Part 6
Chapter 11
Mom takes me on a trek across the area that I'm sure I've never taken before. For all of my grandparents' faults and flaws, they didn't let me go running around this area by myself. I was always supposed to stay within their eyesight, but apparently Mom didn't have the same restrictions, or maybe the restrictions just went away as she got older.
She leads me to an area surrounded by medium-sized trees that look like they couldn't figure out how it is they wanted to grow. Branches are sticking out in all directions and they're leaning in odd directions as if they just all spontaneously agreed to defy the convention of growing uniformly. They're tangled together and Mom walks right into the tangled mess.
My objections to following her die before they are even fully formed. I don't see a point in objecting and turning around now. We've already been walking for almost an hour and chances are that this is the place that Mom was so determined to get to today.
I slip through the hanging branches and once my eyes can focus past the mess of tree limbs, I see my mother sitting on a large rock conveniently existing in the small haven that is created by the trees that surround it. The sun's rays still penetrate the space, warming it up and making it a little less scary than it looks upon entering it.
"I've never been here before," I test the sturdiness of one of the lower hanging tree branches before I lift myself up and take a seat on it. "I was never brave enough to venture out this far."
Mom picks up a small branch and starts making figures in the dirt. "This is where I found out I was pregnant with you."
Her admission almost has me falling off of the tree limb. I was expecting her to tell me she hung out here when she was a girl, and that this was her special place. "How?" I stutter out the question as I regain my balance.
"Home pregnancy tests existed back then, Mel. It wasn't the Stone Age."
Her sarcasm is not entirely welcomed. "Okay, sorry if that was a stupid question." I haven't eaten, haven't slept that long and have just taken a long hike up into some place where I don't exactly know where I am anymore. I think if I come across a little short-tempered, then my mother should understand that.
Mom rubs at her face. "It wasn't a stupid question, Mel. I'm sorry."
"Okay," I pick at the bark on the tree.
She goes back to her drawing in the dirt. "I took the test out here because I was terrified that my mother would catch me."
There's a little voice nagging at me in the back of my head and telling me that this moment is a little more important than I'm allowing it to be. Mom has taken me here for a reason. This story she's telling me is important.
"So, this is the place where I first learned that I was pregnant with you."
"That must have been tough." That's the best thing I can come up with to say? I suck.
Mom nods but doesn't look up at me. "I hid the pregnancy for three months."
I break a piece of bark apart in my hands and let out a little screech when a bug pops out and starts running up my arm. Mom looks up at me with an eyebrow raised and I give her a helpless shrug. "Sorry," I mutter. "There was a bug."
This time it's my turn to look away from her and down at the ground below me. I swing my feet back and forth a little wondering if it's my turn to start telling stories or if there's some particular question I need to ask. Honestly, and I'm not too happy about this, but I never really thought of Mom as ever actually being pregnant with me.
In my head, I've always just seen Mom getting raped and then I was born. I've not really taken time out to think of what happened in that in-between time. "So how did your parents find out about me?" I'm almost tempted to ask her how they found out about 'the fetus,' but we're not just talking about any run of the mill 'fetus'. We're talking about a living thing that Mom had inside of her that became me. We're talking about my life as it existed inside of her and how it changed things for her.
My brain has just accepted the importance of this conversation. It gets it now. I get it now. This place I'm in right now is where my mother made a decision about me. This is the place where she decided to be my mother.
"You gave me terrible morning sickness and eventually my mother figured out that I couldn't have the flu for two months."
See? I was trouble early on. "So why didn't you ever, y'know? I mean, yeah."
Mom blinks a couple of times then resettles herself on the rock. "Are you asking me why I never got an abortion?"
Well, I was trying to avoid the 'A' word altogether, but since she brought it up. "Yeah. Wouldn't it have been easier?"
"Probably yes, it would have been easier." At least she's being honest with me. "But I didn't want it to be true, Mel. In order for me to even consider that, I'd first have to realize that the pregnancy was real: that you were real."
So did she think that pregnancy magically went away? I may have never been pregnant, but I know it just doesn't appear and disappear like an allergic reaction.
"When my mother found out I was pregnant, it all became real all too fast," she whispers and I have to strain to hear her. I'd move closer to her, but I think the distance from each other is the only thing that's actually letting us have this conversation right now. "Suddenly, I really had been raped, and I really was carrying his child."
