Page 87 of Where Happiness Begins

“Yeah?”

“I’m proud of you, kid.”

He hangs up, and before I can think of whether I deserve his pride or not, I pay my tab, leave my untouched drink, and go wait outside for him.

But Frank never does show up.

An hour and a half later, when I’ve texted him five times and he hasn’t answered, I figure he’s fallen asleep and forgot about me, so I call for a cab. I’m not disappointed, only tired by then. I just want to be home and forget about this whole day. Maybe tomorrow, I can convince myself I never flinched, that I imagined that dank smell and the feeling of the glass in my hand.

The taxi driver who picks me up must be in his sixties and is blaring tech music through his speakers. As soon as I sit, he’s speeding through the streets like he’s playing GTA, all the while his loud bass worsens my headache. I lean back and close my eyes, only reopening them when I feel the car slowing down.

I don’t realize right away what is happening. It’s as if from the moment I look out the window and see the scene happening on the main boulevard, everything happens in slow motion. Sirens mix with the aggressive music in the car, muffled like they’re ringing from underwater. Blue and red flashes in the distance, and the lights get brighter and brighter the closer we get.

“We’ll need to take a detour,” the driver says.

I don’t answer, entranced by the lights. It’s as if a part of me already knows what they mean.

But only when I see the flipped-over brown car with its cheerful stickers in the rear windshield and a stretcher pulling a sheet-covered body toward an ambulance do I realize what actually happened, although I’m not sure I could call it realizing. More like noticing.

Oh, look, a boot—he must’ve lost it when they dragged him out of the wreck.

The radio is still on. Was he listening to folk or rock when he died?

The keychain is hanging from the ignition, swinging. It probably still holds the pendant his daughter made him in art class a decade ago.

His phone must’ve fallen from the cupholder and shattered. Did it break before or after I called him back?

I’m not sure how I get home next. I was at the accident, watching it all with a painful numbness as if out of my body, and the next thing I knew, I was curled up in my bed, staring at the wall, spending God knows how many days like this. Not sleeping. Notcrying. Just being there, forcing myself to take breath after painful breath.

Eventually, I get myself out of bed, draining a gallon of water while finally starting to think about what happened, and now that I do, I see it doesn’t make sense. I must’ve imagined it. Maybe I did drink at that bar, and I got so drunk I invented some crazy scenario in my head. So I decide to drive up to Frank’s house. I went once to hand him a document I needed him to sign, so I still have his address in my texts. I’ll get there, and he’ll be raking his lawn or washing his awful car, wearing some pompom-riddled hat and waving at me with a huge grin on his face.

But that fantasy doesn’t happen. When I stop in front of his place, dozens of cars fill up the driveway, including a catering truck and some van where two people are pulling out vases of extravagant flowers.

I don’t even stop in front of the house, only slowing long enough to see it all, then slam on the gas and drive back home.

I spend the next day doing the same thing. And the next. And the next.

I’m not sure what I expect to see there. I just know that passing in front of that house makes me feel like I’m doing something. Like I still have a piece of him with me.

I call in sick to work for two entire weeks, faking appendicitis, but really, I’d take an unanesthetized surgery over this kind of pain.

The realization that his death is on me comes slowly at first, and then it drowns me, pulling me down every time I try to gasp for breath. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to call him at night, if Ihadn’t been so weak that I needed him to come pick me up, he’d still be there, spreading his annoying cheer everywhere.

Eventually, I return to work, and it’s probably the only thing that keeps me standing. For the hours I’m in there, I can forget just enough that I don’t crumble. But the moment I leave the studio, it all comes back to me, and the routine continues.

Driving in front of his house becomes some sick obsession. I imagine his clothes lying untouched, his gutters overflowing and never being drained, his roof cracking and needing to be replaced. The house remains the same, but I see it all in tragic fast-speed.

And then, one day, something new appears in the driveway.

His car looks just like it did that night next to the basketball court, scratched and rusted over, but other than that, it’s perfect. As if it didn’t go through some hellish accident mere weeks ago.

This time, I stop in front of the house, long enough for me to stare at that damn car. I don’t know whether I love it because it’s sohimor I hate it because of what it represents. Me failing him. Me dragging him out. Me killing him.

I’m not sure how long I spend looking at those like-new windows and bumper, but when my gaze drifts to the back window, it’s as if time stutters.

My daughter needs your help! Have an extra kidney? Get tested to see if you’re a match and save her life!

His daughter. I’d almost forgotten about her. The one person Frank loved and wanted to protect more than anything in the world. I don’t even know how old she is. She could be thirteen ortwenty. Either way, I’ve taken her father away from her. Her father, who would’ve given everything he owned to help her.

---