The Night Always Comes

by Willy Vlautin

  Inside the house the curtains were shut and the lights were off. Their mother lay on the couch underneath the electric blanket watching TV. She sat up when they came in. “Come here and kiss your mother,” she said to Kenny. He walked slowly toward her and her hands shook slightly when she lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth, and took hold of his arm. “Sit next to me.” She patted the couch with her free hand. “Sit right next to Mommy.”

  Kenny shook his head.

  “Once in a while you have to do what somebody else wants and not what you want. So sit.” She squeezed his wrist as hard as she could and pulled him down to her. He moaned but sat.

  Lynette set her purse and keys on a table near the front door. “Whose car is that?”

  Their mother didn’t answer.

  “Jesus, it’s so awful out today.” Lynette walked into the living room. “I don’t know why you have it so dark in here all the time. Do you mind if I turn up the heat, at least for a little bit? I can’t seem to get warm today.”

  “Sure,” their mother said.

  Lynette turned the thermostat up to 68. “So whose car is that? It’s really nice. Is it Cheryl’s? Did yours break down?”

  Their mother had the cigarette in her left hand and kept her right hand around Kenny’s wrist. Her eyes were on the TV and her voice came out so quiet it was barely audible. “It’s mine.”

  Lynette laughed. “It’s yours? Yeah, I bet.”

  Their mother’s voice grew louder but now it was shaking. “I . . . I bought it.”

  Lynette looked at her, suddenly worried. “What do you mean you bought it? You mean you bought a car today? While I was gone? You didn’t go to work like you said, you bought a brand-new car?”

  Their mother was fifty-seven years old and overweight by forty pounds. She had dyed brown hair and was dressed in her work clothes—a black suit with a cream-colored blouse. On her feet were thick wool socks. She put the electric blanket over Kenny’s legs, moved closer to him, and kept her hand tight around his wrist. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d get upset. But I’ve been looking to get a new car for a long time, you know that, and those guys at Toyota of Portland are nice. They’re not slimy at all. So I set up an appointment and they had the one I wanted. I didn’t even have to put money down. Not a cent and my payments aren’t as bad as you’d think. They even gave me fifteen hundred for the Saturn, and as you know that car was a death trap. The brakes were giving out and it didn’t steer right. It needed new tires, too. The guys at Schwab said I shouldn’t even be driving it.”

  “How much was it?”

  “It was a good deal.”

  “How much?”

  “With everything and the better warranty, thirty-nine thousand.”

  Lynette sat on a wooden chair next to the front door. She covered her face with her hands and her heart began racing. “I’m really confused. . . . We’re supposed to sign the papers on the house next week. Is it going to screw up the loan? Did you think about the loan?”

  Their mother shook her head. “I remember when he wanted us to buy it for ninety thousand and now he wants three hundred? He has a lot of fucking nerve.”

  “It was fifteen years ago when he said ninety. That was a long time ago. And he’s selling it to us for two hundred and eighty. He’s taking twenty thousand dollars off what it’s going to be listed at if he puts it on the market. Plus we’re not going through Realtors, so we’re saving even more. It’s a really good deal and you know it. I told you just last week that the blue house down the street sold for four hundred.”

  “That place is a hell of a lot nicer and not on the freeway.”

  “I know, but still . . . Jesus, why would you buy a car today?”

  “I’ve wanted a new one for a long time,” said their mother. “So finally I just bought one.”

  “That’s it? You didn’t think about how it’ll affect us getting the house?”

  Their mother didn’t answer.

  Kenny wanted to get up from the couch, but she wouldn’t let him.

  “Don’t you want to still buy the house?” asked Lynette.

  Again their mother remained silent.

  “You know if we don’t buy it, he’ll just sell it to someone else, right? And you know as well as me that we can’t afford any other house around here. We’ll have to get an apartment and the apartment’s gonna cost more than the mortgage. Even a crappy two-bedroom apartment around here is fifteen hundred and that’s if we’re lucky. We only pay eight hundred now. If we buy this place, we’ll have to pay around twelve hundred a month, but that’s still less. That’s three hundred dollars less a month than any apartment and we’ll finally own something.”

