I always think of the notebooks as lost, as in, “I lost your notebooks.” I implicate myself as the guilty party when, in fact, I didn’t lose your notebooks at all, they were stolen from me, along with the Barry Manilow decoupaged toilet-seat cover and Hope’s ninety-nine-cent Ambervision shades and everything else. The car was found, of course. But no object was left behind, no floor mat unturned. Everything was stolen, right down to the last loose penny and forgotten half-chewed Twizzler. Some of our clothing and personal effects were eventually recovered, but they still felt dirty after a dozen washing-machine bleachings. But the notebooks, they were long gone.
On the outside, the notebooks had all looked the same: one hundred sheets, two hundred pages, 934 × 712 in/24.7 × 19.0 cm, wide ruled. Just like all the black-and-white notebooks I’ve been writing in since high school. I didn’t peek inside before I put this one in my messenger bag and separated it from the rest of its doomed lot. I had randomly grabbed one to read when Hope left me alone at the table to call her parents or go to the bathroom. I didn’t know that this was the only one that wasn’t about you, but was intended to be all about me.
As soon as Ms. Daisy Schlemmer and Mr. Harlan Oakes, both nineteen, from Kutztown, Pennsylvania, discovered that the Death Valley Diaries, the other eleven composition notebooks left in the car, were just that, composition notebooks, and that they couldn’t use them to fund their meth lab, couldn’t use the materials to get high in another way, not from smoking the ruled paper or extracting the ink and injecting it straight into their veins, I can only presume Ms. Schlemmer hurled them out the window and into a snowy drainage ditch as Mr. Oakes slammed on the gas.
You never blamed me. And yet sometimes I feel like you punished me with silence when I returned. As if you were so committed to the economization of words that you didn’t want to squander any more by repeating what was already put to paper. And if two tweakers destroyed your notebooks, your stories, before I got to read a single word, then so be it.
What bothers me most, the regret that keeps me up at night, is knowing that your words can’t be recovered. They’re lost forever.
(FOREVER.)
monday: the fourth
(labor day)
twenty-five
I saw Hope only briefly this morning, on her way out. She was changing into a formerly white T-shirt that had been vibrantly transformed by hundreds of brushstrokes. The colors were dense and indistinguishable in the middle, then thinned out to solitary streaks along her flanks. The paint always looks slick and wet, even when it’s dry.
“You should sell those T-shirts,” I said, rising from my lumpy sheets, rubbing my bleary eyes.
“Really?” she said, looking down. “I use them to wipe off my brushes. I have tons of them. I wear them until they disintegrate.”
“I know,” I said. “But they look cool.”
She stretched the T-shirt away from her body and gave it an artist’s appraisal. Then she inhaled the armpit and grimaced.
“Yikes! No one would buy this!”
“Are you kidding? It’s the authentic stink of an artist!”
“Who can’t remember to buy deodorant.”
“Seriously, certain New Yorkers pay a thousand bucks for so-called ‘hypervintage’ jeans that have been broken in by pre-wear professionals.”
“Pre-wear professionals?”
“People who get paid to wear the same pair of jeans for a month without washing them.”
“That’s nasty.”
“I know. So a little bit of funk will add value, I promise. Just replace the Hanes label with one that says ‘Hope Weaver’ in an old-but-newish font. One word. All lowercase letters. Make a big deal out of the fact that each one is unique and hand-crafted by the artist herself. Sell them alongside the paintings you were working on when you created the shirt. It’s wearable art! The consumer as canvas…”
Hope cocked her head to the side as if she was seriously considering my ridiculousness.
“Go one step further. Donate fifty percent of the proceeds to a hot celebrity cause. Or is it cause celeb? Doesn’t matter…”
“African debt relief is hot right now,” Hope deadpanned.
“Totally hot. Africa is hot hot hot. Each purchase represents the union between humanitarianism and capitalism, and presents the wearer as someone who cares. Market yourself as one of Brooklyn’s underground guerrillas, one of many fashion freedom fighters who have determined that the sociocultural revolution won’t be televised—oh no—but silk-screened on a limited-edition T-shirt costing upwards of a hundred dollars….”
