marilyn [h.s.]

chapter twenty-seven

Things happen.

Niall ends up with scratches along his wrists, threading red with the blue veins, crawling up to his elbow. No one asks, he doesn't answer – if anything, they understand how you can want to feel alive and hurt (because death takes that away too, even the pain, and they hadn't realized, they had never really thought about it, to be honest).

Liam gets less responsible. He drinks, sometimes, he goes to some sleazy pub and he drinks with stained conversations ringing through his head. But he's always known how to smile and say the right thing. He smiles. The right thing is never right, but it's never wrong either. They expected him to be strong, so he is. He tells his boss that they he doesn't want questions about it- none of them do, because they all know how they handle that, the garish radio presenters with their sorry little grimaces and they're not real persons, they talk about death like it's something that stings a little, a papercut or a fading bruise, and it's not. It hurts a goddamn lot, but Liam Payne was always going to be strong, so no one really knows the difference. No one was really afraid for him.

Zayn smokes twenty cigarettes a day. It's death two times in a row for him – one of them nice and tidy, a funeral with closed casket and flowers and cake at the reception, and the other one raw, messy and brash with fire and blood and screaming. Of course he's choking on it. Of course he's goddamn wrecked – who wouldn't be? Zayn doesn't give up smoking but gradually (it doesn't happen in a day but in ten, twenty, months) he gets the shock to wear off his system. He learns how to draw again and sometimes he even catches Marilyn saying over his shoulder, "That's so pretty... like the stars..."

Louis never quite gets around to sympathy. They stop asking him to, deal with their own wounds. Sometimes Liam will curl up against his ribs and listen to him breathe – and he'll pretend that they're the same, and he'll fall asleep to the regularity of his breathing (it's a bit ironic, when you think about it – if they were alike, he would never breathe like that, long breaths, always the same length). Louis doesn't sleep. Purple circles spread around his eyes, and sometimes when they're waken up by nightmares one of the boys find him standing in front of a window, like a guardian. And maybe that's the problem- Louis was the guardian, he was the rock. And he failed.

And they're all damaged, and they don't get back together like they used to, don't slot back together effortlessly because you can't do that, you just can't. It doesn't happen.

But things happen.

Two days after August 5th they go to the hospital where Gemma is waiting to pick up Devon. Gemma isn't the same either; she's tired, she's worn, and she doesn't look the same, but she smiles and coos at Devon and Liam understands that, because when you've got someone else to take care of the only option is to be brave, be strong—always strong. She slips wordlessly through their fingers, pointing to room 33 and murmuring, "Don't talk about it."

But they do.

They slip into the white sterilized room and smell the rubbing alcohol and realize that they don't really know why Harry is here, but of course they do- the red phone, emergency button, the nurse's nametag that reads Suicide Watch, brightly painted walls all scream it's going to be fine, which is a lie but they accept it because that's all you do after someone dies, you lie. Harry is just a shadow lying on the bed, and he doesn't say much, but he looks at them, and you can sort of speak at him when you see it. He wears a white hospital gown and he clutches the necklace in his hands like a rosary, like he prays to it, like it can save him.

They all know it can't.

They never find out what happened exactly. Maybe they don't want to. Everyone else seems to think that Norma was the one who ended it, that she was the one who had finally cracked and that she had killed herself. But, they knew her. They all knew her, and not like Arthur or Bobby or Granson claimed to know her. They knew her, they understood her, they loved her, and they knew that she wouldn't have done that. She was too strong. Yet, for Harry's sake, they never spoke about it. They simply let it be.

Things happen.

Devon is the only one who doesn't really understand, but at the same time, he kind of understands more than any of them do, which is pretty whacked if you asked Niall. He's sitting on the living room in his apartment when he starts to sob after Devon pulls out the red firetruck. And then the boy- the small, six year old boy- comes over to Niall and holds him as he swears like a man with a nosebleed being lowered into a shark tank, whispering and shouting over and over again, "Why'd she have to go, Devon? Why'd she have to die?" And Devon doesn't say anything for a while, just rocks back and forth with Niall in his arms and waits for him to calm down before he whispers, "When you go to a garden, which flowers do you pick?" Niall stares at him through bleary eyes and sniffs, wiping away a tear. "The most beautiful ones."

Devon nods, not saying anything more.

The day Harry gets home, they're all there- they've been there for 10 days, off and on, knowing life has to start again but not wanting it to, because now all they've got is each other. Harry gets two feet into the door and sighs, looking around. No one speaks. He clasps the necklace and presses it to his lips before running a hand over the wall by the door, the coat hanger where her pink Chanel coat hung, the mirror where she checked her hair, the mat where one of her ratty old fuzzy slippers still lay, cascaded, the other one having been captured by Melvin. "She's still here," he says softly. "Sort of."

And she is.

So life goes on.

Eventually they talk about it, and it makes it seem a little bit better, because when you talk about it, it doesn't seem so bad. You can snip edges and trim ugly corners and you begin to see the beauty of it- the harsh, ugly, beautiful. Niall remembers Marilyn telling him about that (because Marilyn was more than the media made her out to be, she was smart and funny and intelligent). "There's a French saying for that," her voice echoed in his dreams. "Jolie laide. It means the beautifully ugly. I like that."And at the time Niall had probably asked something stupid like, "Why in God's good name do you know French?" but looking back on it now he always says, "Tu est jolie laide," which means 'you are beautifully ugly.' 

And so things happen.

It doesn't ever get better, but it goes on, and there's Liam holding Harry, and there's Louis slipping into the shower, wordless, and coming out looking clean, and there's the blood recessing, and the nightmares recessing too like waves on a moonlit night, sometimes coming back but never staying for long. There's Niall not shaking as much when he meets another client with blond hair and red lips, and Zayn painting pretty pictures with Marilyn behind him, a silent shadow. There's Liam – their voice – saying, "We're like brothers" one day and them believing it for the first time in months. There's Gemma making mashed potatoes with her tears and Devon playing with the red firetruck and Melvin whining and giving everyone sloppy kisses and so it doesn't really get better, but it goes on, and one learns to pick up the fragmented pieces and build a fortress that can never be shaken.

It's like that, grief – it happens, and it leaves scars, but eventually you forget.

And maybe you don't always forget, maybe you like to tell yourself you do, and maybe you do forget some things, the small things, like the way Marilyn's lip curled up when she really laughed, or the way her fingers were always curled or how her hair smelled like lavender and she always wore Chanel No. 5  perfume. So you don't forget, not really. But you forget the small things and the bad things and you're only left with the good.

It's like that, grief – it happens, and it leaves scars, but eventually you forget.