I apologize beforehand. What happened next, I don’t remember clearly. I remember bits and pieces of the whole thing, so this is mixture of what Faye and my brother told me happened, mixed with the flashes in my head.
“Riley? Come on, get up, we have to take you to the hospital.” I heard her saying. I was too out of it to put any of what was happening together inside my head. My brain couldn’t make sense of any of the stimuli around me.
“What?” I managed to whisper.
I felt a slight push on my cheek, while the voice asked again. “Riley, get up.”
Another voice, a thicker one, spoke, it sounded far away. “Riley, come on.”
As I opened my eyes and tried to sit up, my sight became blurry and I felt the nausea building up in the pit of my stomach. I rubbed my eyes to try and clear the image a little, which seemed to work. In front of me, sitting on the floor with me, was Faye. She had one arm around me and was using her free hand to slap me softly in the cheek to try and make me snap out of it. Next to her, was the bottle of alcohol I’d drank the night before. Behind her, standing up, was Connor. He had one hand on his waist and the other one on his chin. His eyes were red. If I didn’t know any better, I’d said he’d been crying.
I sat up slowly, feeling my stomach revolting and my head about to explode.
“Come on, we got to take you to the hospital,” Faye repeated.
I didn’t understand why. I couldn’t remember much about what had happened and even though my brain doesn’t work well sober, inebriated it simply doesn’t work at all. “What?” I asked. “Why?” My voice was thick and dry; I almost couldn’t recognize it.
“You’re bleeding,” she replied.
I frowned, lowering my sight to see if what she was saying was true. Then I saw the blood in my hands, on my clothes; that’s when I remembered. The Colonel jumped. I was there. I held his lifeless body covered in blood and I couldn’t keep myself together after it, which was why I bought a bottle of what looked like vodka under the light, and drank it all.
As soon as I remembered what had happened to the Colonel, I stood up, ran into the bathroom and emptied my stomach’s whole content; what little alcohol it managed to retain. I frenetically tried to wash the blood off my hands and my face. Faye came in and saw me rubbing it off, as if it were poison.
“Baby?”
“It’s not mine,” I said. “It’s not mine.”
“Are you sure?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t provide any gesture to indicate I had heard her. I just kept rubbing the blood off my knuckles and my fingernails.
“Riley, I need you to stop and look at me, okay? We’re worried about you.”
“I’m fine.” There was no blood in my hands anymore, but I kept rubbing and rubbing. I threw water at my face and my elbows. Then I took my shirt off and started washing my stomach and chest, were the dry blood was sticking to my skin.
This calmed Faye. Taking a good look at my body, realizing I wasn’t really injured made her take a deep breath. But my behavior was still too compulsive, too erratic to let her guard down. As I scrubbed my chest trying to remove the blood that got even into my bra, she placed her hands on mine, made me turn to her and whispered. “It’s me, okay? It’s me. Everything it’s going to be okay. Let me take you home. You can take a shower and have some rest, okay?” That shook me out of it. I sighed and cooled off.
“I can’t go home. I won’t do that to mom.”
“No, I meant my home. My mom’s. I’ll ask her not to say anything, okay?”
“Faye—”
“Please, Riley, for once, don’t fight me on this. If it were for me, I’d still take you to the hospital, just in case. Please.”
I couldn’t look at her eyes and say no. She didn’t deserve this. Spend her life and energy trying to close my open wounds.
I agreed to go home with her. Connor stayed in charge of the store. He wanted to close and come with us, but it was something we couldn’t afford. Until Christmas, sells will be a little slow so closing was not really an option.
Faye got us into a cab and gave the driver Barbara Burton’s address. It was a stupid thing to do, not going home to protect mom, because she’d end up finding out. There was a reason Faye and I didn’t hold hands or got too close to each other in public. Small town, big gossip. Someone would tell her. But still, it was better for mom to hear it, than to see it. My clothes were still soaked in blood and I had the face of one of The Walking Dead zombies. As soon as we walked in, Barbara came to the door. Faye held me straight because I was too weak to keep my body balanced.
