"Why did you call me here tonight?" She asked when she entered.
"I needed you." I said, and I crossed the room, to take her hand. She didn't say anything, and we stared at each other for a few moments. I took off my shirt in front of her - and took her hand. I ran her fingers over my ribs... between them, really. I turned my back and allowed her to gently slide her fingers over the line of black and blue down the center. I turned to face her and held her hand, stroking her palm with my finger, and said, "I starve myself."
This mere fact was nothing - everyone knew it, and everyone saw it... but verbally admitting it to another person... it meant something. I was opening myself to her, and letting myself be vulnerable to whatever she would do.
She fell into my embrace and wept on my shoulder, as if it were the first time she heard the news... as if it were a shock. I cupped my hands around her belly, "I wanted to see you... Because today - I realized something when I was wishing my life away. So... that's why I called you."
"What did you realize?"
"I have a reason to try and get better..." I held her in my arms, "It's you - you and your baby... I need you. I want to be there for you... I want to be there when the baby is born, and I want to be here for you mentally... I just needed to see you, before the feeling subsided and I fell down again. I need something to look forward to day-to-day."
She slid her arms around me and I pulled her against my chest, a warm hug. When she pulled back she sat on the edge of the bed and I rubbed my hands in circles on her seven months. My mother gave me six siblings, and I was always interested in touching and listening to her tummy when she was pregnant. Something intrigued me about life before life, and it always seemed a bit unreal to me that inside of my Mom - and inside of Alexis right now - was another small person... and I was the same, once.
She lifted her shirt exposing her bare stomach to me. I stared and ran my fingers over her thoughtfully. Seven months ago my brother and Alexis created life growing right underneath my fingers. Six months ago my brother went to heaven.
"It's a boy..." She whispered.
"Zac would have wrapped you in gold, right now." I sighed. I leaned down over her, and pressed my ear to her stomach, as if searching for the second heartbeat.
"I hope he looks like him."
I planted a small kiss on her tummy, "What are you going to name him?"
She lifted my chin to her face and whispered, "Theodore... Theodore Zachary."
"Theodore?"
"It was among the names we had thought about." She said softly, "And... Zachary in remembrance of his father."
I lay down - my body hitting the sheets hard beside her. "You guys really thought about this, huh?"
She lay back on the bed beside me, pulling her shirt back down over her stomach. "I don't know... It was weird - He wanted to have a name for the baby as soon as possible."
I smiled. "Hey - you know... with your haircut you look more like a Jordan." She pointed out. "Jordie..."
"I do? Should I change my name?" I joked, "Saving face - who would think. Jordan T. Hanson... instead of J. Taylor Hanson."
"Jordie... Hmm..." She paused thoughtfully, "I've called you that before - I think I'm going to start again."
"Call Ike Clarke... he hates it."
"I would, too." She sympathized.
"Next time I call home, I'll say 'Hey Clarkey - How ya doin' Clarkey?'" We dissolved into giggles and Mike appeared in the doorway. He must have been through with physical therapy.
"Do I hear the shrill chipper sound of laughter coming from my roommate?" He asked as we rolled around on the bed at our Isaac joke. I hid my face in my pillow and giggled, and Alexis was at my side saying "Jordie, meet Clarkey. Jordie and Clarkey are coming into town! Jordie and Clarkey Hanson are on the telly!" We were lost in our laughter, and I couldn't even respond to Mike. "Heh... He's going to hate us." She said, when the laughter had finally died. I snickered softly, and looked up at Mike.
"Aw, man, you missed out... it was good fun, we made fun of my brother. This is Alexis, by the way. Al - that's Mike, he's my roommate."
They shook hands and I turned to Alexis, "Ike threw me into a door for calling him Clarke when we were little. That 'I ran into a door' shit was just cover up. I'm not really that stupid."
"Are you sure, Jord? I've seen you do more stupid things."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Like the time you got your foot caught in a cord and fell and split your pants..."
I blushed, "Oh...yeah."
She started cackling and faced Mike, "In front of 14,000 people! He... aaahaaaaaahaaaa..."
Mike and her giggled for a while and then she turned back to me, "Oh well, we can call Clarkey Clarke all we want because he can't do shit to us now. I have the baby and you'd probably break a bone." She was trying to make a joke, but no one laughed, not even herself. I fiddled with the folds in the sheets. "I'm sorry, that was a stupid comment."
