Ashes to Ashes

by Jason Banks

  Heaviness sank down Max’s throat. “Uhhhh...”

  “Have you even checked your phone in the past three god forsaken hours, Max?”

  “Butt... butterball, ha what a funny word,” Max replied, inebriated.

  Brogan’s eyes angrily squinted as if he were practicing for a role as an Asian male in a motion picture. “This right here,” he exclaimed, waving his hand in front of Max’s torso, “this is not going to work out if you keep this up, this shit of returning home fucked up beyond your mind, almost crashing your car into the gate of our driveway—lucky to have not been pulled over and arrested for a DUI—out until all hours of the night...”

  Max let out a sigh, hushing his newlywed husband with an index finger. “But I’m happppyy, don’tchyo... don’tcha... don’tcha want me to be happy?”

  The stinging palm of Brogan’s hand struck across Maxwell’s droopy face. “Goddamn it, Maxwell Florian fucking Williams!” He screamed, yanking his man by the twist of Max’s shoulder.

  Max followed Brogan’s lead toward the door, stooping forward the entire way.

  “Hey! You can’t just leave,” the bartender shouted. “He hasn’t paid a dime yet.”

  Brogan grumbled, rolling his eyes and contorted his head back toward the barkeep.

  “How much this time?” Brogan questioned, bright red in the face with angst.

  Thomas tapped into his digital register. “$68.50,” he hollered back.

  Brogan reached into his wallet, fetched a single hundred-dollar bill and tossed it atop the counter. “Keep the change,” he uttered, wrangling Max back into a standing posture.

  Bright lights zoomed by in both directions as Max held onto Brogan’s neck, walking towards the parking garage neighboring Colfax Avenue.

  “You’ve gotta cut this shit out if you expect me to stick around. I will not stay married to a drunk.”

  Max sighed, blowing potent fumes of whiskey breath in front of Brogan’s nose. “I cannuu... I can quit if ya... if ya wants me to.”

  Brogan stopped mid-step, almost catching Max off his gait. “Babe, you have to want to quit for yourself. There are programs and support groups to help you quit,” he said, grabbing Max by the chin and stared him straight in the eyes underneath a dim streetlight. “Honestly at this rate you’re going, as a doctor, I’d say you develop cirrhosis in five years and if you still didn’t quit, you’d be dead within another five.”

  “I’m sss... sorry, lover,” Max replied, a tear trailing down his cheek. “I’m soo sooo sorry if I hurt’ch-ew.”

  Brogan held Max in a tight embrace. “You do hurt me when you get loaded. But I will be there for you every step of the way if you truly wanna stop drinking,” he replied, brushing the tears from Max’s face. “We’ll talk more and make a plan in the morning. Let’s just get you home for now, okay?”

  A loud overhead page inside Rite Aid jolted Max from his flashback. That was the turning point of his sobriety. As promised, Brogan truly was at his side along the entire road of recovery. Except up until this point, for nearly ten years, Maxwell hadn’t taken a single sip of any sort of liquor. Melanie was right. How the hell was he going to refrain from drinking away his sorrows? This single event marked the first major trauma he’d experienced since his father Steven passed away nine years prior, which is what led Max to drinking, alcohol numbed him from the feelings of sorrow and loss. But what about now? He had Lily to think about. Of which, should have offered him some stability to avoid the bottle, given that he was now solely responsible for another precious human life. The other irony of a thought which offered him some sort of positive reasoning was Brogan essentially died as a result from a drunk driver. Somehow the thought of booze didn’t seem as tempting in that moment anymore, because hell would freeze over before he turned into the same sodding mess who killed his husband.

  Max glanced over his shoulder to notice Lily was nowhere in sight. Immediate panic set in as he scrambled around aisles shouting her name. He felt pathetic for the fact of losing the child in a store on the very same night he’d became a single parent.

  “Lily!” He called out, shouting with both curved hands around his mouth.

  As he rounded the corner of the greeting card section, Max spotted her playing with what appeared to be a snow globe from a shelf in the photo department. He quickly shuffled toward Lily with a sense of relief. Hopefully this would not be a regular thing, or he’d quickly become the worst parent on planet earth, maybe even losing her to child protective services—god forbid that should indelibly happen. Max would be devastated.

