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original_lavi) wrote2008-12-15 04:46 pm
The Good Kind of Voices (written fall 2008)
Again, though, I would really appreciate feedback, specific comments on what isn't work and what does, however miniscule.
The Good Kind of Voices
I woke up the second night, my REM distracted by the flickering lights on the ceiling. For a few moments I lay in wonder, watching them until my brain processed the source: car headlights from the street far below, filtered through the window blinds. Then I noticed the angel in the window.
He was beautiful. Soft, tranquil, and cool, he embodied everything I wanted at the moment. His hair was a wavy dark blond, complexion perfect, and his white wings folded neatly behind him, the tips just brushing the tile floor. When he stood up to walk toward me, I could see from the way he moved he carried a certain strength in his lithe muscles. He actually resembled my old crush Martin quite a bit, except far improved.
He stopped before my bed, far enough away so his face wasn’t backlit from the dim light through the window. “Cara,” he said, and I recognized him, all the memories rushing back.
Sniffing, I leaned my head back and blinked away stupid tears. Michael, that’s what I used to call him when I was real little. I thought it was a good name, better than Gabriel. He was my own personal guardian angel, the kind they told me about in Sunday School. The teachers assured me I had my own, he was with me all the time, so I started talking to him and imagining what he looked like. His appearance had changed through the years with my whims; then his visits grew less frequent, and finally stopped altogether in seventh grade. Until tonight.
I turned to look at him again. He was still there, looking very real, smiling even as he looked sad. Michael had cared for me more than anyone; he held my hands when my parents fought, checked under my bed and all those dark corners to make sure there were no serial killers lurking (pfft, who worried about monsters, I knew that serial killers were actually real), and talked to me until I fell asleep.
“Michael,” I said at last, tentatively. I barely more than mouthed the name. He smiled wider and sat down on the edge of the hospital bed. He seemed very real, and I didn’t want to dispel the illusion.
“It’s been a while,” he said. “But I’ve been watching you.”
My lips twisted in a smile. “Someone else I’ve disappointed, then.”
“I wouldn’t call it disappointed.” He looked very sad. “I wished I could have helped you earlier.”
I shook my head. What could I say? Neither family nor friends, anyone I loved, had been able to help me. It wasn’t about any of them. I wished what I did to myself didn’t hurt anyone.
“Oh, Cara,” he sighed, and looked out the window. “How did it come to this.”
That was rhetorical, obviously. He knew better than anyone.
I shifted, crossing my bandaged arms gingerly over the sheets. “It’s not like it’s over, though. I’m not dead.”
“But you would have been. What if your mother hadn’t come home and found you?”
I winced. “I didn’t mean to. You know that.”
“You would have died anyway,” he said, looking at me again so, so sadly. Only angels could make you feel this guilty.
“I didn’t want to die.”
Michael was quiet, head bent over his folded hands in his lap, until he raised his head to smile at me again, this time more with more feeling. “You’re right. You’re still alive, and you don’t want to die. That’s the main thing. So what are you going to do next?”
I sighed, and it was my turn to gaze at the half-blinded window. I hadn’t been fully conscious much since it had happened, and I dreaded thinking of the immediate future. I had been caught cutting a few times before; some teachers, the school counselor, not to mention most of my friends and my mother knew about it. But now it would all be changed. I could already imagine how gingerly they would tiptoe around me, like I was a volatile bomb that might self-destruct at the slightest rough movement. They wouldn’t trust me to be alone by myself for the longest time, and that thought was enough to nearly make me decide my life truly wasn’t worth living. Everyone would know and whisper and stare, and ugh, how they’d talk to me….
Michael waved his hand in front of my face. “Cara. There’s more to your life than the next six months. You’re supposed to live another fifty, sixty years. You won’t be around these people even by the next ten.”
“Not if my mother has anything to do about it.”
“And do you blame her?” For the first time a sharp note entered his voice. I looked at him, feeling a little wounded. He smiled again to take the sting away. “You will get away eventually. You can move away, anywhere you want. Be around anyone you want. Do anything you want with your life. Keep that in mind.”
I nodded. It was a good thing to keep in mind.
Michael stood up, walking toward the window. I watched him move, suddenly feeling bereft. “Do you have to go?”
He turned halfway to look at me. “You should get some more sleep. But I’ll be around these next few days.”
“Good.”
