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How long has it been? Five years? Six maybe.
The man who sways down the old road, doesn’t remember walking over to that old brownstone house. He doesn’t remember dragging himself, half drunk, down the old stone sidewalk. He doesn’t remember because he could do it by muscle memory alone, his body knows what his brain doesn’t. Because at the moment, his brain is a fog and the fog is the color of gold, a wave of amber that seems to break down his skull and fill in the gaps with the ever flavorful taste of whiskey. His limbs move of their own accord, his dress shoes scraping against old stone and he can’t even count how many times he’s tripped and fallen, but it’s enough that his pant leg is stained with mud and it’s making his legs cold. But the cold doesn’t bother him, the whiskey sloshing in his stomach and in his blood and in his veins keeps him warm, keeps him mindless.
He just remembers thinking that he can’t go back to that house, not when everything there now and forever will be a painful reminder of the life he once had and once lived. The one he had spent years running from, the one that made him abandon the only blood family he still had left in this world. When he blinks, it’s not the back of his eyes he can see, all he can still see is that black coffin. He’s still standing by the flowered platform which holds that ornate coffin and his hands still feel the ghostly smooth surface below its tips. No one is around him and it is as if the feeling of smooth wood is imprinted into his digits, and he wonders idly and sluggishly if that’s the reason why his normally rough and calloused hands feel soft and smooth all of a sudden.
But he doesn’t dwell on that notion for long. Because the amber in his head is clouding his vision now, twinkling and flickering in his optics, like it’s water. . .maybe he got that last puddle he fell into his eyes, he doesn’t know, and suddenly he realizes he’s standing on the stoop of that old brownstone. He doesn’t even know why he’s come here, of all places. He doesn’t know if Felix will answer the door, or if he’s even home. And it’s alright if he sends him away, after so long it’s less than what deserves. Standing on his front step feels like the most familiar, yet foreign thing; something he left behind years ago. He should turn around, go back home. It’s late; he shouldn’t bother Felix at this ungodly hour. He knows this. But he’s numb, and he’s tired to the bone, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he goes home or decides to be alone for now.
And so he rings the doorbell.
He waits on the doorstep for a moment. And no one comes. The ache in his chest grows, even though he thought he expected nothing less out of this.
But then, just as he’s about to turn and leave, there’s quiet footsteps on the other side of the door, and then the door opens, just a fraction. A little old man is wearing a robe just behind it, and pointing a pistol at him from the dark of the hallway. The old man doesn’t say anything and neither does he, he’s fully expecting to be berated, to be sent off into the night and disregarded without another word. Hell if he didn’t know the man any better than what he did, he was fully expecting to be shot.
But just then, the old man says a name, softly, as if in disbelief.
“. . .Izzy?”
The taller man’s stomach clenches. That old familiar nickname. No one has called him that name in years, and being called it now, just makes the familiarity hurt even more. No one knows him by that name, none but a few are still alive to even know that name. And one is in the ground in an ornate box at this very moment, and one of them is standing by the door and he looks confused. The man once known affectionately as Izzy and who would remain to be called so for the rest of the night, doesn’t know what the other man sees when he looks at him, but his confusion quickly morphs into worry. He says things, things Izzy doesn’t pick up on “You look like shit. What happened?”
He opens the door wider to let the taller man in, still holding the pistol up but not aiming it specifically at him. His eyes scan the street behind him. “You didn’t get followed here, did you?”
Izzy doesn’t have the strength to talk, so he just shakes his head. He steps into the house, and the little old man closes the door behind him, flicking the safety of the gun back on.
Felix turns to him, looks him up and down. Izzy does the same, eyes softly trailing up and down.
My, how long has it been. . .Five years? Six? Seven? Longer? He hasn’t changed a bit. Maybe smaller than before, but oh my he hasn’t changed a bit. . .
