Drowning in You (14 page)

“
What do you
mean?”

Mom spoons only a bit of the
bean salad into her mouth then sets her plate to balance on the
retaining wall beside her. Waiting, watching her, I kick the wall
with my heels to release the anxiety tightening my muscles.

Mom doesn’t speak, though. She
hangs her face in her hands, covering her features so I can’t be
sure if it’s tears or rage. The words muffled through her fingers
she says, “I don’t know what to do. Dex, what would you do with
him?”

“
You don’t
have to blame yourself like you did in America,” I say, on the
spot.

Mom drops her hands and shoves
them under her thighs. “Why not? We’re in this together.” Her voice
is shaky, and I bet if I nudge her shoulder she won’t flinch. Her
body is in that spot, but her mind isn’t there. “Oh, we’re in this
so bad. So many bills and…everything.”

“
He’s not with
those guys again…?”
Those embezzling fucks
who stole money from cancer patients
.

“
He’s
stressed, and tells me he needs to go out…”

“
Mom. Is he
involved with them again?”

She gestures out at the world,
saying, “I—we—can’t leave our home again. I can’t lose everything
again and rebuild. I’m old and tired.”

I try to turn Mom into me but
her body is rigid, refusing to move. “Is. He. Involved?” I ask
slowly, staring at the side of her face.

“
He thinks we
need to do something about the money situation and he keeps hinting
at something but I’m too afraid to know more.” Mom wobbles, slips
off the wall and then tries to catch herself, her actions jerky and
strange. Something clicks and I don’t know why I didn’t notice her
jumpiness or her strange neediness on the phone, or hurrying us
down to the food court so quickly before.

“
Have you been
drinking?”

“
No drinks,
Dex. Just a drink,” she mumbles.

Mom doesn’t drink. What Dad
drinks makes up for her abstinence threefold. But on the job?

“
Hey,” I say,
turning her to me with force this time.

Her body’s heavy with
resistance, but I’m stronger than her. She drops her chin into the
space between her collarbone and shoulder and refuses to look at
me.

“
What’s
happened?”

It’s strange that Mom’s only
feeling it now. However, her actions seem more impaired by emotion
than alcohol. That much I can tell. In fact, when I watch her sob
into her hands, I’m sure of it. It’s happened to me.

On one night, I could be
climbing fences and lying in the streets, and shouting shit to
weird people driving by in their cars with my head spinning,
stomach sloshing, a sick feeling in the back of my throat.

But sometimes—like when Raych
smashed my cell phone in a jealous rage because she does stupid
stuff when drunk, although we were never dating to begin with—I’m
stone cold sober after many beers, punching a brick wall beyond the
moment my knuckles graze, bleed or throb.

Sometimes I get emotional. I
think Elliot has been the only one to hear me. I’ll whine about how
I hate that my body doesn’t work and hate God for doing this and
ask him to cure me and profess my hate for jellybeans. We’ve never
discussed it the next day or anything.

But now, with Mom, I feel like
I’m inside her head. Her hands are trembling when I take them in
mine. He face is streaked with tears and she’s sniffling. I pull
her into me and her chin plops on my shoulder and her body goes
limp. Alcohol brings out the stuff you try to hide.

I would know.

Which makes me want to belt the
shit out of Dad. It’s clear I’m not getting anything coherent from
Mom today. I ask if she wants me to grab her stuff but she holds up
the bag slung over her shoulder.

“
In that
case,” I say, lifting her up.

She stands, wipes away her
tears and breathes deeply, trying to rid herself of the telltale
facial features that don’t go away for half an hour after
crying.

“
Go home. I’ll
let the staff know.”

She wavers, wanting to say
something but hesitating. In the end, she says, “Don’t worry. I’m
fine. I need to get back to work.”

“
You can’t, so
stop being stupid and catch the bus back home.” Because Dad drops
her off and lets her go home on the bus, little shit. He keeps the
family car and lets his wife catch a bus home after hours slaving
away for sick and dying people.