  “Oh honey, there you are,” he gasped, kneeling down to his haunches. “What’cha got there, munchkin?”

  Lily shook the snow globe with a plastic rectangular slot in the middle, shrouded by fake globules of white foam to imitate a snowstorm.

  “That will hold a picture inside it,” Max said. “When a picture is slid into the slot from underneath the base, the photo appears inside, and the snow surrounds it.”

  Lily grinned. “Should we put a photo of daddy in here?”

  “That’s a great idea, hon,” Max replied, pulling out his iPhone to locate his camera roll. “I say, why don’t you help me find a picture to put in there and then you’ll have it forever and ever to look at and smile at the good times you had with daddy.”

  “Okay,” Lily obliged. “Let me see,” she insisted, pulling on Max’s arm to lower the device in front of her.

  The both of them remained there in the corner of the drugstore, flipping through countless pictures while reminiscing on all the fun memories they provided. Max thumbed over to an image showing Brogan acting silly with their daughter inside the shopping cart of a Costco snack aisle. Lily giggled.

  “You were such a little stinker that day,” Max chuckled, grinning for the first time that night since he’d arrived home from the restaurant.

  Lily pushed through a few more photos, landing on a picture which showed the three of them—Brogan, Maxwell, and Lily posed in front of Max’s backyard fence in Carmel during their mid-west Easter visit for Max also observing Passover with Brogan.

  “This, this, this one,” Lily exclaimed. “This is my favorite.”

  Max nodded in agreement. “Then this one it shall be for our one and only Lily Ambrosia Baxter, Princess of Denver County.”

  ‘Our’ stung inside his psyche. That would only prove to be a very unshakable habit—speaking of Brogan in a plural sense.

  Thankfully, Lily didn’t pay any mind to Maxie’s mess-up. He held onto the sturdy gondola display and stood up. A yellow Kodak instant printing machine sat alongside the wall a couple paces to their left.

  “Watch this magic, Lil,” Max instructed, grabbing her small hand and led her to the photo kiosk.

  Using the Bluetooth transfer option, Max selected the image of them back in his hometown and virtually beamed the file to the screen. As the image appeared, Lily gasped.

  “Wow, how’d you do that?” she questioned, with a look of shock.

  “It’s just magic. Isn’t it cool?”

  Lily shook her head. “Yeah, and look what’s coming out of here,” she said, pointing toward the plastic cradle which keeps the prints from scattering to the ground.

  “Yep, that’s our pictures,” Max nodded.

  As he retrieved the print including two wallet sized copies of the same image, Max walked toward the checkout counter with Lily in tow. He placed the snow globe and Kodak print on the counter, where it appeared no employee was within sight.

  “We only need one, why are there two?” Lily asked, loosening her grip from Max’s hand as she spotted her favorite candy bar on the attached display shelf next to them.

  “I am going to have the same picture, so we both have daddy with us everywhere we go. I’m going to keep mine in my wallet,” Max responded, retrieving Lily’s hands from the candy shelf. “No, we don’t need any chocolate tonight.”

  “Hello?” Max shouted, waving his hands around in the air.
<
br />   Lily sighed. “But Kit-Kat’s are my favorite, Maxie.”

  Within moments, a female employee with long blonde hair approached the register. Her name tag read, Rebecca. While she punched in her codes to unlock the point-of-sale, Max gave in and allowed Lily to place the candy on top the counter—considering how difficult that night was for the both of them.

  “Okay, sweetheart. But you have to wait until tomorrow to eat it,” Max insisted.

  “It’s alright, I’m so tired Maxie. I can wait until tomorrow,” she agreed.

  Rebecca rang the merchandise quickly. “Do you have your Plenti card?” she asked while chewing on the masticated gum in her mouth.

  Holding his hands out in hesitation to avoid the whole loyalty card pitch. “No, just save it for next time. Thanks,” he retorted, annoyed at the constant membership card sales pitches for every freaking store he frequented. “I hear the same speech from Dirk back in the pharmacy every time anyway.”

