He threw open the front door and headed for his car.
I clamored down the steps. He dropped into the driver’s seat of his car, slamming the door. I pled with him through the window but he was shoveling pills into his mouth, blue flat pills that I’d never seen before.
“What the hell is that?” I asked him, and he was sneering at me, an ugly expression for an ugly emotion.
He locked the door and let his head rest against the seat. His eyes were growing glassy, and I was frantic.
I pounded on the glass because he was picking up a baggie and pulling out more pills.
“Beck!” I shrieked. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Don’t!”
This couldn’t be happening and Kit broke the glass. He snaked his big arm in to unlock the door and then he was yanking Beck out.
“What the hell are you doing, Beck?”
Beck’s eyes flashed angrily, his pupils huge, and he shoved Kit away.
“Leave me alone,” he snapped. “Leave me alone. You’re both traitors . . . to my dad. To me. You wanted me to think that you loved me, that you understood. But you don’t. You only wanted to do what you wanted to do. Each other.”
“That’s enough,” Kit barked, and he grabbed the baggie out of Beck’s hand. He tossed it to the ground next to me and grabbed Beck, holding him tight against his chest. My son dangled there furiously.
“We’ve got to get him to the hospital or something,” I said to Kit. “Put him down. I think he needs his stomach pumped.”
“It’s in my system by now, Mom,” Beck said, and his mouth was a line. “It won’t help.”
“How long have you been doing this?” I demanded. This couldn’t be happening. “Why would you do this?”
Beck laughed sharply.
“Well, you can start by looking in the mirror,” he said, and he was derisive and ugly.
The implications of what he was saying slammed into me and I felt wobbly and weak.
“You can’t blame this on your mother,” Kit told him, his voice raised and firm. Beck squirmed out of his grasp.
“You don’t know anything,” Beck snapped back at him. “You don’t know what she’s been like. She’s been living on Xanax and wine, barely wanting to get out of bed. She can barely take care of herself, much less us, and now this. I gave up college so that my mom could fuck my father’s best friend? I can’t deal with this shit.”
“Beck, I’m sorry. You can still go to college. We’ll fix everything.”
But he got back into his car and slammed the door, the remnants of the window falling onto the ground like shattered diamonds in the light.
“Beck. Just get out of the car. We’ll get you some help.”
“It can’t be fixed,” he said, and his words were fading now, his voice weak. “You need the help. Not me. Leave me alone. Forget I exist. Because to you, I don’t. From now on.”
His engine roared to life and his tires squealed because he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
He was gone and he was high and there was nothing I could do.
“I’ll track his phone,” I said. “I’ll call the police. I’ll . . .”
I collapsed into Kit’s chest and he held me as I cried.
“What do I do?” I asked him helplessly. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You love him,” Kit finally answered. “No matter what. That’s what we do.”
“But he’s gone.” I raised my head and my eyes were wet and Kit wiped my tears away.
“He’ll come back,” he assured me. “This is his home.”
“When?” I asked, and my voice was crazed. Kit held me tight.
“I don’t know,” he said, and he was confident. “But he will.”
thirty-six
BECK
MERCY HOSPITAL
10:03 P.M.
“SO . . . YOU TWO WERE A thing,” my aunt Sam is saying, and I listen intently.
“It wasn’t like that,” my mom insists, and she’s embarrassed. What are they talking about?
But then Kit speaks with his deep voice and I can’t even hear his words because all of a sudden, I know.
Kit and my mom.
“It sounds like that,” Sam says uncertainly. And I have to say I agree—after all, I was there. He’d basically said all roads had come together; he thought my dad was meant to die so that he could be with my mom.
That’s fucked up.
Anger pulses through me, rich and hot. I want to jump up, to shout at him, to scream. But I can’t move. Not even a muscle.
This is fucked up.
“Look,” my mom tells Sam. “Kit has been close to me for a very long time. He’s been our best friend—mine and Matt’s. We didn’t do anything wrong. He was comforting me, and it was nothing . . .” Her voice trails off.
Kit’s silent now, and if I were him, I’d be hurt.
Did my mom mean to do that? Surely not.
The room is quiet, and I can hear restless sounds of pacing and of shoes on the floor. It’s awkward and uncomfortable. And for just a minute I’m grateful that my eyes aren’t open and I don’t have to deal with this situation.
My coma had come in handy for something.
Funny. But not funny.
“Can I have a minute alone with Beck?” Kit asks finally, and that was unexpected. I don’t want it, but of course I don’t have a choice.
“I guess,” my mom finally answers. “But don’t take long. It’s already after ten.”
We all know what that means.
Less than an hour until it’s time to get up.
Fuck. I don’t feel ready.
Mom brushes my hair out of my face like she always does, and then I’m alone with Kit.
I sense it in the silence.
Kit’s hand is on my arm and it’s rough with calluses.
“Hey, kid,” he says, greeting me, even though he’s been here all night. “I know you’re mad at me.”
He pauses and I don’t know if he thinks he can get a rise out of me, but it’s not working.
