I was in the room again even though I knew I’d been there all along. I looked at Adam, then at Rafael. And then I heard myself say, “Do I have to say something?”
“Don’t you want to?”
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I can’t.” I kept focusing on the stain on the carpet. I wanted to find a bat and a windshield. That’s what I wanted.
“I’ll miss you, Zach.” Rafael’s voice was softer than it had ever been. I wondered why he was speaking because that wasn’t in the goodbye rules. The goodbye rules were that you listened to what everybody was pressing into the goodbye medal. Rafael was breaking the rules and I wanted to yell at him and I opened my mouth to speak but it seemed like it had been sewn shut. Rafael smiled and whispered, “I love you, Zach. You know that, don’t you?”
He said that in front of the whole group and it just wasn’t right and my lips kept trembling and then I swallowed real hard and made myself talk because I wanted my voice to be stronger than my trembling. “You don’t. You don’t love me.”
Rafael’s face was calm. “I do, Zach. I want you to know that.”
I placed my hand over my eyes and shook my head.
Do not feel. Do not feel.
I knew what Adam was going to say. He was going to say, “I see you, Zach.” But he didn’t see me. No one saw me. No one in the whole fucking world saw me.
-2-
I went to all my groups. But I wasn’t there. I could make myself not be there. It wasn’t a trick really. It was, well, normal. Normal for me. In the middle of the afternoon, I was too tired to keep my eyes open. I told Jennie, the afternoon therapist, that I felt sick. She studied my face. I don’t know what she was seeing. “Give yourself what you need.” I decided to give myself a nap.
I went to Cabin 9 and stared at Rafael’s packed bags. I lay down on my bed and looked up at the ceiling. I couldn’t fall asleep. Maybe I didn’t want to fall asleep. The thought entered my head that Rafael would be coming to get his things and I knew that I couldn’t handle seeing him. Goodbye was a monster that was swallowing me up. That monster was too strong for a guy named Zach. I had to leave Cabin 9 before Rafael came back. I had to leave. I couldn’t breathe and the thought entered my mind that I was never going to get better, not ever.
I was going to live forever in this in-between space, somewhere between the living and the dying. I was stuck there.
I don’t know how I managed, but I scrawled out a note to Rafael and placed it on his desk, next to his journal: Don’t hate me.
Then I ran out of the room.
No one sees me no one sees me no one sees me.
I found myself sitting in front of the tree named Zach.
The sky seemed so dark. I lay down on the ground. I had another strange dream. I was walking alone in the desert and I saw two men coming toward me. One of the men was my father and the other man was Rafael—and then all of a sudden Adam was standing right next to me and he said to me: “You have to choose, Zach.” And I knew I wanted to pick Rafael because that’s what my heart was telling me, but I didn’t. I didn’t pick him. I picked my father. And then me and my father were walking together in the desert and when I looked close, I could see that we were both holding pints of bourbon and we were drinking and there was blood all around us. Father and son. Blood.
When I woke up, it was dark and I was shivering from the cold.
I thought about the dream. I thought about the bourbon and the blood. I knew that I was trembling and I didn’t know if that was from the cold or from the dream. I picked myself up from the ground and made my way to the smoking pit.
I smoked a cigarette. And then another. And then another. I was numb. I wasn’t feeling. That was okay. I concentrated and held on to the numbness. This is what I really wanted, not to feel. I wanted to be like an ice cube that refused to melt. If I could just stay exactly like this, then I would never be sad again, not ever—if I could just hold on to this numbness. If I could just do that, then the name Rafael couldn’t hurt me. The name Santiago couldn’t hurt me either. And the memory of my father and mother, that would mean nothing.
I looked up at the stars and envied them. God didn’t make them feel things.
-3-
I walked into Cabin 9. Amit was working on a painting. He looked up at me. “I’m really pissed.”
“So what?”
“I don’t get you, Zach.”
“You don’t have to get me. It’s not part of your work here.”
“That’s really shitty, dude, you know, how you treated Rafael.”
“Rafael will live.”
“You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Me? What’s wrong with me? Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“Then why don’t you just leave?”
“Shut up, Amit.”
I threw myself on my bed and looked up the ceiling. I was holding on to the numbness. It was almost like drinking. I swear it was just like that.
I heard Amit get up from his desk and heard him as he put on his coat. “Rafael left something for you, asshole. It’s on your desk.”
I pretended not to hear him.
I heard him leave the room.
