Chapter 16
THE MARJORIE CORRELATION
Mathematics had always been among Oscar’s best subjects.
As a teenager, he’d loved sitting at his desk, writing out a gorgeous triangle proof, neatly solving quadratic equations, mapping out probability.
When he’d run into his former high school teacher just a year before, she’d asked what he was doing and whether he was alright.
Oscar had always liked Miss Spencer, so he’d been glad to tell her he was studying Computer Science.
“You’ve always been a star at math. I’m not surprised. But I am glad,” she’d said.
Oscar had been, too.
His calves ached as he labored to get as far from the shopping district as possible, as quickly as he could.
His heart was punching in all the hours he’d failed to work, hammering away at the scaffold from which Oscar’s sanity was set to hang.
His breaths staggered out of him as he blinked away his tears.
Of course Oscar was good at mathematics.
His first lesson in life had been the concept of correlation, the direct relationship between his mother’s presence and the swift departure of his joy.
Maybe Marjorie Peters had put out a restraining order against Oscar’s peace, forcing it out of every single room she was in, every street—for a time, the entire town.
Oscar’s teeth slipped as he ground them, and the feeling jarred, curling his nose. Who was this woman, to make him whimper like this, like the dog she’d refused to let him and Lina have as kids?
I hate you, he thought.
And he wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to his mother or himself.
They had always been two sides of the same coin, equally hard and brittle, never seeing eye to eye.
His short nails dug deep into the tender flesh of his palm, aching, and Oscar relished it.
Oscar wished for a moment he was back at that stall, that he could smash the side of his fist into every plastic container, crack them until there was nothing left to crack, until his skin was a map of lacerations, until his hand was throbbing so badly from the pain, there wasn’t space for thought.
Oscar turned a corner, the edges of his vision blurring as his panic spotted the world in black.
Out of the pedestrian part of town, everything felt closer, larger, louder.
This was no longer the rush of people walking by in groups, the soft flirtatious laughter of couples trilling on the air, the cries of small children begging for ice cream as their parents exasperatedly tried to explain that school was about to start.
That had always been his mother’s argument come September, as though his throat would magically know to close up so he could avoid eighth grade English.
On this side of his world was the sound of construction, grinding a headache straight through his skull, the rumble of cars and trucks as they passed through to get from one city to the next, the beeping traffic lights that made him want to punch a hole through green.
Stop it.
Oscar wanted to tear out his hair.
Stop it.
Oscar wanted to scream.
Stop it.
Oscar wanted to walk into traffic.
Turning abruptly as the thought bouldered into him like the sixteen-wheeler he wished would flatten him, Oscar pressed himself against the wall of a bakery and pulled out his phone, fingers trembling as he pulled up his messages.
Spikey (Draft): Boo, can you come get me? Something bad has happened and I’m scared. I want to
Aaron was supposed to be recovering from the ugliness with his mother. What the fuck was Oscar doing? He closed the conversation before he could continue growing his mess and instead found Christina’s contact and started typing.
Oscar: Hi, Christina. Do you have an open slot today?
Oscar stood against the wall, counting the taps of each finger on the back of his phone like he was one of those ballet teachers his mother kept taking him to as a child.
It would always end the same, with them telling her gently that Oscar didn’t seem interested in learning and perhaps she should find him a different activity, that these things couldn’t be forced.
But his mother had forced him. Over and over again.
And look at her now, still forcing him off the edge, teetering on the tips of his toes at the periphery of the sidewalk, a swan dropping to its end.
No. This is all you.
It had been more than four years since he’d last seen her.
He shouldn’t have let her affect him this much, not now.
He was supposed to be a brick house, built from the sweat and labor his Papa had put into affirming him every day of his life.
How did she turn him into sticks and mud every single time?
Because you’re fucking weak.
Oscar’s mind went to his parents’ bathroom, to the tissues in his sleeves, to the trucks racing across from him.
No. I can’t.
He’d spent too many hours axing acid-coated flesh and poking spears into red-webbed eyes to lose the battle against his own demons. But shaking hands were no good for fighting.
So Oscar would just have to drown them.
When Papa had his heart attack, Oscar went in the ambulance with him.
That was the real funeral service, the final escort.
Oscar had sat beside the EMT, eyes on the zipped bag, as though Papa were a suit and not a man who had loved him.
They had told Oscar not to go with them, but he wouldn’t let them take Papa on his own.
He couldn’t leave him with strangers like that.
So the EMT had taken care of Oscar in his state of shock and then they’d sat him down on a cold plastic chair beside the cold room where they’d put Papa.
When Oscar’s mother arrived, she’d hugged him.
He couldn’t remember the last time she had done that.
But that day she had. She’d pulled him in, and she hadn’t said anything about his hair or about the clothes he was wearing.
She’d just cried and babbled and cried some more while Lina looked at her and Oscar, waiting for a proper explanation.