Yeah, my grandmother was good at ruining the mood for just about anything. Maybe in this case, the mood needed to be ruined; the denial needed to be ended. Pregnancy isn't the type of thing that should really be ignored. It contains multiple levels of seriousness that I don't even fully comprehend.
"She took away my choice, Mel."
"I thought she'd be signing you up for the…to do it."
Mom throws her stick off into the outskirts of our space. "She told me my pregnancy was my punishment for being a whore." That does sound like something she would say. She wasn't the sensitive type. "She said, I'd look at my child every day knowing that it was my stain on the earth, that I couldn't take away. She taunted me with the idea of…you up until you were born."
"Yeah," I clear my throat and force the words to leave my mouth, "she was a real bitch." That's an understatement since she obviously decided she was going to taint my life before I was even born.
"But she was wrong, Mel." Mom gets up and eventually decides to eliminate the space that separates us. "When you were born, I did see Robert," I'm surprised she can even say his name. I still don't want to say his name and I've actually bothered to have more than a few conversations with him. "I saw him raping me." She's just throwing out all kinds of powerful words today, isn't she? "But I never saw you as a stain."
She stands directly in front of me and places both of her hands on my knees, which are at her waist level. "You never have been a stain, and you never will be. Not to me, never to me. Laura was wrong, because when I first looked at you after you were born, the first thing I saw in you was a brown-eyed little girl who took hold of my finger and refused to let go. I saw strength in you, Mel-a strength I thought I would never have myself."
One of my hands goes on top of hers. "You had to have that strength, Mom, because if you didn't, then where did I get it from?" My grandparents didn't give it to me. Robert couldn't have given it to me; he's just not capable of that sort of thing.
Mom shakes her head. "I don't know."
My question was mostly rhetorical, so I don't know how to respond to her answer. It kind of makes me wonder if she's always had this low self-esteem and I just failed to notice, but how would I not notice a thing like that? We lived in the same house for a while. We've spent a lot of time together. At one point, I would have had to notice something like this.
Then again, this could be that point in which I recognize it. This is that point in which I recognize it. It sucks how this stuff works out for me.
I squeeze her hand. "I got it from you. You may not have seen it in yourself then, and I have no idea how you can't see it in yourself now, but you had it. You have it, and I know you do because it's part of what has kept me alive." Exactly when did I become a cheerleader?
Mom moves her hand away from mine. "It doesn't feel like it's there anymore."
"What do you mean?" I jump down from the branch and almost knock Mom over in the process. "You take me here, to this very private place. You share this with me and then you say you don't feel the strength anymore?" Maybe I should calm down a little, but damn she just can't be serious.
I mean, I haven't even shared one solitary memory with her since we've arrived here. I've been really silent and the silence didn't come about by accident. I don't want to talk about anything that happened here. I'm not sure if I could handle it, but Mom's talking. She's found the strength. She has the strength.
"Telling you about this is easier than everything else," she explains as she reshaps the distance between us.
Everything else? "What is everything else?"
"Living with it. Waking up to it every day!" She yells at me. "I don't know if I can do it anymore."
Living with it is the hard part. "Then why are you holding onto this?" I motion around me trying to point out everything around me that is part of her past.
My motions stop when her eyes capture mine. "Why are you?"
"I'm not," my voice falters a little. "I let this go."
Mom snorts in what seems like disgust. "Don't start lying now, Melinda."
Who's lying? "I did."
"Letting go and not talking about it aren't the same thing." She challenges me. "You know that."
"What do you want me to say?!" I yell at her. "What is there to say?"
"Why does that picture mean so much to you?" She doesn't yell, not like I am. She simply looks right at me and asks as if she already knows answering her will break me.
I clench my jaw shut tightly. My breath is coming heavily and I feel anger building inside of me that I haven't felt building in a long time. I try closing my eyes, but when I do I see flashes of a time I have tried to bury and burn.
"Fuck!" I scream out at the sky above me. I turn to one of the trees and take a kick at it and am reminded that my leg is not stronger than a tree trunk. The impact jars my knee and I stumble to the ground.
