I'm dead. I've been dead for awhile. I'm writing this in a bar in McCarran Airport, and the bartender is wiping down the dark, shiny, fake wood of the bar and picking up pint glasses, glancing at the few couples sitting at tables, drinking mineral water and eating stale popcorn from white, stiff Styrofoam bowls.
I've been dead for three years now. The bartender places another pint on the bar, beads of cold drink sweat gathering in a little circle. There's a lot of brass lining in this place, which makes it very shiny and reflective.
I'm not writing about what I should be writing about. Maybe I'm trying to divert myself. I don't deny that I'm dead, but it's hard to think about the fact that there's a part of myself -- you -- walking out there, smiling with ignorance. You don't know that I'm here.
But I, the corpse that's just slightly paler than your average person, who doesn't really smell like a corpse when I wash myself, wear fresh clothes, and dye myself in perfume, knows where I am -- where you are. I know where I am all the time, and even if the other part of me doesn't want this part back, I'll find a way to reveal myself to you.
Actually, my plan's been pretty simple: Just show up at your house -- the one you'd moved into after I'd died -- the house of forget, with all of its fresh objects and fresh memories, and confront the living part of me.
You killed me, I'd say. Just because you wanted to. Just because you could, you killed me. Let's carry on now, just as if grieving didn't exist. Pretend that the closure really exists inside and out.
The closure does exist. That's the rub. It exists, intangible and eternal now, internal and external, as above, so below. You have forgotten about me almost entirely, now merely a memory in mist.
It's midday in the bar. Planes are crawling on the tarmac towards their gates, little luggage trolleys speeding belongings to their destinations. It's probably over a hundred degrees out there right now, able to melt anything out there, even skin, if kept out there long enough.
I'm still here, drinking and writing, and walking, and interacting with the world you know because, somewhere, you want me around. There's a sated knowledge that you miss me, the part of you that once was you; you miss that feeling when pain made you feel sane.
When Mom died, don't you remember that? No, because I wasn't dead yet, that's right. I as you was ending.
You moved houses, sold everything, started over. I started living out of hotel rooms.
The funny thing is, when you're dead, everyone believes everything you say until you actually state that you're dead. I stay in the stasis of the living, and because you keep me here, money is always in my pockets. I keep my head down. I follow you sometimes, just to know your new habits. But I know what you're going to do because there are some things you keep. Sometimes I sit outside your bedroom window as you make love to any number of your male suitors, trying to forget me as they love you for that one second of climax and step into your shower, with your multi-colors and Mag Champa smell, and wash away your memories. They don't really know you any better than you do.
You're like me, really. We're both alone. We are the same height, same eyes, same hair. Except when you wonder how you lose clothes, it's because I go in your house sometimes, when you aren't there, and steal them. New clothes, clothes that you bought to forget, so a forgotten takes them.
Once I walked into your house, stood at the door, and just stared at all of your things. I thought about taking a lamp, a plant, a couch, ripping the curtains just a little, flipping a switch in your power box, cutting the phone line, or your cable line. But I didn't. I just stood there and stared for a moment, taking in the clean neatness of it.
I'd walk through the house, walk through all the rooms, remembering the placement of your things, saving your bedroom for last. That's when I knew why I was still here: King size bed -- it wasn't the exact same bed that I had, and now you sleep under white flannel sheets, with big white pillows-- a four-poster, wrought iron, black, white lace hanging above you. Still, you keep framed art prints, except now instead of Dali and Chagall you keep Monet and Waterhouse. There's more black and white photography on the dark brown nightstands and on your matching vanity-- I always wanted one of those, with a big oval mirror and glass jewelry box full of trinkets, surrounded by makeup and picture frames. And you've started to keep live plants -- and they kept the room smelling cool and green. That Mag Champa smell from your bathroom barely touched the room, but it was just enough to make it smell fresh and unlived-in.
I sat down at the vanity, sat up straight in the high-backed chair, and took it in, just how I always wanted it to be, with the glass jewelry box trimmed in gold right in front of me and black and white landscapes surrounding me. I almost picked up the compact in front of me. I never wore makeup. I'd hated it, because it felt like I had something crawling on my face and I always scratched or wiped it off.
Instead, I opened the top of the jewelry box. There was an array of earrings, broaches, and necklaces, pearls and silver and rhinestones.
Mom's wedding ring wasn't in there. The Irish Claddagh ring, with the two hands holding a crown above the heart. That tarnished silver ring, broken in one spot that used to pinch the inside of my finger when I wore it on my right ring finger, the heart facing outwards. You hadn't pawned it, so where was it?
That ring was my remembrance. Even after I'd sold all of Mom's things, or had given them away, and Dad faded away as her possessions dwindled, that ring was my remembrance of her. It reminded me that I carry part of her here.
But she was gone, and there was nothing I could do about it, and I hated it. I was changing out of me into you, but I didn't know it yet. I was trying so hard to get used to an entirely new reality I'd ever even glimpsed before.
And then, suddenly, I was on my own. I'd grieved, and adjusted, thought I'd done all the remembering I was supposed to. You were born as I died, the only you had died, and I was supposed to disappear just as all of my friends had disappeared, left and gone because I'd changed completely. They couldn't understand grief, could they?
You shed your skin. You shed off me, and I was supposed to wither and die like old weeds. But I am not gone, still; I am here, and restless, because there's something in you that won't let me go, that wants to keep me here, tangible and named.
I looked at myself in the mirror, stealing earrings from your box. My box. I'm pale as tumbleweeds, you know, sun-faded brown-pink. My hair is still straight and dusty-brown and my hazel eyes look a little more weary, but I am you. And I am still inside you somewhere, bonded. Those memories of Mom barely keep you together. You have the ring, you keep it neat. You must let go of me. Where is it?
The bartender has brought me another beer. I never liked beer, but I don't really care now as I write this. It's something colder than I am.
I am waiting for you to get off your plane. The gate is nearby, but I can see everyone walking through, going to the baggage claim. I can feel you near, as I bend down to write. I know you're here. I can wait. You're coming home from Ireland, where you wanted to see where you might have come from. I could've easily followed you there, pretending to be something or someone else, but I didn't. It was your trip, not mine. I can go there any time I like, if I wanted to. But I don't want to be here anymore. I want you to remember me, remember that Mom is near and that you can let go.
I can feel you near. I have to stop writing.