“How do you come up with this stuff?” Hope was laughing now.
“I’m so much better at managing my friends’ careers than my own,” I replied. “I swear you won’t be able to make them fast enough.”
“You know, the sad thing is you’re probably right. No one will buy my paintings, but these stinky T-shirts will make me rich and famous.”
“Just give me ten—no, twenty— percent of the profits after Africa gets its cut, okay? Then maybe I can stop relying on my sister’s charity.”
“You headed there today?” she asked.
I nodded. “You off to the studio now?”
“Yeah,” she replied, looking through her wallet. “Classes start tomorrow, so it’s my last full day to work on this final piece I need to finish before Friday….”
“Oh.”
She stopped looking when she found her MetroCard. Hope always likes to have her MetroCard in her hand, inside her pocket, ready to whip out when she reaches the subway turnstile. She never wants to fumble around for it, because she thinks that might make her a target for muggers. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she hasn’t quite adjusted to city living. (Something you can relate to.)
“You need to talk? I’m sorry I rushed off yesterday morning and—”
“What time did you come home last night?”
“I don’t know. Maybe three-ish?” A curl fell away from her messy ponytail. Hope bzzzzzed a raspberry to blow it out of her eyes. “You were asleep. Did you try waiting up for me?”
“No,” I lied.
I had tried to wait up for her last night. None of the roommates can afford cable, so my late-night TV viewing is limited to shitty infomercials for skin-care lines shilled by unnaturally preserved has-beens from eighties nighttime dramas, shitty public-access programs promoting local high school screamo bands with names like Baby on Boredom and Go Ahead and Hate Us, and reruns of shitty sitcoms of the fat-slob-husband-with-hot-skinny-wife variety. I scraped myself off the couch sometime around two A.M.
Hope’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I should have called….”
I waved away her apology. “It’s fine. Really. You have so much you need to do.”
“Really? Because…” I could tell from her voice that she was relieved.
“It’s fine.”
She stuck the MetroCard in her deep front pocket.
“And besides,” I replied, “if we’re going to talk about Marcus, we need more than just a few minutes.”
“You do want to talk about it!”
“Just go, Hope,” I said. “Really. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
Then I made kind of a dick move. “Yeah. I’m having brunch with Bridget this morning, anyway.”
“Right,” Hope said, trying to keep it light. “Because you tell Bridget everything.”
I once made the mistake of telling Hope that Bridget had become my best friend after she, Hope, moved. Of course, by definition there can only be one “best.” So Hope, who is not one who usually gets involved in these types of power struggles, gets passive-aggressively pissy about it. I don’t see it as choosing one friend over another, because each plays a unique role in my life. Bridget is the careful listener. Hope is the carefree talker. And I value them both, just at different times, and in different measures.
Bridget was my best friend in the years before Hope entered my life in middle schoo
l, and then again after she left. For too many years, I denied that Bridget was anything more than a superficial replacement for Hope. But Bridget has proven to be more than just a fallback friend. In those years that I didn’t see Hope very much, Bridget was the first person I turned to whenever there was a major shake-up in my life (mostly involving you). There have always been fundamental differences between us, and not those unfair assumptions based on her beachy beauty and how she once put it to use as a professional catalog model and football player’s girlfriend—the latter pursued with more go-getter grit than the former.
Our differences unite rather than divide us. She provides alternative insights that expand my myopic pessimism. As such, Bridget has offered more comfort and shrewd advice than any other friend (including Hope). However, when I’m not in crisis mode, and Bridget and I are just blithely shooting the shit on an ordinary day, our talk, while perfectly pleasant, lacks that certain urgency for more. I say good-bye feeling all talked out.
