all this way just to tell you about it.”

The fucking silences, man, what was in them. Hank finally lays his cards down on the table.

THE ENIGMA OF
Hank Christian. He's peeled back his top layer of black sweatshirt. Just two more layers of black and it's Hank's white skin. I'm on one side of the table, he's on the other. A tuna salad sandwich on a big white plate in front of Hank, his matching white coffee mug. A tuna salad sandwich on a big white plate in front of me, my glass with red and yellow balloons filled with sparkling water. The stove's behind me and I'm looking at Hank with the window light behind him. He's on his second cup of coffee, maybe his third, black, no sugar. The way he starts talking, I remember what caffeine does to you. The words gather up and crowd his throat, each one trying to get out first.

“Her name was Maria,” Hank says. “We met at Hal Taylor's wedding. Up in Connecticut. You remember Hal, don't you?”

“He thought you and I were having an affair,” I say.

“Hal's an asshole,” Hank says. “Married him a rich Connecticut girl. What a mess that turned out to be.
The Great Gatsby: The Miniseries
,” Hank says. “'Course I'm not one to talk. Look how my marriage turned out.”

“Hank!” I say. “You married this Maria?”

“Not really.” Hank says. “I mean I did. We got married at the Justice of the Peace on Staten Island. But it wasn't two days I found out she was still married to her first husband.”

“What the fuck?”

“I should've known soon as I seen her,” Hank says. “Had to be something wrong with a woman that perfect. Tall, olive skin, green eyes. Crazy the way her brown hair could go from blonde to auburn with the light.”

“She ever get the divorce?” I ask.

“Right after I found out about her husband,” Hank says. “I met her son, Boomer.”

Hank takes another swig of coffee, picks up his tuna salad sandwich then lays it back down. Hank looks at the sandwich, as if he's studying it, but really he's not looking at the sandwich.

“I loved that kid, Gruney,” Hanks says. “You should've seen him. Sturdy little guy, full of piss. More than I ever loved
her
. You'd have loved him, too. At seven years old, he already had a heart like yours. Smart as a whip. He came to stay with us for a couple of days and never left. His father didn't want him back.”

Hank's black eyes look over the table at me. The sorrow of a son whose father doesn't want him. The way the light comes through the kitchen window, you can see Hank's glass eye rolls a little. Not like Buster's, but just enough to notice.

“There's no doubt in my mind,” Hank says, “I was that boy's true father and he was my true son. We even look alike. We had this thing where he was Spider-Man and no matter where he went, our spiderweb was always connected. Heart to heart. The crazier his mother got, the more he needed me. Broke my fucking heart.”

“Crazy?”

“Cocaine,” Hank says. “Did it every chance she'd get. And other drugs, pills. All kinds of pills. Course I didn't figure that out until our second year together in Florida.

“
Porca Miseria
,” Hank says. “Of course the sex was out of this world.

“But she kept coming up with these weird reasons why she had to fly back to New York. Most of them had to do with business, but the one that topped them all was
I'm going to die if I don't have a cappuccino
.”

Hank pushes the big white plate away from him. It smacks into his coffee cup. I hold on to my new glass, the red and yellow balloons.

“
Crap
pucino,” Hank says.

“That's all right, though,” Hank says. “Boomer and I didn't miss her at all. Saturdays we'd head out to the beach and spend the whole day there.”

My mouth is full of tuna salad sandwich but I can't wait to speak.

“But was she totally addicted?” I say. “I mean like a junkie?”

“The drugs were just frosting,” Hank says.

“Then I got the first cancer scare with the tumors on my dick and all,” Hank says. “And all of a sudden this weird-ass woman starts acting like a human being. I mean she was still on the drugs then. I didn't find out about the drugs for a long time. But for some reason, when I got sick, Maria completely changed. She came home from work every night, cooked dinner, even wore different clothes and tied her hair back. Like all of a sudden she was the Maria in
For Whom the Bell Tolls. Ave
Maria. Fucking crazy bitch. She was even considering becoming a Catholic.”

“You said
business
?” I say. “Did Maria have a job?”

“Maria's a fucking lawyer, man,” Hank says. “Corporate. Found a job in Gainesville the first day she went out. Didn't put a thing on her body that wasn't designer.”

“So she supported you?”

“She supported herself,” Hanks says. “And her habits.”

“All the while,” Hank says, “I'm trying to keep my little family together and my health together and go to school. Take good care of my boy. I'm working for the college library. Didn't make much, couldn't make the rent on the fucking lavish apartment Maria insisted we live in for fuck's sake, but I bought the groceries.”

“All in all though, I'd say,” Hank says, “we stayed together a pretty good family for two years. By that time Boomer and I were blood. Then I found the rock of cocaine and her stash of pills.”

“In one of her designer purses,” Hank says. “Gucci. A huge leather purse filled with bottles of pills, all different shapes and sizes, blue and pink and white capsules. Smiling faces on some of them. And the rock of cocaine. It's what they call an eight ball, man.

“When I showed her the cocaine and the bottles I'd found,” Hank says, “Maria went ballistic. She called my dean at the college and told him I was sexually abusing Boomer.”

Hank, those sweet smiling lips, the way his lips flatten, push tight together.

His black eyes staring straight into my eyes. Not
staring
, really,
searching
, the glass eye just off enough. The scar under it, a crooked blood tear. As if in my eyes there was a secret and Hank had to know this secret.

“Gruney?” Hank says, “Can you fucking believe that shit?”

“Then she called up every person in the department with wild stories of how I was a sex addict and that I was taking drugs and assaulting her and her son. Really it was fucking nuts.”

“So what did the dean say?” I ask.

“Oh, everybody at the university was cool,” Hank says. “They could see what I couldn't. One day I come home and there's a note. She's moved back to New York and if I ever want to see Boomer again, I'd better not come after them.”

“She took my
son
, Gruney,” Hank says. “Stole Boomer and left me alone in the night without my son.”

Hank's fist hits the table. The salt shaker tips over, the pepper too. I gulp down the last bite of tuna salad sandwich, quick reach over, hold the water glass.

“Three months later,” Hank says, “she's crying to me on the phone, telling me she can't live without me and how much Boomer misses me and she's not doing drugs. So they came back. They gave her her old job back.”

I pick up the salt shaker. Take a pinch of the spilled salt, throw it over my left shoulder.

“First thing Boomer does when he sees me,” Hank says, “the Little Shit, green devil eyes just like his mom. He's Spider-Man, see, the web between our hearts. You should have seen it. He leapt clean across the room right into my arms.”

At my kitchen table, Hank Christian has his empty arms out and is waving his arms around his head.

“Two weeks in the house all together,” Hank says, “shit started up again. The cocaine, the pills, the phone calls, the allegations of abuse.”

“There was this one day,” Hank says. “It was the last day Boomer and I were together. We both knew there wasn't much time. I took him to his favorite place, Back Yard Burgers, and I tell you, Gruney, it was just like that one time with you and me and Silvio on Columbus Circle – that boy and me sitting in the booth in a diner. I asked him right out please to not cry because if he did cry I'd start too. That's what kind of boy he was. He didn't cry so he could protect me.”

“And of course
that
,” Hank says, “makes me start crying. Fuck. For some reason, both of us are holding onto the Heinz ketchup bottle, a grown man and a boy, crying our eyes out.”

Under Hank's new eye, the scar that makes a yellow and blue dent there, the crooked blood tear, a bolt of lightning.