December has arrived, and with it the first snow.
Snow is an exaggeration. It's more of a dusting. Little white flecks of frozen rain scattered about like spilled marbles. The trees have been turned into tall, skinny skeletons that paint black against a gray snowy sky.
I'm at a bookstore the next time I see Kurt. I see him first. I don't know what to do. He is there, standing by shelves of New York Times bestsellers. He's dressed in a winter coat, even though it's really not that cold. A red scarf is draped around his pale neck. It drips like blood down his
throat.
I turn away because I'm too shy too approach. This used to be something I was good at, but now I don't know how to deal with seeing people I know in public. Kurt must have felt someone's eyes burning into the back of his skull because I hear him say my name.
He comes up to me, a few books tucked under his arm. He looks different. I realize it's because he's wearing glasses. They're thin and black frames against his eyes, but not ugly. They make him look like an artist, or a librarian.
"Hey. Funny seeing you here," his words smile across his lips. "I didn't know you like to read."
I don't, technically. Ever since I've been spending my lunches in the library, I have discovered Books. Thousands of little words printed on blank pieces of paper that put images into my head, like a mind-movie. But that's not why I'm here. I'm writing. I tuck my book deeper into myself to shield my words from prying eyes.
"I didn't know you wear glasses."
Kurt reaches up to touch the frames. He must have forgotten they were there. "Oh, yeah. I need them to read sometimes. I, uh, don't like them that much." He studies me through his spectacles, a miniature wall of glass separating us. "Do you want to go get Starbucks?"
I stumble against the roof of my mouth. "No money."
"I'll pay. You can pay me back later, if you want."
I think had it been any other person, I would have declined and ran out of there. But it's Kurt.
Someone who is beginning to mean something to me. So I nod my head. He steers me through the shelves of paperbacks and hardcovers and people standing around looking bookish. We find
Starbucks and he orders two chocolatey somethings I never would have touched when I was a Real Girl.
Most of the seats are filled with the Laptop Army and snuggly-cuddly lovers on a Starbucks date. I find a booth next to the window, which radiates cold as I settle near it.
"So how was your Thanksgiving?" his voice asks as I take a cautious sip of the coffee. It scalds my tongue. I relish the pain.
"I refused to tell my family something I'm thankful for, so my dad sent me to my room. You?"
Kurt laughs a little at my words. I didn't mean to be funny.
"Mine wasn't that great, either. My parents are both single kids, and my grandparents are all either dead or don't live in the country, so it's always just me and my dad. It's kind of lonely."
Kurt's eyes flick to something next to me. I flinch when I realize what he's seen. I try to touch it, brush it back into the unknown, but he's seen it. Too late. "What's that?"
I don't want to lie to him. I withdraw it. "It's a story I'm writing. It's... it's not much, yet."
His blue eyes sparkle with interest. "So you're a storyteller?"
"I guess."
"What's it about?"
I'm still getting used to the way my throat changes when I'm around Kurt. With the rest of the world it is stuck and filled with nails that scrape against the flesh of my throat when I try to talk. But with Kurt, the nails and the goo and the cement are gone. I can tell him everything.
"It's about a girl," my voice begins, softly into a different tune. "She's trying to tell the world a story, but hasn't come up with the right words yet."
Kurt's looking at me with something on his face. It's as if he's peering right into the windows of my face, getting a glimpse of what my soul looks like. It's an ugly, wretched thing, but when he sees it, he's accepting.
"What is the girl trying to say?"
I've given him too much. It feels like he already knows, he's just looking for a confirmation. I shy away from those words, the light that shines like fire into my eyes. I don't want to talk about this anymore.
"Did someone hurt her?"
I freeze up. I'm like a computer screen that abruptly stops moving, frozen face with parted eyes and an "O" for a mouth. The cobwebs are back, the demons scuttle closer. I imagine the bookstore slowly closing in on itself, one brick falling at a time.
"Stop it," I whisper.
But he won't stop. Kurt's eyes are brightened by a different emotion now. "That night you came from Rachel's party and you got in my car, you were so drunk. So emotional. You kept talking
about a room."
"Stop it!" My voice isn't a whisper. It's not a scream. But it feels like one in my throat. Kurt's startled by me but he doesn't try to stop me as I suddenly get up and leave. I move quickly through the books, it's a labyrinth that I'll never truly get out of.
When I push through the doors, a blast of cold December wind hits me. I don't want to move any farther. I move to the edge of the parking-lot, teetering between solid ground and an ocean of black cement when car-boats drive by with their horns blaring.
