Coupla' Days, Pt. 1

When my brother called to tell me my mother was dying, I didn't know how to respond.

Anger?

Frustration?

Pain?

Memories of ma came in waves, hitting me hard. It wasn't fair. What did he want me to do? See her? Call her? 

I hadn't seen her in all of ten years. You make life choices, you know? I mean, everyone has to decide where his or her own life is headed. And mine? Well, mine was headed nowhere fast and it was all because, at the time, she was in it. 

And then she left. 

Just left, one day when things got a little weird. Not to be seen nor heard from in ten whole years. 

And now this.

Coming from my brother, things didn't sound all that bad. Really, that's the way with him. I mean, his wife will go out and cheat on him, he’ll call me up the next day and say, "Johnny, she cheated on me. What do I do?" And that's it. No tears, no emotion, just a question. And he doesn't even take my advice, that's the real let-down with the whole deal. I told him I would kill her if it were me dealing with my wife, but what that means in the language of brothers is to find the guy, mess him up a little, and don't talk to her for a week or two. That should set them both straight.

He lets her off the hook with a couple of nights in the sack, and it's over. Man, I don't know how he could do it. Sleep in the same bed with her, I mean. That stuff is pretty hard to take, if you ask me. I don't deal with things all too well.

My mother is mean. She says one thing and means the other. 

My grandmother, her own mother, doesn't even like her.

"Your ma, Johnny, she's a rare bird, she is. What's the matter with her, doesn't even call me on my birthday? I tell you what, she's outta the will if I don't hear from her in the next coupla' days." 

My grandmother's a bit crackers herself, if you ask me. Always taking people out of the will, then putting them back in if they do something nice for her. Piss her off, though? You're out of the will. Nothing to it. Just like that with my grandmother. It kind of makes you wonder when she's going to kick the bucket, just to see if there really is a will. 

Sort of mean, I know, but look where I get it.

Anyway, my mother is baby-sitting one night - my wife and I, we hardly ever get a night to ourselves - and she brings a bottle of vodka with her. This wouldn't be so bad if my kids were older. But they're not. A one year old and a five year old can't take care of themselves all too well. So I tell her not to drink in front of them and maybe take it easy until we get home, we won't be too late. She passes out cold on the living room floor with the kids still up. I mean, they're climbing on her, my oldest daughter screaming in her ear, "Are you dead, Nana, are you dead, Nana?"

When I spoke with her the next morning, she was actually surprised that I would point the finger at her for being drunk and irresponsible. Accused me of being a bad son, that's how far she takes it. I haven't seen her since that night. And now this. 

Hate it Here

Her room is dark, an old pull-down shade hangs haphazardly from the curtain rod, clothes are scattered in multiple piles throughout the room, falling off of the rocking chair in the corner, lying in puddles on her dresser, her bed, her floor.  

And there is a stench.  

It is a strong, sour smell… something rancid.  

And there is the alcohol.  Jack Daniels.  

You hate it here.

She sits up in bed and motions you over.  She is smoking, and it is clear to you that she has been drinking for some time.  You are not sure how long you had been in your room, only that it had to have been for some length of time; it is deathly dark out.  The entire house is quiet and you wonder if your brother has fallen asleep.  You wonder if he is in his room, under his bed, the usual hiding spot when things don’t feel quite right.

You get as close as you dare, trying to stay out of her reach.  She wants you closer, tells you she’s not feeling all that well and that she’s not fucking around.  You move to the side of her bed.  There is a bottle or something shiny poking out from under the sheets, you can see that now.  You can also smell that the rancid stench in the air is coming from her.  As your vision adjusts to the dark, you also think one of her eyes is swollen shut, but you can’t be sure.   

-What did you do to today, Jordan. 

It is a statement, not a question, and you know that she knows about your dad moving and what you told him, but you play it safe.  Maybe she’s just drunk.

-Went to a movie.

-What else did you do, Jordan.

