Grin

Death came to me a little before noon. I know this only because it knocked on the door, I woke up, looked at the alarm clock, and was a little ticked off that I still had about ten minutes left to sleep. I threw on a pair of jeans and stumbled through the living room just to see who it was I was going to ignore. Then I looked through the peephole. I opened the door.

“Your friend has died,” it said. Then the phone rang. I walked into the kitchen and picked it up—Death inviting itself in—and listened as Nathan told me Mark was dead. I turned around and looked into this empty black hood at about the time Nathan started crying. I hung up.

Death said, “He is yours now,” and left. Just turned around, walked through my living room, out the front door, and strolled on down the street.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The whole grieving process got a monkey wrench in the gears when I went to the visitation. There was a whole room full of people, everyone either talking about unimportant things, or telling jokes about Mark. Each joke had a quiet mantra repeating like a background noise beneath it, muttered fervently like it would protect them from vampires: He would have wanted it this way.

Then I saw him, and—let me tell you—that complicated things.

Mark was walking around, grinning like a meth-head, listening to the little groups of whispering people. They kept talking, but I saw a few glance at him out of their peripheral vision, then nervously look away. After all, it’s rude to talk about someone when they’re standing right by you.

Every time Mark saw someone look away from him, he’d laugh a little. He’d walk up right behind someone and stand just over their shoulder, listening to prepared, eulogized stories about him, chuckling like every one was an inside joke that only he got. His aunt started crying, putting a hand up to her face. At first, I thought it was to compose herself, but then I saw she was trying to hide Mark, to not look at him.

Mark bent over at the waist, and I saw that his suit was cut down the back. When he smiled, I couldn’t help but wince. His makeup was atrocious. Maybe it would’ve looked better if he’d been lying down in his coffin, but up and moving around, smiling like a schizo, laughing, it looked fake and plastic and sickening. He looked right at his aunt, his face just on the other side of her hand, and said, “Now you see me, now you don’t.” He straightened, turned, walked a few steps away, then spun and yelled, “Cry about it!” Everyone flinched.

He turned back around, laughing, then saw me.

In one moment, my chest seized up, my muscles froze, and I stopped breathing. They could’ve set a plaque at my feet and put me in a display at the Smithsonian. If it’s true that a person only knows himself in the eyes of other people, I guess I didn’t like what I saw in his.

He walked up, shrugged, and put his hands in his pockets like a kid that just realized his dad was standing nearby. “Looks like I’m all yours.” He looked away, and most of his smile faded, except one corner that stayed cocked up like the hammer of a gun.

I looked around, and everyone had stopped talking. They were all looking at me. Every face had a wordless plea that was as clear to me as anything. So we left.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I took him to a restaurant. It’s an understood tradition at visitations and funerals. The waitress walked up and—I guess by how I was dressed or the look on my face—seemed like she knew where I’d been. But then she saw Mark and frowned something huge. I saw her close her eyes, lower her head, and take a deep, slow breath. I just got a glass of milk. Mark said he’d take two children, a nice house, and a pool, with a side of regret.

Things went downhill from there.

I hadn’t got through a single cigarette before he starts looking at other tables and talking to people. They were polite enough, I guess: didn’t make eye contact and kept their voices low. But some of the things he said really got to them. Deep, personal things. I mean, these words just poured out of him like he had a crack team of little imps with little typewriters hard at work.

“You don’t love your mother. Go home. Look in a mirror. Say it to yourself. ‘I don’t love my mother.’”

“You think this guy’s gonna give you what you want? Listen: five minutes of pumping and groaning isn’t gonna stop your clock from ticking. Get a dog.”

“Yes, you’ve been a bad father. No, you can’t make up for it now. She’s nineteen and doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about you, her boyfriend, or any other man.”

don’t remember sinking lower in my seat, but eventually I was eye-level with the table, and I had chain-smoked every cigarette I had. I kept thinking, Why doesn’t anyone do anything? Why doesn’t someone say something back? And the only answer I got was written on their faces: it was all true.

I mean, if a guy flat-out lies, you can call him a liar. But what do you do when a dead man starts running his mouth and yanking all your skeletons out of their closets? Sure, people got mad, but what were they going to do?

Finally, this one couple got up and left, and that broke the barrier of social propriety for everyone else. In ten minutes, the place was empty, and the waitress never got a better tip in her life. I didn’t tip because she never came back to our table.

"Why, Mark?"

"That's the big question, innit?"

"Shut up. Why do you have to be like this?"

His manic smile faded and he screwed his face up, fit to burst. He opened his eyes and looked at me. I couldn’t breathe again.

“You. Have no. Idea.” He came over the table, crawling like a clumsy spider, and grabbed me by the back of the head. I grabbed onto his wrists, but that was all I could do. “You have no idea. I’ve seen it, and it wants to be seen. Be heard! I’ve got it in my head and it wants out!”

He put his lips against the side of my head and hissed. “You get to witness. Shut up and deal. You’re a mirror: it only looks like you hold things in you, but you’re empty. You’re empty and flat.”

He let me go, sat back in his seat, and scowled like a demon.

“Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

I put my hand to my face, then wiped my eyes with a napkin. He leaned forward, reached out, and tipped over my glass of milk. He looked at me and laughed until formaldehyde came out his nose. Then he left.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the time, I didn’t feel anything at all. I sat at the table, milk running off onto my lap, and stared at where he had sat. I heard people back in the kitchen, but they never came out. I didn’t know it was possible to actively be, but I did. I just sat there… being.

Then I got sad remembering what he said about me. Then I got mad and told myself I’d prove him wrong. Then I got sad again that he was gone and I was supposed to watch him. I cried again. Then I got up, didn’t even bother to wipe off my lap, and left.

I haven’t heard from him since, and that used to really get me on edge. I kept thinking I was supposed to be with him, supposed to remember for him because I don’t think he could. But time came, and there was no arguing. It even got to the point that I used to miss Mark. I started telling people about the visitation and the restaurant. It used to completely kill a party, but the more I told it, the more people liked it. I had the trump of all Mark stories. And sometimes I sit awake at night, eyes open, and try to say those unrelenting words. I would try and speak like him, mad smile and all, yelling truths so heavy they hurt. But they never came out right, and I was left wondering what other poisonous secrets I was hiding. I needed his voice. I missed him.

Until Nathan died.