“He’s had those things stuck in his ears for three days.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Rei, talk to him. He listens to you.”
“No, he doesn’t. I’ve tried, ‘Riah, he just sits there and ignores me.”
I can hear you talking about me. In that horrible moment in between songs, when the silence outside my manufactured world of beats and rhythms pauses to flip to a new song, a new era in my ignoring the grief around me. I hear you worrying, saying it’s not healthy for me to go around with my earbuds wedged firmly in my ears, ignoring everything but what I can see around me. And even then, I tend to close my eyes a lot.
You don’t understand my obsession, and that’s okay. I understand. Mariah, you cook to numb the pain, and Rei, you run everywhere. Running, running, running. Like you’re afraid if you stop for too long, the grief will catch up with you and you’ll never get free of it. We all have our coping mechanisms. I don’t expect you to understand mine.
Lee was fucking twenty six. He had his whole life ahead of him, and some drunk driver just took it away. Like that. No warning, no getting to say goodbye, nothing. He was just gone.
I know we fought, and I know a lot of times we didn’t like each other. But he was fucking family, you know? And most of the time, he was a decent cousin--someone I liked having around. He played Chinese Checkers with me, and laughed when I said it was a racist game. He made sure I didn’t get beat up on my way to school until I perfected the art of going from ground-level to 8 feet in the air in the safe haven of a tree in 5 seconds or less when I was ten. He helped me with my math homework, for fuck’s sake.
Oh boy, here we go. Another song change. I squeeze my eyes shut and pretend I’m somewhere else, anywhere else, not in the men’s room at the funeral home. I’m in my grandmother’s house, young enough that I can still sit on her lap and play with her reading glasses hung around her neck on a string of brightly colored glass beads while she told me stories. Golden light filtering through the picture window, catching dust motes and spinning them into tiny rainbow flecks floating through the air.
I hear the opening notes of “Braille” by Regina Spektor and breathe a small sigh. Better. Something else can distract me, instead of me having to do it myself. I can’t do it well enough on my own, anyway, and it’s exhausting to try, even for a few seconds.
Through the gentle piano, I hear someone knock on the stall door. I don’t bother answering, because the door’s locked and my feet are perched on either side of the toilet seat. My precious iPod is cradled in my hands, and I’m staring at the screen like it holds the answer to everything, the answer to how to bring Lee back and stop my mind from turning down paths I don’t want it to go. The morgue, identifying Lee’s body. Rei didn’t want me to come, but I did anyway.
“Kevin,” I hear Rei call, muffled by the cubicle door and the vocals pumping into my ears. “Kevin, come on, just let me talk to you.”
“Go away,” I mutter wearily, surprising myself. That’s the first time I’ve spoken in three days--I put my earbuds in on the way home from the hospital and never took them out, refusing to acknowledge anyone’s presence vocally.
Apparently, the sound of my voice has given Rei renewed hope, because he rattles the door a little and calls my name again. “C’mon, Kev, just let me talk. You don’t have to say anything, I just want to know you’re okay.”
I wrestle with myself for a few seconds, as the ending notes fade in my ears. Gritting my teeth, I ease off the back of the toilet, my Converse sneakers hitting the tile with a soft thump. I wait for the next song--”Stand In The Rain” by Superchick, horribly appropriate--to start before I let my fingers fall on the slide holding the door shut. Do I really want to let him in here? A small part of my mind cries out in lonely agony, screaming Yes! I need someone! I can’t be by myself anymore! Wearily, I let the door swing open a little.
Rei’s eyes are rimmed in red--I feel guilty for a second, knowing that while I lost a cousin, he lost a half-brother, someone he shared his whole life with from birth. They were nearly inseparable. I turn down the volume just enough so I can hear what he’s saying.
“Are you okay?”
That’s a stupid question. I’m sitting in the bathroom of a funeral home at my cousin’s funeral, stuck to my iPod because if I don’t have something distracting me, I’ll lose my mind. I shake my head and look at him questioningly, projecting his own question back at him telepathically and hoping he gets the message.
He smiles a little--not a real one, that’s too much to ask of anyone in his position--and shakes his head back. “I’m not okay, either.” He shuffles from one foot to the other, and I can’t get over how un-Rei-like he looks, in his black suit and dark green tie--wait a minute. That’s Lee’s tie. His I’m Trying To Look Responsible For A Job Interview tie. Rei catches me looking and rubs his neck a little. “Yeah, I didn’t have a tie that wasn’t cartoon characters or Christmas lights. Do you think Lee’d mind?”
Silently, because I’m choking on the fact that it’s Lee’s tie, I shake my head. Rei and Lee shared clothes all the time--I used to tease them about swapping skirts like middle school girls. Now, it’s just too much. I bite my lip hard.
“Kevin,” Rei sighes, gently pulling me out of the bathroom stall. I don’t fight, just let him pull me into a hug. The part of me screaming to be held, to have someone to lean on, quiets down, lapsing into silent grief as Rei pulls his fingers through my hair, a move that I think is just as much for his benefit as mine. “Kevin, it’s okay to cry, you know. I know you’re doing everything you can to not cry, but sometimes you just...have to.”
The song changes. Silence descends, and suddenly I can’t take it anymore. My arms wrap around his waist and all at once I’m sobbing, my face pushed into his Oxford shirt and Lee’s tie and the lapels of his suit coat. His arms tighten around me and I feel my hair start to get damp as he starts crying too.
A few moments later, the iPod is no longer in my pocket, and the music no longer plays. Gingerly, I feel Rei reach up and slide the earbuds from my ears, and I want to protest but I find I don’t care, I’m crying so hard that I couldn’t say anything anyway. My iPod is in Rei’s pocket now, and he’s stroking my hair again, and all the tears I’ve been bottling up come out in a flood, and irrationally, all I can think of is Noah’s Ark and how we’re going to need a bigger boat to get through this.
“It’s okay,” Rei whispers into my hair, holding me just a little bit tighter. “Just cry, it’s okay.”
And somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder how many time’s Rei’s cried in the last three days.
