If I Swoon

by Rory Doherty

I killed Jonathan. I killed my best friend Jonathan last night. I stuck a needle of heroin in Jonathan’s arm and depressed the plunger. I watched Jonathan nod off and die.

* * *

The news comes from my mother, a phone call. Jonathan is dead. The news comes sooner than I expect, and hearing the news of Jonathan’s death from my mother throws me. But here it is. Jonathan is dead. I say the words to myself, Jonathan is dead, over and over. I am numb, mouth racked. I swallow hard but there is nothing to swallow, not a blessed drop. In the mirror above my dresser, I watch my fingers draw down on the skin of my face, draw my cheeks to a hollow, my mouth to a frown. I think about punching the wall. I pray. I pray for my fingers to ball into a tight fist, pray for something to rise, rise up and drive my fist clean through the drywall, but my fingers will not leave off sculpting my face and nothing comes, not a blessed thing.

* * *

Diane opens my bedroom door and catches me in front of the mirror. The bottom falls from Diane’s voice when she sees what I have made of my face. “Honey,” Diane says. “Sweetie,” Diane calls me, “What is it?”

I say to Diane the words I have not practiced enough. I tell Diane that Jonathan is dead. Diane wraps her arms around me, and I study her back in the mirror. Diane asks me how Jonathan died. I tell Diane what my mother told me. I tell Diane that Jonathan died last night, that Jonathan overdosed on heroin. My words sound hollow, bloodless, scripted. Diane pulls me close and eases my head down onto her shoulder. I hide my mouth in the nape of Diane’s neck. “Baby,” Diane says, rocking me, soothing me. “I am so sorry. Are you alright?”

I ignore Diane’s question, and I wrap a strand of Diane’s hair, long and dark, tightly enough around my index finger to pinch the flow of blood. Diane does not know Jonathan. Diane has never met Jonathan. Diane knows only the stories, the many stories I have told her of Jonathan and me. For Diane the stories are enough, and wrapped up tight the way we are one of Diane’s tears finds the edge of my mouth. The taste of a tear, of salt honest and pure, soothes me, lures me, lulls me into the comfort, the reprieve of Diane’s hug. The hug feels good, and I want only to be held when Diane stiffens and pulls back. There is no telling what Diane makes of my face, but I am relieved when Diane wraps her arms around me again and I feel the warmth of Diane’s breath on my neck. “My God,” Diane says, her voice barely a whisper. “My God.”

* * *

My mother calls again. I do not want to talk to my mother, but there is nothing I can do. I listen to my mother fire up a cigarette, and I take a deep breath and hold it. My mother has to say what my mother has to say, and I have no choice but to hear my mother out. I picture my mother’s words tangled in swirls of Virginia Slims smoke. She is sitting at the kitchen table in her chair by the window. If not at work, my father is sitting across from her.

My mother blows out a lungful of smoke and tells me that my father got more details on Jonathan’s death. I know now for certain that my father is sitting at the kitchen table with my mother as she tells me what I already know—that Jonathan was found dead in a hallway of the East Dedham projects. My mother goes quiet, but I say nothing. My mind is on my father, about what my father is thinking—that all junkies, his term, lie. My father does not say this with condemnation or disdain. For my father, this is simply a truth, a plain and simple truth learned from twenty years as a Boston cop.

First, a junkie swears he is telling the truth, my father says. Then a junkie swears with his hand to God he is telling the truth. Then he swears on his mother’s soul he is telling the truth. The truth, my father maintains, is a junkie would not know the truth if it bit him in the ass.

My mother is still talking, talking and sobbing. I hold my breath, hold my silence. I put my phone on mute and squeeze my face between my hands. My mother asks me if I wouldn’t feel better coming home for a few days, maybe just until after Jonathan’s funeral. I tell my mother no. That I am doing okay, sad, but okay. I tell my mother that Diane is with me. I want to end the call, and I thank God, I literally mouth the words, thank you, God, when my mother ends the call for me. She asks me to put Diane on the phone.

