14. December 1995, Part III didn’t love her in the past tense.”“Where will you go from here?”
DECEMBER 1995, PART II
"I DIDN’T LOVE HER IN THE PAST TENSE.”
T he countdown on the timer had started the moment Julia moved to Santa Barbara. She was focused, ambitious, and driven, and he wasn’t. She knew what she wanted; he didn’t. Things changed; priorities shifted.
But she wasn’t fucking Kevin. She never had been. He could prove it to himself, if he wanted to. Julia had once told him the name of Kevin’s fiancée, and that she was the trustee for that foundation that did all the underwriting on NPR.
It wasn’t like he was hurting anyone. It would put his mind at ease, finally.
So the next morning, William dialed 411 and requested the listing for the DeSmet Family Foundation in New York City.
“Nicole DeSmet’s office; Dawn speaking.”
“Hi Dawn; this is the wedding photographer,” he said. “I’m calling to confirm the date with Nicole.”
Silence. “The wedding is off. I already took care of that with you.”
His guts heaved with nausea, but he thought fast. “Ah, right, I’m so sorry; I got my paperwork mixed up here. The reason I had Nicole on my call list is actually because I wanted to let her know that I changed my cancellation policy. Depending on the reason for cancellation, I can sometimes refund a client’s deposit. Since Nicole cancelled very recently, I’m reaching out as a gesture of good faith.”
Dawn practically squeaked. “Wow, that’s so honest, and generous!”
So Dawn was young and na?ve. That was promising. “Well, if Nicole ever needs a photographer in the future, I want her to remember me.”
“I’m sure she will!”
“So, if you can just share with me the reason behind the cancellation, I’ll verify whether or not I can offer her a refund.”
“Oh. Well...” She giggled a bit. “I don’t know if I should say.”
William closed his eyes and crossed his fingers that she was as gullible as she was na?ve. “I’m sorry, I should have explained. It’s just, the specific circumstances behind the cancellation determine whether or not Nicole qualifies.”
“Okay; but, um... maybe I should–”
“For example, was it a mutual decision?” He was desperate now for any shred of intel.
“Um... no.” After a moment’s hesitation, Dawn added, “Kevin broke it off.”
“I see.” William’s heart threatened to hammer its way right through his sternum: No, no, no, it said. Please, please, please... “I’m sorry to keep pressing, Dawn, but the attorneys are such sticklers. They’ll insist on knowing the exact reason why.”
Dawn met his ploy with silence.
“I know – it’s incredibly annoying,” William plowed ahead with a forced chuckle, “not to mention intrusive. Lawyers, right?”
She reciprocated with a breathy laugh, but still said nothing. Just as William was about to try again, she finally spilled, keeping her voice to a near-whisper.
“He fell in love with another woman – a student of his, actually. Dumped Nicole so he could be with her. And Nicole was the one who funded their research, too. Can you believe it?” Dawn scoffed in disgust. “If anyone has earned a refund on her wedding deposits, it’s Nicole.”
William wasn’t sure why they called it heartbreak, because the pain centered more on the intestines. It felt like someone was using a dull implement – a wooden spoon, perhaps – to gouge them out.
He had seen it in the movies, but he had always assumed it was just melodrama – this curling into a fetal position on the floor, gasping for air. Weeping into a wet spot on the carpet, grasping at the fibers for support. He didn’t know that kind of thing happened in real life.
Some time later, he didn’t know how long, he managed to pull himself back up into his bed. And he stayed there for a month.
A sixteenth of an inch at a time. Digging down through the epidermis and dermis, the layers of fat, the abdominal muscle wall.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t eat. He lost half the weight he had painstakingly put on since his growth spurt at age fifteen. The only reason he didn’t lose all of the weight was because of the Jameson he was drinking to help him sleep.
Disentangling the innards, pulling them out, loop by loop.
His mother begged him to talk to her, to tell her what had happened this time. But he had forgotten how to talk. His mother said time heals all wounds, so how was it that every day it only hurt more?
The phone rang, tentatively at first, then more insistently. His mother passed on all of the concerned messages from Haze, Mike, and Paul. She told them he had mono.
It would never, ever be okay again.
Finally his mother threatened to have him 5150ed. And since William had seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest , he got out of bed and submitted to a sandwich at the kitchen table.
“Maybe you should try one of those antidepressants,” his mother suggested skeptically. His parents had never been big believers in all that psychobabble, as they called it. Instead, wherever a good old-fashioned bootstraps mentality fell short, they supplemented with spiritual guidance. But after Andy’s predecessor transferred to another parish, they seemed to have lost faith in that, too.
A few minutes later, Mike arrived. He sat across the kitchen table, the shock of William’s wraithlike appearance registering plainly on his face. It was clear that Mike’s presence was intended to buck him up somehow – to remind him of all the fun he was missing out on with the band. How much the band mates missed him. How much the girls in the audience missed him.
The girls.
After Mike went home that night, William unlocked his father’s liquor cabinet and swiped another bottle of Jameson from its rapidly-dwindling supply. Surely his father must have noticed by now. He sat in his bedroom, consuming it, and thought about the girls.
Haze and Michelle definitely helped him forget his problems, but they weren’t always at his disposal. Some days he was left high and dry with his thoughts, and his Jameson. What he realized, as he drained the bottle, was that he needed more of those forgetful days, and fewer of the high and dry ones.
