The Rules of Inheritance (39 page)

DAVE HAS GONE BACK to San Francisco, but I continue to walk down to the 826LA space every day. There's constantly something to help out with, curtains to hang, bookshelves to hammer together. The walls are all painted. A globe hangs in one corner and there are neat cups of freshly sharpened pencils all over the room.

 

As the launch date approaches, I spend hours there, and am often the last to leave. Walking home each night, staring down at the yellow paint on my sneakers, I have this new feeling fluttering around inside me.

 

Something like satisfaction.

 

Maybe something like happiness.

 

Shortly before the official opening the executive director asks me to come on board as the volunteer coordinator, and I accept in a heartbeat. Even though we've hardly begun, I want nothing more than to be officially part of this organization.

 

That first Monday a few of us stand nervously at the windows, watching kids pile out of a school bus. We've been working hard to get the word out to parents and schools, and a local teacher has arranged for her high school essay class to drop by for the afternoon. The students glance suspiciously around the room, not sure what to expect, but one of the volunteers jumps in before they can backpedal.

 

Hey, guys, how about you grab a seat right here?

 

Slowly the kids fill the room, scattering the contents of their backpacks across the brand-new tables, grabbing pencils from the little cups we've so carefully stocked.

 

I end up at a table with three boys: two eleventh graders, Freddy and Ismael, and a shy, sweet ninth grader named Robert. Their essays are supposed to focus on teamwork, and I begin by asking them each to go around and read what they have out loud. They are here today to get help on their final drafts.

 

Before they start I fight back a breath of nervousness. I'm worried about what they're going to read and how I'll respond. I wonder if they're annoyed with me for asking them to read out loud and if any of them are going to volunteer or if I'll have to pick on one of them.

 

Suddenly Freddy shrugs his shoulders, leans forward, and begins reading aloud from a crumpled piece of paper. I am immediately captivated by his vivid description of the feeling of handcuffs encircling his wrists when he was fourteen and being arrested for beaming lasers at passing helicopters. When he finishes reading what he has so far, he explains that he plans to incorporate teamwork into the essay by recounting how he and his friends, by
not
working as a team, had failed to escape the LAPD.

 

We move on to Ismael after that. He's written about his grandfather in Mexico, known to have had “less than fourteen but more than eight” children. Ismael isn't quite sure how to bring teamwork into the essay, but after a thorough discussion between the four of us he comes to the realization that his grandfather had been the leader of the team that is his family. Robert, only fourteen but already a gifted writer, has finished his entire piece already, a story about getting trapped on a boat with his family on Lake Mead one summer, as a dangerous storm threatened to capsize their vessel.

 

We are all impressed with Robert's essay, especially by the way he so easily describes the teamwork required to keep all the family members afloat. After an hour the boys are grinning at one another, energized by all the new ideas they have come up with for their essays. We make plans to meet up often in the next few weeks to continue working together.

 

When I walk out of the center an hour later, I'm buzzing with happiness. I realize that for the first time since my father died, an entire afternoon went by in which I didn't feel sorry for myself.

 

In fact I didn't even think about myself.

 

Months and months later I'm sitting in my office at 826LA. The sounds of the afternoon tutoring session echo in the hallway and I pause, looking up from my computer. I glance at the walls around me, at the walls I painted all that time ago with Dave Eggers, and I realize that he did have an answer for me after all.

In a strange way, as we move through grief, healing brings us closer to the person we loved. A new relationship begins. We learn to live with the loved one we lost.

2007, I'M TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD.

I
'M ON MY WAY to my 7:00 p.m. psychopharmacology class when the accident happens. I've been cruising down Sepulveda, my body still warm and relaxed from the yoga class I just left. I'm listening to Peter Bjorn and John, thinking about how I'm going to see them at the Roxy tomorrow night.

 

I glance down for just a moment, at my phone or at the little illuminated buttons on the stereo, maybe both, but when I look back up the car in front of me isn't moving anymore.

 

I'm going too fast to stop. Even as I slam on the brakes, my car makes impact.

 

My books and bags fly off the passenger seat.
Thwack, thwack, thwack.
The hood of my car crumples. My head snaps forward and then back.

 

Everything comes to a halt. I quickly turn off the stereo.

 

I give myself a once-over to make sure that I still have all my limbs, and then I ease my foot tentatively onto the accelerator, following the other car into the parking lot of a nearby gas station.

 

The other driver is a woman, and we get out of our cars at the same time. Her car looks relatively fine. It's mine that illustrates the intensity of the impact. The hood has crunched up toward the windshield and a tiny tendril of smoke sifts upward into the night sky. I try to smile as the woman approaches, but my breath is already quick and shallow. There is a lump at the back of my throat and I feel the prick of tears welling up.

 

Breathe, Claire. You can do this. Don't cry yet. Please don't cry yet. You can do this.