  While Lily rubbed her tired eyes, Max swiped his debit card through the terminal. He signed on the well-worn LCD screen before he swiped his receipt from the clerk’s grasp.

  “Have a great night,” she said, waving them both out the door.

  Great Night? Yeah, right. Max couldn’t think about any worse of night in his entire god forsaken life.

  Inside the car, Lily quickly shut her eyes after being buckled into the back seat. Max turned the ignition and the radio station stuck on an oldie’s channel emanated from the speakers. The familiar lyrics struck at Max’s already breaking heart.

  “‘Cuz we’re living in a world of fools. Breaking us down. When they all should let us be. We belong to you and me...”

  The intimacy of this song sank deep within Maxwell as he thought back to he and Brogan dancing to their wedding song, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ by Bee Gees. His heart beat quickly in his chest as he wiped the sorrow from his eyes. Max thought it was ironic that this very song should have aired on the radio station at that precise moment. However, in a very subtle way, he considered the notion that this was Brogan, or God, or some super-plasmic phenomena in the universe—sending him a message of peace and comfort knowing that Brogan crossed over into the great beyond painlessly and with ease. As he placed the vehicle in reverse, Max glanced down at the sparkle from his Cartier rose gold diamond ring while the remainder of their wedding song finished playing. It became crystal clear to him that this was Brogan’s way of possibly saying ‘I Love You’ one last time.

  With pain throbbing throughout his entire skull, Maxwell continued to toss and turn in their bed. Their was a concept he still couldn’t brace himself to accept forgetting. Less than twelve hours prior, he and Brogan were laughing and simply enjoying each other’s presence. Now he was only stepping into the vast world of grief, taking a giant plunge from satisfaction to a state of mourning. Even though his new reality was dismal, Max hoped with all his might that he’d break into a cold sweat and wake up from a horrifying dream to the warmth of Brogan’s hairy chest against his spine. Though he knew this wasn’t a possibility. He glanced at his alarm clock on the nightstand and noticed the night advanced way into early morning.

  Tears swallowed his tired eyes for the umpteenth time that night as Max figured he wouldn’t be able to catch a single wink of sleep. His focus wasn’t sharp enough to read and a happy state of affairs in the current book he’d bookmarked on his Kindle would invariably put him into a fit of rage, fighting away the demons which would soon inflict only more sadness. The fact of the matter was, Max knew his near future wasn’t going to be a storybook tale worth swooning over. He sat bedside, hunched over while resting his migraine-ridden forehead into both of his palms. Sleep seemed impossible, so he figured he’d wander downstairs and find some way to keep busy until daybreak when Lily would hopefully awake somewhat rested.

  He descended the stairwell while digging his fingers into the corner of his temple. He knew there was always a bottle of Tylenol in the kitchen’s cupboard on the farthest left side of their kitchen. As he arrived at the bottom step, he rounded the corner to traipse through the foyer. After stepping forward atop the granite tiles, Max was reminded of the shattered glass water bottle which he’d dropped a handful of hours prior and forgotten in this single moment. When he and Lily returned home from the hospital and their extremely late journey through Rite Aid, he’d carried their conked out princess up the stairs to tuck her into bed whereupon he surrendered under the sheets as well.

  “Oh fuck me,” Max scowled, hobbling over to the nearest wall.

  He pulled out a small shard from the arch of his right foot before hopping on the other foot into the kitchen, leaving a small trail of blood behind him. Luckily a small first aid kit was kept in the same place he was headed towards. Max quickly swung the cupboard door open and scooped the bottle of acetaminophen into his hand. With his other hand, he grasped the kit by its handle and slid it off the shelf, which sent a bottle of Alka-Seltzer fruit chews tumbling to the ground below.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, I’m hopeless without him,” Max cried to himself, scooping a roll of gauze, a band-aid, and miniature sheers from the first aid kit.

  Actually, Brogan trained him how to tend to these sorts of emergencies quite well. It was his recent tarnished self-esteem which convinced him otherwise. After placing the anti-bacterial strip across the laceration, Max wrapped a generous portion of the white bandaging around his foot to help cushion the ache which applying pressure or standing on would provide. With pain throbbing at both ends of his body, the Tylenol wasn’t needed as much as it was required at this point. He shuffled to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Lily’s apple juice then returned to sit in his chair in the ample kitchen’s breakfast nook to swallow the pain relievers.