  Their mother knocked the ash from her cigarette into an empty Coke can. “He talks an awful lot, but believe me he won’t really sell. He’s said all this shit before.”

  “But this time is different and you know it. He already agreed to sell it to us. If we back out, he’ll just put it on the market. He had the Realtor come by. She took pictures and everything. You were here when she did the walk-through. He’s tired and old and wants to sell.”

  Their mother’s hand shook as she picked up a Starbucks cup from the coffee table. Kenny grabbed for it but missed. “Don’t,” she yelled at him.

  “Mr. Claremont’s been nice to us,” said Lynette. “He’s trying to help us.”

  “Help us? This house is a shithole and he hasn’t fixed anything in years. How can that be nice?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  Lynette closed her eyes. Her heart was beating so fast she thought she might vomit. “We decided not to tell him about anything wrong ’cause we were scared he’d start raising the rent like everyone else. So we didn’t call him and he never raised the rent. It was a kind of deal. You know that, and it worked. How can he be an asshole for that? Bonnie’s rent has nearly doubled in the last five years. Even next door they raised it by four hundred dollars and that place is worse than ours. He hasn’t changed our rent in almost eleven years. Eleven years . . . He’s not bad. He’s just seventy-five years old. He doesn’t care about this place and he doesn’t need the money. He wants us to have this house. That’s why he’s giving us first shot and giving us a good deal.”

  “Then you buy it,” their mother said and let out a rough laugh.

  Tears suddenly leaked down Lynette’s face. “You know I can’t get a loan,” she said in a heartbroken voice. “We’ve gone over this a hundred times. I just don’t understand why you’re doing this right now. I’ve worked so hard to get the down payment.”

  “You don’t have eighty thousand dollars.”

  “I do and you know it. I’ve showed you my bank account. It’s in there.”

  Their mother set down the Starbucks cup. “But it’s me that’s gonna be handcuffed to the loan.”

  “So that’s it?”

  Their mother didn’t say anything.

  “We’re trying to build something,” said Lynette. “We’re trying to make sure we have a good future. This is a great deal. I like it here and Kenny likes it here and everyone in the neighborhood knows him and looks out for him.”

  Their mother put out her cigarette. “I’m fifty-seven years old and I still buy my clothes at Goodwill. It’s a little late for me to care about building a future. And Kenny will be fine anywhere.” She kept her eyes on the TV and coughed. “You don’t know what it’s like. Other women my age are going on vacations with their grandkids, they’re talking about retirement plans and investments. Me, I haven’t taken a vacation since the time we went to San Francisco, and that was over fifteen years ago. I’ll have to work at Fred Meyer until I drop dead. I’ll never get to retire and that’s just a goddamn fact. So lately I’ve been asking myself, why do I have to sacrifice even more than I already have? Why do I have to have a debt hanging over me for the rest of my life? Haven’t I given enough? I mean why can’t I have something nice for a change? Just for me, just on
ce. I drove that piece-of-shit Saturn for seventeen years. And day after day everyone on the road saw me for what I am, a middle-aged, overweight fatso loser.”

  “But it’s just a car,” said Lynette. “You only drive it to work and back. Cars don’t mean anything.”

  “That’s what you think,” said their mother. “But you don’t know. Things like that mean something.”

  “I don’t think they do. Not really.”

  “I’ve worked at that Fred Meyer Jewelers for so long and all I have to show for it is being able to get a two-hundred-thousand-dollar loan on an overpriced, falling-down piece-of-shit house?”

  “But we’re getting security,” said Lynette. “We’ll finally have something of our own that we can fix up, that we won’t ever get kicked out of. Because if we get kicked out of this house, we’re kicked out the neighborhood.”

  Their mother took another drink from her Starbucks cup and Kenny again grabbed for it. “Goddamn it, stop,” she snapped. “I’m not in the mood.” She looked at Lynette. “Don’t you think I know that the house is really for you? That it has nothing to do with me?”

