Merilyn Chang is a journalist and digital media manager based between New York and Berlin. She’s studied comparative literature and creative writing for her bachelor’s and has since been working on her first novel. Her work has been published by Dazed, Resident Advisor, Fact Mag and more.
God’s Seat
The day August died was just like any other day. It was all the days after that were different. That morning he woke up earlier than I did, as always, and made tea for us in the kitchen while I journaled in bed. August didn’t like to lay around in the morning. He liked to get up minutes after opening his eyes. Said it helped him start the day instead of ruminating. Not that I’m running away from anything, he said. It just never did anyone any good to swim in your thoughts.
I was writing about our evening by the lake yesterday. Since I met August a year ago, my journal was filled to the brim with notes about him. In the beginning, his moppy hair and big hands. He had a curious obsession with birds, even though he rejected bird watching as a hobby. He liked to read about them in books and always kept a pocket-sized notebook in his shoulder bag. It was from a trip he took with his family to Thailand years ago. He had detailed drawings of all the birds he’d seen then. Even the one that broke his arm. He always laughed when he told that story.
A few months in, my journal entries grew more detailed. I wondered why he didn’t like to speak to his family. The only person he’d talk about was his sister Ryan. He loved her more than he loved most other things. One word by her could make or break his entire day. He kept talking about having her fly out so I could meet her. You guys would love each other, He said. You both have this thing about you…the thing that makes other people want to get close to you. Like you both just get people.
I think what he meant to say was that we were softer, more pliable, easy to bounce ideas off, or be a sounding board for. I didn’t know Ryan, but I knew she became the mother that they lost to depression. A divorce gone haywire, rich fathers with powerful lawyers, white horses, and country houses. All lost in a moment of breakage. I thought August would be deeply opposed to marriage, but he seemed to want it all the more. Even if it is an act of insanity, weak knees giving into momentary desire, it’s a feat to be able to feel anything at all, he argued. We all know nothing lasts. So isn’t it all the more fantastic that people still feel strong enough to do it? They’re saying, fuck probability and shit, we feel so much right now that we may be the exception. And they’re probably not. But that kind of thinking, isn’t it the point of being alive?
He asked me to marry him five months in. I couldn’t tell where the line was drawn between joke and reality. Sometimes it seemed like August couldn’t tell either.
He called me from the kitchen and my pen went stray, trailing off the page.
“Tea?” He chimed from behind the walls.
I set the journal beside my bed and lifted my feet from under the covers. It was February, but winter never really came where we lived. Still the air was chilly as it hit my body.
August had a cigarette between his lips and all the windows open. He was straining the tea leaves, making puddles on the counter.
“Come on, August. It’s 10 am in the morning. Kinda early for a cig, no?”
“It’s been like three days! Life’s about moderation isn’t it?”
“Moderating death, if that’s what you mean.”
August put the cigarette out in the sink. His mom had picked up the habit after the divorce, leaving a permanent scent of nicotine on all her clothes. August had this brown leather jacket from his mother. It was his favorite piece. Went well with everything. But the smell of smoke seemed so ingrained in the fibers of the leather that I could smell it from across the room. He loved it. Said it smelled like her.
I watched August spread jam on his toast, making sure to cover all corners of the bread. He didn’t like any part untouched. “Why don’t we go to Thailand together?” He suddenly raised his head.
I laughed. “You tell me! Why don’t we?”
It was a special place to him. The last place he saw his parents happy, the last trip they took as a unit. He wanted to reclaim that trip.
“Maybe we should go before it gets too hot there. Like this winter. I can buy your ticket!”