You don’t answer.  Scratch your nose.

-Went for some pizza, but Ben said he felt sick so we came home instead.

-So you know your father is moving.

Again, this is not a question.  She takes a drag on her cigarette - a long, deep drag that invades her lungs.  She exhales a great plume of smoke directly into your face.  It rolls out of her mouth, a dirty factory belching smoke into the polluted sky. 

-Yes, I know he is moving. 

-You also know that he doesn’t love you.  Or Ben.

You don’t answer.  You want to scream at her, tell her to shut up, that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 

You don’t.

You stand there, frozen, not able to feel your legs.  You have the sensation that you may fall over, right onto the floor, spilling right onto the floor next to her and then what would she do?  Would she panic?  Would she leave you there?  Would she laugh?

-Jordan.

You hate her.

-Jordan.

Her words slur and the liquid from the bottle, you can see now, has spilled out and left a deep, dark stain on the bed sheet.

She has a hold on your arm.  Not tight, but she has you. 

You are not scared, but have an overwhelming feeling of sadness, of regret.

Regret for what?  What did you do?  It is not clear what you should be feeling, all of these things running around in your head, but it is definitely regret. 

Of that much you are sure.

Maybe because you don’t feel anything at all. 

Maybe it is regret that you don’t feel anything at all. 

Not even love. 

She lets your arm drop and does not speak another word.  The cigarette has gone out and is lying limp between two fingers.  You take it from her and place it in the overflowing ashtray next to the bed.  It topples onto the floor, the bedside table already full of whiskey and pill bottles, a mirror with a razor blade, cut up pieces of a drinking straw – the bendy kind -  and little specks of white covering everything;  you are not sure if it is the white of ash or of cocaine.  You are pretty sure, however, that it is not ash from her cigarettes.  

Another Untitled Piece

Your sorrow is too much to bear.  You look around the apartment, devoid of feeling.  You stare at rich colors of the paintings hanging on otherwise pale walls, finger the knick-knacks on the mantel of the fireplace.  You listen, wait, hoping for the thing that will make this right.  It does not come.  Of course it does not.

Only days before, you were out watering your garden, meticulously kept by you and only you, and envied by mother and all of the ladies she gathers with for brunch and whom she calls friends.  Your garden has been featured in numerous magazines, hailed as a “masterpiece of vegetative splendor.”  Your mother is jealous and no longer comes to see you.  This is how you would have it. 

Your thoughts turn back to him.  You are certain you loved him, at one point, at one critical juncture in your life.  Was it the point at which you realized you were pregnant for the first time?  For surely there could be no purer love than the love a man gives upon the birth of this, his first child.  Was it the time he brought home a bouquet of freshly picked flowers, yellows and pinks and oranges, all right out of Mrs. Pingree’s flower garden?  For surely no man in his right mind would risk being shot at while pilfering from the old lady’s precious beds. 

And there.  You have said it.  No man in his right mind.  Of course he wasn’t.  Couldn’t you see that?  Maybe you couldn’t.  Maybe it was you too blind to see the truth, that this one was incapable of love.  Or so you thought.

You walk to the kitchen, the counters are bare.  In the sink are dishes from the breakfast you ate by yourself and in the bathroom, towels still wet from the shower you took just fifteen minutes ago.  They hang over the shower curtain, pink and blue towels with little angels embroidered onto them, all in gold with silver lining.  And your bed, unmade, untouched, really, for you haven’t slept in two nights.  At least not here.

Untitled #1

He takes big swallows of hot coffee that she has made for him, opens his throat wide, his knobby Adam’s Apple barely moving.  The hot liquid does not seem to bother him so much, nor the fact that he drools as much of the liquid onto the floorboards as makes it down his throat.  The cut to his mouth has caused this, and although she has helped to suppress the bleeding, he still has not much use out of the mouth’s left corner. 