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
Another shake of his head. Felix reaches for the switch on the wall and turns the lights in the hallway on. Felix’s hair is messy, still black just like how Izzy remembered, but now it’s peppered with white in various places. It’s also messy, and ruffed, like he just rolled out of bed, but Izzy doesn’t have the mental capacity right now to feel bad about disrupting the old man’s sleep. He instead follows , stalking into the house and down the hallway, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it.
“Izzy?”
Aroused by his voice, Izzy swayed alarmingly to one side, but caught himself on the edge of the mantelpiece. His eyes drifted around the room, taking in the old familiarity, then fixed on the old man’s face. For an instant, they blazed clear and pellucid.
But Felix is frowning at him, now, concern written all over his face. “What’s wrong, Isidore?”
His stomach clenches again, but hearing his full name be said out loud almost clears his mind and almost makes him feel younger in a way, , and he knows he probably should apologize for showing up suddenly on his doorstep in the middle of the night after so many years, but when he tries to talk, his tongue feels like it’s made of lead.
“Ma’s gone,” he chokes out. It’s the first time he’s acknowledged it out loud, and the words taste like ash in his mouth. It overpowers the taste of whiskey in his mouth, and just like that, the dam that’s been holding the flood of grief back since the call and the funeral collapsed and crumbled, and he bites down hard on his fist, desperately trying to muffle his sobs when his legs that have been carrying him since he touched down in New York some nearly 48 hours ago finally give out from under him. “Mama’s gone.” He says again.
“Oh, Izzy,” Felix says quietly. Through the blur of his tears, he sees the look of pity on his face, and god, he hates that look, hates that the closest thing to family he has has to see him this way. He shouldn’t have come here. But Felix places a gentle hand on the small of his back, guiding all 6 feet of him to the ground, and Izzy can’t find the willpower to apologize and leave.
Izzy’s head swayed from side to side, his hair normally well kept and pushed back hanging in his face in wet and dirty strands. He realized he was crying a little bit, and he felt a momentary disgust that he should be sitting here on the floor in a house he had not been in in years. He was trying to keep from crying, he can’t cry in front of him, not Felix, not Felix just like he can’t cry in front of his sister. Then it occurred to him that he had a right to cry for the things he had lost, that he had a right to be in shock if that was all what this was.
His mother, after all, had died just three days ago. In some crummy little hospital in the larger part of the city. And he wasn’t even there. And in some ways he felt odd over the fact that he mourned for her. After all, when he had all but abandoned the family years prior, he figured it would have been the last time he had ever seen his kin. And it hurt in the beginning- walking out on your family no matter what would always hurt- but not quite as much as it seemed to do now. In the beginning he had figured that maybe leaving would have been better. But now that he thought about it, he mentally kicked himself for not returning after finding out about his dad’s passing.
His dad’s passing was one not filled with remorse, not like his mothers was now. But one filled with anger, a slow seething. When he was little he would often think of ways to kill his daddy. He would figure out this or that way and run it down through his head until it got easy. But he never did get the chance. He never did kill his daddy. His daddy did it himself. His daddy drank himself to death the year after Izzy had officially wiped his hands off of the family and moved out and refused to ever come back. His sister didn’t call him then. Maybe she figured it was for the best. He just heard from word of mouth how they found him shut up in the house in his room dead and everything. Next thing he knew his daddy was in the ground and it was only he, his mother and sister left.
But now, he had lost his mother the same way. . .nearly identical to how he had lost his daddy. But he couldn’t bring himself to cry about it when his sister had called to tell him. Because maybe deep down he didn’t believe it. Thinking that maybe it was just the universe's idea of a cruel joke to be played on his already tired soul. He had loved his mother, he really did. And in many ways he still did. But he could never bring himself to ever come home after he had left. Too much resentment lingered between the two, too much regret and disdain for past deeds and past grievances and things left unsaid. Too much guilt lingered just as much as the resentment, and it was the guilt that had kept him away. The anger kept him from coming to his fathers funeral. In the beginning he felt free, to finally be out of that old house and all the bad memories attached to it, to feel the stone under his feet and wind in his face. But now, there was no sense of freedom, no sense of the wind under his feet and the sun in his face. He just felt like a deserter. Like he had given up too quickly. And there wasn’t anything that he could do about it now, except sit crying on the floor and grieve clinging to a man he had not seen in years. Grieving all that he had lost, but most of all grieve for his mother. And while he would never say it outloud, Izzy would forever wish he had visited her, and had accepted her apology all those years ago, just to save the years that had been lost between them.
