Drowning in You (23 page)

He props his chin on my head.
We sit like this for forever. My arms are crossed over my chest and
Dex holds me up against him, between his legs, with his hands over
my crossed arms. I’ve never felt more safe than huddled like this
in him.

“
I won’t let
this happen,” Dex says.

I’m about to say neither of us
can prevent death, but I realize he means the hack and steal. He
won’t let his dad take the money. Right now, I believe that because
I am too spent to disagree, and because I believe Dex won’t let it
happen without it killing him first.

“
Thank
you.”

I lean forward and plant a
lingering kiss on his forearm. I breathe heat in from his skin.
It’s calming, in a way.

“
But why are
you here?”

“
Why wouldn’t
I be?” he says, concern pitching his voice higher. As if I’ve just
asked why a mother would love her child.

“
I don’t
know,” I say. I don’t know why I asked; I don’t know why he
wouldn’t be here.

Suddenly, my heart takes off,
my muscles itching to move. I shimmy out of the pretzel position
Dex and I are folded in, standing up. I hold my hand out and pull
him up.

“
That was
quick,” he says.

“
I need to
find Nana, Pa and Darce. Isn’t your mom here?”

I think I see Dex smile. It’s
gone before I can be sure. I wobble into step, shaking feeling and
blood back into my feet.

Darcy’s brown hair rounds a
corner as I reach the opening of the waiting room. “Darce!” he
whips around, drops his jaw and ogles at me, then shouts for Nana
to Pa to turn back.

“
I’ll be
back,” Dex says, kissing my cheek.

Nana and Pa hurry back to me,
relief widening their eyes and quickening their strides. Darcy
runs, hands out to me, smiling. I catch him side on, full force,
and they all tell me how they’ve been giving me some “space”. They
tell me how Dad was reaching out of his bed when he must have lost
balance and fallen off, hitting the ground headfirst. The movement
might have been what caused him to black out momentarily because he
hasn’t been able to get out of bed for days. His head is being
operated on.

That’s all for now.

Dex comes back with Lisa in
tow. She tells us the long name of an operation that the doctors
are performing. He’s in a critical condition. He’s lost a lot of
blood, and the doctors have lost him once only to bring him back.
There’s pressure in his head the doctors are trying their best and
fastest to release, but it’s dangerous given almost anything might
set off another problem since Dad’s body is as vulnerable as
watermelon flesh stripped out of its thick, hard shell.

Lisa goes up
and down checking what she can for hours. Pa finally goes home with
Darcy after another hour, once Darcy’s eyes have finally given in
to exhaustion at three
am
and he can’t hit and scream at us when we try to
take him away. Pa’s right. This isn’t a place for Darcy right now.
He should be home.

Nana stays with us but within a
quarter hour of Pa leaving she’s slumped back against the wall,
soft snores snarling from her lips and catching occasionally in her
throat.

Dex has
swapped from the seat next to me, to folding me in his lap, to
resting back beside me with my head against his shoulder, to us
simply holding hands, side by side. We eventually start I Never,
minus the alcohol because what else do you do at four
am
?

“
I Never had a
picture of you taped next to my monitor,” he says.

I look at him.

“
Insert drink
here,” he mumbles.

“
Shut up!” I
squeal, clamping my mouth shut. Dex whips around to stare at me,
his expression amused.

“
Seriously,”
he admits.

“
Well,” I say
next, “I Never sat by the football field to watch you peel off your
sweaty shirt after a game during lunch.” Pause. “Insert drink
here.”

“
Well ‘shut
up’,” Dex squeals in a girly voice. It’s nothing like me, I swear.
I hope.

I slap his knee, or at least
try to, but he swivels inhumanly quickly, leaving me desperately
slapping the air where he should be as he ducks under my hands. I
resort to shoving my arms into a cross over my chest.

“
I Never
crashed every high school party in the year level below me just to
see you out of your school dress.”

I jut my chin at him, and he
doesn’t flinch, grinning in a way that makes him model sexy, in a
way that makes this suffocating, dreary, heart-wrenching hospital
wait, with its terrible smells and stiff seats and shuffling nurse
shoes all a figment of this horror nightmare.

“
Insert drink
here.”

“
Okay,” I
grin, staring at his lips, “I Never not liked Elliot.”

I then screw
my face up because I messed up the game.
I
don’t even understand
that.

“
What the—?”
Dex says, biting his lip. “Never mind.” He licks his lips, looks at
mine then rushes words out, saying, “I Never jacked off thinking of
you.”

He shoots an invisible
shot.

“
Dex
!” I squeal. People stare at us
but they can go jump off a bridge, that’s exactly how I feel. I’m
someone with confidence who thinks and does what she wants to. My
heart stutters and sends waves of tingles through my hands and
feet, a sense of power. I haven’t mucked around like a kid
since…since I was someone’s daughter. I stab at Dex’s chest. And
run in circles around the waiting room with him chasing
me.

“
Come here and
let me show you what I
still
do,” he says, implying that he still uses me as
his inspiration during private time with his hand and his
dick.

“
Eew!” I
squeal again, ignoring admonitions of quiet and disgusted hospital
staff—of anything but Dex and this moment.

“
That’s it,”
Dex gasps, suddenly behind me, having snuck up from an opposite
direction. His hands close around my waist, squeezing me tight. I
lift my legs and kick in the air like the hysterical woman I
am.

That’s when Lisa calls,
“Charlee,” in an empty, broken voice.

I try not to analyze the staff
avoiding my eyes as Dex drops me to my feet. I walk right up to
Lisa as she pulls me into a room with a viewing window the expanse
of the entire wall and tells me words that I knew were coming, but
that I never, ever wanted to hear.

“
I’m sorry,
Charlee, but your dad Walter passed away at 4:43
am
.”