I listen to them talking until Diane shuts herself up with the phone in my bedroom. Diane and I have been together almost a year. We are in love but for now live separately. I lie on the couch in my living room. I think about turning on the television, but I cannot find the remote. I have not slept for two days. I feel edgy and wired. I lie on the couch and concentrate on the warming hive that is my face. I push and pull at the flesh of my cheeks and the skin around my eyes, temples and forehead, and I think about Jonathan.

Jonathan and I met in grade school—St. Mary’s. Teachers called us precocious. We both scored top-of-class on standardized tests, but our grades were at best mediocre, and our marks for conduct and effort were consistently insufficient. Jonathan and I were wise asses, absolutely, always disrupting class, always kept in for recess and kept after school for J.U.G., Justice Under God—what they called punishment at Saint Mary’s.

Jonathan was bright, brighter than me by a long shot, bright enough to dole out respect, charm, and humor at the right times, in the right measures, and to the right people. In fifth grade Jonathan worked it with Sister Ignatia that he and I be allowed to read while serving J.U.G. Jonathan’s plan was for us to read and do the required report on every book squeezed onto the blue bookshelves built into the southeast corner of Sister Ignatia’s classroom. By exhausting the fifth-grade library, Jonathan reasoned, we would expose Saint Mary’s as insufficient in reading, the cornerstone, Jonathan argued, of a sufficient parochial education. Jonathan and I liked reading. We tolerated other subjects, but we both liked reading. For Jonathan and me, sitting still was not so impossible while reading a good story.

Jonathan and I executed his plan with vigor, exhausting the blue bookshelf in a single grading period. Next, Jonathan leveraged our reading prowess to convince Sister Ignatia to grant him and me access into the teachers’ break room, a room strictly off limits to students where a ceiling-to-floor collection of books covered the entire west wall.

Inside the teacher’s break room Jonathan and I felt more mature, more trustworthy, more literate than our insanely jealous, mouth-breathing classmates. Sister Iggy, our name for Sister Ignatia, promptly popped our bubble. She handed Jonathan and me two very thick books—the Bible and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Start with these Sister Iggy told us.

My zeal waned, but Jonathan refused to be cowed and tore into both books, disrupting class by dropping gems like “Wherefore art thou?” and “To thine own self be true” and “Anon”. I pushed back in my chair one time and it made an ungodly scraping, squealing noise. Jonathan jumped to his feet and in his most sonorous God-like voice bellowed at me: “Be still, and know I am the Lord!”

Sister Iggy busted her gut laughing, but this did not stop her from serving up J.U.G. for Jonathan and me that day.

* * *

Jonathan’s viewing is at Doherty’s Funeral Home. Diane is with me, holding my hand. My eyes, burning and watering, have not adjusted to the dim lighting when I hear Jonathan’s mother saying my name. I fill up and cannot speak. Jonathan’s mother has my face in her hands, and my face burns under the coolness of her touch. Jonathan’s mom is saying something about Jonathan, about Jonathan and me, but I cannot make out her words. The words Jonathan’s mother says to me are choked by sobs, washed away by tears. I break from Jonathan’s mother and walk across the room to Jonathan’s casket. I kneel before the casket, diverting my eyes from Jonathan’s corpse. I cross myself in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. My eyes and my face are on fire when I look at Jonathan’s dead body in a casket, his taut, made-up face and bloodless fingers draped with black rosary beads and clutching a crucifix. Jonathan is dead, and I want to run away, away from the viewing of Jonathan’s dead body.

On our way to the car, Diane asks me if I want her to drive. I tell Diane no, that I am fine. An awkward yawn interrupts me, draws out my answer to Diane. A second yawn quickly follows, which makes Diane yawn. Withdrawal is starting. Soon withdrawal will be very real. Diane held my hand the entire viewing. Her fingers are pale and crimped. I loosen my grip, raise Diane’s fingers to my mouth and kiss them. I tell Diane that I am sorry, sorry for not introducing her to a blessed soul. I thank Diane, and I tell her I love her, that she is a blessing in my life, that I love her for getting me through Jonathan’s viewing.

