the heel press

I’m cleaning out my dead sister’s apartment today. No one ever thinks about what happens to their stuff once they die. They think about their money, or their house, or that vacation that they never took. They don't think about what happens to their clothes, or their photo albums, or that hand print mold from third grade. Those are the things that make up your life. Those are the everyday objects that you leave an unmistakable imprint on. Lisa thought about all those things before she died.

            Lisa Harris killed herself on a Monday. She made herself a strawberry flavored poison cocktail, collapsing in her tiny kitchen. She was 25 years, 3 months, and 6 days old, almost exactly 2 years older than me. Her suicide note was short and simple. She told our parents and me that she loved us and that it was not our fault, that there was nothing we could have done and not to cry over her death. Her death was the solution to her problem, she said, the band-aid on her eternal wound. Lisa was a bartender, so she knew how to mix the concoction to make the hemlock tasteless. If it was good enough for Socrates, it was good enough for Lisa.

            I learned of her death on a colorful, spring Tuesday. I was in the middle of my usual morning jog. I hadn't been outside for longer than ten minutes when a musical jingle coming from my jacket pocket disturbed my thoughts. The screen on my cell phone flashed “Home”. I knew it would be Karen, my mother, possibly yammering about a sale, or a holiday party, or Mrs. So-and-so’s new curtains. “Hey Karen, what's up?” I had stopped calling her mom by the time I turned 15.

“Jellybean,” she said. My ridiculous nickname sounded serious and sad as Karen’s voice, throaty and strained, echoed through the phone. “Lisa killed herself last night.”

I felt blood rush to my head in heavy, full pulses, then I shook my head slightly as if to bump the statement from my mind, “Wait, what? She killed herself?” Karen began to cry in long broken sobs, like the sentence was not a question, but news given to her again, renewing her pain tenfold. My sister was dead. I don't remember the walk back to my apartment. I dropped my keys and phone on a glass end table. They sounded like stones clanking against the wall of an empty cave. I sat on my couch and listened to the silence of the morning.

Jellybean. I should have realized when Karen said jellybean that it was serious. She never used that name. When I was born, Lisa couldn’t pronounce my name- Jocelyn, so she chose something that sounded like my name, but was within the range of her 30-word vocabulary, although most of the time she butchered jellybean as well. My cell phone chimed and vibrated on the glass coffee table. It was Karen again, asking me if I could bring white orchids, Lisa’s favorite, to the funeral.

The wet grass folded under the pressure of my black pumps, as they slowly sunk into the ground. I placed the delicate flowers in an untied bunch on the cherry wood surface of her coffin, then stepped back under the blue canopy and took my place next to Karen. I hadn’t seen all of my relatives together in a long time, but their familiar patterns of behavior quickly fell into place. The women were holding white kerchiefs to their eyes, and releasing appropriately timed sighs throughout the minister’s speech. The men were standing solemnly with their hands crossed or held by their wives. I remember hearing Karen whisper the Lord’s Prayer to herself as my sister was lowered into the ground.

Seeing Karen’s face so sad made Lisa’s death more real. Her full, rosy cheeks and light brown freckles looked ruddy and added to her emotionally flushed appearance. I always thought she looked so eternally youthful. At the funeral, her silver-gray streaks and tired eyes proved otherwise.

“Tired” was not a word that I ever would have used to describe Karen when I was younger. I remember her bounding through the market, Lisa and I silently mocking her stride, head held high, arms swinging. There would always be that one tantruming child, screaming about unbought candy or toys. She would turn her head towards us over her shoulder and mutter under her breath in a sharp, aggressive tone, “If you ever embarrass me like that in public…” she’d never finished the sentence, but I’m sure the consequences would have involved a freshly braided wicker switch, or Cap’s leather belt.

 “How’s Cap holding up?” I asked her. Our father, Captain Wilson Harris, had never cried a day in his life, as far as I was concerned. The saddest I ever saw him was the day Lisa left for Los Angeles. He hugged her for a full minute, longer than he’d ever hugged either one of us for as far back as I could remember. Hugs were for special occasions, like grandmother’s silverware.

“You know your father. He’ll be fine. Are you going to be okay, Jocelyn?”

            “Yeah Karen. I’ll be fine”, I replied.

I’ll be fine. My mouth had memorized the shape of the words by the time I was 10. I could stop tears with that single phrase. As long as I said it, they felt it was true, and that’s really all that mattered. I remembered the parties she used to arrange with her friends; carefully orchestrated parades of willowy women in pastel chiffon and dainty garden hats. I always wished I could join, but Karen insisted that I play with Lisa and the other children. She knew I was disappointed, but I would retort with the usual “I’ll be fine”, letting her carry on to her grown up world.

            The crowd slowly began to disperse as the last prayers were said. However Karen had been first to leave. She had to get back to the house to prepare for the reception, always the hostess. Captain Harris leaned against the car, waiting for me, his arms folded, lean muscles bunched and raised. They were visible even through the thick material of his suit jacket. I remember him picking me up as a little girl and spinning me around and around. He seemed so huge then, like a human jungle gym. He didn’t look so intimidating now. I stepped toward him, my own skinny arms outstretched.

