Bottled Up (22 page)

“Stay with him 'til he's asleep,” she said, walking out of the room.

She looked tired. Her eyes were half closed. That could have been either because she was wiped out or because she'd taken one of her Valiums.

Or it could have just been because she was sad. Being sad all the time might make a person look real tired.

My mother looked friggin' exhausted.

I walked over to Mikey's bed and sat next to him. Bugs Bunny was on the floor. I picked it up and put it under his blanket where he could get it. He didn't move, and his eyes were closed.

“You okay, Bugs? How you feeling?”

He didn't answer. I figured the kid was real mad at me for not picking him up. He'd found out what a shit I was and how bad I'd been letting him down. He was just getting his energy together so he could tell me off.

I waited for it. I had it coming.

Tears started coming down his cheeks. First one, then two, then like seven or eight.

“What's the matter? You hurting?”

He nodded.

“Your head hurts? I'll get Mom.”

He shook his head.

“What's wrong? Why are you crying?”

He swallowed, and then said, “I'm sorry.”

If words could kill I would have been dead on the spot.

“What the hell are
you
sorry for?”

He still didn't open his eyes.

“I'm in big trouble, right?”

“For what, Mikey?”

“I broke Daddy's bottles. The police came.”

“The police didn't come because you busted the bottles. They came because you got hurt.”

“Am I going to jail?”

“No, of course not.”

“Are
you
going to jail?”

He was crying so hard, I could hardly hear the question.

“Why would you think that?”

“I saw the policeman bring you home that night. I looked outside and I saw him.”

It
had
been my brother at the window. That's probably why he'd gone and hid in the closet with that bottle.

So that was my fault too.

“Nobody's going to jail,” I told him.

“I'm sorry, Pip. I'm sorry I do wrong things.”

I put my hand under his head and gently pulled him against my chest.

“You're not the one that should be sorry,” I said.

“I'm the one who broke the bottles.”

I didn't know how to explain it to him, and I sure wasn't as good at apologizing as he was.

“Maybe there shouldn't have been any bottles to break,” I said.

He wiped his nose on the bottom of my shirt.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how about not wiping your snot on me.”

He almost smiled, and that was good enough for me. I'd thought he forgot how.

“Pip?”

“Yeah.”

“How do they know how many M&M's to put in the bags? Like how many red ones and how many green ones—how do they know?”

“You're supposed to be asleep.”

“Pip?”

“What?”

“I got a headache,” he said.

“Yeah.” I gave his pillow a hit, and he lay back down on it. “I bet you got one hell of a headache.”

I woke up shaking from a nightmare.

I dreamt I was at the Site. Mikey was following me, and I was trying to outrun him but couldn't.

I got to Beattie's headstone and lit a joint, hoping Mikey wouldn't catch up with me and see me getting high. I took a deep drag and closed my eyes for just a second.

When I opened them and blew out the smoke, Mikey was sitting on the grass leaning against Agnes. He was rolling his own joint.

“What are you running from me for?” he asked. “I'm faster than you.”

He lit the joint and sucked in hard, smiling the whole time. I went to pull the joint out of his mouth, but slipped. I fell back and whacked my head on the headstone.

“That had to hurt,” Mikey said, still smoking away.

I rubbed my head and turned around to see what I'd knocked into. I jumped up when I saw it.

The headstone didn't say Beattie.

It said Downs.

Phillip Downs.

Mom stayed home with Mikey. I was surprised, but I guess I wasn't supposed to be. She's his mother. I just had the feeling she was going to ask
me
to do it. It would have been better than going to classes anyway.

Maybe she needed the day off. She'd been up most of the night listening to the Grinch yell at her. He'd been yelling that what happened to Mikey was her fault—that she was a lousy mother and she was lazy and she was stupid and on and on and on.

She didn't yell back, but I heard her crying.

I stayed in my room. It wasn't up to me to run down there and get in the middle of it.

Like Claire says, we all have choices and Mom made hers by staying with him.

I felt bad for her, though. Some choices are hard. Change is hard. I sure knew that. Sometimes just doing what you've always known is a lot easier than trying to do something different.

Mom was standing at the sink rinsing out her coffee mug when I went through the kitchen on my way to school. I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what. I'm not a big word guy. I could yell at my parents pretty good. I just didn't know how to talk to them.

“See you later,” I said.

It was the best I could do.

Coach Fredericks picked me first for this crazy obstacle course he'd set up. I couldn't climb up to the top of the rope. I fell on my ass twice.

“Got to clear out those smoked-up lungs, Mr. Downs,” he said.

Bend over so I can blow it out your—

Every teacher that day got on my case about something.

One good thing happened, though. Jenna nabbed me after Kirkland's class and said she was treating me to lunch. How could I say no? She smiled at me
and
she was buying.

The only cafeteria food that won't kill you is the chicken fingers. We both got that, fries, and soda. We took our trays to the back near where the freshmen eat, so nobody from any of our classes would come over and get in our way.

“Thanks for having lunch with me,” she said.

“Why'd you want to? We don't hang out together or anything.”

“We're hanging out now.”