I am nothing.

This is nothing.

Actors audition for years.

Writers submit stories for
years.

Alcoholics drink and drink.

We all lead to nothing, all
that effort builds to nothing. Nothingness catches up to you,
smacks you right here in the throat, winding you. It doesn’t mean
shit if you pray, hope, try. Nothingness is the pull of sleep that
takes you before you realize it’s all gone.

But Dexter Hollingworth is
there, slipping under my body—I’m not sure if he caught me in time,
truth be told.

21. Ungluing and the Gluing

Dexter

The morning of Walter’s death
Charz was hospitalized. By which I mean Mom paged the nearest
doctor to get some damn oxygen into her lungs. The doc said she was
hyperventilating and in shock, so he put her in a room away from
the main wards.

Two days later, I’m watching a
man I saw the night Walter died walking through the ten-foot-high
revolving glass door, a lady waiting for him on the sidewalk,
intently watching every step. He hobbles down the hospital’s front
steps, holds out his arms, and she greets him by launching herself
into his embrace, bouncing happily on the spot.

That should be Charz. She
should have had this horrible period where Walter had to fight some
pain, a broken bone or two, and then he should have walked himself
out through those doors to meet her for a congratulatory hug.

Life’s a fucking bitch though.
Why do they make movies and books about people overcoming the odds
when death is a noose always hanging around your neck, and it
tightens if you turn left or right, and it chokes you if you try to
slow down and step back, or if you try to get too far ahead. And
you’re always on your toes. Death doesn’t kill you, but those toes
give up and you’re as good as a corpse by the end.

Life
isn’t
a circle
or
a matter of
waiting for
karma
. Or what’s another
inspir-fucking-ational saying?

Life’s about learning from your
mistakes.

You’re living
in a glass jar—
go out and see the
world!

Crap.

I punch a pillar that has been
made by Hercules himself. I punch until the pain isn’t in the
white-hot fire ripping through my tendons.

I punch the pillar until I’m
about to snap my teeth off. And long past the point the tender skin
reopens from when I’d ripped it open from Charlee’s front
bricks.

Unclenching my jaw, which I
never asked to grind shut, I wash my hands until the water runs
clear. I wrap toilet paper over my knuckles as I exit the bathroom,
rest my hand on the reception counter, and lean over.

Smiling, I say, “Hi ma’am, I’m
here to discharge Charlee May on behalf of her grandmother.”

* * *

Day five I catch the bus to
Charz’s like usual. I walk through the front door to the kitchen.
Betty has a bowl full of potatoes in one half of the sink. The bowl
sitting in the other half is empty. She is frozen, slouching over
the stainless steel, peeler poised as if about to murder someone
and doesn’t move as I say hi over her shoulder. I grab a bottle of
Coke and a bottle of water from the fridge to take into the living
room to Darcy.

Peeking back around the corner,
my leg still in the hallway, I see Betty staring at the floor.

“
Thank you,”
she mumbles. Finally she looks at her hand, snaps her head up when
she realizes what she’s holding, and peels the entire potato by the
time I look away a moment later.

“
For you,” I
say, handing Darcy the Coke.

He sips at it today, at least.
But he pulls back with this God-awful look as if I’ve handed him
piss. He sets it on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“
I don’t know
why it doesn’t taste good anymore,” he says, shrugging his
shoulders. He looks to me for the answer when I can’t figure out
how to tell him this is what death does to everything around you.
“Is it off?” Darcy adds, leaning forward to finger the
bottle.

“
It’s
brand-spanking new, dude.” I pick it up and take a gulp. After
years of only drinking water and fruit juice, Coke is inordinately
bubblier than I recall it being. I gag and pinch my nose to press
out the bubbles, finishing with a burp.

“
See!” Darcy
says, “It is bad.”

“
No, I just
don’t drink Coke.”

“
Ever?”

“
Ever.”

“
Why?”

“
I don’t like
the taste.”

Darcy’s jaw drops.

“
I’m kidding,”
I lie. My head is spinning so much from the stress that chokes me
in this house that I’d rather streak down the street than have to
explain, well, anything, really. “It’s not good for me.”

“
Why?”

“
For the same
reason as it’s not good for you,” I say, tapping his cheek where
his teeth lie behind.

“
Oh.” Darcy
traces squares around the outside of his game controller, while I
sit next to him as usual.

His pa is watching TV in the
other room. He’s there so much I think he must press a button to
change the seat of the recliner into a toilet so he can shit.
Either way, Darcy’s nana cooks dinner for them, cleans and then
sleeps in the guest room with out so much as seeing a potato, dish
or bed.

It’s ‘cause of me. We don’t say
it through a look or consoling words, but I know it. The guy who
murdered Mr. and Mrs. May is now the glue keeping what’s left of
this crumbling family from flying off in the wind.

“
Why are your
muscles so big?” Darcy says.

“
It’s good for
me.”

“
Are you a
body builder like The Rock?”

“
No, I just
like to stay healthy.”

“
Why did my
dad have to die, Dexter?”

I have to swallow my mouthful
of water before I can answer, but my throat clamps shut and
prevents it from going down. I wrestle with my mouth and throat for
a good minute before I splutter and half swallow, half spray it
over my clothes. I stand up and use my sleeve to pat down the
couch, my sweats, and hope I haven’t ruined this coffee table,
which must have cost more than every bed in my house.

Remembering Darcy’s still
hanging there, waiting, I say, “Sorry about that. I’ll be honest,
water is pretty horrible too.”

Darcy holds up an invisible
sword. “Victory!” But he slumps down, tracing squares around the
game controller again. And it’s definitely not me imagining; the
kid’s fingers move as though he’s drunk. He can’t trace a neat
square and probably couldn’t walk the line of shame down a road. He
slips all over the place.