“What on earth happened?” she inquired.
“It’s not my blood,” I responded.
“Riley, darling, did you…?”
I knew what she was asking. Faye’s eyes focused on me, as if she were asking the same question. Had I gotten into a fight and hurt someone… or worse?
“I tried to see if he was alive. He wasn’t.”
This alarmed them more. “What do you mean?” Mrs. Burton asked.
“I didn’t do anything. That’s what I’m trying to say. I got his blood on me when I touched him and shook him to see if he was alive.”
“To see if who was alive?”
I lowered and shook my head. I wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Faye turned to Mrs. Burton. “I’ll get her in the tub, don’t worry.”
Barbara didn’t say anything, but she was still worried. Watching a loved one walking into your home, barely being able to stand, with their clothes covered in blood; no one is prepared for that. I cursed at myself for putting them through this.
Faye filled the tub with warm water, helped me undress and slowly got me inside. As the warm water covered my body, my muscles relaxed and my mind went blank. The pockets of blood still stuck to my body melted away. Faye rolled up her sleeves and scooped water with her hands to wash my neck, my face and my ears.
“How is that?”
“Better, thank you.”
She nodded, then stood up and picked up my clothes from the floor. “I’ll go put this in the washing machine.”
“No… don’t. I don’t want to see those clothes again.”
Her shoulders descended as she let out a big handful of air. “I’ll go throw them away then. I’ll also get you a change of clothes. I must have something yours lying around somewhere.”
After saying that, she left me alone in the silence of the bathroom. With only the drops falling from the faucet and into the water to interrupt it. I closed my eyes and immersed my head in the water to push the world away. But I couldn’t, I could still see his face, remember the conversation we had, the sound his body made when it collided with the floor. I went out for air and stared at the ceiling. Now, a day after it happened, it seemed surreal.
After twenty minutes in the tub doing nothing but try to shake the feeling of pressure in my heart off, I stood up, picked up a towel and dried myself off. While I didn’t emotionally feel better, I did feel more energetic; composed.
When I entered Faye’s old room, she was sitting there, by the window. It gave me an awful sensation in my chest. “Could you please… get away from the window?”
She turned around. “What’s wrong? It’s a beautiful day. It might not rain.”
“Just do it.”
She stood up and came to me. “I found some of your old clothes. A black hoody and some sweatpants. I also found you…uhmm, some underwear.”
I smiled at her blushing. “Why do you keep my underwear?”
“What was I going to do with it? Throw it away? Give it to charity? Just put them on.”
“Thanks.”
I thought she’d leave the bedroom so I could change, but she didn’t. She just stood still waiting for me to get dressed. I removed the towel from my body, dried off my hair and put on the clothes. She didn’t try to initiate conversation. She even appeared to be angry. Once I put the hoody on, she asked, “What happened?”
“I don’t wanna talk abou—”
“I don’t give a shit! You can’t do this! You take off, you don’t tell anyone where you are going or why, and you come back drunk and covered in someone else’s blood! Connor found you, Riley. He thought you were dead! So did I. But then I saw the empty bottle next to you and thanked God that you were drunk out of you mind and not dead!”
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“No! No more excuses, no more walls. I’m tired of this.”
Those words hurt me, so I answered. “We’ll I’m fucking tired of you and Scott but you don’t see me complaining, do you?”
“That’s everything you do! You think I have fun? You think this is so great for me! I sleep next to someone I’m learning to hate, who has complete control of my life and I cannot fucking breathe! I asked you to help me look for a place and you haven’t.”
“I’m sorry! I don’t really remember much of the things I say.”
“That’s not what I’m saying!” she yelled, then breathed in and added, in a calmer voice, “I don’t wanna fight with you. I’m just tired of this wall between us. I need you to tell me what’s going on inside your head. You haven’t been taking your pills. The only one you are taking is your aspirin. You are volatile, angry, forgetting things and fucking drinking. You don’t even like the taste of alcohol for God’s sake! Come on, Riley. I am not leaving you, but could you please make it a little easier for me to take care of you?”
