The Guilt We Carry

by Samuel W. Gailey

  Or maybe everything would get traced back to Alice. Trouble always seemed to follow her around. Like a puppy trailing after its mama. Never straying far. Always right at her heels. Nipping and nipping. And even if trouble didn’t find her, Alice managed to find it instead. Didn’t seem to matter where she was. The city or town never mattered. She always managed to be at the wrong job, associated with the wrong people, doing stuff that was stupid and dangerous and messed up. Being around people that never failed to make bad decisions and kept digging themselves deeper and deeper in a hole. She made all the choices. Hers and hers alone. Couldn’t blame anyone else. She thought that once she got off the streets, life would get better, but she had been wrong—dead wrong.

  Someone moaned in the next room over. The box spring squeaking like a cage full of rats. Kind of early in the day for that kind of business, but Alice figured that there were worse things to be doing in the middle of the day. Like watching a bunch of people kill each other.

  She peered around the room for a moment. The motel room had been what she called home for the last few months. Pathetic. Depressing. Disgusting.

  Another moan from the next room. Louder. More urgent. Then the box spring settled down and someone started to cough.

  She cleared out the dresser drawers of all her clothing—not that she had much of a wardrobe. She owned two pairs of blue jeans. No skirts or dresses. She hadn’t worn a skirt or nice dress since she ran away from home six years ago. A handful of shirts—one of them was Elton’s T-shirt that he gave her all those years ago that she could never part with. She stared at the blue shirt, thinking about sweet Elton and his little house. It was the last time she felt safe and protected and appreciated.

  Alice stuffed the T-shirt and everything else she owned in a red suitcase that had seen better days, then went about cleaning out the bathroom. No makeup to speak of. Not really her style. Some shampoo and tampons, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a hairbrush. It had always been this way. Packing light, keeping only what she really needed to get by.

  There was a half a pack of cigarettes on the back of the toilet. She grabbed those, too, and wished she had something to drink. Her buzz had lost its footing, and she could really use one right about now. Her eyes fell on a can of beer at the edge of the sink. It felt about half-full. Then she noticed some cigarette ashes around the lip. Desperate, but not that desperate.

  It seemed like she had always been in some kind of trouble and on the run, but not like this—not with a bunch of dead people behind her. She’d been caught shoplifting twice before. The first time for stealing an egg salad sandwich at an A&P grocery store in downtown Baltimore. She had been living on the streets for about six months; she was hungry, desperate, and didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t have any money and couldn’t bring herself to beg—that seemed even worse for some reason.

  Before running away from home, Alice had never stolen anything. Shoplifting seemed like a federal offense back then. But hunger trumped everything else. She stuffed the sandwich into her pocket and got as far as the parking lot before a security guard caught up with her. Just an egg salad sandwich, but the store manager insisted on calling the cops and pressing charges. And she didn’t even get a bite of the damn sandwich.

  The second-time shoplifting turned out to be a little less innocent. She shoved a watch in her pocket at a Kmart. She had intended on selling the watch on the street or at a pawnshop. She needed the cash, but it wasn’t for food. By that time, she had developed quite a taste for alcohol and she was jonesing for a drink.

  Both times she got arrested, Alice didn’t have an ID of any kind. No driver’s license. No library card. Nothing. And the cops don’t like that at all. The first time she got caught, Alice was stupid and gave them her real name. She was barely sixteen and didn’t know any better. But for some reason—maybe the supervising detective didn’t feel like doing the paperwork or he didn’t like dealing with runaways—the police didn’t call her parents. Alice walked out of the police station, free and clear, but she officially had a record for stealing an egg salad sandwich. Alice O’Farrell was alive on paper.

  Alice stepped out of the bathroom and fought the overwhelming urge to jump in the bed, close her eyes, and drift away. Maybe if she fell asleep, she’d wake up and none of this mess would have happened. Maybe she would just wake up with a lousy hangover, and as she always did in the morning, she would rate the degree of her condition from one to five. That would be nice. Nothing on her mind except for a hangover. Funny how sometimes in life you can suddenly look forward to one of the things you thought you hated the most.