Julia had been right all along – underneath the restrained exterior, he was a roiling, boiling, seething hotbed of passions. He liked to feel good. He deserved to feel good, for a fucking change.
He couldn’t drink on the job, so he did it before going to Dunphy’s. Not enough to dull his job performance, since his talent there was part of his game. Just enough to flirt comfortably with the waitresses, and the new hostess, and the female prep cooks.
Eventually, the alcohol started wearing off in mid-shift, so he stashed some of those mini-bottles of liquor in the interior pocket of his coat. The ones he swiped from Haze’s house.
He told himself he was tipsy. And staying tipsy was the key. It carried away the last of his inhibitions, so when a waitress passed his station on the way through the kitchen – or a hostess, or a female prep cook – he invited her to accompany him to the walk-in, or to the alley out back. If she actually obliged, that was a good sign. The things that went on in the walk-in and the alley behind Dunphy’s were legendary.
He even succeeded with a customer once, a woman in her mid-forties who asked to pay her compliments to the chef after trying the cioppino, so Paul sent him out. She slipped him her number, and he spent a sleepless night at her condo.
On Fridays at MacGowan’s, he ordered Jameson, neat, and then another one. It bolstered his courage so he could get up on stage and broadcast his heartbreak publicly. The girls in the audience practically swooned over that stupid fucking song he had written for Julia.
Afterward, he didn’t pack up his guitar and go straight to Haze’s house like he used to. He hung out with the guys and had another Jameson, neat. And then another.
Cindy gave him a concerned look as she pushed his third drink across the bar. “You okay?”
He grinned and lifted his glass in response. “Cindy, I’m better than okay. I’m on fire.” And he went to mingle with the groupies.
The withholding of his attention was actually his most powerful tool, more powerful than the giving of it – at least where most of them were concerned. It was like catnip. Chat her up a bit, get her number, and then not call. If she came back to the bar the next Friday, sometimes all he had to do was walk her out back. Sometimes he was too lazy to go even that far, and he would lead her to the men’s room.
Drinking at MacGowan’s was getting expensive, so he learned to start at home. Just enough to put on his best show, but not sloppy yet. After the show, he’d order two or three more from Cindy.
When Cindy pushed his Jameson (neat) across the bar one Friday in May, he thought he detected her disapproval tight around her mouth. Bemused, he watched her retrieve a wet rag and flick it furiously over the bar. He wondered why he had never fully appreciated that curvy bombshell physique before. He had already enjoyed success with one middle-aged woman. Why not this one?
He propped his elbows on the bar and leaned forward. “Hey Cindy, I think I finally just figured it out.”
“Amaze me.”
“You look exactly like Geena Davis.”
She wasn’t smiling. “And you’re auditioning to be Brad Pitt?”
“If you like.”
“Not really.” She hurled the rag into a bus tub. “Let me guess. You think hey, she's a single mom, pushing forty, three kids. She wears corsets with her tits spilling out and serves booze to horny assholes all night. I'll be a breath of fresh air. She'll be so grateful. ”
He recoiled, annoyance tightening his chest. What the hell was wrong with her these days? In the beginning, she had practically thrown herself at him.
She leaned across the bar at him so abruptly that he flinched backward. “When you first came in here, I flirted with you because I saw a cute, sweet kid who needed a boost of confidence. Now I see a pathetic, entitled, drunken douchebag.”
He scraped his bar stool back so roughly that it tipped over, and he stumbled. He made sure to bring his drink with him. He staggered across the room, gulping it down all at once and then slamming the glass on the stage so hard that it shattered.
His brother was there, clapping a hand on his back. In a low, soothing tone, Mike said, “Hey man, you okay?”
“Fucking incredible.” He clambered onto the stage, snatched the now-disconnected microphone and began parodying his own song. Some girls near the stage looked up at him and giggled.
William paused long enough to stretch his arm out. He tried in vain to settle his pointer finger on the amorphous, wavering female specters below the stage.
“Look, Mike! It works no matter how bad I sing it!”
Mike humored him with an awkward grin. He was climbing onstage but, sensing an intervention, William dropped the mic, leaped from the stage, and draped his arms across the shoulders of two of the girls. Including the one with the copper hair and the cute little overbite.
“Ladies, let me buy you a drink from the waiter in the back room. I’m on the outs with the bartender at the moment.”
They giggled and followed him into the back room where the tables were. He didn’t remember very much after that, except that he couldn’t take his eyes off the Julia doppelganger. She told him her name, but he promptly forgot it – it distracted from the illusion. And he was definitely hitting it off with her, too. She leaned across the table, tossed her copper hair. Flashed her cute little toothy smile at him. Let him buy her drink after fruity drink and offered him sips of it from the same spot that her lips had touched.
Increasingly he ignored her friend, especially after she started letting him nuzzle her freckled throat and slide his hand up her bare thigh. At one point, Mike appeared and bent over his ear.
“Beer goggles, dude. Beer goggles.”
William shoved him away, so Mike shrugged and pulled up a chair next to the other girl to play wingman. Then the Julia doppelganger reached into her purse and retrieved a colorful little pill of some kind. With her flirty grin, she held it to his lips, offering it to him.
He eyed it warily, willing it to come into focus. “What’s that?”
She leaned into his ear and whispered, “X.”
Mike spotted it. “Ohhhh, fuck yeah; share the wealth!”
