Thunder Falls

by Michael Lilly

  I remember getting a call from a hospital in Albuquerque—incidentally, the same one where I left Todd to heal up after his own gunshot wound—and hearing, from the other line, “Is this Esther’s son?”

  I don’t remember the details of the conversation—those memories have been replaced by the details of the emotions I felt. Mostly of overwhelming wrongness. Unfairness and ugliness. I don’t remember what look I had on my face, but when Todd saw it, he copped it immediately and squeezed my hand. It was meant to make things easier, but it tugged me that much farther into the zone of vulnerability, allowing a few tears to escape and roll down my cheek.

  What the hitman said to me about my mother had been on the back burner of my mind the entire afternoon, but for a few reasons, that was the extent of attention I was able to give it at the time. This phone call succeeded in calling it forth from its neglected place and setting it at the forefront of my mind. Apparently, my mother was involved in an epic gunfight last night.

  Her (Todd’s and my) house, in New Mexico, was swarmed by a ragtag team of mercenaries in Keroth’s group. By some miracle, she managed to kill quite a few of them and escape the house unscathed, but got seriously injured when she hunted down the leader of the pack, some guy named JT. JT is dead, and my mother is in the hospital, in critical condition. She hasn’t been conscious, but according to what evidence they’ve been able to pick up, she confronted him in the same room where Todd and I found and rescued Stan Romero.

  She conquered him and two reinforcements who ran in—one with a bullet, but the other by ramming him through a window and toppling outward with him, falling from the second story onto the hard gravel driveway below. Nobody knows for certain how long she lay there before ambulance arrived, but the estimate is around half an hour. Fortunately, additional ambulances had been called down from Albuquerque a while beforehand, in order to treat any who may have been wounded during the night, but as they found, everyone (with the exception of my mom) was either unscathed or dead.

  I remember stumbling over words to communicate to Todd what happened, but trying to recall exactly what I said or how he reacted is like trying to snatch a fish out of murky water using my bare hands. Then we left.

  The road rumbles timidly beneath us as we speed toward New Mexico. Some time ago, I acknowledged the possibility that I may never be returning there. To be doing so now isn’t shocking, but the circumstances are. I’m not sure who accessed my mom’s phone in order to retrieve my contact information, but whoever it was must have sent those digits to Trina, as well—she called me some stretch of time ago and let me know that she was boarding the next flight out of New York.

  Hearing her voice was strange, especially when observed through the distorting lens of my exhausted desperation. She was emotional, borderline distraught, but underneath those layers of hysteria, I detected the truth of her character: She had grown into quite a strong woman indeed. Uprooting and moving to the opposite coast must have been a daunting venture in itself, and she faced it with the fearless determination that echoes in her voice now.

  She ended the call with a quick, “Bye, Remy, love you.” I suppose this should have caught me by surprise, but instead, it pulled at some deep-seated and long-dormant strings of my soul, the ones whose sounds reminisce of the toasty interior of the house on chilly winter nights and Mom’s cooking and the dull but insistent pull of sleep while curled up in blankets, as the rain taps out a lullaby on the window. It shouted, didn’t whisper, home, in a way I didn’t think could make me feel good. During the time since that phone call, the pleasant memories, long forgotten, have been oozing forth steadily.

  At some point, my stream of thought, barreling down the accessible conscious lane of my mind, flicks on its signal and drifts over to the subconscious lane as I fall into a shallow doze, my tenuous stability eased only by Todd’s presence and his calm command of the vehicle.

  I don’t remember much of my dreams—only that, for the most part, they were stressful and anxiety-inducing. I do recall, however, that they ended on a positive note. Or, at least, a neutral one, which is still a net improvement from the general tone of my slumber. There was some kind of resolution, some sort of relieving finality.

