"Left Behind" by Lucy McBee

Left Behind

Lucy McBee Plastic comb, black (DOC issue) 1 box (two-thirds full) 5x7 envelopes, self-stick 1 ream 8x11 unlined paper, half empty pencils, #2 (2) books (4): Autobiography of a Yogi (paperback), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (paperback), Infinite Jest (hardcover), Lucid Living (paperback, water damage) toothbrush (DOC issue) CLIF bars, oatmeal raisin (3) blue Converse sneakers, size 12.5 Lenny and Joe’s Fishtale T-shirt, purple, size L gray Champion sweatpants, tag missing, fist-sized hole in left knee small penknife guitar pick $4.35 Bic lighter, green.

Absent from the list compiled by some unknown other(s), but no less consequential: generic shopping bag, the kind that shouts THANK YOU over and over, loud at the top, whispered at the bottom, the kind used to carry things on their way to being unremembered, the kind you’d twirl and swing and twist around your wrist after allowance-day visits to GameStop; 1 bed sheet, gray (DOC issue).

You used the bag’s handles off-label, to make a perfect knot under your chin, three fingers above the sheet’s throat squeeze,

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L E F T BE H I N D

insurance against instinct, the plastic a new skin for your face when the air ran out.

Among your personal effects, no note.

It wasn’t your fault, I wanted.

You couldn’t have stopped me, I needed.

I understand why you set limits, I wished for. But I missed you anyway.

The kinds of epiphanies my relentlessly highlighted copy of Don’t Let Your Kids Kill You (later discarded . . . the only serviceable book I ever trashed instead of donated) warned me not to expect.

Also not on the list: what remained after the person had gone, soon to be reduced to something elemental, unrecognizable. The body I took such pride in, as if I’d assembled it, animated it, set it to grow. The health, the vitality, the height. Look what a good job I’ve done! I communicated only through shining eyes during annual well-child visits. Look how he thrives!

The last time you (we) saw the doctor you first met when you were three hours old—long and skinny and slightly jaundiced— you were seventeen and embarrassed to still have a pediatrician, especially one shorter than you. As you reached for your toes so he could check your spine, he asked about your plans.

College?

Nah. Job? S’pose.

Military?

No way! I could never kill anybody!

It wasn’t until your sister demanded a fuller reckoning that we learned you had left behind a note.

To your girlfriend. The day before, she’d told you she wouldn’t wait for you this time. If you got back together when you got out in five, then great, but she’d see other guys in the meantime because twenty-two was too young to be alone.

LUC Y MC BE E

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We only know this because she called your sister after, inconsolable.

How you ended the note: and another short, misunderstood life comes to an end. Unsigned. Maybe you thought your body was signature enough.

You told us you saw the face of god when you drank cough medicine (bottle after bottle after shoplifted bottle, the empties floating on a trash island somewhere, eye candy for seagulls).

And that’s why you wouldn’t stop. You’d play your Fender (not among your personal effects) very loudly in Stanley Quarter Park at 3 a.m. and then force your way past locked doors and windows into homes you mistook for yours and then came the unforced error of resisting arrest, refusing to buckle under the taser, saved from being shot or bludgeoned to death by police only through the sheer luck of the skin you were born into.

Don’t keep doing this to me, I begged. I’m scared. And you said: I know life feels real, but trust me: everything is an illusion. The body is nothing, less than a puppet.

What I have now, a decade later: the barbed miracles of dreams of you at four, at six, drawing dinosaurs and spiders and race cars—always in green—asking for pancakes again, giggling when I tickled your neck and called you Flapjack Monster.

When you were nine, I left behind my own note. Remember?

At the Old Saybrook Motor Inn. Along with an extravagant tip for housekeeping. So sorry about the sheets! My son gets nosebleeds!

While I was packing, you signed it in green crayon and added I’m Sorry with a sad face nested in the O. I assured you that you couldn’t control your blood vessels and we don’t need to feel guilty about things we can’t control.

Apparently, I wasn’t listening.