Maybe something would have come out of it.
_ _ _
Izzy all but collapsed onto one of the couches when he stumbled his way through Felix’s house to the living room with Felix’s hand holding him steady. He swiped at the tears on his face as Felix walked towards the open kitchen. There was the metallic taste of blood on his tongue as he continued biting uselessly on his fist, but no matter how hard he bites, he can’t get the tears to stop.
This was stupid why did he come here, what was coming here going to change.
Then, Felix comes back, carefully prying his hand away from his mouth before the younger man could do anymore damage. The man’s nose wrinkles at Izzy’, and Izzy knows he can smell the hours old booze lingering on his skin. The man’s face looks hard, but Izzy has known him long enough to know that he’s simply thinking.
Suddenly he’s leaving the room again. “Stay put.”
If Izzy wasn’t this worn out, he might have just laughed at that. He doesn’t think he could do anything but stay put, even if he tried to. His knee’s hurt and he vaguely past the numbness wonders if he’s got gravel in his joints. Not to mention he has a splitting headache. So instead of attempting to leave, he just sits, staring blankly at the rug under his feet when he hears Felix come back down the stairs.
“Does Mad’s know you're here? Does she know that you came back?”
Izzy doesn’t say a word at first, simply shaking his head softly still staring blankly at the floor.
Felix is talking again, and it takes him a second to process the words. “I’d offer to let you stay as long as you want, but I also know that you won’t . . .”
“No,” Izzy shakes his head. His throat feels raw when he speaks. “I'm leaving in the morning.” Izzy doesn’t see the nearly undetectable flinch that rocks the old man’s body when he says that.
“I figured as much,” Felix says. He gets Izzy to shrug his jacket off and hangs it in the closet for him, then kneels and unties the laces on his shoe’s.
“I’m sorry,” Izzy murmurs, “It’s late.” On the table, the clock tells him it’s ten minutes to five in the morning. Has he really been awake that long? He could’ve sworn it wasn’t this late. Or early.
Felix sighs but says nothing about what he has said. “You’re tired,” he said. “Clean up. I’ll move the boxes upstairs, then you can sleep. Come on.”
The walk up the stairs is more treacherous than it has to be, the old man doing his best to keep the younger but far more taller gentleman by his side, wrinkled tanned hand placed in the middle of his back. At the top of the stairs, Izzy turned and swayed so alarmingly that for a moment Felix believed he would tumble all the way back down to the bottom. Instead Izzy looked at him, seemingly about to speak, then turned away again. A moment later, the closing of the bathroom door at the end of the small hallway muted the almost stormy sound of the sink running.
A while later when Izzy finally comes back out, he’s shirtless, save only for a pair of boxers that Felix had been kind enough to leave by the door for him. He’s clean now though, free of the grit in his knees and the muddy water in his hair, which, while still not slicked back, graces his features in soft albeit damp yet drying curls save only for the loose strand that hangs limply against his brow.
Felix doesn't ask him how he’s feeling now when he walks up slowly to the bedroom door. He knows him well enough from his youth to know that while he was clean, that even the soft homely smell of shea-butter soap and warmth from a shower and the promise of a safe sleep would not be enough to cure his aching heart. Felix had been through it all before of course. This 'visit' wasn’t particularly unusual behavior from him, even though it had been years since he had last seen him. But even now nothing has changed. Even in his youth he would often hide in this very same bedroom to escape his parents groundings and his fathers harsh temper, skirting around the upper floor balcony on the narrow tree branches outside. Absurdly dangerous with his clumsy feet looking back on it now. He'd never tell you what was really wrong, he'd just be evasive and change the subject, and as such Felix long since taken to humoring him over trying to delve into his head. It did no good and only made him antsy. Even now sobering up Izzy looked about as miserable as he did walking through the door of this old Brownstone, as he did so many years before.