August had funds from his dad. Perhaps from the guilt of his absence, or the regret of having let down his only son, post the failure of his second family. His younger wife left him after seven years, taking their little daughter with them. They got child support every month, but August’s dad was denied visiting rights. After Ryan cut him out, he turned to August, the only child left that would still give him the time of day. They didn’t have a good relationship, but it was salvageable. And his dad knew that. He would spend the rest of his life investing in automobile safety research, after the accident that killed his son. When he reached the old age of 85, his daughter would finally speak to him again, long after their mother passed. She would go to her father’s big house upstate and tell him she forgave him, after realizing that there were, indeed, still good men out there. Like her husband, she would say. Like August, they would both agree before staring off into the emptiness of the big driveway that rarely saw more than its own car.
August didn’t like accepting his money, but we were still in college. He swore that the moment he graduated, he’d make his own.
I fumbled the spoon around my empty teacup that was waiting for liquid. “I feel bad taking your dad’s money.”
“Don’t. He’s got more than he knows what to do with. And it’s not going to any good use anyways.” August was scrubbing down the counter, waiting for the boiled water to cool slightly. He was a stickler for morning routines, even though no other parts of his existence beckoned any type of routine. Being with him calmed me down from the noise of the rest of the day. Even just a morning together. If I could piece together all our mornings like a puzzle, I would, and re-live each of them, every single day. Pitchy kettle and hot tea. The crunch of a butter knife on toasted bread.
He poured hot water into my mug. We were on a coffee break to reset our tolerance. After tea August would realize that we had no more tea bags for tomorrow and run out to the market. He would die before reaching the market—my 1967 vintage Jaguar, or, our car, as he liked to call it, totaled in a messy heap of metal and leather. In the eulogy his mother, more consumed by madness than before, would reach a moment of clarity and commend her son for getting more out of his 21 years of life than most did in a lifetime. She would say that her son broke the curse of the family, sacrificing himself in return, then, retreating back into madness, mumble antics about his childhood till Ryan escorted her off the stage. His sister would deliver a speech that garnered a standing ovation from the funeral attendees. She would go on to become a renown psychologist years later, giving speeches becoming part of her profession. In her eulogy for August, she asked the crowd to imagine the feeling of getting out of bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Imagine it was the dead of winter, bare feet on hard tiled floors. The kind of cold that stings like glass. The starkness of overhead lights in your eyes after the dark bedroom. That’s what it feels like to live without August she said. That feeling will be there for as long as she lives.
But I digress. I want to linger on this moment a little longer. Maybe rewind to last night. Yes, that sounds right.
Last night August drove us out to the lake where we spent summer evenings last year. We were only months into the relationship, then, and everything still felt new. My stomach flip-flopped whenever he would ring my bell, and my appetite was unreliable. The lake was where college kids came to get drunk at the end of the semester. Skinny dipping, and keg stands, fireworks in the summer. Sometimes someone would bring some hash, some of the good green stuff, and the night would take a calmer turn.
We went there with our friends before it was closed off indefinitely for the last month of summer break. A freshman named Olive, petite girl with long red hair and pale eyelashes hit her head on one of the rocks on the deeper end of the lake. There was a part out by the east end of the lake where kids tied an old rope to a tree calling it the God’s Swing. It attracted the younger kids more than it did my friends. But sometimes we’d drive by and watch the commotion.
Toward the end of summer, Olive took a faithful dive, after a couple rounds of beers coaxed by her friends and dove straight into the shallow end of the water. She’d apparently hit her head and died on the spot. Some of the kids scrammed when they found her floating face down. Others called the cops. August and I weren’t around that night, but it was local campus news for a few months. The lake closed entirely—the rope cut off from the tree. Pictures of Olive were placed at the entrance to the lake—fresh flowers replaced every few weeks for the first months. Everyone at school knew her name by the first week of classes.
August and I tried to go back several times in the fall, but it was still closed off. Only last night, did we find the blockade to the entrance removed. We drove in and parked at our side of the lake, across from where Olive head-dived into heaven.
It was different without the backdrop of summer. Without our friend’s horsing around in the back, without the slight buzz of alcohol and the yells of our classmates. Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart was playing on the radio. It was a throwback kind of night, where they only played music from over 10 years ago.