My relationship with Hope is simpler, and paradoxically more complicated. With Hope, there is an immediate intimacy and ease to our conversations that I have not found with anyone else. (But you. On our best days. When we used to talk, or rather, when you used to talk to me.) Hope and I share a love of wordplay, an appreciation of low culture, and above all, a fascination with the tragicomedy of life. We banter playfully and energetically; I always feel happier afterward than I did before. When I’m in her company, I laugh loud and long, which is something I don’t do nearly enough.
Our ability to enlighten and entertain each other is based on a deep understanding of the way each other’s mind works. However (there always seems to be a “however”), no matter how close Hope and I are, there always seems to be certain taboo subjects that I can’t discuss with her (mostly involving you). And these gaps in confidence are usually filled by Bridget. Why should this time be any different?
Hope’s eye caught the stack of boxes still taking up too much floor space.
“I thought you stayed in all day yesterday to unpack,” she said.
“I started to,” I said lamely. “But I got distracted.”
“You were distracted.”
And simple as that, we both giggled at the shorthand joke that only we could understand.
Only we knew I was referring to that last morning before Hope moved to Tennessee. Her parents were waiting in the driveway, glancing at their watches, tapping their feet on the asphalt, jiggling their keys, eager to leave Pineville—and memories of their son’s tragic overdose—behind. But when I stepped inside Hope’s room to say good-bye, it could only be described as aggressively un packed. The carpet was littered with assorted vintage clothing (thirties granny dress, seventies burnout jean jacket), random CDs (The Very Best of the Partridge Family, Biograph), stray art supplies (crusty brushes, flattened tubes of oil paint), and miscellanea of the female hygiene variety (no need to elaborate). Hope was untroubled by her lack of progress, and assumed a yoga pose that put her on her back with her legs flipped up and over so her toes touched the floor behind her head. Her mantra?
“I’m distracted.”
And so, with my invocation of this simple exchange from our past, the last few moments of awkwardness were forgotten. (Well, not quite forgotten; otherwise I wouldn’t have written about it.)
“I’ll see you tonight,” Hope said. “I shouldn’t be too late.”
“Sure,” I said, knowing that she never meant to be too late, but she lost track of all time when she was at the studio.
After we said our good-byes, Hope hesitated in the doorway for a moment. Her paint-stained fingertip touched the wall, tracing the intertwined vines in Claire’s name. Then she dropped her hand, gave me a shy, closed-mouth smile, and turned away without another word.
I rolled over and looked at the top of the bunk. Kirk was gone. In his place was Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly.
JESS:
YOU CAN TAKE ME “BACK TO THE FUTURE” ANYTIME.
LUV YA, MIKE
twenty-six
It is a testimonial to how much I value my friendship with Bridget that I agreed to be her maid of honor. I assumed this role would require my participation in certain bridal rites that rank well below other distinctly female activities, such as running out to the twenty-four-hour drugstore at midnight to buy high-absorbency tampons. But Bridget is my oldest friend, and her sunny optimism is a rarity in this city. Even rarer is the purity of Bridget and Percy’s love for each other.
I’ve known Bridget since diapers. I’ve known Percy since French I, when he was a tiny, hairless freshman, and I was the sophomore object of his comically misguided Pepé Le Pew–like flirtations. It’s been five years since Bridget and Percy were cast as the leads in the 2001 Pineville High production of Our Town, and yet I still can’t fathom how they progressed from mere acquaintances (through me), to friends in their own right, to more than friends, to a long-term couple who kiss and do other, uh, intimate things. It should be no surprise that I can’t quite wrap my head around the prospect of them uniting as man and wife. In fact, the only thing I consider to be even more extraordinary than Bridget’s ardor for Percy—whom she has been blissfully and abnormally dating since high school without a breakup or even so much as a major fight—is the fact that she has not made any progress on this wedding, which is supposed to be happening next September. Bridget has been the anti-Bridezilla, putting most of her energy toward more practical concerns, namely, making sure she graduates with Percy in June, because she lost a bizillion credits when she transferred from UCLA to NYU to be with him.
