by Voss, Deja
I can tell she’s rolling her eyes at me.
“Am I just supposed to stop paying my bills? You think that’s what she’d want?”
“Don’t talk about her, Amber,” she scolds. “She’s not dead yet.” I roll my eyes right back at her. She’s such a hypocrite sometimes. I stumble to the chair next to my mom’s bedside and sink down into it with a groan.
“Are you drunk?” Aunt June hisses across the bed.
“Hi, Mama,” I say, completely ignoring her. I grab her clammy hand and intertwine her fingers in mine. “How was your day?”
Her eyes are halfway open and her lips are moving. I know she can feel me, I know she can hear me, even if she doesn’t know who I am or what’s going on. Sometimes she talks back, but those times are growing few and far between. This most recent bout of pneumonia isn’t helping her cause much, and I’m sure they have her numbed up pretty good.
“Did you stay awake for your soaps this afternoon?” I ask, for lack of a better option. It’s the closest thing to home she has anymore, something she’s been watching most of her life. She might not remember what day it is or how many kids she has, but she’ll tell you all about the Quartermaines and Spencers like they’re her BFFs.
“Ava?” she asks softly.
“No, Mama, it’s me, Amber.” She’s been talking a lot lately about my sister. Everyone in my family says the older I get, the more I look like her.
“Ava!” she yells, the low rumble of her voice punctuated with her rattle of a cough. “You’re drunk again! I can smell you. What did I tell you about coming around here drunk?”
“Mama, I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not drunk.”
“Get out of here!” Tears run down her cheeks. “If you ever want to see her again, you need to get your life together. You’re not welcome in my home like this. Get your stuff and go away. Get out of our lives!” She’s digging her fingernails into my hand, and the strength of her frail little body catches me off guard. I jerk my arm away, my wrist bruised already.
My aunt is just staring across the bed, biting her lip like she’s got something to say, her knee fidgeting so hard I think she’s going to put a hole in the floor. As my mother's wails grow louder, her cough gets worse and worse. She literally sounds like what I imagine death to be. The gurgling and coughing and agony, nothing like the peaceful slumber my Zen gurus want me to believe.
She’s thrashing wildly, even as I try to kiss her face.
“I’m not Ava,” I say. “Mama, it’s me. It’s Amber.”
A nurse rushes into the room and pulls me away from her as she slides an oxygen mask over her face. I think she’s giving me the side eye, as if I was the one who inflicted this on her.
“I think we’ve had enough excitement for the day, wouldn’t you say, ladies?” the nurse asks coldly. “Why don’t we try again tomorrow?”
“I love you, Mom.” I wait for my aunt to pack up her knitting supplies and she kisses my mom on the forehead, tears welling up in her eyes. We walk out of the room together, knowing full well that the next time we see my mother, she’s probably going to be in even worse shape than she is right now. She puts her arm around my shoulder, and we walk down the dreary hallway together, not needing to say anything. This has become our new normal. We’re both hanging out in this weird purgatory together, we’ve both already grieved the loss of an amazing, kind, beautiful woman, and now we’re just waiting for a phone call telling us we can finally put her to rest.
The cold night air hits me like a ton of bricks and I feel suddenly sober. I feel like I should’ve known better than to come around my mom drunk. I’m usually a little bit better at hiding it, but I didn’t have time for lunch today and I forgot my mouthwash.
“I’m sorry, Aunt June,” I say. “I didn’t mean to get her all riled up.”
“Well you should be!” she scolds. “You’re not even old enough to drink yet. Where the hell did you get alcohol?”
“From your liquor cabinet,” I shrug.
“I mean, you’re old enough to join the military, you basically took care of your mother around the clock until she went into the home, I guess I don’t blame you if you want a cocktail every once in a while, but you can’t be driving around drunk, missy.”
“Trust me, I feel pretty sober now.”
“Better safe than sorry,” she says, grabbing me by the hand. “Why don’t you come over to my house? I need to talk to you about something anyway. We’re probably both going to need a couple drinks.”