  Max wondered where he left his phone, since he was curious if Mel was still awake or if she’d fallen asleep by that point. Since Indiana was two hours ahead of Colorado, he figured that his sister was already asleep. After remembering that the device was probably still in his jeans pocket, he didn’t really feel like trekking back up the stairs just to retrieve it and there was also the factor of a broken glass mess he still needed to clean up. The latter being first on his late-night agenda, Max rose from the table to retrieve a broom and dustpan from a utility closet just adjacent to the foyer where his mess remained widely scattered. This may have been the moment Maxwell decided to switch his preferred drinking water to a brand which wasn’t stored in a fragile container.

  Once he swept up the broken bottle and wiped up his trail of blood from the floor, Max let out a large sigh. All that action just in the past half hour and he still wasn’t truly tired. He paced into the living area to find one their iPad’s in a corner chair of the room. This particular tablet was Brogan’s iPad for home use. It wasn’t protected with a pass-code since there would be nothing he needed to store on it which required such security. Since he knew Melanie’s phone number registered with iCloud, he manually dialed her from the onscreen keypad while falling effortlessly into the couch. It rang a couple times, then switched to Melanie’s front facing camera.

  “So you are still up,” Max said into the device, noting his sister was wide-awake with several lights still switched on in her bedroom.

  Melanie appeared to smile a small bit, but Maxwell knew deep inside that she was trying to stay as chipper for his sake.

  “Yeah, of course I can’t sleep. You’re my twin brother, whenever you hurt, I feel it too,” she replied.

  “Well I didn’t figure with it being almost,” Max said, stopping to look at the time on the iPad’s status bar, “oh shit, it’s already almost 7:00 am there.”

  “I know this is a stupid question and all, but how are you holding up? Speaking of which, you never replied to my last text about the drinking thing. That’s another thing which has me worried tonight,” Melanie questioned.

  “I know, I’m sorry I forgot to reply. That made me flash back to the time when Brogan found me drunk off my ass for the
however many handful of times in a bar on Colfax,” Max responded with tears, surprised that he could still cry at all by that point.

  Melanie offered a warm expression. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to...”

  Max interrupted. “No, it’s not your fault. It’s just the timing of when I actually read it, which was the irony of it all. ‘Lil and I were inside Rite Aid and I’d looked up from my phone and noticed I was standing right in front of a giant aisle of liquor. Well and then...”

  “I didn’t know Rite Aid sold alcohol in Colorado. Isn’t that illegal?” Melanie interrupted.

  “Well for other drugstores, yes,” Max replied, swallowing hard, “but this is a 24-hour store and they actually have their own liquor license through the state. It’s the only pharmacy or drugstore in Colorado that has one, apparently. But I didn’t get a chance to say why I forgot to respond.” Max took in another deep breath, placed the side of his forehead into his palm. “The other reason is because when I snapped out of that flashback, I’d lost Lily inside the store and it took me a couple minutes to actually find her.”

  Melanie gasped, trying to hold back the tiniest of chuckle for which Max would give permission for later. “You lost her? Where did she wander off to?”

  “No, it’s okay, you can laugh at this,” Max confirmed, shaking his head in embarrassment. “I’d lost track of her on my very first night, not even a few hours into being a verified single parent,” he sighed. “I found her in the photo department holding up a snow globe that has a slot underneath to slip in a picture.”

  “Oh,” Melanie responded. “Well that’s weird.”

  Max nodded. “Yeah sort of. I thought that before we even went back home. I had to find an item which Lily could associate with positive memories of her father,” he choked back more sorrow, “I mean Brogan.”

  “That makes sense, I guess. She would have a different time grieving this than a kid not on the spectrum I suppose,” Melanie admitted.

  Max raised his shoulders while tipping the bottle of apple juice back to get out its last few drops. “Anyway, the actual reason I tried reaching you now is because I need you badly, Sis.”