The
Highway’s Calm Hum
By
John Rogan
It
was early Spring, 99, in 8th grade, on a Friday. That night walking home I
did not realize Heather would be dead in five years.
There was a hill that served as a barrier between my house
and the highway. The murmur of the cars drifted over the hill, but the tone was
barely noticeable in its unchanging, plaintively constant tone. Deteriorating, cracking suburban streets
snaked across the hill. Ice had melted and refrozen in all the cracks then
melted again. The dewy wetness coating the neighborhood walkways, stairs, and
driveways were blotted with pot-holes, mud, widening cracks, and loosened
stones. There were big houses with big driveways about 20 yards apart. There
were sidewalks on both sides. The concrete paths outlined the beautifully cared
for lawns. The lawns were yellow and muddy still from the Winter. In between
the sidewalk and the street ran a five-foot margin of grass, sometimes thinned
by people pulling cars onto it and parking. Tall White Oaks, somber brown Chestnut trees, bare-branched
Elms, and ashy-gray Beech trees lined the streets. Their naked branches like
frantic arms weaved softly against one another in the cool, wet, Spring night-wind.
Brownish buds held tight at the end of each branch, ripening to a vital green
with each passing day. Heather’s house sat near the highway. My house sat on the
other side of the hill.
At that time I can remember having a series of headaches,
migraines. I’m not exactly sure what they could be categorized as. Fevered
visions where I saw the undercurrent of things, not the objects or the forms,
but the real vested currency, the real emotional and existential weight that
was interwoven into every day. But still to this day I’m not sure if it was
just my teenage imagination running wild with hormones. I was 13 coming out of
8th grade and into high school, so I’m sure my always active
imagination was brimming with the anticipation. I’ll be doing something now and
some cue will bring me back to my old neighborhood, and the head-ached visions,
sifting over the images my memory left me from that time, I’m not sure which is
more real than the next.
Heather said her Mom was getting dinner ready, so I started
to walk. I would walk four houses down off Heather’s street. Then taking a left
onto Lexington Street I started to climb the hill. The road got really steep at
this point and I could feel my calves aching after only a few steps. The sun
had already set, the thin, wave-like clouds above flashed an intense pinkish,
dying orange. Lights were coming on outside of people’s front doors. The
streetlights came on. Reaching Tower Avenue I saw the clouds lilt into a soft
purple, shadows stretched to the point of envelopment. On the other side of
Tower Ave I looked down the long Avenue that stretched down the height of the
big hill. Tower Avenue and Lexington street were an intersection at right
angles to one another. I saw the lights in the houses and realized it was fully
dark now. I continued on Lexington trying to discern the soft, gray light that
had been in the air before, but only saw the thick pitch of the emerging black
shade that came down over all the houses. I looked to the next white
streetlight.
***
On Friday nights during this past Winter we had a thing
called Ski Club. It was organized by The
Saint Joe’s Middle School, so every Friday they would take two bus-loads of
kids to this small ski-resort, Called Nehoiden Valley, an hour away. All the
scattered angst of the week was centralized in one bus trip. Almost every kid
in the grade went on the weekly trip. Our school had an uneasy relationships
with dances. They tried to prevent males and females from embracing the urges
of puberty any way they could. Dances were too sexual. The subtle inferences
dancing and sex both liken to one another were more than the chaperones could
handle. We had one or two dances a year, more for show, to keep the student
body placated and keep up with the public schools. The parents forced an
inner-guilt strongly on themselves, and then seeming to forget this, funneled
the energy of this emotion into controlling the actions of their children. It
was all about not exposing them to things that actually, really happened.
Keeping us safe from the tortured pitfalls of sex, longing, relationships,
love, and the heartbreak of inevitable separation. It was all too real, and we
were not real, we were kids, so we got Ski Club.
Heather fed off the nervous energy of the school, the
parents, and the more judgmental and traditionalist kids in our grade. I
remember It was a couple years after he died, but she became obsessed with Kurt
Cobain. She drew detailed portrait after portrait with shades of pencil.
She
seemed to delight in provoking these kids, the administration, teachers, they
were all trying to hide something, stave it off, and you could see her eyes
light with vivid energy when she brought what she felt was real into existence.
And Heather having brought the emotional and psychological pressure point of
the school to its forefront loved being up on stage, like Kurt, to see the
audience react.
The half-pipe at Nehoiden Valley was where the cooler kids
would hang on Ski Night. The ones who had established a hierarchy in the small
school based off a small checklist of superficial features. This group
like-minded and like-looking cloistered next to the snowboarding half-pipe to
socialize, joke around, and read out the gossip of the week. The Half-pipe was
halfway up the mountain so chaperones were usually nowhere to be seen. I stuck
to Skiing with Jackie, so I only heard of this story when I got to school on
Monday. But there the story stood on
Monday. Looking over the half-pipe the group saw hunched over, Heather,
exhaling a cigarette, coughing, but smoking most of it.