She smiled. I took a bite of a chicken finger because I felt my face getting hot.

I wasn't sure how to talk to a girl—especially to a girl I liked. Not being at least a little stoned made it even harder.

“I don't think it's right for you to treat me like I have a disease,” she said. “Just because I go to counseling.”

“What?”

“You've been acting as if you don't know me ever since you saw me at the counseling center.”

“That's not because I saw you there. It's because . . .”

“Because what?”

“Because you saw
me
there.”

“That's crazy.”

“It wasn't crazy when
you
were thinking it.”

She laughed. “I'll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You tell me why you go, and I'll tell you why I do.”

“You first,” I said, figuring it would give me time to come up with a good story.

“Fine.” She took a deep breath, then started talking. There were three kids in her family, she told me. She was the middle kid and she had a younger sister. She used to have an older brother—until two years ago.

“When he died I got left holding the bag. My parents were too screwed up over Rick's death to be parents anymore, so I had to take care of my little sister.”

“How'd he die?”

She took a sip of her soda and waited as if she was trying to decide how much to say.

“First tell me why
you're
in counseling?”

“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Giraldi said if I didn't go he was going to expel me.”

“Why counseling? Why not detention for the year, or community service?”

“He thought I needed someone to talk to.”

“Do you?”

I shrugged.

“So,” I said, “how did your brother die?”

“He overdosed on pills,” she said without skipping a beat.

“He killed himself?”

“We're not sure, but the story is that he partied too much one night. There was no note and he had a lot of booze in him.”

“Shit,” was all I could say.

“Got that right. I really miss him sometimes.” She looked away for a second, then down at her food. “Ever since he died I'm the mommy, the daddy, and the big sister all wrapped up in one teenager.”

“I take care of my little brother a lot too. I don't think I'm as good at it as you probably are with your sister—”

“How do you know that?”

“Trust me. I've been screwing up a lot lately.”

“How?”

“I don't know . . .”

“Yes, you do. Tell me one thing you did to screw up.”

“Okay. My father was supposed to go on this zoo trip with him, and he finked out at the last second. I dragged Mikey to school and made him get on the bus and go when it was the last thing he wanted to do.” I shook my head. “The kid was probably embarrassed the old man didn't come through for him.”

“So how did you screw up? What do you
wish
you'd done?”

I took a drink of soda and thought for a second about whether I wanted to answer.

“I wish I had just bagged school and gotten on the bus with him.”

She nodded. “Well, maybe one day I'll get my sister and the four of us can take our own trip to the zoo.”

“Sounds good,” I said, taking a bite of chicken. “So how do you screw up with your sister?”

“Last week I gave her pizza for dinner.”

“So? I eat pizza all the time.”

“It was frozen pizza.”

“I eat those too. They're great.”

“I forgot to cook it.”

I laughed. “You gave her
frozen
frozen pizza?”

“
She
didn't think it was funny,” Jenna said, laughing with me.

I put my hand on my cheek.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “It's stupid.”

“No, it isn't. Eating frozen pizza is stupid. Tell me.”

“My face just hurt for a second.”

“From the black eye you got last week?”

“No, because I haven't laughed or smiled in a while. It's like my face wasn't used to it, so it hurt.”

She stared at me with a goofy smile on her face.

“I told you it was stupid,” I said. “You can't believe I'd say something so dumb. Right?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But now it's my turn to sound corny—”

“Oh, so I sounded corny?”

“Maybe a little. But I was just going to say something about how you act so tough. You have such a mean face and try to act like such a badass, but you're really just a mush.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You're hard on the outside but really sweet on the inside. You're like, I don't know, you're like an M&M or something.”

That was funnier than she'd ever know.

Mom was in Mikey's room with him when I got home. It looked as if they'd spent the whole day in there.

“Tell her to let me out,” Mikey begged me.

“He's been in his room all day?” I asked my mother.

“He has to be careful,” she said.

“He can't hide in here forever.”

“Just to the living room,” Mikey said, putting his hands together as if he was praying. “Puh-leeeese.”

“Tell you what.” She got off his bed and stretched her back. “I need a few things from the store for dinner. You keep him out of trouble while I'm gone,” she said to me. “But when I come home, he's going right back to bed to rest until it's time to eat.”

Mikey waited for her to get down the stairs before he jumped off the bed and opened his closet.

“Want to play Superman with me?” He took a handful of action figures out of a box and held them up.

“Bring them downstairs,” I said. “We'll put the TV on and hang out.”

Downstairs Mikey jacked up the volume on the TV while I went into the kitchen to ask my mother to get me some of those peanut butter granola bars I liked. She was standing at the sink, and just when I walked in I saw her tossing a pill into her throat and chasing it back with a glass of water. It was one thing to think about my mother popping pills. It was something else to see her do it for real.

I think it hit me right then. I wasn't just my father's son. I was my mother's too.

“What are you doing, Mom?”

She pushed the pill bottle into her purse and wiped her lips. “I'm getting ready to go. Keep a good eye on your brother. He can't do a lot of jumping around, and if he says he feels dizzy—”