Even under the influence of so much alcohol, William still glanced around to make sure they weren’t being watched as the Julia doppelganger passed pills under the table to both Mike and her friend. Then she retrieved one for herself and held it in front of her lips with a seductive grin at William. Inviting him to take his along with her.
Fuck it. “What do I do with it?”
Everyone at the table laughed, and Mike good-naturedly berated him for his na?veté. The Julia doppelganger took his tablet, placed it on his tongue, and ordered him to swallow it whole. He washed it down with his drink.
Not long afterward, she groped him and whispered, “Let’s all go back to my place.”
Everything after that was a frenzy of motion, a jumble of voices, sporadic glimpses of flesh. He was aware of being very hot, and insatiably thirsty.
In the midst of it all, a vague memory of his brother’s command. “Shove over, Will. Switch with me.”
A bolt of pleasure, his eyes rolling back, crying out with the shock of it.
His eyes opened, and it was daylight. Disoriented, he waited for the room to come into focus. He became gradually aware of a body entangled with his. Wincing, he opened his eyes a little wider. Lifted his head.
They were lying on the floor, naked, covered by nothing at all. She snored delicately, her head on his shoulder, her leg slung over his.
He mumbled, “Julie?”
She stirred a bit, but didn’t open her eyes. “Brittany.”
Seized with panic, he glanced around frantically and found Mike on the bed a few feet away. Naked. With the Julia doppelganger.
William scrambled to a sitting position. Scuttled backward, across the carpet, as fast as he could. Brittany jerked fully awake and rolled herself up to a sitting position. Blinked at him, her bleach-blonde hair a tousled mess, wisps of it falling into her makeup-smeared face.
He sprang to his feet, cursing the pounding in his head, and ran to the bathroom. Heard Brittany say, “What’s his problem?” He snatched a towel, and wrapped it around his waist.
When he came back into the room, he saw the pills, empty bottles, and pipes strewn everywhere. Brittany sauntered naked around the room in search of her clothes, wholly unfazed. William raked his hands through his hair, trying to stop the room from spinning.
“Jesus Christ.”
In the bed, Mike and the Julia doppelganger stirred, stretched. Mike’s eyes flew open wide as he took in his surroundings, and then he grinned. “Whoa. Hell of a party.”
“What the fuck did we do?!” William demanded, snatching his clothes off of the floor.
Mike glanced around the room. “Everything?”
The Julia doppelganger sat up in bed now. Her copper hair was clearly out of a bottle. What he had thought were freckles on her throat were actually moles. And she didn’t have a cute little overbite like Julia’s – she just needed an orthodontist.
She swung herself off the bed, only to step in a puddle of vomit on the carpet. “Oh, God.”
Mike watched her scrambling into her underwear and observed, “I think we’d better bounce.”
William nodded and followed him into the living room, carrying his clothes, still wearing only a towel. After pulling on his boxers, Mike clapped his hand on William’s shoulder and said, “Thanks, bro. Best night I’ve had in a long time. Can’t say the best night of my life – there was this time Jimmy and I got twacked with these four chicks–”
“Shut the fuck up, Mike.”
“Jesus, dude, what’s your problem?”
Thoroughly panicked, William scrambled into his clothes and stumbled out of the apartment, down a set of stairs, and into an unfamiliar streetscape, cringing at the bright sunlight.
He had no idea what neighborhood he was in. He didn’t recognize any of these buildings. He staggered to the nearest major intersection and looked at the signs. He frowned – he didn’t recognize the street names either. He knew most of the major streets in San Francisco. He had traveled down almost all of them during his explorations on his motorcycle.
Also, there were a lot of black people around here. Was he in Excelsior, or Visitacion Valley? Maybe he was in Crocker-Amazon. He stopped someone and asked which way to the nearest Muni station.
The man’s wary eyes traveled the length of William – the rumpled clothes, the facial scruff, the wavy hair darkened with grease and standing on end. “There’s no Muni in Oakland.”
Fuck me.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon before William made it back to MacGowan’s. His motorcycle wasn’t there. Had someone brought it home for him? He was a bit shaky by now. He could not wait to get home, eat something, and wash it down with some Jameson. Then he would take a shower and brush his teeth before he had to go to work.
When he finally made it home by foot, he heaved a sigh of relief to find the motorcycle parked out front. Then, to his dismay, he spotted Haze sitting on the front step, a duffel bag at her feet, her knees drawn up to her chin. Dread already welled in William’s stomach.
It was going to be bad.
He stopped in front of her. She wouldn’t say anything, so he prompted, “What’s the matter?”
Slowly, she clambered to her feet. Stepped toward him and looked in his face for a moment with those somber eyes. Then, her face screwed up. With his reflexes as numbed as they were, he failed to anticipate her as she wound back and slapped him hard across the face.
“What the fuck?!” he spat out, clutching his smarting cheek.
She reached into her duffel bag and, to his horror, produced the photos he had taken of himself with Haze. The ones of them together at Grand View Park, and McWay Falls, and all the other places he had taken her in a futile attempt to recreate the magic he once felt with Julia. Haze flipped through them casually, one by one, as if he weren’t even there.
His mind whirled. He had left those in his bedroom. “How did you…?
“You didn’t come over last night after the show, like you said you would.”
His eyes flew open wide, and he froze. He had completely forgotten about it.
