The Opposite Side of The Street

TW: suicide

“I’m fine,” Jeremy said, and I knew he was lying. For my benefit, most likely, though I can’t understand why. We were painfully young and inexperienced then, and who knows why young people do what they do. He was drying his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt, hunched on the cold stone porch of his childhood home. He was shivering, despite the hot July night. I was sitting there beside him, my hand on his shoulder. I couldn’t move, thinking that if I stayed there long enough, touching him, some of his pain would seep through into me. Of course, as the minutes went by and the ambulance sirens had long since faded, I remembered that wasn’t how this all worked. It was hard to comprehend anything other than the present moment -- logic doesn’t come easy to the weary mind. I was still trying to make sense of what had happened. How something like this could happen to someone like Jeremy. Around us played the sounds of early morning -- crickets chirped and houses creaked -- like the whole world couldn’t care less. 

The night before was nothing but a blur, and faded more with the years to come. I think I blocked most of it out; to this day, I am left with the memory of Jeremy’s phone call. The sun had set and I had just arrived home from work. Mom was upstairs in bed and he couldn’t speak. 

He was huffing heavily into the phone -- in the split second after I answered the call, my thoughts scattered. I cut through to the very worst I could think of: a home invasion. Jeremy was taken hostage, he was being suffocated. They’ll want ransom money.

“Jeremy?” I asked, the confusion and fear in my voice almost comical for the lack of context. And then, I realized he was crying. He was gasping, like he was struggling for air, and I knew it was going to be terrible. I remember freezing in place, like I was bracing for some unseen impact. I remember my mind going totally blank.

“Jeremy? Are you okay?” I asked, speaking sternly, demanding a clear response. 

“She’s dead,” he said.

A paramedic told me Mrs. Fisher had died of an overdose. She took pills, the same left over in the mirror cabinet from when she had teeth pulled. The bottle was still half-full -- almost like she had been saving them. 

By the time Jeremy had found her, his mother was pale, lifeless, breathless -- collapsed on the cold white tile in a heap of limbs. It was 10:33PM.

“Why don’t you come stay with me? My Mom won’t mind,” I started, but he just shook his head. 

“I should clean up around here. Stay with my Dad,” he said.

“Jeremy-” I was going to change his mind, I had enough of the self-sacrificial Jeremy. I needed him to accept the help, for my own peace of mind, but he was shaking his head again. Forcefully. Perish the thought, like he was reading my mind.

“No, Claire. I need to,” he argued, his voice suddenly darker than the night around us. He stared at me for a moment, and his eyes said more than any of his words had. The look was appreciative, understanding -- sorrowful. I took my hand off his shoulder, and I tried to think of something, anything, to convince him to come with me. Still, logic was out of reach, and Jeremy was too headstrong. My mind was swimming with angry thoughts -- Jeremy’s consistently uncaring father, the selective unfairness of the world, the stretcher covered in a white sheet in the back of the ambulance… 

The air had become very cold around us, and I pulled my arms closer around my middle. The sun was already rising.

“I’m fine,” Jeremy said, barely three years later. In the background, I heard all kinds of chatter, like Jeremy was in a room with thousands of others. In my head, I saw him amongst a sea of soldiers, standing at a telephone booth -- one hand holding the phone, the other plugging his free ear. He was looking sharp, his hair buzzed and his jaw more defined than it once was. His shoulders were broad but he still had those boyish freckles and that timeless, dimpled smile. Just thinking of him, I missed him more than I had ever missed anyone before. 

“What’s the food like?” I asked, and he laughed heartily into the speaker. My heart soared, like it usually did when he laughed. I missed that feeling. It had been months since we’d spoken. 

“Do you really want to know?” He asked. I shrugged, then laughed at myself, knowing he couldn’t see me.

“When will you be coming home? Do you know?” I asked, then cursed myself for being so eager. It wasn’t like I didn’t want him to know I cared so much, but it was the juvenile in me who still thought feelings should be kept secret. I wondered if he cared as much as I did.

“I barely got here, Claire,” he said, and his words tugged at my heart, as they were laced with barely detectable melancholy. The kind that only true friends can pick up on. Even thousands of miles away, Jeremy was doing this to me. Wounding my heart, and he didn’t even know it.

“Not true, it’s been seven months,” I said, and he laughed again.

“Has it really been that long?” He asked.

The phone buzzed with static and my heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t lose him. My mind was flooded with all kinds of words of hope and encouragement and love. Please be brave, please remember to call, please don’t get hurt. Please come home. Please come home. Please come home.

“I don’t want you to worry about me so much,” he said, like he was reading my mind again. I could’ve broken down and cried. My throat burned, but I took a deep breath.

“I have to. That’s my job,” I said. I could hear him smile.

“Do you miss me, then?” He asked. That familiar skipping in my chest, and I scrambled for the right thing to say. Years and years together, attending all the same schools, running in the same circles, living our lives side by side, and I had never told him what I felt. It felt wrong and risky, silly even, having played together and sung in the school choir together and taken camping trips together. Through first boyfriends and girlfriends and pets and puberty. Through parents’ deaths and holidays and barbecues. Through thick and thin. I thought he knew enough that I didn’t have to say it outright. I couldn’t anyway, the idea was too paralyzing of a teenage fantasy to even be fathomed. I always thought that we could go on our entire lives blissfully unaware of the fact that I was completely in love with him like I hadn’t loved anyone else before. I just didn’t expect it to hurt so much. I didn’t know that it would tear me apart, knowing that he wasn’t sleeping in the big white house on the opposite side of the street, but somewhere in Afghanistan, where I couldn’t get to him. 