When I fell asleep, I had the dream again, the dream with Rafael and my father and Adam in the desert. I saw Rafael walk away when he got close to me, but my father offered me a drink. I woke just as I reached for the bottle he was handing to me.
-4-
I didn’t go to Group. I pretty much just hung out in Cabin 9. The only place I went the whole day was to the smoking pit. People said hi. I didn’t have the energy to say hi back to them. In the afternoon, I kept staring at Rafael’s journal—that was the gift he’d left for me. There was an envelope with my name written on it. I didn’t open it. I picked up the envelope and studied it. I tossed it back on the desk.
When Amit came back in the room, he glared at me. I looked back at him blankly.
The dreams got worse. I woke up screaming but I didn’t want to think about the dream. I heard Amit’s voice. “I can’t stand to watch you, Zach. You’re dying, dude.”
I heard me answer him. “They’re just dreams.”
“They’re killing you.”
What do you know? That’s what I wanted to say. But I didn’t say anything at all.
-5-
I went to Group. I didn’t interact, but I went. I stared at the floor mostly. During the break, I figured maybe I should just go hang out in Cabin 9. But before I reached the cabin, I heard Adam’s voice. “Two o’clock, Zach. Can you come see me?”
I shrugged.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yeah, okay.” And then I looked at him. “What’s the point, Adam? I’m just wasting your time.”
He started to say something—but he stopped himself. “Two o’clock, Zach?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I walked into Cabin 9 and stared at Rafael’s journal. I flipped through the pages and stared at the neat handwriting. I found myself reading one of entries:
In the dream, all the trees were bare and leafless, the winter night dark and starless. I was wandering around without a coat. I don’t remember what I was desperately searching for. I knew my life depended on finding whatever it was I was in search of. But I was exhausted and hungry and my only thought was how cold I was. I had never been that cold. I woke up and it was still dark, the blanket on the floor. I covered myself up and wondered about my search.
I was a wanderer on the earth. A nomad. That was my last thought before I fell asleep again.
The next morning when I woke all I could think of was leaves. I had this image in my mind as I walked the labyrinth: I was standing in the sun and green leaves were floating down from heaven.
It was snowing leaves. And I was young again.
I ran my fingers across the words. Little pieces of paper filled with
words.
I pictured Rafael standing at the center of the labyrinth, the sun shining and the leaves of summer raining down on him. I pictured him smiling and laughing. I tried to picture myself standing right next to him.
-6-
“What’s going on up there?” Adam tapped his temple with his finger.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, what’s going on here?” He tapped his heart.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I didn’t say goodbye to Rafael.”
“I know.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I get that.”
“Do you?”
“I guess goodbye can be a monster.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not bad to love someone so much that it hurts.”
“You don’t know. You’re not me.”
“Strange as this may sound, Zach, I do know something about pain. And I do know something about love. And that’s a fact.”
“But you don’t know anything about me. You say you see me, but you don’t. You don’t.” I felt my lips trembling. No no no no no don’t cry, Zach, no don’t cry don’t cry but my body wasn’t listening to what I was telling it. I got up to leave but I when I stood up, I couldn’t move. I felt Adam’s arms around me. I leaned into his shoulder and cried. “I’m lost,” I whispered. “Adam, I’m lost.” And then I started saying things that I didn’t know I was going to say, words stuck inside me. “I want my father, Adam. I want him. I don’t know where he went. It hurts. It hurts. Adam, it hurts.”
-7-
I kept staring at the envelope with my name on it. I took a breath and opened it. And there they were, Rafael’s words:
Zachariah—
There are a good many things that I want to say to you and yet I don’t know exactly what those things are. I’ve learned over the years that if I just begin writing, then I somehow manage to find the right words. I think you already know that I’m a true believer in words. I believe in their power, in their ability to hurt and their ability to heal. Maybe that’s why I’m leaving you my journal—because writing in these pages was an important part of the work I did here. Maybe that’s why I’m writing to you right now—because I want to say something that might help you. I don’t mean that in a condescending way either, Zach. I’m fifty-three and you’re eighteen but that doesn’t mean I’m smarter or even that I’m somehow more enlightened. The only thing I really know is that I’m finally getting to know myself. I hope, Zach, that you get there before I did. I hope you don’t wait.
You once confessed to me that you had imaginary conversations with people. I have those imaginary conversations too. Here’s one I had with you:
Me: Are you going to say goodbye?
Zach: I can’t.
Me: Will you do me a favor? Will you stop looking at the floor and look at me?
Zach: You’re making me feel like a little boy.
Me: Then don’t act like one.
Zach: You’re going to give me a lecture as a parting gift?