“I hadn’t heard from you,” she continued. “I called Mike, but he wasn’t answering. I went to MacGowan’s, but they were closed, and your bike was still out front. I didn’t want to call your house that late at night, but I came over this morning because I was so worried. I was talking with your sister in the kitchen when the rest of your family came home, freaking out because you were missing. And then Mike said he brought your motorcycle home because you had gone home with some ugly-ass skank. That in fact, she was the ugliest-ass skank you had ever gone home with. Your sister tried to shut him up, but he didn’t get the hint. Nobody knew I was in the kitchen, you see.”
She was still flipping through the photos of herself. She flipped again, and landed on the identical ones he had taken of Julia.
William flinched. His first instinct was to snatch them from her, but he knew that would only escalate things. It might even leave those precious mementos in tatters. Instead, he sat down on the front step because his trembling knees would no longer hold his weight.
He patted the step beside him. “Haze. Please sit. There’s something I want to say.” At the skeptical look on her face, he added, “I promise – no bullshit.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she complied. She was holding the photo he had taken of Julia at McWay Falls in Big Sur. The one he had taken of her right before proposing. He almost panicked at the idea of any harm coming to it, but he forced himself to remain calm.
“Everything I’ve done has been me trying to forget,” he said quietly. “It’s not an excuse, I know. You deserved so much better. I’m sorry I caught you up in all my crap.”
Curling her lip in disgust, she shoved the photos at William and left without another word. He spent a few minutes gathering his wits. His family waited inside; he had to let them know he was okay. He went upstairs long enough to mumble his apologies to his agitated parents and his sheepish brother, who no doubt realized the havoc he had wrought. He grabbed a bag of potato chips from the pantry and retreated back downstairs to his bedroom.
Haze had violently jerked open the drawer of his bedside table – tore it off its runner. It dangled precariously. His address book lay open on his bed – his “little black book” stuffed with feminine names. His closet door was open and the box where he hid his memorabilia of Julia appeared to have vomited its contents onto the floor. He checked to make sure everything was still there, and then carefully replaced it all along with the photos of Julia that Haze had returned to him. Then he went out on the back patio and burned the photos of Haze in the fire pit.
Back in his room, he popped open the bag of chips and sat on the edge of his bed to eat them. Took a pull or two off the bottle of Jameson on his bedside table.
Was he just destined to burn his bridges with every woman who cared about him?
He heard a light knock on his bedroom door. “What?” he snapped.
“It’s Mom. Can I come in?”
He glanced around himself at the chaos that was his bedroom. She did not need to see any of that. Instead, he emerged from his room and went to sit on the couch in the in-law unit. His mother joined him there.
William hunched over, his elbows and forearms on his thighs, and frowned down at the carpet. His mother peered earnestly at him. They sat that way in silence for a long time.
Finally, he said, “I gave her an engagement ring. We were going to get married.”
Somehow, she knew he wasn’t talking about Haze. “I know. But Will, most high school sweethearts grow apart.”
“You and Dad didn’t.”
She opened her mouth, grappling unsuccessfully for a response.
“I should have listened to my gut,” he persisted. “I should have gone down there with her.”
“It’s not your fault, Will. She didn’t even try to make it work. It’s not like your dad and I haven’t had rough patches over the years. There were plenty of times I was ready to leave. We just worked through it because it was worth it. Maybe it was because we had you kids. Or maybe we’ve just been lucky. But the point is, you deserve to be with someone who thinks you’re worth the effort.”
William shook his head. “You don’t know the whole story, Mom. I fucked up. And also, the timing just wasn’t right.”
“Son, where relationships are concerned, the timing is never right. If someone is worth it, you sacrifice other things, the way you kept trying to for her. You were ready to give up a full-ride scholarship to go down there and be with her. But she didn’t love you as much as you loved her. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.”
He sat up straight now. Looked her in the eye. “I didn’t love her in the past tense, Mom. I still love her.”
“I know you do, Will.”
“I don’t know how to just shut that off.”
She put her arm around his shoulders, leaned the side of her head against his. “I’m sorry she hurt you. But all this stuff you’ve been up to? This is not you, son.” Her voice grew suddenly strained, choked with tears. “I know your dad and I screwed up. I know we weren’t around like we should have been. Your nonna did the best she could, but it wasn’t her job to raise you, and we never should have expected her to. She was too old and out of touch to keep up with a bunch of rowdy teenagers.”
“Mom, it’s okay–”
“No, it’s not okay, and I’m not finished,” she said fiercely, as if the floodgates had opened and she couldn't contain the truth anymore. “First we failed Jimmy, and then we enabled him out of guilt. And by enabling him, we failed the rest of you kids, too. I know that now, and Will? I’m so sorry. If I could go back in time, I’d fix it. I’d listen to Nonna and do everything differently. But all I can do now is learn, and do better.”
Startled by her sudden, frank confession, William pulled back to look her in the eye. “Mom–”
“That's why I’m telling you now that Jimmy’s getting paroled soon.” When William flinched in shock, she quickly added, “Don’t worry, I won’t let him set foot in this house, but I’m sure he’ll be hanging around the neighborhood. Getting back into trouble with his old crew. You need to get out of here, Will. Away from him, and Mike, and all the temptations they bring with them. You need to start over somewhere fresh, away from all the associations you have with this place.”
He considered a moment. “Where?”
His mother rubbed his back. “Have you ever given any thought to joining the military?”
William scoffed. “Do you really see me marching in lock-step with any group of people?”
“You might find the discipline and camaraderie in the military are exactly what fits the bill,” she replied. “And you could get money for college.”