I remember that Monday with the gossip about the cigarette
buzzing all around and me not seeing Heather yet I started to get the first
stage. The white fuzz along the edge of my vision. Like I was watching a
television screen and little blips of white static and fuzz flashed across the
screen while concentrating in thick, white, gray, glitchy pools along the
border. I was pulling a book out of my locker. My Spanish Textbook fell out and
hit Sara below me. She yelled up at me, but not noticing I tried to pick up my
lock, hearing: “Heather”, “cigarette”. And trying to focus out of the building
static, I was swinging my locker door shut when I dropped my lock and I heard
“Hey!”
All light escaped from the hall ways. Everything
became black with small runner lights, like at a movie theatre, the only thing
making the ground discernible. Silent, dark I walked down the path with the
lights. Peering out the windows of the hallway I saw the outside like it was
film exposed and photocopied back to me. The outlines of the trees and the
schoolyard outside a subtle black, while all the light reflecting off of the
scene splayed and stretched in varying frequencies through the window to me in
a flattened but vivacious white. As the darkness of the hallway met the vivid
white coming through the windows outside, I still saw all the kids, silent,
like on a security camera, moving white, but outlined in black. They went about
changing classes, grabbing their books. The light blended from the black
hallway, the white outside, and the forms moving in-between, I began to hear
voices. Not like someone speaking to me, but overhearing someone, little bits,
Heather’s voice, My mother’s, Ann Curry from the Today Show, President Clinton,
Kurt Cobain giving an interview: “It’s a lot of luck, being in the right place
at the right time”. Courtney Love crying and reading Kurt’s suicide letter
saying “There are some more personal things that is none of your damn
business.” The cool, blue moonlight, smoke, like a ghost, effortlessly floating
up, silent, before the other kids knew what they were looking at. The calm of
the wilderness in Winter at night. A soft group of figures trouncing on the
quiet snow. “Is that Heather smoking a cigarette?” The combination of light
splintering into static, closing in on the vison, filling the scene,
accelerating, voices coming faster, but so many they cannot be distinguished.
The quiet blinking of stars on a Winter night. Sheets of Notebook papers are
blown down the hallway. The light, stars, falling on top of me, like sparks
coming down. Each page lifted by the wind then blown away. Heather is old and
is staring at me saying nothing, below her eyes there are dark, heavy, black pits.
It’s like she really wants to say something, but she’s old and shy and does not
want to mention it.
Not really remembering, but not really forgetting, stunned
I stood in the hall as I heard the bell ring which brought me back to physical
reality. I guess I had just been standing there. My locker door was slightly
ajar and the heavy lock was on the floor. My unzipped Trapper Keeper slipped
down to my thigh and loose pieces of paper had fallen out onto the floor and
scattered down the hall. Noticing how I was just barely holding onto my Trapper
Keeper, I let it fall with a flat thwack onto the messy group of papers in the
now empty hallway. Trying to regain my bearings, I realized I was hopelessly
late to Art class. Not feeling Ill, but feeling more ungrounded, thrown-off,
like things were spinning, but nothing actually was, I figured, I could pass
for being sick, and made my way to the Nurse’s Office.
***
The streetlight glow emanated out in a
chemical white cone. Passing underneath it I looked at my hand, stretching my
fingers out and thought the skin looked sickly pale. On the other side of Tower
Avenue now I was still on Lexington Street, but after the streetlight I started
heading down. The suburban road spread in front of me, damp and dark like a
thin layer of water was in the air, but I could not see it. Emerging out of the
other side of the streetlight’s glow I could see how rain water came down this
road like a big slide. My head jerked left as a dog started barking at me from
behind a fence. About a block away was the next white streetlight. Aside from
the lights on outside of people’s houses there was large a gap of darkness
before I entered the next streetlight’s white glow. I could see the shadows of
finely trimmed bushes and lines of cars pulled into driveways. I imagined
family’s inside. Kids too little and happy to worry about going to a good high
school to get into a good college. The dark contrasted with the white
streetlights vaguely made me feel like I was moving through a tunnel.
The
black contrasted with white gave me eerie flashbacks to the thing I could
barely remember and was not sure if it was happening in real life. The grainy,
image filled headaches that left me stunned and nauseous. The migraines and the
images and the voices were happening to me. I was real life. So, it must be happening
in real life. But looking up at the line of houses, the driveways, thinking of
my parents waiting for me at home, I was not sure if what I experienced was
real. We were being prepared for the real world. My Dad was in the real world.
My Mom was in the real world, but everything I did, all my passions, all my
desires were frivolous, naïve, fanciful, and inherently inferior. And I could
never be real, because I was placed in this inauthentic bubble in order to keep
me safe, fit, and prepared for the coming reality. Glancing over at a neat yard
with perfectly trimmed dark hedges I started to feel a drowning hopelessness,
an unending series of rebuffs and prods to keep me in line, for my future, but
never getting a chance to be independent in that future, since I had been so
controlled in order to arrive there. A depression hit me strangling my stomach
into acid. My body was being carried down the hill by its own momentum and my
feet, ankles, calves and thighs had to tense to slow.
