Requiem Aeternam

“It’s pretty late, I understand that, and if–”

“Don’t think anything of it.” Dr. Kendall Liu, in her dark jacket, turned the key in its suitable lock and swung the squat door open. The half-light and spittle from the street marinated the small table, bedight in dust and a basket of decorative fruit, and chairs lined up in a row against the wall. Dr. Liu, with barely a sound, ascended the carpeted steps to her office and waved her hand, “C’mon,” for the young man behind her to follow. 

“Come on up. We’ll talk.”

Dr. Liu thought of offering tea but she knew Gabe’s manner of thinking. Wouldn’t want to be a bother, he would retort. I’m already inconveniencing you enough as it is. And if he didn’t say it, he would think it, in the way that Gabriel allowed unspoken words to be tied up in knots and painted in blood as with a haphazard scalpel.

Gabriel took the stairs two at a time. He was in a hurry. Dr. Liu opened the door to her office, thin like a chapel but lofty like a cathedral. There were three lamps in the room, one on top of a bookshelf, one at her desk, and another on a small table next to the chair where the patients sat. She turned all of them on. There was a small, compact clock on the table which might have been mistaken for a decorative rock. The time read 10:57 PM. 

“Nearly eleven o’clock already. Holy cow.” Gabriel ran his hand over his thin, brown hair. 

“Just take a seat,” Liu said, as kindly as she could. 

Gabriel nearly began pacing as though this were not his psychiatrist’s office at all. His movements were very manic; even when he had sat down, his forefinger grazed over the leather of the seat. 

“Now, what did you want to talk about?”

He pursed his lips and started tapping his foot. He had something important to say, drastically important, and arranged extraordinary conditions under which he might say it. Yet now, with the familiar lighting of Dr. Liu’s office and the window showing off the coal blackness outside from which he had just come, he could not say it; it was too strange, too unknown to say it, something he could only ruminate on in an abandoned warehouse or in his lonely bed. 

“Gabe, you can tell me.” He was surprised that some hint of irritation had not manifested itself yet. Hell, Gabe was more irritated with himself for demanding this of her than she was actually doing it. 

Mute, Gabriel shifted in his seat. He crossed his right leg over his left but immediately was uncomfortable and so crossed his left over his right. 

He knew he could never say it otherwise, so he blurted out: “My father called me tonight.”

Liu’s eyes widened. 

Gabe looked away, just as he made sure to never look himself in the mirror in the mornings. 

“I see. And what did he say?”

“No, no. I didn’t answer the call.” Let me make one thing clear!

“Oh. Ok. So, w-when did he call you?”

“About forty-five minutes ago.”

Dr. Liu’s eyes jumped to the little clock and she did some quick math in her head. 

“Is he alright?”

“How the hell should I know? I didn’t answer the call.”

Obviously. 

Kendall Liu then spoke the only words that seemed sensible, if only as a catalyst for conversation: “What can I do to help?”

“Nothin’.” And Gabe looked out the window in despair and his eyes were orange in the light of the lamps. 

“How long has it been since you last spoke to your father?”

“Let’s see. It was probably about-two years now. Closer to two and a half but–”

“What went through your mind when the call came through?”

“Well, I was uncomfortable.”

Liu nodded kindly. 

“I-I haven’t talked to him for so long, ever since Lyle died.”

Kendall was quiet, subtle and silent. 

“Yah, it’s been a really long time,” Gabe said, with an air of breathiness in his timbre. “Long time.”

“What was your first reaction when the phone started ringing?”

“I didn’t answer, for starters.” He and Dr. Liu nodded simultaneously.  

“Just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Gabe swirled his hand around in the air, catching dragonflies of thoughts. 

“It’s just-I couldn’t do it. I know I… I couldn’t. It would be wrong.”

Her ears perked up. 

“What would be wrong?”

Gabe’s eyes seemed threatened. 

“I dunno, answering his call.” He shrugged. 

“Why?” She was not demanding.

Gabe turned away from her, looking out the window.

“It just would be. What would I say?”

“Did you think of anything to say?”

He hummed under his breath. She let him breathe. 

“You called me about twenty minutes ago. So, what did you do between when he called you and when you called me?”

“I just, uh, kind of sat there.” In the tone of a professor or an agent being debriefed. “I was shocked.”

“This shock-did it make you want to do anything?”

His eyes danced from the carpet to the window back to faithful Dr. Liu. 

“Run away.” Gabriel was being brave and his inhibition was melting like makeup in rain. 

“Run away,” she affirmed. “And run where? Here?”

“No.” He was gripping the arm rests with white knuckles. “Not here. I didn’t even know where I wanted to run to. I just-I just didn’t want to be there.” He stopped for a breath. “I wanted to be anywhere else.”

“Did any place stand out in your mind where you wanted to go? Amongst all the places other than ‘there’?” Liu’s gaze, incisive yet serene in the same instant, flashed across the small room. 

“Yah.” Like a little boy caught in a lie. 

“Where?” It was almost whispered.

A magazine on Dr. Liu’s bookshelf distracted Gabe briefly, but he snapped out of it. There had been a question. The way the light bounced off Dr. Liu’s glasses, that was something to note. Something sinister was crawling up Gabe’s throat. He didn’t want to be obvious and turn the clock around, but he began to calculate what the time was. He had been here about ten minutes, and when he had walked into the office–

Did Dr. Liu always come so dressed up to emergency sessions in the middle of the night?

She waited patiently, knowing the response would come when Gabe was ready. She was touching upon something. 