  As the tired car comes to a halt at the Albuquerque hospital, the luminous clock in the dash reads eleven o’ clock on the dot. Night has fallen and I rise from my sleep with a pulsing spot on my forehead—the spot where I rested it upon the window, evidently. Todd rolls the windows down a crack, kills the engine, looks at me, smiles in his I don’t have the experience to empathize properly, but you have my full support way, squeezes my hand, and opens his door. He gets out and over to my door faster than I can even undo my seatbelt, and he helps me out, strong and secure and solid.

  “What if this is a trap?” I say sleepily. The thought only just crossed my mind, but I don’t stop or even slow my path toward the hospital doors. At this point, I only want the whole ordeal to be over. If the hospital is my end, so be it.

  “This isn’t a movie,” says Todd.

  I agree, but I still shoot him a look I know he’ll understand to mean, What about the past year managed to convince you that our lives are grounded in any sort of normal reality?

  “Right, but still. I think it might actually be over.”

  If it were anyone else offering such speculation, I would dismiss it as wishful thinking or unfounded optimism, but there’s something about Todd that makes me believe him. Perhaps what I need right now is to believe that, even if I’m incorrect. There’s only so much paranoia a mind can handle.

  I try to steel myself for the emotional ride I’m about to go on, but the combination of Trina and my mother in the same place, without the tremendous weight of my father’s presence, is a prospect I’m drastically underprepared for—if someone handed me a shield and a sword and informed me that I was next in line at the colosseum, I would still be more prepared than for facing reuniting with Trina and Mom.

  So instead of spending my mental faculties laying a foundation for a building whose shape and material I don’t know, I instead try to clear my mind of the day’s (and decade’s) events, which, in my worn-down state, proves to be much easier than expected.

  Todd and I must look like a designated driver assisting his extremely inebriated friend as we enter the hospital. He does the talking, thankfully, and guides me with his anchoring presence toward the elevators.

  A minute later, we walk into my mother’s room.

  The hospital bed, accommodatingly wide and long, dwarfs my mother and, for the first time since she re-entered my life, I see her as small. Her skin is scored with cuts and bruises—some minor and shallow, but others marked by stitches—and her unconscious head is supported by a C-collar, and is covered with purple-blue-black bruises and a series of tight gauze bandaging.

  The hospital-issue blanket is pulled up above her chest, and on top of that lies a blanket I recognize as one that she herself knitted for Trina when we were kids. I have a matching one in a box, somewhere. Trina’s is periwinkle blue, with intricate stitches and interesting geometric designs knit into it, like a fuzzy mandala design. My mom used the same pattern for mine, but with red yarn. She gave them to us on Christmas Eve in 1999, and that night, Trina and I stayed up, wrapped in our blankets, coloring in old coloring books until neither of us had the strength to keep our eyes open any longer.

  And speaking (thinking?) of Trina, there she sits, in a chair in the corner, fiddling with her nails and waiting for me to notice and acknowledge her. As soon as she sees my eyes travel from our mom to her, Trina stands up, crosses the room in two big strides, and throws her arms around me.

  I feel—or perhaps ‘sense’ is a better word—Trina trying to navigate her own emotional storm, and in the space of a moment, we become each other’s anchors, each of us too flimsy to deal with the storm on our own, but together solid enough to have become immovable by the tempest. Todd is helpful to me, but in regard to this particular type of storm, he
’s in another dimension, and the storm thus pays him no notice.

  She continues to squeeze me close, wordless for a time, before finally releasing me and stepping back to her chair. Her eyes swim with tears, but so far, none have made the grand escape onto her plump cheeks.

  She looks, more or less, exactly how I thought she would. Her thick, dark hair falls down over her shoulders and spills over her white blouse. She has an average figure—which by today’s media standards, would be considered full- or plus-sized—and has always known how to dress it. Even in her distress, she looks beautiful, like a melancholy music video. I’m stricken by memories of her experimenting with makeup, at first a well-guarded secret from both parents, until Mom not only embraced it, but began to share her makeup with Trina and give her tips and instructions. The two of them would sit in front of the vanity in Mom’s bathroom for hours, me sitting on the end of the counter, watching with innocent and absent-minded fascination.

