Everything He Left
As she watched the passing traffic, something allured Vanessa deeply about the thought of ending it all. Not in the way of Miles’ death but in the way her depressions crept in—by unspeakable forces conspiring to torment her. She pictures a black expanse with soft edges, a sort of canvas with which every person in her life felt abnormal. A Rothko but with different shades of black. As she comes closer to the painting a whirring sound in her head becomes louder. She tries to touch the painting, but wakes up before she can. The scene reminds of something she has experienced a hundred times before yet never seen in real life. Gasping for air she awakes to realize she has had the exact same dream two nights in a row.
A text message pings her phone before takes another step on the rubble sidewalk of East Greenlake. In the distance, she sees a man with a cowboy hat and boots. A tumbleweed passes by the man, and she feels in her soul the desert heat of a boomtown like the ones she read about in Arizona. The man puts his hand to his holster and tips his hat. Miles always had a fascination with cowboys and the old west. She feels the first drop of an impending rainstorm.
She would not make it much longer. During the day, she decided to go into Miles’ favorite bookstore without him. A man at the front desk peered over his book to meet her confused expression. They always looked like destressing people served no purpose in such a place of high society and literature.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“No,” she said, trying to look normal. The one or two times they had gotten drinks at the adjacent Spanish restaurant, Miles had always insisted to the waiter they get the best seat in the house (in the corner, next to the window). Even when she went with her family—who knew the owner— she couldn’t get the same seat. When they enjoyed the rare date, he would never allow anyone who recognized him to talk for too long even if it concerned music. He wanted to focus completely on her (or at least give the illusion). He may have felt too paranoid about one subject or the other and had to sneak off the bathroom to throw up.
Taking one foot off the curb now, she looked around. At the intersection of Greenlake boulevard and Los Gatos Canyon, she saw hot dog vendors peddling their carts up and down the street, men getting off the local metro stop, people parking their energy efficient vehicles. Deep breathes. Something takes over her arms now then her legs and they start walking towards the intersection. Sounds slowly start to fade out or become distorted beyond recognition.
A man yells at her from a distance but she couldn’t care less. Cars skid out of the way to avoid her. Her hair feels the rough pebbles of the pavement as her skull touches the cement. Floating by her eyeball, a long cigarette gets tossed in the wind as a car speed by her. Someone rushes out into the road. Her elbows have bruises just below where her tattoos lay.
“Lady… Can I help you?” the man yells before calming himself down. “Are you… a protester?” He had seen some stuff about stopping big oil by standing in the streets, but he can tell by her clothes she didn’t intend to step into traffic and lay down in front of a red light. “Call 9-11,” he mouths to someone back in her car. A young girl watches on as Vanessa remains on the warm pavement for another minute.
“I’m fine. Just let me rest,” she says. She looks down at her toes and wiggles them like a kid trying to test whether you can really move all of them at once. You can but it hurts a bit if you try too much. “My name is Vanessa,” she says. Her eyes start to roll back, and the man shakes her a bit. His screams go to mute in her head. The darkness has entered. “Vanessa, my name is Vanessa,” she says. A final breath escapes her lips as her fingers gently release onto the pavement. “I knew him once,” she whispers.
She found his body laying softly on the kitchen floor. The few months before his eventual passing, perhaps Vanessa sensed a shift but nothing major. The lifelessness artists suffer from had taken a toll on one of the greatest yet most nonchalant musical minds of all time. She had Narcan in the house and desperately tried to resuscitate him. She pounded his chest in a rush of feeling. Screaming at the top of her lungs she noticed nothing else in the kitchen which could possibly save him. Never having done CPR but watched enough films to understand the basic premise, she bent down and for the final time touched her lips to his and she blew air in his mouth.
Miles entered pure blank space after his death. In it, a piano with a small ash tray sitting atop it. Every so often an entity brings him cigarettes and booze as he wants. He looks down on his life, regretting not what had happened but the way it unfolded. All good things must end. Vanessa enters much the same but the two of them never meet. She sits in a far-off room with her family and drinks coffee. They discuss art and literature but never love. Miles’ spirits still sits on the porch of the house, overlooking Greenlake boulevard. The swing which they both spent hours swinging on smoking, rocks back and forth on the busy nights of young revelers. Music remains the only thing bringing both Vanessa and Miles together.
