To My Wife, Regarding The Leftovers
Few things suggest “I could have done more” like the bright overhead lights above the bathroom mirror. Few things announce “I’m going to be better today” like the conscious decision to floss.
But there’s more there in that morning reflection, something I see all over my face and in everything else framed in that mirror. On good days, if feelings could occupy physical space, it would be mostly behind and crouched low, out of view. On bad days, it is covering everything like shrink wrap and it is vibrating.
I’m not sure what it is exactly, probably because it is so many things. It is grief and guilt, but those are too easy and obvious, and may only be minor characters. It is something more, something that surrounds — and it is difficult to pin down, with words, or without.
Maybe it’s shortsighted or an enormous cop-out, but few things have represented that world of second guessing and guilt, the one where a violent awareness of grief is the air you breathe, and where you turn every corner expecting chaos, like HBO’s The Leftovers.
The show, based on Tom Perotta’s book of the same name, maybe loosely, maybe not (I haven’t read it), has recently entered its third season. And I have yet to watch a new episode. Not because I’m not interested in what comes next — but more because I can’t stop watching the pilot.
Quickly for those of you that are uninitiated, the premise of The Leftovers is that 2% of the world’s population has disappeared into thin air, without notice, at the same time. One moment a baby is crying in a car seat, a Dad is pushing a shopping cart, a person is driving a car, and so on, and the next moment they are simply gone. This Rapture-esque event becomes known as The Sudden Departure.
The main character, chief of police Kevin Garvey, along with everyone else, is tasked with making sense of a world that has (pardon me while I quote Weezer’s Blue Album) turned and left them here. And while the obvious question is what happened to that departed 2%, the show makes little to no attempt to tackle that question. Rather, the first episode, and every plot twist that follows, addresses the broader question of how do we, or they, move on? What if those feelings of loss, which we normally keep extremely private, were out in the open, all the time, for everyone? What if everyone lacked closure? What if no one had the chance to say good bye, or I love you?
And while The Sudden Departure is a global event, the series presents it mostly from the perspective of the small town of Mapleton three years after the event, branching out through connections between key residents, with the focus heavily on Garvey and his family:
His son, Tommy, is part of a cult, sort of. His daughter, Jill, is still in high school. His wife, Laurie, has left him to join The Guilty Remnant (which is definitely a cult, but a very different group than what Tommy is mixed up in) — a group that wears all white, eats mush for sustenance, smokes a ton of cigarettes, refuses to speak, and proclaims themselves to be the “living reminders” of the the departed.
What is clear almost immediately is that The Leftovers is not going to address the questions you want answered. Instead of revealing why something happened — whether it is the nature of the Sudden Departure or one of the other many other mysteries that unfold throughout the story — the show allows you to follow individuals to see how they react, and not just in the moment, but as a slow burn that reveals the emotions and memories behind their actions.
But beyond that, a television world where everyone is reeling makes for some very honest and straightforward dialogue that to a person (me) in a non-television world where maybe everyone is reeling still feels amazingly cryptic.
There is a scene in that first episode where Chief Garvey arrives late to the Heroes Day parade — the first major event the town has held since the Departure — and Dennis, one of town’s policemen, asks him “Are you worried?”
Garvey responds, “Dennis, I’m always fucking worried.”
It happens all in passing, with Garvey and the episode moving quickly to get to the action (a Heroes Day protest by the Guilty Remnant), but damn if it doesn’t hit so many nails on the head with one quick strike.
Later, Garvey is at the bar and is asked by a woman where he was for the Departure. He lies and says he was home cleaning out a gutter. He asks her the same question, and while she doesn’t lie — she was in the parking lot of the laundromat — she certainly does not tell the whole story. She leaves out the part that her baby boy was in the parking lot with her, until suddenly he wasn’t.
It’s moments like these, the subtle gaps between strangers and the endless space between loved ones, where the show steps over the boundary between their world and ours: No one wants to say the painful details. And it’s easy to assume that no one wants to hear them.
A few short scenes later, Garvey is in the cul de sac of the Guilty Remnant looking for Laurie. She comes outside, as does the group’s leader, who writes on a legal pad “You are not welcome here.”
“I know,” he responds. She underlines the words and shows him the pad again.
“Thank you for fucking underlining that. Jesus Christ, I’m trying to talk to my wife.”
