Ashes ashes, p.13
Ashes, Ashes, page 13
The hiccup was that I had to tell Heath. Sometimes, like when I have to break plans, he goes silent for five whole minutes. He bites his arm and saliva oozes from the corners of his mouth. One time he drew blood. So I tweaked my argument a bit and told him that we’d be stranded in Sibley from now to eternity if I went through with the pregnancy. But this didn’t work on him, either.
Somehow, he still doesn’t hate my family. Even though Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me invite him to dinner. Even though Dad refused to come to the door when he stopped by to introduce himself, pitting out in his too-big white button-up. Even though Jeremy and his goons took turns pissing in his locker before the janitor finally put a new lock on. He didn’t hate them the way I figured he did, God knows why. Sometimes it was like he enjoyed how shitty they were toward him. Just a little bit, anyway. At least this way he was part of the family, and what could’ve tied us all together better than a child, even if it meant endless punishment and harassment from Dad and Jeremy and even Mom?
“Where’d you sleep, Heath?” I asked him this one time.
They caged him up in the winter, so he loved spring, summer, and fall. He dozed under trees, on stoops, beneath bushes, in the ditches of dirt roads hoping someone would come along thinking he was dead so he could jump up and run off laughing.
“Weren’t you scared, honey?”
“Always,” he said. One older brother, Martin, Merlin—it started with an M—liked to finger his girlfriend, then give Heath wet willies. He’d slug Heath in the cherries and push his head against the bedroom window. “I held off as long as I could,” Heath said. It was worse than pissing his pants, the tears leaking out, he said.
“Honey? Honey? What happened with that guy? Did he hurt you?” It wasn’t always the homes. Wasn’t always the kids, either. Uncle Bob, crashing at his sister’s place. Heath didn’t wanna talk about him and that’s how I could tell it was bad. Because if he couldn’t lie about it, that meant he couldn’t handle telling himself the truth.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, “because my sister, Cynthia the Rat, came with the heavy machinery and busted us out right quick.” Cynthia the Rat. These ridiculous names. He said she had buck teeth and hairy cheeks and matted down redhead braids. She walked hunched over with her hands in front of her. He said he liked to drop bits of mozzarella on the floor in front of her. He wanted Uncle Bob’s help building a trap for her. Back then he loathed her because she was always talking about France and fancy coffee and famous scientists. Her favorite topic was how there are more planets like Earth in our galaxy than grains of sand on Earth. Drove him insane, the thought itself as much as her never shutting up about it.
“Looking back, though,” he said, “she was my first mother. She could’ve left me behind when she split.” Instead, she took all the kids with her.
The “heavy machinery”? One day after school, middle of winter, innocent little Heath was in the garage with Uncle Bob, his hero at the time, when in ran Rat holding a handsaw in one hand and a hammer in the other. Their sister Jill Koozie had broken a pair of scissors. She clutched a blade in each hand. Someone had a tire iron. Skink, his brother, a screwdriver. Everyone was yelling at everyone else and then Heath started crying so hard he couldn’t hear. He crawled out of the garage and ran up the driveway and hid behind an oak trunk. “The oaks were big there along the driveway. I thought they were giants.” It was snowing good. His tears turned to “scabs” on his cheeks. He thought everyone was dead. Then his Mom’s van rolled down the driveway, Rat driving. She leaned on the horn and the side door slid open and they yelled at him to get in. Finally, Rat jumped out and wrestled him to the ground and dragged him into the van.
They stopped in some back alley so they could swap license plates with a vehicle parked in an open garage. Rat had a bunch of dollars rolled up in a rubber band. They drove for a while, then parked in the woods. “Living was just being cold and trying to be warm. Just arguing about everything and climbing trees and finding somewhere off in the woods to piss without nobody watching.” Being hungry so long you’re not hungry anymore, how can there be such a thing? “Eating heat from the van vents. Drinking snow.” They were all sick, too. “Throat choking down gravel, nose packed with gunk.” “Stumbling from tree to tree some days just wanting to get kidnapped by someone better.” Rat bought him cough syrup at a gas station. He drank it and she talked to him about the planets and outer space and God.
He ran into some friends at a gas station and got picked up by social services. Rat made sure he didn’t go back to Uncle Bob.
Murphy, that was that boy’s name. Murphy, the bully with those filthy fingers.
A few days after I told him we were pregnant, we met up again. It was ten at night. Rainy and cool. I told him my decision and he closed his eyes and hung his head and nodded, consoling himself or whatever, then he got out of the car and disappeared for a bit. While he was gone, I listened to the radio. I’ve always hated silence. I’ve always hated the silent-thoughts. I hate them even more now. He came back with wet hair and knuckles all cut up and gory from punching a tree. Idiot. I wasn’t scared of him. I’ve never been scared of him. I felt bad, though, so I lied and told him I’d think about it some more. Later on, after the procedure, I called to tell him what I’d done. I didn’t wanna tell him. I tried hard to think of a way around it. I could tell he was irate, only it was weird because he wasn’t mad at me or was too distracted to lash out. By what I don’t know, but his wheels were really turning. Maybe it’s just that I could never do anything to make him hurt me. He loves me too much. And he thinks I’ll never stop needing him, especially now.