I see a ribbon of red out of the corner of my eye. A warm body comes to a stop behind me. He struggles to speak at first. Maybe he knows how it feels.
"You forgot this."
He's holding my book in his hands. It's been unopened. I take it away from him quickly, fingers stashing it away where it will be kept safe. We're silent for a moment, the cold wind biting into us, but neither of us willing to move.
"I'm so sorry," he tells me in a very low voice. "It's not my business to ask what your story is."
My eyes pinch open and shut a couple times. I almost expect to feel salty tears rising, blurring my vision. But there is nothing. Maybe I am tired of crying.
"I'm sorry too. It's just... it's hard to explain. I don't know how to say it." I don't recognize my own voice. It's shaky, wobbly, like a newborn colt, but then it's strong. It rises and falls through the air, reaching Kurt's ears. I hear him exhale softly.
"Then don't say anything," he suggests. When I look at him, there's a ghost of a smile on his face. I promise myself that one day, I will tell him everything. But for now, we will remain like this.
"Are we- are we friends, Kurt?" I'm not sure where the question comes from. Deep inside, where the chasm is always hungry and thinking but nowhere near breathing out my secrets. It's the vulnerable side I don't show anyone anymore.
"Even though you're one of the most mysterious people you've ever met and I have absolutely no tact sometimes... yes, I believe we are." When he smiles down at me, it touches his blue eyes. For the first time I can see myself reflected there.
Every time I go to Brookwood now, I always get there early. I quietly escape through the slow hallways, the falling stairs, and I am in the basement. A small kick at the door after sweeping up my bag leads me into the garden.
I have pulled up all of the dead plants and the creeping old weeds. There is still much work to be done; rocks to be rearranged, mulch to be laid, statues to be straightened. The beds are far from perfect. They are patchy, dark, sick. They don't know what to think of being cared for. It's been so long that a person has come to weed that they are bewildered by my actions.
It's getting harder to stay outside. The weather grows colder. It's snowed a few more times, each time heavier than the last. I'm forced to bring gloves now. The air is frozen sometimes when I wake up in the morning. But it is bearable. Pain doesn't feel all that painful anymore.
Olga Young has allowed me to go back and serve food to Doris. She doesn't think it's the safest idea, but I tell her that I can handle it. I'm stronger than I look. At least that's what I keep telling myself.
Doris doesn't seem to care much for me. I don't think she recognizes me. Her sickness fascinates me. A lifetime of memories, stored up over many decades, can be destroyed in a matter of months. The human mind, for all of its triumphs and power, is as weak and flimsy as a piece of paper. This disease enters the mind and just devours it. Sends everything into oblivion.
Olga only agreed to let me serve food to Doris if someone else was with me, just in case Doris wanted to chuck something at my head again. Fish and Jungle were out, of course, and Kurt is the only person I know that volunteers at Brookwood. So he comes with me to take care of Doris now.
I knock softly, three times, on her door. There comes no response. I push the door aside anyways.
Doris is in her chair again. I don't think she ever moves from that spot. She sits and waits and watches for Something. A great something that will whisk her away from this hellhole. Maybe a ghost, or an angel, or Death himself. I know these things because she rants about how horrid this place is whenever I come. I think it's a never-ending rant, though. None of the other volunteers here seem to enjoy bringing her meals. They think I'm crazy for asking to take care of an unhappy hag like Doris.
She turns to look at us. Her eyes are narrow.
"Who are you? Why are you here?"
I step forward carefully. "My name is Quinn. I'm here to deliver your food."
Doris offers a bitter cackle. "Is that what you call it? I was raised on a farm, I know what that is. Slop, meant for animals. That's what we all are, isn't it? In here we're all just animals at the crazy farm. Suiting, really. I began at a farm, and now I will end at a farm."
I never talk much when I deliver her food. I try to place it on her table as carefully as possible, then escape. Escape, escape, out of this gray little cube that they keep her locked in. I feel sorry for her. I think that's why I keep coming back. If I were kept here, I'd turn into an angry old woman, too. I think she hates the people that bring her food because we can escape. She watches us leave in the afternoon, arrive a day later. We have the freedom to come and go, walk and run and escape this place. But she can't. She has to stay. Probably until her death.
"Who are you?" Doris inquires, craning her wrinkled head a little farther until she can clearly see
Kurt, standing uneasily in the doorway. He stares at her, eyes widening.
"I'm Kurt. We- we've met before."
Doris frowns at him deeply, as if trying very hard to place his face. Her brows release into a wide line, concluding that he is a stranger and he is lying to her. "We've never met before. I'm sure of it."
Kurt doesn't try to argue. He simply looks away as I set down the plate.