Lately Mrs. Milhokovich has been putting the pressure on her daughter: Is this wedding happening or what? So now, with a year left for planning, I assumed that Bridget had called for this brunch so we could sit down with our respective calendars and schedule appointments with the cake stylists, floral artisans, and favor specialists who would have me tied up in the Knot for the next twelve months. I have braced myself for these tasks ever since I agreed to be her number one bridesmaid last December.
I assumed that the first order of business would be the finding of the Gown, followed by the far-less-important search for the bridal party’s complementary couture. I’m still scarred by the memory of being dressed up like a banana for my sister’s wedding when I was sixteen. Though Hope had assured me that bridesmaid dresses have come a long way since then, I could only hope that Bridget’s color scheme would be inspired by a more flattering fruit or vegetable. And I didn’t have to think too hard about how stunning Bridget would look on her wedding day, because with her classic blue-eyed blond looks, she’s always resembled my own sister (and mother) more than I do. So superficially blessed, Bridget could easily pull off a wedding dress made entirely out of engineered lunch meat.
When we were younger, before my parents moved to their waterfront condo across town, Bridget and I always sprinted across the street and up the stairs to the other’s bedroom to break any big news. Now that we’re both in the city, we’ve settled on an undistinguished Irish pub in Brooklyn Heights to serve the same purpose. Bridget says she doesn’t mind making the “trek” to Brooklyn from the East Village because such interborough subway travel makes her feel more like “a real New Yorker.” Of course, merely having such thoughts undermines any cred she’s earned, but I love the pure ingenuousness of her efforts.
Bridget got there before I did, looking radiant and reluctant to say good-bye to summer in a crinkly-cotton Empire-waist dress and flip-flops. She was seated at a plastic-covered table past the already rowdy regulars at the bar, in a small alley-like seating area tucked back near the kitchen and unisex restrooms. It was my favorite table because it had the best view of all the random Irish-themed artwork hanging crookedly in mismatched frames along the deep green walls: an eight-by-ten glossy of Colin Farrell in a still from Miami Vice; a poster of a football team, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 1988 National Champions; a Dublin street map; a collage of U2 ticket stubs; and so on.
/> Bridget greeted me with a cheery little wave.
“I already ordered for us,” she said, grinning merrily in anticipation of the $7.95 breakfast plate of deep-fried bacon, eggs, hash browns, and soda bread that we always split when we met here.
We hugged hello and had barely settled into our rickety seats when Bridget began our conversation with a gleeful yet terrifying, “I’ve got big news!”
I might have flinched.
“We’re not getting married.”
I almost tipped over in my chair. “What?!” Water spilled from glasses and silverware clattered as I clutched at the table to retain my balance. “You’re breaking up?”
“Nononononononono!” Bridget’s pale hands flapped around her lovely face like the wings of a dove struggling to take flight. “We’re not breaking up at all! We’re still engaged.”
“But you’re not getting married?” I was confused.
“Well, hopefully someday. But not until gays can do it, too. And even then we’ll probably elope.”
“Really?” She had taken me completely by surprise. “When did you decide this?”
“I don’t know. It’s a pretty hot topic around school. And as a black man, Percy really sympathizes with the struggle for equality. We wouldn’t join, like, a racially segregated club, so why would we participate in an institution that discriminates against homosexuals?”
“Well, that makes a lot of sense….”
This was a lie. I respected them for taking this stance, but it didn’t seem like their battle to fight, especially when not all gay people even want to get married. My former writing professor/mentor, Professor Samuel MacDougall, even wrote a book about it, An Unconventional Life. To be honest, I never got around to reading the book, but I did catch a lot of the controversy surrounding its publication, and how it made him a traitor to gay activists and a hero among right-wing conservatives who champion traditional “family values.” From what I saw in the New York Times, Mac merely argued that gay-rights activists were squandering their resources and energy battling for the right to participate in a failing institution rooted in subjugation and conformity. We’d all be better off if we fought for other causes that improve everyone’s lives. Gay, straight, and in between.