And so that is me, I am trying to talk to my Wife, about what I see when I look in the mirror, about the rotten feelings I have most days, about the painful details that can be just so difficult to say or think that anyone really wants to hear. And in fact, I am finding it all so very difficult that I am using The Leftovers to do it.
But I’ve started to open up. Remember months ago when we went to that bar to watch some of the Eagles game, and it was the first time we had beers out together in quite awhile? I told you then that things weren’t going well for me. I said it wasn’t you, or the kids, and that I felt terrible because I should be great, mostly because of you and the kids. Because when I step outside myself and look at it, what we’ve have together, there is no other way to describe it except to say that it is wonderful.
Then I step back into myself and it is a constant brood.
Remember that woman who freaked out at the waitress because she wouldn’t serve her? She stood up and yelled some things about Trump’s America and then stormed out. Then she came back a few minutes later and shouted more things about Donald Trump.
That day I told you I was going to maybe talk to someone. Maybe seek out medication. And just saying that, just talking to you about it for ten minutes, I felt better. I didn’t tell you what I was dealing with, but I said I was dealing with something.
It’s hard to put into words. But like that scene from The Leftovers, I am always fucking worried.
Not anxious. Not anxiety. Fucking worried. Completely calm. But completely worried.
But it is more than that. Part of it is just a constant awareness of the potential chaos and loss that comes with most passing seconds. Part of it is a need to be prepared for that next time. Not prepared like let’s stock a bomb shelter, but prepared as in a refusal to be lulled content by so many consecutive days without a terrible phone call.
That’s what The Leftovers did perfectly: represent that feeling, the knowing, that at any moment literally anything could happen, everything could change forever and then from that moment on most everything would be about that moment.
This thing we have together is amazing, but I can’t help but be aware how terrifyingly fragile it is. The world is senseless and we have no control, and you have no idea how desperately I just want to forget that but at the same time never be caught off guard again.
Even still, it is more than that.
So every day before I open that bathroom door, I do my best to shed those feelings, because I know on the other side, out in the house with you and the kids, is a world so fantastic that my main daily task is to not ruin it with my bullshit.
Too often I’m completely on edge and don’t even realize it until the smallest thing tanks my mood. Sometimes, I have to tell myself to breathe. Deeply.
Too often I’m bogged down by those things that happened so long ago; like heavy blankets on cold nights, their weight is the last thing and first thing I feel. Sometimes I’m simply unable to float the necessary few feet above my bed and drift inside the dream that is our wonderful life. Sometimes it is just too easy to get stuck in the details of the life I’ve lived rather than the life I’m living. Or maybe all that just now is a bit too dramatic.
It’s just that I have a terrible amount of regret and guilt about that past. I look back and think that I didn’t do a good job. That I let people down. That I was terribly selfish.
But like The Leftovers, I guess different people handle it in different ways. Some people never say a word and smoke a lot. Or drink a lot. Or spend most nights having terrible dreams. Or no dreams at all. Or spend a few months doing nothing but hallucinogens, hoping to feel that thing from the night sky that you felt that first time you looked up really searching for something. Or pills to forget that second night you looked up and felt absolutely nothing.
Eventually you have to quit the pills and tripping and just live with a hole in your heart every time someone says “oh, look at the moon” and you look because they expect you to and it’s just another night and another sky and another moon where you look up and don’t feel a thing. The moon and sky and stars and cars and roads and houses and trees and flowers are all just blunt vivid reminders of the chaos of life and the pain of loss.
And then the mirror before bed, or worse in the morning, reflecting a personality that has maybe become just a caricature of loss and longing.
Infinite faults and guilt reflecting back and forth under that perfect set of bathroom light bulbs.
A morning tap tap tap at the bathroom door breaks the cycle of stare, regret, repeat.
“You still in there?” You say it quietly, barely loud enough to hear over the exhaust fan, because the sun’s not all the way up yet and our girl is still sleeping, “Open the door and look at your boy’s outfit.”
I reach for the door, instantly and genuinely excited, the caffeine is having its desired effect; that dread, in the mirror, is somehow effortlessly transported to the horizon, behind me and far away.
I open the door but don’t see him. I’m still getting used to our boy being too big to not always be in our arms. I look down and he’s standing right there, smiling, looking even more adorable than he did the day before. I barely notice what he is wearing and if you ask me later in the day I’ll have no idea. But I’ll remember his smile. And I’ll remember yours.