"It's okay - it's true... and it's my own fault." I tried to smile it away, "No big deal."
Mike sat down in his bed and pulled out a book, and Alexis was looking serious now. She was on her side facing me. "Hey Taylor..." I turned my head back to her, "What are you going to do... I mean, when you guys start touring again. You're never going to make it through a show like that."
I sighed, "I'd collapse during the first song, I know. I won't be this way forever... We haven't even mixed the album - Ike's been writing like crazy, so we might not even be done recording. I've only written one song since Zac died... and I don't know when we'll get a chance to record and finish - never mind go on tour. What are we without a drummer?"
She sat up a little and shrugged, "I don't know... You could hire one... Zac taught me Hanson songs... I'm not exactly the best drummer... but... I could try..."
"Al, no - don't be stupid. You have school - the baby... A real career."
"Music is a real career."
"Not for you." I said, "It's critical that you focus on yourself and the baby before I let you come within ten miles of the music business... They'd eat you alive, and you don't deserve that." She sighed, softly and I lay back on the bed rubbing my fingers between my ribs anxiously. "Besides, how can I go back?"
"Back?"
"Back on stage... back in the world. How can I face it all again? Going to all of those cities again - remembering all of our times there. It's like ghosts - and emptiness - LA is empty... full of stupid memories on street corners - but dead. Everything died with him."
"It's too much." She seemed to agree. "You know - I have it all... in a box. All of his things. On our first date we saw 'Almost Famous' then walked on the shore. He told me he was going to make it his goal to do acid and appear on a rooftop screaming 'I am a GOLDEN GOD!' I still have the movie ticket - I don't know why I kept it. I must... I must have felt something special about it - naive at fifteen."
I turned and faced her, "It was special. He came home, you know, so happy that he kissed you goodnight. I remember that. I had an inkling who the love songs were for. You know Zac - he's not really that type of guy... So from the beginning we all knew, I think."
"I loved him so much." She wrapped her arm around me and cried softly. I stroked her hair.
"When you're with someone your entire life..." Our voices had become hushed, "And suddenly - They're gone. How... How do you deal with that?"
Tears were coming, and we were clinging desperately to each other, our pain taking hold. "How can I just go home - and wake up every single day, and not see him there. How can I just come to terms with the fact that he's just a memory now? He was my co-worker, my brother, my friend and... not everyone has a relationship like that with their family members... and... Ike... We're both... I don't know what to do." She cried hard against my chest. "I guess I'm used to it - not seeing him every day... but some days - I can't deal with the fact that I can stand in his bedroom doorway and look at how neatly folded his sheets are - for hours, and hours and no one will come in to ruffle them. Every single day... I saw him every day for eighteen years."
"You're very good at speaking about your feelings, Tay. I never told you what people said about your eulogy - I didn't know if you could deal with it at the time. People had to leave because they couldn't deal with listening. Everyone was so worried when you collapsed, Tay. You stopped looking people in the eye... How come you don't talk how you feel all of the time?"
I reached for my cigarettes and she pushed my hand away. "Don't. I don't want your second hand smoke."
"I'm sorry..." I shook my head and sat up with my head in my hands. "I'm sorry, I'm stupid." I turned so my back faced her, and looked at Mike, who was pretending to read his book, "I shouldn't have even thought about it in front of you."
She ran her fingers up my back and massaged my neck softly, "Jordan..." She hushed - using that name again, "Don't worry. One silly little cigarette wouldn't have harmed anything." Her fingers were splaying across my shoulder blade wings. "Why is your back bruised like this?"
"It's the anorexia..." I said softly. "If you poke me too hard I'll probably get a bruise."
She pulled her hands away, "I don't want to hurt you..."
"I don't feel it."
"Is that why you cut your hair?"
I turned to face her, my face was burning with embarrassment - but I didn't know why it embarrassed me so much, "I..."
She sensed my discomfort and began to stutter, "Well... you know... I was reading about anorexia in a magazine... and... it mentioned something about hair loss."
I looked down at the bed sheets and self-consciously rubbed my head. Everyone knows how much I used to love my hair, it felt like such a touchy subject. "I didn't want anyone to see that I was losing all of my hair - so I shaved it... My doctor says it'll grow back full again if I keep eating..."