            “How are you, Cap?” I asked as he stood to hug me. His face was sagged slightly and looked older, as if the whole ordeal had aged him significantly. There was hardly a sign that he had been crying, except for the bits of lingering tissue paper lint clinging to the corners of his eyes.

            “I don’t know how we lost her, Jellybean.” He hugged me lightly and patted my back, then opened the car door for me.

            I was used to his general terseness; it was something I grew up with. I would reach for his hand in the grocery store and he would pull it out of my range. He would walk quickly, at least 10 paces ahead of me, and turn every once in a while to make sure I was still there. I felt as though my presence was a nuisance. It was a chore to take me with him. I remember taking that pill of sadness and setting it under my tongue to dissolve. When I was younger it was easy to find something else to distract me from that little heartache my father had caused. Eventually I got used to ignoring them as firmly as they ignored my sister and me. I knew I wouldn’t get more than that simple statement out of him, so I got into the car, pulling the skirt of my black dress out of the way of the closing door. He drove away from the cemetery, the diggers by the blue tent just starting to cover Lisa’s grave.

His voice rang through the small space of the car.

“Will you clean out her apartment? Your mother and I don’t have the heart to. She would probably want you to do it.”

             “Sure”, I said, “I think she still has some of my clothes anyway.”

I half laughed, half grunted trying to sound casual and lighten the heavy look of sadness that had settled over my father’s face.

I’ve reached Lisa's apartment after battling through a sea of typical Los Angeles traffic. I hesitate before opening the door, my hand shaking slightly on the knob. I don’t know why I’m nervous. I haven’t even cried yet.

Her apartment looks like an inter-city garden with floral patterns and hints of green everywhere, but unlike the fragrant, oxygen filled essence of a garden, the room feels sterile and void of life. I investigate her apartment slowly, assessing what would have to be moved. It was a small space, so it wouldn't take long. She had cleaned out the cabinets and gave her plates to her landlady, who had always admired them. Her liquor cabinet however, is immaculate. Colorful green and blue bottles, some half emptied, some still full, are scattered among crystal glasses. I pour myself a shot of bourbon and silently toast to her, letting the alcohol burn its way down my throat.

            I finally wander into her bedroom, half expecting to see the remnants of a crime scene. There’s no body, no police report, no evidence of death in the room at all; just her rumpled white cotton sheets splayed across her bed and the faint smell of her carnation perfume. I walk to her closet and slide the doors open. All of her clothes are hung neatly in garment bags and her shoes are in their boxes. I laugh a little to myself. She was always so tidy.

One sweater hangs outside of the bags and catches my eye right away. It’s a baby blue chenille sweater that I loaned her ages ago. She wore it to a winter office party, back when she was interning for People, her dream of writing still alive and pulsing. She came staggering home with the sweater half hanging off her tiny frame, her black slip dress stained with punch and riding too high on her hips. Her make-up was smudged and her face and hair wet from the rain. She looked like a drowned clown. She walked past our parents and me sitting in the den watching ER re-runs, and ascended up the stairs towards her room. “Must have been some party”, Cap mumbled as he searched for the remote. Karen never looked up from her knitting. That was the first time I saw Lisa drunk. After a year I got used to her drunken walks home. Cap and Karen never made a fuss over it. We were 18 and 21 at the time and as far as they were concerned, we were grown. I understood why she drank so much after my first inebriated plunge into liquor. It was soothing to drink, like a balm on my mind.

I walk over to her bedside and pick up a gold picture frame sitting on her nightstand, the only picture left out in the entire apartment. It’s a picture of her and me at a beach in Hawaii, the summer before she left for college. She’s standing proudly, waving to the camera, wearing a ridiculous straw hat and polka dotted bikini. I have on a one-piece blue Speedo and was sitting on my beach towel, legs folded into my chest. Lisa had asked the boy next to us to take our picture, her not so subtle attempt to flirt. We talked for hours on that beach, the sound of sucking waves complementing our girlish chatter.

“Do you think you’ll ever call Karen ‘mom’ again?” she asked me, wiping sand away from palms of her hands. I looked out onto the waves, squinting away the sun.

“Probably not,” I casually answered, “It irritates her far too much. Besides, she stopped being our mother years ago.” Lisa laughed at my tiny rebellion. She still called her mother, especially when they were on the phone, her attempt to close the space between them, I supposed. A seagull squawked loudly overhead and we both turned our faces up to look, allowing the blinding sun to run over our faces.

“Did I ever tell you about coming home from the hospital with mom after you were born?”, she asked me, her eyes glowing with excitement. “No, I don’t think you have,” I replied, turning towards her, positioning myself for the story.

“Well,” she started off grandly, “When they bought you home from the zoo, you were very hairy.” Her face broke out into laughter and I knew immediately that she was messing with me.

“You jerk!” I flicked a handful of sand at her and we fought playfully for a minute before she regained her composure, ready to tell the rest of the story.
            “When they bought you home from the hospital, mom held you for at least one week straight. I don’t remember seeing you out of her arms. Of course I was two years old, so I may be making some of this up, but I thought that you were a part of mom or something, that you were attached to her. I would ask Cap, ‘when is the baby coming off?’ and he would laugh until he was blue in the face.”