Coming into the white glow of the closest
streetlight my depression turned into a search for the source. And scanning the
people in my environment all I saw were supportive Teachers and Parents smiling,
locking me into the social fabric of my environment and aiding me along on the
journey. People made sure I fit in. I hated them so intensely. Anger seethed
and my eyes ached like they were going to spill tears. The hostility bubbled up
and arose out of some unknown place to me. My hatred for them created
confusion, like there was something wrong with me for hating them. I should
want to fit in. An image of My English teacher smiling with lipstick on her
front tooth dominated my thoughts for half a moment. The anger bristling confused now, full of
frantic energy, but not sure where to expend it. Who should I turn to turn to
blame? And so, not knowing and never finding an answer I swung around wildly to
find a cause. My psyche spinning into
oblivion. Settling dark under my underneath my eyes. Muddled and perplexed,
inevitably I blamed myself.
Coming
out of the streetlight I felt the rash of frenzied thoughts had tired me out.
Confused and exhausted I was cooling. I was coming towards the end of Lexington
Street. I felt spent, more numb than depressed, a sense of detachment and an extreme
sentiment of not caring vitalized me, making sure I would not care enough to
let my parents and teachers in to possess me. My dreary mind brightened at this
rebellion. Retain myself. A purification through disinterested inattention. “Whatever!”
with an eye roll had become me and Heather’s new favorite attitude. Collecting
myself and feeling confident in this defiance my stomach settled. I told myself
to calm down, you can handle all these people. I continued slowly walking, not
really wanting to get home, to the corner ahead.
***
Sometimes
now looking back I wonder if Heather did not feel the same things I felt
walking home from her house that Friday night. We gravitated towards one
another’s attitude, so there was probably something akin to my own teenage turmoil,
confusion and anger. But knowing how everything turned out, now, I wonder if
back then Heather was spinning, without a direction, wilder than I could have
ever feared or imagined. That the doubt, the fear and the confusion I felt
could be much more real, strong, and immobilizing for Heather is something I
only thought about after everything was over.
So
Heather was dragged through conferences with teachers and the principal based
off of the cigarette rumor. Heather’s defiant tone as she relayed the meetings
to me did not endear her with the principal or the faculty. Heather kept
pointing out indignantly how they had no proof, just rumor, but she admitted to
smoking to me. “I snuck one out of my Uncle’s pack when he was over last
weekend. Courtney is always smoking. I know it’s bad for you, but apparently,
everything is.” This series of office-style rebukes and admonishments seemed to
unsettle something that was already disturbed in Heather. Soon she was known
for smoking before school, during lunch and after school. The cigarette was her
form of expression, the little rebellion to reclaim herself and her sanity. I
understood. We did not even have to talk it over. But one day standing with her
she handed me the smoking butt she was smoking, taking a drag I got light
headed, my throat felt soar and dirty, then an uneasy nausea. “it’s not for
everyone.” Heather coolly said, taking it back, airily taking a drag and
exhaling.
Heather
did not really try to fit into a clique but preferred talking to kids one-on-one
whenever she could get the chance. Something about these conversations seemed
more sincere. People who sometimes mocked and gossiped over Heather in groups
would be disarmed by her warm demeanor, the soft understanding voice, and her genuine desire
to know what another individual experienced. In groups or in cliques she was
quickly overwhelmed by the rules, the loud, degrading jokes, the appearance
based formalities, and the inevitable anxiety of people joining together
against her to prove their superiority. So, Heather avoided these cliques, and
many of their members, aware of the interesting individual they had conversed
with in their one-on-ones, felt spurned, inferior, insecure, looked-down-upon,
and threatened by Heather and her wild energy.
To
my Dismay at the beginning of February that year in 8th grade
Heather told me how she had sex with one of her older brother’s friends. I had
not even kissed anyone yet and most people who had kissed someone were lying.
Fear gurgled into my stomach and I asked Heather what it was like. “It’s
alright” she kind of shrugged and commented like off-hand.
Heather
was admittedly very pretty. She was tall and this height seemed to be
announcing an early adulthood. Her body looked like a young adult woman’s, but
she had just turned 13 like me. She dyed her black hair an off pink and blue
color that mixed with her messy dark curls to look uniquely cool. This vibrant
and often purposefully messy hairstyle held over her dark eyes. Her lashes
traced dark although she did not know how to put on eye-liner yet. And like me
she was pale. Bordering on Goths we were Courtney Love fanatics. We loved
anything her band Hole did. The style, the music, and the attitude fit our
irreverent, frustrated mood. Heather and I each took on the role seriously. I
stayed visibly clean cut, afraid of upsetting my parents. Hole was an inward
spiritual rebellion for me. Heather seemed to fall for the part like she needed
to be someone. I felt confused, angry what with puberty coming on, but more
than my adolescent angst, Heather was trying desperately to find something. I
still don’t know if it was her parents. I mean they are still together, but I
heard they were going through counseling when all this stuff was going on. Maybe
it was genetics, those vacant eyes, the hopeless outlook, the burning cigarette
poised in her hand up next to her head, because she was born that way. Maybe
the cookie-cutter upbringing we had crushed her to the point of ruin, like it
was this suffocating environment that met with her burgeoning personality and
it stifled her to paralysis then self-destruction.
