Chapter 22
EIGHT YEARS LEFT
I showed up at Mom’s around dinnertime. I stood on the porch for a while without knocking, watching through the lit-up window as young women gathered around the old dining room table.
They laughed and gossiped as they passed dishes of chicken and green beans, and I remembered all the dinners I’d had with Mom and the girls.
My first real family, the way I thought of it.
That warm-belly feeling of food on the table and people you loved around it.
One of the girls must have spotted me peeking through the window because Mom came out looking to scare off a prowler. I didn’t know how far gone I was until I saw her face. There was genuine fear in her eyes. I had barely slept or eaten in days, and I near collapsed in her arms.
She put me in one of the empty rooms, and I woke to softness and steaming broth just as I had years ago when I’d escaped the shed.
Time folded in on itself as I made my way downstairs and found a wrapped plate on the table.
I didn’t feel much like eating, but I pushed the chicken around and nibbled the potatoes to make Mom feel good.
I passed a large mirror in the hall and caught the first sober glimpse of myself in a while. I was bone thin, and my skin was dull and gray. I was blurred at the edges, fading. The lonely ghost once again.
I found them out on the back porch talking in low voices over candles.
Tima was curled up in her usual chair, Phoebe sat on the ground with her feet bare, and Martha and Mom were on the couch.
I tried not to think about who was missing.
I was too raw to unearth her right now; every thought and movement felt like it was brushing against an open scrape.
They all got up and wrapped around me in a big cluster. I seized up inside, waiting for it to be over. I didn’t want to be touched.
They set me up on the couch and swaddled me in a thick blanket.
Mom gave me some hot tea, and I sipped on it.
What I wanted was something stronger, to blunt all that I was feeling.
I thought about what I had stashed in the glove compartment of my car, or various coat pockets and drawers in my house.
I could make an excuse about needing to be alone. It would be easy.
I tried to stand up, and Martha pulled me back down. She whispered that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was gonna stay right there and drink my goddamn tea.
I thought about telling them what had happened in Austin.
But when I tried to put it into words, it didn’t make sense.
I’d gotten naked among strangers, and maybe something’d happened, or maybe it hadn’t.
Maybe I had cheated on Tate. I couldn’t be certain of any of it, but either way I felt used up, dirty. A worthless demon child.
I spent the next few days in a tense fog of paranoia and formless rage. I ate plate after plate of Mom’s meatloaf and potatoes, heat radiating from my skin, and then puked it up in oily streams. Afterward, instead of feeling relief, this black hole opened up in the empty space.
There were times I could hear a dog panting in the corner of the room, or I’d see a flash of white moving just out of view. Some moments, I felt I was already in hell.
All I really wanted was a drink, or a bump, or a little bead of heroin. I’d have taken anything set in front of me if it promised a world in which my every nerve wasn’t exposed to blistering reality, or where every regret didn’t come streaming back to torment me.
More than anything, even more than the drugs, I yearned for Hess. The grounding comfort of her presence, and the way she always knew what to do. I had never felt warmer and more whole than when she was there, caring for me. Loving me.
I knew why I’d driven her away, but part of me wondered if it’d all been selfish whim. This petty need to experiment and be free when all I really wanted was someone to love and be loved by. I had always done my best work when she was with me; I was only truly solid in her presence.
But that part of my life was over, and I couldn’t go back.
Mom came in after a few days and told me Tate was there to see me. I couldn’t talk to him the way I was. Part of me blamed him for what had happened, that he hadn’t protected me. Another part felt guilty and ashamed, like I’d betrayed him, and myself.
So I told her to tell him to leave me alone.
But he came back one night, late. He knelt in the front yard and yelled up at my window. I saw Mom trying to get him to leave, but he wouldn’t go until I came down. I was starting to feel better, and I couldn’t let Mom deal with him for me. She’d already done so much.
I went downstairs in my borrowed housecoat and slippers.
I must have looked like a little old lady, because Tate smirked at me in this glazed way.
He was on his knees in the grass, and his dark-blue shirt was soaked through with sweat.
He looked pitiful in a way I’d never seen him; we’d never been separated by altered states like this.
“Lou. You are my goddess of the night. Of the forest. Of the forest at night.” His eyes swiveled in their sockets. “I am your disciple. I dedicate my life to the worship of you.”
He unbuttoned his shirt and opened it to reveal his chest. Blood trickled down from long, thin slashes across his pecs, forming the letters L-O-U.
Mom gasped and brought her hand to her mouth, taking a step back toward the house. I wasn’t sure what to do for a moment. He looked so pathetic kneeling there. Not like someone who was dangerous or deserved punishment, but someone in pain who desperately needed help.
I crawled to him in the grass, and I put my arms around him. Then I pulled him up to his feet and supported his swaying body as we went inside. Mom kept her distance as I dressed his wounds and gave him some water.
I packed up my scant possessions and led him half conscious to my car. Mom offered to let him stay, but we both knew it wasn’t right. Her house was a sanctuary for young women. They couldn’t be worried about some handsome junkie moaning from the next room.
We went back to my house, and I put him to bed.
While he slept, I had to find something to do with my hands and my brain.
The house hadn’t been cleaned in months, so I started clearing away trash, wiping down every surface, hand-washing the floorboards.
I went to the grocery store as soon as it opened and bought enough food for an army.
I covered the kitchen with trays of muffins.
Tate took bites, and then threw them up into a trash can next to the bed.
I held back his beautiful, tangled hair.
Mostly I let him ride the wave alone. There was no saving him from it.
The studio in Paris had sent a demo pressing of the tracks Tate and I’d recorded. I finally opened the package, took out the record, and set it on the player.
The sound was dissonant, hard on the ears, lacking any melody. It made my skin crawl. It was like receiving a letter from a self far gone, and I imagined her still in Europe smoking junk in a bathroom while the building burned down around her, awaiting my response.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was pure dog shit. This wasn’t music. This was the sound of a hammer flattening a mind into a thin disc.
I put logs and old newspaper in the fireplace and lit it with a match. I watched the flames catch and grow, and when it was big and hot, I tossed the record in. It melted slowly, the black goo hissing as it covered the wood, banishing that terrible sound back to wherever it came from.
Tate stepped out of the bedroom for the first time and sat next to me in a pile of blankets.
Neither of us had anything to say.
Instead, we watched the fire together, and we lost ourselves in its shifting, primal power.