William shook his head. “With my drug test results? Not even the military is going to want me.”
Her eyes broadcast pain. “Is it really that bad?”
“Bad enough.”
“You can clean up, Will. Go to rehab. ”
“Great; then that will be on my medical records for the military to see.”
“It can’t hurt to just talk to a recruiter. They might be able to work with you somehow. Or talk to your Uncle Frank. He was a Marine, you know.”
William’s smile was rueful. “And his Vietnam horror stories are supposed to inspire me?”
She frowned. “Frank’s very proud of his service. Ask him yourself, if you don’t believe me. He’ll tell you it made him a man.”
He sighed, and stared down at the floor again.
“Promise me you’ll just talk to him about it,” his mother persisted.
“Yeah, okay,” he grumbled. And without any further ceremony, he stood up, went back into his bedroom, and closed the door.
After finishing the bag of chips and taking another few swigs of Jameson, he glanced at the clock on his bedside table. Four o’clock; his shift started at five. If he hustled, he could drain this bottle before he had to leave. He worked at it until he knew that if he didn’t leave for work right now, he would be more than fifteen minutes late.
He parked his motorcycle in the alley as usual and staggered into Dunphy’s through the back door. Slung his coat over the hook so clumsily that he knocked over the entire coat rack. Went to stow his valuables in his locker, but couldn’t remember the combination, so he just left them in the chair by the lockers. Staggered through the kitchen to his station.
He scraped the grill to clean it but didn’t wipe up the detritus, so it smoked. He slammed the pots and pans until Paul looked up from his station to see what all the racket was about. He sliced his finger open and swore loudly. Seized a towel and wrapped it around his bleeding finger.
Paul rushed over, demanded a look at the injury, and flinched as the wall of Jameson fumes assailed his nostrils.
Slowly, calmly, Paul told a prep cook to go find Karen. Karen was to take William to the bathroom, rinse the wound and bandage it. Then, though it wasn’t a very deep cut, she was to take him to the ER and get his finger checked out .
“I don’t think he’s in any condition to drive,” Paul observed, looking directly at William, “seeing as how he’s in so much pain .”
Karen did take him to the bathroom and bandage his finger. From the grim look on her face, he knew – his employment at Dunphy’s was over.
How far he had fallen since eight months ago, when he resolved that Julia would hear only good things about him from her parents.
“Please don’t tell Julia about this,” he pleaded, his words coming out mushy through his numb mouth and tongue.
Karen froze, still holding his halfway-doctored hand in hers. “Why would I tell Julia?”
“So she can congratulate herself again on dumping me for the millionaire,” he sloshed out bitterly.
Karen frowned, as if confused. “What millionaire?”
William scoffed. “You don’t have to pretend for my sake. I know all about him.”
“About who? ” she demanded, and he had to admit, her look of consternation was convincing as fuck. Or maybe he was just that drunk.
“Kevin,” he spat out.
After a long, searching pause, Karen’s eyebrows lifted in recognition. “You mean the TA?”
“The Cat Stevens doppelganger.” His voice sounded very, very far away. His head was nodding, his neck suddenly unable to support its weight.
He couldn’t make out much of what Karen was saying as she resumed bandaging his finger, but his drink-addled brain seized on certain snippets, like just a friend .
Could it be?
All these months of numbing himself – this slow suicide he’d been committing – had it all been for nothing? Nothing but a big misunderstanding?
No.
No .
Dawn had told him... but then again, she didn’t exactly say.. .
What had she said?
“He fell in love with another woman – a student of his, actually. Dumped Nicole so he could be with her.”
He had interpreted it one way, but now he realized there was more than one interpretation. Dawn had said nothing to suggest that Kevin and the woman in question were a couple. In fact, she had never even mentioned Julia reciprocating Kevin's feelings.
For two seconds, his tattered heart grasped desperately at this tiny thread of hope. And then he remembered – it didn’t matter if this unlikely new interpretation was accurate. If Julia could see how zealously he had gone about degrading himself – how callously he demeaned others in the process – she would know he was just another drunken burn-out. Just like all the other men in his family.
And she deserved better.
On their way to her car, Karen led him out the back door and through the alley, where he had parked his own motorcycle. After pausing to vomit into the sewer grate, he swung himself onto the bike without warning – without even putting his helmet on first.
“Wait!” cried Karen, springing forward to touch his arm. “I’m taking you to the ER.”
“No, you’re not,” he shot back. She sprang back at the deafening blast of the engine, and he peeled away.
That was the last thing he remembered, until he woke up in yet another unfamiliar bed. Only this one was hard and cold like the ground. No sheets, no mattress. Loud, testosterone-drenched voices ricocheted off of sterile gray walls around him.
He sat up like a shot, and immediately crumpled back onto the bed. Wherever he was, the entire room was spinning.
Actually, come to think of it, he wasn’t in a room at all. He was in a cage with bars. Just like the albatross on his back.
Pain screamed in his finger, and he groaned. He opened his eyes just enough to look – a bloody bandage. He remembered that Julia’s mother had put it there.
He opened his eyes wider now. Sat up much more slowly this time. Took in his surroundings .
He was in jail.
“WHERE WILL YOU GO FROM HERE?”
After the jailer returned William’s belongings and walked him out, William stopped short in his tracks, not quite believing his eyes.