***
I
turned from Lexington Onto Manning street. I ran my hand over the cool blue
U.S. Mailbox on the corner. The large Beech tree rattled shadows against the
first streetlight on Manning. I walked slowly to the next glowing white splotch
a block away. In the streetlight beyond that I saw three kids. Two were walking
and one was circling them in a bike. They moved forward towards me and I could
see them in the White street light two blocks from me. Not really alarmed I
figured I would just pass these kids who could be in my grade or in high school
or something. They were probably just walking home like me. There was a soft,
wet breeze. A cooling, chill air left over from the Winter came billowing down
for the night. A gust picked up scattering brown decaying leaves leftover from
the Fall. Little twigs and broken branches blew off people’s darkened lawns. Windchimes
bleated and banged out a wistful metallic tinkle.
So
I passed through my white streetlight 2 blocks away from the kids and into
darkness. They coming towards me on Manning Street passed their eerie, white
streetlight 2 blocks away and folded into darkness. So, in-between us there was
one streetlight we would meet at. The kids joked to themselves unintelligibly.
I really only remember shadows and outlines. I remember hearing them though,
like two boys laughing in a friendly way and some girl quiet, present and
softly saying something. And now both of us plunged into the gap of darkness I
could still hear them, still see the shadowy outlines, but glimpsing ahead,
seeing if I recognized the kids, it looked like they were shadows outlined in
the white glow of the streetlight. Not wanting to be staring at the kids as I
emerged into the fluorescent, white splotch of the streetlight, I looked down,
like I was just intently walking. But I wondered who these kids were. And
coming to the circle of light, raising my head in curiosity and to to nod a
friendly hi, I saw the street completely empty before me. Only the dewy
pavement of the street, the dim porchlights on houses and windchime notes clanging
together and carrying. Looking around I guess they could have ducked into one
of the yards or driveways without me seeing, but I could have sworn they were
walking in a group right ahead of me. A boy and a girl walking and another boy
on a bike, circling them. I saw it. The light from the streetlight illuminated
my body, making me feel pale, like blood was draining out of me. The dark
street stretched before me, getting dizzy, looking to the yards and seeing no
one I tried to continue walking. A heavy depression sank into my stomach.
Turning my head I could see no one. They were just here and I was going to walk
past them, kids like me. The muddled uncertainty of if they had existed fused
with my memory of the three High School Seniors dying in a car accident last
year. My haywire imagination connecting the dots. It happened on a Friday
Night. One of the kids had just got their license. He was speeding and slammed
into a tree with his two friends. All dead instantly. All very young. Infinite
experiences in life had laid ahead of them. They had all gotten into Colleges
and were going off to brighter futures before they were suddenly killed. The
town had held candlelight vigils when it happened last Summer. People left
roses and teddy bears on the splintered tree they smashed into. Was there a
girl in the car? But the uncertain anxiety of seeing beings that did not exist
mingled with the idea that getting into that car that night those kids never
knew that would be the end of their life. I pictured the kids joking and
laughing, fighting for the front seat, slamming doors, turning on the radio; a
young Friday night stretching before them.
Petrified, I gawked at the cruel twists of life that left people broken
and destroyed. The uncertainty of the future taking on a dread, a depressive
weight, mingling with the uncertainty of seeing or not seeing those kids. I got
really sad, unbearable cruelty was as commonplace as friends, cars and big
trees. A stinging in my eyes made me realize I was upset. Getting really scared
I started walking fast to my house. I just wanted to be home.
***
The
September 11th terrorist Attack occurred on the 3rd day
of High School for me and Heather. We were shuffled from class room to class
room, until parents started to pick up their kids, both our parents were at
work. Heahter’s mom was too scared to leave the house. The school day lost any
semblance of structure, so me and Heather milled around talking to random
people. Making friends, making conversations “How many planes are unaccounted
for? like 50, or something.” “There’s like 10,000 people dead.” Kids could not
reach their parents on their new cellphones. Heather and I saw an Asian boy
quietly crying into his cellphone, dialing over and over again. We found out his name was Pete and his Dad
had been on a flight that morning, but he was not sure where. We got him to calm
down. We talked with him for most of the afternoon. He told us about his
favorite Science-Fiction movies and characters. We kept asking him questions about
the plots, the universes, the flying crafts and rules of his various galactic
worlds to keep his mind off his Dad. He got so energized about telling us he
actually smiled for a bit. Pete found out later his Dad was fine.
Heather
was more sexually active than me. I dated Rob Scheitzer freshman year. We
broke-up when he left to go to the Agricultural high school a county over. We
kissed, but that was it. Me and Heather’s relationship seemed to still rest on
that easy, single wave-length that made communication between us natural and
spontaneous. But now with Heather came the boys. I mentioned earlier how
Heather was attractive in a dark way, and now in high school, she embraced
make-up and short skirts. Boys seemed to gravitate towards her playful,
irreverent and frivolous nature. “I can get any guy I want in the school.” She
said to me one day, like reading a scientific fact from a book. Heather’s
hook-ups did show no discrimination when it came to social order. Hooking up with football players one night and
toying with prude Computer Club members the next. Word spread. Heather revealed
in all the drama, attention and gossip that seemed to swirl around her tight
jeans, her hips and the purple bra strap she let slip down past her shoulders.
