“C’mon, it’s pouring!” he yells from the doorstep.
“Where have you been?” I scream to hear myself over the storm.
He doesn’t reply and just disappears behind the door. I follow him inside.
As soon as I see him put her bag of takeout on the table, I know that my mother was lying. Of course, I think to myself.
Why wouldn’t she? She has always been a deceitful asshole, why did I think that had changed?
I'm tempted to just turn around and leave but I also want answers.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I say with water dripping off me onto the welcome mat. “Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”
He turns toward our mom and says, “Mother, you care to explain?”
Mom smiles in her cunning way and shrugs her shoulders in an exaggerated way.
“I’m sorry, okay?” she says to Owen. “You see, what happened was that I borrowed his phone when he went to get a pack of cigarettes and I broke it.”
I roll my eyes.
“Here, if you don’t believe me.” Owen hands it to me.
If it had been dropped, the screen would be cracked. But this phone was shattered.
It wouldn’t even turn on. It looked like it had been thrown against the wall or hit with something really heavy. Whatever happened to it, happened to it on purpose.
“I didn’t know your number,” Owen says, opening the containers of Indian food and placing them on the counter.
Something is different about him. He’s here, but he’s not here. It’s like he’s absent.
“She has my number,” I point out.
“Yeah, but you said you never wanted to hear from me again,” my mother points out, gesturing with her cigarette.
That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have given it to him, I want to say but instead, I focus my attention on Owen.
“You could have just come back and told me.”
He shrugs and gives me a vapid smile. His eyes won’t meet mine and it’s not just because of the guilt. There is something else going on.
34
Olive
When we go out on the stoop…
Owen doesn't say anything for some time. I watch him arrange all of the containers in a buffet-style. Once he’s done, he walks over to me and throws his arm around my shoulder.
“Olive, I’m sorry,” he says, somewhat slurring his words. “Honestly, I know you didn’t want me to go see Mom but I had to. She’s my mother, you know. I missed her. I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“I wouldn't have said anything about that. But I was worried. You should’ve told me.”
“Eh, you weren’t that worried,” he says, waving his hand in my face.
His words are slow but not deliberate. He seems oddly relaxed given that he is in Nicholas’ presence. “Besides, you have him. You made your choice.”
I pull away from him.
“What are you talking about? Made my choice? Nicholas is my boyfriend and you’re my brother. I have room in my life for both of you.”
“Nah, nope, nada,” Owen says. “That’s where you’re wrong. You don’t have room for both of us. He killed my girlfriend and I can’t be around someone like that. And you…you made it real clear the last time we talked that you believe him.”
“I never said anything like that. But you’re making accusations about him that you can’t know for sure are true.”
“I know, Olive!” Owen raises his voice. “I know what he did and what he didn’t do! And if you believe him over me, then fuck you!”
“Is that why you’re here? Is that why you made me look for you all over town? I was this close,” I say, pushing my thumb and index finger together, leaving only a sliver of space between the two, “I was this close to going to your parole officer.”
“You were going to do what?” Owen yells. It originates somewhere deep in his stomach and comes out like a roar. “Don’t you ever talk to him! This is a personal matter, Olive. This is none of your business.”
“There are people trying to kill you, you asshole! Whoever you snitched on in prison, they are connected big time and there’s a ticking clock on your life. So when you didn’t show up, and I didn’t see you for two days, I thought you were dead.”
Sobs that had started to gather in the back of my throat have turned into tears that stream down my face when I say the last bit. They are a mixture of anger and disappointment and disillusionment.
“I know that, don’t you think I know that?” he asks.
“No, I don’t. Otherwise, I don’t think you would be here, getting high with Mom and making me look for you all over town.”
Owen takes a drag of his cigarette and leans over the counter for support. He doesn’t say anything for a few moments and the silence in the room becomes overbearing.
“The food is getting cold,” Mom says. “Would you like to have some, Nicholas?”
“No, thank you,” he mumbles.
“Suit yourself,” she says, piling food from different containers onto a plastic plate.
“Can we talk somewhere…in private?” Owen asks.
I nod and follow him out onto the stoop. The rain is still pouring down and we huddle under the small, ripped awning.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I say in a hushed tone.
It’s the middle of the day but I don’t want the neighbors to hear what they have already heard plenty of.
“I wanted to see her. I knew that you wouldn’t approve and I didn’t want to have a fight about it,” he says coldly.
“I was worried about you. I wish you had called.”
Looking somewhere behind me, he says, “I was going to, but she broke my phone. On purpose. She said she wanted some alone time with me. That she missed me. Then we got high and…honestly, Olive, it was like a day later and I completely lost track of time.”
“Yeah, meth will do that to you,” I say, my words heavy with judgement.
