The Night Always Comes

by Willy Vlautin

  She parked at Jubitz truck stop and set the file with the photos on the passenger seat. One by one she took them out and tore them into little pieces and put them back in the file and got out. In the first trash can she came to she dropped the file inside and went into the restaurant, sat at the empty counter, and ordered coffee.

  It had been nearly seven years since she’d been there. Even Jubitz haunted her. Half the city now seemed to haunt her. At least once a month she, Jack, and Kenny would eat breakfast at Jubitz so that Kenny could watch the semi-trucks come and go. Sometimes Jack would get his boots worked on at the truck stop shoe repair or they’d take Kenny to the movies in the small truck stop theater.

  What would Jack think if he saw those pictures of her? Or of her being a prostitute or stealing a car and having a bag of cocaine in her purse? She wiped her face with a napkin and took off her scarf and coat. She poured cream and sugar into the cup and stirred it. Even after seven years she still missed Jack, and not a day went by where she didn’t worry about what he would think of her if he knew her now.

  Outside of her grandparents, her brother, and mother, Jack was the only person she had ever really loved, and he was the only person, outside of her family, who had ever loved her. The only person in the world who had chosen to live with her, chosen to care for her, and took the chance to love her.

  She was twenty-one and worked the counter at Tulip Pastry Shop on Lombard Street when she first met him. Jack Burns was twenty-four and he came in one morning on his way to work as a forklift driver for the Driscoll Steel Company. He told her later on that when he walked into the bakery that first morning he knew he was seeing the best-looking woman he’d ever see in his life. She stopped him in his tracks. Lynette felt the same about him. Even after their first meeting she couldn’t stop thinking about Jack because he reminded her of her grandfather.

  He began coming in regularly and flirting with her and trying to make her laugh, and she in return would flirt with him and try to make him laugh. They made a game out of everything. After two weeks she bought him a gift, a tin of Badger Balm, because she noticed his hands were rough and cracked. It was spring, but she wrapped it in Christmas paper. She drew a heart under his name. The place was full of customers when she handed it to him, but he didn’t leave after he got his pastry and coffee. He just sat in the back, near the window, and waited. Customer after customer came in, but he didn’t leave. An hour passed and then finally, for a moment, the bakery was empty.

  “Aren’t you late for work?” she asked from behind the counter.

  “I called and told them my truck broke down,” he said. “I just wanted to say thanks.”

  “You already thanked me.”

  “I know. I just wanted to again.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “My hands feel better already.”

  She laughed. “I’m glad.”

  “Can I see you sometime outside of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  It began. She saw him that evening and almost every evening after for three years. Her life had seen so much darkness before Jack, but in meeting him it was like she was relieved of it. Like she had been saved from herself and her past and was suddenly somehow swept away to somewhere beautiful. Her anger vanished to the point where she couldn’t remember what it felt like to be full of rage. Her hopelessness disappeared. This is what true love must be, she told herself. It saves you and changes you. It’s like living inside a movie where the dirt in you and the scars on you are eradicated.

  She slept with him after seven dates. He asked her if she’d had sex before, and she told him only once when she was in high school. She didn’t tell him about her past, about running away, or about JJ. She didn’t tell him about trying to kill herself or the time she’d spent in the psychiatric hold of a hospital. All the things she had done before Jack, the things she was so ashamed of and damaged by, seemed to fade into nothing just by seeing his face. Some nights she woke up in his apartment with his arms around her and she was so excited and relieved to be free of herself that she would weep.

  Within four months she spent three nights a week at his apartment and started taking birth control. They had sex nearly every time they saw each other and for the first time in her life she had orgasms. When she stayed at his place he would wake her up with a cup of coffee. He would walk her to work at six and pick her up after she got off. He spent all his money on her and after five months he told her he loved her. He told her he wanted to marry her someday.