  “Jesus,” cried Lynette. “Why would say that? Have you gone insane?”

  “Me, insane?” Their mother let out another laugh. “I’m not the one with the mental problems. I’m not the one who’s been committed.”

  Lynette sprang up from the chair. Her fists clenched and her face turned red. “Why would you say that right now?” she yelled. “For fuck sakes, why would you throw that at me right now?”

  Their mother looked at Kenny and leaned into him. “Here we go,” she whispered. “I knew this part would come. Hang on tight.” She let go of Kenny’s wrist, just for a moment, and reached for her pack of cigarettes. Her hands shook violently as she lit one. She kept her eyes on the TV while she did it and Kenny grabbed for the Starbucks cup but knocked it over. The cup fell on the carpet and spilled.

  4

  Kenny screamed when he saw what he’d done and jumped up from the couch and began pacing around the room. Lynette went to him and stopped him and took his hand. “It’s okay, Superman,” she said gently. “I’m sorry, buddy, I didn’t mean to yell. We’re just talking about important things and I got carried away. And that carpet’s old and the coffee will come out. It’s no big deal. We’re all okay, so come on, we’ll go to your room and set up a movie.”

  Kenny shook his head and tears streamed down his face.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” their mother said. “Everything’s okay. Just go with your sister.”

  Lynette went to the kitchen. In a locked cupboard was a package of Pop-Tarts. She put a single one on a plate, grabbed a kitchen towel, and went back to the living room. She threw the towel to her mother.

  “How about a Pop-Tart?” said Lynette.

  When Kenny saw it, he quit crying and Lynette grabbed his hand and took him to his room. She turned on a box heater, helped him off with his shoes, and he sat on the bed while he ate. She shut the bedroom door, sat down next to him, and began to sob.

  Kenny tugged on her sweater.

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’ll be okay in a minute. I’m sorry I yelled. I didn’t mean to. It just came out.”

  A color TV sat on a desk in front of the bed. She started WALL-E on the DVD player, placed headphones on Kenny, and then sat back down on the bed next to him. She put her arm around him, but he only pushed her away.

  Her mother was still on the couch when Lynette returned twenty minutes later. No cigarette was burning and the leopard-print electric blanket covered her up to her neck. Lynette sat in the same chair by the door and looked at her. “I didn’t mean to yell. I’m sorry. This is just a lot to process. You’ve really blindsided me. . . . Look, I know you hate this place and you have a lot of reasons to. A lot. But I’m telling you if we don’t buy it we’ll have to move and we won’t get to decide where we live. We’ll never find a house around here, that’s for sure. There’s a good chance we’ll end up in Gresham or off Columbia in some sorta apartment complex. I know we don’t want that. We both grew up in this area and I know we both want to stay. And remember everyone I’ve asked says we should buy it. The accountant at the bakery looked it over and said we should. I also asked Joe, who owns the Dutchman. He said we’d be crazy not to buy it. I even asked my accounting professor. Every single one of them said we should do it. And once we buy it we can fix it up. We won’t let stuff slide just because we don’t want to call the landlord. You’ll be surprised how nice I can get this place. Pretty soon it won’t be an old piece of shit, it’ll be something different. It’ll be ours.”

  The room was so dark that Lynette couldn’t see if her mother’s eyes were open or closed. The sound of the TV was the only noise in the room. She waited for her mother to reply, but she didn’t.

  “You have to tell me what’s really going on,” said Lynette. “I’m having trouble breathing. I’m really scared and I don’t understand what you’re doing. We’ve had this plan for three years, and now a week before we’re supposed to sign the papers you buy a fancy car and say you don’t want the house.”

  “I’m too tired to talk about this,” whispered her mother.