“
No, I need
to. I can’t leave. I need…I need to get back,” she says, trying to
push past me.

I grasp her shoulders and force
her to look at me. “If you don’t go home and let me tell the staff
you’re sick, I’ll tell them you’ve been drinking on the job.” As
soon as I say it, my mouth feels dry and I feel like shit. I
shouldn’t say this to my mom, but it works. She scowls but then
tension disappears from her shoulders and she looks like she’s
carrying less of a burden. She needs rest. She doesn’t deserve
Dad’s shit.

Mom supposes
she could go home
and kisses me on the
cheek before dragging her feet off to the bus stop in front of the
hospital.

But she stops. Turning, she
says, “I didn’t buy you your coffee, Dex.”

“
Who’s your
boss?” I ask, without answering her question. I have an idea and
waiting for a coffee isn’t part of it.

“
Rhonda. Ask
for Rhonda.”

I wave her off
and hurry back inside to the elevator.
Stupid
, I think,
so stupid.
Why was I badgering Mom
for answers, possibly getting myself caught up in Dad’s mess when I
have my source right here?

When I’m up on
Mom’s floor, I ask for Rhonda and tell her about Mom having
something of a bad day but I didn’t ask questions because I think
it was “women’s business” I quote. She shakes her head sorrowfully,
empathy on her face,
and tells me she’ll
check on Mom’s next patient, Walter, herself.

Agreeing, I say goodbye and
make as though I’m leaving. Instead, I hide around a corner and
watch as she goes into room 311, reappearing a minute later.

When she’s out of sight, I slip
into the same room and jam the back of a chair under the handle
behind me.

13. Crushing Confession

Dexter

Walter is not the Walter we all
used to know when I see him.

I remember a big grin for the
cameras, and high-quality action shots from a photographer who
snapped him for an article. I’m used to seeing him larger than life
and he’s anything but someone with the upper hand on life at the
moment.

He looks like crap because of
what I did. Anything I planned to say to him is an untouchable
thought, now, in the same way you can’t grab a puff of smoke. I
plonk my ass into the guest chair by the foot of the bed. There’s
one up by his shoulder too, but that feels too personal, too
close.

This man here has his eyes shut
and an IV drip feeding into his hand. He’s lost every bit of that
potbelly I’ve seen him in the papers with, which should have been a
good thing for his health. Now, however, I bet his loved ones would
give anything to see that weight back. And although he’s probably
at the correct weight for his six foot or so build now, it’s more
wrong than I can put to words.

Yellow. That’s
his skin. Almost like
Simpsons
yellow. A shiver slices along my spine, reminding
me that
you
(stab)
did
(stab)
this
(stab).

Walter’s body is littered with
bruises. It’s their coloring that delivers another stab, but this
time to my heart. I clutch my chest and keel over, breathing
through my legs. Seems to help, but it takes five minutes curled
that way and trying to convince myself I wasn’t the reason for that
IV drip, for the yellow tinge to his skin, or the fact he’s
probably lost weight equal to that of a five-year-old kid before I
can sit up again. Those things take a long while to unconsider.

But it
doesn’t even look like him
.

That thought plants a seed that
sprouts into hope. Because there’s no way I’d have the ability to
do that to another human.

Yesterday, last week,
always—I’ve re-imagined how the wire snapped from that lift. The
split second in which my instincts pumped adrenaline, sending
white-hot pain searing through my nerves, the victims had begun
shrieking in terror. Their desperation tore at my heart as I
uselessly fingered the tops of the controls, trying to figure out
what to do when my thoughts were a garbled mess anyway.

An official police
investigation as well as an independent investigation arranged by
Mason’s determined I was innocent. The regular company who
maintained the wires, lifts, and other electrical had bypassed
standard procedures for signoff. Of course this proved I wasn’t
guilty.

But who doesn’t like a good
controversy?

