How To Save A Life (21 page)

I’m unpacking the dishwasher when Jase steps out the back.

"I'm gonna do the rounds, ask everyone to finish up again," he says, and I almost trip over my tongue in my haste to protest.

"It's cool! Why don't I do that?"

"Um ... because it's really more my job as manager?" He's not unkind, but there's a light in his eyes, and I know he's onto me. "What's with you and that table?"

A glass shatters somewhere in the bar, and I'm momentarily saved by the (glass) bell.

"Lia baby, your ma broke a glass. Can you bring out a dustpan?" Smith sticks his head into the doorway and smiles, as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

Jase's eyes go wide, and his lips turn thin, but he doesn't say a word. He just stands there and watches me.

"Yes, Smith," I say meekly. I duck down to grab the dustpan and broom from the corner cupboard, and am about to walk out to fix it when Jase's hand latches onto my wrist.

"We're going to talk about this later." He clears his throat. "I ..." Something flashes across his face, and instead of it being the anger I expected, it's sadness. Regret. "Are you embarrassed of me?"

“No!” I rush out.

“Then why would you hide who she is?” He shakes his head. “It feels like a lie, Lia. And I don’t like liars.”

It's so much worse than if he'd blown up at me or lost it. That I could have handled. This, though? This pain and disappointment? It's ten times worse.

"Lee Lee, hurry up, baby!" Mum screeches.

Make that a million times worse.

I grab the dustpan and broom and rush out into the bar area. Now Mum and co are the only ones left, and as I sweep up the glass, they continue their merry conversation over the top of my head. Their voices are too loud, too slurred, and all of a sudden, I'm sick of them, sick of their attitudes, sick of Smith and his creepy eyes, sick of Mum and the way she sometimes seems intent on ruining my life.

With the last of the glass in the dustpan, I march over to the register and punch in the few numbers to print out their bill. I place it in a saucer and walk back over to their table then slam it down in the middle of all of them.

"We're closing." Five pairs of eyes snap to mine. "Here's your bill."

Stunned silence engulfs the group, then Smith starts laughing, a slow, evil laugh, like something straight out of a horror film. The others all join in, and even Mum gives a nervous giggle or two.

"Lia, it's polite to let the customers finish their drinks. Are you gonna get your mum an extra to replace the one she dropped?" Smith reaches out and pulls me to his side with his giant animal-slaughtering arm. I wriggle out of his grasp, and shoot him an indignant glare.

"No, we're closed. Our licence doesn't cover us after twelve." As soon as the words are out of my mouth, my eyes widen.

"Your licence?" Smith asks. He steps closer to me and leans down, whispering in my ear. "You know what else your licence doesn't cover?"

I shiver and nod, the threat behind his words clear.

"Come on, guys, let's go." Smith gets out his wallet and slams a credit card on top of the bill, and I sigh with relief as I take it up to the machine to process it. Kyle's wiping down the bench there, and he shoots me a look as I start typing in the payment.

"Jerks, right?" he asks in a soft voice. "They came in here, all demanding and rude. Some people just don't get it."

I concentrate on the receipt the machine spits out, barely trusting myself to speak. "They don't," I finally manage.

I take the card and receipt back to the table and place them down. The group are all wriggling into jackets and coats, picking up handbags and the likes.

Mum is noticeably quiet, and as the others file out the door, she takes a step closer to me. "I'm sorry, Lee Lee."

Her eyes are sincere, and I have no doubt she means it. But I've heard sorry so many times, and this time, sorry isn't enough. I look up to the door, feeling someone watching me. Smith stands there, his dark eyes boring into mine.

I shrug. "We can talk about it later."

"Love you, baby." She wraps her arms around me and kisses me on the cheek, and I'm overcome by her scent of cheap perfume and even cheaper booze.

She walks out, Smith's hand protectively on her back, his eyes still trained on mine till I shut the big wooden doors and pull the lock. I rest my back against them and breathe a sigh of relief. Thank God that's over.

Then I see Jase's gaze drilling into me from the kitchen, where he stands with his arms folded, and I feel as if I have a whole lot more to answer for.

Kyle
, Soraya, Jase and I clean up in silence, and just as I'm about to finish shining the final tray of glasses, Jase lets Kyle and Soraya go, and it's just the two of us, alone in the bar and a whole heap of silence.

He stands next to me, grabs a glass and starts shining, expertly making his way around it before placing it on display in the bar.

I'm torn between being sad and afraid, and eventually settle on angry. So what if I kind of avoided telling him about my mother? I'm sure he can understand why. And his whole reaction seems a little over the top. Besides, I can't get my heart too lost in him anyway. I'm going to Melbourne, damn it! I don't have time for this—

"My mother used to lie to me."