* * *

Jonathan and I got high pretty much every day in high school—Catholic Memorial. I liked to watch Jonathan roll blunts. His long fingers, dexterous and nimble, deftly twirled a perfect blunt, taut and tight, a blunt that would draw evenly without fail. Jonathan tried many times to teach me how to roll, but I could never match his skill. The best part was the laughter. Jonathan was funny, hilariously funny. He was razor sharp and lightning fast and cracked me up with remarks only I would get, saying them with perfect timing in his wise-ass way.

One time after getting high, Jonathan asked me to put some Visine in his eyes because he could not do that sort of thing to himself. I accidently poked Jonathan’s eye with the Visine bottle. I poked his eye good. “Why have you forsaken me!” Jonathan howled. After a few minutes of laughter, Jonathan let me try again, and not at all on purpose, I poked his eye a second time. “Et Tu, asshole!” Jonathan yelled as he snapped a punch into my chest. I had just taken a hit, deep and long and hot. It was a solid five minutes of me coughing and laughing and wiping away tears before Jonathan let me have another go at his bloodshot eyes.

* * *

Jonathan’s funeral is tomorrow. Diane promised my mother she would stay with me at my apartment until after Jonathan’s funeral. I need to be alone, but Diane will not break her word to my mother. Aches wrack my body, and the yawns, stretches, and watering eyes will not quit. Soon I will be ill with chills and sweats and shakes and exploding bowels. I’ve been pulling on NyQuil, popping ibuprofen, and swigging Imodium but withdrawal will not be denied. I cannot, will not let Diane see me ill, so I sneak off and snort a small bump of heroin, just enough to get me through. I promise myself that I will quit heroin forever, and that I will never, ever shoot heroin again. Hand to God.

My face still feels strange, but not from withdrawal and not from snorting the bump of heroin. There is a strangeness to my face that I have never felt before, a numb, fleshy, looseness, as if I could peel off my face, as if I could tear off my face and start over with a new face that bunches and slackens and smiles and frowns in ways that make sense.

I lie perfectly still after making love to Diane, hoping she will drift off to sleep. Soon I must get out of bed. I must pace and smoke. Diane senses something is wrong. She asks me if I want to talk. I whisper for Diane to tell me what needs talking about. Diane rolls onto her side. Her face is not six inches from my face. Diane asks me where I was the night Jonathan died.

The bottom drops from my stomach as I hear my answer, a careful, deliberate, blunt lie. In a voice that comes from only God knows where I tell Diane that I was with her the night Jonathan OD’d on heroin. My voice does not crack or waiver as I tell Diane she and I were right here in this bed all night the night Jonathan died.

* * *

Diane is nothing like me. Diane never has days when her insides feel like a thousand shattered light bulbs. Diane never craves oblivion or finds consciousness intolerable. Diane never puts poison in her body, never takes a hammer to her brain with drugs and alcohol. Diane is never conflicted. Diane is never driven and derided by vanity. Diane’s eyes never burn in anguish and anger. Sadness never clings to Diane’s bones, claws at her heart and cloys her soul. Diane never lacks control. Diane never has to guard against getting too high or too low or too perfectly in between. Diane never fears the other shoe dropping. Diane never fears being alone. Diane is solitary, stern, confident, strong. Diane is honest. Diane is unblinking and unswerving. Diane knows what she wants, why she wants it, and how she will get it. Diane is comfortable in her own skin. Diane does not have an addictive bone in her body.

Diane pulls me back from the jumping off place, back from myself and away from my impulse to destroy the innermost parts of me that Diane loves most. Diane eases the hammer from my hand. Diane reinvents me, recreates me, raises me. Diane makes me crave presence. Diane restores my sanity, heals my spirit, and stills my mind. Diane is salvation. Diane is redemption. Diane is grace. Diane is my drug of choice.

