Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy) (17 page)

On the worst nights, the nights where she had a diet cola or some coffee or a cigarette or a damn carton of cigarettes with her drinks, my mom would drink even more, and if she had caffeine, she would be up in the morning in a stupor. She’d hit me once, in one of these, just once, and never again, when I was sixteen, and she’d apologized and said she’d thought I was someone else, but whom, I never wanted to ask. I’d help her into bed on those mornings. Last night, I’d had to help her into bed, and when I’d come over, she had luckily just fallen asleep on the couch, on her stomach, the phone rolled under the coffee table. She hadn’t injured herself or had a heart attack, but still, I’d had to come out and see what had happened

The nights where she had too much nicotine were the worst. I know what nicotine dreams are, the dreams that are vivid and lucid and messed up, to the point that my mother would swear she saw my father in her dreams, that maybe, he was really still alive, and those were the worst because they gave her false hope and she’d end up spending money at some random fortune teller’s, hoping that the answers about my father that they gave her through leading questions held some truth, hoping that everything would just revert to the way it was before my father died.

But, today, my mom was just asleep, with that damned pillow, so I went to the sink, crouched down, and got the rubber gloves out, and the cleaning supplies to clean up the vomit. We didn’t have any sawdust left, just sponges, so I’d have to go buy those today: the vomit would ruin the sponges but the stuff had to get cleaned up somehow. I put on some light classical music on Pandora as I cleaned, but changed it within minutes. Usually, I liked it as background noise, but right now, everything musical reminded of Lawrence, the man who I knew I couldn’t be with anymore, because I couldn’t expect him to understand or deal with this.

The doorbell rang and I went to answer it without checking the peephole. There, in the same clothes as he’d had the night before, was Lawrence, and me? I was in a pair of ugly beater jeans, an old apron I used just for cleaning these kinds of messes, rubber gloves, and my hair up, no makeup, stray locks held back with chipped bobby pins. “What do you want?” I said coldly.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“No. You can’t.” I said. He didn’t leave the stoop so I said, “How did you find me?”

“You took my driver. Obviously, he’s going to tell me where you went, Kim.” Lawrence didn’t sound haughty or arrogant: he was just stating what were, to him, plain facts, but to me, seemed almost like an invasion of privacy.

“Well, come in,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m cleaning and I guess you can help or watch.”

“I’d love to help,” said Lawrence, rolling up his sleeves and getting on the floor next to me, and he watched me clean the vomit using the sponge, so he took the other spare sponge and tried to help, but only managed to make his shirt disgusting and make the stains worse, so I had him stop.

“So...I take it this isn’t your vomit, Kim?” he asked quietly.

“No. No, it’s not.”

“And this is your house, so...”

“It’s my mom’s, obviously.”

“And this is why you get calls from your mom? Because she gets drunk?”

“Yeah.”

“How often do you get them?”

“The calls? Maybe...once a month. But this happens almost on a weekly basis now. She binge drinks on weekends, when the store is closed, on her own supply, no doubt, and ends up wasted, the house a wreck, and when I’m on vacation, or I have free time, I try to help out, but it was hard with school in session. I can’t go to a graduate school away from the area because I know that things will get worse for her if I leave her. Even UCBH was too far.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Kim?” said Lawrence, washing his hands and coming back to me as I cleaned up the last of the vomit and started to put the cleaning supplies away.

I thought about my answer before I got up from the floor. “You have no idea what I have to deal with, Lawrence. You don’t know what it’s like to have to deal with someone like my mom, someone who is toxic, somebody who sucks the life out of you, who requires so much maintenance,” I said, shaking my head and resisting the urge to just curl up into a ball and rock back and forth.

“I don’t? Then you don’t know me as well as you thought, and you definitely don’t know yourself. I love you, Kim, but I can’t help you with the problems in your life if you don’t let me in. The first time, after the rape at Club Grit, you shut me out and didn’t let me in. I was left wondering about what had happened between us and how we should move on, how we could heal. Then, you shut me out again by bottling in your problems and not telling me about your problems, about your insecurities about dating me. And now, when there’s something I can actually help you with, you still want to shut me out. What am I supposed to do, Kim?”