  “If it’s about the car, we’ll get you a decent one later on. I promise. But the house is the thing we should be worried about. You know I can’t get a loan or I’d do it. You know I’ve tried. The job at the bakery doesn’t pay enough and the Dutchman is mostly just tip money and I can’t get more hours, I’ve tried. I paid off my credit cards, but they’d all gone to collections by then. I have bad credit. On paper I look like shit. I’ve apologized a million times for that. You know I have. But I have the cash for the down payment. I really do.”

  “How did you get eighty thousand dollars?”

  “I just got it.”

  Her mother sighed and her voice quavered. “Why is everything always put on me?”

  “I know it seems like it is, but it’s not,” said Lynette. “Buying this house will make it less on you. We’ll have security, we won’t answer to anybody, and we won’t get kicked out. And I’ll do all the work. I’ll make this place really nice.”

  Her mother sat up and the electric blanket fell to her lap. She took a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and lit it. “You can say I’m the worst mother in the world because of this. . . . Maybe I am. And you can blame me for everything that’s ever happened to you. Maybe you should. But I give and give and what do I ever get? I’m not trying to sound horrible. I’m just being honest. What do I get? Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll be handcuffed to a loan on an overpriced falling-down house. And it’s a house I hate. A house that you’ve tried to kill yourself in, a house that’s been like a prison since Kenny was born, a house that your father abandoned us in. So I said to myself, Doreen, you deserve something nice for a change. You deserve to treat yourself. Just this one time. Just one time in your life.”

  Lynette got up from the chair and started to pace the room.

  “You’re gonna go nuts now and throw things, I can feel it,” said her mother.

  “I’m not,” Lynette said, shaking her head. “I’m not like that anymore and you know it. I’ve worked really really hard. I’m not like that. . . . Why do you keep bringing up the way I used to be?”

  “Because the way you used to be is still in you. I can see it right now trying to get out. You say you’ve changed, but I don’t think you have. Because people don’t change. That’s one thing I’ve learned in this life. And let me tell you no one likes being pushed around and threatened. They don’t and that’s what you’ve been doing to me about this house. It’s probably why you can’t keep a boyfriend.”

  “I don’t want a boyfriend.”

  “You sure wanted Jack.”

  “Jesus, why would you bring him up right now?!” Lynette cried. “Why are you being so mean to me?”

  Her mother wouldn’t look at her, she only knocked the ash from her cigarette into the Coke can and sighed. “I’m so
rry, I shouldn’t have said that. I guess I’m upset, too.”

  “Don’t ever bring him up. You have no right to and I’ll fall apart if I think about that. You saying that is being really awful to me.”

  Her mother nodded.

  Lynette sat back down and rested her elbows on her knees. They sat silent for nearly a minute and then she said, “Remember when we went to that open house at that new apartment building on Mississippi?”

  “I remember.”

  “We knew then. You’re the one who said it to me. ‘If he sells we’re fucked.’ Twenty-eight hundred dollars for a three-bedroom apartment. Remember? We ate lunch at Lung Fung afterward. We talked about it. We were both really worried. I thought we came up with a good plan then.”

  “It wasn’t my plan.”

  “You didn’t say no. You never once said no.”

  “If I would have, you’d have just yelled at me.”

  “That’s unfair,” said Lynette. “You have to stop talking like that.”

  Her mother looked at her. “It’s gonna hurt what I’m gonna say, Lynette, but it’s true. When someone’s been as mean as you, the other things don’t come back. You think they will but they don’t because right behind the new niceness and new smile is the old yelling and old anger.”

  Lynette nodded. “I know you’ve put up with a lot. I’m not denying that. That’s why I’m trying to make sure we get the house.”

  “You ran away on me.”

  “I know.”

  “It almost killed me.”

  “That was fourteen years ago and I’ve apologized a thousand times. What’s the point of bringing it up now?”

  Her mother took a long pull from the cigarette, exhaled, and coughed. “I didn’t know where you really were for eleven months. You only called once in a while to let me know you were alive. You wouldn’t tell me anything. I only got updates from Marsha when you’d visit Kenny. There I was, struggling just to keep us afloat, keep my job, and keep Kenny in one piece, and you, my sixteen-year-old daughter, had to run away.”