I’m sure this has something to do with Ava. I don’t really know much about my sister except that she left when I was five and I haven’t seen her ever since. My mom kicked her out because she was “out of control” and tried to pretend like she didn’t exist. The only thing I have left of her is a picture that I’m not supposed to have.
In some strange way, I miss her, even though I don’t know her. Most kids outgrow their imaginary friends, but Ava always stayed with me. I could never tell my mom, of course. She damn near just wasted her last breath cursing her.
Aunt June’s Range Rover is already running, and it feels good to get out of the cold. We ride down the highway in silence to her house in the suburbs, and I try not to drift off to sleep, but it’s been a long day. Long month. Long eight years. Maybe we’ll all get the rest we need soon.
“You got any food at your house?” I ask.
She chuckles. I know the answer to that question. Aunt June’s husband retired a few months ago and has taken up cooking as a hobby. Her house is always stocked to the brim with stuff to eat.
“I think Tony made stir-fry tonight.”
I wrinkle my nose at her.
“Aren’t yoga instructors supposed to be into eating vegetables and stuff?” she teases. “You’ve gotta be the least healthy healthy person I know.”
She makes me laugh. It’s true. I have a few vices other than stealing liquor from her. French fries, nachos, anything breaded that you can dip in ranch dressing, these things fill the void in my life where a normal twenty-year-old inserts things like having friends or dating.
“I’m sure he’ll make you whatever you want.”
By the time we get to her house, you can hear my stomach growling over the sound of the radio. I’m beat. I’m starving. I think I’m mildly hungover, if that’s at all possible. I’m not really sure because this drinking thing is new to me. All I want to do is curl up on her couch and fall asleep so we can wake up and do this again.
Aunt June’s house is one of those houses that has never seen the wear and tear of a child. Everything has a place, every expensive decoration, duvet cover, and piece of antique furniture. It doesn’t really feel like a home to me, more of a show house, but that’s just the kind of person she is. When Uncle Tony started his new kitchen fascination, she about had a bird when she found out he was actually using the pots and pans that hang over her wooden butcher’s block slab to cook with.
“My beautiful ladies,” he whistles as we walk through the back door. I carefully take off my sneakers and line them up next to the wall just the way she likes them. Tony kisses Aunt June and pulls me in for a warm hug. “How’s Caroline today?”
“Same as usual,” June shrugs. “Today was a pretty bad day. She can’t seem to shake the pneumonia.”
He looks at us with a knowing kind of sympathy that’s so different than the way the outside world looks at me when I am forced to explain my situation. He understands what we’re going through, and he knows that the best way to help us is to keep life moving forward, business as usual.
“You want wine, June?” he asks, pulling a bottle from the fridge. “I have that sparkling water you like, Amber.”
“We’ll take vodka,” June says to him.
“Just vodka?”
“Maybe some ice? You want an olive, Amber?”
“Ew,” I say.
“That’s right, she doesn’t do green stuff.” Uncle Tony grabs a couple rocks glasses from the china cabinet and Aunt J
une pulls out a tray of cheese from the fridge and sets it on the counter in front of me, along with some crackers. I start to devour them like I haven’t eaten in weeks. I’m sure a pound of this cheese probably costs more than my monthly electric bill, but I’m not even chewing at this point.
“So what’s the special occasion?” Tony asks as he tops off the glasses. He opens a beer for himself and takes a seat next to me at the island.
“It was a bad day, Tony. I think Amber and I just need to unwind a little bit. I don’t know how to put it into words that don’t sound like I’m a terrible sister.” She plops a couple olives into her glass and takes a long swig.
“You mean you don’t know how to say that you secretly pray at night that she doesn’t wake up in the morning?”
