Ownership- A Novel Extract

When I was young and significantly less intelligent than I am today, I had a dog.  The dog’s name was Dog, simply because in my head things had to be addressed as they were.  Names were nothing more or less than a form of identification.  I felt no need to add my flair to this distinctly unlovable object.  The dog would walk and bark and eat and shit as and when it so pleased.  Since I could do nothing to control its life, I felt no need to foist upon it a tag of my own, some civilization-enforced rule that the dog had to be mine.  The dog was no more mine than it was anybody else’s. 

My mother liked to name things.  In fact, my mother named just about everything in our house.  The kitchen was called Leela, the bedroom Sophie, and the bathroom Geoffrey. She gave everything ownership because she could. 

I guess we’re both the same today.  She takes ownership of her disease, and everything that comes with it.  She calls her own the pain, the pills, the slightly pitying but somewhat patronizing looks of friends and family who walk past, knowing that in their heads and their hearts they are immensely thankful that they have a life that she doesn’t. I guess when you are so grateful to God that this didn’t happen to you, there’s little space left for pity, or sorrow. And then there’s me. When I am offered condolences I thank the giver and assure them I’ll pass them on to mom.  When somebody tries to close the yawning distances that keep us apart, I will tell them those spaces can never be filled because the person who really belongs there is nearly gone.  And when they sigh, turn away, I hope to God that this really does happen to them because I want so badly for someone else to know how this feels. And yet, at the end of it all, I cannot take ownership. My mother’s cancer is not for anybody to own, and I guess that’s what makes it all the more fucked up.

*

That week I visit Christian’s house for the very first time. 

Also for the first time, I see him truly happy.  There’s something that shines through him when he tells me about his home, the place where he lives this life, that adds substance to him, a kind of vibrancy I haven’t seen before.  I feel as if I’ve been watching the black and white version of him this entire time and then someone went an invented color.  And yet I feel it’s because of me.  As if I was the one who invented color film; who unlocked this side of the bright boy in front of me.  I feel jealous of him for a long time that day until I realize it’s not because he’s so happy.  I have known happiness in my life.  It’s because he has something to live for.  All I have is something to die for. And I can die a thousand times and it won’t go away. 

“Christian,” I ask finally, “do you cry?”

It seems important to know, and I can’t explain why, even though he asks me again and again before he answers. 

“I don’t know,” he says, “sometimes, I guess.”

“I didn’t mean in the philosophical way, you know.  Like, I dunno, you soul crying or some shit.  Have you cried?  Physically?  Like, with tears and all?”

“Guess so.”

I stare at him for a good fifteen seconds after that. I think he thinks I’m judging him but honestly, I’m not.  It’s just interesting to see him, the Buddhist boy called Christian, the writer who doesn’t write, the player who doesn’t play, the flirting object who does not flirt.  Just him.  As is.  No strings attached, or removed.  It’s a fascinating experience.  Out of body, I tell him.

“Likewise,” he says, and then he gets that glint in his eye that I haven’t seen since he puked up my lunch on Ritanova’s head.

*

In the last week of May, I go to see Lee. It’s animal instinct, I think.

“Hey,” I say, “you look like crap.” And he does. There’s soot smeared all over his face and there are bags under his eyes that I’ve never really seen before, and all these factors together sort of lever him up to the forty years that, a few weeks previously, I would never have believed he had lived.

“I know I do.” He stands up and wipes an arm over his mouth, smearing some of the soot onto his teeth. “But I see someone who’s worse.”  He takes off his apron and jams it in the tiny space between the microwave and the shelf it’s sitting on.  I guess that’s what happens with people.  We press to each other so close that there’s no air to breathe anymore, and when we stop doing what we do it’s just so hard getting used to breathing on our own again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. 

Again, taking ownership. As if it was his fault. As if it was anybody’s fault. I suddenly wonder why these things seem to matter so much. They are superfluous. Apology. Condolence. Concepts society has created to ensure that we do not feel alienated in the world of somebody else’s pain. And yet, there is no anger. Perhaps, only an ounce of pity that even Lee has fallen prey to these influences. It suddenly occurs to me that I like him so much because he doesn’t give a shitty hoot what anybody thinks. And now there’s the possibility that maybe he might.

“Um, Lee? Can I take you somewhere?”

He looks up at me in surprise. The shapes in the room do funny things with his face in the minimal light. Suddenly his nose could be a sailing ship.

 “Yeah,” he says, “why not?”