She felt like the star. Her mood Freshman year could be described as ecstatic.
The public high school we attended introduced us to whole new groups of kids we
never met at our small Catholic Middle School. Me and Heather followed Courtney
Love in our fashion traits with Heather actually able to pull it off. We took
full advantage of not having to wear uniforms anymore. While Heather looked
done-up, slutty, dirty, but pretty in a just below the surface kind of grace. I
usually just looked trashy, actually dirty in an unhygienic way; not grungy-dirty
like Heather. So I stuck to blending in and Heather dominated the school.
We
were unknown to many of these Public School kids, so when they had first met
the pretty, vivacious Heather they were interested, magnetized by her bristling
energy and brooding determination. Her sharp laugh soon became common at our High
School’s house parties and get-togethers. Me and Heather were a little crazy
and crude. Public school kids stood slack-jawed one day as me and Heather
affectionately kept calling each other cunts. But we were kind, compassionate
and picking the trait up from Heather I treated everyone like they were
important. It mattered. Kids appreciated these strange Catholic school girls
ignoring the social hierarchy of Public school to treat people with respect. We
were a break from the monotonous clique wars of Public grade school. By the end
of Freshman year we were quite popular. And we carried this new exemption with
the same care-free attitude that seemed to multiply our social power the less
we cared. Popularity came to us naturally through kindness, not creating groups
of superiors and inferiors and placing ourselves in the superior category.
***
I was coming off of Manning street. I was able
to see my house on the corner of LaSalle Road. My heart was beating very fast.
I seemed to be sweating but I was cold. My hands were shaking. I held them up
in front of my face and saw them tremble. I tried to get them to stay still, but
my mind still moved in a disoriented, messy headache that seemed to jump and
splinter in my forehead. Behind my tremoring hands stood my house. My mind jumped from one potential undefined horror
to the next. My purpose at seeing my house had been to go inside, but
approaching it I stopped. Voices spoke, speedup and talked discernible over one
another. Paths and their alternatives hung around me spectrally like lighting
bugs. I saw the slow floating lights against my darkened neighborhood. They
were like stars on a clear, cold Winter night. I saw in momentary flashes of situation,
action and daylight all the choices and how many there were to make. Each image
flashing so fast I saw the scene but could not discern it. I was trying to
remember something horrible, or it was out ahead of me in the future. Somewhere
vague but sharply poignant. The floating lights dimmed to the dark shade of my
house. The cacophony of voices slowed and in Heather’s lone voice I heard: “I
think of her all the time…….I don’t know, But I miss her……I miss her a lot.”
***
I
kept inhaling, inhaling, inhaling “harder!” Heather said. Heather Looked at the dirty Gatorade bottle
of a Ghetto bong inquisitively. “Your finger is not on the rush.” She said
after her inspection. My thumb fumbled for the jagged hole in the plastic
Gatorade bottle. The air sucking my thumb in, and almost out of breath the thin,
wispy air inside the Gatorade bottle became a thick, yellowish cloud. I coughed
hard then a thick plume of smoke erupted out of my lungs, up, scorching my
throat and out of my mouth, Heather stepped sideways and said “Woa!” The smoke
filled the entirety of Mark Forrest’s dad’s tool shed. I coughed extremely hard
to the point my eyes watered and I could not see anything. Patting my chest I
felt better the more I coughed. My body heated up and I sat on a sack of Scotts
lawn care then scanned over the dirty shed. I saw the grains of white-specked
soil on the plywood floor, entangled lawn-mowers, rakes, weed-whackers,
shovels, fertilizer spreaders and the stream of afternoon sunlight coming
through the one window.
Mark Forrest and Heather started dating at the end of
Sophomore year. That summer in-between Sophomore and Junior year we hung out at
Mark’s all the time. Mark had this seedy side to him that seemed almost
magnetized by anything controversial and prohibited, but it was off-set by this
genuinely kind demeanor that was very friendly and accepting of kids. This
gregarious disposition made it so Mark had a lot of connections by the Summer
between Sophomore and Junior year. He always had weed and kids who would stop
by with pills and coke. Mark saw drugs and drug use as a way of having friends,
a social life, and that Summer with the revolving door of characters and
stories and parties how could you say Mark was wrong. His parents were in Italy
for the Summer they called once a week, but otherwise Mark just withdrew money
they put in his bank account.
