God Hates Us All

23

DAPHNE REMAINS NEARLY COMATOSE for the entire drive home. After we drop Marvin off, I drag her into the shower, do my best to scrub her clean, and tuck her into bed.

“What about the farewell drugs?” are her only words to me, a line from Sid and Nancy. Then she falls asleep, so deeply she snores.

I spend most of the night sitting in a chair next to the bed, watching her. I doze off at some point during the early hours of the morning. When I wake, the bed is empty and the Buick is gone from the driveway. There’s a note pinned to the refrigerator: “Sorry.”

The call from Kings Park arrives later that afternoon. Miss Robichaux has decided to check herself back in, says a bored administrator whose greatest concern is that I pick the Buick up from the parking lot.

The next morning, another spectacularly sunny day, my father drops me off at the institution. Daphne shuffles out into the visiting area, looking very much like she did the first time I saw her there. She speaks slowly. They’ve clearly upped her dosage.

“So,” she asks. “How do you like me now?”

“Same as it ever was,” I say. “You look like the woman I love.”

She smiles weakly. “You know why love stories have happy endings?” I shake my head. “Because they end too early,” she continues. “They always end right at the kiss. You never have to see all the bullshit that comes later. You know, life.”

“Lady, this love story is just beginning. Rest up, because when you’re feeling better…” I pause, because I don’t know exactly what to say next.

“What?” she asks. “We go back to the suburbs? We get married? That’s us, right? Two and a half kids and a white picket fence.”

“Fuck all that. We can move back into the Chelsea. I’ll even pick you up in a big yellow taxi.” It’s a reference to the end of Sid and Nancy that I hope will cheer her up.

“You’re not Sid,” she says, shuffling back to her room.

Daphne’s words sting at first, mostly because she’s right. All of the bourgeois bullshit that we used to make fun of—stupid jobs and suburban values—has somehow become my life. I’m beginning to understand her urge to set fire to the world.

But I’m not Sid Vicious. Despite the world being a fuckedup place, well past fixing, I don’t have any desire to wreck the joint.

Maybe it’s just the sunshine that socks me in the face when I walk out the door, but I’m just not ready to go home and get ready for work. I could start fresh. Find a job in a better restaurant. Quit food service altogether.

I don’t even have to stay in New York. K. said that traveling was lonely, but I’ve never even been to California, where the sun’s supposed to shine like this every day of the year.

I pop a cassette into the Buick’s stereo. It’s the Ramones. I turn the volume up high and roll down the windows. The highway air tastes of fumes, but it still feels goddamn good to breathe.