Sometimes, Starsky just pushes my buttons. Sometimes, he’s so infuriating, I could kill him! Sometimes, I even tell him that. Even when he and I both know it’s not true. Even when I know the reason he’s making me angry is to stop me falling into the pit of despair that certain anniversaries open up for me.
In Starsky’s mind, filled with that weird logic of his, making me angry at him is supposed to deliver me out of my blue funk: it’s supposed to aid me to refocus all my negative energy on him so that I can let go of whatever is bothering me; and it’s supposed to help me get my equilibrium back so that tomorrow will be a better day.
Why does he have to do that? Why is he always thinking about me and not himself? Why does he put up with me? Sometimes, I just don’t know the answer.
I couldn’t help my mood today. I couldn’t help the shouting and the sarcasm. I couldn’t stop the grumpy sighs and the drumming fingers. It was beyond my control. The dark clouds were hovering over my bed when I woke up this morning. The calendar screaming the date at me like a klaxon calling out my loss: saying you’re alone, you deserve to be alone and you’ll never find happiness. You’d think after two years, I could at least let some of it go but each anniversary of that day does the same thing to me: fills me with sadness, anger, a sense of hopelessness.
Starsky knows this and yet he still comes by and picks me up. He still talks to me about nothing and does stupid things to wind me up just so I can lash out at him rather than at myself. He’s never, not once, asked for a day off to avoid me. He takes what I dish out and still wants to be my partner anyway. That’s a special kind of friendship and that’s an amazing type of friend that on days like to day, I really need but don’t believe I deserve.
Usually, we struggle through the bad days together and at the end, he’ll drop me off and say, “See ya tomorrow, Blintz,” like I hadn’t just ripped his head off for the thousandth time. He’ll act like he doesn’t mind when I ignore him, or I just grunt, because he knows that tomorrow I’ll be all smiles and things will be good again. It will be like today never happened. Starsky always believes in ‘least said, soonest mended’ and, by and large, it works for us.
But not this time.
Not this time, when I’d said those unforgiveable words, “I could kill you,” and had very nearly managed it.
What kind of a partner was I anyway? What kind of a friend? Starsky deserves so much better. He deserves someone who won’t take his bad mood out on him or even better someone who’ll let things go and not stew on them.
As the doctor wraps his chest to support his broken rib, Starsky smiles and jokes with the nurse. He even smiles and jokes with me. He acts like I didn’t almost cost him his life with my inattention: my head down, stuck in my own world, so absentminded that I didn’t see the pipe ’til I was tripping over it and knocking into my partner. He acts like he didn’t fall off a roof because of me; like he wouldn’t have been dead if he’d fallen a foot to the right. But I can’t act like that. All I can see, in my mind’s eye, is a drop, a huge gaping hole between buildings. When I think about it now, it makes all the blood rush out of my legs, which is why I’m sitting on a chair unable to move.
As the doctor and nurse leave to organise the paperwork so Starsky can go home, silence descends. My hollowed out brain is ringing with thoughts, each more terrifying than the last — you nearly killed your partner today; you nearly lost your best friend; you nearly lost the one thing that makes this world worthwhile. My heart’s no quieter: it’s telling me I should get away from him before I hurt him irrevocably; before I say one too many mean things that will break the camel’s back; before I actually do cost him his life.
I can’t look at him. My failure hurts too much.
“I’m sorry,” the words escape my lips without me forming them. They are totally inadequate.
“Hey, these things happen, Blintz. Don’t go beating yourself up about it,” he says and he means it too.
We walk in silence to his car and he insists on driving even though he’s in pain. I expect him to drop me home but he stops at a little bodega to run some errands. I can see the way he’s holding himself stiffly and my mortification knows no end. He comes out carrying a six pack of beer and a bunch of yellow roses. I raise an eyebrow at him but he just puts the items on the back seat and drives: not towards my house or his but somewhere else. I’m not sure where we’re going ’til we get there.
The cemetery.
He hands me the flowers and I get out of the car silently. I wander down the tidy rows of white and grey tombstones until I come to the one inscribed with her name: GILLIAN INGRAHM. I lay my flowers on the neatly clipped grass and say what I need to say. I kiss my fingers and place my hand on the cool marble stone, saying thank you for our short time together, saying goodbye.
I feel better as I walk through the grassy lanes to my waiting partner.
He starts the engine and turns the car back towards where he lives. I know he wants to go home and rest but I also know he’s taking me with him. We’ll drink beer and talk and I’ll sleep on the couch ’cause he’s decided he’s not letting me be alone today. And I’m grateful, more grateful than I can say.
As we open the first beer, he turns to me and says, “Next year, we’re taking the day off.”
I frown at him. “We don’t need to do that, Starsk. We don’t take a day off on Terri’s anniversary. We always do something on the day or evening to remember her but we don’t take the whole day… I don’t need the whole day.”
Unexpectedly, Starsky grins at me. “No, but I do. Gillian’s anniversary is dangerous for my health. If I remember rightly, last year you threw a can of soda at me and gave me a black eye. This year you knocked me off a roof. I might not survive next year!”
And suddenly, I’m laughing and he’s laughing too. I throw a cushion at his head and he ducks, clutching his bruised ribs and gasping, “Don’t make me laugh!”
So next year, I might take the day off to keep my partner safe and sound… but if I don’t, I will remember to be grateful for Starsky: for the way he drives me crazy; for the way he reads my mind; for the way he gives me hope; for a partner who’s always got my back; and for a friendship that’s unending.
