Unforgivable (6 page)

AS SOON AS I WALK THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR OF MY house, I know something is wrong. It smells weird, and it takes me a few moments to realize it's the scent of something cooking. But even stranger are the sounds coming out of the kitchen—something I barely recognize as my father's laughter and someone else's, a woman's.

I'm not sure what I expected to see when I opened the door, but it definitely wasn't my dad being spoon-fed sauce by a woman who looks closer to his age than anyone he's ever dated. She's black, too, which is a first. Dad's dated two women since my mom left, both briefly, both in their twenties, one white and one Filipina, I think. Or maybe Vietnamese. She wasn't around long enough for me to find out.

“You must be Marcus!” the woman says.

“Hey,” I say. I meet Dad's eyes for a second and am shocked to see them wrinkled in a smile.

“This is Monica,” he says. “My girlfriend.” He sounds so proud of himself, almost giddy, like he's suddenly thirteen instead of fifty-two.

“It's so great to finally meet you,” she says, stepping forward and shaking my hand with the one not holding the spoon. “I hope you'll join us for dinner. I made polenta cakes with sausage and peppers.”

“Monica's a great cook,” Dad says as he puts his arm around her waist. “She spent her junior year of college in Florence.” She turns her head and kisses him on the cheek, and he laughs, and this is too weird. Even being alone with my crazy thoughts is better than being subjected to this.

“I already ate,” I lie. I still have the doughnut I bought this afternoon in my bag. That will have to be my dinner tonight. No way I'm coming back down here. “I have homework.”

“Oh, darn,” Monica says.
Darn
? Who says
darn
? “Well, next time.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I say.

Her smile cracks a little, and I'm surprised I feel bad about being so rude. It's not her fault my dad's an asshole. She hasn't known him long enough.

“Marcus,” Dad says in his judge voice. I wonder if Monica can hear the undertones of hostility, the potential for rage. “Monica worked really hard on this meal. I've been promising her dinner with you for weeks now.”

“It's okay, William,” she says. “Really. We can do it another time.”

William?
His name is Bill, lady.

“Fine,” he says. I wonder if she notices the look in my father's eyes, the one that says
I'm going to kill you
. “Another time.”

“It was really nice meeting you, Marcus,” she says. “I'm looking forward to getting to know you.” She looks me in the eyes as she says this, and I know in that moment that my dad is in fact serious about her, and she's serious about him. Maybe he has moved on. Maybe he isn't still settling for vague versions of my mother, when she was young and beautiful and eager to please, and he assumed that's all she was.

“Yeah,” I say. “You, too.” And I'm not sure I don't mean it. As I walk out of the kitchen and up to my room, the floor feels somehow different under my feet, softer and less stable. The walls feel warped. The shadows in the corner are too many shades of gray.

IT IS SATURDAY MORNING. OTHER FAMILIES ARE JUST GETTING up. They are still in their pajamas, in warm kitchens that smell like coffee and pancakes. But in our house, Dad is heading out the door for work. He has been promoted. He is too important to stay home.

He thinks he can sneak out without us noticing. He doesn't know I'm at my hidden perch at the top of the stairs. He doesn't know Mom is waking up at this very moment. He didn't notice her curled up on her chair in the living room. He doesn't know she's been there since last night; they've had separate bedrooms for nearly a year.

Maybe she has already started drinking this morning. Maybe she is still drunk from the night before. She is on the floor now, hanging off him, pulling on his coat, trying to keep him from walking out the door. She is crying and I can understand only half of what she's saying. The only thing I'm sure of is that I can't
un-see any of this. I cannot un-feel this embarrassment, this combination of sadness and disgust. I want to look away, but I can't.

Mom is on her knees, her face blotchy and wet with tears. She cries, “You're going to see her, aren't you?”

