515 W Oakdale | CREATIVE WRITING
Cecilia died last night. Doped up on some kind of morphine, while her kids sat and watched her suffer, she passed away. Fifty three—too young for her to have “had a good life,” too old for a “tragedy,” we label it unfair. Sometimes the English language fails to suit our needs.
Ana was there, in the room. She’s nineteen. I wonder if she held her hand, if she cried. If Andres was there too, and if Gary could bear to watch. What room she was in, and if it was light outside. Did she get to say goodbye, was she herself? Did she wear her scarf?
I met Ana when I was 11. She showed up to field hockey pre-season in a tight fitting Abercrombie shirt and booty shorts, strutting around that field in her full-blown b-cup, while the rest of us tried not to kill ourselves with our $25 wooden sticks. Ana was the goddess of the sixth grade. She made out with Charlie Bomier in the library and there was tongue. It was a scandal.
And we became friends. And I met her family. And I love/d them.
When I think of the name Cecilia, I remember when Ana and I came home to the parentals doing an A cappella rendition of the Simon and Garfunkel song. Our parents weren’t friends; they were momentarily united. By Cecilia. It became our anthem.
She wasn’t saccharine, or one of those people you are in complete awe of. She was kind, and interested: genuine and sweet, with hidden talents and an endearing sense of disorganization. She used to make us pancakes.
Gary inspired and scared me simultaneously. He was the last of a dying breed: a diehard print journalist who made me believe that there was hope for the future of journalism, and he was an all around tough person. He used to lecture us at the breakfast table. He used to track down escaped convicts for his articles. When I asked how Gary was doing, the answer was broken.
I guess I don’t believe in marriage, or I didn’t anyway. All of my friends’ parents are divorced, some of them twice, with Dads who run off to foreign countries and never return from their midlife crisis. We are the band of “broken home” misfits, the ones who lost our faith before we were supposed to.
But they made me believe, because they were so perfectly imperfect. Their marriage was like their home: not the one you idealize, but the one you want. Lived in, beautiful, filled with pictures, and mementos, used furniture and soft lighting, a creaky staircase and a small porch, with a cat that bolts out the door and a brother whose growing up to be a little shit but we know he’ll straighten out, an inability to get anywhere on time, and a pulling desire to stay and leave simultaneously, located just outside Clark St. where the gay pride parade passes every year and we marvel in the color, braveness, and light of something we don’t understand.
And I felt safe there, because it was everything I wanted. The Cuban flag on the wall, and the pride that came along with it. The worn breakfast table, and the parents that always wanted to know how your day was, to inform you about what was going on in the world. The brother who you loved, and made dress up. Being the center of our grade, living close to school. The homemade lemonade in the fridge and the fight for the last popsicle. The feeling of a home, not just a house.
I once told Ana she didn’t understand familial problems. We had just come out of Century movie theater, two blocks from her house, and she was ranting about how she didn’t like the movie and I told her to fuck off because she didn’t understand it and there was a third person with us who was just uncomfortable and it all went silent and we never spoke about it again.
Cecilia was diagnosed with breast cancer two years later.
Ana didn’t tell me for six months.
And I didn’t see it. I didn’t notice Cecilia’s head scarf, or tiredness. Gary’s passion dwindling, or Andres going off the deep end. Ana’s receding social interactions, or change of attitude. I was too busy looking for safety in a dream.