  “Who’s this?” she asks, ripping me back to reality.

  Such rudeness is uncharacteristic of me, but I’m sure she’ll understand, given the circumstances. “Oh, this is Todd. My boyfriend,” I say.

  Trina stands up again and gives him as tight a hug as she gave me, and I step back to take in a moment that five-, ten-, or twenty-year-old me would never have believed: My family, sans daddy, together and welcoming my partner into the otherwise oh-so-exclusive circle. It’s my turn to tear up a little.

  Trina sits back down and I ask her the question I’ve been afraid to ask since my arrival. “How is she?”

  Twenty-Nine

  Trina shakes her head; apparently, the question moved her to a darker part of her mind. “Not good. The doctors aren’t sure what to expect. She’s in a coma, and there’s really no telling when—or if—she’ll come out of it. Aside from that, her physical wounds are hard to read, as well. Her spine is all fucked up from the fall, so even if she does come out of the coma, they’re not sure she’ll be able to walk. And depending on the brain damage, she may not be able to do much of anything—even speak—for the rest of her life.”

  I exhale and feel the stinging of my eyes tearing up again, the room blurring into an ugly stew of synthetic whites and blues and chromes.

  “Remy…what’s been happening? I just heard about Dad less than a year ago, and well, that was whatever, but now Mom?”

  I look to Todd—I need someone to tell me what to do—but his returning gaze says, You know perfectly well what to do.

  So, I tell her everything. I start with two years ago, when the case for Ellen Dodge appeared on my desk and I discovered that our father was the murderer. With reluctance, I move on to disposing of him—if there’s anyone who will understand this, it’s her—and the subsequent shitstorm that forced Todd and me to move to New Mexico. I tell her about Andre and Stan Romero, and the ever-present and perpetually flailing tendrils of this evil organization. I tell her about how I left Todd—in this very hospital, in fact—to flee, in order to keep him safe. I tell her what happened to Mom and why. I tell her about Mom’s own heroics and her work with Deliverance, about the reputation she acquired and how that led to the eventuality of a bright red target appearing on her back. At certain parts of my recount, such as my getting shot or my mother showing up at my doorstep, I think I hear her stir, but with no more certainty than if I imagined it.

  As I tell my (and Todd’s and Mom’s and Creed’s) story, Trina sits in solemn patience, nodding along. Sometimes, her face shifts into shock or even horror, but it always defaults back to a concerned attentiveness. When I finish, she nods but doesn’t speak; she seems to understand what few do: that there’s nothing she can say right now that will make it any better. Her support is implicit and thus needs no spoken message.

  Then, it’s Trina’s turn to tell me her story. I know that she moved to New York to sing, but that information is about as informative as the title of a novel alone.

  To my great relief, she hasn’t been bothered by Keroth’s army of goons. Admittedly, I didn’t give that much thought, particularly when Todd, Beth, and my mother occupied my thoughts so commandingly.

  When she ran off to New York, she had every intention of cutting us—all of us—off completely. To cross the rickety bridge to an adventurous new land and slash the ropes upon reaching the other side. Of course, she knew it was in her nature to be dramatic, and she figured she’d probably override that decision before too long, but it felt good to revel in the drastic finality of her action. She had been awarded a scholarship with a generous living stipend, so she didn’t have to find work—at least, not right away.

  Her arrival in the Big Apple (which she learned not to call it within two days of landing in it), while well-timed for her, seemed to come at a pivotal and detrimental time for those around her. Her charm has always been good at getting her friends, and college was no different. She fell into a circle of classic New York artsy hipsters, just a couple of trust funds in excess of a perfect Rent cast, with the immersive bohemian lifestyle on display, but secretly (and not disappointingly) better funded. Exposed brick walls, independent coffee joints with live local talent once a week, and organic, grass-fed, gluten-free, and vegan options on every other menu. And on top of all of that, she had finally created a substantial distance between herself and her past. Geographically, at least.