“This doesn’t make sense,” their mother kept saying to the medical examiner. “He doesn’t drink or smoke. I cook healthy meals. He goes on a walk every day. Is it the stress? Was it the stress? He doesn’t even drink.”
“Ma’am, sometimes it happens to perfectly healthy people,” the man’s response went, over and over.
The rest had been a blur to Oscar, right up to the funeral.
All he could recall of the time between his father being certified dead and his father being buried was the phone ringing incessantly and Grandma sitting in their kitchen with their mom, their Aunt Celia from their mother’s side milling about the house, washing Oscar’s clothes and braiding Lina’s hair for school, preparing pasta bakes for them to eat.
This doesn’t make sense had stuck with him.
Because it hadn’t. For once, he and his mother agreed.
And for a while after that, he played her shrill exclamation in his head each time he approached the bleachers around the track at school, bumming cigarettes from kids who pitied him because his father was dead.
Later, he’d repeat the same sentence to himself while he finished whatever dregs remained at the bottom of whichever bottle he’d have procured at the cheapest price.
Because Oscar figured if Papa had lived his entire life doing everything right only to die like that anyway, then he might as well haze up his mind and put off all the other ugly things he wanted to do to himself.
His phone pinged, tearing him from the memories that had seen fit to assault him ever since he’d spiraled into this bar. Oscar swirled the golden liquid streaked with paleness where the ice had melted and tilted his head back to finish the drink, reaching for his phone.
Christina: Hi, Oscar. I just saw this. I’m sorry. I was in sessions all day long, back to back. Are you okay?
Oscar was not okay. In front of him was a fresh glass he’d signaled the bartender to get him.
His ass was sore and numb from sitting on the stool so long, and when he walked out, his wallet would be lighter.
Not only had he made Aaron less than half of what he was supposed to, he’d also gone and spent its value in liquid misery.
But Oscar needed to keep his hand wrapped around the glass, needed to feel its sobering cold against his palm and fingertips.
Oscar couldn’t have free hands because they wanted to hurt him.
Oscar’s legs couldn’t be allowed to walk without buckling beneath his weight because if they carried him to the bathroom, he would find himself in the mirror and he would see the shape his mother had traced with her cutting tongue.
So Oscar finished his drink and listened to the buzzing in his head, ignored the repeated pings and vibrations on his phone, because he couldn’t quite look at Aaron’s name on his screen, knowing how badly everything had gone, how he hadn’t been able to do this one miserable thing for him, how he’d failed him.
Oscar couldn’t fathom opening their conversation and slurring out a response with the world moving at seven hundred miles an hour before his tired eyes.
Oscar thought about closing them. Maybe the world would stop spinning if he only closed them. Just for a minute.
It felt like less time had passed than the sixty seconds he’d promised himself when someone began to shake him.
Oscar’s jaw was tense, his mouth open, sleeve dark and wet with his drool.
It smelled like the sticky floor of a nightclub on Sunday morning, felt like walking into school after Papa had died, every pair of eyes sticking to his face and head.
“Hey, we’re closing. Can I call someone for you?
” Oscar allowed his blurry vision to settle on the man who stood in front of him.
His brown eyes seemed kind, the black hair on his beefy knuckles reminding Oscar of Grandpa.
Bitterly, he wondered whether Papa would have had these hands if he’d been allowed to age. “Son, you good?”
“Hmm.” Oscar blinked, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Keep your eyes open. Hey.” A hand was gently slapping his cheek, soft and warm. It reminded him of wrapped caramels pressed into his pockets, weighing them down all the way home, where he’d stash them in the burrow of treats from Grandpa for the rest of the week. “Kid…who do I call?”
Oscar’s throat felt clogged, like his stomach had clawed its way up his chest and settled there, waiting to be spewed. His eyes began to close again, the dimmed lights overhead piercing his eyeballs like flaming needles.
“They shouldn’t have kept serving you like this,” the old man grumbled.
He turned to mutter to somebody else, but Oscar missed that part of the conversation. He leaned back, his spine cracking as he stretched, arms flailing as he reached for the back of a chair he wouldn’t find.
It was an endless fall, a tumble into darkness, closed eyes and an open mouth as the whiskey he’d consumed heaved out of him, splattering the hardwood floor of the bar, speckling his hoodie in a sickly orange Oscar spied as his eyes slitted open.
Oh, shit.
Whatever remained in his stomach groaned out his mouth, jeans squelching as his knees pressed into the puddle of vomit.
Oscar’s crotch warmed as a small tinkle of piss pushed out of him, moistening his boxers from the strain.
If his body tried to throw up empty a second longer, his eyeballs would pop out of their sockets.
He didn’t know the hands and arms that caught him as he slackened and fell, a wave of coolness fanning his face, turning down the dial on his nausea.
“Kid, who do we call?” the old man asked again.
“Lina,” Oscar replied, reaching for a phone he’d left on the bar top. He would hate himself for it in the morning. For now, Oscar closed his eyes and let himself drift.