“I never asked you to take care of me,” I said, not to hurt her, but to let her know this wasn’t her responsibility and that I didn’t want to be another thing in her life that made her feel trapped.
“No, you didn’t. Actually you’ve made it a point to make it really hard on me…”
“Then why do you keep doing this? This cannot be easy. Taking notes on what I’m supposed to be takin, when I’m supposed to be taking it, calling me at night so I don’t forget to take my pills, doing memory exercises with me, writing down my next doctor appointment… and having an overbearing, controlling husband. Why bother with me?”
Faye sat on the bed, I sat next to her. She stayed silent for a good minute before replying. “You really underestimate how much I love you. I know what it feels like to lose you, I am not going through that again.”
I sighed. “I know. I don’t think I could be away from you again… but I don’t want to be a burden in your life.”
“You are the only thing worth anything in my life right now. Don’t take that away.”
I smiled and moved forward to kiss her. She placed her hands on my shoulders to pull me closer. We stayed quiet for another moment, then I told her everything that happened, and why I took it so harshly.
“Why did he say it was your fault that he was like that?”
“After the explosion that almost took my arm, I found him under a pile of debris. He was badly injured, I thought he wouldn’t survive but I still couldn’t just leave him there. So I pulled him out of the debris and carried him.”
“You saved his life.”
“It wasn’t much of a life. Because of his injuries, he wound up losing most of his limbs and… his children didn’t want him.”
“God, Riley. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s just… not fair,” I said, about to cry again. “He shouldn’t have died like that. Alone, in a place where no one goes to see him anymore. With no one to cry for him.”
Faye didn’t add anything. It was something she couldn’t understand and one of the things I loved about her is that she won’t pretend to know what you are going through. Just like I cannot understand what losing a father is, she cannot understand what I had just gone through.
“I’m sorry. But he wasn’t right.”
“About?”
“You are not like that. You don’t beat me.” I opened my mouth to remind her about the thing in the motel, when she interrupted me. “That doesn’t count. I mean actually making a decision to beat me. And you are compassionate and sweet and you try to help people. Look at you parents.”
“My parents?”
“You don’t know? Your dad asked my mom for a recipe he could prepare for your mom. He also asked her to give him some, get this, cleaning up tips because he was to clean the house this weekend so she doesn’t have to.”
“My dad? Seriously?”
“I know, right? You are not like that, Riley. You have plenty of people who love you and who are happy you came back.”
“Faye was my rock. She tried, she really did try to pull me back from the edge. She hadn’t realized that I was already falling when she reached for me.”
“Do you think it made a difference? Having her there, I mean,” she asks. Her voice is soothing.
“Of course. I’m here, aren’t I. I did this for her, my mom, my brother, my dad. But if she hadn’t been there…”
I don’t need to finish the sentence. We both know.
“What happened then?”
“We got a call from Connor, Scott had gone to the bookstore to ‘visit’ Faye at work and when he didn’t find her, he got angry and went to look for her at her mom’s. Connor was calling to warn us. I decided it was best to leave, even when Faye asked me not to. I went home and, to my surprise, I found my dad in the back yard, working on my mom’s sewing table.”
“Did he finish it?”
“That weekend.”
“Did he make her dinner?”
“Spaghetti Amatriciana. I remember that.”
“Did he clean the house?”
I know what she is doing. She is not just asking me about my story, she is checking to make sure I’m not spacing out again. I can’t, I am completely focused in this because this is the most important part of the whole story.
“He tried. It’s a big house. But that was enough. He didn’t have to actually do it, he just had to prove to mom that he was willing to try again, and again; over and over again.”
“Does that sound familiar to you?”
I smile. “It had to get bad before it got good, right?”
“Is that how you see it?” she asks.
“Now I do, but I didn’t back then. I thought my life was punching me into a corner and had just pushed me to the floor. Unfortunately, it had plans to kick me while I was down.”
