I Have Some Questions For You

by Rebecca Makkai

I knew Jorge Cardenas didn’t let himself drink when he was sad, because that was how alcoholism started, and he didn’t want to be like his father.

I cared about details. Not because they were something I could control, but because they were something I could own. And there was so little that was mine.

My brother, Ace, died two and a half years before I started Granby. On campus, I’d mark certain spots on certain days (his birthday, the anniversary of his death, the day I wanted him to know the Pacers won the division title) by peeling off a swath of tree bark or stepping a stone hard into dirt—leaving some mark that would be there later. I’d check it weeks or months on. Sometimes I’d carve his initials, but more often I’d just slightly alter the world.

You’re so much better off with me out of the way, she wrote on one of them.

“You know, I always knew you were going to be okay.” I felt like crying—out of bitterness? out of tenderness?—because if that was true, he was the only one who’d ever thought so. I certainly hadn’t thought it myself. He said, “You were always going to be just fine.”

“You know what’s weird,” I said, “is the memories don’t dim. I have fewer memories. But the strong ones don’t go anywhere.”

You said, “I’m talking about more important things. Directing. Writing. Aren’t you into film? I don’t think you’re destined to be a backstage girl. I think you’ll wind up in charge of it all.” I can look back and see how that might have made a certain kind of kid fall in love with you. But I got something completely different from it. A new vision of myself, for one. A sense of possibility. Ultimately, a career.

One loss wasn’t worse than the other, but it was the second that did us in.

The one where the men finally told about the priests, decades later, and everyone lauded their bravery. The one where the women came forward after five years, and everyone asked why they hadn’t spoken sooner.

She said, “You’d think if she was all that troubled, she’d have told the producer.” It was the one where fifteen women accusing the same man of the same thing was too much of a coincidence; they must have coordinated their stories.

How many times did I have to learn the same lesson? You’re not special. And that’s okay.

A room is never drunker than when you’re the sober person.

As my eyes stopped watering, as my face went numb, I settled, with a singular fury, on you. You were the older man giving her trouble. You had keys to everything. You had the protection of being preppy and white and respected. Who the fuck moves to Bulgaria?

“Life isn’t that messy if you stay away from mess.”

On my way back to the car, every person I passed emanated waves of grief. Every person was someone’s uncle or niece or babysitter sitting on an overstuffed sofa, telling the camera what it was like to find the body, or not find the body, or hear the voicemail, or find the purse she never would have left behind.