Mom comes up behind me then takes a seat on the ground next to me. "Why does it mean so much to you?" She asks me again.
The palms of my hands rub at my eyes, pressing hard into them. The pain distracts me from my forming tears. "They took everything from me." I finally answer her. "They always took everything."
She grabs at my wrists and tries to force me to lower my hands. I resist her at first, but eventually give in and let her force me into facing her. "Tell me," she begs me. "I want to know."
"They took you away from me." I try to wipe at my tears but her grip is still firm on my wrists. "They erased everything and told me that I made you go away because I was so bad. They said you couldn't stand having a little sister that was so ugly and stupid. I thought if I could bring you back then I could make them happy, but then I just wanted you to take me away."
I can remember my grandmother sitting me down and telling me that I had a sister once. It was the first time she told me this Sara person ever existed. She told me that 'Sara' left because she didn't want her family anymore. She never said anything about kicking Mom out. Her story was that my sister left because she couldn't stand the idea of me existing. She told me that Sara would always hate me and then told me that she would never leave me. My grandmother told me that said she would be the only one in the world to love me like I deserved, and then told me to get the rooms upstairs ready for the guests.
I was four at the time.
"That picture is the only proof I have that you didn't hate me." Laura Sidle tried so hard to make it so that my mother and I would hate each other. She tried so hard to poison us, and for a long time she was successful.
When I saw my mother for the first time after my grandparents died, a part of me did hate her. I can only wonder if Mom had a part of her that hated me too. I don't want to ask her because I don't want to know the answer. I don't want to know if Laura was as successful with her as she was with me.
Mom releases my wrists and maneuvers herself so that she's sitting next to me. "I took you here after you were born." She places a hand on my thigh. "So, you have been here before."
There's so much stuff that I want to remember from the short time I got to spend with my mother before she left. I want to have all the memories that she has so that they can ward off all the ones that Laura handed off to me. They seem so much better than what Laura planted inside of me.
"Why?"
"I wanted you to know this place." Her hand starts rubbing at my recently injured knee. "This was the only thing I could give you that didn't come from my mother first, but she managed to take it away anyway."
Of all the things that my grandparents did, I don't think they moved us out of the B&B just to spite Mom. I'm not going to go as far as to say that spiting Mom didn't have anything to do with it-I don't give them that much credit-but moving had a lot to do with the amount of work they didn't want to do to keep up with their thriving business.
A part of me has always thought that they decided to give up their business because they didn't want to be put under a microscope, and success would do that to them. They didn't want people to know what went on behind their closed doors. They needed a quiet life to torture me in and not an active one.
I take a quick look around me then focus back on my mother sitting next to me. "But you're giving it back to me, right?"
Mom squeezes my knee and I jump a little. Hopefully, I'll be able to make the hike back to civilization. "Let me look at your knee." She tells me and starts pushing up my pant leg.
"Hey, wait." I stop her movements by grabbing onto her hands. "You have to answer my question first."
Her eyes move away from my knee and capture mine. "It's our place now, Mel."
"Okay." I nod and let go of her hands. "Then fix me up, Doc."
She smiles at me then finishes pulling up my pant leg. A cold hand envelopes my kneecap and I can feel her cautiously testing it. "Does that hurt?" she asks as I suck in a good bit of air into my lungs.
I look down at my knee and can see that it's clearly swollen. "Doesn't hurt too much." I've done things to my body that have hurt worse. "I might need to get an x-ray though." I just want to make double sure that I didn't break anything, because now that my anger and adrenaline are ebbing the reality of me kicking a tree is settling in, and in a battle like that, I'm pretty sure that the tree wins every time.
"Are you serious?" She removes her hand from my knee.
"I would like not to be."
"Okay." Mom blows out a long breath then puts my arm across her shoulders and helps me stand up. I put a little weight on my leg and am happy that it doesn't hurt too much.
Mom leads us out of the thick cover of the trees and back onto the dirt path that led us here. I lean on her for as much support as she can offer. "I do remember coming up this path once." This is the first memory I'm going to share with her about this place. Since she's shared so much with me, it's only fair I pick up my end of things. "It was after we had already moved out."
"What were you doing?"
I smile at her and can't hold in the small chuckle that escapes me. "Discovering that I was gay."
Mom stops walking. "What?"
