I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (34 page)

“I don't know,” Wintric says.

“There's no justice, but there are rules. You don't have to like them, but they're there. You want to get pregnant, move out, turn your back on your family, fine, but you're not going to be sailing the Mediterranean on your yacht. And I get it. It's not all about money. But she chooses the hardest way possible.”

“I get it.”

“All of that, and if she showed up, I'd probably let her in. Why wouldn't I?”

“I guess you would,” Wintric says.

“It wouldn't be about forgiveness, just about the kid. It's my only grandkid.”

“Old man.”

“Old enough.”

“Drop her a note and see what happens.”

“A note?”

“Write it out, old school,” Wintric says. “You might be surprised.”

“You'd forgive everyone. That's your rehab talking.”

“You never know. Things grow out of control, but sometimes there's a good reason. I mean that things may be okay after a while. Maybe she comes back different and things are good.”

“Do you feel different?”

“I feel how I feel. I try to remember how I used to feel, but I never know if it's better or worse. I don't believe people when they say, ‘This is the worst I've ever felt.' I don't think anyone remembers how good or bad things were.”

“Maybe.”

“I think about being on the drugs,” Wintric says. “I remember being calm. I remember feeling good, but I don't know. I don't trust myself.” He pauses. “What if it felt good but it could've been better? The only way to know would be to try it again.”

“Dangerous.”

“That's the problem with drugs,” Wintric says. “They work.”

“I was on good stuff after the accident. You're damn right they work. I'd be lying there in the hospital thinking that I'd walk again, I felt that good. I remember weeks after, still thinking I'd walk. Get me drunk enough and I'd probably tell you I still imagine it. It's not good to think that way.”

“You never know.”

“Stop. It's been long enough to know. But put it this way—if a miracle happens and I stand again, I'll throw a party. I'll fly out all the friends I can find. We'll all hold hands and go on a walk together.”

“Am I on the list?”

“Hell, you are the list.”

“I don't believe you,” Wintric says.

“I'm not drunk.”

“How's your liver?”

“How's yours?”

“That fair, I guess,” Wintric says.

“It's not about fairness.”

“Okay.”

“I don't know what it's about.”

“We're older now. It can be about anything.”

“I remember being a kid on the playground at school and watching the cars driving by and wondering where all of them were going. It fascinated me that all these people could just go wherever the hell they wanted. And come to find out it's true. You grow up and you can go wherever the hell you want. Just hop in the car and go. You get older and all of a sudden you have all these choices.”

“Independence,” Wintric says.

“In a way.”

“Yeah.”

“But you still have places to be.”

“Hopefully, places you want to be,” Wintric says.

“Your choice, my friend. Grab the family, hop in the car, and go. That easy. One-way trip. But I've been preaching at you for years. You know this. You aren't going anywhere, because you like it there.”

“You're guessing.”

“What's the name of the lake?”

“Almanor.”

“You love it.”

“You're guessing.”

“I've known you a long time.”

“That's true,” Wintric says.

“You like getting up in the morning?”

“What?”

“Do you like waking up and thinking you have a day in front of you?”

“Sure.”

“My father used to rant all the time about random crap and most of it was worthless, but as I got older one thing he used to ask me was, ‘Why are you waking up today?' I guess what he meant was that I'd better have something worth waking up for, and if I ever got to a place where I didn't, I'd better make a change quick. But you ask that question too often and it gets tough. Doesn't matter what you've been through. Don't ask me to answer my own question.”

“You don't have to think like that when you're a kid.”

“You don't ever have to think about it, but it helps sometimes.”

“We all got reasons to get up,” Wintric says.

“Do you know yours?”

“Maybe he didn't mean the big stuff. Maybe it's a small thing.”

“Could be.”

“Something simple,” Wintric says.

“It has to be simple or no one would understand. Has to be enough to get you out of bed.”

“Yeah,” Wintric says. “Something simple.”