His return had good timing. It would probably be the only thing to keep whatever sanity I had left.
My mother came in the next day, flushed, nervous, and looking on the verge of a breakdown again. I felt very guilty about her. Like labor hadn’t been bad enough.
“Hi Mom.” I wiggled my fingers at her, my wrists and forearms stiff inside the new bandages.
“Sweetie.” Sitting down, she reached for my hands, seemed to reconsider for a moment, then took hold of my fingers anyway, though careful not to touch the edge of the gauze. I squeezed her hand as best I could.
Once, twice, she tried to speak; and then she broke into sobs, lifting my fingers to her face.
It was unbelievably horrible; I felt appalled seeing my mother cry in any situation, and knowing I was the sole cause now was so much worse. It, funnily enough, made me want to die, except obviously I couldn’t because that would make her even sadder. I couldn’t even move from where I was, either to try to comfort her more or leave. I just had to endure.
I twisted my head to the side, trying to find something else to focus on, and saw Michael sitting in a chair in the corner, his arms looped around one knee drawn to his chest. He looked sympathetic.
This is so awful, I thought to him, and immediately after: I deserve this.
Well, in the sense that you should know the heartbreak you would have caused, yes.
I turned back to my mother, sobbing quietly but steadily. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered.
She just shook her head without opening her eyes. Her words came through the sobs, barely understandable: “No-o-o, it’s me – me, me who’s to blame, me who did this to you…”
I winced and did my best to turn toward her. “No, Mom, seriously. I know it’s in style for everyone to blame their mother for their problems, but – that’s bullshit. This has nothing to do with you. I love you, I really do, and you’re a great mother. You’ve always been a great mother. This is completely my problem and I’m sorry – I’m sorry I hurt you.” Something huge caught in my throat, and I stopped, desperate not to start crying too.
Good job.
Her sobs slowly subsided, though she continued whispering apologies at intervals, but finally she sat up, wiping her eyes. She did her best to smile at me, her frizzy brown hair sticking around her face.
“We’ll make everything better,” she said, still holding onto my hand tightly. “We’ll go on vacation, anywhere you want, anywhere in the world.”
I did smile genuinely at that, though I still felt horribly guilty. “It’s okay, Mom. Not turning down the vacation – but it’ll get better anyway. I really don’t want to die. I love you.”
She kissed my knuckles, murmuring, “I love you, I love you too,” over and over. I bit my lip hard to keep from bawling myself, and looked over her shoulder at Michael. He tilted his head and started tracing letters in the air, and I distracted myself trying to read them.
The therapist was next.
Diane, that was her name. She was middle aged, dignified, and very composed. I had seen her a few times before, never to great effect, but she knew my background better than a total stranger.
Mom had told me she would be coming in, so I had had some time to prepare myself. I knew I had work to do; if I wanted to get back to anything like a bearable life, I had to persuade everyone I was healed, that I had caught a glimpse of my mortality and wanted to live. Which I had done, more or less. I knew, anyway, that my depression and bitter frustration in life was in a temporary state of hiatus, shocked into numbness by the near-death experience. Once I was allowed to go home and enter daily life again, it would all return with additional aggravation at how everyone was treating me. But in order to make it as bearable as possible (if – since – life was so inevitable), I had to start with Diane now.
Small-talk wasn't really appropriate, so I got straight to the point. I held up my forearms, wrapped in white. "This. This was not supposed to happen."
"Razor slipped, did it," Diane said dryly. That's one thing that could be said in her favor; she didn't try to sugarcoat everything.
"Eighteen times," I agreed. "No, seriously. I didn't actually want to bleed to death. Who does? I got carried away."
"That's a bit of a problem."
"Yes, I agree."
"Well." She folded her hands deliberately in her lap. "What are we going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?"
"No more razors," I said promptly, hardly aware of what I was saying. "I'll go French. Plastic knives for every meal too."
Diane looked at me steadily, no trace of a smile. I could have hit myself; of course none of that would get anywhere with her, she'd chalk it up to valiant denial activity to pretend myself and everything was normal. I tried to act more sober and recall what I had actually planned to say.
"Okay. Seriously. I don't want to die. I never realized how much I didn't want to until I found myself being rushed to the hospital. That's how it goes, doesn't it? And now I – yeah, it scares me how far I went without realizing I was killing myself. I don't want to not be able to trust myself. I don't want to have to be watched twenty-four-seven."