He lets the words roll off his back and doesn’t call me on it. I’m his concerned sister who doesn’t want him to do hard drugs (or any drugs for that matter) but I shouldn't have said that. That self-centered and better-than-thou bullshit isn’t going to do anyone any good.
“I know that I’m not supposed to use anymore. You know that I had a problem when I was a kid, before I went to prison. And then everything just got worse in there.”
“You can get drugs in prison?” I ask, naively.
“You can get anything in there. And drugs are one of the easiest, a lot easier than a cell phone, for instance. Being high helps you pass the time like nothing else,” Owen says, looking far away at the horizon, as if he can see behind all of those dilapidated buildings. “Then, when I learned to read, I quit.”
“So, what happened?” I ask. “Why did you…do this?”
“I wanted to see Mom,” he says quietly. “I didn't want to have a fight with you about it. We have been fighting about enough. But seeing her brought back all of this anger and guilt and everything else that I felt for so long. She was always so selfish and she never looked out for us.”
“So, why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you come back to me once you saw that?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I know that she was a shitty mother but she is my mother and she’s the only one I’ll ever have. So, I just wanted for things to be good between us again. I didn’t want to feel so crappy about everything. I didn’t want to think about all of terrible things that she did when I was a kid. I just wanted to be happy with her. So, when she offered me a beer, I said yes. When she offered me a joint, I said yes. And then…she offered me some meth and, again, I said yes.”
He hangs his head so far down that his chin almost touches his chest.
I can’t help but feel sorry for him and my hand reaches for his. As soon as we touch, he pulls me in closer and buries his face in my shoulder.
I hold him through the hard thick sobs of regret and promise him that ever
ything will be alright.
I’m no longer angry with him. I am here for him and I want to make his pain go away.
“I have to tell you something,” I say when we pull away from one another. “We went to see Gabby.”
It takes him a moment to process this information before asking why in a flat effect.
“We were looking for you and we found her email address in your notebook and looked her up.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Owen says. “She’s married.”
“Yes, I found that out when her husband came out.”
“Does he know about me?” he asks after a moment.
“No, I just said I was your sister and she taught you in class, that was it. But she wasn’t very happy to see me. Have you talked to her recently?”
“Not since I got out.”
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not as I give him a reassuring nod.
“The thing is that…there’s somebody else. Someone I can’t have, and no one can really ever compare to her.”
I look at him surprised.
My heart skips a beat, in a good way though.
People meet people in prison all the time but this sounds like it’s something serious. Why hadn’t he said anything about this before?
“This is great, Owen,” I say, giving him a hug. “Who is she? Tell me everything.”
“No, it’s not,” he says quietly. “It’s not important. I can’t have her. She’s…off limits.”
“Like married?” I ask.
I don’t like this streak of him dating married women. He’s better than that or at least he should be.
“Does she have a family?” I ask with a wince.
The thought of my brother breaking up a family with kids makes me nauseated. I know what it is to be on the other end of that. I suspect that’s one of the reasons why our father disappeared so much for days or weeks at a time when I was a kid.
It’s not like Mom was a particularly easy person to live with but she didn’t deserve to be yanked around like that.
He cheated on her, they fought, he left and then he came back and the cycle started all over again.
“No, she doesn’t,” he says to my relief.
“So, she has a husband but no kids?” I double check.
“No, she’s not married,” he says quietly.
“Okay…so, what’s the problem then? If she has a boyfriend or a fiancé, it’s great but she’s not married yet,” I say, gasping to myself silently for what I just said.
It’s not okay if she’s married and it’s not okay if she’s with someone. It’s lying and deceiving and shitty all around.
“No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend, not really,” Owen says.
I narrow my eyes and try to figure out the problem. When he doesn’t elaborate I grab him by the shoulders and shake him a little.
“So…go get her. Why haven’t you yet? Why are you being so secretive about this?”
The first gunshot sounds like thunder. The second sounds like a firecracker.
Blood rushes to my head. There’s nowhere to hide. I drop down to the stairs but on top of the stoop, I’m completely exposed.
Someone yells in the distance. I focus my eyes and see a group of guys in a gray Cadillac with the windows rolled down.
The guy in the passenger seat is a holding a big gun with a long barrel. Another shot goes off.
This one hits right above my head, at least it feels like it does.
I cover my face with my hands and don’t look up until the car screeches away.
That’s when I see Owen with his blood all over the top step.
“Owen! Owen!” I slide over to him, cradling his head in my lap. “Everything is going to be okay. I’m here.”
I wipe his face with my hands and kiss him on his eyes and cheeks over and over again.
“Someone, please call the police! He needs the paramedics!” I yell at the top of my lungs.
His eyes are open and he blinks with every other breath or so.
Blood is literally draining away his face, turning his pale skin even more white.