“I wanted to go to Lyle’s grave.” His voice was not quivering and neither was his chin. 

“Did you?”

“No.” He sounded disappointed in himself. “No, I didn’t. I sat there for a few minutes ripping the hair out of my head and gnashing my teeth and then I came here.” He made eye contact again. 

“What made you want to go to Lyle’s grave?”

He had a response but he was forced to speak it through a thick, stained glass window of melancholy in his throat. “I wanted to say I was sorry.” Tears welled up in his eyes and he looked at his lap.

“Sorry to Lyle?”

“Yah.” He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and prayed that there were no more. More composed, he continued, “Just (he was grasping for it) to tell Lyle how I’m sorry that I caused his death.”

“Gabe.” With enough poignancy and heart in that name alone to stop a speeding train. “You did not cause Lyle’s death.”

“Well,” he stopped to steady himself. “I was the one who didn’t look.”

“They ran a red light, Gabe. That’s not your fault.”

“He was too young to be in the front seat anyway.” Frantically wiping away tears with the sleeve of his shirt. 

Kendall Liu persisted, “That’s no reason to beat yourself up like this.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Anger and desperation, flashes of color without tact or vulnerability. “Just sit there and grieve? Tell my mom and dad that it was a total freak accident that took Lyle away? Their little boy? Oh God…”

Gabe collapsed under the weight. Kendall Liu wheeled her chair over to his and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. Low sobs came, muffled, followed by a piercing note as Gabe allowed himself to feel all the guilt and unnamed sadness fill up his eye sockets and a gaping hole in his chest. He fell quiet after that, though, drifting like a burnt piece of paper into a gust or like the darkness descending on the final shot of a movie. 

“Gabe, that was not your fault.”

(Without looking at her, still bent over) “Yes, it was. And I can’t face my mom and dad now because of it.”

Another note. 

“God,” Gabe sighed more than spoke. “Why did this have to happen? I didn’t deserve this.” But he hastily added, “No, it’s not that I didn’t deserve it: Lyle didn’t. Lyle didn’t deserve it.” He choked out the final words. 

“Gabe, Ga-abe. You’re right-you didn’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this.” Dr. Liu insisted.

“It was my fault. It was my fault.”

Dr. Liu abruptly stood up from her chair, without taking her hand from Gabe’s shoulder, and directed it so that it faced opposite his chair.  

“This was not your fault. And I’m not saying this to calm you down: I’m saying it because I need you to know it. It was not your fault. And you don’t deserve to be miserable.”

He didn’t respond. 

“Could I have you try something?” He looked up and saw the chair but made no comment. 

Kendall Liu explained: “I want you to pretend that your father is sitting in this chair. And talk to him and tell him what you would say.” But she was nearly crushed by the grimace of pain and closed, watery eyes that contorted Gabe’s face. 

“No. I can’t.”

“You wanted to answer the phone, didn’t you?” She was pressing the issue. “And that’s alright. You want to have a relationship with your dad. And your dad wants to have a relationship with you.”

Her heart broke just imagining the tortured voice of Gabriel’s father leaving a message, “Hey Gabe, it’s your dad. (A sigh) I was just, uh, thinkin’ about ya tonight and (pausing to itch his nose to distract him from tears), well, I, uh, just wanted to tell ya I love ya and that I would really want to talk with ya sometime. Yaknow, ‘cause it’s been a while. I don’t want to shut ya out; you’re my son. I love ya, Gabe. I love ya, I love ya, I love ya.” 

“If you have nothing to say to your dad, then that’s fine. But if you do, wouldn’t you want to tell him?”

Eyes slowly opening, Gabe spotted the chair again through the blurred telescope of his vision. 

“Anything you want to say.”

And this is what Gabe said:

“Dad, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did. I can barely live with myself, knowing what happened was my fault. You and Mom losing your little boy and I didn’t…”

Dr. Liu was impressed with his emotion but knew there was something beneath it. She stepped back to allow him to be alone with his father and plain before himself. 

“Dad, I wanna see you again! I miss ya; I miss Mom! I miss those old times we used to have! I miss, god, all those fun times we had. All the laughing and the dinners and the games and the fun, with you and me and mom and Lyle! But that’s all I can see! All I can see is Lyle! When I think of ya, Dad, I think how much I’ve disappointed ya and I see Lyle. Every good thing that happens to me, any joy I get, I feel guilty about; I don’t deserve to be happy! Not after what I did! But I can’t live being this sad, this unhappy! God, I’m miserable. I’m at the lowest point; this is absolute zero. I’m like a cup that’s poured out; I’m empty, Dad. I’m empty. When I go to that sandwich shop and work all day, I hate it. I hate it but I think, ‘Lyle’s dead so you work in this dingy little shop.’ And when I can’t pay my bills, I wish I were dead. But that’s not fair to Lyle either!”

Wails of agony absorbed themselves into the soft upholstery. Gabe didn’t look at the clock, for he was fixed in a moment in time, at an intersection in St. Paul where the light had just turned green.

“I wanted to answer your call, I did! (He broke down again; he imagined delivering this soliloquy while crawling over the carpet of the family house, on hands and knees) I really did. I really wanted to answer your call. I wanted to come over and have spaghetti with you and Mom, and we could just laugh together and cry together and BE together again. But I can’t! I have to go to Lyle’s grave instead, because that’s where I belong! That’s where I belong!”

He fell out of his chair and lamented, slapping his clenched fist against the floor. With each heavy hammer smash, driving a nail into the cross, Gabe screamed through clenched teeth, “That’s! Where I! Belong!”