"I believe that," Diane said, and it sounded like she did. "But regaining trust is going to be a long process, both for yourself and everyone around you….”
I never meant to zone out; I had told myself earlier I had to pay attention and do what she said, as much as I could. But maybe it was the blood loss. Whatever it was, I tried to look attentive and serious, nodding occasionally, and glanced over once to see Michael standing with his arms crossed by the side of the window, beautifully lit up by the sun. He winked at me, and I smothered a smile as I quickly looked back at Diane.
After she left, I was exhausted. I slept for the next few hours, waking up only when they brought my dinner. I ate enough to show I had a desire to live, then went back to sleep.
When I woke up it was dark again, and I felt cold and alone. The hiatus hadn’t lasted long.
Meetings three times a week, Diane said. Talking and recapping and never letting me just forget and move on. My mother would never stop crying, looking at me fearfully with puffy eyes. The stares and whispers, false friendliness of oh-your-life-matters-and-means-something-to-us, trapped in that horrible cycle of school and home, day in and day out. I had already gone too far, how could I even get hired anywhere unless I wore long sleeves every day. My grades had sunk beyond recovery and I’d missed too much school; there was no way I could graduate now, and so I might get into some second-rate community college, doing what, there was nothing, nothing I wanted to do. I could never leave behind this period of complete pathetic failure; I myself had inflicted those prominent scars which would remind me every day for the rest of my life. She’s so bright, my third-grade teacher said. She’ll go far.
I realized my fingers were twitching, groping the sheets for something sharp. I rolled onto my side, carefully putting my arms together to trap my hands between my thighs, and closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, Michael was kneeling in front of me, holding out a small sharp knife.
I pulled back, raising my head to look at him straight on. “What are you doing?”
He raised the knife closer. His eyes were a blue-gray, one of my favorite colors, and he had never seemed so close or real. “Take it.”
I stared at him.
Michael took the handle in his other hand, turning the blade to press it against his palm. “If you want to cut yourself, cut me.” Red swelled on either side of the blade.
“Stop!” I had the crazy urge to reach out and grab him, but of course I couldn’t do that. “You’re missing the point – I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“I’m a part of you,” he said, and drew the knife past his wrist, a clean line down the middle of his forearm. “And I’m not real anyway, as you just thought.”
“Stop,” I cried again, both to his words and action, but my eyes followed the red line slowly surfacing and growing against his perfect white skin. It was strange, feeling that familiar fascination without the accompanying pain – it felt wrong, guiltier.
“You have to stop it,” Michael said, holding his arm steady. “Every time you do this, I will too.”
“Okay, I’m not even doing anything right now!”
“You’re thinking about it. So I’m reminding you.” He turned his arm over and dropped it to his side. Not a trace of blood remained; his skin was unmarked.
I lay quietly, uncertain about what was going on, this contest with myself. I was a little afraid it meant I was headed toward schizophrenia. That was all I needed at this point.
Michael leaned forward, crossing his arms on the edge of the bed, his eyes inches from mine. “I’m only here because you want me here. You only see me because you want to. If you want me gone, I will be.”
“No,” I whispered. “I need to talk to you. I need to talk to someone who believes me, who knows what’s going on.” Better a figment of my imagination than nothing at all. Whatever gave me a reason, right?
I rolled onto my stomach, stretching my arms out awkwardly on either side of my head so as not to press on them. It was too uncomfortable, and I turned back onto my back. I tried to lie still and relax, imagining Michael leaning over me, cool fingers brushing over my eyelids and my hair. Someone who was always there, always cared, and understood.
He’s not real, stupid, a voice said (my voice, that hard voice which forced me to face the truth and see how pathetic I was and admit it). No one’s there at all. The room’s empty, and you’re just developing another pathetic illusion to try to make yourself cope. It won’t work. It’s all in your head.
But I could feel – or just wanted to, so badly – his fingers on my face, because he was there and cared, all the time, and I turned my face into the pillow and cried because what I needed and wanted so badly wasn’t real.
My mother visited twice a day and dropped off a load of my favorite books, CDs, and DVDs. None of the darker ones, though. That was sad; my mom just couldn’t understand how terribly tragic stuff could stir me positively and leave me awed me with how much feeling and passion there was in the world.