"The birds," Doris murmurs into her chest, losing interest in Kurt and returning her gaze to the window. "The birds."
I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it. I ask before I can stop. "What about the birds?"
Doris lifts her head, as if having forgotten she has company. "They don't come to the feeder any longer. The feeder needs to be refilled. I keep telling people that but they never listen. No respect for their elders."
I tentatively move closer to Doris. She points to the glass window, which peers out into a small courtyard. There are three metal rods jutting out of the ground, ending in bird feeders like a stem ends in a flower. The feeders were indeed empty.
"Do you have bird seed?"
"Of course. It's in that closet over there."
I hear a throat being cleared. Kurt is staring at me in the doorway, shaking his head ever so slightly. He doesn't think we should be putting bird seed in her bird feeders. I don't understand why he thinks this.
"Kurt and I will fill them for you."
The surprise on the lines of Doris' old face does a strange thing to my heart. I didn't think it was possible for me to feel things like pity or sadness any longer, but there it is, the strings of my heart being tugged at by this batty old woman's expression. It occurs to me that no matter how much you can care for a person, it's an entirely different thing to care about them.
"That would be nice."
I hunt through the creaky closet until a heavy bag of birdseed is discovered. I manage to pull it across the soft white carpet, but I cannot pick it up. Kurt looks at me before bending to sweep it up in his arms.
"We aren't supposed to do these kind of things for the people here," he says to me as we go outside into the bleak courtyard. "Their family members are in charge of watering their plants, filling the bird feeders, and stuff."
He exhales sharply as he sets the back down on the ground outside a glass window. I peer inside, feeling slightly panicked when a pair of old eyes gaze back. I recognize Doris on the inside of the sheet of glass. She's watching us intently, like we're on television.
"Has it occurred to you that she doesn't have any family members to fill the bird feeders?" I ask him quietly, hoping that Doris can't read lips.
He doesn't respond as I unhook the feeders, dipping them low to the bag so he can scoop in the seeds. The air is chilly. Our breaths create curling clouds in the air.
The feeders are finally all filled to the very top. We've dumped quite a bit of the seeds, but I feel that the squirrels will be grateful of our sloppiness. Doris is still gazing up at the bird feeders when we go back to her room.
"I was wrong," she says, a strange glimmer to her eyes now. "I do know you." Kurt puts the birdseed back and tugs on my hand, knowing that we've already been with Doris for too long. Fish and Jungle are probably wondering where we are, but it's never mattered to me less.
"You do?"
She nods firmly. "I see you every day, outside in that abandoned garden."
I freeze up slightly, feeling the blood rush to my head. That garden was meant to be a private world for me, secret from all prying eyes. I can feel Kurt looking at me in confusion.
"It's about damn time we have someone around here that cares about the details. That garden's been let go for years now. It's a pleasure to see it getting attention."
Her words are surprisingly kind. Completely out of character, though I assure myself she'll be back to her cranky self once she forgets that Kurt and I were the ones that filled her bird feeders. But I can't believe someone has seen me working in the garden. How does she know? Do others know? Am I a joke to them, fixing something that can't be fixed?
To his credit, Kurt does not mention the garden for the rest of the afternoon. It isn't until the evening when the younger volunteers have to leave that he catches my eye. He comes closer to me, as close as I allow him to come.
"What garden was Doris talking about?" His blue eyes are filled with curiosity.
Without saying a word, I turn away. Kurt somehow understands, following me quickly down the hallway. We go down a few flights of stairs until we reach the bottom level. The army of rusted washers and dryers are loud tonight, creating white noise on the canvas as I approach the broken door.
I pull it open, leading Kurt into my secret garden.
It isn't much. A bit of an eyesore, really. There's still ugly patches and broken weeds and fallen leaves that have caked into mud over the years. But it is mine. And I am showing this piece of me to Kurt. He has walked through the doorstep of my world.
"How- how long have you been at this?" he asks in an amazed voice.
"Ever since I started volunteering here."
He is impressed. I can tell. He's looking around with raised eyebrows, lips slightly twisted as if he's about to smile. Maybe he didn't think I had something like this in me.
"It'll be beautiful in the spring," his soft, withered voice says.
We stay there for a little longer, in the peaceful silence. While Kurt explores, I crane my neck upwards to the sky. The Brookwood building rests beside us like a mountain. It's only then that I see a giant glass window on the side of the building, some kind of resting area for the residents. It must overlook the courtyard. I imagine Doris' wrinkled, once-beautiful face peering down at me as I toil away in the weeds.
I feel the ghost of a smile.