Nothing ever changed.
“If it really matters to you, I was going to get up early anyway,” Felix assures him, straightening up his back. “I’m catching a flight for a meeting.”
Izzy vaguely registers the old man taking his boots and placing them neatly at the foot of the bed.
“Get some rest,” Felix tells him. “I’ll be back in the evening.”
Izzy sits down heavily on the edge of the bed. He doesn’t say anything. All he does is grip the parts of the bed in such a way, he curls his fingers into the sheets like they were claws. But as Felix goes to leave, the tall lanky man finally speaks.
“Hello, Uncle Felix….”
The old man stops dead in his tracks at the doorway, as if the words alone, spoken so softly without any effort where enough to keep him anchored. When he turns, Izzy is still looking at the floor, as if he’s ashamed of something. He fell silent. For several moments they both did, and the quiet had the feel of a deliberate thing. Then Felix said:
“Hello, Izzy”
Felix wasn’t sure what he wanted him to say after that, and he didn’t know how it would feel to say anything again after all this time. So instead he looks. Eyes softly trailing up and down the figure in front of him.
How long has it been? Five years? Six? Seven? Longer? Definitely longer, there’s no doubt about that. But he hasn’t changed a bit. Taller yes, definitely taller, hairier too. That beard was not that long the last time he saw him. Did he even have one the last time I saw him?
“Mama’s gone Uncle Felix. . .”
The words rolled on his tongue, heavy and bitter tasting. It was as if he had just learned it, enunciating the words as if they were some foreign language that needed sounding out.
Mama’s gone
Mama’s gone
Mama’s gone and she’s not coming back
She’s dead
My mothers dead
He said it. Over and Over again in his mind. As if it was new. As if he hadn’t been there, hiding amongst the tree’s unable to bear for long looking at his sister as she stood amongst that ornate box, giving final words to the woman who lay within. He said it, as if he wasn’t too much of a coward to go down there to comfort her, and instead kept himself far back amongst the tree’s, watching from the dark shaded shadows, until the procession left and all he could do was walk and walk until his feet nudged and nearly tipped him over into the large hole where the box lay, only to jump in regardless and stand in the tight space between the box and the hard cramped dirt behind him. Smooth black wood gracing under his finger tips. Concealed from the public eye, snug within her coffin, Mrs Dunn looked as she had looked in life. At least that’s what he had hoped. He hoped the years had not been too rough on her since his daddy died.
He could only hope.
Back in the present, it takes far too much effort to swing his legs up onto the bed and pull the covers over himself, but Izzy manages to do it. His limbs feel exceedingly heavy as he lies down on the bed, like two large trunks of oak wood. He wants to say more to his uncle, he doesn’t know what to think and at the moment he’s suddenly too tired to do so.
Felix himself wants to say more, but instead he decides to let the young man rest. He flicks the lights off as he heads out the door. “Goodnight, Isidore. We can talk later. . . ”
He tries to rest, he really does. But there’s an irrational fear keeping him awake, itching at the back of his mind. But just outside the room, he can hear Felix’s footsteps softly padding through the house as he gets ready for the day. He listens as the footsteps change from the softer, muffled sound of bedroom slippers, to the harder clack of dress shoes against the wooden floor. It’s a familiar, comforting sound, one he’s heard hundreds of times over the years, and for now, it’s enough. He lies in bed, and tries to ignore the hollow ache in his chest, and wishes sleep would take him. The soft sound of early morning traffic coming through the window.
He tried to remember the last time he had cried in front of this man. He thought instead of his dead mother. Felix was right. He was tired. He had never been so tired. Familiarity helps him sleep.
He closed his eyes and slept for nearly eighteen hours.