  Jack had a pickup truck and each week when he got paid he took her out to eat in a different part of town. They saw movies together, they got drunk together, and they saw bands play. They went roller-skating at Oaks Park and ice-skating at Lloyd Center. They walked in and out of high-end downtown stores. They spent weekend afternoons strolling through neighborhoods looking at houses they wanted to live in. They went to furniture stores and picked out the furniture that would go into those houses.

  After eight months he drove her to Seaside for the day to meet his parents and then to Eugene, where his brother, Henry, was taking classes at the community college to be a mechanic. There was a gentleness to Jack that she could just disappear into. Never once did he blindside her or intentionally try to hurt her. He could get nervous or grumpy, insecure or angry, but when he did he would try to talk to her about it. He would try to explain himself to her, explain the way he felt.

  She introduced him to her mother and Kenny and to Lynette’s great relief Jack liked Kenny. He wanted to spend time with her brother, so they began taking Kenny to lunch at the Sextant on the Columbia River so that he could watch the boats pass. They took him to the airport to see planes taking off, to stock car races, to baseball games, to the Hotcake House, and to the horse track. Jack took them camping near Mount Hood. Neither she nor Kenny had ever camped before. They had never sat by a campfire. Jack was the first man that Kenny ever really liked. He was the first man Kenny ever ran to and hugged when he saw him.

  There were times when Lynette was certain that Jack had been sent by her grandfather to save her life. When they would go to the Hotcake House, she would secretly pray to herself and thank her grandfather for remembering her and caring enough about her to bring Jack to her. Thank you, thank you, thank you, she’d say.

  But after a year it started, the old Lynette would reappear. In those moments her sadness and hopelessness and anger would rush past her like a speeding car. It nearly broke her when it first happened because she realized she hadn’t rid herself of who she had been. She hadn’t rid herself of herself, and once she knew that, it became a fog that chased her, a fog that would never completely disappear.

  At first she was able to keep it under control because it only came up when she was tired, sick, or too drunk. Over time, though, it took more and more work. She began having to force herself to act happy. She told Jack none of this because she was certain if he knew how much she struggled and what she was really like, he would leave her.

  It came out first in Seaside. They had been together a year and four months when there was a beach party to celebrate Jack’s brother’s graduation from mechanic school. His parents were there. His aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Lynette was so nervous to meet them all and so nervous that they wouldn’t like her that she began to drink. Jack took her around and introduced her to everyone. His grandmother told Lynette that she was the cutest girl she’d ever seen in Oregon. The old woman hugged her and wouldn’t let her go. The whole family was nice to her, decent and kind, but none of it brought relief, only a building pressure she didn’t know how to ease. She couldn’t catch her breath. It was like she was drowning and falling at the same time.

  A bonfire was started, night came, and slowly his family went home. Then a real party began with Jack’s and Henry’s old high school friends. It was summer, there were no clouds in the sky, and it was warm. Someone brought a portable
stereo and people smoked weed and passed around a bottle and drank beer. Jack left her with his brother to go to the bathroom. When he came back, he talked to friends of his near the fire and then after a while he began talking to a redheaded woman who Lynette knew had been his high school girlfriend. They only spoke for a few minutes, but that night, drunk and tired of trying so hard and terrified to be staying at his parents’ house, she threw a full beer can at him and ran down the beach into the darkness. She began crying and couldn’t stop. She came to a street and then to another and made it to Highway 101 and began walking north on the side of the road.

  Jack found her an hour later sitting outside a closed Les Schwab tire shop. He parked his truck and rushed over to her as she sat against a wall. “I was so worried about you,” he told her and tried to put his arms around her. “What’s going on? What did I do?”

  Lynette pushed him away as hard as she could. “Why don’t you just go back and fuck your redhead. I never trusted you. I never . . . I fucking hate you and I fucking hate it here and I hate your whole stupid fucking family.”