The game is on ESPN2. An afternoon bowl game five days before Christmas. Channel flipping, home alone and bored, Wintric sees the game appear, and an unrecognized moment of peace passes before he focuses on the screen. Wyoming versus Oregon State. Flung into paralysis, he stares at Wyoming's brown-and-yellow uniforms, the helmets: the saddled cowboy and bronco. Wyoming. Jettisoned to Nelson's white door, Nelson's dog, now huge and savage, the white door in the heat, the
AFG
sticker on Nelson's Jeep, the dog pressing him, the McDonald's parking lot, a white door, a garbage truck, desert and gunpowder, a postcard in his hand. He won't write his name on it. He won't send it. Wyoming is a white door. Trapped, Wintric holds the remote in his living room. He can't move his fingers. He holds the remote. Wyoming is an exit off I-80. He stares at the television through credit card and beer commercials, through a missed field goal and an ACL tear. Wyoming is a gun in his waistband. He won't use it. Wyoming is a white door. No one is there.

Wintric stands. He's off the couch. His coat is on. He's on a nearby street, squinting. The sun reflects off the ice-packed road.

The dealer's house is in a row of shotgun homes. Someone has left a square of red Christmas lights on around the front window. The fence has been fixed and the home has been painted yellow since Wintric was last here, ten months ago. There used to be kids' toys everywhere, but now there's only this sturdy fence and two feet of snow.

Wintric doesn't go inside. He waits on the steps. When he gets the pills, he selects four from the bottle, then tosses them into his mouth. He tries to swallow them dry, but the pills stick in his throat. He gulps twice, but they're still stuck, so he rushes down the three stairs and cups snow from the yard into his mouth and waits for it to melt enough to swallow.

“What the hell?” says the dealer. “Get the fuck on.”

Wintric walks away, but not home. He turns down Second Avenue, past an empty lot where as a kid he used to break empty Budweiser bottles. Every step he takes seems to propel him a block. Rushing and ready for the Oxy to be absorbed, he walks past the old homes and families he's always known: the McIntires, the Garretts, the Roulands, the Killingsworths. His breath plumes out wide into the cold. He doesn't know where he's walking, but he wants to be outside. Already he believes he could walk forever, go anywhere.

Down First Avenue now; a minivan and a blue Chevy truck pass him and he walks the road past the Salversons' and the Hardigs'. The cold and anticipation push Wyoming away and he searches for the self-pity that will make all this worth it, and he thinks about his life, how he's lost it, how the days don't get better fast enough, how he's seen the world but none of the parts he wanted.

Wintric steps and slips, but he steadies himself. He stops in front of the Waldrons' place, a house he roofed in the fall. An inflatable Santa sits on the porch by the front door. Family friends for years; he'd only cleared three hundred on the five-day job. The snowpack lays thick on the roof, and Wintric finds himself here, in Chester, before the drugs have hit.

He'll always be here. He won't get younger. He's walked this street forever. The drugs haven't hit, but he can wait. It's him, alone on First Avenue. The Waldrons' place right here. He's alone but alive, and the drugs haven't hit yet. He's here, alone, and suddenly there's enough time to fear.

When he enters the Holiday market, he pauses inside the automatic doors. The store is busier than normal in the winter months, and he frantically searches the checkout stations for Kristen, but she's not there. He digs his nails into his palms and keeps his head down and paces fast down the cereal aisle to the back of the market. Wintric turns the corner near the frozen apple juice and sees her and stops. Her back is toward him, hands at her hips. Her hair is longer than he remembers.

Kristen is talking to Mrs. McIntire. She shifts her weight and brushes Mrs. McIntire's arm.

Wintric steps forward, then pulls back near the freezers and grabs the back of his neck. He presses his forehead on the cold glass. Kristen loves him and he doesn't know why. He's starting to feel light and he's scared to go home and scared to step out into the aisle, but he knows what alone means. He's heard their stories.

He pulls his head off the freezer door. He steps out into the aisle.

It's Mrs. McIntire who waves to him first, and Wintric waves back, but he can't force a smile. His heart pumps the poison and Kristen turns toward him. She raises her hand to wave, and when she sees him her hand stops its move upward. Her mouth opens. Her hands fall to her sides.