Even though I mean it in the kindest way possible, even though all I want is peace for my mother finally after years of fighting, even though we all know there’s not even one-hundredth of a thousandth of a percent of a chance of her ever recovering, saying it out loud feels really shitty. I take a sip from the glass and instantly begin to gag. I jump up from my chair and run to the fridge, looking for anything that I can chug to get that taste out of my mouth. I grab a carton of chocolate milk and start downing it straight from the jug.
“Well, at least we can tell she doesn’t do this very often,” June laughs. “You can take that milk home with you, by the way. And yes… exactly what you said. This is no life for Caroline. She’s not living. She would never want this for you, or for me. It kills me seeing her like this. It kills me knowing that your entire life revolves around caring for her. That’s not a burden that a young woman should have to bear, and you’ve been doing it for the last eight years.”
“You helped me, Aunt June. You were always there for us, and you always came to my gymnastics meets and made sure I had clean clothes and a ride to school. You supported me when I decided to do yoga teacher training instead of going to college. You were just as much a mother to me as she was, more even.”
“Well I know that was never the plan,” she sighs. “That was definitely never Caroline’s plan. I need to tell you something.” She motions to the seat next to her and I feel a chill run down my spine as I slink across the white tile. Tonight has been so strange, and I have a feeling it’s about to get weirder. The way she’s looking at me, the reluctant thin smile on her face, I feel like she’s about to turn my world upside down.
“What do you really know about Ava?” she asks.
Chapter 2
Fifteen Years Ago
I’m playing with my plastic pony dolls on the steps. My mom hates when I do this. She says it’s really dangerous, but I like to use the slats in the bannister as corals for my horses. I also like to spy on my mom in the kitchen. Me and my ponies can spy on her and her friends while they have their grown-up coffee time. Most of the time I have no idea what they’re talking about, but every once in a while I find out something really juicy, like that Becky Turner still pees the bed every night. She’s a year older than me! I’m not going to tell anybody, but just knowing that I have some dirt on a first grader makes me feel pretty powerful.
My mom and Mrs. Henderson are cutting out coupons today. They’re being pretty boring. I braid my favorite pony’s hair to match mine and clip a big pink bow in her tail.
Mrs. Taylor walks into the kitchen holding a magazine. I know my mom doesn’t really like her. She calls her a witch with a b whenever she’s not around, but she’s always nice to her face. I don’t really like the looks of Mrs. Taylor. Her lips are always puckered like she has a lemon in her mouth and she talks to me like I’m a baby.
“Emily,” my mother says, barely looking up from her coupons. “I see you just let yourself in. What brings us this great pleasure?”
“I didn’t realize it was coupon day. I would’ve brought mine over, too.”
More boring stuff. More coupon stuff. I get to work on my next horse. This one’s a boy. I colored his yellow mane green with a magic marker, but I don’t like the looks of it anymore. I need to go borrow some scissors so I can cut it off. He will look much better with short hair anyway.
I tiptoe down the steps and peek around the corner of the railing. Mrs. Taylor is waving around her magazine.
“I’ve got something here you might want to see, Caroline. I found this under Toby’s bed. Looks like your daughter made page eleven!”
“You’re kidding, right?” Mrs. Henderson says to her. “How are you going to come up into Caroline’s house with some porno magazine and say something like that. That’s really low.”
I have no idea what a porno magazine is. I squint my eyes to try and see the cover, but my mom is grabbing it out of her hands.
“I just figured you’d want to know what Ava was up to these days. You don’t talk a lot about her anymore.”
“Get out of my house, Emily. I don’t know what goes on in your home, but we don’t allow pornography in my house. Maybe you should be more concerned about what your children are doing than what Ava is up to these days.”
She tosses the magazine into the garbage can as Mrs. Taylor storms off.
“You’re not even kind of curious?” Mrs. Henderson asks her as she sits back down and starts flipping through her coupons. “You don’t even kind of want to look at it?”
“I do not,” she says.
