Present: Pictures
I kept telling myself I would go back and visit Isaac again, but I just couldn’t seem to get the time off work on any of the days that his doctors said I could come. I guess they liked to keep him on a pretty strict schedule, and my boss was a bit of a jerk who I didn’t think liked me very much. I did all the work the best I could, though, and the pay was good, so I wasn’t going to complain about not getting time off when I wanted it.
Even if I couldn’t go visit him, Ike and I had been talking on the phone pretty regularly over the last part of the summer. He knew I would always be at his apartment and it was getting so it didn’t even surprise me when the phone rang. It was always him, anyway.
I got home – I was starting to think of the apartment that way, even though it wasn’t really – earlier than usual one day, and started to shed my overalls as soon as I closed the door. Just as I had loosened the buttons and pulled them down off my shoulders, the phone rang. I picked it up without any hesitation.
“Hey, Ike,” I said, not even bothering to look at the caller ID.
“Still keeping my apartment clean for me? And in one piece?”
I looked around. Except for a couple soda cans on the coffee table and some dishes in the sink, it didn’t look too bad. “Doing my best. I only caught the kitchen on fire, the rest of it is fine.”
Isaac laughed long and hard, and the sound was a relief to hear. With each of our conversations, he seemed a little more relaxed, and his laughter came easier and lasted longer each time. I was starting to feel the same way about myself, too. There were times when I felt positively relaxed – a feeling I couldn’t even really describe, except to think back on the time I had smoked that joint with Taylor.
“Mom and Dad came to visit me,” Isaac said, his voice pulling me back from my thoughts.
“What? No shit?”
“Yeah, really,” Isaac replied, with another small laugh. “I think Mom even kind of admitted that they hadn’t been the best parents ever.”
“Kind an understatement, don’t you think?” I said, grabbing a soda from the fridge. On second thought, I put it back and picked up the last beer. The night with Shelby hadn’t been so bad, so I figured drinking another one would be okay.
“Well, I’ll take what I can get. Dad didn’t really say much, but that isn’t anything new.”
I cradled the phone against my shoulder while I struggled to open the beer. “I guess the silent treatment is better than some things he could say, though.”
“Definitely,” Isaac replied, chuckling. “What’s that sound?”
“Umm… drinking one of your beers?” I replied, before I realized how stupid it was to admit to it.
“Zac! You really think that’s a good idea?” Isaac screeched.
I took a big swig of it before saying, “Why not? I’m not taking any of those pills anymore, anyway. Can’t hurt me too much now, can it?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I am. I’ve had enough of it, Ike. I just want to be. It isn’t so bad,” I replied.
There was a pause, as I guess Isaac considered what I had said. Then he replied, “Well, I guess that’s good. I’m starting to feel better about it, too. About being.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup, and I think they will let me come home soon,” he said and I could almost hear his smile at the idea of leaving that place. “I mean, I can check myself out almost any time. But I wanted to wait until the doctors agreed that I was good to go.”
“Really? How soon? I guess I should…” I didn’t want to finish the sentence. He knew I had been living there almost full time, but I was still just sleeping on the couch and trying my best not to leave a trace.
“No, you shouldn’t. You’re staying there, if you want,” he said.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t even manage to do more than stutter a little and hope that he could tell I was happy.
“Do you think,” Isaac began, drawing the words out a little like he didn’t want to say it. “Do you think you can handle cleaning out Taylor’s room? We can put his stuff in storage so there’s room for you.”
“You know I’ve been sleeping on the couch?” I asked.
Ike laughed. “I had a feeling. You’re too predictable sometimes, Zacky.”
He had a point, and I smiled into the phone. “Well, anyway, how long do I have to clean out his room?”
“About two weeks?”
I kept putting it off. I knew it was going to happen someday, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. Still, I could tell with every phone call that Isaac seemed more like himself. So I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
Knowing that didn’t make it any easier. I hadn’t touched anything in Tay’s room except for his guitar. It was easier, somehow, for me to treat the room so delicately, almost pretending like it wasn’t there or like Taylor might be coming back to use it soon. But I knew that wasn’t healthy. As much as everything in my life reminded me of him, and the horrible absence of him, I couldn’t keep ignoring his empty room.
Finally, after putting it off for a week and a half, I steeled myself to open the door. I pushed it open and stood in the doorway a while, still not quite ready to step in. There was a pretty thick coating of dust on everything; I hadn’t cleaned his room when I cleaned the rest of the apartment. Seeing that, I turned back around and got a towel and some clean supplies from the kitchen. With those in hand, I could set to work. Getting the cleaning done first would delay the inevitable – packing up the bits and pieces of Taylor’s life.
