i would read a lot for a while there. i was a kid during all this, of course, when i'd read entire books in a day. now it takes me weeks to get through one paperback. but back then, something about how it passed the time was nice to me. those were long hours in bed waiting for everyone else to quiet down for the night. i needed absolute silence to even attempt doing anything. mom's screaming was never easy to tune out, neither was the piercing way my brother would whisper some curse or something toward dad. this was during the age of CDs but it wasn't like we had any kind of money for those, so we had cassettes. never took good care of them, my dad. smoked in his listening room, warped the tapes with soot and ash. but he'd stopped listening to them really once i was in school. so i'd take his walkman one night and put a random tape in and suddenly it was like snow was in my ears, and everyone was finally gone. there wasn't any music on it at all, no designed noise at all, the ribbon was just pure white noise, it sounded like touching sand. and while that was nice to finally stop hearing them, it wasn't like i could sleep with the goofy oversized things on my ears blasting. for a week i just sat there on the on the bed on the floor and stared at the closed door, watching the shadows of them move to and fro until the hall light switched off. i measured time in the number of times i had to flip the blank tape. it got old fast. when i asked to get new batteries for the thing dad just complained and told me to go to the library or something like a normal kid should so i did. just walked out the door. no one cared about these things back then. the librarian was just as blase about the thing as dad was so i just checked out whatever books could fit my tiny hands and weren't for babies. i left with some pulpy romance that had to have been on the shelf for quite a few well-loved years. when i came back home there was another fight underway and batteries on my bed. i skipped dinner that night to read with the flurry in my ears. of course i wasn't too great at reading then, i was just eight or nine i think, so i only went through a chapter that night, relishing in the fact that this was a book for grownups. of course, mom and dad didn't care. but when i took off my headphones, suddenly hours had passed and everyone else was asleep.
i kept at this and saw the romance develop between the two leads, the acts of love making me think of disney movies or something. love was always some begrudging thing until right then. i found myself smiling, at least whenever there wasn't a bump on the walls shaking the floorboards. no amount of noise blocks out a tumble. i finished the book and replaced it with another romance, i think by the same author, within a couple weeks. that one went by sooner, similar plot and characters with the names moved around. soon i'd start bringing home two at a time, then four, then however many i could carry in my backpack. of course, mom and them would still get too loud for me at night sometimes, and i'd get irritated but i'd just turn the volume up. by the time i finished another chapter, it'd be silence. the teacher at school was impressed but didn't approve of my choice of reading material. i might've not been a great reader at the start there but i knew a thing or two about why people did things. i knew my dad smoked because he wasn't trusted around a bottle anymore. i knew my mom watched the news all day because she was bored with me and my brother. you don't gotta be a genius to know why a person would read a romance novel. but i never put myself in the story like other people did, i suppose. sure, i was thinking myself as the bookstore owner swept off her feet by the suave wayward music man, but i was also thinking myself as the music man, too. something about the feelings they had toward one another, not really the feelings they'd receive from one another. i think around book 12 or so my brother got sick. he was older than me, but now he's forever just 17. what got him got him quickly, but for that stint in the hospital bed, i'd look at him and wait for tears to come. and he cried, he did, when he'd touch my arm and cough when trying to tell me something but all i could think about right then was how i wouldn't have to hear that whistle in his teeth anymore if this was really happening. and of course it was really happening. it happened. and i felt bad but i didn't really cry. i was mostly annoyed that i had to spend a whole weekend around so many sad people. made me feel guilty for not joining in on the malaise. still, the night of the funeral i went right back to the bed and put on my headphones, though in hindsight i would bet that the house was silent regardless.
