CARRY ME HOME - PART 4: ANDRE
Harper packed up her car the morning of graduation. We three partied, Deion, Harper, and I, all night never wanting to end. The morning after, she left.
I don’t know all the places she visited, but she stopped in New York, the farthest place she could stand away from our hometown. She got a job a waitress at some shitty blues bar and found artists to latch on to.
At first we talked every week, me giving her news of home, her telling me wild stories of the city on the vanguard. Slowly, calls became emails, or texts. The time between each response grew. The change was unspoken, and barely noticeable. Until one day I woke up and thought of Harper and realized I hadn’t talked to her in 3 months.
I called her, made plans for Thanksgiving. Deion, Harper, and I had promised that every year we would meet for Thanksgiving, or meet as we were best able. Since Deion was still in Army training, we would be talking to him on the phone.
I flew out to New York, and Harper was waiting at the airport for me with an awful bedazzled sign. She looked great, a completely different creature than the girl that had left California at the beginning of summer. Now it was almost winter and she wore what even a clothing neophyte like me could recognize as stylish. She gave me a hug, and fawned me with attention that I had missed.
We found a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place for Thanksgiving, called Deion, and had a great time. The next day, she gave me a tour of Manhattan, and I marveled at the towering concrete canyons. Finally it was time to go. We made a promise to talk more, I got on the plane and didn’t hear from Harper again for almost another year.
As for myself, I was busy with school. I was studying engineering, against my better judgment, because I worried about getting a job afterwards. I took a part-time position at the college’s newspaper, and covered all kinds of mundane stories while dreaming of flying to Spain and being Hemingway.
At the beginning of the start of my second year of college, Deion was killed. I called Harper almost immediately after I received the call. She picked up the phone after it rang almost twenty times and I was ready to hang up. It was early in New York, even earlier in California. I told her the news, guilty that it was the first thing we had said to each other in nearly a year. I heard the phone hit the floor, her crying out “Deion, Deion, why.”
I said, “Harper, pick up the phone. Harper. Harper” until finally she did.
“Yes.” Her voice was thick with grief.
“The funeral is this weekend. Can you make it?”
“Yes,” she said.
But she didn’t.
The next time I saw her was Thanksgiving. I flew out to New York, not trusting that she would arrive in California unannounced. I knew where she lived, or least where she once had. She was still there.
I knocked, and she answered, looking like complete shit. Looking completely shocked that I was there. “What do you want,” she mumbled, blocking the door.
I pushed her back, she was weak. “It’s Thanksgiving.”
“So.”
“So aren’t we going to celebrate it together?”
She looked around her dingy studio and then laughed, a husky laugh that wasn’t there when I knew her before. “Oh, of course. Let me just whip up a wonderful dinner to have on my clean, wonderful, perfect table.”
She came towards me. “What do you really want,” she growled. “I know what you want. What you and Deion always wanted.”
“Harper, don’t do this.”
“Then what the fuck do you want from me?”
I went back to my hotel, intending to never come back. It was still Wednesday, though, and my flight back wasn’t until Friday. Instead of switching my flight, at great expense, I felt drawn back to her apartment.
I woke up Thanksgiving morning thinking only of finding some place open for food. After a quick bite, I dropped by her place. Nothing. Again, harder. Nothing, but the door moved open, it was unlocked. I pushed it open, and saw Harper lying on the floor, passed out. She looked dead. Hell, she might have been dead.
I called 911, rode by her side to the hospital, waited in an overlit room, called her disinterested parents, and finally was allowed to see her nearly a day later. I had canceled my flight.
I walked into her room, and her eyes were closed. “Hey,” I said.
She turned her head, opened her eyes. They were glossy, unfocused. “Hey.”
“How do you feel?”
She laughed, or tried to. “How do you think.”
I sat down on the chair that was crammed between the wall and her bed.
“What happened?”
“I’m sick.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” I said, letting anger come into my voice.
“Fine, I overdosed.”
“On what.”
“Heroin. I think.”
“You need help.”
She opened her eyes again; they were clearer. “No offense, Andre, but what do you know about what I need? You haven’t been here. You don’t know shit about me.”
“I did,” I said. She was crying, but so was I.
“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “But you don’t anymore. I barely do either. I do need help, but not in the loaded, strings-attached way you or my parents are going to offer. This is my mess, and I need to get out on my own.”
We sat for the next few minutes in silence. Finally I said, “I can wait here until you’re ready to go to California. To go home.”
“Home?” She practically spat the words at me. “I don’t even know what that word means anymore. Home. I’ve lived out of a suitcase for the past 15 years of my life, there is no home for me to go back to. This is my home. New York is my home. Where I am is my home. Not California.” Harper turned away, then. “I’m tired. Can you leave?”
I did. Left the hospital and went back to the hotel for my bag and then straight to the airport without looking back. I didn’t see Harper again for another 5 years.
I threw myself back into my studies, forgoing any social activities for months. My friends understood, I told them why and promised that once I had a chance to process Deion’s death (and Harper’s rejection of me) then I would be ready to be social again.
And bless them, they waited. I might have lost one or two friends, but they obviously didn’t matter. My grades were impeccable, and I was making connections. After graduating I landed a job at a local firm, and although the pay was only middle of the road, it was a good job. I was happy, for the most part.
My days were filled with work, nights with various social activities. I occasionally thought about Harper and wondered what she was up to, whether she had ever figured things out. But those thoughts gradually faded away and she came up in my mind less and less.
One day, while at a housewarming party for a worky buddy, I was introduced to a girl named ‘Tina.” She was small, seemed to take up little space. Her voice was quiet but her words were forceful. Her eyes flashed with strength, and I was taken aback. Although we only chatted for a minute about the recent bank bailouts, I had to know more about her.
I asked my work buddy who she was, and he said she was a friend of his wife. By this point she had left. I begged his wife to introduce me another time, or perhaps set up a blind date. At first she was cautious, saying that Tina was one of her best friends and had been hurt by men before. I promised I wouldn’t do anything wrong. Finally she conceded, and a double date was set for the following weekend.
I was more nervous for that Friday than I had been for a long time. What if she didn’t like me? What if I wasn’t her type? When the day came, I rushed through work and came home to get ready. Finally it was time.
It turns out I didn’t have much to worry about, for I married her. She my best friend, and I’ve never been happier.
I do have to say one thing. Growing up, I had a friend. A dear friend who left us too soon. I’d like to invite up another childhood friend to raise a toast for Deion Rust, who died too young. Harper, can you come up here?
Harper?