  Of course, she was aware that creating physical distance from an emotional issue would do no more to subdue it than closing the closet door would make the monster vanish, but it made it quite a lot easier to focus on the present knowing that her former life, full of fear and struggles and strife, was a sharp four thousand miles away, ticking on in her absence.

  Then the present struck.

  New York, which she trusted as a fertile new land into which to put down roots, lost its glamour of novelty in time, and reality dawned on her: She was alone. Her support system, she realized, was only as strong as the relationships she was able to build with those in the vicinity, and while she enjoyed them, she’d have been kidding herself to think that they were any better than tenuous. This thought didn’t occur to her often, but when it did, it swept a chilly gloom into her heart like the first biting gale of winter.

  Indeed, although she had a knack for building relationships quickly, she had an equally prevalent knack for setting them ablaze and inadvertently pouring gasoline on the flames with any efforts she made to remedy the issues. She hadn’t received many great gifts from her parents over the years, but among them, her emotional intelligence and ability to maintain relationships were by far the worst.

  Chief among these catastrophic attempts at human connection was by far the worst and, at the time, the most puzzling: Gunther, Trina’s Ex—with a capital E.

  The circumstances under which she met Gunther were innocent—playful, even. She entertained the idea of a romance with him even more eagerly when she thought of telling her peers the story of how she’d watched him walk headfirst into a tree due to his nose being buried in a paperback. He heard her giggle—not a malicious laugh, but one infused with an innocence that, in her, had died long ago—and chuckled himself before introducing himself.

  They hit it off immediately. As it turned out, the book he had been reading was Roald Dahl’s Matilda, and a well-loved copy at that. This was Trina’s favorite book growing up—I have distinct memories of her pointing her fingers at objects in the house in hopes that they would submit to her commands and zip around the house like drunk flies. At times, when she was angry at Dad, I’m sure I even caught her jabbing her finger in his direction (behind his back, of course). I’m not certain what she was visualizing in these moments, but probably something satisfyingly punitive.

  As every hopeless romantic and rom-com aficionado knows, a mutually loved children’s book is one of the most powerful means of establishing an instant love connection with a total stranger. This case was no different, and as one might expect of Matilda, talking candidly about the book—what they love about it and ho
w they relate to it, specifically—paved the path for the disclosure of their pasts which, it turned out, they also had in common. She seems to have had a romance not terribly unlike Todd’s and mine—from the start, at least. Perhaps humans are just drawn to humans with similar degrees of brokenness.

  In terms of compatibility, it sounds like the two had a connection to rival ours, even down to the subtle, less celebrated things that I find to be the most endearing, like sharing a space without the implicit obligation of doing anything together, or the way we pick up on each other’s moods and act accordingly without verbal communication.

  However, like me, Trina gets panicky upon getting close to people—but this is where our parallels end. My panic manifested by way of convincing myself that I’m not good enough for Todd, and that he could be happier with someone else, or even alone. I braced myself for the day that he would realize this and abandon me, but that day didn’t come, and over time, through his own means of communication, he told me that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Trina’s panic tore through her mind like a mighty tornado of paranoia, shredding any rational thoughts and reasoning that dared enter its path. I suppose Gunther just wasn’t as successful in communicating his commitment to her as Todd was with me.

  I reflect for a moment on whether Todd and I would still be together if his methods of addressing my insecurities was similarly unsuccessful, but dismiss that thought and shift my attention back to Trina.

  This was the beginning of how things went sour. From the start, it was salvageable—a boat with leaks, but patchable ones. However, neither Gunther nor Trina were equipped with the emotional tools necessary to mend the vessel and stay afloat. Water came aboard faster than they could bale it out, and that was that.