He’s wrong. I love him but he’s wrong. He’s the one who needs me. I don’t need anybody. Like, after the stirrups and clamps and tubes. The numb and suction. Fetus, placenta. Cramping, discharge. After all that, I’ll never be un-clamped, -tubed, -numbed, -suctioned again. Good, I’ve realized. I see that now. Good. That doctor cut out the part of me that is Sibley, that is Spencer, that is this house and the people in it. I don’t need them. Not anyone. When I leave it’ll be for good. Heath will understand. I mean, he would’ve. He’s dead. I know it in my heart, and I love him, loved him, and I’m happy for him. He doesn’t have a reason to come back, either.
The front door bangs open. Two sets of feet thunder downstairs, Jeremy’s and Dad’s, I can tell.
Jeremy throws open the guest room door and Dad grabs him by the waist. I jump out of bed looking for something to defend myself with. My phone is a rock, my keys claws.
“You little slut!” Jeremy yelps.
“If this is about Julie Ann …”
“You fucking whore!”
Ashes, Ashes
Heath
I’m not ready to open my eyes just yet. Something is waiting for me. I know it’s not nothing, because at least the sun is here, the same disgusting blood orange from yesterday, blotting the fuzzy black of my inner eyelids with peach, scarlet, and lemon tones. It’s not nothing, because at least I’m conscious. Consciousness just seems to be this infected wound that won’t heal but won’t bleed you out either. I sit up straight and open my eyes. The room is beautiful, like, sarcastically gorgeous.
It can’t be meant for me, the glossy clean-white cabinets and prickly stucco ceiling and smooth, bright navy walls and neat tile floor and throne-like hospital bed and perfect IV bag on its perfect stand with its perfect needle in my perfect hand. My gown feels silky. It caresses my legs and arms and stomach and there’s the soothing pressure of my thigh wraps and the crinkly paper sheet underneath me. Where the pain should be, it’s not. If only it were there. Or better, I felt nothing.
On the counter across the room, in a plastic bag, is an off-white, bloodstained bathrobe. I remember everything. In the bathtub, blood serpents slithered up from my slashed thighs.
A woman (maybe thirty, no older than thirty-five) pokes her head into the room. Seeing that I’m awake, she enters the room. She wears heels and pantyhose, a cobalt blouse, and a charcoal pencil skirt with a matching suit coat. Her platinum-streaked beige hair is a cinnamon roll atop her head. Unbound tufts twirl down the sides of her face. She holds a clipboard.
“Hello, Mr. Reynolds. I’m Doctor Candice Granger. Please call me Candice.” Her voice is calm, firm, prim, except her squinty, vigilant caramel eyes belong to someone fussier.
I nod at Candice, and she stares at me, pouting, poorly mimicking my helplessness. Her bedside manner needs some work. It’s like she’s mocking me.
She shuts the door and sits on the sofa beneath the windowsill.
“May I call you Heath?”
I shrug.
“Heath it is, then.”
“Candy?”
“Candice,” she corrects me. Polite but stern.
“You an investigator?”
“What would I be investigating?”
“I don’t know.”
“You aren’t in any trouble. I’m a psychiatrist. I’m here to talk with you about the reason you’re here.”
“You all are the reason I’m here. If it were up to me, I’d be somewhere else.”
“That is what I’d like to talk about—”
“I’d rather not, Candy.”
“We don’t have to talk right away. For now, know that we have a room available in what we call a Grace Unit. It’s a safe place. We can run some exams on you, we can get you started on some medication, we can monitor you … It’s an excellent facility. We do, however, need to ask some questions. Do you have any family members around who could assist us? Phone numbers, places of work. All that information would be helpful. I also have a bit of paperwork we need to fill out, insurance—”
“That all sounds nice. You should save the room for someone else. I’m actually feeling much better now.”
“But—”
“Does anybody call you Candy?”
She lowers her eyes to her clipboard, makes a note. “No one,” she replies.
“Ever?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“But you could’ve forgotten if somebody had?”
“I suppose.”
“But you didn’t forget,” I insist.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it bothers you.”
“I just don’t like the name. That’s all.” A mannequin smile.
“Who called you that?”
“Let’s talk about you, Heath.”
“Do you know what death is like?”
Her eyes spring open. “Of course not.”
“Then how can you be so sure it isn’t better than living?”
“You’re right, I suppose I don’t. All the same I’d like to speak with your parents or guardian. Do you have their phone numbers? Are they in your cellphone?”
“I didn’t plan on taking it with me. Sorry. Candy sounds like a dirty nickname.”
“Perhaps. Happen to remember their cell numbers?”
“Maybe.”
“You wanna call someone?”
“No.”
“Your dad?”
I gaze up at the stucco, sigh, and begin to yammer about my dad like I was just thinking about him. Like I ever met the guy.