“Nothing, Lawrence, nothing, because there’s nothing you can do,” I hissed, walking over to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. The sink was full of dirty dishes, some still caked with stale rice and kim chi. I hadn’t been coming home as often this last semester, with the drama at the sorority, so I hadn’t been able to cleanup after my mom as much as I had before. It wasn’t like her drinking got any better when I cleaned the house and was around for her, but it made my stays with her more tolerable. As I drank at the cup slowly, wincing at the taste of the tap water, used to bottled water and filtered water, the kind I’d had at Omega Mu,

“Nothing I can do? Are you serious, Kim? As you yourself keep mentioning, I am a billionaire. I have money, more than I could possibly spend on my own, and you know what I can do with that?” He took me by the shoulders gently. “Do you know, Kim? Do you?”

I pushed him off and took a step back. “Why don’t you just fucking tell me, Lawrence? Why do you need me to answer back as if I’m like you? As if I’ve had the privileges you’ve had in life, the privileges that have allowed you the ultimate luxury, a lifestyle free of worries?”

“You know better than anyone that my life is anything but worry-free, Kim. But, apparently, you don’t understand why I’m able to make certain problems disappear: the money can solve a lot of problems. Money’s not everything, but it’s damn inconvenient to live without. I have enough money to buy out your mother’s liquor store, enough money to send her to rehab, enough money to set her up in a nicer house than this one, in a better neighborhood. I can make her life easy, as easily as I could make yours easy too. You talk about how I have too much, but damn it, don’t you know I already know that? Don’t you understand that I can make things more even, level out the playing field, if you just let me in? Why won’t you take my help?”

“Because I don’t want your pity, Lawrence! This isn’t your problem! It’s between my mom and I, not between you and me or you and her or anyone else. Can’t you understand that for me, what you’re offering is a handout and that you’re taking my pride in turn? Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I don’t care! I don’t have much else left other than my pride: you know I don’t have my dignity left either, but yet, you insist on taking that away. Can’t there be one problem I solve? Can’t there be something I handle, that you don’t just magically make disappear with money? What is left for me to do, Lawrence? Where is my agency? Where is my autonomy? I’m finally free of Pearl, but now, I have you orchestrating my life. I’ve exchanged one cage for another, and although yours might be more plush, I’d rather be free and fending for myself than trapped and kept like a song bird.”

“Accepting help doesn’t make you weak, Kim, it makes you strong. I can go and donate to a charity that helps alcoholics, but that wouldn’t help your mom. This isn’t about money or power, and I’m sorry if anything I’ve done has given you that impression. I’m sorry that I’ve been blind to the fact that you need your freedom, that you need space from me, that you need to live your life the way you want, not the way I want for you. But this, here? This problem, with your mom? I can’t just let her waste away this way, Kim. You need to get her help, and I can’t see you go into poverty in order to care for her. Please, just help me help you help your mom get her life back on track, so your life can continue. You shouldn’t have to be your mom’s caretaker, not yet, not this way, and I can help you undo the damage that’s been done to her, if you just let me help. The greatest gift I can give you is your mom. Please, Kim. Please. Do it for her. Do it for you.”

“It’s not going to change anything!”

“If it doesn’t, at least we tried.”

“And if nothing changes?”

“Then we’ll figure out a way to make it work. We’ll figure out something for your mom, even if it’s just maid service so you don’t have to clean.”

“It’s not about the cleaning!”

“Damn it, I know that, Kim! I’m not stupid, just too damn rich for my own good, and I don’t know what to do! Things like this are usually hushed up, which is unhealthy because now, I have no idea what to do! And around you, that seems to be the norm: I’m faced with situations I’ve never had to face before, with no clue what to do to solve them. I want to help you clean up any messes in your life, past, present, and future.  I want you, the bad with the good, because you’re worth it, Kim, but sometimes, it’s hard for me to figure out what you want me to do for you!”

I’d never heard Lawrence say something so passionate but also personal to me, and it calmed me, instantly, and I had a chance to think before I replied, far more calmly. “So why don’t you just ask me, Lawrence? Why don’t you just ask me what I want, or what I think?”