Haze said nothing; she just looked at him. He stopped in front of her a moment, and she blinked and turned away. Without a word between them, he followed her. She led him to an old Volkswagen Beetle that might once have been green, but was now olive, gray, and rust. Was it hers? If so, he had never seen it before.
She got in the driver’s side and leaned over to unlock the passenger side door. It squawked open, and he got in and buckled his seat belt. She started the car and tuned the radio to a Russian-language station on the AM band.
They rode along like that halfway to the Mission before William said, “I’ll pay you back.”
She still said nothing. Looked straight ahead.
After another minute, William asked, “How did you–”
“Mike called.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way to the Mission. She parked the car in front of a neighbor’s house and met its owner at the front door to return the keys. Then, with a fleeting glance at William, she turned toward her own house.
Was she really going to let him inside? Was she going to let him follow her, then slam the door in his face, just for theater? He certainly deserved it.
She unlocked the front door and held it open for him. With his hands in his jacket pockets, he shuffled into the foyer. Followed her into the living room and took a seat on the sofa when she beckoned him to.
Without a word, she went upstairs. His hands were shaking almost uncontrollably. He hadn’t eaten in a while; maybe his blood sugar was crashing. He didn’t feel hungry. His eyes wandered in the direction of the cart, with its mini-bottles.. .
The cart was empty. The party was over.
Haze came back downstairs, carrying a stack of sheets and a blanket. William rose from his seat and tried to help her put them on the sofa, but for some reason his hands were shaking so badly that he almost couldn’t control them. Come to think of it, he was a bit sweaty and clammy, too. Maybe he was coming down with something.
He looked up and saw her watching him. Followed her gaze to his trembling hands. He clenched them, trying to stop the shaking. His pulse fluttered in his neck.
She finished putting the sheets on the sofa, then slowly said, “You should eat.”
He nodded. He followed her into the kitchen, but she ordered him to sit at the table. She emerged from the kitchen a few minutes later with some kind of soup. He wasn’t hungry, and his hand was shaking so badly that the soup sloshed right out of the spoon. His stomach quivered with nausea.
Haze watched him struggle for a few minutes, then got up and went back to the kitchen. When she returned, she carried a can of beer.
“Drink this.”
His eyes snapped to it right away. The itching at the back of his throat…
She thrust it into his hands. “You need to drink it. You’ll feel better.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re going through withdrawal.”
The words crashed through his wall of denial like a sledgehammer. Still, he shook his head. “I’m tired and hungry.”
“I’m Russian. I know alcohol withdrawal when I see it.” She popped the top. It emitted a sumptuous hiss. “Going cold turkey could kill you.”
He looked up into her eyes, and her face promptly swam. He looked away, blinked rapidly and bit his tongue hard. He accepted the can and drained it all in practically one go.
His hands stopped shaking. The flu feeling vanished .
He dissolved. Folded his arms onto the tabletop and crumpled into them, his shoulders shaking.
She sat in the chair opposite him, but made no effort to console him. She calmly watched and waited until he got it out of his system. The grief, the terror of living, the shame, the denial – all pooled within some swollen, diseased organ of his soul that finally burst.
Spent, he sagged into the crook of his arm. Without even lifting his head, he said, “Why did you bring me here?”
She said, “You need to detox.”
He lifted his head. He was past shame, past hiding the ruins of his face from her. He swiped his hand over his eyes and said, “I can’t. I don’t have health insurance.”
“Go to General.”
He glared at her. “You’re joking, right?”
She pressed her lips together, grim. “Then you’ll have to taper.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I do.”
He looked up at her again in some surprise. She said, “Do you trust me?”
Did he trust her? He had wronged her, after all. Did he dare put himself in her hands? Did he have a choice?
He said, “How?”
“You’re going to have to be completely honest with me. If you are, you’ll stay out of the hospital. If you’re not, then you won’t.”
“Honest about what?”
She retrieved a pad of paper and a pencil from her desk and brought it back to the table. With the pencil hovering just above the pad, she said, “You have to tell me exactly how much you’ve been drinking every day.”
He propped his elbows on the tabletop and clutched his head in his hands. Hot shame seared his insides, and his eyes stung again. “At least a fifth of Jameson.”
She had that grim look again. “Every day.” It was a statement, not a question, but he nodded anyway. Slowly, she set the pencil down on the pad. She hadn’t bothered to write anything .
“Call your family,” she said. “You’ll be with me this week.”
She gave him one beer every hour – sixteen per day. The next day, ten beers – one every hour and a half.
The next it was eight, and the day after that, six.
During the day, he came with her to her studio. He sat in the office in the back and she snuck beers to him there. He read English translations of Russian literature that he borrowed from the bookcase in her house. He played games on the computer, listened to the radio or dozed fitfully on the loveseat. At night, he came home with her and she served him porridges of rice or buckwheat that she called kasha , and chicken broth with little flecks of dill in it. When he couldn’t sleep, she made him a tea of lemon balm, chamomile, and honey.
Now, in the cold light of sobriety, he looked in her bathroom mirror and no longer recognized the man he had become. This scruffy stranger staring back at him had aged five years in just a few months. He had no qualms about using people, including his first and most enduring friend, in a misguided attempt to escape his grief and pain. Not only that, he had allowed people who definitely did not have his best interests at heart to enable his worst impulses.