That day watching dad working on mom’s sewing table made me feel incredibly happy. I sat on the yard chair a few feet away from him and just let him work. When mom came, she asked what he was doing. I said, “Getting you back.”
Mom wasn’t convinced, but I wasn’t expecting her to be convinced by one single thing. Dad wasn’t expecting that either.
The next day, Matt called me about the Colonel’s funeral. He wanted me to attend. I forced myself to go. I owed him that much.
Faye helped me get dressed, my uniform felt a bit bigger somehow. Maybe it was because I wasn’t exercising as much as I did when I was in the army so I didn’t have the muscle to fill it; maybe it was just my imagination. Once I was ready, I looked at myself in the mirror.
“How do I look?” I asked.
“Like my brand new fetish.” I laughed as she smiled. “I’m sorry but you look really, really good.”
“Thanks,” I murmured looking at myself in the reflection again.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I have to. I will just stand there, and be the perfect soldier. Nothing more.”
They buried Colonel Randy Sieves with a full-on military funeral in San Francisco, next to his wife. Something he was entitled to because of his almost twenty years of service. Matt and I agreed it would be best if we didn’t ride with the caravan, and instead meet at the cemetery. We were both using our uniforms as a sign of respect.
When the caravan arrived, we walked behind it with the rest of the soldiers who’d arrived with the families. I saw the Colonel’s daughter. She was walking in front, just behind her father. She was wearing a black dress and high heels. The son didn’t even have the decency to show up to his dad’s funeral.
As we walked, I also noticed that most of the people present were soldiers and not family members. If I say I counted six people without the uniform, I might be exaggerating; and four of those people were the daughter, her husband, and her children. As we reached the Colonel’s final resting place, everyone gathered in a circle. Matt and I stood behind, with our hats under our arms looking at the scene while they took the coffin out of the caravan.
The Honor Guard said some words, performed a service and pulled out the American flag. God. When I die, I really don’t want a military funeral. Not that I think I might get one, but if they offer it, my family has orders to say “Fuck, no! But thanks”. It’s just a personal thing. Matt does want one though.
As we stood there, the son in law asked how much longer it would take. That really bothered me, but I kept it in.
“What an asshole,” Matt murmured.
“Quiet,” I ordered. Not because he was not right, but because we were showing our respects to the Colonel, not to that prick, not even to his daughter. There was something the Colonel was right about, he shouldn’t have died like that.
The Colonel was buried with the flag he’d dedicated half his life to, and the people dispersed. Everyone except the daughter. She was kneeling down and seemed… in pain. Like she really missed him, and like she was truly sorry; but the husband came, picked her up from the floor and took her away.
After that, Matt and I had to say goodbye. He asked how I was feeling about the Colonel, I was the last person to speak to him and I was there when he… jumped. I didn’t tell Faye what I was feeling, I wasn’t going to tell him. But he still offered help, telling me his therapist could really help, if help was what I needed. Then we parted ways. I believe now, that Matt saw something in me. The calm before the storm. Something that reminded him of himself and wanted to prevent it and unfortunately he couldn’t.
The next few days, Faye and Connor kept asking me to not go to work, to take some time for myself, to grief. I reminded them that I’m not good at doing nothing but it was no use. One day, I showed up at the bookstore, and Andrea was there.
“What are you doing here?” Connor asked. He was angry at me.
“Oh, come on. I had to get out of there. Those walls where going to asphyxiate me.”
“Then go to the library, or visit Mike or something. We don’t want you here.”
“What’s going on?” Andrea asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but Connor replied. “She’s been through a lot and she needs to rest,” then, my brother turned to me and added. “Go.”
“Hey, if what you need is rest, I’ve got two coupons for a day at the Spa. We can grab something to eat afterwards,” Andrea said, with a flirtatious hint to her voice.
I exhaled slowly, walked up to Andrea and pulled out the small notebook I always carried in my back pocket. She seemed confused as I opened it, looked for an exact page and after finding it, began to read. “Lexapro, Prozac, Aricept, Aspirin Full-Dosage. Friday every two weeks. Fish, avocado, broccoli, celery. Two and four.”
