death comes close

Death comes close to me, and I welcome her, if for no other reason that I have people waiting for me on the other side. This was not the first and wouldn’t be the last.

A rewrite — we’ll see how close I can get to the truth of it all. Every story is shaped by the teller, and where they’re looking when the shit goes down, and how they saw it through their own lens at the time and what parts the mind chose to notice and remember.

My oldest son is 27, so that would make this 26 years ago now.

When I was 16 I met the man that would become my first son’s father. The relationship would last 3 years and end in flames.

And his best friend, who I also loved. Early in the relationship I got dumped and the friend moved in quickly to pick up the pieces. We didn’t even talk about it, we just fell into each other’s arms. One night we were on the cliffs at Point Fermin, kissing on a concrete table at the edge of the sea. The cops were called and I got a curfew ticket and was driven home. He followed us back to my grandmother’s house to apologize.

Matt was tall and narrow and blond. A raver in the 90’s in LA, he wore oversized JNCO jeans with big enough legs that I could fit in one—a fashion adapted from prison where the issued clothes never quite fit. He had a stainless steel barbel in his tongue that he would click between his teeth, and would lean his seat all the way back with me behind it, glancing in the rearview mirror draped with multicolor plastic beads and I would admire his natural vampiric canines and the ocean blonded streaks in his hair. More like soccer field blonded I guess. I never went to one of the games, in fact I only found out later that he played. My mom hypothesized that all the ecstasy drained the Serotonin from his brain. I think it was his dad taking him to the cop station to beat him in front of the other officers. Some dads.

He worked at Cheesecake Factory at the time and was still living with his parents, his dad a sheriff and his mother stayed at home and grew cucumbers. His room was up carpeted stairs, 70’s tuft with the rounded nose that’s easy to slip on. I slip down stairs a lot. There was this silver hematite necklace I had in my bead box and he asked for it. For a while it was on the car mirror, and then later in his room I saw it wound up in a tall clear glass.

When Jon wanted to get back together (this was the first Jon), I told Matt and he didn’t say much but I could see it in his eyes, though he chose to accept it because of how much he loved Jon. In retrospect, I wish he had better protected me. But we never talked about it again —- us. We just argued about dumb things, like how much mayo I put on my sandwich (he tried to take the knife away in my own kitchen).

When I was 4 or so months pregnant with Liam we were sitting on a sofa at a party and Matt put his hand on my belly. “Feel it,” I said, “those kicks, it’s like he’s going to be a soccer player.” Those tiny flutters so strong they nearly bounced his hand. Interesting. Were those tears in corners of his eyes?

I saw him on his 23rd birthday. We went out for Mexican food all together. He had a new girlfriend I didn’t much like, I liked the old one better. As ghetto as she was she kind of looked like me and was more real. That was a Wednesday. We were going to hang out again Friday.

He spent a lot of time with mom and brothers, driving them around and hanging out in the back yard. He showed up wherever we were from time to time. After Liam was born he stood next to me in the hospital and cried and pet my hair. I had nearly died from Preeclampsia and had to give birth in the dark on my side at first to bring my blood pressure down. No one was allowed to speak (nurses orders) and I couldn’t walk around or move. All night back labor and I really thought my soul was separating from my body. I fell asleep between contractions for 2 or 3 minutes at a time, so exhausted. 3 pushes later I met the person who would change my life forever. I was 17.

Friday came and phones were corded then. Jon and I lived in a Spanish Style house in San Pedro on 11th street with arched doorways and textured walls. Our first home. I was laying in bed when the phone rang, and because I was nursing Liam I didn’t get up to get it and maybe that was my mistake. Or maybe things happen exactly the way they’re supposed to.

Later that day the phone rang again and Jon answered and started screaming. The phone dropped out of his hand. Matt had gone to the shooting range and rented a Glock. The cops said the cameras showed him crying in his car first, calling people. Calling me.

Then he blew off half of his head. They said his body shook for a while with the gun still in his hand, so no one could come close while he bled out, and for a while there was a lake-sized stain on that indoor/outdoor carpet until they pulled it all up. I went.

My mom wanted to come to the viewing and I didn’t think I could bring her. “I think it’s just his parents I don’t know.” I regret that.

This room was maybe 10' x 10' and Matt was in a body bag that he was too tall for. It was duct tape silver and full of ice, with his feet sticking out at the bottom. A white sheet was laid over the top with his head and part of his shoulders out. They packed the side of his skull with something like silly putty. His hair was red with blood and brushed back from his face with the streaks of blond shining through. His eyes and mouth glued shut with something shiny and clear.

I leaned over his face, my tears falling all over it, my heart broken. “I love you I love you I never said I love you.” I cried.

He stuck around for a while. He visited my mom at her house and she let in the back door. He was knocking in the middle of the night, “Susan, Susan let me in!” It was dark but she could see him just beyond the glass, so she looked down and opened it and he walked past her into the house, with half head gone and blood everywhere, bedraggled.

His parents had him cremated and started acting weird. The chapel at the funeral was large and all the way full. Many were women he had loved at some point. The girlfriend made his funeral tape. It seemed more like songs she personally liked but we came to associate them with him through repetition.

Someone saw him walking around at the Cheesecake Factory, and baby Liam laughed at the dark at the end of our hallway.

After the funeral the parents packed up their house and decided to move to Wyoming. He had always said his mom was a Wyoming cowgirl. He was an only child.

My mom said, “I feel like something’s wrong. I called the cops to ask and they said that Matt left a note in his car. He left everything to Liam.”

I called his parents and they said nothing, showing up the same day with garbage bags of clothes and comic books and shoes and that hematite necklace. They gave Jon the $5K Matt had saved and left town with his ashes in a box in their safe. No grave and we never saw or heard from them again.

Chico (Matt’s other best friend) tattooed his name on his body. He and Mindy (the former ghetto girlfriend I liked) came over and we drank and cried for weeks. After I went to bed she told Jon that Matt and I had an affair. He assumed it was during our relationship and accused Liam of not being his. I was mad at Matt. Why am I having to deal with this bullshit alone? Where are you?

I wasn’t ok for a year and then my friend Lana sent me to a Psychic at her witchy occult shop in Torrance. The ladies name was Audra.

“Your friend, the tall, skinny one with the blond hair. He has a dry sense of humor. He says, ‘remember the cops.” I was stunned. “There was a sharp pain in his head and his heart. He says you’re not grieving the right way. You have to let him go.”

“But, but can I still talk to him?”

She laughed, “he says you’re going to anyway.”

Through the years he’s been there. People comment on it to me and describe him the same way. “Your tall blond friend, he’s always around. He’s patient and polite. He sits right there and waits.”

When I sent Liam out to live with his dad as a teenager someone told me, “he says I guess  I'm going to California!" (to follow Liam). Liam never accepted him after the things his dad said.

His heart. This painting.

And now I’m quick to say it, “I love you I love you. I don’t know how much time we have but you have to know how much I love you.”

Now I'm spilling coffee everywhere, on the art, my computer, myself, my vape. It's whatever. My heart is broken open and I'm not closing it. The painting took 6 years to finish, exhibited in Venice Italy and now lives in Spain, in the 200-year-old house I bought and lost. I was in jail when the second payment was due and the deposit is gone. They're saving my things for when I get back.