But also, in that same cold light, he could finally remember the man he once wanted to be. The man his grandmother had raised him to be. The man he had once aspired to be for someone he loved. The only question now was whether he could become that man all on his own because it was the right thing to do – because he wanted it – without requiring somebody else to do it for. After so many disastrous judgment calls, could he even trust his own gut? He wanted to rely on it to incorporate the best parts of himself with the best parts of the people he admired, and become his own man.
The sober man staring back at him wasn’t sure he could, but he desperately wanted to try.
On the fifth day there was a lull at the studio, and Haze joined him in the office. William sat on the loveseat and picked at the burrito she brought him and watched her as she ate. She sat in the office chair, her shaggy dark hair falling in a curtain over her cheeks, concealing her face from him as she leaned forward to take a bite. She looked different somehow, and it dawned on him that she was no longer deliberately streaking her hair with gray. She looked younger this way – her own age.
Her black halter crop top, with its plunging neckline, and her cut-off denim shorts offered minimal obstruction to the canvas that was her body: the mythical Pazyryk creatures stampeding down her arms. The occult-like ring tattoos on her fingers. The heads of the Madonna and Child on her back. The edifice of the cathedral on her breasts. The fish aligned vertically along the length of her shin.
The sexual urge seemed to have abandoned him, but he felt a yearning of some kind. He wanted to love her in the way he had loved Julia. He should have. He sensed that she wanted him to.
He said, “Why are you doing this for me?”
She looked up at him, startled. Still chewing. Taking her time with it, as if using it to consider her response. Finally, after swallowing, she admitted, “Because I’ve been holding out on you.”
William’s heart missed a beat. “Holding what out on me?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she slowly re-wrapped her burrito. Clearly, this was going to take a while. Or maybe it was going to take something out of her.
“Information,” she replied at last.
Blinking, all he could manage was a stupid echo. “Information.”
She nodded, wiping her mouth on her napkin, then neatly folding it. Finally, she lifted her eyes to his. They brimmed with something like guilt.
“And I wonder if it might have helped if you knew it all along.”
He caught himself leaning forward in his chair. Words abandoned him. All he could do was wait.
“Will...” She winced, then shook her head, as if to clear it. “Did Jimmy ever... do things to you?”
It took William a second to grasp what she meant, but when he did, he recoiled in denial.
She watched him like a hawk for several long seconds. And despite his best efforts, as the seconds ticked by, an unwelcome memory floated to the surface. A memory he had tried in vain to sink beneath years of denial, weed, and booze. The memory of his brother Jimmy, kneeling atop his chest. Slowly unzipping his jeans, one tooth at a time.
I bet you’d love to suck a real man’s cock, wouldn’t you?
Occasionally, while pinned beneath Jimmy, William detected something rigid pressing into his hip. It disgusted him, but at the time, he attributed it to an involuntary reflex on Jimmy’s part – the inevitable and entirely unintended result of physical contact. William knew only too well how little it took, and under the most inopportune circumstances, as well. But now, William wondered how unintentional and involuntary it had actually been.
William swallowed past the rising bile in his throat. “Nothing he really followed through on, anyway.” The words came out strangled.
Haze slowly nodded. She seemed to be making up her mind about something. “I’m not proud of what I’m about to tell you, but I’m even less proud of keeping it from you.”
William couldn’t fathom what was causing her such discomfort. She was usually so cool and collected – notwithstanding that one time she had administered him a well-earned slap. All he could do was brace for the bombshell on the horizon.
“I’m sure you’re aware, no thanks to your brothers, that meth makes you do incredibly stupid things,” she continued quietly. “And one of the incredibly stupid things I used to do was fuck Jimmy.”
William’s mouth went dry. The earth shifted on its axis. Summer changed to winter and back again in the time it took him to process her admission. “Wh- what ?!”
“Yeah,” Haze responded drily. “Or at least, I tried to.”
The truth opened up to him slowly, like a flower unfurling in the clear light of day. And what it revealed was going to rearrange everything he thought he knew.
“And Jimmy tried to fuck me,” Haze added, peering keenly at William, as if willing him to understand. “He really tried.”
“But he couldn’t,” William deduced at last.
She looked relieved that he was catching on. “Most of the time, no. ”
“Because he was gay.” He stated it like it was a fact he had known all his life, even though he had only known it a few seconds. Jimmy was gay. Of course he was.
Haze tucked her legs underneath her on the chair. “You deserve to know the truth, Will. Because even though Jimmy’s abuse was horrible and inexcusable, and it hurt you beyond anything I can imagine – it ultimately wasn’t about you. Not really, anyway. It was about Jimmy’s own internal conflict. His own self-loathing. But he didn’t get so messed up in the head all on his own. He had plenty of help along the way.”
William frowned. “What do you mean?”
Haze shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Do you know why the priest at Holy Cross got transferred? The one before your friend Andy?”
William blinked, unsure how the two subjects were related. “I... I heard something about inappropriate contact with parishioners.”
Haze gave a silent, rueful laugh and shook her head in dismay. And suddenly, understanding crashed over William like a rogue wave.
“Do you mean…?”
“Jimmy told me the story in a rare vulnerable moment, when he was crashing after a binge,” Haze began quietly. “He told me your parents brought him to the priest when he was only eleven in the hopes of ‘curing’ him or whatever, because back then, even psychiatrists said homosexuality was a mental illness. But I guess your parents didn’t trust psychiatrists, and I guess they thought they were protecting Jimmy’s privacy by bringing him to the priest, instead. And then the priest abused his position of trust to prey on the exact same vulnerable kid whose parents had sent him.”
