I snap the suitcase closed. It was my mother’s, so it is a very old and old-fashioned one. I put on my shirt and socks and shoes. I look at him as he is fixing bourbon by the sink.
“I shall miss you,” I say. God, give me a better closing line than that.
He has his back to me.
I find my hand shaking as it moves to the doorknob. As I depart the premises that contained him and me and a ghost who was me as well.
“Goodbye, Barry.”
He pours another drink in his jelly glass.
I have my suitcase in my left hand. I walk out into the hall that smells of tenements and death and loneliness and terminal lives and harsh smelly food and anger and poverty, as I close the door. Not surprise to hear the hard crash and smashing of the jelly glass against the door.
He wanted to throw it against me. I guess I wanted him to, as well. Some children are playing in the hall. I walk past them.
Their poor clothes and their dirty hair mix with their filthy hands and their hopeless slits of eyes, along with forced laughter, as though they are guessing at how to be children. As though they died inside a long time ago. And are just making it up as they go along. Hoping for the best. Flying blind.
Aren’t we all?