  It was the first time she’d gotten angry at him or said things like that to him and as she did she could see his face change. Like a man watching his best friend drown. Terror and horror. He slumped down to the ground. He whispered to her, “Why are you saying this?”

  Lynette knew, even as it was happening, that she had started their ruin that night. Because she didn’t tell him why. She couldn’t. She said only, “Can I get a bus back to Portland?”

  He stood up sadly. “I guess you could. Probably tomorrow, though. It’s too late now. But I’ll give you a ride. It’s the least I can do.”

  In the truck she leaned against the passenger-side window and wouldn’t speak. Jack tried to apologize, he tried to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t, and after a while she closed her eyes. When he stopped in front of her mother’s house two hours later, he was weeping. “What did I do?” he whispered. “I just don’t understand what I did. I went out with that girl when I was a junior in high school. She’s married now and has a kid. I don’t like her that way. . . . I just don’t understand and I don’t want to leave it this way. I love you more than anything and I just don’t know what’s going on or what I did that was so bad.”

  Lynette said nothing and got out of his truck and went into her house and down into the basement. She didn’t get up to do anything but use the toilet until she had to go to work two days later.

  A week passed and then late one night she went to his apartment. He answered the door in his underwear. She broke down crying and collapsed on the ground and told him how sorry she was, how she had never been in love before and how she was insecure and jealous. She told him she didn’t understand what had happened in Seaside but promised it would never happen again. She told him over and over that she loved him. She kissed him and begged him to take her back.

  And he did. That night he told her he loved her so much and was so broken up over her that he couldn’t sleep. Sometimes at work he had to lock himself in the bathroom and sit down just to catch his breath, and for the first time in his life, he said, he felt hopeless, completely hopeless.

  The next day they both called in sick and stayed in bed all day. In the afternoon she got up and made them breakfast and when night came she made them dinner. It took two weeks for him to relax around her again. For a while he tried to get her to talk about that night, but always she would avoid it. She was too frightened it would come back if she did. Her answer was to give more of herself to him. She began doing his laundry and cleaning his apartment. She went wherever he wanted to go and ate whatever he wanted to eat. Jack would say things like “Shit, Lynette, I know you don’t like eating at Santa Cruz all the time. You pick the place. Let’s go where you want.” But she wouldn’t. She decided to never say no to him, that she would give anything and everything to him and by doing so she would be more of him and less of her. She would try to erase herself completely.

  He proposed to her six months later. He bought her a ring and found a one-bedroom house near Pier Park at the end of St. Johns. By then he had become certified as a welder, made good money, and could pay the rent. She was in charge of the electric and gas bills and the groceries. It was the nicest house she’d ever lived in. The floors were oak and the kitchen had been remodeled. There was a dishwasher and a washer and dryer. The bathroom had a shower and a separate tub. They bought houseplants and used furniture. They put up posters and pictures. They had a yard and she planted flowers and they talked about getting a dog. Jack made her a key to his truck and taught her how to drive. She finally got a license. Once again it was like living in a dream that never ended.

  But one morning she woke and the darkness was again there. It was all she could do to get out of bed and go to work. It became such an effort to seem happy that one night she went to a movie by herself and on the way home she closed her eyes and walked out onto Lombard Street and was nearly hit by a truck.

  She began going home more to see Kenny, hoping that he would help take the darkness away, but she ended up only taking it out on her mother. She threw a bowl full of Golden Grahams and milk against a wall and screamed at her. She broke down, crying on the floor, saying she wanted to die.

  Thanksgiving came and they went to Jack’s parents’ house for dinner. She wore her engagement ring and a new dress. She brought two apple pies she made at the bakery. She didn’t drink and helped with the dishes. She was polite and said funny things, and Jack made sure he paid attention to her. They didn’t go out drinking with his brother and their old friends. They went to bed early and he held her in his old basement room. They had sex on his high school bed while his parents were at the store.

