Once Upon a Road Trip (38 page)

“Vincent.” Angie spoke in a quiet, commanding tone. She touched the backs of two fingers to his forehead, finding his skin cool and clammy. That ruled out fever delirium. She didn’t know a thing about his medical history, but she doubted this was some sort of seizure. Finding his closest hand, she wrapped hers around it. “Did you…have a nightmare?” she asked, more concerned about getting a response out of him than with making him feel childish.

“Not exactly.” Vince’s dispassionate voice came at a low mutter. He didn’t move, and his eyes never deviated.

Grady jerked backward in alarm, lost his balance, and fell onto his backside. “Dude,” he complained. 

“Not dreams, just memories.” Vince’s head wilted forward.

Angie’s stomach writhed in distress. “You heard what we were talking about?”

Vince gave an almost imperceptible nod, though he still didn’t look at either of them. It was as though he’d been enshrouded in a cloud of despondence so thick, it was palpable. He was suffering. Angie recognized that much — as clearly as she recognized she was the cause of it.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—” She pried at his clenched fingers and worked her hand into his when they relented.

Oh God, what did I do?

“You’re sorry?” Vince’s expression remained as vapid as his tone. “My life is what’s sorry. I shouldn’t even be alive in the first place.”

Grady pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the futon, worry creasing his brow. “What are you talking about? You shouldn’t say stuff like that.” His voice pitched with anxiety, and Angie guessed that Grady might be feeling nearly as responsible as she did.

Vince made a short, low sound that could have been taken for a laugh, if not for the fact that he was so completely void of his usual humor. “A while back my dad had a few too many, and he told me the reason he stayed with my mom was because of me. Because he was taught that when you knock somebody up, you’re supposed to stick around.”

“You know they say stuff they don’t mean when they’re tanked—” Grady interjected in a deliberate, careful tone.

“They weren’t even going at it that day.” Vince finally shifted his dull gaze to Grady for an instant before staring across the room again. “But…I already knew I was an accident. I’ve known since I was a kid—” His voice broke off for a long moment. “I was the reason they were always miserable. I overheard them a long time ago, going on about how they’d be better off split up, but they couldn’t because of me. They sounded so...trapped. I remember thinking how selfish I was, when I’d pray every night for God to keep my parents together. And then I thought if I wasn’t around, they wouldn’t have to worry anymore. They might be sad at first, but then they could finally be happy.” Vince’s listless voice remained near a whisper, the retelling spilling out in a halting ramble. No one interrupted him.

A prickling sensation spread out across Angie’s skin, beginning at the back of her neck. A part of her recognized this as her body’s reaction to an unconscious suspicion — one which the rest of her mind hadn’t quite caught up to. She squeezed Vince’s hand in a feeble attempt at encouragement. Glancing at Grady in hopes of direction, she found only uncertainty in his furrowed brow. So she focused all of her attention on Vince’s face as he spoke, straining to read something. Anything.

Vince continued on, “I found a broken bottle in the kitchen. I tried to cut my wrist with it, but it hurt too much. I chickened out.” He twitched the hand that Angie held, and she tightened her grip. “I hid it. I told them I fell.”

Another glance toward Grady told Angie he was shocked by his friend’s confession. It didn’t seem likely she would find much help from him. “How old were you?” she asked, softly.

Vince answered in the same detached tone, “Seven, I think. Maybe eight.”

Angie swallowed hard, struggling to keep her emotions under control while enduring the sense that something had slithered into her chest and constricted around her heart. “You’ve never told anyone before?”

Vince shook his head, a slight and slow movement. “I didn’t want to end up in a psych ward. I never tried again. I thought about it a couple of times…when things would get bad. When I didn’t want to feel anymore.” He turned his head halfway toward her, green eyes shifting the rest of the way. “I’m not crazy. I’m just—” He trailed off, his tired gaze revealing how drained he was on so many levels.

“You’re in pain,” Angie finished for him. She recognized the despair consuming him as she would have recognized a physical person. Like an old, tormenting enemy — she knew it well. But she also knew better than to whip out the ‘I know how you feel’ card.