* * *

Jonathan’s funeral is at Saint Luke’s church, where Jonathan and I served for years as altar boys. Cherubs, Father O’Hara called us, my cherub book ends, he’d say. Father O’Hara always seemed genuinely pleased when Jonathan and I served Mass with him. What Father O’Hara did not know was that Jonathan and I routinely stole bottles of communion wine from the sacristy. Jonathan and I joked that getting drunk on stolen communion wine was not, could not be a sin because the two of us were gathered in His name and the wine had been blessed by the Pope. After Mass Jonathan and I drank communion wine on our sacred drinking log behind Saint Luke’s church. That was what we called it, “our sacred drinking log.” Jonathan and I got plastered after serving Mass. We guzzled communion wine and toasted the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the Pope.

Diane and I sit in the back pew of Saint Luke’s. Enormous, arched doors close shut with a bang and form an impenetrable dark wall behind us. The pew is wooden, unpadded and unforgiving. My collar is too tight, so I try to undo the top button. The button pops off and rolls down the aisle. Diane goes after the button. I watch Diane step softly down the aisle, watch as shafts of stain glass light dance in Diane’s dark black hair. I watch Diane retrieve the button and put it in her purse. When Diane sits back down beside me, I lean into her and I whisper that the button is mine, that it is my favorite button, a button I want back. Diane shakes her head. Before I can jest some more over the button with Diane, Father O’Hara begins his sermon and people start sniffling and I mark time in a world unto myself.

* * *

I injected Jonathan because he could not do that kind of thing to himself. Jonathan wrapped a piece of cloth tightly around his arm and balled his long fingers into a tight fist. Jonathan slapped his arm, and a host of blue veins rose, rose up out of Jonathan as if his insides were happy to be rid of them. Jonathan grabbed my hand before I pierced his skin with the needle. He was grinning his cocksure grin when he came up with a beauty, Jonathan’s very last beauty: “If I swoon,” Jonathan said to me, “Hold me. Hold me tight.” I am here to tell you that one nearly killed me.

* * *

Now Jonathan is passing me in his casket, and I am standing next to Diane remembering how good it felt laughing with Jonathan, laughing our asses off. My face is a mass of needles and pins, and it feels as if my entire face, scalp to chin, has been turned inside out. Jonathan’s dead body is passing me by, and I am on the verge of bursting. You had to see Jonathan’s face. It was beautiful. “If I swoon,” Jonathan said, “Hold me. Hold me tight.”

I turn to Diane. Diane takes one look at my face and knows. Diane knows. And before Diane can wrap me in her arms it comes gushing out—oceans, rivers, torrents of tears. I cannot stop the flood of tears or the chest-wracking sobs. I wail like a baby in Diane’s arms, my face hidden from the world by Diane’s embrace. I pray for forgiveness. Forgiveness for inserting the needle and depressing the plunger and killing Jonathan. Forgiveness for not trying harder and longer to revive Jonathan. Forgiveness for wiping down the filthy countertop and throwing our spoon, needle, and cigarette butts into the shit-filled commode. Forgiveness for turning out all of Jonathan’s pockets in search of our score of heroin. Forgiveness for dragging Jonathan’s still warm body out into the hallway. Forgiveness for leaving Jonathan dead and alone on a piss-stained carpet outside of apartment 12 of the East Dedham projects.

I pray for Diane’s love. I pray for Diane’s loyalty. I pray for the will and the strength and the courage to get clean. I pray for a miracle. I pray for grace. I walk from Jonathan’s funeral sobbing like a baby, one hand clutched to Diane’s hand, the other pushed deep in my pocket fingering a tight ball of heroin.

Crafting fiction that moves the reader is Rory Doherty’s passion. In addition to being a writer, Rory is and has been many things: son, brother, student, athlete, soldier, bartender, teacher, husband, father, business owner, pet lover, etc. Through all past lives and including this iteration, he feels mostly like a thief trying to not get caught.