Meeting Point

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Imogene's ghost lives stubbornly on these walls: she's far gone — but everything she's left here is so irritatingly still. The slate shadows left by her bicycle tires, the positive affirmations preserved in vibrant felt-tip: "I am strong. I am enough. I am loved." And now, she's dead.

The apartment sings its lonely hymn. The living room reeks of wetness and fresh paint, winds slash against the windows in a vernal frenzy. I sit, unstirring, my little finger spinning in lukewarm coffee. "Oh, Gene." I murmur, and it feels brave to say it aloud.

I lean against the counter, my elbows pressing into the marble, and I rest my chin on my palms. A thought flits in my mind, quickly running through my nerves in a sprint: I never really loved Gene. Maybe that was wrong of me.

The kitchen stays silent, only stopping to let the chirp of crickets hum through the blinds. There are plates freckled with banana bread crumbs, china cups holding sunken tea bags, plants on the windowsill with their heads hung low. I grab an emptied out packet of microwave popcorn, wincing at the scrunch of foil, thinking about that one time we watched The Lion King in the dark.

I know I can't live here anymore — but I wish I could leave everything she touched exactly as it was, time-locked in an exhibit of how normal she always had been. The browned daisies on the mantle scream it — she's dead! And yet, I've spent this entire month waiting to hear the door hinges creak, followed by light footsteps, her favorite pair of spotty Converse against the floorboards. Gene slept to love songs played on low volume, danced her way to the breakfast bar every morning. I can remember the way she'd stretch my name out like a song — Li-lah! — and the way her eyebrows would cross when she'd dab at my lash-line with an eye pencil.

I hate that I don't feel the kind of grief that hurts. When Imogene's mother walked through our wonky door, shaky limbs and eyes outlined with sagging red skin, I didn't cry with her. When I accidentally turned on her computer and set my eyes on her wallpaper — a picture of a grinning dog enveloped in summer grass — I didn't feel my heart tighten in my chest.

I rake a hand through my hair before tying it up, and I try to string the memories out, one-by-one.

(Early last September, we're pulling our socks up over our ankles, intently watching our reflections in the standing mirror as we head out to our first freshman college party. That same night, walking back to our room in zig-zag lines, my laughter lodged somewhere between my chest and my throat. New Years Day, draping our living room in silvery tinsel, our feelings lost underneath a yelled countdown. Mid June, it's her birthday, and we're cooking five minute pasta and it feels nice to have a friend.)

I clench my jaw and look down at my feet, at that newly opened can of white paint.The landlady insisted I paint over the walls, but it feels like there's an invisible shackle, heavily dragging my wrists, that doesn't allow me to. How could I erase those two red lines on the section of wall between our bedroom doors, the ones we put there as we laughed about our difference in height?

"Man," I whisper to myself. "This is going to be so hard."

I don't understand why the brush feels so unusual in my hand.

The first week after the car accident, I'd stand still in my bedroom, shifting my weight from left to right to left to right, desperately trying to find some part of me that missed her. Gene was always supposed to leave, so my windows had always been carefully boarded up.

Maybe . . . I should be glad that there's no sobs rising up my throat, shudders fixed on my hands.

"I love you, Gene." I roll the words in my mouth. "Sure, I love you."

My eyes stare into empty space. "Sure, I loved you." I shake my head and raise the paint roller so it hovers over the wall.

(No, Gene, I never loved you. Because I knew you wouldn't stay.)

I start moving my hand up and down, in meticulous rhythm. She'll still exist behind a few layers of paint, won't she? That thought veils me like a shock blanket as I cover the walls in this dull grey.

When I reach the space above her bed, I pause. I put the roller down and search for the brush on the paneled floor. I carefully paint over some of the words before taking a step back: loved, strong, enough.

I smile as I look at what's left.

I am, I am, I am.

Up until this moment, it felt like Gene still existed somewhere, and Fate had carved us a meeting point — a small nook in the universe — where I'd see her again someday. But now I know she's never again going to sing Beyonce as she cracks eggs into a sizzling pan, hastily shove her arms into coat sleeves as she runs out the door, ring the doorbell twenty times before I get out of bed to answer. I feel a dizzy heart thump in my chest, steady but loud.

I can feel the empty cavity in this room where she's supposed to be standing. I bite my tongue and push my shoulders back, and then I raise my hand with the paint roller again.

"I don't feel like mourning, Gene." I say, as if maybe, she might hear me. But maybe being hugged tight with remorse as I painted her walls was mourning enough. And I thought of her all day, talked to her ghost on the walls before I wiped her out, and I left that silly apartment and let life move on.