Chapter 25 Larissa #2
“I hate being broke,” I said, so quietly I was surprised he heard me.
“It won’t always be like this,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re too industrious.”
“Lots of very hardworking people live in poverty.”
“Yeah, but you’ve got the other stuff. The business sense, the tenacity, the intuition.”
“You can tell all that just from sharing a dog with me?” I teased.
“No, I can tell because I see it.” He turned to me now and looked me in the eye.
The corner of my lip twitched.
“I can either chase the life I want or I can settle for the life I have, Chris. And I will never settle. That doesn’t mean I’ll ever get anywhere. It just means I won’t ever stop trying.”
He studied me quietly and I took in a deep breath and let it out.
“Sometimes, when I’m feeling sorry for myself,” I said, “I think about how rich I’d be five hundred years ago. I get to drink coffee every morning imported from foreign lands. I have sugar just lying around and fruits out of season.”
“The finest textiles,” he said, nodding at my Hawaiian dress with Woofarine’s face on it.
I laughed and rested my head against the seat. “Five hundred years ago you’d be sticking leeches on people and doing incantations to rid them of demons.”
“We still do the leech thing,” he said. “I’d be an apothecary. Probably growing my own herbs. And doing the demon thing.”
“I’d be a bar wench,” I mumbled.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’d own the tavern.”
I smiled softly. I didn’t believe it, but I appreciated that he said it.
“It helps to put things in perspective,” I said. “I’m lucky when I think about it.”
He didn’t answer me and we slipped into silence again.
I raised my phone, took the picture, sent it through. And then we just sat there, the freeway humming nearby.
It was weird because technically we should be driving home now, but he didn’t make any move to leave, and I didn’t really want to leave either. It was like our talks in the doorway, the ones that just kept going.
“How have the nightmares been?” I asked, looking at him. “Are you still having them?”
He was quiet for a long beat. “Yes.”
“They’ll get better,” I said.
“Eventually,” he said. “Or so they say.”
I peered back at the billboard.
“My mom drank herself to death.”
I looked over at him. “What?”
“She died of cirrhosis of the liver. She was an alcoholic.”
I blinked at the side of his face. “Chris…” I breathed.
“I have never said those words to anyone outside of therapy. Ever.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “You haven’t told Mike?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I just didn’t,” he said, turning to me. “I’m not ashamed of her. That’s not why. I understand it’s a disease and there were things out of her control. I’m ashamed of myself because I should have known.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. I didn’t.”
I watched him in the silence.
“It didn’t even feel like she drank a lot,” he said. “She’d have a mimosa at breakfast. A cocktail with lunch, two or three glasses of wine with dinner—I mean, she was retired. She was with her friends, she was just enjoying life.”
“Is that all it takes?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah. Five drinks a day for five years, that’s all it takes.
Especially for women. I had never, in my entire life, seen her drunk or even buzzed.
I mean, now that I look back, it’s probably because her tolerance was so high.
She always liked her wine, but it was never an issue.
She was a hospitalist, an incredibly functional person. ”
His eyes were sad. “Why didn’t I see it? I should have known. I’m a pharmacist. I know about addiction, know what dependency looks like.”
“Chris…”
“I sent her wine for her birthday,” he said, almost more to himself than to me. “That haunts me now. Like I shipped her an expensive poison as a present.”
I pivoted in my seat. “Okay, first of all, you shouldn’t feel guilty about enabling what you didn’t know was going on,” I said. “She was a doctor, yes?”
He nodded.
“You’re telling me she didn’t notice? She didn’t know what could happen? There weren’t points in her decline where she could have taken steps to save herself? There weren’t doctors or friends who were with her a lot more than you were who called her out on it? Tried to intervene?”
“There were, but—”
“I lost my voice screaming for my dad to change. I was never loud enough for him to hear me. And you probably wouldn’t have been either.
The reality is that most people with addiction won’t do what they have to do for anyone else.
They have to want to do it for themselves, have to hit their rock bottom and decide to save their own lives.
You didn’t know, Chris. And it sounds like she didn’t want you to. It’s not. Your. Fault.”
We stared at each other over the center console, and I watched my words move over him. The almost desperate look in his eyes transformed into something softer and hopeful. Like maybe what I said was the truth. Maybe he wasn’t responsible for the actions of everyone around him after all.
Chris took a lot upon himself. I saw it. The way he always looked out for Mike. The way he took such good care of Woofarine.
The way he took care of me.
I thought about the nuts he’d tossed in the trash at the cabin.
I kept coming back to it. It didn’t even surprise me that he checked the pantry for me.
It didn’t surprise me that he found me something to eat today, or that he took me to get these pictures.
In fact, it would surprise me if he didn’t.
Chris loved with his whole heart. He gave all of himself to the people he cared about.
And he cared about me.
I could see it. The gentle way he looked at me sometimes reminded me a little of the way Mike looked at me, even though I knew rationally it was not even close to the same thing.
And I couldn’t explain how I knew, but telling him that his mom’s death wasn’t his fault meant something to him because what I thought mattered.
It’s why he told me and nobody else. My words carried a different weight for him, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why.
Unless maybe I was for him what he’d become for me.
A friend. Maybe even one of the closest he had.
I studied him in the light of the billboard. He studied me back.
“I think she would have really liked you,” he said quietly.
“And I would have thanked her for raising such a good human being,” I said.
Something flashed across his expression, but it was gone before I could tell what it was.
“I’m not good,” he said. “Believe me. I don’t always do the right thing.”
“But you always try.”
He breathed out like the praise took something from him. He looked so vulnerable sitting there. I had the strongest urge to hug him. To put my hand over his or climb into his lap and hold him.
I didn’t realize Mike hadn’t been there for him. And maybe that was my fault. Now that I was in Mike’s life, maybe I was taking space that otherwise might have gone to Chris.
Who comforted Chris when he needed it? Nobody.
And that broke my heart.
Something moved beyond the base of the billboard and disrupted the moment.
I turned and leaned forward to look out the windshield in the glow of the headlights.
There was an animal tangled in the blaze-orange plastic fencing lining the lot. I gasped and unbuckled my seat belt.
“What?” Chris asked.
“Something’s stuck in the fence,” I said, getting out. “I think it’s a baby deer.”