“Oh, God.” William’s stomach churned with nausea. “So the priest got reassigned because of what he did to Jimmy?”
“Among other boys, yes,” she said.
“Fuck.” For the first time in his life, William felt something bordering on compassion for his oldest brother. It was a peculiar new sensation, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to embrace it. “Are you telling me they didn’t even de-frock that piece of shit? They just transferred him right on to his next batch of victims?”
“From everything I heard, yes. I got most of the story from Jimmy, but I thought the meth crash might have made him delirious. It wouldn’t have been the first time, or the last, as you know. But Mike confirmed the story after Jimmy went to prison, and he filled in the rest of the details.” She pinned him with her hazel eyes before adding, “Apparently, Mike walked in on the priest raping Jimmy in the church’s sacristy. Jimmy was only fourteen.”
On the verge of dry-heaving, William could only make a garbled sound of horror.
“Mike told your grandmother what he saw,” Haze continued quietly. “He said your grandmother and your parents did everything they could to get that priest de-frocked and prosecuted, but the diocese covered it all up.”
It took a minute for William to recover his voice. “So that’s why my parents stopped going to church. Even Nonna stopped going for a while. She only went back after Andy became the new priest.”
Haze scanned his expression; and again, behind her intensity, William detected the echoes of guilt. “I know Jimmy targeted you, but I just didn’t want you going the rest of your life believing it was because of you. Or that you had done anything at all to deserve it.”
Hurt people hurt people, Andy had said. It’s not an excuse. Just context.
Now he knew.
“I’m glad you told me,” he admitted finally. “Thank you.”
She searched his eyes for another moment. Apparently satisfied with whatever she found there, she slowly unwrapped her burrito again. But William was still too nauseous to eat.
After many long minutes of heavy, pensive silence, Haze ventured to ask, “What are your plans after this?”
He tilted his head. “Plans?”
She peeled some more of the aluminum foil back from the burrito. “Where will you go from here?”
Flummoxed, he shrugged. “Back home, I guess. But not to stay.”
She took another bite from the burrito. Chewed thoughtfully. “ Kirill – my brother, the priest – he knows a lot of fishermen up there in Alaska. There’s a ton of money to be made in a very short time on the crab boats.”
“Out of the frying pan into the fire,” he scoffed. “Fishermen are the biggest horde of drunks and junkies you’ll ever meet.”
Haze shook her head. “Kirill knows which boats are the sober boats.”
He gave a short laugh. “The sober boats?”
But she wasn’t laughing. After a moment’s hesitation, she added, “My husband Matt – ex-husband, now – he’s on one of them.”
She got up and opened a filing cabinet. Retrieved a folder – a portfolio of sketches – and began rummaging through it. Eventually she said, “You can stay the week. But after that, you have to go.”
He nodded.
“If you decide to go to Alaska, my brother Kirill can introduce you to the captains and give you a place to stay until you get a job.”
Finally, she located what she was looking for and held it up to him. It was the mermaid she had sketched for him on Halloween. She came over and lifted his left arm – the receiving arm, she had told him. “‘Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.’”
He drew his arm away. “It’s too late for that. She’d never have anything to do with me now.”
She withdrew to her chair. Sat down hard on it. Neither of them had ever explicitly acknowledged her before, this other woman that loomed like a specter between them.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He pushed aside his burrito. No hope of choking that down. “No, I’m sorry, Haze. For lying to you.”
Though her shrug was almost nonchalant, she stared down at the mermaid sketch in her lap and chewed her lip. “You never really lied, though. We weren’t exclusive.”
“But it was lying by omission. I didn’t tell you...” He swallowed past the lump of shame in his throat. “You know.”
She lifted her piercing gaze to his. Waiting. Tugging anxiously at his knuckles, he finally owned it out loud, even though, of course, she already knew.
“I didn’t tell you I had other partners. And, um... I wasn’t safe, so I put you at risk. I don’t know how you can stand to even look at me right now, much less help me, but...” Summoning his courage, he pulled himself upright and looked her straight in the eye. “I’m sorry for betraying your trust, especially after everything you went through with Matt. You gave me your friendship, and I treated you with disrespect. That was pure shit of me, and you deserve to hear me say it.”
She gave a tiny wince and trained her unfocused gaze on some point in the corner. But in an even tone, she said, “I appreciate the apology.”
He continued staring until she finally dragged her eyes up to his again. They sat that way for several long seconds, but somehow, it wasn’t uncomfortable.
Finally, the corners of her mouth tipped up almost imperceptibly. “So, no mermaid, then?”
He answered her with a muted smile of his own. “I’ve been thinking of a compass instead.”
“A compass?” She pulled a sketch pad and a pencil out of her desk drawer. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I could use a little direction in life, don't you think?”
Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. She glanced at the clock – a minute past two – then opened her mini fridge and handed him his two o’clock beer.
Then she set to work. He sipped and watched her, bent over the sketch pad. She tucked her hair out of the way, but it kept slipping out from behind her ear. Her pencil flicked lightly across the paper, its whisper the only noise in the office.
At last, she held it up for him – a compass rose, modeled after the eight-pointed stars on her knees. Marking the position of north, so tiny that William almost had to squint to see it – a crab.
A while later, reclined in the chair in her workspace, he listened to the buzz of the tattoo machine as she hunched over his right arm.
THE END