Out back by the delivery dock, in an employee bathroom, Wintric jams two fingers down his throat for the second time. He cut the roof of his mouth with his fingernails on the first attempt and he tastes his own blood and gags, then throws up into the toilet. His head floats over the putrid water and he cries and waits for what's next. His stomach clenches and he dry-heaves. He stands and washes his hands and face with hand soap. He exhales, then sprays a lavender-scented air freshener.

On the back of the bathroom door hangs a green-and-white Chester Volcanoes basketball calendar. Kristen must have put it here. He stares at it for a while as he gets his legs under him.

Wintric listens for his wife on the other side of the door, but he doesn't hear her. A weak exhaust fan works above him and he searches for the switch to turn it off, but he finds only one switch, so he flips it off and it kills the light and the fan. It's quiet now and he listens. What's he opening this door to?

Wintric listens inside the dark bathroom. He feels the drugs. He smells the pungent lavender. He places his hands on the door. In the darkness he could be anywhere.

He waits for Kristen's voice asking if he's okay.

He waits and he cries and his chest is soft and the drugs warm the space behind his temples and all along his back.

He can wait. If he wants, he can wait right here. He can choose to stay in this place.

He thinks about flipping on the light switch, about saying his wife's name. He thinks about turning the doorknob.

“Kristen?” he says.

He listens. He hears his own staggered breathing and squeezes his mouth. He waits. He feels for the doorknob. It's small in his hand.

“Kristen?” he says, and opens the door.

Out on the delivery dock, a man Wintric recognizes unloads crates of milk. An announcement garbles over the store's loudspeaker.

In the far corner, behind stacks of paper towels, Kristen sits on a stool with her face in her hands. She's pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Wintric walks to her and stands close. He can smell her vanilla perfume. It's cold and he doesn't know if he should touch her or speak, so he wipes at his wet face and stands there and watches her. Her wedding ring covers her left eye. A bracelet he's never seen is on her left wrist.

Behind him, the sound of milk crates being stacked. An announcement from the speaker somewhere above them. The voice calls his wife's name.

Wintric reaches out and touches Kristen's shoulder. His numb fingertips press against her cotton shirt.

He knows what's happening. He'll leave his hand here. He's aware. He's facing the moment. He'll stay right here.

“Please,” she says. She stands up, shaking his hand off her.

She exhales hard and runs her hands down her chest and belly, over to the outside of both hips. She pulls at the bottom of her shirt. She stands close, her shoulder inches from Wintric's chest.

“Kristen,” he says. He stands, motionless, her smell in his nose. The shape of her neck. The curves of her ear. She could turn to him. So close, she could turn his way. He watches her face. He waits for the turn.

Over the store's loudspeaker, someone's calling her name.

She keeps her eyes forward as she walks away and rounds the corner back into the store.

Wintric grabs the back of his neck, then folds his arms.

Someone is calling her name.

He listens to the sound.

My deepest appreciation for

–my incredible agent and friend Chelsea Lindman.

–my brilliant editor and friend Ben Hyman.

–the wonderful Houghton Mifflin Harcourt team, especially Leila Meglio, Hannah Harlow, Brian Moore, Laura Brady, and Liz Duvall.

–my parents

–the Goolsby, Archibald, Hunt, Rouland, Moss, and Walton families.

–my dear friend, colleague, and sounding board Brandon Lingle.

–the many people who opened the doors to my professional dreams, especially Donald Anderson, Kathleen Harrington, Thomas McGuire, Blaine Holt, Erin Conaton, Peter Bloom, Lance Bunch, Jessica Wright, Karen Pound, Troy Perry, and Debra Shattuck.

–my great friends and brilliant readers of this book: J. A. Moad II, Brian Turner, Siobhan Fallon, Kristen Loyd, Kerry Linfoot, Gretchen Koenig, Kyle Torke, Charlie Beckerman, CJ Hauser, and Mike Warren.

–my Florida State University family, especially Robert Olen Butler, Bob Shacochis, Mark Winegardner, Diane Roberts, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Michael Garriga, Brandi George, and Jennine Capó Crucet.