A/N sorry I didn't update sooner. I have no excuse except writers block. Please keep reading! Please!!
Chapter fifteen: Mark
1993
The average human spends five percent of their waking life with their eyes closed. Think about that for a second; we don't see five percent of our lives. It doesn't really seem like a lot, especially if you look at it on a pie chart or something, but if you think about it, I mean really think about it, it's really quite a lot. You always think of yourself as being completely aware of the thing that happen to you. Like, who'd know better than you what's been going on in your life, right?
Sure.
It's one in the morning and I'm watching Maureen's rings glitter in the dim light. They're cheep rings, the kind you get at the dollar store. You can see the seam where they were poured into the mould and the silver coating is chipping off. The plastic stones fell off one of them yesterday. From the fit she pitched you'd have thought it was a fucking family heirloom. Those stupid rings....they're like her bangles. Cheep and flimsy and plastic under the paint but she never takes the fucking things off. Not even in the shower. It freaks April out. She insists it's not hygienic. That always makes Mo laugh because....well because because.
"There's nothing on TV," flops onto the floor in front of the "TV" dejectedly. By TV, I mean of course this large box covered in fake wood paneling circa 1975. I found it in a junk yard and fixed it. Fixed it in the sense that now it at least turns on.
"It's Friday night, of course there isn't anything on. Everyone else is out doing something." I say. I toss one of Collins' old socks at a passing roach. It swerves and scurries into a hole in the wall.
"That's disgusting. Don't play with the roaches, Marky."
"Well there's nothing else to do."
"We could go out...." She suggests half heartedly. I glare at her.
"Could we?" I say testily.
She mumbles something about how if I weren't such an old Jewish woman we could which only pisses me off more.
"Since when are you April?" I snap.
"Fuck you, Mark."
"Fuck you, Maureen. If you want to go out so badly, then go! I'll wait up." I add.
"Don't try to play the martyr, you little fuck. Don't try to make me feel bad for wanting to have fun!" she pulls her hair and swoons onto the sofa beside me. I feel like I should tell her that this is not Gone with the Wind.
We stare at the Christmas lights glowing around the ceiling. After a while Maureen reaches over and switches on the radio. "Sweetest Perfection" plays softly.
"I'm sorry," she says softly.
"So am I," I say. "I'm sorry we didn't go out. I just...."
"I know," she says. "I don't understand but I know you feel like you need to wait up for them. For him. I mean, I know why you're worried."
I shake my head. "I want to think it's April's fault, only I know it's not. I know he started it."
Maureen smiles at me in the soft light. I wish I had my Nikon but it's in the back room. She leans her head on my shoulder and we stare at nothing.
An hour later she's dozed off on my shoulder, but I'm still wide awake. It seems like I spend so many nights wide awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling and waiting.
I feel like I've been living with my eyes closed for the past four years. Ever since I met Maureen and fell into this fucked up relationship—because that's what happened, we just sort of ended up together, like we were obligated to because of Laura—I've been focusing on stupid things. I'd been ignoring all the important things. Ignoring the way April's eyes dulled, the way she slept so much more, the way she suddenly spent hours curled on the sofa like a cat, the way she let her hair fade and didn't care. Somehow I didn't notice that all that amazing energy, that spark of interest, the thing that made him focus so clearly on one thing gradually faded out of Roger. That is to say, he was focused on something, but not on music or April. I missed the bruises in the crooks of Roger's elbows, on the backs of April's beautiful legs. Don't ask how. I made myself stop seeing. He was always the strong one. He always took care of me. He always knew when to stop.
I focused all my energy on Maureen. On her stupid dramatics. I don't think I ever loved her, not really. For all that Maureen is like Laura, only airbrushed, she's not who I want. And I'm not who she wants. She's made—continues to make—that abundantly clear. Half the time I'm here she isn't. She comes back with hickies that have suddenly materialized on her neck. Hmm, I wonder what that could mean? And don't ask why we're together. Desperation. Fascination. Spite. Anger. Because when we get along we do have fun, maybe. Because somehow, through all the shit, we began to care about each other. Strangely, inexplicably, we each care enough about the other not to leave. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself. Maybe we're both just too afraid to be alone.
It was Collins that jerked me out of my stupid, self centered fug. He'd been running kind of wild since we came to New York, we all had. But Collins was really going for it full tilt. We used to joke about it, Tom Collins the Man Whore. Only it caught up to him. It's hard to hear the word AIDS in connection with one of your best friends. Hard to suddenly be jolted into the realization that someone is mortal. Driving Collins to the hospital to get tested....it was like driving home from New York with Laura and Roger all those years ago. Driving home and not really knowing what was coming, only that it felt bad and wrong. And then you get there and your dad gets so pissed off that he hits you, nocks you off your feet and the table corner whacks you in the head. That's what it was like hearing the news. Like you've been fooling yourself that the worst is over and then suddenly WHAM! And you realized it's just started.
Collins is gone now. He's got a scholarship to MIT. I don't know.....I really don't know what'll happen. All I know is he woke me up. After that I started seeing more and more things that weren't right. And I started staying up and waiting for Roger and April to come home, just to check that they made it, just to see if they were okay. I never said anything. Never in the year that I've let myself understand what's going on, have I said a word about it to them. What kind of a friend does that make me?
I don't know. I feel like I don't know anything anymore.
OK guys! I'm so so so so soooo sorry this is late and I'm even sorrier that it's so BAD! Please review anyway, I really need a boost. And please don't be pissed.