Heather was enamored by this extended social circle of
shady kids and drug deals. The whole framework seemed like some dark social
scene and by dating Mark she could become its queen. She was always over Mark’s
and would usually call me around 10 in the morning that Summer to see what I
was doing and if I wanted to come over. I would go over and we would take bong
rips and watch Stanley Kubrick movies in Mark’s basement. The intense summer sunlight
outside only visible through small windows. We lay clustered on the couch in
the cool, dark air. We sat heavy in a red-eyed lethargy only interrupted by
crinkling bags of chips and cookies. The television screen glowed Robert De
Niro and Joe Pesci swearing and beating people into blood, or some British guy
raping women and kicking people, or some other twisted violent movie from
Mark’s various film fixations.
During
the afternoon, we would go to the grocery store and get dinner. Mark’s friends
and associates stopped by all afternoon and evening crushing Vicodin or
Adderall into powder, snorting some lines, then a pick-up Basketball game would
usually erupt out of shit talking. Their visits were usually brief, mainly
business. Mark always said bye to them “I’ll call you.” Was his parting phrase.
When it started getting dark he would flip through his phone to find someone to
do a packy run. “What do you guys want?” In a hazy Adderall, Vicodin and Weed
stupor we usually answered back for some kind of Vodka. Mark was good at barbecuing
no matter how many substances he was on and we always had a nice dinner, usually
very mismatched, like the night we had spaghetti and bacon for example, but
whatever it was food and we were 16. Mark then usually got the booze figured
out, and with a big enthusiastic “What’s up dude!” another car pulled into Mark’s
driveway with a young kid getting out and going “Where are your parents?” Mark
always joked it off, outlining the freedom his life entailed while his parents
traveled all Summer. The dinners. the empty house. I will admit it all felt
very adult, like we were really on our own now.
One
night Mark drank so much cheap Vodka he kept getting sick to the point Heather
was getting upset and wanted to call an ambulance. We knew they’d call Mark’s
parents. We watched him over the night and he finally seemed to be done
throwing up. The next day he stayed in bed all day, but emerged at night recovered.
We all sat on his wooden deck with Heather in my lap on one of the outdoor deck
chairs. He kept saying how he threw up so much he think he burst a blood vessel
in his eye or something. Snorting some Vicodin and smoking some weed he claimed
to feel better. Heather and I sat out on his deck as he blew clouds of pot
smoke up into the air. Jumping on Heather he started kissing her neck. They
were messily making out with me underneath Heather. They dragged each other
onto another seat. I just sat still and sedated from some Xanax I took with the
beer I was drinking. Not really caring, I watched Heather put her hand on his
chest and hold him back on the deck chair “We, were really worried and scared
last night. We thought you might die!”
Mark played down how bad it really was:
“AAaahhh.” He quipped like it was a comment, “so you really care?”
“If
you die? Yes!” Heather shot back in a mock outrage, her intention being to look
really cute as she said it. But with a forcefulness that came from a contemplative
night of watching someone she loved be sick. The tone of Heather’s answer hung
in the air like it came from a very real place of acute concern.
“So
you would come to my funeral and cry your eyes out?” Mark asked seriously but
veiling it in a joking bravado.
“Yes!”
Heather replied. Mark looked shocked and dazed, maybe it was the weed kicking
in or maybe all the relationships in Marks’ life were obligatory, the outward
appearances of the mechanisms for Love existed in Mark’s life, but nothing as
genuine and corporeal as Heather. The bronze-yellow deck light spilled over the
shadows of the railings and illuminated the finely trimmed-lawn Mark’s Dad had
landscapers come once a week to keep green and even. We told him how we almost
called an Ambulance. He got perturbed by this and shaky, pale and slow he
replied, “Really! I do not recall that.” In a kind of mortified slow drawl. He
went to the bathroom for what seemed like a long time. Sliding the glass door
back and stepping back out onto the deck with a bottle of Water, Mark looked up
at the sky and said “Thanks guys.”
“For
what?” I said in my Xanaxed careless haze, since neither me or Heather had not
said anything. I do remember seeing a flash of Heather’s face. She was smiling
full and satisfied against the off-bronze shadows of the deck light with air-conditioners,
cicadas and crickets, chirping, clicking and humming in the stilled dark of the
dense suburban neighborhood surrounding Mark’s backyard behind us.
I
never really got a glimpse into the tight secrecy of Heather’s house and her
parents. Heather’s Mom did not work and Heather would usually be yelling things
back at her when I met her on the curb outside her house. I was never invited
in which struck me as odd, since Heather knew my parents well. She claimed her
Dad was never home, but when he was he brought sanity back to the household. She
would often exasperatingly go off on tangents about her mother criticizing her
and how hypocritical it was for her Mom to criticize Heather for doing this
while her Mom did that. I just caught all these angry fragments about her
Mother, and she never spoke of her Dad, but when she did it was very fondly and
an easy relaxation came over her demeanor. I knew her Dad was a high-end
defense Lawyer and traveled for some of his cases. Heather showed me newspaper
clippings about her Dad at some high-profile trial. Maybe Heather was difficult
with her Mother and was the one to blame for the fights and not her mother, but
I got this vague, foreign sense that she really respected her Dad and what he
did. She was angry at him for going all across the country and having a big
reputation in town for standing up for people, being the voice of the
voiceless, defending all these people, but not being around to help her.