But I watched the funny movies and laughed. I re-read the books, some of them outdated favorites from my childhood, and exchanged cynical commentary with Michael. It served to pass the days. They let me get out of bed soon enough, then walk around the park across the street with my mother and sit in their relaxation lounge for convalescing patients. That was a depressing place, in my opinion, and I kept my face in a book as much as I could.
On the fourth day, my friends arrived.
Friends was a loose term. Madison probably counted as my best friend, even though she ditched me for nearly a year when we first entered high school. She had repented, though, and stuck with me when I went through a really bad time last winter. Sarah, Danielle, Ethan, and Ryan sat at my table for lunch and occasionally worked with me in groups for class. Eric had come too, which surprised me. He was my ex. We had dated last year for nearly a whole semester, until he told me rather bluntly that he couldn’t deal with my problems. I didn’t blame him. I was even more messed up back then.
I greeted them all brightly, though, trying to make jokes and make it look like it was just an accident I was here. Madison went straight forward to give me a tight hug, which the others, except for Eric, repeated more awkwardly.
“How’s school going without me?”
“Rossheimer held a moment of silence for you Tuesday morning,” Sarah said.
“Aw, how nice of him. So how much homework do you think I can get out of?”
“All of it, if it were up to me,” Madison said at once. “If any of them give you shit about it, just look up real slow and sad, as though you’re about to slit your wrists again if you have to do too much math.”
I grinned, even while the rest of my friends looked a little shocked. This was why I loved Madison, though.
She reached over and roughly ruffled my hair. “Seriously, though, cut it out. …No pun intended.”
It took me a second to realize, and then I burst into laughter that might have been more than slightly tinged with hysteria. It was contagious, though; everyone else joined in, Madison falling across the bed with her head in my lap.
When I calmed down enough to speak, I said, “God, Madison. I need to keep a notebook of your quotes, then I’d never do anything.”
“Do it,” she said, looking up at me. “Or else we’ll be forced to tie mittens onto your hands. Try cutting yourself with mittens on your hands, bitch. Also, you’ll look totally ridiculous in the summer. On the beach.”
“Oh my God,” I said, and bent over her body to hug her waist as best I could. “Don’t ever leave.”
“I think you should start wearing long gloves every day,” Danielle suggested. “Like Rogue.”
“White ones, so we can tell if anything new is bleeding,” Madison added. “Then it’ll be back to the mittens. What’ll you do then, gnaw on your skin?”
Shaking with laughter, I turned my head and saw Michael sitting in a chair, smiling with his arms crossed. See, you don’t need me so much.
I made a face at him. But they won’t always be around.
Sarah set down a giant heart of chocolates and a get-well card from my homeroom class, and started going through my stack of DVDs. “Ooh, I love this one. Can I borrow it sometime?”
Madison sat up. “No, don’t you see it’s vital to her will to live? Go rent your own copy. Or borrow mine, I have it too.”
“You can take it,” I said. “I’ve discovered if you watch it too many times, it actually starts sucking away your will to live. Be careful, you don’t want to end up like me.”
“Heavens no.”
The nurse came to shoo them out at the end of visiting hours, despite how Madison clung bodily to me, vowing she could not leave until she saw mittens on my hands. I felt overwhelming affection for her, so much that it ached, and I wondered how I could ever do anything to myself knowing she cared and would have something to say about it. But she wouldn’t be around forever; the hard truth was that we would almost certainly drift apart after graduation. I would have to find someone else.
I finally appeased Madison by promising to pretend my hands were in mittens, keeping my fingers pressed together and working them like a seal’s with my thumb.
“Good girl,” she said. “I’m warning you, though, when I come next week I’ll ask about your diligence. I’ll check with – what’s your name? – Linda here. Linda, make sure Cara remembers her mittens every day. She can’t be trusted.”
Coming from Madison, even those hard last words which I had dreaded made me smile.
Eric hung back, however, asking Linda for just two minutes alone with me. I was curious.
“Hey,” I said, when Linda had agreed and stepped back out, leaving us alone. “What’s up? How are you doing?”
He looked awkward. “I should really be asking you that.”
“Nah, it’s pretty obvious. I’m better than it looks, actually,” I added, gesturing with my bandaged arms.
“Good.” He shifted, hands pushed in his pockets. “I just – wanted to apologize for how I treated you last year. I was an asshole, really insensitive.”