 

We begin to exchange information, and she takes a long time filling hers out, searching for her insurance card, huddling over in the car seat, scribbling down various numbers and information.

 

Leave, leave, please just leave so I can sob in peace. I chant this in my head over and over while she writes.

 

She finally hands me a piece of paper, and I give her one in return.

 

Will you be okay? Do you want me to stay? She looks concerned for me.

 

No, no, I'm fine, really. Thank you.

 

I sink back into my car, pull the door closed, and let out a sob. I hold my phone in my hand, my thumb ready to depress any button.

 

And it all comes crashing down. It swells up and crashes down like a tsunami.

 

What the fuck am I doing any of this for? What is the point of all of this?

 

All day I'd been a little sad, could feel the weight of things slightly pressing down, and all day I'd been fighting it. It's okay, Claire, I whispered in my head all day. It's okay. You can do this. You're already doing it. It's working. You're changing. You're getting better.

 

All day I told myself these things, held my head high, took calm, even breaths.

 

But suddenly, sitting here in the car, phone in my hand, it all comes crashing down. This thing that I'm fighting every day, all the time.

 

In this moment, twenty-eight years old on a cool Los Angeles night, my thumb is ready to press a button, the button that will connect me to that person, the person you call when something like this happens.

 

Except I don't have that person anymore. They're all gone.

 

I'm nobody's most important person, and I don't have a most important person. The tears are streaming down my cheeks now.

 

This is it. This is the thing of it.

 

The thing that leads me to those moments when every part of me is screaming.

 

I'm nobody's most important person.

 

Ryan and I have been broken up for months now, and it wasn't long after he moved out that I realized I'd lost a vital connection. I'd lost that unconditional attachment. The one person you call when something like this happens.

 

I fight this all day. It's okay, I tell myself. It's okay to feel alone, to feel unattached. It's okay to want to attach to someone. It's okay to want to be loved. It doesn't make me a bad person. It's okay.

 

Except, it's not okay.

 

I hate myself.

 

In these moments I hate myself so much. I can't think of one person I know who is no one's special person. I can't think of one friend of mine who isn't a daughter or a sister or a wife or a girlfriend. I can't think of one person who wouldn't have that most important person to call if they got in a car accident, or if they found out that they had cancer or that they won the lottery.

 

I feel like there's something wrong with me because I'm no one's special person.

 

Like I'm damaged.

 

Like I'm not worthy of being someone's most important person.

 

After a while my sobs subside and I call my friend Timbre. She arrives within fifteen minutes. A big hug. I don't even have to tell her why I'm so upset. She knows. And she is wonderful, so loving. She handles the tow-truck guy, makes decisions, even gives me her husband's car so I can make it to class to hand in a paper on time.

 

Anything, sweetie, she says. Anything you need.

 

I cry again on my way to school in her husband's car, feeling so grateful.

 

I know I'm going to get through this, that I won't always be alone, that I will one day be someone's most important person.

 

I know that the work I'm doing right now will make me all the more important.

ON MY WAY HOME from school in Timbre's husband's car I try to tamp down the emotions swelling in me.

 

I don't want to go home. I want to keep driving. Anywhere. Up the coast. Harder, harder, harder—I want to press the accelerator as hard as I can. I can imagine the dark, winding curves of the Pacific Coast Highway. Mountains crashing upward out of the earth on one side of me. The roiling, churning sea on the other. Moonlight glinting in the cresting waves.

 

Instead I walk up the stairs to my apartment, pick up a package from Amazon that's on the deck, turn the key, calmly open the door, greet the cats, prop my yoga bag up against the door, put my purse on a stool under the kitchen counter, and open a piece of mail.

 

I walk into the kitchen then, clicking on the light as I enter. I look at a bottle of wine up on a shelf. I imagine removing the cork and just pouring the whole bottle down my throat, can picture the crimson stains, pretty and fading against my skin. Drinking, drinking, filling. I imagine biting down on the glass, consuming the whole bottle, literally eating, crunching, the glass.

 

I haven't had a drink in thirty-one days.

 

I lean against the counter, both hands down, cool against the tile. I am screaming inside. I want to drink, to die, to run away.

 

I can't do this.

 

I can't make it through this.

 

Breathe, breathe, breathe—yes you can.

 

My eyes roam the apartment. I need to find something to do before I cave and open that wine bottle. In the bathroom I turn on the shower, run it hot, hotter. I peel off my clothes and step into the steaming, scalding, water.

 

I'm fucked. I'm fucked. I'm fucked.

 

I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

 

I turn the shower head off and the tub faucet on, and I let the water fill up and I crawl beneath it, twisting and turning as though the water is a blanket and I am trying to cover myself. I'm pushing hard against the walls of the tub, my arms taut and straight, and I am crying, except I'm not because there are no tears, only breathlessness and an inward wail.

 

I wrap my arms around myself. I can do this. I can do this. It doesn't matter if I'm fucked.