“Olive,” he says slowly and with great difficulty.
“You’re going to be fine,” I repeat myself in a frantic tone trying to make both of us believe what might be completely impossible.
“Olive,” he says again, raising his finger slightly as if to get me to be quiet.
Wiping tears off my cheek, I let out a big sob and wait.
“I…love…you,” he says with a long pause between each word.
“I love you, too. So much.” I grab and hug him as hard as I can wanting nothing more than to somehow infuse him with life.
The paramedics arrive and the world gets the volume turned down. I watch everything as if it’s happening to someone else.
When I look up, I realize that Nicholas is right behind me.
I don’t know how long he has been there and I turn my body toward his chest and fall into his open arms.
“He’s going to be okay. They are taking him to the hospital. He’s going to pull through,” he whispers into my ear.
35
Olive
While I wait…
The hospital smells like cleaning products. The waiting room is brightly lit and a place in which it’s impossible to hide.
It’s not that I want to be hidden, per se, it’s more that I want to be invisible. I don’t want to be here but I can’t be anywhere else.
Hospitals have always made me very uncomfortable. I’m not sure that there’s anyone out there who really loves them, especially when they are visiting a loved one, but I’m not sure everyone feels exactly like I do.
I pace in front of the vending machine like a tiger in a cage. I’m not angry or impatient, rather resigned to my fate.
Perhaps I’m in a daze.
Owen has undergone surgery, but he is still in critical condition. They had to put him into a medically induced coma and now it’s just a matter of waiting.
The doctors don’t have any answers. Doctors, plural. There are five of them. One is the spokesperson, the others are part of her team, whatever that means.
But at least what we are getting is the combined opinion of all of them put together. They said that as if it’s a good thing.
How does that saying go again? A camel is a horse that was designed by a committee. Committees aren’t always what you want.
Whether or not it’s something I want now, I have no idea.
I have no idea how to feel about anything. In fact, I feel nothing.
In one of the magazines in the waiting room, they have an article about how autistic children can’t tell emotions. The teachers who work with them use a chart and point to different emotions to help them identify how they feel.
Smiley face for happy.
Sad face for sad.
The article is old and I wonder if they just rely on emojis now. Anyway, if you asked me how I feel right at this moment, I would’ve pointed to the sad face.
Two minutes ago, I would’ve pointed to the angry orange face and the inward pointing eyebrows.
Over the last few days, my mom and Nicholas have taken turns trying to tell me to calm down.
If there is one thing that I have been throughout all of this it is calm.
Stoic, some would say.
Dead on the inside, someone else would say.
Mom was here during the surgery but ever since then she hasn’t been around much. According to her, there is no point to us sitting in the waiting room when we can wait just as effectively (or ineffectively) at home.
If his condition changes then they’ll call us, she reassured me. But I read online that it’s important to talk to coma patients, that it helps them remember who they are after they wake up so I make a promise to myself to wait for it to happen.
It’s Wednesday and I haven’t seen her a bit and I don’t expect her to show up today either. But she surprises me.
“Want to
get a cigarette with me?” she asks, waltzing over.
I don’t smoke but I say sure.
The sliding doors open for us and we step outside into the falling light. It has been days since I have had a fresh breath of air and I breathe in deeply.
“You called and asked me about this woman who Owen is in love with,” Mom says, taking a drag of her cigarette.
I had left her a message about it yesterday. The doctor told me that it’s nice for the patient to hear voices of people who care about him.
So, I thought I would try to find her, wherever she is, and ask her to come visit.
“Do you know who she is?” I ask even though I know that it’s a long shot.
Owen wasn’t the type to tell that many people things that mattered to him and our mother would probably be at the bottom of the list anyway. But he did spend some time with her and, who knows, maybe something slipped out.
She finishes one cigarette and lights another. I wait but she doesn’t say anything. Still, I can feel that there’s something on the tip of her tongue.
“What did he tell you?” I ask.
Again, she doesn’t reply.
If she had nothing to say then she wouldn’t be here.
She wouldn’t have brought it up.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Olive, but I guess I’ll just come right out and say it.”
“Yes, please do.”
She picks at her peeling nail polish on her thumb with the index finger of her other hand.
Finally, she puts out her cigarette and says, “It’s you.”
My tongue touches the roof of my mouth and my mouth drops open.
“But he’s…my…“
“No, he’s not,” she cuts me off before I finish the thought.
I touch my collarbone with my hand.
“I didn’t want to tell you but, hell, now is as good a time as ever, I guess,” she says, lighting another cigarette.
“I adopted you when you were a kid. I’m not your biological mother and your dad is not your biological father. That’s probably a good thing, huh?” She laughs a loud raspy laugh that originates somewhere in the pit of her stomach.
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