“My dad lives in a trailer park in Hackensack, about an hour north of here. You turn off the highway just past that sign that reads ‘Jesus Saves’, for some church, and just before the one that says ‘dot, dot, dot, For Retirement,’ for some bank. Last time I saw him was five years ago. He took me fishing up in Walker with one of his high school friends. The guy’s wife, believe it or not, died in the Oklahoma City bombing. Very sad. Summertime, Dad went fishing every Sunday after church. He hated church but he liked having a reason to drive into town on Sunday mornings. His only other reason was the liquor store, except back then liquor stores were closed on Sundays. And he liked having an excuse to wear collared shirts. You see, he was a mechanic, if he happened to get out of bed, I mean. Anyway, he took me and Rod, his Oklahoma buddy, up to Leech Lake. Pulled his boat on a trailer. Boat was real nice. We had everything: seat cushions, life vests, lures, minnows. We trawled for sunfish. Dad sat in the back next to the motor. I went through two entire packages of sunflower seeds, drank six Mountain Dews one after another. I kept having to stand and pee over the side of the boat. Dad told me that my Dew-piss was poisoning the sunnies. I kept laughing and laughing and laughing. Long story short, he and Rod ran off together later that summer. Never saw him again.”
“That’s—”
“Mom was an angel. She taught me everything I ever needed to know. The most important thing I learned from her is that the worst shit in the world doesn’t last forever. Pain and worry will outlive us all. It took me a long time to see what I needed to do, but figuring it out brought me so much peace.”
“Suicide, you mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And is your mother around?”
“She was murdered.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have any children, Candy?”
“I have a son. He’s six.”
“That’s nice. Who called you Candy?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m wondering who called you Candy.”
“I don’t see the point in—”
“Because you don’t wanna talk about it.”
“You want me to be uncomfortable?” she asks.
“I’m hoping to piss you off a little.”
“Why?”
“If you hate me, you won’t be so sad when I’m gone.”
“Do you push a lot of people away like that?”
“Not enough of them.”
She jots down more notes, looks up. “It was my grandfather who called me that. He was not a good man. He was violent with my grandmother. Plus, it’s a rotten nickname, in my opinion. I find it disrespectful.”
“I’ll quit, then.”
“Call me whatever you please, Heath. May I ask where you were living? Is there anyone you can call?”
“I’ll think on it. But I need to get some sleep. Say, you know what this is for?” On my bed is a detonator-looking stick connected to another IV bag via a long cord.
“It’s for pain management. Just hit the button if you’re hurting. You can’t overdose, it’ll only give you so much.”
I close my eyes, return to the fireworks in my eyelids.
“Thank you, Heath, for being so open with me. I’ll be requesting that the nurses keep a close eye on you. We’ll talk more later.”
“You’re the boss, Dr. Granger. Sorry your grandpa sucked so much.”
“Thanks, Heath.”
She’s motionless for several seconds. No scribbling on her papers, no brushing lint from her shoulder. Then she stands to exit the room.
“I did it,” I say.
“Did …?”
“Mom. I killed her. I need to sleep now, Dr. Granger. You’ve been very kind to me, and I sincerely appreciate it.”
She asks a series of questions about the half-real, half-fictional woman she believes is my mother, becoming increasingly baffled and pesky the longer I ignore her, talking the way she might to her son when the boogeyman haunts him.
It’s tricky because I can’t open my eyes until she leaves the room but I can’t afford to waste any time once she’s gone. She might not be gone for long. I gotta get out.
I peek with one eye. The room is empty. I trigger the detonator again and again until my thumb cramps up, wait a minute as the numbing juices pour into my veins, then get busy untaping the syringe from my hand and pulling the IV needle out. I’m too woozy to climb down from the bed so I try to steady myself by staring at the sun, which looks ready to vomit. The hairs on my arms stand up. I swallow some acidic bile.
When did I last eat and what’d I just pump into my body and what floor am I on and who gave the doctors my name and where is Monica and does she think I’m alive or dead or barely-alive-almost-dead. And was it, would it have been, that put-on surprise from my classmates and teachers, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he went and done something like this, no, he was such a happy boy always, oh no, maybe we should’ve treated him a tad better”?
I’m wobbly. My legs buzz. The thigh wraps are tight and the seeping from my wounds causes the gauze to stick. Each step toward the door tugs at the skin around them. On the way out of the room, I slip into the bathroom, turn the sink faucet on, step out, and shut the door behind me. I grab the plastic bag containing Miss Bonnie’s robe and sneak into the hallway, eyes on the floor, avoiding the grout between the tiles because Monica could never love me again if I step on it, that old gag showing its face again. Still, what type of lunatic would risk losing the woman he loves over something as simple as accidentally stepping on grout?
I step into the next room over. An old man is sleeping, his handlebar mustache cloud-gray and thorny. In his own plastic bag are cowboy boots, a straw cowboy hat, and jeans stinking of manure. Must be he’s one of those snus-gobblers collecting bailouts from the government whether the crop comes in or not. I put the hat on. It covers the top half of my head, fits clear over both my ears. My gown tumbles to the ground and I throw on Miss Bonnie’s abrasive robe, tightening the belt around my waist. Then I slip on a pair of grippy socks. Candice and some dude return to my room. They call out for me, knocking on the bathroom door. The farmer mumbles. His eyes flutter open. Groggy, he says, “Who the hell are you?”