This is actually one of the better memories that I'm sharing with her. It's about time I shared something with her that doesn't include torture and unhappiness. "I went hiking with a couple of friends. I separated from the group with a friend and as we were wandering around, she kissed me."
"What did you do?"
"Well," I laugh, "first I kissed her back and then I freaked out and ran away." Mom laughs with me. "I wouldn't call it one of my smoother romantic moments."
"How old were you?"
"I was twelve."
We start walking again. "So, you figured out you were gay at twelve?"
"Not so much. I just figured out that it didn't completely suck when my friend kissed me." Mom carefully helps me maneuver down a small incline. "Figuring out the whole gay thing didn't come until about a year later."
Briefly, I wish we had taken some kind of golf cart up the path so that I wouldn't have to do the entire walk back. "It seems like it was easier for you," Mom's voice interrupts my wishing.
"How'd it happen for you?"
"I accepted it after you were born."
"Yeah," I smile. "I can see how that would make you gay."
Mom doesn't laugh at my comment so I keep my mouth shut. "I accepted a lot of things about my life after you were born, Mel."
"I've been told having kids changes things."
"A lot did change for me."
This is actually kind of depressing, because I know that my birth wasn't exactly the happy, celebrated time that other births have been known to be. My birth was hard on my mother, largely in part because of the circumstances of my conception and my grandparents' negative attitude. Just thinking about all that makes me a little happy that I don't remember anything from when I was born. There was a lot of stuff going on that I just kind of ended up sleeping through, since I was a baby and all.
"The things that changed, Mel, they needed to."
"I'll take your word for it." I can't argue with her about this since I really wasn't aware of things that were going on at the time.
"I regret a lot that happened, but I don't regret having you."
"Yeah," I respond through a sigh. "I wish things could have been a little different, but I don't regret having you either." Sure, I didn't give birth to her-the idea of it just seems weird to me-but there was a point where we chose to keep each other. I'm not quite sure when it happened exactly; I just know that it did. We kind of just chose to accept each other and our relationship.
"Okay." I can tell there's more she wants to say, but am thankful that she doesn't say it. If I hadn't decided to go to battle with a tree, then maybe I could have kept this whole caring and sharing thing going on a little longer, but I did decide to stupidly attack a tree. So, I just don't have the energy to take this conversation any further.
When we get to the hospital and the doctors have me pumped with painkillers, then perhaps we can continue this conversation. Mom will probably be able to get more out of me than she can in my current state. I'll tell her everything and then conveniently forget that I said anything at all.
"You're going to call Nikki and Catherine and tell them what you did to yourself." Mom says as we carefully go down another sharp incline.
"I'm injured," I reply. "You should do it."
"You realize we haven't even been alone for a full day and already you're going to the hospital."
I see how my knee injury might not instill the level of confidence from Catherine and Nikki that we were originally going for. "Can't we just tell them what happened when they come out here?" That way we can downplay this as not a big deal and say that it sort of happened and isn't serious.
"Who said they're coming out here?"
I just assumed that everyone was jumping in a car to come to our rescue. "They're not?" What kind of conversation did Mom have with Catherine? I didn't think a pack of wild wolves would keep Catherine away from us at this point.
"No. They are. I was just wondering who told you." Mom grins up at me and I'm not so sure I'm enjoying her attempt at being humorous.
"Funny," I reply sarcastically. "So that means you're calling Catherine about my knee right?"
Mom shakes her head. "No."
Well, then we go with my plan and wait until everyone is here to share the news. I don't want to cause unnecessary worry, and I don't quite want to admit that I attacked a tree either. I can see a lecture coming from Catherine about that, and a joke about my intelligence coming from Lindsey.
I stop walking for just a moment when I see that we're actually within view of the Bed and Breakfast we came from, and grab onto Mom. "Thanks for taking me out there." I motion my head in the direction we've just come from. "I understand how important that was." I'm even beginning to understand why Mom thinks it's so important we continue to stay at the small B&B too.
"You deserve to know what happened. I at least owe you that."
"No," I shake my head and grab onto Mom's hand. "You don't owe me anything, not really. Everything that needed to be settled between us already has been, so all this is just extras."
"Really?"