Me: Will you just look at me?
Then you, Zach, you look at me. And I hold out my journal to you and say: I have this gift for you.
Then you, Zach, say: I can’t take that. They’re your words.
Me: Maybe I want you to have my words.
You, Zach, shake your head.
Me: Take it. Then I place my journal in your hands.
Zach: I have a confession to make. I read your journal. You look away, afraid to see the expression on my face.
But I’m smiling and say: I know.
Zach: You know?
Me: Yes, Zach, I know.
Zach: Why didn’t you tell me you knew?
Me: For the same reason you didn’t tell me you were reading it. Maybe we’re both a little too in love with keeping secrets. Maybe we should stop.
You, Zach, hold the journal in your hands and nod.
And then I look around the room one last time before I leave.
And then you, Zach, say: I guess I have to say goodbye.
Me: This isn’t goodbye, Zach.
Zach: When someone leaves, it means goodbye.
Me: Not always.
Zach: People come here—and then they leave. And after they leave, they want to forget they’ve been here.
Me: Some people, maybe so. I’ll see you again, Zach. I’ll see you again because I want to see you again. And because I want to see you again, it will happen. I will make it happen.
And then you walk me to the van that’s waiting to take me to the airport and I say: You’re the sweetest boy in the whole world.
Zach: I’m not.
Me: Don’t argue with me, Zachariah. And then I look into your face one last time, smile and get into the van and leave.
That’s my imaginary conversation.
Zach, I knew you couldn’t say goodbye to me. It hurts. If it hurts a fifty-three-year-old man, then how much more would it hurt an eighteen-year-old boy? But here’s the problem, Zach. If you want to be alive, you can’t avoid pain.
I know something about avoidance–I was an expert at that. But avoiding pain, Zach, isn’t possible. Just because life has hurt me or you or all the people that are here doesn’t mean we have to live in pain all the time. I lived in pain because I chose to live in pain. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the idea of tragedy, the idea that I was destined to live a tragic life. I had this romantic idea about the life of a writer and what he was supposed to suffer. I was Rafael, the artist, the superior being who created beauty out of his own misery. Somehow, I made my own pain a kind of god. I worshipped that god with all that I was. As Sharkey would say, That is so fucked up, dude. Inexplicably, though, and this is the part that really is inexplicable, I somehow avoided the real pain—the pain that was killing me. I avoided it altogether.
I think you’re like me, Zach. I think you live in pain even as you don’t want to feel. You’re beautiful and brilliant and in love with words and yet, like me, you remain in an inarticulate space where words are stuck somewhere between your heart and your throat.
Speak, Zach.
Do you know the story of Zachariah in the Bible? I think you should read that story. God struck him dumb for his lack of faith. He was unable to utter a single word. He regained his ability to speak when his son was born. And he sang. Zachariah sang! Sing, Zach. If I could sing to my monster, then you can sing to yours.
Rafael
I read the letter over and over and over. And then I opened his journal and I saw he’d written his cell phone number and his address. I thought of the imaginary goodbye scene that Rafael had written. I will see you again because I want to see you again.
For a moment, I thought of the word happy and it was a word that just, well, it felt like it was visiting me. I knew it wouldn’t last for very long and I’d be sad again and then it would be worse because it’s one thing to be sad and it’s another thing to be sad once you’ve been happy. Being sad after you’ve been happy is the worst thing in the world.
I must have been smiling because Amit asked me, “What are you smiling about?”
“I was just thinking.”
“Well, I don’t know what you have to smile about after the shitty way you treated Rafael in group. I mean, dude, that really sucked.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry I behaved like a five-year-old. I’m sorry.”
Amit smiled. “Yeah, just like Rafael said.”
“Yeah, just like Rafael said. I’ll make amends to the group.”
“I’ll remind you. In case you forget.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Good.” Amit studied his painting. “What do you think?” He held up his painting. It was a road. It didn’t look like my road. Well, why should it? It was his road. There were tepees and cacti and all kinds of stuff on either side of the road. His painting was a lot more complicated than mine.
“You want to tell me what it means?
”
“I’m taking it into Group.”
I was glad Amit wasn’t mad at me anymore. It was weird, but I felt like talking. Maybe I was tired of my internal life. My sad internal life. “Amit? What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?”
He got this look on his face, like maybe he didn’t want to answer. But he did answer. “In prison—well, bad things happened.”
I think I knew what he was telling me. “Do you think about it a lot?”
“Sometimes, I have dreams.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry those bad things happened.”