People
started to blame Mark. He had a well-known reputation for being a druggy by
Senior year of High School, and I think at the time I blamed Mark as well, but
looking back I think Heather was just as
uncontrollable to Mark as she was to everyone else. People saw it as Mark’s
influence over Heather turned her into a drug addict, but it was more Heather
irresponsibly stealing Mark’s lifestyle and recklessly running away with it.
Mark really cared about Heather and I think with all the gossip and the rumors
repeated, read back, distorted and exaggerated from one person and group to the
next this was somehow lost.
Heather
started skipping classes Junior year and skipped so many Senior year she was on
the threshold of being expelled. She had skipped Summer school in the Summer
between Junior and Senior years. She chose instead to navigate the sketchy
network of Mark’s contacts. She would crush up any kind of pill and snort it,
but by the beginning of Senior year she was snorting concentrated Percocet 30’s
with no Tylenol, morphine pills, Dilaudid, and Oxycontin.
She
began to get really difficult to deal with. She would be up and happy and kind
just like the old Heather, but then her mood would borrow down into senseless
anger, lashing out at anyone, even me, who said the wrong thing when she down
was in these fits of hatred. Picking her up one morning for school at the end
of Senior year she tried to get me to skip, and I had already been accepted to
Umass Amherst and was really looking forward to going and did not want anything
to mess that up. So, I said no. Heather saw me saying no as like some sort of
selfish betrayal on my part and she launched into a diatribe against her mother
and how I was like her mother, and that no one cared. I stopped her in a peeved
voice and reminded her I was her best friend not her Mother. Picking up on the
authoritative tone I mistakenly took in my offense at feeling attacked by her,
Heather angrily launched at me for being “one of them”. Like I belonged at the
high school with all the kids and the cliques. Like I had sold out and she
stayed true to something we both had previously, at one time believed in.
Heather had not applied to any schools. The black strands of her bangs hung in
front of her face. The dark, thin wisps of hair before her eyes reflected an
amber-gold while catching the early morning light in my car. She was yelling
and I was yelling. Just off-loading small, petty resentments that had accrued
over the years. I remember thinking “oh my god like Me and Heather are really
fighting like this is serious.” And I brought up how she was like some Kurt
Cobain always strung out. Heather said “whatever” and I taunted her about her
new outlook like giving up was the cool thing to do. “Hi, I’m Heather I’m just
going to become a big burn-out druggy and mock everyone else who tries to do
anything with their life.”
Digesting
what I just said Heather saw all the misunderstandings criss-cross her reality
and people shrugged off the assumption, the judgment based on a false truth, the
stereotype for the disorderly girl exaggerated out of all reality, until the
despair filtered down to her, to be blamed, punished, and isolated, so her
physical mind and body had to deal with the mean-spirited remnants. When
Heather was alone she wondered if they were right, if there was something wrong
with her, if it was even worth trying because she would do something
instinctual and natural to herself, and so mess it all up. The psychological
prejudice one receives for being different is larger than any one individual. I
wish that morning I had not gotten so caught up in the stress of my Senior year
to care, to understand my friend. But for whatever reason I did not see it at
the time. Heather was scared, overwhelmed, and felt alone. I was the only one
who had her back and she felt really betrayed. I used our friendship as a
momentary authoritative advantage over her, and I wish I had taken the time to
cool down and find out what was going on underneath. There was something awful
there I could have helped her with, and maybe we could have fixed it that
morning.
Heather
returned with a “Fuck You” that was almost animal-like, her teeth clenched, and
while she was saying it and in the ensuing heavy silence afterwards I thought
how the extremely violent “Fuck You” seemed to be definitely aimed at me, but
the intensity with which she said it, and the way she hopelessly looked out the
window after, emitting an emotional exhaustion of frustrated fatigue, like it
was meant for people beside me, like people who could not understand Heather,
so they judged her, blamed her and then left.
I
pulled into the Senior Lot and the Heather got out and slammed the car door
without saying a word.
The
thud seemed to echo, elongate into a low pitch whine that got higher as I
started to see the blips of static and the unsettled grey, white and black
pooling unsteadily in the border of my vision. I saw my Dorm Room at UMass, the
low-pitched whine was interrupted by Heather crying. I heard Heather crying.