I smile at her. "Of course," I start walking again and since Mom's acting as my crutch she starts walking with me. "Now, if you make me call Catherine, then the scales are completely uneven again."
"You're calling her."
"Fine." We're still even though. That's not going to change. I don't see how it could change. We worked hard for it, and maybe it's time I start doing a better job of showing Mom that I don't hold the past against her anymore. It probably would be a good idea that I try a little harder in understanding the parts of her that I've glazed over the past couple of years.
Chapter 12
The fact that Mom and I stopped to get food before we went to the hospital should speak volumes about the severity of my injury. My knee did hurt, but my hunger was hurting me more, and since I could still walk, I figured that my hunger was more important. I talked Mom into agreeing with me by telling her that I hadn't taken my pills yet and needed food to do so. I even suggested we stop at a nice little restaurant instead of getting fast food, the options being greater for us vegetarians.
She went along with me, but I'm sure that's only because she was probably pretty hungry herself and my knee really didn't look too bad. The only reason we probably are even going to the hospital is because it's the responsible thing to do. So, when this story gets told to Catherine, she won't be able to accuse us of not taking responsible action. She can just focus on yelling about knowing that something bad was going to happen.
Mom still said that I should be the one to call Catherine and let her know all that was going on, but I did the independent thinking thing and decided that Nikki should be my first phone call. When she picks up the phone, the first thing she says to me is, "I'm driving a car while your stepsister and stepmother yell at each other about appropriate behavior with boys. So I love you and your family, but next time you run away, I'm taking a plane to come get you."
"So you finally left?"
"Catherine insisted. She said she felt like something was wrong."
Uh-oh. "Nothing's wrong." Unfortunately my voice squeaks a little, and I can't help but take a peek down at my knee.
"What are you and Sara doing now?" She must have noticed the squeak. She's just not outright asking me if something is wrong; probably because she doesn't want to freak Catherine out even more.
"We're eating."
"And then what are you doing?"
I groan into the phone knowing that I can't get away with not telling her. She's in a car with Catherine and Lindsey doing a ten hour drive just because she loves me. Lying at this point seems pretty pointless. "We're going to the hospital because I kicked a tree."
"Okay." She pauses for a moment and I can just imagine her taking a look over at Catherine and deciding whether or not she wants to inform my already highly agitated stepmother that I need to go to the hospital for x-rays. "We'll see you when we get there." She's not telling, and I'm sure that somehow I'm going to be blamed for that later.
"I'm sure I'm fine. I just want to make sure all the parts are in the right place, do the responsible thing and all." I understand why she's not telling; there's no point in it really. All it might accomplish is us finding out if Catherine can turn up her worry notch just a little more. She already got them in the car, probably earlier than expected, because she felt like something was wrong.
We're going to have to discuss Catherine's sixth sense later. I'm not entirely comfortable with not being able to hide things because someone else has a 'feeling' about what it is I might have done or am doing.
"Okay. We'll be there later tonight." She hangs up without giving me a chance to say goodbye and I think it's fair to say that she's starting to feel the stress that Sara and I have caused as well. I wish there was some way that I didn't have to involve Nikki in any of this.
Wasn't it just yesterday that I talked to her about us finally focusing on her? Didn't I make promises about helping her through her problems and taking on responsibility?
"What's wrong?" Mom returns from the bathroom and slides back into her seat across from me.
"I feel like a piece of shit." I can't even give Nikki a day of offering her my attention for once. My mother crashes into our apartment and then everything ends up being about me and my family again and our conjoined problems.
"Is your knee hurting you?" Mom looks down at my legs.
I have to go to the hospital and dump that on Nikki to deal with too, while she's sitting in the car with Catherine and Lindsey going at each other again for something that is ultimately pretty trivial. "No," I mumble as I drop my head to the table. Luckily, the waiter cleared our plates from the table a few moments ago.
"You called Catherine?"
Great, now I also have to admit that I didn't call Catherine and that I didn't even talk to her at all. "I called Nikki and told her what was going on," I mumble into the table. "She didn't tell Catherine because they're on their way here now because Catherine got a 'bad feeling'."
"I didn't think she could wait two days." Mom doesn't sound particularly happy about the news, but that's not surprising. What is surprising is that she understood what I mumbled into the table.