“Of course I miss you,” I said, and he chuckled. A small laugh, like he was thinking too.

“I miss you,” his voice suddenly soft, like velvet and feathers and every other sweet thing in the world. 

And that was enough for me.

“I’m fine,” Jeremy said, but this time, I couldn’t hear him too well. I was at a party, somewhere in West Hollywood. I was with David, who wasn’t too interesting to me, but interesting enough to others that he was invited to a lot of parties. And me, being interesting to David, I was his guest to quite a few of them.

Something felt off, when I saw that Jeremy was calling. I felt an immediate rush of guilt pass over me, knowing Jeremy was probably sitting in his apartment. It was probably too quiet, he probably had dinner alone, and it was a Friday night. We had had dinner together there the Thursday before, and he seemed to be more like himself. Not “weird and distant”, like my mother had called him, the personality he had taken to since returning from the war. 

“How are you sleeping?” I remember asking. I remember thinking to myself that his apartment was always so terribly cold. I wondered if he would think it rude if I brought him blankets the next time I visited. Just something he could drape over his shoulders when he wandered through his drafty space. I figured it had something to do with bills, and my heart was breaking for him. I wanted to hold him and reassure him and take care of him. Was it rude to bring blankets?

“Better,” he said, and he nodded, sort of like, yes-things-are-going-pretty-well. That made me smile, and I remember feeling a little weight fall off my heart. I so badly wanted him to be well.

“He can’t be helped,” my Mom had said. This was another night, probably a month before. We were driving to the movies after dinner, and it came out of nowhere on the car ride over.

“He’s just dealing with everything. I can’t imagine going to war and all that… Then coming back, and nobody cares that you were even there,” I spat, and she looked at me sideways. I could see her raising her eyebrows at me in my peripheral vision.

“I just wish he’d let me help him,” I said. I was looking out the window, wringing my hands in my lap. It felt horrible, talking about him like this. Like he was something to be discussed, rather than my closest friend.

“You do help him,” Mom said, and I was already formulating my rebuttal.

“No- he never does. I always try to help, but he shuts down. He does that whole macho thing, like ‘no, Claire. I have to do this on my own’. He’s always been that way,” I said. I realized that I was regurgitating the thoughts that had been running through my head at the time. I felt suddenly sick. 

“I think you do more for him than he deserves,” she said, her voice tired. She sighed out in the open, like the conversation itself was exhausting, and it made me angry.

“Mom…” I started, and I knew it had to be said. “I love him.”

“I know,” she said. “I also know that you can’t let things go.”

And there I was, plugging my ears to try to hear him over the thumping bass of electronic music. I was stumbling towards the balcony, half-drunk, half-determined.

“Are you sure?” I asked. Someone was grabbing my arm. I turned around; it was David, begging me with his eyes. Not again. I pushed him away, taking longer steps towards the sliding glass door. I shoveled past the strangers.

“I…” he trailed off. He was painfully quiet -- annoyance was rising in my chest. Why was it so hard for him to speak up? Why was it always me doing the talking? Why couldn’t we just say what we are both really thinking?

I pulled myself outside and leaned against the brick ledge. I looked down into the street, which glittered with headlights and streetlamps. Already on the balcony, there was a middle-aged balding man smoking a skinny, pink cigarette. He smiled at me, and I grimaced. 

“Jeremy, what’s the matter?” I asked again. Now, standing out in the open air, I could truly hear his silence. The way he was scarcely breathing, and my mind flitted back to the night spent on the porch. His shoulder, which I could still feel in my hand. I felt trapped, knowing I would never stop feeling for him. And then, I smiled.

The realization was coursing through me, and I was beginning to think that things would work out. I could drive over there tonight and be with him. I didn’t have to wait another second. He came home, we didn’t have to be apart unless we wanted to be. 

“Nothing, I’m…” he trailed off. I was growing impatient. I wanted to tell him everything. It was knowing that I was trapped that had set me free. Something about the alcohol in my system and the brisk night air filled me with courage. I wouldn’t spend another day feeling bitter. I wanted to spend every day I had by his side, and I was ready to let him know.

“Jeremy, I have an idea,” I smiled, and his voice cut through.

“I’m so lost,” he had said.

I lost my balance. I took a shaky breath inward, though I wasn’t entirely sure yet why my body was reacting this way. I tried to straighten up, clutching the wall beside me for support. 

“What’s happened, are you okay?” I asked, forgetting whatever courage I had just possessed. I was suddenly feeling very bare, stripped of my bearings. The vulnerability was overwhelming. I had felt this way before.

“Jeremy,” I urged, when he didn’t answer. The man on my left puffed a plume of silvery smoke out into the darkness. It disintegrated into nothing.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Jeremy said, his words muffled. 

“I’m here, talk to me,” I said, as sincere as I could.

“I can’t,” he said, and I threw up an arm in frustration, like he could see.

“I can come over,” I said. Nothing but emptiness. The seconds rolled by. It all felt off.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. Phone sounds.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said.

“Look, I wanted to-” I started, but he had already hung up.

It was 11:15PM.