"Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you're falling to the floor crying thinking, "I am falling to the floor crying," but there's an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you're on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn't paint it very well." – Richard Siken
.
Nothing fades, yet days get shorter. This is a paradox, or some crap like that.
In the grimy peephole of an uncaring outside world, you are surprisingly fine. You are not exactly alone; you are becoming more than lonely, even.
You step outside of the shadows and hunch your shoulders to protect against the sunshine.
At least, at least.
Oscar calls it progress. Oscar, who only knows what you tell him, who only knows about what happens now.
(And who, all the same, knows so much more.)
If he loves you anyway, you never ask him to. Sometimes you just stay.
Trish would call it—
Whatever emptiness resides in your chest clenches like a fist. One bullet, and it took two loves.
.
You kept the jacket.
She told you, spitting the words and making you hate her, that he would have betrayed you.
But he is dead. Your first love. The love that was something you went and found for yourself, when you still did that sort of thing.
You screamed for help when you found his body.
You remember that day, and you remember his laugh, and you call your life Alias—not so much as a tribute, but as a promise that nothing is ever as it seems.
.
At night, Oscar breathes quietly, like a man at peace.
You let him.
It doesn't feel bad. That is the most you hope for most days.
But hell, at least you are hoping.
.
Trish and her goddamn expectations.
For so many years, you loved Trish with all the good parts of you that could be scrabbled together from ashes, and yet—
People with expectations always, in the end, want something for themselves.
.
When you help Oscar's mother move apartments, she babbles about the saints and presses a holy card into your hand. "Hyacinth," she says.
You do not think she means the white and purple flowers that used to grow in clumps by your front porch.
Your fingers close around gilt-trimmed edges. "OK."
"Very strong," she says, patting your sleeve and waggling her brows. "Strong. Carried statute of la Virgen Maria."
And because you are being better, and kinder, or something like that, you twist a smile onto your face and discover that it comes more easily than it used to. "Why," you ask, "did he do that?"
Her eyes bore into yours. You have made seventeen trips up and down her creaking stairs, but you are not noticeably tired.
"Because," she answers. "He had to."
.
Malcolm moves out.
You catch yourself picking at the wall he spackled and painted and finished.
You make yourself stop—not before you have caught a splinter under your nail.
It hurts.
.
She had something more to say to you. And maybe she did not deserve to say it, and maybe you were wrong to let yourself love. You always tried to be careful, when it came to letting yourself love.
When you look back over every sorry and sorrier year, you think: I am not very good at that.
.
It didn't have to be you.
With one hand, you smear the steam on the bathroom mirror. Trish will do what she wants. She always has.
That is not why you love her.
(Though you do.)
You poise your knuckles half an inch from the mirror's surface.
You have stopped doing this, breaking things.
.
Oscar and Vito drive you to Long Island and the three of you walk along the beach. Vito finds shells and you find a tangled mass of limp seaweed, because that's your luck.
Oscar's arm settles warmly around your shoulders.
Salt stings in your eyes; you wish you had died in the accident, mercifully silent, never knowing what you would have to carry.
What you say is this: "It's pretty"—
—and you do mean it.
.
Oscar does not ask you to say I love you.
You have not said those words since you said them to save Trish, to save everyone, and maybe you should have said it to your mother—
Now, you are never going to say it again.
You kiss him instead.
You are carrying statues that are not made lighter by miracles. This is the secret you do not tell anyone:
You know exactly how heavy they are.