My father looks down at her coldly, his dark brown skin so smooth and untroubled, as if he cannot be bothered by her antics. The scene looks like something out of a play, staged for ultimate dramatic effect, my father and mother actors cast as husband and wife, but who barely know each other in real life. The contrast between them is so great. The contrast is all they are.

I wonder in this moment who I resemble more—my mother or my father. I am undeniably black, though I am much lighter than Dad. My hair is kinky like his, but I have Mom's green eyes and straight nose, am thin and lanky like her, not stocky and broad shouldered like Dad. But then there are the other, deeper traits. Am I the serious, driven, unfeeling man towering above my mother, or the needy and erratic woman on the floor next to him?

I feel David slide next to me at the top of the stairs. We sit there for a moment, listening to Mom beg, listening to Dad bark, “Renae, pull yourself together. This is pathetic.”

David puts his arm around me. He says, “Let's get the fuck out of here.”

Our parents don't notice us come down the stairs. We walk right past them, through the kitchen, and out the back door, and we drive away in Bubbles, David's new vintage Mercedes station wagon, not talking, not needing to talk.

I know where we are headed as soon as we get off the freeway,
even though it has been a few years since Mom has taken us there.

We sit on a piece of driftwood, the beach empty except for a couple of seagulls. David pulls out a pipe and fills it with sticky green herb, lights it with a lighter, and inhales. He hands the pipe to me and I put it to my lips, giddy to be joining him in this secret. It feels like some sort of initiation into manhood, like our dysfunctional family's weird version of a bar mitzvah. David puts up his hand to block the wind, lights the bowl for me, and I inhale and cough, surprised that the smoke does not taste minty. We pass the pipe back and forth until all we have left is ash. David blows and it floats away on the wind, breaks into particles, smaller and smaller, and is swallowed into the bay.

I don't know if I'm high, but I know something is different. I am sitting next to my brother and we are somewhere no one can find us. Mom probably forgot this place exists. Now David and I have something that is just ours. In a couple of months, summer will be over and I will finally be a freshman at Templeton with him, a senior. David and I will share the same world. He will take up the space where I hold my worries. He will be so big, he will crowd everything else out.

“I don't feel anything,” I say.

“You will,” David says, looking out across the water. He picks up a rock and throws it. “And then none of this shit will matter.”

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I EXPECTED TO FIND, BUT I WENT BACK to the beach. Maybe I thought there'd be a clue. Or maybe I thought the clothes Evie took off before she entered the water would still be there, piled on a piece of driftwood, her phone charged and tucked safely in her pocket. Maybe I thought they would be untouched, unbothered by human hands or the weather, that I could bury my nose in her shirt and still smell her. But every sign of Evie was gone. Someone had probably thrown away her clothes, taken her cash and whatever else they could use out of her wallet, and hacked her phone to sell. The beach was just a beach, covered by rocks and seaweed and what seemed like more garbage than usual.

I found nothing. I am running out of ideas. So now here I am again, waiting for Evie's sister outside her school, even though she made it clear that she wasn't interested in seeing me again. But I have to know how Evie's doing, and after trying the hospital and
Cole, this is the only thing I can think of besides going to her house.

“You again?” a sharp voice says behind me, and I turn around to find Jenica.

“How is she?”

Jenica sighs. “You can't keep doing this.”

“I don't have a choice.”

“You could choose to leave us alone.”

“That's not an option.”

“You know my parents hate you, right? They're never going to let you see her.” I open my mouth to protest, but she keeps talking. “They think you got Evie hooked on drugs. They wanted to press charges, but she convinced them not to.”

My heart jumps. Evie was thinking about me. Talking about me. Defending me. I still exist.

“We smoked a little pot, that's all,” I say, only partly lying. “We drank a little.” She was drunk when I left her that afternoon, but that was all her doing. I left her at home, where she was safe. I didn't know she would go back to the beach. I didn't know she'd go swimming.

Jenica blinks and says nothing, and I'm not sure if she believes me, if she's convinced of my innocence.

“Did you tell her to call me?”