I lift my head and brush my hair from my face. When my eyes focus in on Mom, I see her sitting back in her chair with her arms crossed in front of her and her mouth is all twisted up with her unhappiness. The urge to remind her that this conversation isn't supposed to be about the agreement she made with Catherine but about me and Nikki overwhelms me, but my brain recognizes its selfishness and I remain silent.
A part of me wants to defend Catherine's actions. It's easy to jump to her defense since her worry is probably a driving force for her, but at the same time, I don't know what Catherine and Mom talked about while I was sleeping. I don't know what kind of deal they struck up that smoothed out all their rough edges. So, defending Catherine would mean that I support her possibly breaking agreements.
I'd rather not sit here with Mom and get angry about the current situation either. I'm okay with just sort of feeling like a piece of shit right now. There's no need for me to add onto that.
"Nikki grew up not that far from the bay." It's a change of subject, and a selfish one at that, but I can't defend Catherine and I can't defend my mother's anger; I should at least take a shot at defending Nikki. "Her father was some hotshot real estate guy and her mom was an accountant, I think."
Mom's looking at me like she wants to tell me to shut up. I'm not going to though. My silence won't do anything for either of us.
"She grew up in a big house with lots of things that were probably supposed to make up for the sexual abuse her father put her through and that her mother dutifully ignored." Mom's arms uncross and she sets them on the table. "Nikki got on the drugs so that she could block the stuff out that happened to her, but she couldn't bring herself to leave because she knew if she did, then her father would go after her younger sister."
"I um," Mom clears her throat. "I didn't know Nikki had a younger sister."
I nod. "Her sister ran away from home when Nikki was eighteen. She hasn't heard from her since."
"Why didn't either of you say something?" Mom reaches out and cups her hand around my own. "Catherine and I could have done something."
"What's there to say?" I pull my hand away. "A teenage girl ran away from home and faded away as if she had never existed in the first place."
"But…"
"No," I forcefully interrupt her. "Nikki's parents looked for her. They've filed their police report and Abigail made the Missing Persons lists. Nikki crawled through most of California trying to track her down. I even tried helping out once, but sometimes people just don't get found, Mom."
"I'm sorry," Mom places her hands in her lap.
"We ran away last night. We might have let Catherine know what was going on, but we still ran away. I still left without telling Nikki goodbye first. So, forgive me for not wanting to pay a whole lot of attention to you needing to be angry at Catherine right now, because I feel like a piece of shit for doing something to Nikki, and continuing to do things to Nikki, that I'm really wishing I could take back right about now."
"Mel." Mom reaches out for me again, but I'm intent on not gaining any physical contact.
"I fucked up," I whisper then stand up. "Are we still going to the hospital?"
Mom looks up at me then gets up slowly. "I'll meet you outside."
I nod then leave Mom to pay the bill. I sit down on one of the benches in front of the restaurant. Hopefully, Mom understands that I wasn't trying to make that little thing inside about me. I just want her to think about something besides her and Catherine a little. Nikki is going through this too, and yeah okay, that's probably mostly my fault, but at least Mom should recognize that what we're doing extends beyond us.
A few minutes later, Mom exits the restaurant and comes to sit down next to me. She tries to put her arm around my waist, but I push away from her. She follows my movement and somehow I end up in her grasp, despite my trying not to.
"Don't punish yourself," she tells me. "Nikki's not going to."
"Maybe that's why I need to do it myself." Now that she's got her arm wrapped around me, I don't feel the need to fight it anymore.
"She wouldn't want that either."
I lean further into her. "So is this genetic?"
"What?" She really doesn't know what I'm asking.
"The need to punish yourself," my hand grabs onto her waist so that she can't pull away from me. "Is it genetic?"
Mom's body tenses for a moment then relaxes again. "Seems like it."
"Is that why we really came here, to just punish ourselves?" Maybe in some twisted way, some part of me had that hidden agenda. It just wanted to twist that little dagger of pain that sits inside of me in further just to remind me that it still exists.
Mom shakes her head. "I don't think so."
The thought of the picture Mom gave me invades my memory. She looked younger in the picture, but not too much so. I was a small baby; I always thought I would have been bigger considering how tall I am now.