I chuckled a little, my legs stretched out in front of me, sand glittering across them. I thought her story was more about her as a baby than me, but I let her revel in the thought that she had dispensed some invaluable truth to me. When we were kids Lisa would always do little things to keep me amused, or more practically, quiet, until Karen and Cap had completed their important adulthood tasks, whatever they may have been. “Playtime” was not a word in their vocabulary.

I place the picture back on the nightstand and open the drawer below. I see a small brown envelope with my name printed on it. I open it and slide out the contents. It’s a tape with a note that says, “Play me” in Lisa’s handwriting. I hesitate a little, afraid of what I might hear, then walk to her living room and put the tape in the deck and push play.

            “Everything nice and neat, huh J?”

It’s Lisa’s voice, clear and distinct, echoing through the apartment. After a long pause, she starts talking again.

“Well, I won’t beat around the bush and tell you how sorry I am. There’s no point in that anymore. I just wanted to talk to you, or rather, tell you, a few things so you have a better understanding of what happened. Do you remember that night I came home from the Christmas party in your blue sweater? I’m sure you do. I was such a mess.” She pauses for a minute and I feel my knee shake slightly. I sit on her dull floral couch and listen as she continues.

“I was raped that night.” My hand draws to my mouth and the image of her flashes in my mind, standing there wet and pale, haunting me. “I never told anyone. I went to work the next day and pretended like everything was fine. I tucked it far away, to the point that I forgot it happened at all. I couldn’t write anymore. I moved away and started working at the bar. I didn’t think about it after that. Then last week, as I was on the last leg of my shift, he came into the bar. I didn’t recognize him at first, but he ordered a gin and tonic, and his throaty, grainy voice was alarmingly familiar. I froze for a minute, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t him, but I absolutely knew that it was. I fixed his drink and bought it over to him, his hand grazing mine as I set the glass down. He didn’t recognize me, I’m sure, he had had more to drink that night than me. I wanted to leave more than anything, but my boss was watching me from across the bar and he knew I still had 30 minutes left. There were hardly any other customers that night, so of course, Alan- his name was Alan I discovered, started talking to me. He flirted with me for a full 20 minutes and I didn’t stop him. He was handsome and he spoke with such ease and elegance. I felt disgusted with myself. This man pushed me against a Honda car door and raped me in a pay-by-the-hour parking garage, and I thought he was sexy and provocative, and somehow it started to not matter. It was the oddest sensation- being concerned and yet not concerned at the same time.

I couldn’t even conjure up enough emotion to cry when I got home that night. Seeing him like that, knowing that he had some hold over me, it was unnerving. I couldn’t deal with it. I used to be able to feel. Why wasn’t I angry? What happened to me? What happened to make my heart shut down on me? And the sad part was I didn't care about not caring. I was numb.” The words sting me and echo in my head. “I shut off my emotions after the rape. I shut off the world. And I didn’t know how to turn them back on. Someone once told me that taking your own life is the stupidest thing you could ever do to yourself.” She snorts a little and laughs shallowly, “Well, I guess I’m really dumb then.” I wipe away the tears that are mounting on my face and listen as she continues, “So that’s it. It can’t be helped. I didn’t want Karen and Cap to hear this. I knew they would be somehow disappointed that they had raised damaged goods. I wanted them to have the note. Please don’t play this for them. It was for you. Oh, and on the matter of my stuff- I loved this apartment. It was my constant reminder that the world was real and full of emotion and that used to be enough. In the end it was a reminder of the emotions I could never reach. Please, do whatever you like with it. The things from this world I will miss the most are Karen, Cap, and you.”  The static fuzz noise of blank tape loop for another few minutes before I get up and turn off the tape player.

            I’m crying uncontrollably and try to talk at the same time, but wondering if I should talk at all. It isn’t Lisa. It’s just her voice. I throw one of her sofa pillows at the wall, which only makes a dull thud, an inappropriate noise for the turmoil I’m feeling. I sit on her living room floor, my legs folded underneath me. Why didn’t she talk to me? I thought we told each other everything.

I listen to her message again and again. With every repeated play, I understood her numbness more and more. It was the same emptiness that I had nurtured for a long time now. Somewhere along the line, we both learned that feeling meant pain, so it was better to ignore, to lock things away. She had fallen in to the sea of secrets that lived behind Karen and Cap’s eyes. Between Karen’s endless social engagements, and Cap’s military service they were hardly there, and when they were there, they pried us as far away from childhood as possible. They were wrapped in a world we were not meant to be part of, simply silent witnesses. I couldn’t blame them though. Their parents raised them to be little adults as well. I wish I could have figured it out for Lisa, made her understand that they had twisted our hearts without even intending to. Maybe she could have dealt with the rape better. Maybe she could have lived with it. I wipe the tears from my eyes and pick up my phone, quickly dialing the number to home.

"Hey mom. I’m at Lisa’s place. She didn't have much. Just some clothes and sheets, a couch and tables."

"What's wrong Jocelyn?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"You called me mom."

“I know, mom. I know.”