  For Christmas they went back. A new dress, two apple and cranberry pies, and Lynette trying harder and harder to be good. Jack’s mother took her aside and told her how happy she was that Lynette was becoming a part of the family. She said she couldn’t wait for the wedding, for their grandkids. When the Christmas visit ended, Lynette left Jack’s parents’ house so exhausted that during the truck ride home she wished she was dead. Jack held her hand as he drove. He leaned over and asked her, “Are you okay? You seem tired. . . . Is there anything I can do? Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  Two different men came into the bakery each day. Both flirted with her and asked her out. She showed them her engagement ring, but she began to think about them. When she had sex with Jack, she thought of them. The darkness went away when she was like that. When she thought about dying or stepping in front of a car or having sex with someone else or getting shot in a robbery. It all brought relief.

  Summer came and Jack’s brother, Henry, got a job at a Ford dealership in Portland and stayed with them on their couch. She did the things she thought she was supposed to do for a visiting brother. She made dinner, she kept the house clean, she didn’t flirt, but she was nice. She tried to be Jack’s honest and loyal girlfriend. The three of them saw movies together, they drank together, and they drove around in his truck together, Lynette in the middle, between the two brothers.

  She read about a woman who ran every time she was depressed, so she began running. Jack bought her shoes and sweats and for a while it kept the darkness at bay. When the bakery lost its assistant pastry worker, she took the job. The shift started at four a.m., but she loved it. She didn’t have to be polite or nice or talk to people. She got to make scones and cookies and pastries. She was able to bring comfort to people without talking to them, without giving herself to them. And for a while the new position helped.

  But Henry didn’t move out. He was there every night for three months. The two brothers began drinking after work together, and one night Lynette woke up to them in the kitchen with a woman she’d never seen. The woman was young and pretty. She had black hair and tattoos on her arms. The kitchen table was covered with beer cans and Jack was at the stove making pancakes.

  Lynette came from the bedroom in her pajamas. “What
are you doing?” she asked, her voice already trembling.

  “I’m sorry we woke you, but I’m making you pancakes.” Jack was smiling and drunk. There was bacon frying in a pan. He had the cast-iron griddle out and a box of Krusteaz buttermilk pancake mix. “They were going to be ready by the time you got up at three thirty.” He looked at the clock on the stove. “It’s three twenty-eight right now, so pretty good timing. I even put blueberries in them because those are your favorite.”

  “But who is she?” Lynette pointed to the woman.

  “It’s Henry’s friend, Roxy,” Jack said.

  “Get her out of my house,” she cried, her voice almost hysterical. And then it all came out of her. She threw a glass at Henry and screamed that she hated him, screamed that he was ruining their lives. She screamed at Jack that he was going to fuck the woman and then she screamed at Roxy and tried to hit her. Jack had to hold her back. She didn’t know what happened after that, but by the end she was left in the kitchen alone with everyone gone, the bacon burning, the smoke alarm going off, and the box of pancake mix spilled out on the floor.

  When she got back from work that afternoon, Henry’s things were gone. Jack could barely speak to her when he got home. She broke down sobbing and begged him not to leave her. She said she would do anything to make up for what she had done.

  “I’m not gonna leave you,” he said. “I’m sorry I was drunk. I was an idiot to make pancakes and stay up so late. I really am sorry for that. But that girl, Roxy, my brother likes her. I don’t like her. I just met her and have nothing to do with her. And I’ve been trying to get my brother to leave. I have been, and I’ve told you that. My mom said I was crazy to let Henry live here as long as he has. But he’s my brother and he says he’s been looking for a place. I don’t know what to do. I’ve told you all this over and over. You know I have. My brother staying here so long and me being drunk and up so late is all my fault. I’ll take blame for that, but I just don’t understand what happens to you. Why can’t you tell me when you’re getting upset? Why can’t we just talk about it? And the things you say are so fucking mean. They’re just so awful. . . . You say the meanest things I’ve ever heard anyone say.”