“They stopped giving Olive flowers.” August said, after a long silence.
“I guess they can’t stay alive in February.”
“Not in California. Everything stays alive here.”
August was gazing across the water, his hand fidgeting with my nail, as he gripped my hand. “When my mom tried to kill herself, I thought that was a young death.”
“What do you mean?”
“When someone dies young, we’re programmed to be sad.”
“It’s all about the potential. Someone older might have lived out their lives to the fullest. Younger people haven’t had the chance yet.”
“Yeah but, I think most old people haven’t really lived out their full potentials either. They’re just pulling their weight along, trying to make something meaningful of all this time we have.”
“It’s a lot of time.”
“We can’t waste any of it, Amelia. We have to do something.”
“I’m down. For something!” I laughed. “Like what?”
“I want to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and I want take the Trans-Siberian railway from Russia to China. Then we’re going to make a film about it.” August looked me in the eyes, half joking, half serious. Then he drifted his gaze across the water again. He went on about the places we would go. Ice climbing in Iceland, Svalbard, the most remote Northern town in Greenland for the northern lights, dancing in Cusco, Peru. He had an uncanny knowledge of geography and wanted to turn everything he saw into a film. When he finished, he looked me dead in the eyes again. “We’re going to do it?”
We sat for a little longer and talked about the first film we would make. An intercontinental journey from Moscow to Beijing. And we would be the first people to cover it entirely on film. We’d revolutionize the documentary filmmaking scene. Change it overnight, once our piece dropped. “Maybe we can do it when we graduate this year.” He said.
“Seems like a nice grad gift.” I brought his hand to my lips and grazed against it.
We went for a small dip in the water later. Just our feet. It was too cold to take clothes off, just socks and shoes thrown haphazardly in the car as we tiptoed down by the water. The grass was cold and sharp against my feet. I clenched my teeth as we waded closer to the water. August seemed to like the cold. He rolled up his pants and dipped both feet in, walking deeper till he was several feet from the shore. “Come here!” He motioned.
It was too cold for me. I dipped my feet in and squealed, jumping back onto the grass, which felt warm in comparison. August laughed and ran back to me. The bottom half of his pants were a shade darker, wet, and half stuck to his calves. “I’ll keep you warm.” He lifted me up and ran toward the car, throwing me into the passenger’s seat before grabbing my feet and rubbing them between his hands. He threw his breath onto it, huffing warm air onto my skin as I laughed at the tickle.
Later as we drove home he reached into his backpack and pulled out a flower. He stopped right by Olive’s photo, at the entrance to the lake, and lightly placed the white flower in front of the framed image.
“You didn’t know her, did you?” I asked.
“No. But I feel like I did. Or I do.” He shrugged.
At home, August brought me tea in bed. He had some more cinema readings to do before class the following week, so sat with the lamp on, in the corner of the room while I wrote in my journal.
I wrote about him, of course. I’d loved a few boys before. It was hard to decipher what love really was to me. Was it the comfort of feeling a home in someone else, or the intensity of a more passionate union. Did one mutually exclude the other? What was the difference between loving someone and being in love with them? People have told me they fell in love after three weeks. For me it was always much longer. Months and months until one day, I’m sitting on my couch, eating take out with August, staring at the TV which is playing a re-run of some dumb show, his foot rubbing against mine, to show he was still there despite the boxes of Chinese food between us. It hit at that moment. I realized I loved him.
It was the first kind of love I’d felt that wasn’t contingent on something else. All the past loves felt like they had to lead somewhere. Somehow, at some point, we were all fed the narrative that finding love and finding a partner should spearhead a direct pipeline to marriage and a forever union. It made sense. But it detracted from how present I could feel in the relationship. Always waiting for something else, always fearful of it being taken away. With August, I felt just right, just at home, with the exact present moment. There didn’t have to be plans for a future, as long as we could just continue on like this, everything would be ok.