He took his head in his hands for a second before throwing his shoulders and head back and placing his hands behind his head, looking up at the dirty popcorn ceiling. “Because I’m supposed to be this perfect man for you, Kim, and it’s stupid. You’ve never told me that you expect that of me, and that’s what drew me to you to begin with: the fact you had no idea who I was, or about the money, or about anything, and that you never treated me differently after. The fact that you find my worth not in my net worth, but in my intrinsic value, is terrifying, because it means I have to figure out how to make sure I don’t lose you.”

“Well, you’re going to lose me if you don’t give me some goddamn freedom,” I said with a laugh but there was some truth in the sentiment.

‘Is there anything else you’d like?” he asked, sarcastically, truth in the sarcasm as well.

“Are you actually asking me what I’d like?” I asked, pretending I sounded surprise, although the fact my heart was fluttering showed that yes, I was.

“Yes, Kim, I am,” he said quietly and seriously.

I looked down and bit my lower lip before looking back at him. “I...I do want my mom to get better. At the same time, I don’t want help or aide or handouts.”

Lawrence leaned on the kitchen counter and put a hand in his pocket, just to leave it there, not to pull anything out. “I’m not trying to tell you how to feel, but...I’ve gone through similar feelings. I’ve had to accept help sometimes, and even if nobody’s tried to make me feel bad about it, I have before, and it’s sucked. But, the reason I want to help you is because I love you. And if you don’t want it, I understand.”

I nodded: I did understand what he was trying to say, the way he understood me better than he let on. “No, I do, but I want it like this, with a dialogue, not thrust upon me. Can you make me a promise, Lawrence?”

“Anything,” he said, his icy blue eyes meeting my dark brown irises.

I closed my eyes. “Can you...just ask me sometimes? Just ask me what I want or how I feel or just, what I need? Instead of just orchestrating everything for me?” I opened my eyes, wondering what waited on the other side: something that would maybe be okay? Or nothing at all?

“Would you like that, Kim?” he asked, and looking into his eyes, I knew he wasn’t joking: I knew he was being serious, and that he was asking because he knew that I wanted him to ask me more questions, to just fucking ask, and he was.

“Yes, Lawrence, I would,” I replied, and as I finished, he took my hands in his, not caring I was wearing a vomit stained apron and jeans, with my hair a mess, and pressed his lips against mine, sealing his promise with a kiss, the way he’d sealed my love before, and would have it always, from now on, because I knew that Lawrence and I had a shot at a real future.

L
AWRENCE WAS RIGHT: he had the ability to get my mom the best treatment possible. He went over brochures with me and we visited different facilities until we found the perfect rehab center for my mom. I sat down with her, by myself, and went over the options with her and she agreed to get treatment. Lawrence footed the bill for me, and, for the next hard three months, made time to be with me and support me while I supported my mom in treatment, visiting her as often as I could. She became healthier, more normal, more like the mom I had before dad died.

It was September; about six months after I’d first met Lawrence. It’d been such a long, weird trip: if I’d been told at this time, the year before, that I’d fall in love with a billionaire, I would have told the person they were crazy, but it was true: I was in love with Lawrence, and I let him know it as often as I could. I was no longer as cold and distant as I’d been when I first met him. I was able to take help from him, I was able to trust him with everything, and I was able to finally start living a life where I didn’t have to always feel like I was pretending to be something or somebody that I wasn’t. I was finally just able to be myself.

Lawrence sold Club Grit: neither he nor I wanted to go back there, and the clubbing thing wasn’t my scene any more. Lawrence took me on his business trips to foreign countries like France and Japan, where I’d explore the city by day, while he hashed out business deals with other men like him who just spoke different languages and lived in different places. It was during our trip to Ireland, in September, that everything changed again.

After work, he picked me up at the small café where I’d been doing reading, whisking me away not to a fancy restaurant, but to the bed and breakfast we’d been staying at while he did his business in the city proper. The Doting Dubliner was run by a young couple, who maintained the cozy aura of the b & b but also knew that many couples came to Ireland for romantic getaways, so guests were given a keycard to enter the inn on their own terms and at their own schedule. When we got there, nobody was around, not that it mattered: Lawrence took me by the hand up to our room, swiping the keycard again, before pushing me down on the sheepskin-covered bed.