“She couldn't even if she wanted to. She got sent straight to rehab as soon as she got released from the hospital. The only people she's allowed to call are my parents.”

“Rehab?” I say. “For smoking pot and drinking?”

Jenica stares at me for a long time and I can't quite read the look on her face. “You don't know?” she finally says, and her face softens with a wave of emotion. It could be compassion. It could be pity.

“I don't know what?”

“Oh, wow.”

“I don't know
what
?”

What else didn't Evie tell me? Is there anything real about the girl I fell in love with?

“She had a ton of opiates in her system when you brought her to the ER,” Jenica says.

“What?” I say. “Opiates? What are you talking about?” I wonder for a moment if we're talking about the same person, if there's another Evie who goes to North Berkeley High who has a sister named Jenica.

“She had a problem with pain pills after she got out of the hospital the last time, but we thought she was over it. She promised. God, we were so stupid.”

I'm trying to wrap my head around this timeline. Evie was on pills after she got out of the hospital,
before
she met me. That means she must have been on pills the whole time we were together.

I cannot feel my body. I am incapable of feeling. If I feel just a little, the floodgates will open and I'll be destroyed. Did Evie tell me the truth about anything?

“Wow, you really didn't know,” Jenica says. “I actually feel sorry for you. Well, get in line. Yours is not the first heart she's broken. You know Evie had a boyfriend when she started seeing
you, right? And she was stringing you both along?”

I don't say anything. My mind is stopped, frozen. It cannot process this nightmare of information.

“His name is Will. They'd been together for two years. He stayed by her side the whole time she had cancer. He came to visit her in the hospital almost every day.” Jenica is agitated, angry. Her voice is shaking. “What'd
you
do? Get her high? Share some of your drugs with her?”

I don't want to hear this. I can't. “I need to talk to her,” I say.

“She doesn't want to talk to you.”

She's lying. She has to be lying. “There has to be a way for her to call me.”

“Dude, I'm serious. She doesn't want to talk to you.
I
don't want to talk to you. It's over. Give up. Leave us alone.”

I grab her arm as she starts walking away. I need something, anything, solid in my hand. “Don't touch me!” she snaps, and pulls away. I let her go, and I wonder if that's the last piece of Evie I will ever touch.

I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG THAT NIGHT WE SLEPT on the beach. Part of you was gone, replaced by a stranger who only cared about getting high. I tried to get you to talk—about your family, your friends, the cancer, anything—but you were closed up so tight I felt like I was scraping at concrete with my fingernails. You finally gave a little, but you stayed so vague, giving me tears but no details. And then you kissed me, as if a kiss would wipe away your sadness, as if it would distract me from my mission to discover the source of it. And it did. And that shames me.

The next night, you were even worse. It's like you were becoming transparent, threadbare. I had the feeling you were going to disappear any second. I didn't want to get high, didn't want that to be the only thing that brought us together, but I smoked with you anyway because I knew you'd do it without me, even as I sat there next to you, and I couldn't bear to see you getting high alone.

Had we ever been sober together? I can't even remember.

It felt so familiar. Your distance and my desperate yearning to reach you. The feeling of running and running and never getting any closer. You were so much like David, so lost to me. I could feel you going down the same road as he did. I could feel myself following you. And even though you were there with me, even though our bodies were touching, I suddenly felt so alone. And being lonely when you're with someone is the worst kind of loneliness.

I was so torn when you threw yourself at me. My body wanted you. God, how it wanted you. But my heart wanted something else, wanted the part of you that hid inside your body. I could tell you weren't really there. The light was gone in your eyes, replaced by something dark, frantic, terrified. I know it wasn't me you wanted in that moment. You wanted the distraction of my body. You wanted to use me like a drug. You wanted my body to get you high.

As hard as it was, I managed to say no. I know you were hurt by my refusal. You thought it meant I didn't want you. How could I possibly explain how untrue that is? How could you not see that my stopping was proof of how much I love you?