Page 58 of Nights Without Night
CHAPTER TEN
I’d been afraid everything would collapse the moment we got back home.
It doesn’t, but it doesn’t all just fix itself, either.
The moment we’re back, life sweeps me away. Just a few days after we arrive, so do my grades. I sit in front of the computer for a while, just staring at the screen. Isadoro sits next to me, completely calm in his confidence. When I click the link, the numbers and letters are all a mess until they untangle themselves before me.
“I did it,” I say. It’s all there. All my courses, my projects, my exams. All the programs I’ve learnt the ins and outs of, the digital languages I’ve perfected. All the paint and the clay and the spirit I’ve dripped onto canvas and moulded into shape. Life is fucked up enough that it all wouldn’t have mattered if these rows of letters and numbers didn’t glow like they do now.
“I did it!” I repeat like I’m waking up from a dream. I look at Isadoro, smiling, and he laughs at my surprise.
“Yeah, you did,” he says, and accepts my strangle-hold hug as I lunge at him.
I liaise with work, and they’re ecstatic. We agree I’ll do a few days to get re-acclimated with ongoing clients and look at some possible projects starting up, and then start officially at the beginning of September.
This leaves me enough time to stress over the summer show at the end of August. There are quite a few pictures to pick from, having done so many with Isadoro, and I talk to my advisor about options and composition. I have a few clay structures as well, and he tells me he can get me space for them in the show. I feel like I could vibrate out of my skin with anxiety and excitement.
At home, things move more slowly. Isadoro reverts back to barely leaving the house, but he comes out of his room, which is more than I could have hoped for. He takes over a lot of the cooking and the house chores, guilty at his negligence of them before the trip. I don’t really care. I’ll thank whatever gets him out of the room.
Despite this, some days are still worse than others. Some days, the darkness in his room becomes too thick, and he can’t escape it. I’ve learnt to be a little less direct in my approach, but no less present. I’ll open the windows, parting the curtains just slightly so they flutter in the breeze. I’ll lay with him sometimes and talk about the exhibition, about the job, asking his opinion to engage him. It works, sometimes. He seems less frustrated than before, and I realize how scared I’d been. Scared for him, but the fear took his shape, talked to me with his face, until I started feeling a little scared around him, too. Scared of what his own behaviour might mean for him. Scared of how much it hurt to see him suffer, and how helpless I was to stop it.
We stay up late much of the time, sitting on the couch with just a sliver of space between us, but going to bed is still strange and lonely. After so many days of going to sleep to the sound of waves, the silence is heavy. It drags with it the suggestion of a visceral fear that reminds me of childhood. Of being a kid and hating to fall asleep after my parents had gone to bed, when the house felt unnatural and dead. Now, it feels like my nights are haunted, and these ghosts are just the night-time anxiety of children, manifested.
I’ll lay in the dark and feel the exact shape of his absence in my bed. The hollow creature of it is as transparent and still as the silence of the oceanless night.
I’ll close my eyes and miss him.
**********
One day, I come back from talking to my advisor and Isadoro isn’t home. I don’t notice at first, thinking it’s just a bad day and he’s in his room, but when I peek inside I’m startled to see his room empty. I look around, stilling when I see the note on the coffee table.
Out for a bit,
Be back later
I roll my eyes at Isadoro for giving me the least possible information, and through an outdated medium. I take out my phone and send him a text.
This is your phone speaking. Please use me. I can help you communicate with people. Will wonders never cease?
He doesn’t reply, but I didn’t expect him to.
He comes back a few hours later. As soon as I see his face, haggard looking and exhausted, my stomach drops.
“Isa? Are you…is everything okay?” I ask, that old tentativeness back.
“Yeah,” he says, and moves straight towards his room. I watch him, feeling like I’m sinking, as if he’s dragging me with him, when he stops at the threshold. He just stands there, shoulders and back stiff with tension, before some of it seeps out of him with a sigh.
He turns back to face me, pauses again, and then walks towards the couch. I just follow him with my eyes as he sits next to me. He slumps onto the couch so that his head rests on the edge of the sofa’s back. He closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and just sits there for a while.
For once, I don’t push.
“I went to the V.A.,” he says suddenly. I almost jump, glad of his closed eyes so he doesn’t see my gobsmacked expression.
“How did it go?” I ask eventually.
“It went,” he says, and I can tell that’s the whole sentence.
“Isa…” I say softly, and brush one of my hands against his. His eyes flutter open slightly, and he looks at me. I smile. “I’m glad you went,” I say simply. His lips twitch into a fraction of a smile. “What did you do?”