“I want you to know your mom is a good person. She’s worked so hard to keep it together. She’s suffered such a great loss, and while all you saw was what you thought were her failings, she kept you all afloat.”
I feel a twinge of guilt.
I had been hard on her. I know that now. I was so lost in my own pain I wasn’t able to see hers.
“And what you saw that day . . . what you heard. I’ve loved your mom for a long time. Even before your dad died, if you want the truth. But I would have never acted on it. Your father was my best friend, and I consider you guys my family. Matt was like my brother.”
I’m struggling now. Struggling with having to stay silent. There is so much I’d like to say. But even as I think of the words, I also think of memories.
Of Kit coming to our BBQs. Of Kit and my dad laughing over a beer. Of Kit and my dad tinkering on a car or screaming at a football game on TV. If I’m honest, I have to admit that Kit never did one inappropriate thing when my dad was alive.
He was simply a good friend to both of them.
And then after . . . well. As much as I didn’t like it at the time, he helped my mom.
He picked up my mom’s pieces after my bomb went off.
I feel my anger ebbing, slipping away into the dark.
How can I be mad at them when I handled things so much worse myself?
Kit’s voice is filled with pain and guilt, and I actually wish I could speak up and tell him.
That I don’t blame him anymore.
I’m stunned that I don’t.
But it’s the truth.
“So, don’t be mad at her,” Kit says, talking again. “She loves you so much, and one thing I’ve learned from all of this is to not take for granted the people who love you. Sometimes they’re gone in an instant. It sucks that we don’t know what we’ll miss the most until it’s gone. It’s a travesty of life.”
He pauses for one beat and then continues.
> “I miss the way your dad called me Kitten when he was teasing me,” he admits, and the thought of that is funny. My dad calling this big guy Kitten. But then Kit’s voice cracks and he breaks down and cries. I hear the tears, I hear the wetness in his voice, and it’s actually terrifying because he’s always so unflinching, so strong. If he’s weeping . . . Jesus. This must be bad.
“Just wake up, son,” he urges me. “Don’t be afraid. Just come back to us. Everything will be okay.”
But it isn’t always.
I know that, and so does he.
* * *
I COULDN’T HELP BUT think about the differences between Angel and me as I sat against the blocks of the building, smoking and blowing puffs toward the sun.
“Your mother left you, and I left my mother,” I told Angel. She was next to me, blowing smoke rings.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“I was a dick to my mom,” I said. “She didn’t really deserve it. She was doing the best she could.”
“Then what happened?”
Angel snapped her fingers at Winston because he was getting too far away, but he bounded back to us and she smiled at his flopping ears.
I shook my head. “Everything. I was a mess. I was using. Pot and Xanax, H. I couldn’t take reality anymore, you know? It was all closing in on me.”
She nodded because she knew.
I watched the dog chase his tail and the sun was so very cold, which wasn’t as it should have been.
“Have you ever felt yourself do things, things you know you wouldn’t normally do, but you do them anyway?” I asked her. “It’s like someone is moving your arms and legs, and you let them.”
She stared at me, but she wasn’t getting it.
“I was out of control. I was so pissed. At everyone, everything. I think I was grieving, but I know I was pissed. Then my mom started seeing my father’s best friend and I fucking snapped.”
“Jesus,” Angel breathed. “That’s messed up, dude.”
“I know. But I don’t think I should’ve been such a dick.”
“They’ll forgive you,” she said, and she was so sure of herself for someone who didn’t even know them.
“I don’t know. I told her I never wanted to see her again and then I left. I went and got high in a crack house and didn’t come down for two weeks. When I came down, I’d lost my car and my wallet.”
“Well, thank goodness your driver’s license was in your purple bag,” she mentioned, because she liked to see the bright side.
“Yeah. I still had that.”
“Don’t beat yourself up too much, King,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Doing drugs is easy. Doing life is hard. And sometimes, we have to hide from it in the best ways we can.”
“I hurt everyone I love,” I told her. “That’s why I don’t want to get close to you. I’m not good for anyone.”
She laughed, and I saw her humor in the air in a mist of gray and white.
“It’s too late for that bullshit, King. You are close to me. And I’m close to you. We’re all we have, or have you not noticed? King, I had this foster home once. The dad was nice enough, but the mom wasn’t. She wasn’t a nice person, but she was religious, if you know what I mean.”
I instantly pictured a pinch-mouthed Bible-thumper. Angel smiled when I told her that.
“Sort of,” she admitted. “She went to church a lot and Bible study. But anyways, something she said stuck with me. She was talking about carrying crosses.”
I lifted an eyebrow because I had no idea what she was talking about.
She sighed. “People like to carry their burdens with them,” she said. “We feel like if we punish ourselves long enough for everything that has gone wrong in life, we’ll somehow make it right again by our own sheer misery.”
She messed with the frayed hem of her jeans and didn’t make eye contact with me. Her voice was very solemn, and I know she meant every word.
“I was upset about my mother, and that’s the pep talk that this woman gave me.” Angel shrugged now. “It made sense at the time. And I think it makes sense now. She said people create their own crosses and become their own martyrs. We feel like if we punish ourselves enough, we’ll cleanse our own sins.”