"Keep eating, Tay. For me, all right? And... You'll be strong again - you'll have hair... and you'll be beautiful like you always were. Girls will be in your bedroom and perhaps you will find you Goddess, finally."
"My Goddess bleeds in a bathtub."
She paused and gathered her words, noticeably taken aback by my statement, "Would you have spent the rest of your life with her?"
Pause.
"Yes."
"I wish I could have met the girl who got under your skin."
"I wish you could have, too... I wish she could have seen the day I was healthy - instead of the days when she had to force feed me and watch me throw it up later." I sighed softly to myself, "She was holding me over - after she died I lost 30 pounds in three weeks." I was shaking my head, and turned away - I couldn't face her when I was feeling like this. "I wish I could have helped her when she was getting beaten... and I wish she didn't leave that way - that she could have come to push the nausea back... I was almost gaining weight again before she committed suicide. I weighed 120. By the time I came here I weighed 90."
I was speaking of things Alexis knew nothing of. "We couldn't help each other - what happened was inevitable. I was burning cigarettes on my thighs and she was doing cocaine." I held my hands to my lips once I was finished - I surprised myself at how much I had just admitted, openly.
She didn't say a word... but wrapped her arms around me and kissed the back of my neck. I turned my head and kissed her lips, "I don't think things are going back to how they were before. I can't picture fucking groupies after all of this."
That was the truth. I couldn't see myself pulling off my shirt and baring the word "FOREVER" to a perfect stranger... Then having to explain (or avoid explaining) where it came from. It felt like betrayal.
She must have glanced at the clock then. She shifted and mumbled, "It's late... Wow, I've been here for hours..."
"You should go."
I kissed her cheek and she slipped away from my room that evening. I sank into my sheets and squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about how I had kissed her, and how my lips tingled with longing. I would have kissed Mike right then... I would have kissed him had I not opened my eyes and saw him leaning over and retching. I watched him do it, and then I watched him push a take-out dinner dish filled with vomit under his bed. So this is what it's like? Hiding and secrets? It reminded me of a boy not too long ago who slid his cocaine under floor boards, and kept his pills in his boxer shorts.
He wiped his mouth and looked timidly at me, "You won't tell anyone, will you?"
I could see his hands shaking, and I was shaking too. "I promise. I won't tell anyone."
I closed my eyes and wished I could wipe that vision from behind them, and forget the longing that pulled at my heartstrings and tingled on my lips. I needed physical contact with someone else before I dropped my drawers and had sex with the sex-addict three doors down. It was odd, my mixed feelings of disgust and extreme physical yearning.
"Why'd she call you Jordie?" Mike asked me, and I noticed the color had flowed back into his face.
"Jordan's my name. My first name... Taylor's just my middle name."
"Jordan Taylor, eh?" He curled up in his sheets, "I learn something new every day."
I squirmed in my sheets and felt like I was actually going to cry if my heart kept aching like it was - if my stomach kept screaming its horrid emptiness at me - if every movement on the sheets kept irritating and bothering me into a lustful oblivion.
"Fuck." I finally sighed, sitting up. "I... need something, my body is in fucking spaz mode. I'm going to go get a snack."
Mike cringed, and I didn't offer him anything. I asked the woman who worked at the desk if I could get a snack from the cafeteria. She escorted me there, and I got a small bag of Fig Newton's, which I ate in front of her.
When I returned to my room I was half-expecting a girl to be sleeping in my bed keeping the sheets warm, but it was empty, and cold. I gave into my desires and touched myself after lights out, although much to my dismay I could hardly get it up. I did feel it grow hard in my hands, but when it did I felt my arms go limp and my body was cold. I stroked my half hardened dick the best I could before I soiled my sheets and fell asleep feeling like I was a big tub of Jell-O.
The next day they told me I could take the next step, and go home on weekends. I had moved up to 120 pounds. They patted me on the back and gave me a little hamburger magnet for my refrigerator at home - like that was supposed to be a comfort, like I wanted to remember my time at the mental institution.
I packed up my bags and gave Isaac my hamburger magnet when he picked me up that Saturday.
"What's this?"
"I don't know. I think it's supposed to encourage me to eat."
He raised his eyebrows, "Weird."