After about an hour, when every surface in the room was scrubbed and polished until it shined, I had to stop avoiding the packing. I decided to start with all his clothes, first. That would be the easiest. I had used part of my last paycheck on a bunch of those big plastic storage boxes. I pulled all the drawers out of Taylor’s chest and started folding their contents. Taylor had just shoved everything in there, but it had to be folded to fit in the boxes.
After all the drawers had been emptied and two boxes filled, I moved on to the closet. First came the clothes, which were taken off their hangers and folded. That filled another entire box. I thought there were a few things in there that I would have liked to have, but probably wouldn’t have fit me. So I packed them up anyway. As long as they were in the storage building, I could go back and get them later if I still wanted them.
Next came all the shoes, belts and scarves littering the bottom of his closet. I threw the shoes into the box first, then the rest of the stuff in on top of it. I found one hat that I was pretty sure Taylor had borrowed from me, and set that aside. After the closet floor was emptied, I could pull up his desk chair and dig through the shelf at the top.
It was piled full of all sorts of things I couldn’t quite identify. Standing on the chair and trying to keep myself steady, I started pulling the contents out and tossing them onto his bed. There were several paperback books, some sheet music and a couple shoe boxes. All of these landed with soft thuds on his quilt and soon the shelf was empty. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I really wanted to look in those shoe boxes. Something was just pulling me to them, even while my conscience yelled at me to leave them closed and pack them away.
The curiosity won out.
I sat down cross-legged in the floor and pulled one of the boxes down into the floor in front of me. With apprehension, I lifted the top off of it. The box was full of pictures, movie tickets and other bits of paper. The movie tickets dated back several years, all the way back to when Taylor had first gotten his driver’s license and started going to the movies all the time. I could remember several that he had taken me to watch with him, even though he usually didn’t like for me to sit with him and his other friends.
I thought unfolding the bits of paper and reading them was invading his privacy a bit too much, so I drew the line there. But I couldn’t help looking through all the pictures. Some of them were of us at home when we were little. He must have stolen some of them from mom’s photo albums – pictures of him blowing out the candles on birthday cakes, or riding the new bicycle he got for Christmas.
By the time I reached the picture of Taylor laughing over my broken nose (his fault), I realized I was crying. And I didn’t think it was just the memory of how much that had hurt. I didn’t even remember the last time I had cried. The last time I had really, really cried. Banging my shin on the coffee table or opening a door into my face might raise a few tears, but I couldn’t remember ever sobbing like I did then. Big, fat teardrops fell onto the pictures and I tried my best to wipe them all up as I kept looking through the shoebox.
Every few pictures, I had to stop completely when one big sob would run through my body, making me shake all over. It was like now, almost a year later, the reality of everything was hitting me for the first time. And strangely, I didn’t mind at all. I wasn’t really sad. Not the way I used to be. I was just suddenly feeling – feeling everything I hadn’t been able to feel before that.
The pictures were getting more and more recent. There were photos from Taylor’s senior prom, with the blonde girl he had sworn wasn’t his girlfriend, even though we could all tell Mom was hoping she was. Several pictures of that damned Camaro, from every possible angle. And then, photos of Portia, Alex and Tay goofing off in the record store. In one of them, Tay and Alex were sharing a look that made me a little uncomfortable, like I was watching a moment that wasn’t meant to be caught on camera or seen by anyone else at all. In the next picture, I could see Tay and Alex’s arms around each other, holding each other closer than friends, and then I knew. I had answers to all the questions I hadn’t figured out how to ask.
A knock at the door made me jump and I hurried to wipe away all my tears before answering it. I was glad my shirt was black so that the tears wouldn’t show on it, but I knew my face probably still looked really red and would give everything away. I ran to the door, grabbing my forgotten beer along the way and tossing it in a trash can.
When I flung open the door, I saw Isaac standing there, a big suitcase on the ground beside him and another bag flung over his shoulder. Without thinking, I grabbed him and held him tight to my chest.
“It’s good to see you too,” he said, trying to laugh, but it mostly came out as wheezing.
I pulled back and looked my brother in the face. He didn’t look as tense or sad as I remembered. He looked like the Isaac I knew and I was amazed that six months could make such a difference. I wondered if I looked any different.
As though he could read my mind, Ike looked me over and said, “You look good, Zac. You look… sane.”
“I feel sane, too,” I replied, smiling.
I couldn’t help it. I pulled Isaac in for another hug, and he hugged me back. Still clutching him close to me, I whispered in his ear, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I think maybe you’re right,” Ike whispered back.