“Everything happens for a reason, Vanessa,” her mother would tell her as she cried into her arms. Saturday afternoons with her mother when they would go to a local art shop together—the last time she felt safe. She would peer up and the large wall of canvases and her mother would lift her up to pick out the exact one she needed on the day. They would also pick out watercolors, pastels, and all types of colored pencils. And as her mother tucked her into a car seat after leaving the store, she would peer over at the blank canvasses sitting next to her then fall into a deep restful sleep.
She continued to live at Miles’ house. The house felt like a shell of its former self– as if a part of it died with Miles’ late presence. The corners felt more shadowy, dusty. She could never look at anything too long without breaking down. It made her remember the faces of Miles’ crying relatives– who visited once or twice and vowed to never go back. Miles had a sense of purpose but not the right one. He liked making music and performing but couldn’t see any type of life outside it (like Dave had said). He couldn’t see himself enjoying any remotely commercial music. And he knew why. The grief therapist assigned to her did her a lot of good. He told her a new medication may help her feel less like a ghost.
She looked on life’s events as a casual observer and didn’t have the energy to do anything besides sleep all day. When she didn’t have any obligations—which she frequently didn’t—she would wrap herself in a blanket and walk around the house. She never responded to people asking her simple questions or asking her to go out. If she did go out, she only listened to music and just stare at people, haunting the same four Greenlake sidewalks she had all her life.
She already took a variety of things, which made her feel either too groggy or like a meth addict. She had seen the same therapist for almost all her life who would complement her on the immense progress she made through various diagnosis. The person who had always made her life better had officially run out of answers. Vanessa seriously wondered if she should voluntary commit herself.
After Miles, she continued to see the two therapists separately. Vanessa ultimately decided to give the pills one last try with her new guy. Both professionals convinced her she should enjoy the world more at the age of 25. Enjoy and experience the city which so longed to have her as an actual part of it again. She could reconnect with old friends without Miles. People wouldn’t stare at her and more importantly she could feel like herself going to the places she had kept from everyone (him included).
She had always dreamed of Europe. New York perhaps could suit her. She could visit anywhere really. She had many friends there who shared a similar sensibility to the finer artistic works, listened to her music and shared her lifestyle. Perhaps she could go back for graduate school or start her career as a model. Many of the best models she knew preferred to live in New York. Being anywhere near the house always transported her back to the day of his death. It took her a while to stop hyper fixating on the details of his undoing.
“Miles… Miles!” she screamed at the top of her lungs until her body suddenly gave out. Kneeling over his back, convulsive sobbing led her to eventually collapse on him. When the EMTs arrived, they had to sedate her. She had become so overwrought with her emotions she almost felt euphoric. In the corner of the kitchen, she cried almost to the point of blindness until suddenly her tears ran out. She looked up and for a moment before the sound of sirens took hold, a bird flew from a nearby powerline and landed on the deck. The next few months all she remembers involved staring at the blue paint of an old hospital room.
She talked to police, news reporters, and family for months but Dave started to fade out of their lives almost completely after the day of the incident. Dave, Miles’ agent had done everything he could to prevent a tragedy but not enough. Miles pushed himself too hard, but Dave’s dialogues certainly didn’t help. Miles could make the whole company millions before anyone even batted an eye. In another life, they could have worked well together.
He would watch her from afar and throughout the rest of her life Dave sacrificed his reputation to get her anything she wanted. She never noticed her complete obsession with Miles until now. She heard his music in everything. The best of his work hadn’t come yet. The best years of their life could have gone so beautifully. The next album would have set them up for life. His name forever in the minds of indie musicians around the world. After she passed, tourists would stop by the house and comment:
“Miles Lerner lived here with his wife Vanessa LaMore!” Some would know she more than him had lived there but it didn’t matter. They could both live on the in the lore of the neighborhood forever. She knew perhaps all of the thoughts had crossed Miles’ mind, but legend status didn’t faze him. While she wanted to keep everything together, he wanted to keep it separate. On the rare occasion her and Miles danced or drank together it felt like a dream. She could tell how much he lived for the moment. No substance could ever come between their passion for each other. So much so, many of their friends would remark how much they looked in love with each other at the bar. She hated the proposition and made sure to distance herself.
Today, she knows she did so to protect herself but if only she had told him more. No man in her life had ever filled the role she needed. Her attachment style would only lead to more heartbreak if she couldn’t change. Any sign in Miles she didn’t like always meant he had no good left in him. He couldn’t defend his actions, and she knew just as much.