I spin to face him. He's leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded and a troubled expression on his face.

"She'd do the classic battered wife routine—oh, I ran into a door, or whatever—even to me."

I nod, showing that I'm listening, and I put the glass I'm polishing down.

"At first I'd see through it, but soon she became so good at lying that I couldn't tell what was real, and what was not." He runs a hand through his hair, then turns his gaze back to me. "I guess I'm just worried that ... you were really good at hiding the truth out there, y'know?" He tilts his head back, indicating the spot where we'd talked. "And I wonder ... is there anything else you're hiding?"

Only everything.

I have no idea how to reply, wanting to confess everything right there and then. I want to tell him my real age, that I go to school. I want to tell him what happens at home with Mum and the cutting, with Smith and how creepy he's acting, about how I'm running to Melbourne because I'm running away—

But he'll hate me.

He'll see me for the lying, weak person I really am.

I step toward him and wrap my arms around his neck, kissing along his jaw. This distraction technique always worked with Duke. When questions got too hard, or times got too tough, I could always rely on this to see me through.

Jase, though?

He doesn't.

He places his hands on my shoulders and firmly pushes me back. "Don't."

And then I have to decide which I want to save. Our relationship, or myself.

I choose myself.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, and I grab my bag from the shelf behind me then push past him and run out the door, heading straight for my car I all but throw myself in.

Tears stream down my face, and I'm sobbing, crying with everything I have. I wonder if I cried this much before—if I even did that day when Mum found
him
.

And the worst part is, he doesn't come out and console me. He just stares at me through the window, and somehow that hurts more, so I start the engine, swing the car into reverse and then speed off home.

***

It's after two in the morning, but I have all this energy burning through me and I know I won't be able to sleep. The lights aren’t on in the house and I guess Mum and Smith are out God knows where, probably trying to rob some other bar or something.

My car shudders to a stop and I grab my bags then jog to the front door, twisting the key in the lock and shoving the door open. She keeps ruining my life, and now I feel I have to do something to ruin hers.

I charge up to her room, garbage bag in hand, and yank open the drawers in her bedside table.

Nothing.

Seriously, who doesn't have anything in their bedside table drawers?

I yank open the wardrobe doors, rifle through her clothes and that's when I find it. One of her jackets has something hard in the pocket, and I reach in to take it out. Gin. It's a bottle of gin.

Five minutes later and I have her complete stash laid out on the bed. Three bottles of wine, a bottle of some cheap vodka, the gin and a knife.

Seeing them sitting there, the things she hid even from me makes the impossibility of the situation seem worse. If she couldn't be honest with me about this, what hope do I have that she's going to get help like she says she is? What chance is there that she'll commit to the meetings, hell, commit to herself and quit this time?

Rage courses through my body, and I pick up one of the bottles of red and hurl it at the wall. It cracks, a satisfying sound of breaking, and plum liquid seeps out over the floorboards. Watching it pool and spread is like watching fire, and for a moment, I feel calm as I watch this casual destruction in front of me. My mind seems to slow and heaviness settles over my limbs.

And then it finally hits me.

Sleep.

***

I never escape the dreams …

I scream. My eyes close and my hands fly to my stomach, pulling away the knife that sliced across my side. Tears burn my eyes and bile chases up my throat. The pain is enough to make me sick.

“Baby! My baby!” Mum scrambles to me, her eyes wide. Her hands fly to my wound and she applies pressure. It hurts so much, deep inside me, everywhere.

“Why-y-y?” I sob, looking at the woman who gave birth to me. The woman who was supposed to look after me—to protect me no matter what.

“I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, Lee Lee,” she says, shaking her head. “Please, believe—”

“No!” I cry around another scream of pain. But she still doesn’t get it. Still doesn’t see why I’m really hurt. “Why don’t you love me enough to stay?”

She stills. Realisation dawns on her features, followed by a flash of horror. “I didn’t mean … I didn’t think … I …” Her mouth opens and closes. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

She stands and pulls me to my feet, and I stagger beside her. Blood coats my hand, my fingers, my shirt, and I think of the last time I saw it, and I want to cry more, harder, all over again.
Why is this happening to me?

Mum’s still talking, but I don’t hear her over my cries. It’s only when she says the word ‘neglect’ that I snap out of my pain-induced haze.

“What?” My lower lip trembles.

“I neglected your care. I’m going to turn myself in.” She squares her shoulders and faces me. “I need help, sweetheart. You’ll be able to go to a carer, a foster home, or—”

“No!”

One word.

Because she’s the only family I have left. And I can’t lose her.

And that’s how I convince her to use butterfly bandages when I should have stitches, to try and hold my wound together. It doesn’t work, and it splits open every now and then, but eventually it heaps enough to function. Enough to get by.

