Chapter Eight #2
When she pulls up to the front door, she squeezes her eyes closed, sighs and hopes for the best, but when she walks inside, she is immediately hit with the overwhelming, acrid smell of vomit.
She opens the window next to the front door even though the temperature outside is in the fifties and it’s already chilly in the rooms Raffy rarely pays to heat.
She sees through into the living room where he is passed out on the couch.
From the looks of the puke, he probably passed out last night and is still asleep, which is a good day for her because he’ll be able to have a coherent conversation after she wakes him up.
Talking to him with a hangover is always better than after he’s already started for the day.
She covers her mouth and nose with her scarf and sits down at the edge of the couch in front of his frail body, and she strokes
his hair for a moment and fights back tears—she feels like she should be used to it but she somehow seems to be mourning his
loss like it’s brand-new every time she sees him like this. She kisses his forehead and then gently shakes him awake.
“Hey, Raff. It’s me,” she says and watches his eyes flutter open. He jolts a little when he becomes aware of her and then
the vomit down the front of him, and the late hour. He looks at himself for a moment like a frightened child who wet the bed.
“Just give it to me,” she says, and he looks so fragile as he pulls his shirt over his head and hands it to her that she can
barely stand it.
“Can you get in the shower?” she asks him, and he doesn’t speak, just shakily stands and disappears into the back hall and then she hears the water running.
She throws his shirt in the washer and starts a load.
She walks around the kitchen and living room with a Hefty bag, dropping all the empty bottles inside, and cleans a few surfaces with a disinfectant wipe.
When he returns, he’s wearing a hoodie and sweats. He opens a Heineken to stop his hands shaking, then sits across from her
on the couch, where the indented cushion and pile of blankets tell the story of a man who has scarcely left that spot in many
days.
“How’s Drew?” he asks—always the first thing he says.
“Good,” she says, because she hasn’t decided if talking to him about what she found would be helpful or set him off in some
unknowable way.
“He never comes up. He said he would when he got his license,” Raff says.
“He will. It’s been a little chaotic,” is all she says, because he won’t know about Tia or the school bomb threat or anything
else. He thinks he’s being spied on by the government through his cell phone, so he refuses to turn it on half the time. Or
maybe it’s all a show and he does it so Sasha will still come up to see him in person.
“Your fridge is empty,” she says. “I ordered Instacart. Nothing healthy, don’t worry. Promise you’ll make something later,”
she says. Even though she sees a flash of embarrassment in his eyes, it’s never enough for him to change. There’s not enough
shame in the world to pull him out of the depths of his addiction.
“Sure, Sash. Thanks,” he says, and then she suddenly can no longer stand the stench of bodily fluids mixed with disinfectant and she tells him she needs some fresh air and goes out to the back and sits on one of the Adirondack chairs that circle the firepit they used to roast marshmallows in a hundred years ago.
He pops another beer and puts on a coat and follows her out.
He throws a few logs on the fire. As he fiddles with lighter fluid and kindling, she sees glimpses of the man he once was. Until the day that changed him.
On one rare occasion when Drew was young, Sasha left him with her mother and accompanied Raff to Mexico, where they stayed
at one of the renovated beach properties for a much-needed getaway. At the airport on the way home, they got tipsy on rum
punch at the airport bar and almost missed the flight. As they rushed to the back of the dwindling line to board, there was
a man, practically in tears. He said he’d lost his passport and it was his grandmother’s first trip to the US. “Marta,” he
said, pointing at a small woman sitting in the wheelchair in front of him, and asked if we could help her onto the plane and
keep an eye on her. “She’s ninety-two,” he said. “She’ll be so scared but has to get there for a funeral.” They agreed. Of
course they would help, Raff said immediately.
There had been some tip-off, of course, and that’s why the guy was trying to get rid of the bag in the poor woman’s wheelchair.
He vanished. She was unrelated to him and clueless about what was happening. Sniffer dogs came, police. Sasha and Raff were
both arrested. The only reason they let Sasha go is because Raff, after hours and hours of interrogation, took the blame to
protect her because he knew it was over for him whether she went down or not, and he’d never let that happen.
Three years in a Mexican prison, and he turned into someone else, someone who would never recover from the trauma.
They tried. But at some point, she had to do what was best for Drew and let Raffy drown in his own pain.
If they didn’t have Drew, maybe there would have been enough therapy and time and love and hope in the world for him to have survived it, but he didn’t survive. Not really.
She just could never bring herself to explain this to Tom. She wishes she could forget it herself. Maybe she’s still in some
eternal denial that it all happened. Sometimes she has trouble understanding how she could possibly live this whole other
life so separate from the life she lived with Raff. Some days it seems impossible.
“I wanted to show you something,” she says, pulling a 5x7-size piece of paper out of her bag with a photo printed on it. She
printed it only because she knows he won’t look at her phone like a normal person. It would turn into an argument, with her
begging for him to “just fucking look, for God’s sake,” she knows. Cameras, Big Brother watching, electronics bugged—the conversation
would take a paranoid turn, and she needs him to focus, so she just printed it and shows him Jack Hoffman’s face. “Does this
person look familiar at all to you?”
He squints at it, then takes it from her as he sits back down, still bent over, poking at the fire with a stick with his free
hand. He holds it back out to her.
“No. Should it?”
“I don’t know . . . I saw it and . . . I just know I’ve seen him before— Like, I’m sure.”
“Okay?” Raff says.
“He’s dead,” she adds.
“Oh,” Raff says. “Am I supposed to know what you’re getting at here?”
“No. I just wondered if it’s someone you used to know, maybe, and I’d only met him in passing. I just can’t put my finger
on it.”
“Sorry.” He hands it back. They sit together for a long while.