"Melinda Sidle?" I hear a voice call out to me and then quickly look around trying to spot the body that belongs to the voice. My eyes land on a person I thought I would never see again in my lifetime. I guess that's another downside of coming back here; people I used to know are still here.
"Avery," I stand up to greet him, being extra careful to not show the pain my knee causes me. "It's been a while."
"I thought you'd been killed." He steps up in front of me and play-punches me on the shoulder.
Mom stands up and takes her place next to me. Avery turns his attention to her and runs his eyes down her body. Once he's finished, I smack him on the head. "Show some manners."
He laughs as he rubs at his head. "You haven't changed," he tells me with so much confidence that I look down at my body to make sure that he isn't right. I have to remind myself that he doesn't really know me and that he never really did know me.
"What's the point in that?" There's no need to share with him that I have actually changed.
He nods a couple of times then stuffs his hands deep into his front pockets. "Did you get a chance to hear about what happened to Bri?"
I left here and never thought of looking back. I didn't care about who I left behind, didn't even think about Nikki. Sara came and picked me up with Catherine at her side, and I went away from everything, not concerned with who or what might be affected by my sudden disappearance. I thought I'd just leave everything here and nothing would be able to walk out with me.
"I haven't been around, Av." There's no reason to add that I haven't wanted to be around, and that I felt no reason to be around. I wouldn't want to imply that I didn't care about the people I left behind. Some part of me must care. I may not be able to find that part now, but it has to exist. It'd make me a better person, probably, if it did exist.
Avery gives a small nod as he drops his gaze to the ground. "That's why so many of us thought you were just dead."
"So, Bri?" He doesn't really need to tell me what happened to her. I can already guess. "She died, right?"
Mom puts a hand on my back and I do my best to not jump at the contact. Standing here, with Avery in front of me acting like his normal anxious self, talking about how some people we know have fallen away to that mist of death that we all seemed to fear, yet seemed to be actively seeking, makes me feel like the last few years haven't happened to me at all.
The fact that Mom is standing next to me now, reminds me that the years have happened, but a look at Avery reminds me that the years just didn't happen to me. They happened to him too. I can see it in the gaunt look in his eyes and the lack of fat on his bones. I can see the extra years of torture in his dark brown eyes, and suddenly I really don't want to be here anymore.
When Nikki gets here, all I want to do is jump in the car with her and drive away from this place. We can leave Catherine, Mom and Lindsey to deal with whatever it is left to be dealt with. She and I can drive to someplace else where there aren't any memories that can tear us both down.
Avery looks up at me and removes one of his hands from his pockets. It's balled in a fist and in that I can see the pain that he doesn't want to express to me. "She overdosed."
He doesn't need to add that he's the one that gave her her last and final high. I remember that he always gave his cousin the drugs because he didn't always trust her to do it right on her own. It's messed up logic, I know, but it's logic that I learned to understand. "Shit, man. That sucks."
"You think you can tell Nikki about it?" He asks me. "I haven't been able to find out what happened to her."
"She's with me, Av." I tell him, hoping that he understands that means that Nikki is safe. She's not fallen back into the world that he can't get out of even though it's killed a member of his family. "I'll let her know."
He nods a couple of times, then starts looking around frantically like he has someplace important to be. I understand that he just wants to get away from me. "Are you staying someplace?" I ask, more concerned about him now than I ever was before.
Part of me blamed him for Nikki's addiction. Well, that's not exactly true. A lot of me blamed him for Nikki's continued addiction. He supplied Nikki with the heroine she put in her veins, and more times than I can count, I imagined putting a gun to his head. The fact he was just as messed up as Nikki didn't often register in my brain. Nor did the fact that he and Nikki grew up together register. I pretended that Nikki and he weren't best friends and pretended that her occasional sexual relationship with Bri simply didn't exist.
Perhaps that was easier for me. Maybe I needed to blame everyone else for what she did to herself so that I could make it easier on me as I tried to help her.
"My parents let me move back in," he tells me as he takes a quick look at Mom. "Doesn't seem like you're out on the streets, either."
My eyes, for the first time since Avery approached us, meet my mother's. She's been quiet, although I really wouldn't know what she would say in front of Avery. He's not offering to sell me drugs and I'm not offering to buy them. All we have between us is a lot of history that I haven't felt the need to talk about with her, and I can't guarantee that I'll feel the need to talk about it with her now.