Andrea frowned, and asked. “Sorry?”
I answered with my eyes still on the notebook. “The first list is the pills I have to take every day at specific hours. The second one is my appointments with the physiotherapist, the third list are the foods I should be including in my diet to help my memory. The first number is my physical pain in a scale of zero to ten today. The second number is my level of happiness in a scale of zero to ten today. And I didn’t even include the drinking ’till passing out of last week. Point is…” I said closing the notebook and putting it back in my pocket. “I’m a problem. A burden. And you really don’t want a piece of that cake. But thanks!”
Andrea’s expression was of true horror. She said goodbye to Connor and left. Connor cracked up after she was out the door and said, “You didn’t have to scare her like that.”
“She wasn’t going to stop, and I really can’t stand people who can’t take a no.”
“You’re not a problem, Sis.” Connor said, out of the blue. He’d been so different in the last few months. Supportive even. “Oh, almost forgot. I’m gonna need a longer shift.”
“Why?”
“I wanna safe for the aviation school and… well it’s not cheap and mom and dad are not helping me a second time. So if I safe half my salary for a year, I should be able to gather enough money to get me in. But I need to work full-time. I’ve noticed we can afford that and maybe Faye doesn’t have to work so hard, and you can take a break.”
“Faye?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you noticed? She learned WordPress to make the bookstore’s website, she talked to the marketing guy, got the contract for the canvases for that guy who comes in every Saturday, keeps the bookstore clean and the customers happy. She’s the soul of this entire thing.”
I hadn’t noticed she’d been breaking her ass off. I’d been too distracted. “Where is she?”
“Went out to talk to some guy from a school. They need supplies for their art classroom. I’m telling you, that woman needs to take a break.”
“Art supplies?”
“Yeah, I told you yesterda― Oh, she said you haven’t being taking your meds.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Yeah, well, get out of here. Find something to do, something that keeps you calmed, alright? We have everything in order.”
I took my notebook out knowing I needed to write something, but I couldn’t remember what it was. “Sorry, could you tell me again what you needed?”
Connor frowned. “I need to work full-time.”
I wrote that down. “Right, right. I remember. And Faye is talking to a school about…uh, books.”
“Art supplies,” Connor corrected.
“Right. Okay, I’ll go.”
“Good. Oh, Riley. You remember what you told Andrea?”
I smiled as I walked towards the door. “I told her off, that’s all I need to remember.” He laughed.
I began taking my pills that day. I couldn’t go around forgetting what people had said to me, and what I’d said to them. It wasn’t working, it was only making me feel worse. And while the impotence sensation of not being able to work without the pills was still there, I had to admit to myself that I needed them. The Lexapro and the Prozac worked their magic and kept me emotionally balanced.
I also started babysitting for Mike and Louise. Mike had to work, and Louise had to get some sleep because Emily had one pair of lungs. I also stayed home with Emily when they needed to spend some alone time. They hadn’t had a single date since she’d been born and they needed sexy time. Taking care of Emily made me happy. She was sweet, energetic and kept me focused. While I wasn’t working much because Connor and Faye kept saying they had everything under control, I still spent time at the bookstore. I couldn’t stay away.
One day, while I was about to get inside, I saw the guy who rented the apartment upstairs, which belonged to the same landlord. The entry to that apartment was next to the bookstore. The guy was packing his things into a truck.
“Hey there, Brad… right?”
“Hey, you’re the girl from the bookstore.”
“Yeah. You’re moving?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? You’ve only been here for like, four months.”
“Well, I like Mr. Greene and he’s cool, but that apartment is a shithole and I finally found a better place for the same price so, I’m outta here.”
“So the place is gonna be empty?”
“You wanna rent it? Don’t do that to yourself.”
“I might not look it, but I’m quite handy.”
“No amount of work can fix that apartment. But whatever you say. Good luck.”