It is night - a great, big dark night with a piss-yellow moon hanging in the sky and not much in the way of stars that he can see.  He is on a porch that is not his, but that of the woman sitting next to him, a woman he met two days ago and has not said more than fifteen words to since she let him stay with her upon seeing his sad and broken face.  

And he knows he should probably say more to her, make her feel that he appreciates her generosity and kindness for making him a couple of meals and letting him use her shower, although he has not taken her up on that just yet.  He is not much for talking, though, and so he just sits with her and lets the night wash over them.  

It has been a couple of days and the really sad thing, the most horrible thing about this all, is that he really wishes he could go back and do things over.  Not that it would do any good.  Wishing to do things over requires that people wish to do things differently and he just could not see that happening.  She would still piss him off and he would still feel like killing her, and that was where any difference would end.  Right there with the whole killing part and he tells himself that he would not do it this time, would not plunge the knife into her heart and watch her sink to the ground and watch her look up at him with pleading eyes for the first time ever, and he tells himself that he would not be thinking it is a little too late for that honey.  That’s all I ever wanted from you was to look at me with eyes that were pleading - soft, sensitive eyes that do not lie and cheat and steal a man’s soul from the depths of his being.  No, things would be different were he given the chance to do it all over again.  He just didn’t know how and he was smart enough to know that this second chance would not come to pass.  There just are no second chances for men like him.

He looks at the woman sitting next to him and wonders what her name is, if she has any children or a drunk-ass husband who would come home any day now and stagger past them sitting on the front porch together and not so much as look at the two of them, and he would smell like beer and puke and sex and she would watch him stumble up the steps and normally go after him and scream at him about where he had been and all the time knowing that he would lie to her, but she would do it anyway.  

Except that this time would be different.  This time, she was sitting on the font porch with another man, and she didn’t know his name and he hadn’t asked her to sleep with him yet but she would if he did ask, just as soon as that drunkard husband fell flat-faced asleep on the kitchen floor. 

He wonders all of this as they sit here together.

Yet nobody comes home.  Not this night, or the next morning either.  They sit side-by-side in old wicker rocking chairs that creak like it is cicada season and stare out at the day growing new and don’t say a word to one another.  At one point he wants to reach out and grab her hand and see what she would do and what it would feel like but he doesn’t know her name yet and even men like him know to abide by certain rules of dating and just being with women in general. 

Eventually they go to the kitchen and rinse their mugs out with slow running water from a kitchen sink still full from breakfast lunch and dinner things from the last two days.  It is light out, morning now, and the sun is hazy and shaded and the day looks like it will never come to full light.  

He looks at her and wonders will she ask him to her bed or should he just rent some space on the living room floor, cold as it is on the bare floorboards and dirty too with filth plenty of days old he is sure.  He looks at her and wants to tell her how he is sorry for having to put her into this mess and realizing as well that it is not his fault entirely, as she is the one who chose to let him stay.  No matter.  She’s full grown, after all.  A woman can make up her own mind about a man.

He wonders does she have a phone, looks around the dingy kitchen where they stand, and realizes he hasn’t heard the annoying trill in the two days, now three, since they have lived together if you could even call this living.  He doesn’t ask her, only looks around some, and thinks that this type of woman probably has no use for a phone anyway if even she has electricity at all.  He trods heavily over to a sofa with a pattern of faded roses and doesn’t look back at her in the kitchen but knows she is there watching him, wondering about him.  He falls to the sofa in a dead heap.  Dust rises angrily and then settles back into crevices and onto surfaces, carefully covering everything, a soft blanket of dead skin and fragments of earth.

He dreams of the woman that night, alone in her bed, only it is not her.  And she is not, he can see as he creeps silently closer, alone.

When he wakes it is night again and he doesn’t know how long he has slept and he doesn’t know where the woman is.  He wonders what the townsfolk are doing, wonders if the discovery has been made yet, why no one has been to find him.  How long would it take?  Surely, it was only a matter of time.