Just like our relationship.

Waking
in Mum's bed is a strange, unfamiliar feeling. The curtains are still open, and light streams in from the blaring spring sun. My eyes are stuck together, and for a split second, I wonder what I have to be unhappy about.

Then it all comes crashing in, and I remember. The dream.

I huff out a breath of air through my nose, then sit up, swiping at my still damp cheeks. It's this dream I hate the most. This dream where the pain is too real, too familiar for my liking. It's better when I don't see the note, see those four words, that pathetic apology that somehow justifies the taking of his life.

I cradle my head in my hands, thinking of all that happened last night, and the smell of red—

Ah crap.

Peeking through my fingers, I see the red wine still pooled on the floor, the other contraband on the bed beside me. The clock on Mum's bedside table reads eight a.m., and I know I have to get moving in case she comes home early.

I throw the bottles and the knife in the trash bag I brought up with me, then slug it over my shoulder and take it downstairs, emptying all of the liquor down the drain. Then I throw the empty bottles in our recycling. The knife, though? I know she'll go looking through the trash for it. She's done it before.

So this, I take back up to my room and search for my piano book, the one that houses all my favourite scores. I slide it in between the pages, then place it in the bottom drawer of my desk. It may not be the world's best hiding place, but if she's looking for the knife, she's in a frenzy, and I know my music books are the last place she'd think to look. At least this way, I can leave it here until bin night, and then maybe I can sneak it into someone else's trash.

One more trip downstairs to get a sponge, a bottle of cleaning spray, some paper towels and another trash bag, and then I head back upstairs to clean. I carefully pick up the glass and throw it in the bag. Luckily, it broke in two big chunks, so it's quite easy to collect. Then, I try and mop up as much of the liquid with those paper towels as possible. It takes me at least half an hour, as every time I move, the wine spreads, but eventually, I get rid of any loose liquid.

Finally, it's time to scrub, to try and remove that dark brown stain from the floorboards in the corner of Mum's room, and the purple streaks running down her wall.

I spray the cleaning agent and then scrub with the sponge, both hands on the piece of tough yellow material and moving up and down. I scrub the floor with everything I have, my entire body weight pressed down against the sponge, and the foam turns from phosphorous white to a pink, then finally to a purple.

I look down, my hands soaked in the stuff, and all of a sudden, I'm no longer here, scrubbing the floor, but in another home, at another time.

***

Once someone's life has stained the floor, it's impossible to get it clean.

It's been seven days since the death, three days since the funeral, one day since my stomach split open, and the stain on their bedroom floor still remains, a scar from the death of one third of this family. A visible reminder that nothing is okay, or will be the same again.

I haven't seen Mum since Thursday. After the funeral, late, late at night, her friend from college, Cheryse, came 'round, took her out to get her 'mind off things'. I had a fair idea of what that activity entailed, and while I'd had frequents texts, so I knew Mum was still okay, if a little boozy, I didn't know how she was doing really.

And she didn't know about me.

She'd asked Ellie's parents to take me in for a week or so, while she 'adjusted', and I'd stayed there for the first two nights, but yesterday afternoon, I told them she'd come home, and they'd believed me. I shouldn't have lied. I'd never been a liar before.

But sometimes you have to lie to get what you want.

And right then, I wanted my family.

But I knew my family would never let this mess just stain the floor like this, so I was scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing to try and erase this blatant and painful reminder that
this is where he died
and
he is never coming back
, and it hurts, hurts deeper than any physical pain I've experienced, but worse—it feels just like physical pain, too. There's just more of it. It's all consuming.

And underneath that devastation, that injury to my heart that I can't seem to find the strength to fight, there's a slow-burning rage. An anger that's hungry for fuel, a fire that feeds on the situation I'm in. Because how dare he bow out with no real rhyme or reason? How dare he leave me when I need him so much? How dare he do all that, and then just say sorry?

"Sorry's not good enough!" I scream to the empty house. My words echo against the walls, heard by no one except me, my sponge, and the red-brown foam collecting around my hands.

I don't know how long I scrub, but eventually, the suds stop turning a darker purple, and my hands are pruned from the cleaning formula. The boards are still wet, so I can't tell if I'd succeeded in my mission, but at least I've given it a try.

Downstairs, I rinse out the sponge and wash away the tears I didn't realise had fallen. I have to make things right again. I have to make things better for Mum.

I wait and I wait, sure that she is coming home, that she's been at least sleeping here, despite spending some time with Cheryse.

But she never comes.

No calls.

No cars in the driveway.

Nothing.

So eventually I go to bed, in the same bed I always have, and I hope like hell that when I wake up things will be different.

Because I need things to be different.