Raffy steadily drinks until his eyes are hazy and his trembling has subsided, and Sasha makes small talk about a television show they both like and about Drew trying out for basketball and about winter coming, and then the sun has sunk behind the red maples and dusk sets in.
Raff places his hand on top of hers, resting on the arm of the chair, and she feels the warmth and weight of it and lets it be.
And they sit some more, saying nothing at all until it’s almost dark, and then she goes into the house and collects the grocery delivery from the front step.
She makes him a pot of pasta and puts a loaf of parbaked garlic bread in the oven and tells him not to burn the place down
and that she set a timer. He’s back in his well-worn spot on the couch with a blanket around his shoulders. She almost leaves,
but then she sits and waits the ten more minutes because she doesn’t trust that he won’t forget and burn the place down. She
slumps next to him in her big coat and they stare at an episode of the Carol Burnett show until the lonely, hollow ding of
the timer pierces the air from the kitchen, and then she gets up and fixes him a plate and places it on the coffee table in
front of him.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says. She doesn’t respond. She kisses him on the top of the head, leaves some cash on the
countertop, then quietly exits the front door and drives home.
She tries to put him out of her mind the way she does each time she leaves him, and she keeps the radio off and just sits
in the silence as she drives.
When she arrives home, she hears video game noises from the living room.
She thought maybe she’d ask Raffy’s advice about Drew at some point, but she couldn’t, and she knows she needs to confront the situation.
She hears the game pause, and she pulls off her coat and puts her bag on the counter.
As she heats up some water to make tea, Drew comes into the dim kitchen and takes a soda from the fridge, then leans against the counter.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey. Chloe get to bed on time?” Sasha asks.
“Yep,” he says, about to go back to the living room.
“Thanks,” Sasha says, and then, “Hey . . . Drew.” He pauses and looks at her. She has rehearsed the best way to ask him about
this without making him shut down completely. There is really no way. It will sound like an accusation even though she’ll
frame it as a question that could have a reasonable explanation.
“You were at that closed-down restaurant, Hefty’s, the other night and I happened to pass by and saw you . . . talking to
some guy . . .”
“Oh, you happened to be passing by?” he says with a humorless little laugh.
“First, I’m the mother in this situation and you won’t talk to me with that tone. If I want to follow you everywhere you go
every single day, I can do that. Second, I saw you give some guy money and he gave you something, and I could have leaped
to every conclusion and grounded you and jumped out of the car like a lunatic embarrassing you. I could have taken your phone,
yet here I am, talking to you about it calmly. So try again,” she says.
He sighs, swallows. “So was there a question in there somewhere?” he asks.
“What were you doing giving a stranger money at an abandoned building? Yes. That’s a question.”
“Post Malone tickets,” he says, flatly.
“What?” she asks.
“That’s a person. Like, music. A concert. Tickets were sold out and so I bought some off this guy from school,” he says.
“I know who it is. Why would you be getting them late at night in an abandoned building?”
“I don’t know. That’s where him and his friends hang out—take girls. Probably drink and cause trouble, too . . . before you
ask, but I was just there for the tickets,” he says, and if he’s lying, he’s good at it. He didn’t know I saw him, so he has
to be making this up on the spot, and what’s unsettling about that is it came to him so quickly. The details. There is no
way that guy was a classmate. He had to be thirty at least.
“I saw a small backpack. You need a bag for two tickets?” He stumbles a moment at this. Then just shakes his head.
“It was dark. Maybe that’s just what you thought you saw,” he says. Okay, he’s gonna play games. Sasha won’t take the bait.
“So where are the tickets?” she says instead.
“Gave them to Roxie. They were for her,” he says, looking at the floor.
“That was nice of you,” she says, turning to take the kettle off the stove, pouring the hot water into a mug and dipping her
peppermint tea bag. “You don’t have to hide things from me, you know. Like if you’re in some kind of trouble. I saw construction
paper in your room—red circle cutouts the same shape as that school bomb threat,” she says, turning to him. He puts his soda
down and his mouth hangs open.
“Are you actually serious? Now you’re going in my room?
For your information, I was making pumpkins and bloodshot eyes and all that other crap with Chloe you asked me to help her with.
You wanna talk about who’s hiding stuff from who?
” he says, being sure to keep his tone in check because taking his phone or car away are real threats he knows she’ll follow through with.
“What does that mean?” she asks, incredulously.
“It means why do you enable him?” he says.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, still playing dumb.
“How’s Dad? Did you make sure to leave him money that you tell yourself he’ll buy food with when you know the truth?” he says,
and she did not expect this.
“There’s a fine line between enabling and keeping him alive,” is all she can bring herself to say, because she’s shocked that
he knows this and also feels protective of Raffy and equally protective of Drew. She doesn’t want him involved in adult matters,
but he’s noticed things. He’s a smart kid.
“Okay, Mom,” he says.
“You should go see him next weekend. He asks about you,” she says.
Drew purses his lips and gives a small nod, then disappears back into the living room, where Sasha hears the dramatic music
and gun sounds from his video game. She takes her mug and begins to make her way to check on Chloe before she takes her long-awaited
hot bath.
After she turns on the water, she realizes she left her phone on the counter. Halfway down the stairs, she can see into the
kitchen over the open banister, and there’s Drew walking in and then stopping and staring at her bag on the counter. He cocks
his head sideways and looks at the paper printout of Jack that’s sticking out the top. He has a puzzled look on his face.
Then she watches him glance left and right, and he goes over and plucks the image out of the top of her bag.
He stares at it a minute, then folds it roughly, shoves it into his pocket and quickly leaves the room.
What in the hell would her son want with a stranger’s photo—a dead man’s photo?
Unless that man is not a stranger at all. Or not dead.