Most days that
technical garbage does not give one ounce of calm to my guilt. It
really doesn’t matter. Those people’s lives were my responsibility
and I was
there
,
therefore giving any other legit excuse no weight. I was
there
. Period.

When I’m able to look up
without my neck automatically forcing my head down, I take in
Walter again. See, some people can comfort themselves by repeating
shit to make memories disappear but for me it’s bullshit. I don’t
live in a world of fantasies or else Tahny wouldn’t have become a
mother so young and her boyfriend wouldn’t have freaked and fucked
off. We’d still be in Chicago and I’d have a proper bunch of
“friends”. I’d never have done this to Charz…

At the thought
of her name I stagger from my chair and into the guest seat at
Walter’s shoulder. I reach out because his hand is
right there,
but it’s
also too far.

From this position, where I’ve
just discovered he has the slightest freckles, that his nose isn’t
dead-straight, and that Charz gets her long, thick eyelashes from
him, it’s hard to remember what Walter looked like
pre-accident.

I try squeezing my eyes shut to
block out distractions around the room, but his image stays in my
mind, a shadow of a body. I force warm, chocolate-colored eyes full
of life into the picture because they’re the ones Charz has, and
force on dirty-blonde hair because it must have been the same as
Charz has in an earlier time, just now dusted with grays. He has
strong cheekbones, not sunken ones, after I force them on him too
before I give up.

Before I know it I’ve gone and
wrapped my fingers around the frail hand of Walter May. I stare at
my hand, the way it captures his with what would look like
tenderness to anyone else, but for me? I’m wrapping the truth
around him, making him read my thoughts. See? I wasn’t drugged out.
I wasn’t even faint from having a hypo. See? I would never do this
to you, to Charz’s parent. See? I swear to you I didn’t so much as
plan or know about any of it.

“
See?” I tell
Walter’s face. “I’m not a worthless piece of shit.”

He doesn’t reply. He ignores
me, not even the hint of a flutter in his eyelids. Just an
ever-so-slightly slack jaw and an expressionless look in his sleep.
He doesn’t even grin or shiver or anything, like you do when you
dream and your body physically reacts from what happens as if it
were real.

I slide my hand from his and
clench mine in my lap. I slouch in my chair and stretch out my
legs, toeing the metal bars of Walter’s hospital bed.

“
I have a
confession, Walter. My dad, or at least one of his connections, put
you in this condition, I think.” I close my eyes, and that’s when I
remember Walter was the one with the brown, wiry hair, and Melissa
was the one with the blonde bob.

“
Your
wife…Melissa,” I say. And then I let out a breath through my nose.
It sounds loud and stressed. “I will find the motherf—” But I stop
myself. Dad’s made me grow up and not blink an eye at swear words
like that.
Thanks for
nothing
, I think to him, deliberately not
swearing. Maybe that’ll be my pledge, I’ll stop swearing and no
more tats and no drinking, and I will tell Raych I stopped wanting
to think of her with her clothes off a long time ago. Or even
wanting to think of her at all.

“
Here, I’ll
tell you a story, Walter.” I shut my eyes and dip my head back once
more. “I’ve been in love with your daughter Charz since high
school. I don’t know how it is that we went to the same school even
when you were—are—a millionaire. Is it that you didn’t want Charz
to see herself as any different from the next kid? I may never have
that answer but you’re a good man. Walter, you are.” I peek through
my lids to check on him and then shut out the world
again.

“
It’s funny
‘cause she’ll be driving that silver Audi A3 and be wearing this
glittering necklace like a clump of diamonds, but she’ll be kind to
everyone and acting totally normal. One time she was sharing a
package of macaroons with a bunch of other kids. They’re those
half-moon crusty looking cookies in hot pink or magic purple or
lime green with the cream filling. I don’t have enough to waste my
lunch money’s worth on those, but they look tasty. And she was
giving them to whoever wanted some.

“
Okay, I’m off
track. Where was I? Okay.” I slap my thighs and force myself up,
pushing past the feeling that my body is heavy and doesn’t belong
to me.