ix.
wisdom
If asked later on, I could never quite explain what possessed me to return to church the following Sunday.
I hadn't wanted to. Walking back to that old, white-washed church had been the last place I'd wanted to revisit, but something inside me had been unable to remain complacent staying within the depths of my dirty sheets and mattress that morning. The conversation I'd had with the old man last week had haunted me throughout every day that followed, and I couldn't seem to stop replaying every word he had said to me. I ran through the event at the wooden bench outside the church for hours on end, unable to escape the way that old man had seemed to know every single inner working of my mind.
I didn't even understand my own mind. How could he dig inside it so easily, when he was – and always would be – a complete stranger to me?
The weather was less gloomy than the previous Sunday, with a brighter sun and only a few streaks of cream-colored clouds spread across the pale blue sky. There was an annoying number of sparrows flitting about through the budding branches above me, their normally faint whistling now piercing loudly against my eardrums. The effects of Saturday morning's hangover were still affecting me a full 24 hours later, and every sound seemed to be magnified inside my skull by several decibels.
For the life of me, I could not convince myself to turn around on the sidewalk and return the way I had come. My mud-streaked sneakers were determinately pointed towards the direction of the church as I trudged my way down the busy street, despite how desperate the rest of my body was to return home and curl into a ball of nothing in my bed.
Nothing mattered to me anymore, anyway. If the tiniest sliver of me wanted answers for what had happened last Sunday, then I had nothing better to do than to revisit the place where it had first begun.
The old man was seated at the exact same bench where I had left him a week ago. He was leaned back against the weathered wood of the seat, peaceful and unmoving as I approached. I could hear a voice from within the church behind him, deep and strong and commanding as it echoed against the bare walls. Mass was well under way, and it seemed the pastor was already beginning his sermon. Yet the old man was outside, an empty space beside him on the bench, as though he hadn't come here for the church service at all.
I suppose I hadn't quite returned for the service itself, either.
He only glanced upwards when I was less than two feet from the edge of the bench. His thin lips split into a grin, revealing grey rows of intermittently cracked teeth. My feet were planted firmly at the very edge of the sidewalk, blades of the grass that separated the concrete from the bench brushing against the toes of my shoes.
"Well, look who decided to show up," the man said. "You're late."
I fixed him with a harsh glare, but the usual anger that broiled inside my stomach whenever someone spoke to me that way was absent, at least for the moment. With arms that were firmly crossed over my chest, I told him stiffly, "I only came back to ask you a question."
"Just one? I'm disappointed, mate."
The sound of the church's organ resonated out through the stained glass windows, a sweet yet haunting note that made the old man's eyes drift shut for half a second. When he reopened them, I was still standing firmly in the sidewalk, and he raised one eyebrow that was made up of thin strands of fine white hair. "Sit down, would you? Those legs won't be young forever."
My eyes rolled without my permission, and I tried to disguise my reaction by sitting down against the wooden boards of the bench – but the old man let out a rusted chuckle, and it was clear he had seen. The bench creaked beneath me as I sat, as though the seat was already exhausted from holding the weight of both myself and the old man.
"I wanted to ask you," I began slowly, staring fixatedly at the road before us, "why you know so much about me."
I expected him, to laugh, but the sound didn't come. Instead, the old man responded evenly, "Of course I know about you. We met yesterday, don't you remember?"
Twisting in the bench, I met his grinning expression with a hard glare. "This isn't a joke. Why do you act like you know me?"
"The question you should be asking, mate," he sighed heavily, "is why don't you know yourself?"
He had pointed at me when he'd said it, jabbing a stubby forefinger twice at my chest. I didn't lean away to escape the close proximity of his hand, but my eyes narrowed at the gesture. "What are you talking about?" I asked hotly, doing everything I could not to get angry so early in the conversation. I couldn't storm away again, because I needed an answer.
"I'm saying," the old man began, "you're pretty fucked up. Now, don't get your knickers in a twist. Hear this old man out, yeah?"