the books were more interesting. had grander gestures. and that stupid smile of mine would deepen with each one. a proposal made on a hot air balloon, renting out an entire baseball stadium for a date, or even the smaller stuff like just recreating a favorite meal from the girl's childhood. of course the books would always harp on the girl's reaction, the feeling of being loved so deeply. i wasn't interested in that though. i was caught up on how anyone could feel so strongly about someone else to do all that for them. i had to have been maybe 40, maybe 50 books in on this phase of mine when one night there was a noise loud enough to pierce the headphones right before a thud rattled the walls. i got another paragraph in the book before my bedroom door swung open and mom ripped the headphones off my ears with tears in her eyes. to her credit, she didn't mince words that night, told me right away that dad was dead and that he shot himself. i nodded and started to reach for the walkman again when she scooped me up and took me to the porch to wait for the cops to come. she kept talking and talking and i started to think of it like those stories i was reading. people died in those, it was always so sad. i remember seeing myself on the porch that night, or maybe i'm just remembering it now like this, but i tried to say one of the lines a character said once. i don't know if it was any comfort, i think i didn't have the right tone, but my mom held my hand anyways. i was irked by how cold her hand was. once the sirens rounded the corner and some officers were talking to mom, i tried to go to dad's listening room. figured i could get a better pair of headphones. i saw dad there, on the ground, and turned around. no one knew i'd even left the porch. i knew i'd have to come back later for them. i don't know if i ever told my mom that story but i tried telling it to a couple friends a few times over the years, before i realized their laughter was a sign of unease more than anything. a lot more people came to this funeral, for dad, than the one for my brother. a lot of them gave me a hug. i didn't know what i was supposed to feel. when we got home, though, i figured it'd be quiet like last time we had one of these. no shadows peeked through the bottom of the door, the hall light was off. i started to pick back up where i left off but then i heard the sniffling sound of mom crying again, so the headphones went back on until she was asleep.
i kept this reading phase up for about a year or so i think. mom never stepped foot in the listening room again so i just nabbed the better headphones and got back to normal. each night, static and reading until i got tired enough to sleep, for a year. had to have been, since i remember mom wanting to talk about dad and my brother and visit the graves. i didn't really care one way or the other but i joined her anyways. she was quiet but that was useless since i didn't have a book with me in the car. i'd just relived scenes. the man so in love that he rebuilt an entire cottage just to see his love smile. another man who put a stop to a wedding just to get a small chance at having the love of his life. yet another who'd followed this woman to the ends of the earth on some fantastical quest for her benefit. and in my head i could ignore that annoying focus on the girls and how much they were impressed, how love felt like the natural debt to come afterward. i wanted to know what made someone willing to do all that for some random girl they barely knew. those thoughts stopped when the car did. i followed mom up the hill to where the two were buried. she didn't say anything for a long while then she asked why i didn't look at them when they were in their caskets, at the funerals. i shrugged and said i didn't want to. she asked what's up with the romance books. i told her they were interesting. she must've assumed i thought ill of her, told me that she loves me very much, and that true love like in those books will come one day. i nodded and didn't say anything. i wasn't too concerned about true love finding me. i was loved. i knew that. my brother loved me on his deathbed. dad loved me with a pistol in his hand. for another 17 years after that day on the hill, my mother loved me, too. friends loved me, very much. still love me, now. love wasn't hard to find, and i never thought it was. something about how that conversation went made me feel ill about reading those romance books, though. i was a kid, flighty, you know. i moved on to something else, got real into fashion for a bit there, i think. the stories were burned in place, though, stuck in my head like a hangnail, even now 30 years later. never did figure out what made those men do all that for these girls. it was fiction, i knew that even back then, but still. all these years, i was never waiting for a man to prove his love to me with some grand gesture like that, even though, a few times, something close to it has happened. i didn't want it to find me, though. i wanted to find it myself. get that feeling, get the urge to move a mountain for someone, to put my life at risk for someone else. i wanted to understand what those men were so enthused about. i didn't care about being loved, that was easy. i wanted to love someone. still want to. i'm not worried about someone being okay with me listening to white noise each night. i can find that person anywhere. but i don't know who i'd take my headphones off for.