I glanced up at him, focused on his texts. Papers thrown around messily, gathered by his feet, the light from the lamp cast a gauzy halo around him. He sensed me staring at him and looked up. We both started laughing. He put down his book and tackled me onto the bed, pushing my journal out of the way.
We almost fell asleep in our clothes that night, until I woke up in the middle of the night and stripped it off both of us. We lay naked next to each other, all the lights off, except the streetlamps from the outside bleeding through the white sheets we had up for curtains.
“Let’s stay up till the morning.” August said as I closed my eyes.
“Keep me awake then.”
August moved closer and kissed my shoulder. “You look too peaceful. I feel bad.”
I opened my eyes. Moonlight fell on his face, erasing all the lines and creases that came from being alive. He looked smooth, like something out of a photograph. I held his face in my hands and he did the same, to my waist. I think we stayed awake for another hour or so, saying nothing to each other, until gradually we drifted to sleep. I couldn’t tell who fell asleep first. I suppose I would never know if August really did stay up all night.
And that brings us back to where we started. I hate this part of the story, really. Even though I think about it nearly every day.
When we finished our tea that morning, August leaned over the table and lightly grabbed my face. He liked to give standing kisses, the ones with our bodies straddling a dining table—knees half crouched, half straight. The kind of motion that screams we couldn’t even wait long enough to get on the same side of the table to start kissing! Sometimes, though, we liked to sit on the same side of the table at restaurants—the waiters giving us funny looks before turning into smiles. It made talking easier, we both had quiet voices. It made us feel closer to each other amidst the chaos and conversations of all the other people we didn’t know around us.
But tea in the morning was our thing to do with the absence of anyone else around. It was something I looked forward to every night. And an extra treat if we had the time to eat breakfast together. Which we did, on that morning. It was sunny that day. The type of sun that tasted fresh with the cool air, the kind that performed warmth in the early afternoon, before setting at 5 pm. But it was still so early for us. Only 10 in the morning.
August turned and placed our cups into the sink. “Need anything else from the store? Should we get some peanut butter? Can make some PB&J’s for later?”
“Whatever you want. I think we have everything here.”
I watched him slip into his favorite jacket. I replay that image in my head again and again and again. It’s really one of my favorite moments to remember. The way he moves the hair out of his eyes, the flick of the jacket over his elbows and onto his shoulders. Like something out of a movie. The jacket, his mother’s old favorite, ripped apart in the midst of the crash. It was thrown aside by one of the officers when he tried to perform CPR at the scene of the accident. Later, after the two victims were taken away in their ambulances, one which carried a dead man, and the other, a living one, the leather jacket would be left on the street, crumpled at the ledge of a sidewalk even after the police removed the yellow hazard tape. August’s mom would throw a fit at the hospital, asking for her all her son’s clothes back, breaking into tears when the nurses said they hadn’t found a brown jacket. She would go home and throw away all her leather, making a promise to her dead son that she would never wear the fabric again. Until years later, right before she is sent to the senior home, she’ll see her grandson, Augustus, Ryan’s first and only child, on the day of his college graduation wearing a brown leather jacket under his cap and gown. When he throws his cap into the air, the leather peaks through, almost shimmering in the morning light. She’ll look at her daughter and see tears in her eyes before they look at one another and share a smile.
“Amelia, baby” August had his hand on the door. “I’ll be right back.”
I kissed him. Once and once again, for good measure. He indulged and kissed me on the cheek once more before opening the door and stepping outside. I closed it behind him. We still had the whole day ahead of us, I thought. We were going to make sandwiches and head out for a hike, maybe watch a movie later in the evening with blankets taken from the bedroom and splayed out on the couch in my living room. My favorite kind of day. I walked back to the kitchen and took some bread out of the cabinet. He’d be hungry when he got back. I’d start cooking now.