More Happy Than Not

I close my eyes and count to sixty, zoning everything out like Thomas taught me to do. I reopen my eyes, turn my back on Leteo, and walk home. I owe my mom and brother an apology.

11

MY UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY

Ever since my first birthday, my mom has written me a letter recording my greatest hits of each year. She leaves the letters in my baby album. She even attaches newspaper clippings so I know what was current.

I caught up on all of them on my twelfth birthday. I wasn’t surprised that the first letter was pretty uneventful, aside from me spitting up on my mother’s graduation gown as she accepted her diploma. Before my second birthday, I walked for the first time when my father came home after being gone for a week—which I learned later was because he got kicked out after assaulting my mom in the street. In the fifth letter, I learned I was once obsessed with collecting key chains. A drawing paper clipped to the eighth letter showed me holding my mom’s hand.

These letters are a map of my life. They bring into focus years that are hazy to me. It hurts to admit it, but there were things in those letters that feel like Mom was taking a shot at me. Why did she write down that I was obsessed with singing songs from girl pop stars? Or how when she took Eric and me shopping for toys at CVS, I didn’t let him bully me into buying a blue Power Ranger because I wanted to play with a Jean Grey action figure? I feel like it was her coded way of saying, “This is when I knew about you.”

I think liking Brendan was the first time I knew. Sure, singing girl songs was a tip-off too, I guess, but that’s when it all clicked that maybe I wasn’t who everyone would like me to be. It’s funny the way that ran full circle. A couple years ago, I threw away old magazines my mother left sitting in the bathroom, but not before I ripped out pages of hot cologne models and stashed all of them inside an old binder for whenever I had urges. But I got rid of all that before the procedure.

I haven’t gotten around to apologizing to Eric or my mom yet, but I will. They were relieved enough the other night when I said I didn’t want the procedure anymore. A cloud over our tiny home had lifted. I went straight to bed.

So now I’m acting like this Leteo episode never happened. Eric has agreed to play Avengers vs. Street Fighters with me. When Mom gave me the game this morning, I didn’t comment on the scratches on the disc. I don’t deserve a mom who works too many hours a week so she can afford our outrageous rent, keep food on the table, and even make sure she has something to give her boys on their birthdays. I lose to Eric because I chose Captain America instead of Black Widow, not trying to draw attention to my growing desire to tell him Side A and be done with it.

Before I leave, I go into Mom’s room to thank her again. There are some bills fanned out next to her and on her lap is my baby album. We have a birthday ritual where we look through it together, but maybe she realized the last thing I want to do is reflect on the old days. I see a photo of myself as a five-year-old holding a figurine of Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

“First love, right?”

Mom strokes the picture as if she can twirl my old curls. “You carried her everywhere.”

“I remember telling everyone she was my girlfriend.” I remember believing it too.

“Until you broke up with her for the pink Power Ranger.” Mom half smiles. “Tale as old as time.”

She flips through the album and this reel of my life is lost to me. There are pictures of me on my father’s shoulders when he was still Dad; one of me taking a bath with Eric when we were kids; another one where I’m wrapped in a towel, lying across his lap. Another, another, another, another, and in all these photos is something hard to find now: smiles. “I’m going to go run out for a bit.” She looks up at my face and I know she’s studying my bruises, yellowed but almost healed. Sometimes I look out the window to try and catch Brendan chilling, thinking maybe I can run downstairs and snuff him. “I’ll be fine.”

“How’s Genevieve?”

“Happy,” I lie, and it’s a lie because you can’t be happy with someone who can’t love you back.

“Are you meeting up with her today?”

“Nope,” I say. She hasn’t even called or texted me.

“Going to go see Thomas?”

That one stabs me hard. I haven’t heard from him either. “I’m linking up with Collin.”

She holds my hand and nods. “Okay, my son. Go have fun. Be safe.” She dismisses me but doesn’t release her grip on me, not for a while, and when she does, she holds on to the baby book the way someone would hold on to the edge of a cliff, feet dangling.

I think Collin has legit forgotten it’s my birthday. But maybe it’s because he’s been really stressed lately. Nicole is demanding more attention from him since he’s been spending his free time with me behind her back. His other complaints are small, like how she’s craving ice cubes. The crunching bothers him.

Screw all his bitching because it’s his fault she’s pregnant—okay, our fault for being cowards—but he’s 100 percent to blame for letting her fall in love with him. I never really understood why he “liked” Nicole, and you can argue that I’m looking at her with the wrong lenses, but I know she’s the type of thoughtful girl who will wish you happy birthday every hour of the day and get you presents you never realized you wanted. I can’t pretend Collin is the only guilty one—I’m not an asshole, too. I let Genevieve fall in love with me. But that means Thomas is also an asshole because he let me fall . . . Yeah, he definitely let me fall and couldn’t bother to pick me up.

&nbs

p; But I have Collin. I never admitted loving him to his face, not even to fill these holes of loneliness. When he tells me to follow him, I’m expecting a surprise, but instead we end up at our spot behind the fence. We have sex quickly, and he heads off to work without wishing me a happy birthday, just a pat on the back after he pulled up his pants from around his ankles.

I go the long route so I can walk past Thomas’s building in the hopes of seeing him outside or staring out of his window. Yeah, there’s the risk of seeing him holding hands with Genevieve as they go upstairs and probably have sex so he can feel straight. But I’ve been through that pain before with Collin, and I just want to see him for at least a moment.

I spot Skinny-Dave across the street and when he sees me, he stays underneath the traffic light even though it’s signaling for him to cross. He knows better now that Me-Crazy isn’t around.

Maintenance has finally boarded the lobby door with plywood. I check the mail. There are two birthday cards from my eighty-year-old aunt with dementia; I’m not as surprised that she sent two cards as I am that she remembered my birthday at all. I walk down to the elevator and—just like he surprised me the day Me-Crazy almost killed me—Thomas is there.

He’s leaning against the wall and I want to smile, but I don’t because he isn’t.