I slouched in the bench and crossed my arms, so tightly that my biceps dug painfully into my chest. The man was turned slightly in his seat to face me, while I was pointedly positioning myself to face straight ahead. I wasn't going to interrupt him as he lectured me, but I certainly wasn't going to enjoy it. He hadn't even answered my question.
"Want to know what your problem is?" he asked. It was clear the old man wasn't searching for an answer, as he continued straight on without pausing. "You're not focused on the now. You get me? When I saw you sitting in the back pew last Sunday, I knew something was off. It wasn't just that you were hungover. There was something missing when I looked at you.
"Even now, there's still something broken about you, mate." He was watching me, and I could feel the burn of his gaze against the left of my cheek. I couldn't bring myself to turn my head, and even though my eyes remained fixed upon the traffic-lined street, I was suddenly hanging onto his every word as though everything depended on it. "Look at yourself. No one has that look in their eyes and lasts more than a month without offing themselves. Do you hear what I'm saying? You've got to pull yourself together."
The rush of anger didn't come. I expected the ticking bomb in my gut to leak explosives, to burst in a hurricane of raw fury and flailing fists. This time, there wasn't anger. Cold liquid flooded through the hollows and curves of my veins, and I only felt sadness. It was the kind of sad that made my bones ache, the kind that clung to my ribcage and squeezed and darkened the back of my throat.
It was inexplicable. I hadn't felt this haunted sadness when Ana had died, or even when I had stood beside her headstone as her casket was lowered six feet deep into the ground. With a hollowness in my chest and a lump in my throat, I felt a warm wetness trace a line down my right cheekbone.
"You don't understand," I half-whispered. My voice had warped, and the bold, harsh tone from earlier was completely dissipated into a soft hush. I couldn't control the broken note in my voice. "You don't know what I did. I did something really, really bad. It was all my fault."
"And that's your problem right there. You're dwelling."
The old man's words seemed to have completely separated from his lips. I couldn't be sure if his voice was still connected to his body seated beside me on the weathered, wooden oak bench.
I watched the blurry shape of a black Chevy truck in the street before me, as it passed a gleaming motorcycle. My heart was in my throat and it felt as though I was choking. I fixed my gaze on the street and blurted out the words I had never been able to say before.
"I killed someone. I – I killed my best friend. I was drunk driving, and – "
"And guess what? Your friend wouldn't want you falling apart over it." The old man had spoken immediately, as though the news of what I had done hadn't surprised him in the slightest. "Take it from my experience, mate. The dead don't give a shit."
My fingers were trembling. I clenched my hands into fists, the tips of my fingernails digging into the skin of my palms and dragging me headfirst into the present. I shook my head, my eyes welling with tears and the vision of the street beginning to completely blur before me. "But I can't stop thinking about it. I never should have – "
"Shut up, mate. Just shut up. I'm trying to help you, but you've got to help yourself. It was your fault she died, yeah. If you hadn't been a bloody idiot, it wouldn't have happened, yeah. I get it, and you get it. It's time to move on."
I didn't pause to wonder how he had known my best friend had been a 'she'. I couldn't think anymore. The sound of the church's organ player was leaking through the stained glass windows into the atmosphere outside, and the low notes washed over the back of my head and traced warm lines down to the base of my spine. My cheeks were wet. The lump in my throat burned. How could I possibly move on?
"Listen, the service is almost over. I've got places to be. But take my advice, mate, because I know a thing or two. Don't look so sad. Take a look around you once in a while and forget about all the shit you did. I'm telling you, mate. Live in the now."
I inhaled shakily, sucking in a deep breath of crisp morning air, to cool the burn in the back of my throat. Reaching upwards with hands that still shook slightly, I wiped under both eyes with the torn sleeves of my sweatshirt.
When I turned to look, with reddened and swollen eyes, the old man was gone.
I stared at the empty seat, eyes fixed upon the empty space of bench where he had just been sitting. Autumn leaves rustled beneath the slats of wood, flashing cool red and yellow colors underneath the brown. Behind me, the doors of the church opened. People flooded outside, chatting loudly about the pleasant weather.
I didn't rise from the bench. I sat and watched the bustling cars and thought. I let my head swim with the colors of what the old man had told me, and I wondered if the old man had even been real.