He finished putting his things in the truck, got inside and left. I went up to find Mr. Greene looking around in the apartment. The place was just as shitty as Brad had said, but I was still pretty sure I could make it more than just livable.
“Mr. Greene?” I called.
He shifted toward me. “Oh, Miss Brenan, hello.”
“Hey, I just saw the guy who rented this place. Brad? He said the place was empty, do you have someone in mind for it?”
“Someone in mind? Look at this place. I don’t blame him for leaving, but I ain’t got the amount of money to invest in this.”
“So you’re not gonna make money out of it?”
“Of course not. Would you rent a place like this?”
“Rent? No. Buy? Well…”
“You wanna buy it?”
“In another life, I made a living out of architecture and I was pretty good with handiwork. I’m pretty sure I can fix everything, but you are right; paying for the exposed faucet there, the lights over there, the opened hole over there, replacing the window, changing the floor, fixing the humidity problem, remodeling the kitchen, that bathroom over there… it will cost you at least twenty grand. I can take the place off your hands and do the remodeling myself.”
“You want to move in? Here?” He asked making a wide movement with his arms to point at the whole apartment.
“Not really. Something like that.”
He sighed. “Alright. Let’s talk about an offer.”
After I had finished talking to Mr. Greene, I went downstairs into the bookstore, Connor was placing the new books in their shelves.
“Hey, Sis. What’s up?”
I walked up to him and helped him with the books. “Remember how you said you needed more money?”
“Hey! You’re taking your meds again. Good girl.”
“Bite me. I got an offer.”
He put the books down and faced me. “What kind of offer?”
“I’ve got some money saved, so how about instead of giving you full-time, I just hire you for another part-time job.”
“What kind of job?”
“The kind where you get paid for smashing things up.”
He smiled. “I’m in.”
As he said that, Faye walked in from the storage carrying another load of books. “Hey, Riley. What are you guys talking about?”
“Nothing,” I said looking at Connor for him to understand not to mention anything to Faye.
“Nothing, just that she’s been taking her pills again.”
“Hey, that’s great!” Faye said and kissed me. “I’m so proud of you.”
Then she went off to put the new books on the shelves on the other side of the store.
The next day, I went to visit Barbara Burton. I asked her something that must’ve sounded quite ridiculous. I was happy again, I had reasons to be, everything was taking form and after I was done, Faye and I would finally be together. No more hiding, no more nights away from each other, no more waking up without her.
The day I found out, I was taking care of Emily. She was asleep, so to stop anyone from waking her up and exposing me to the full power of her lungs, I turned my phone off and took a nap along with her. She woke me up with cries for food at six. I warmed up the milk Louise had left for her and fed her. At seven, Mike came home with Louise.
As I left the house, I turned my phone back on and saw that I had nineteen missed calls, all from Faye. I also had one voice mail.
“Jesus Christ Riley, where are you? I need to talk to you as soon as possible. Call me, this is important, please. God.”
Her voice sounded agitated. I figured I was still on time to get to store and help them close for the day and we could talk, so I grabbed a cab and headed there. When I walked in, I saw Scott standing in front of Connor, who had his hand on his mouth. Scott had his arm around Faye’s shoulder and Faye looked pale, like a ghost.
“Hey, there you are,” Scott said as he saw me.
I knew what he was going to say. It doesn’t take a genius to put it together. Faye’s insisting calls, Connor’s expression and Scott’s bragging smile. An ‘I win’.
“I’m so happy you are here.” Scott began “We just had to tell everyone. We’re pregnant.”
Even though I knew what he would say, hearing it was still a very low blow. I felt my throat filling with vomit, a sensation of nausea and vertigo invading me. My voice was quiet and weak when I asked. “What?”
“We just found out today.”
My eyes floated to Faye, she couldn’t keep her eyes on me. She looked ashamed, scared, embarrassed. Her eyes told me how sorry she was, how apologetic she was feeling. But that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t breathe, I felt my heart was going to burst out of my chest and my hands were shivering and cold. I ran out of there.
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