I stared at her, speechless. It made sense but I didn’t think it applied to me.
“What happened was my fault,” I told her slowly. “If I don’t punish myself for it, who will?”
Angel’s eyes were so very soft as she looked at me, and she picked up my hand and stroked my fingers.
“Things just happen sometimes,” she said simply. “We’ll never know how or why. They just do. You’ve been punishing yourself for something that just happened. It’s time to lay your cross down, King. It’s not yours to carry.”
My breath was coming steady now, but I wasn’t sure why, because my heart was thump thump thumping while I considered this revelation. It couldn’t be so simple as to just lay something down. It wasn’t a book or a bag. It was a burden, and it was heavy and it was mine.
“Don’t overthink it,” Angel said. “Just don’t. You’re a good person, King. You don’t deserve this pain.”
She laid her head against my shoulder and watched the clouds. Time passed and I was jittery but I also didn’t want to move. It felt good here with Angel, and I liked allowing her words to sink in.
“I want to get a job,” Angel told me after a while. “Maybe work at the counter in a card store. Everyone is happy when they’re buying greeting cards.”
“I can see you doing that,” I told her. “You’d have to be nice to everyone, though.”
“I’m a nice person, King,” she growled, and I laughed.
“Obviously.”
“I am,” she insisted, and I assured her that it was true.
My hands were growing shaky now and I needed to use. I peered into the bag. “We’ve only got one hit left,” I told her. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? We can just go buy some more.”
That thought brought me comfort. Going without made me panicky.
But she was resolute.
“I’m sure, King. We need this—you know that.”
“It’s just . . . what if I’m not ready?” I asked. “They say you have to be ready to get clean. What if I haven’t hit rock bottom?”
She looked around, an exaggerated response. “We’re living in a warehouse and we’re peeing in the bushes,” she pointed out. “How much further down can we go?”
“I know,” I agreed. “But still. How am I supposed to know if I’m ready?”
She changed the subject and we tried to ignore the elephant in the room for the rest of the day as we nibbled on our stale bread crusts, as we breathed in and out.
We didn’t have much to do to pass the time today except for the endless task of trying to stay warm. We gathered trash from the bins outside and lit a fire with old papers, expired magazines, even a dog-eared oven mitt. We hovered around it and tried to pretend that we weren’t consumed by the craving, by the want.
By nighttime, my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t stand it. My eyes felt like they were popping out of my head as I stared at Angel.
“I wanna use it,” I told her. She did too. I could see it in her hollowed-out eyes and her hands that shook as she stroked Winston’s head.
“But,” she reminded me, “after this, no more. It’s going to suck. But we’ll be done. Do you promise, King?”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to. I didn’t want to. I wanted to.
We had to.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
The mere thought, though . . . shit. It pounded my heart into my ribs because this stuff was life and what would I do without it?
I was careful not to drop the baggie as I reached for the last pebble. It was more precious than silver or gold in this moment, more precious than life.
“Give it to me,” Angel urged, holding out her hand. She had a hole in one of her glove fingers. Her hands were shaking more
than mine and she might have dropped it. I shook my head.
“I’ve got it.”
She pursed her lips but didn’t argue, and she was patient, more patient than me. She watched and waited as I heated the spoon. When it was ready and it’s belly was blackened, Angel held out her arm, and I think her teeth were chattering, but I couldn’t focus on that.
I had to focus on this.
On hitting a vein, on giving Angel release from this life for one last time. After this, we’d be better. We’d be good. We’d be strong. But reality was hard, and I didn’t look forward to it. It was the sea pounding into cliffs, and it was hard and it was vicious.
Angel’s eyes fluttered closed when it hit, and she dropped her head back in relief, like someone had lifted a great weight from her shoulders, and Winston rested his head against her chest.
She floated to her heels, like gauze in a fancy dress made from layers and layers of lace. She floated to the ground like a skirt, and she rested there, waiting for me to join her. I hurried.
I found a vein easily, quickly. I injected and withdrew.
The warmth took my everything, and I exhaled shakily, not wanting to move. I didn’t want to tempt fate. I didn’t want this last high to end.
I was suddenly next to Angel, though, and I didn’t know how I got there, but she was pulling on my arm, and then lying in my lap, and my hands were on her thighs, steadying her, resting. My hands were too much to support, they were blocks of cement or stone.
“It’s like we’re in a canyon,” she said in wonderment, although we’d been here before. “And we’re never going to climb out, King.”
“We will,” I told her, and I was confident now, invincible. “This is our last time here.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she agreed, and her eyes were closed and her hand was hot and clammy. She stroked my face with it over and over, like my skin was a piece of velvet or the satin edge of a beloved blanket.
“I’m a hollow reed,” she said in her singsong voice. “And you’re blowing through me, bending me, King. You’ve bent me.”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked. Her words were like a poem I didn’t understand.
“It’s a very good thing,” she answered. “I thought I couldn’t be moved. I thought I was a stone or a tree, but I was a reed all along.”