"I've always been resourceful, Avery. You understand that." I managed to help Nikki off the drugs and managed to keep her alive. I had to be a lot more than resourceful to accomplish that. I'm surprised that we're both alive now to tell the tale of it.
Both of his hands are pushed down into his pockets again. He's starting to shake a little and it's easy for me to tell that he's not gotten a fix in a while. Looking at him, like this after all these years, still on the drugs and still as messed up as he ever was before, it kind of makes me want to hit him. I want to beat this person out of him, and beat him some more for leaving telling Nikki about Bri to me. I want to beat him for even being here while I am and for making me remember something I thought I could just forget.
"Y-you," he stammers, "got some money?"
If I had never met an addict, and if I had never experienced this before, maybe I'd be surprised by his question. I do know him, though. I know what his addiction can make him want to do and ask things that perhaps the 'normal' Avery that I've never gotten the chance to meet would never think of asking or doing. Nikki swears to me that at one time he was a great kid. She swears that there's a decent human being under the filth I've been exposed to.
I haven't seen the person she has, but I don't share that with her. I just tell her that there probably is a decent guy underneath the addict that I know, and I say that hopefully one day I will see it. She sometimes reminds me that she was a lot like Avery, and I remind her that I haven't forgotten that either.
"Have I ever given you money, Av?"
He chuckles as he takes a step away from me. His hands come out of his pockets and there's a knife in his right hand. "You were always kind of a bitch, Mel."
Mom tries to move in front of me, but I don't let her. "Are you going to rob me, Av?" Despite the real fear I'm feeling right now, I let a smile creep out of me. "Is that really how you want to do this?"
Again Mom tries to move in front of me and again I stop her. If she were to try and take over right now, I'm pretty sure Avery would stab her. I've seen him do it before, so I don't think he's not capable of it.
"Is this the story you want me to tell Nikki?" He doesn't like me. I think he sort of resents me for not trying to help him and for taking Nikki away. All I can hope for now is that he still does care for Nikki. I wouldn't be putting down bets any time soon, though.
He puts his knife back in his pocket. "Just give me some money, Mel."
Mom's hand goes around my arm, and she's squeezing the hell out of it. I'm not sure what it is she wants me to do. I'm not even sure what it is I should do. I try to think of what Nikki would want me to do. I'd like to do something she'd do for Avery. So, I reach into my front pocket and pull out my wallet. Mom's grip tightens even more on my arm, but I ignore her.
All I have on me is forty dollars. I hand it all over to Avery. "Nikki wouldn't want to see you like this, Avery." But for some reason, she'd sympathize with the pain he was going through. I put my wallet back in my pocket. "I don't care if I ever see you again, Av, but if I do and you pull a knife on me again, I'll kill you."
He laughs as he stuffs the money I've given him into his pocket with the knife. "You haven't changed." He backs away from me. "Tell Nikki I miss her."
As he runs away from us, I turn my attention to Mom. She doesn't look entirely happy right now, but she didn't look entirely happy before either. "You gonna yell at me?" I ask, hoping that she'll just accept what's happened.
"I'm sorry about your friend."
I shake my head. "Bri wasn't my friend." I didn't like Bri anymore than I liked Avery. I'm sure that some part of me is saddened by the news of her death, just not the part of me that is awake and conscious right now.
The death-grip Mom has on my arm goes away. "Are you still going to the hospital?"
"What?" I'm confused. Shouldn't she be asking all kinds of questions and lecturing me about giving money away to support someone else's drug habit? Shouldn't things be happening a little differently?
"You still need to get your knee checked."
"Sure," I draw out the word unsure if it's the correct one to use now.
Mom nods then turns in the direction of my parked car. She starts walking away from me, and I can't find the strength to hobble on behind her. She must realize that I'm not keeping up, because she turns back to me with this look on her face that lets me know, finally, that she's not completely okay with what has just happened. "Do you need some help?" she asks.
I shake my head and do my best to start walking as normally as I can. When I get to her, I reach out and put my arm around her shoulders. I don't say anything to her; I don't think I really need to say anything right now. We make it to my car and then sit in silence the entire way to the hospital.
Continued...