I was a little touched he clearly felt so guilty. “Don’t worry about it. I was more than a handful, I don’t blame you for trying to get out.”
“But –“ He seemed to force himself to look me straight in the face. “I wanted to tell you…you’re beautiful, and worth a lot, and deserve a guy much better than me.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “Did your mother tell you to say that?”
“No,” he said defensively, though he flushed. I recognized it as a sure sign of lying.
“Relax, Harrison,” I said, his last name slipping out unconsciously. “Not everything’s about you. This wasn’t about you. Go deflate your head.”
He flushed further. “Yeah, all right. Well, you seem to be doing pretty well.”
I narrowed my eyes and kept silent as I always did when someone was stupid enough to say that. Like I was unable to act any way I pleased. Like I couldn’t mask the urge to cut pretty crosses up and down my skin.
I caught sight of Michael back in a corner, twirling a glinting knife between his fingers, and closed my eyes and deliberately looked away.
A loud thunk made me jump. I looked, startled, to the large window by the door to see that Madison had flung herself against it, grotesque face and hands and arms pressed flat as she slowly slid down out of view. I burst into laughter again, leaning back, and she rushed to the door.
“Zombie attack!” she yelled. “Hospitals are prime breeding grounds for zombies! Have you formed your plan of escape? With mitten-hands?”
“Madison, you’re the love of my life,” I shouted back as Linda escorted her and Eric away. “My sole reason for living!”
“Don’t you dare say that, mitten-girl!”
Alone again, I couldn’t stop smiling, replaying our conversations in my head. I scooted over and patted the bed beside me for Michael to sit down. He complied, sitting sideways so one wing spread down the length of the bed.
“You’ll meet other Madisons,” he told me. “There are plenty in the world.”
“I love her, though.”
“You’ll love others, too.”
“If you say so.” I rifled through my stack of books, finally pulling out a collection of Calvin and Hobbes comics. Mom had brought a few Garfield books too, but I had been over those in junior high. Calvin and Hobbes still made me happy, though.
I giggled through most of the book, pointing out my favorites to Michael. It felt appropriate.
“Do you think Calvin ever remembered Hobbes as a teenager?” I asked him.
“Probably not. He doesn’t seem like the kind of boy who would remember that then.”
“He’s a weird kid, though. He’s already an outsider in first grade. Do you think he ever made a lot of friends?”
“I can’t really picture Calvin as a teenager, to be honest. He seems like a perpetual six-year-old.”
“A six-year-old with a way-too-big vocabulary.”
We read in silence for a while about Calvin’s twisted attempts to woo Susie, until I asked, “D’you think I’ll ever get another boyfriend? A good one, I mean. One who’s actually interested in an incredibly fucked-up girl.”
Michael dropped his head close to mine, almost but not quite brushing against my hair. “Yes. Because you’re really not fucked up all the way through. You’re just in an bad teenage phase, though more self-destructive than most. You’re going to be gloriously sophisticated and confident and attractive in your twenties.”
“And wearing long gloves every day.”
“It’ll add to your allure.”
“I’ll have to take them off sometime.”
“Yes, but it won’t matter then.”
I sighed, dropping the book to lean my head back and look at him. “Is it okay if this gloriously sophisticated twenty-something-year-old still talks to her angel every day?”
“If that’s what you need.” His blue-gray eyes were very close and seemed very real. “I’m always here, so why not.”
I wiggled down the bed to lie flat on my back, decisively banishing all worries of schizophrenia. Whose business was it, as long as it worked and I was able to cope like a normal person? One who didn’t stick blades in her skin, anyway.
I turned on my side, listening to Michael’s wings flutter and resettle as he stretched out beside me. I caught sight of the seventh Harry Potter book on the table, underneath some magazines. I had re-read it the other day, and a quote near the end made me smile as I closed my eyes.
“Of course it’s all in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it isn’t real?”
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Honestly, the rest seems a bit lukewarm. The stuff with the angel is a bit Sueish, and the scenes with the friends are too biting. It does not ring as witty repartee, but it does not seem as if you meant for it to be so very biting.
And the end... I have a hard time with endings, but you already know there are problems with this one. So, I'll leave that to someone else to comment on. I honestly have no suggestion for how to fix it. Not yet at least.
I'd like to come back to this, though.
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I do like this concept, and I do think you could take it further. The angel is a little predictable, but aren't angels always? Especially the conceptions of them in our minds.
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