I scurry back up the steps. She might not want to look at it, but I know I’m going to. I always thought that when my sister ran away, she was going to be a famous movie star or a model or something, and now she’s in a magazine? She was always so pretty. I don’t know why my mom hated her so much. Maybe it was because she knew I liked Ava more than I liked her.
I wonder why my mom isn’t proud? I wonder why she doesn’t want to see the picture? I’ll never ask her. It’s going to be hard for me to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the day, though. Maybe I will pretend like I have a sore throat so I don’t have to talk to her.
That night when I know she’s asleep, I creep down the steps and into the kitchen. I try not to make a single sound as I dig through the scraps of cut up coupons and scrapings from dinner in the garbage can.
I grab the magazine and tiptoe back upstairs to my bedroom. I crawl underneath my covers, pulling them up over my head, and pull out my flashlight. My eyes grow wide when I see the picture on the cover. This girl is really pretty, but she’s wearing less than a bathing suit. She looks like she’s having fun, though, by the way she’s smiling for the camera. I’m not worried about her, though. I need to get to page eleven.
My heart nearly stops beating when I see the picture of my sister. She’s leaned up against a motorcycle and her long black hair is the only thing covering her boobs. She’s so pretty. Those leather boots don’t look very comfortable, but I like her jean shorts a lot. I wonder when she got all those tattoos. Some of them are kind of pretty, and some of them look a little scary to me, like the one with the skull. Maybe they’re fake. I bet they hurt a lot.
She looks so happy, though. I hope when I grow up I look just like her. I don’t know if I would want to ever ride on a motorcycle. I’m sure Mom would kill me if I did, but if it made Ava like me, if it made her want to be my friend again, I would try it. I would do anything to get my sister back.
I stare at her until my eyes grow tired. I try to imagine what it would be like if she was here with me right now, how much fun we would have playing ponies and dress up. I wish I could hug her and tell her I love her. I wish she knew that no matter how much mom hates her, I don’t. I would never.
I rip the picture out as quietly as I can and carefully fold it up. I stuff it into my secret box where I keep my extra Halloween candy and spare change that I find in the couch cushions. I flip through the rest of the magazine, but it doesn’t really interest me. These girls are all naked and hugging each other. It doesn’t really make any sense to me. I don’t really know much about magazines though.
I creep back down the steps and throw it in the garb
age can, trying to bury it exactly where I found it. I might not have my sister back, but at least I have something to remember her by. At least I know I’ll never forget what she looks like.
Chapter 3
Present Day
Micah:
Everyone says going into the Marines is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do in your life. Me, I kind of liked it. Coming from a world of zero discipline, zero routine, and zero responsibility, having someone tell me where I needed to be and what I needed to do every day was actually kind of liberating. Serving my country felt good, it felt right, and I never minded getting deployed. Being an infantryman was what I was made to do; at least at the time, that’s how I felt.
Going into the Marines wasn’t the hardest thing I’d ever done. Leaving the Marines after fifteen years, eleven of which were active duty, that was when shit started getting hard.
Being forty years old and trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, it’s a real bitch.
“You coming down tonight?” I ask my roommate, Gary, as I grab my leather jacket from the hook on the wall. “Or you just going to keep working on that ass groove you got going there on the couch?”
Gary and I served together, and he’s doing about as well as I am adjusting to civilian life. Pretty much all we do is pretend like we’re still active duty. We go to the gym, we eat crappy food out of boxes, and we live in a pretty shitty apartment that might as well be a bunker. He’s replaced his M38 with a video game controller. That doesn’t really do anything for me, though, unless I’ve smoked enough weed that I can’t walk.
“Call me if anybody interesting is out,” he says. “Maybe I’ll make an appearance.”
“Whatever,” I shrug.
Gary and I both bartend at the same joint a couple blocks away from our house. The guy who owns it, Pat, he’s a veteran himself, and he likes to give guys like us jobs while we get back on our feet. It’s not an exceptionally nice place, but the money is good, and if I wanted to go back to school during the day, I’d have the time to do that.