What do I tell him? Please, give me something he needs to hear.

Vince looked away from her and lowered his head.

Angie lifted his hand with hers and clasped her other hand over the back of it. “You have plenty of reason to be,” she said, adopting a tone she hoped was less analytical and more soothing. “But you can’t keep stuffing this. You have to face it and release it somehow, or it’s just going to keep eating you from the inside out.” She paused. “Thank you—for telling us.”

“Yeah—” Grady found his voice again. “And you’re not an accident, you know. There’s no such thing as accidents. Everything happens for a reason.” He recited the adage with an air of authority.

Angie resisted the immediate urge to smack him.
Thank you, Captain Cliché’.

She knew Grady meant well, but she had serious doubts about his effectiveness. She was reminded of another one of  her mother’s favorite sayings; “Well-meaning people are sometimes the most dangerous.”

Vince’s eyes narrowed as he looked to Grady. “Okay G, so tell me the -reason- my parents are alcoholics. Or the reason my ex-girlfriend turned into a lying skank. How about explaining why everybody uses me to fix their computers, but I still can’t get a decent job in my field?” Vince demanded, bitterly. “Is that all just part of God’s cosmic chess game?”

There’s the anger.

Angie expected it to be seething somewhere under that unreadable facade he’d maintained. “You’re not responsible for other people’s decisions. Just yours,” she said, evenly. “You’re allowed to be angry. Heck, -I’m- angry for you. But hanging on to this is killing you, and you know it. Eventually, you’re going to need to forgive people…and God—” She considered a brief moment before gently adding, “—and yourself. Or you’re never going to have the peace of mind you need so badly.”

“Peace? Who has peace?” Vince muttered, voice riddled with disregard.

“I do.” Angie surprised herself with how immediate the answer came.

Now...how do I justify that without sounding nutty?

She had to try. Pausing, she searched her mind. “I don’t always hang onto it very well, and I forget how important it is sometimes—but when nothing else makes sense, it does. It’s worth having.”

As she spoke, it occurred to her she was attempting to explain something that defied explanation. She knew she couldn’t blame him for rejecting her claim. She’d only recently come to terms with the fact that certain things could never be done justice when recounted in words or read about in books. Some things had to be experienced in order to be understood.

Vince fell silent for a long while, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the futon. “Sounds nice,” he said at last. “It must be easy if you have one of those 7th Heaven families. You don’t know what it’s like, trying to hide from all of this crap—trying to hold everything together. I wake up at night sometimes thinking the dark is finally going to suffocate me.” The anger had receded, leaving his tone despondent.

“7th Heaven?” Angie controlled her tone. Now was not the time to be irritated. “Well, I know he’s not talking about my family. How about yours?” She directed the question to Grady.

Grady threw up his hands and shook his head. He didn’t try to contribute anything else, and for the time being, she was glad for it. 

“Look, I don’t know what it’s like to be you...and I’m not going to pretend we didn’t grow up in different worlds.” Angie leveled her face closer to Vince’s ear. “But I do know what it’s like to be depressed. I dealt with that for years. I remember how it was, feeling like you’re standing on the outside watching yourself—wondering why you feel the way you do. Like there’s something heavy and horrible sitting on your shoulders, coloring the way you see things. I remember wondering why I couldn’t snap myself out of it.” The recollection poured out of her so easily, she didn’t have to think about it. “I know what it’s like to just want to feel -normal-, never mind happy.”

Vince’s eyes opened and he turned to look into Angie’s with an intensity that made her draw her face back slightly in surprise. She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t.

It frustrated her that she couldn’t read his face, but at the same time, she was relieved that he wasn’t showing any signs of belligerence. If she wasn’t able to help him somehow, then at least she hadn’t made things worse.

“Would you…let us pray for you?” Angie asked, her voice coming out more timorous than she’d intended. She wasn’t in the habit of making such requests, but if there was ever an appropriate time for it, this was it. Her friend needed more salve for his soul than any amount of talking was going to accomplish. Still, a selfish part of her hoped he might refuse and spare her the anxiety of praying out loud.