Looking out my windows I could not see anyone and I was too dizzy to get up out
of the front seat. I saw Heather’s Mom closing the door, taking a moment to
calm, collect herself, and softly sighing after yelling at Heather going down
the driveway to my car. I saw Heather’s mother getting called awful, nasty
names and she just patiently closing her eyes. Then George W. Bush addressing
the nation “Coalition forces will begin striking selected targets.” But in all
the voices Heather was somewhere crying in them, inhaling air in, then out
heavy, choking with anguish, breathing out spit, like she was crying alone and
private somewhere. And there were Artillery pieces firing and an M1 Bradley
tank with a soldier on top throwing out flowers to people cheering. I was
older, dressed up, talking to someone I did not know yet. I saw what looked
like someone from another country maybe the Middle East, a young man lifeless
on the ground and an older Woman kneeling, crying into his chest. I heard my
teachers and my parents talking over the gossip of kids from school. A grenade
exploded splintering a palm tree. Light seemed to slam into my forehead and I
was in a lot of pain. I seemed to be holding onto the steering wheel to feel
stabilized. But all the scenes just kept flashing forward, the figures in the
scenes replaced by the light and environment of the next coming scene, so I
caught glimpses of familiar places and people for half a moment, until they
were sent spiraling forward with voices overheard, overlapping one another
petering out to Courtney Love in an interview me and Heather had watched: “I
was trying more to negotiate the world and the world’s terms and trying to
subvert some sort of archetype cause I had so much insecurity about that
archetype in my own life and I didn’t really want to participate in that
archetypical way, but at the same time I knew being all haggy or butch or just
plain, it was fun for me in terms of my colossal, legendary vanity, but it
seemed more powerful to create something else, just to see what would happen…I’ve
always been provocative towards guys like that, they’re lame, they make it not
fun for nerdy guys and nerdy girls and uncool people. It’s like these
self-righteous jock-pricks up at the front they come there just to razz you to
tell you they have a boner or they want to see your tits or you’re ugly or
you’re a whore or something. They’re ridiculous” Opening up the driver side
door I vomited onto the empty space next to my car in the Senior Lot.
Heather
and I got over it. We both had a lot going on so we were back together hanging
in the senior lot stand-offish, but silently apologetic by that afternoon. The
end of Senior year was coming fast and I think we both knew in the back of our
minds that we did not have much time left and it would be stupid to spend it
mad at each other.
Heather
and Mark went to Prom. I went with Steven Webb. We all went in Mark’s car. We
took photos of us dancing and smiling, dressed up all nice and having a good
time. There were contests and speeches with chaperones, parents and teachers
wishing us the best for our futures. Me and Heather had done a dance routine
when we were in Eight Grade to Tubthumping by Chumbawumba. When the DJ put on
the song Me and Heather looked at each with eyes going ecstatic. I was
surprised how much of the dance routine we still had intact after not
practicing it for 5 years. Everyone spread out and made a circle and clapped
and cheered while Heather and I synced our routine with everyone watching,
cheering, ending in an animated roar, with Me and Heather hugging and laughing
to each other at the end.
The
end of the school year came and I had to go to orientation at Umass-Amherst at
the end of August. That Summer I was busy getting ready for school. I saw
Heather less and less. She knew I was going. I think there was just something
too hard for her in the goodbye, so she drifted away. The last time I saw her I
was showing her how everything was packed and ready to go. I told her how
nervous I was, but things would be cool once I got there. My Mom called and
asked if we wanted Ice Cream Sandwiches. My mom knew they were one our favorite
treats from When Heather and I were little. Heather and I went out onto my back
driveway, not saying much, but no tension because of the silence, like this was
what we should be doing, like when we were little kids and cool nights and
bright days stretched endlessly before us. Still and calm we sat on the back
steps, not wanting to think much, Heather and I, licked ice cream off our hands
and tried to finish the whole thing, focused in the moment, together -“Yours is
dripping on the ground!”- devoid of the future or the past, before the
late-July heat melted it in our hands.
***
I heard about Heather’s death that first
Fall at UMass Amherst. She was found unresponsive in her bed at one of Mark’s
friends’ house. They took her to the Emergency Room, but dumped her body on the
sidewalk outside, so they would not be held for questioning by Police. It didn’t
make a difference. The hospital said she had been dead for over six hours. A
mixture of morphine, alcohol, Valium and Dilauid had stopped her heart rate in
her sleep.
***
My husband and I went by my parent’s
house with our two little girls. Still the same house off Manning Street. Some of the
houses have been torn down for new ones, new families, but my parents, retired
now, kept the old house as it was. After I left my migraine, hallucinatory
stress dreams stopped. After I found out about Heather dying I kept having them
again, but they were all memories of Heather. I took Migraine medication and
the violence of the episodes completely stopped. I still felt the painful tinge
of seeing below reality, underneath its physical objects and forms, and still
got a panicky fear that made my stomach hurt. The visions and scenes became
manageable. My stress and imagination became a tool for intuition and
awareness. This controlled, frenzied, hallucinatory insight was used to create
everything I have today. I took the energy from the pain of losing Heather and
patiently, methodically focused it into creating something. My grades were good
enough to get into The University of Chicago Law School where I met my husband.
After starting our own Environmental Law practice we had my two little girls
I looked in the direction of the hill
and Heather’s house after getting the girls out of the car and watching my
husband shuffle them down the driveway. My parents waved in the doorway. I
heard the muted thunder of the highway. I thought back on that night walking
home in 8th grade and how it seemed like so much was ahead of me,
but looking back now, it seemed like it was not enough. Things we love just
pass by and scatter. Hearing the low, roaring wail of the highway, picturing
the cars all headed for different destinations, I wondered if the sound of
people separating and traveling reverberated up somewhere. All the different
places and times meeting as one, coming together as one single roar that
Heather easily sat in the calm hum of, passing her days, listening to us all
somewhere.
