Memoirs, Ink

Grief

By Tara Cowie

I'm in the city in thirty-three minutes. This is almost six minutes faster than my best time, but I don't applaud myself for my speed. I realize the game has died with him. Overnight, last week, I became an only sibling. I am the winner by default.

I've watched every fluorescent green minute flash by on the dashboard. I've tried to time it so I see the old number right before it leaves. I've missed it every time. I'm through the Holland Tunnel and in the city and in traffic all at once. My hands grip the leather wheel. I want to turn around and get back in those enclosed lanes of the tunnel, to just drive on and on, fast and blind. I narrow my eyes, limiting my view.

The traffic is tight like a fist. The cars choke in upon one another. I point the nose of my car to the black bumper in front of me. One inch more, and we would touch. I drive like this for a few blocks, and I am unaccountably sorry when the car veers off to the left. Someone behind me honks at the red light. Insistently. A symphony soon rises around me. The horns call back and forth as if they are conversing. I jerk my hands from the wheel and skid my wet palms down my thighs. I look at the faint wrinkles I have wrung into my pants.

It begins to rain. Fat, fast drops of rain that crash down hard, splintering against the windshield. The rain surprises me, though the forecasters have been predicting it all day, every day, all week. They have been predicting a storm for so long, I forgot it would ever come. I have not flicked my wipers on, and the water sloshes against the windshield, rendering everything ahead blurry and limp. I feel as if I have stepped into van Gogh's "Starry Night," except here there is only night and no stars. I imagine walking into the frame and getting lost in there, stepping into a midnight blue swirl, just winding around and around, and never coming back.

The orchestra behind me launches again. It is angrier this time, louder; a crescendo, not a chorus. Cars roar past me on either side, pelting water like punches. When I realize they are honking at me, I jam my foot down so hard on the pedal, the car bucks before it cruises forward.

It is past nine by the time I climb the four flights to my apartment. I open the door and slip in as if I am trespassing. It has been a week since I've been here, and everything looks duller than I remember. The fog has crept in through the cracked windows and lent an ancient quality to the whole place. My steps sound too loud tapping against the floor, so I slip my feet out of my heels as I walk. My feet have been crowded in these too-tight shoes all day, and they feel strange flat on the floor now. I have forgotten how to place my whole foot down evenly; my heels keep lifting up.

In the bathroom, I stand directly in front of the mirror. My hands grip the sink on either side. I hold tight. I'd like to have the strength to tear the whole thing from its place, to see how dirty the pipes would look all exposed, how ugly and jagged the hole would be. The fog has cast ghostly shadows all over the small space. I move my head in slow, wide arcs, clockwise. I let my face disappear in the black of the shadows behind me, then come slowly back, each time slower than the last. Every time I position my face in front of the mirror again, it looks fainter and faded, like a photograph that has been fingered too many times. When my face becomes unfamiliar to myself, I bring it so close to the mirror my nose almost touches the glass. My features paint shadows up and down my image and obscure my face. I consider this, how my face is hiding my face, using itself as a mask. I can barely make out the shape of my nose anymore. I can't tell where my chin begins.

I want to disappear. My brother died last week, a visceral, inspired bout with cancer. The end was nothing we'd ever worried about. He collapsed in the bathroom in the wide gasp of night, dead from a heart attack. I can't stop imagining how his plaid boxers looked set against the white tiled floor, and how he looked in his plaid boxers, dead.

I've been standing here so long my face is almost black. My eyes look pliable. I watch a tear well in my right eye until it falls out, one perfect drop. The drop glows against the black of everything else, and the path it makes down the curve of my cheek glistens in the glass. The tear reaches the black of my chin and falls off somewhere into the black space below. And now I can't see anything because my eyes are filled again, overflowing and filling again. Everything, my face, the walls, the mirror, the sky, is black and getting blacker.

When I open my eyes some time later, I am lying on the ground. I stay here for a while, trying to convince myself I am just an extension of the floor. When my back cramps up, I transfer my prone body to my bed. I close my eyes and then open them again. I turn towards the clock by my bed. The time flashes 12:59 and then 1:00, all four numbers change. I close my eyes and don't try to sleep. I will stay awake through these hours of the night that have become his, and I will hold his hand in the dark.

Tara Cowie lives and works in New York City.  Tara received her BA in English from Colgate University and her MFA in Fiction from New York University.   Tara is passionate about words and writing, and is currently at work on her first novel.  In addition to writing, Tara enjoys riding her horse, reading, travelling, and exploring the world.