“I think that’d be a good idea,” Grady said. He moved to sit on one side of the futon and laid and encouraging hand on Vince’s shoulder.

Vince looked at the hand, then sent his lackluster gaze scanning from Grady to Angie. “Sure. Whatever,” he mumbled. His head lowered in a gesture that was more resigned than reverent.

Angie was still collecting her thoughts when Grady began to speak. She didn’t mind his initiative in the least. He knew Vince better than she did, after all. Aside from that, she was grateful to have more time to reign in her self-consciousness.

Grady prayed aloud with an innate poise, able to articulate his petition on behalf of his friend with an almost polished clarity. In moments like these, Angie was particularly grateful for the assurance that God wasn’t hung up on presentation skills. The list of requests was eventually punctuated with a somber “Amen,” and Grady withdrew his hand from Vince’s shoulder. He got up then and moved to sit on the other side of Angie. He clasped her arm as he settled, offering an supportive nod.

Angie took a deep breath, beginning with a quiet torrent of words that seemed to be waiting for release. She’d closed her eyes early on, not out of obligation, but to help her keep her nerve. Her mental focus drifted as she spoke — sometimes far away, and sometimes centering on Vince’s warm hand, still held between her palms. The empathic strain in her chest began to dissipate. As she neared a sense of completion, she found she didn’t have much recollection of her words. But regardless of what she’d said or how she’d said it, she was sure her intentions had been conveyed. To her, that was what mattered.

All that remained to fill the silence was the low pulse of electronic background music, flowing from the wall-mounted radio. When Angie opened her eyes, she realized Vince was dead asleep. He’d slumped to one side and his head now rested in her lap. His face had relaxed at last, leaving it boyish and tranquil. In that moment, she had the odd thought that he’d never looked more like himself.

Too bad it takes unconsciousness to achieve this
.

Compelled by a gentleness she hadn’t realized she had in her, she brushed the backs of her fingers along the hollow of his cheek. Vince didn’t stir.

She turned her head to look at Grady and found him asleep on the other side of her, his legs bent at the knees and hanging off the end of the futon. Angie couldn’t decide if this was evidence that it was incredibly late, or that she was incredibly boring. What -was- clear to her was that she was sandwiched between two handsome young men in a rather questionable position.

A tingling flush of apprehension crept up her neck. Technically, the predicament crossed a certain boundary line in her mind. She was fairly sure that her mother would “pitch a fit,” if she understood the southern turn of phrase correctly. On the other hand, she was exhausted — and it seemed wrong to wake Vince after what she’d just put him through.

Coming to a tentative decision, Angie rested her head back against the futon and closed her eyes.

Chapter 23

July 21
,

Alabama The Beautiful

I arrived safely in Cropwell on Friday, but promptly got my butt lost. Fortunately, Vincent found me right away. He’s turned out to be a really sweet guy. At first I was afraid we weren’t going to get along. But then yesterday I spent most of the day hanging out with him and his best friend, Grady, and we discovered that my sense of humor blends pretty well with theirs. Grady spent the night at Vince’s house, and I stayed up talking with him for a few hours after Vince fell asleep. He ended up telling me some of Vince’s difficult history. Vince must have overheard at least some of it, we realized later.

I’m still not really sure what happened. Around 3 am Vince  woke up, sat up, and started doing a zombie stare. Grady and I went to sit with him, and he finally told us what was wrong. As it turns out, he’s been dealt more betrayal and neglect than most people would know how to cope with. It was almost like his past hurts from his ex-girlfriend and others were threatening to destroy him with bitterness. I think he’s been hiding in his own darkness for a long time. We tried to talk him down, but I don’t know how successful we were. He did let us pray for him, at least. I think it helped, but I think his freedom is still largely dependent on his will to attain it. I truly hope that he’ll decide to release his pain soon.

It was a strange night I suppose, but I think some good came out of it. I can’t explain it very well, I just feel like I’ve seen what Vince’s soul is made of. Somewhere in there is a strong, brilliant, and compassionate person. Part of me is already sad that I’ll have to leave on Tuesday. I know I can’t take care of him, but I desperately want someone to be able to. He needs and deserves that much.