  Alice yanked all the sheets off the mattress and stuffed everything inside one of the pillowcases. She didn’t want a single trace of herself left behind. She’d dump the crappy sheets somewhere and be doing the motel management a favor at the same time.

  Alice checked her watch. Twenty minutes, she guessed. Twenty minutes since she bolted out of Terry’s. How many of those minutes had been occupied by the discovery of all the bodies? Five? Fifteen? Didn’t matter. Nothing she could do about it now.

  She hauled the pillowcase out to Terry’s truck and tossed it into the back. Just getting this stuff out of her room and into the truck made Alice feel a little better. It was progress.

  “You ain’t stealing our sheets are you, Alice?”

  Alice looked over at Ernie What’s-His-Name, who stood out in the snow, clumps of white sticking to his greasy head. He worked on a banana that was more brown than yellow, and a piece of half-chewed gunk stuck to the corner of his mouth. He grinned at her and it made him look stupid. He wore the same bright red, button-down sweater he always wore. The sweater had to be a Goodwill special, and judging by its stretched-out cuffs and floppy waistband, he’d been wearing it since high school. The kind of sweater that Mister Rogers wore with pride as the kindhearted and soft-spoken host on television. But those sweaters had looked good on Mister Rogers. Not so much on Ernie. Ernie was all of one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, his tiny frame swimming in the crappy sweater and a pair of cinched-up pleated khakis peppered with old coffee stains.

  Alice forced a smile and jammed her unwashed, blood-splattered hands into her jean pockets. “Hey, Ernie. No. Not stealing the sheets. Thought they were overdue for a washing.”

  Ernie gnawed on his banana, mouth smacking open and closed. “Could let you have the maids wash them for a few bucks if you want.”

  Alice glanced over to her room. Door wide open, Terry’s duffel bag sitting on the floor for the world to see. “That’s okay. Probably should wash them myself. My time of the month kinda caught me by surprise this morning.”

  Too much information for Ernie. His eyes darted away from Alice and stared up at the falling snow. “Really coming down.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Supposed to get around eight inches.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I like snow.” He glanced toward her room and gestured at the duffel bag and red suitcase. “You leaving us?”

  Alice chewed on the inside of her cheek, ready to crawl right out of her own skin. “No. I mean, just for a day or two. Going to see a friend.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He kept staring toward her room. “Can I still come to the club tonight? You know. If you’re not there.”

  Fuck, Ernie. Fuck.

  “Why don’t you wait until I get back? I’d like to be able to take care of you myself. Terry doesn’t exactly know about our arrangement.”

  Ernie nodded, unable to conceal his disappointment. “Oh. Okay. When you coming back?”

  “Saturday,” Alice lied.

  “Oh. I thought you were just going for a day or two.”

  Alice restrained herself from the urge to scream at Ernie. To shake him by the shoulders and tell him to leave her the hell alone. “Well, I got a friend over in Allentown that’s in some trouble. Might take a few days to sort through it.”

  “Oh,” Ernie said. “That’s too bad. What kind of trouble?�
��

  “It’s nothing. Just a little trouble.”

  “Like with the law or something?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Marriage problems,” Alice said.

  “Oh. That’s a shame. She leaving her husband? Something like that?”

  Alice heard a phone ringing in the motel office. An old-fashioned ringer. Loud and obnoxious. If Ernie heard it, he chose to ignore it.

  “Your phone’s ringing.”

  Ernie glanced toward the office and shrugged. “Yeah.” He pointed what remained of the banana toward Alice’s truck. “That new?”

  The phone kept ringing, and over that came the sounds of sirens. Police sirens.

  “It’s a friend’s,” Alice said.

  “It’s nice. I’d like to get a truck. I’m tired of taking the bus.”

  Alice tried to inch her way toward her room.

  “Whose truck did you say it was?”

  “Just a friend’s.”

  “Geez, Alice, I didn’t know you had so many friends.”

  “I don’t. Just. I don’t.”

  The sirens got louder. Alice looked out toward the street and watched a police car whiz past. That was followed by an ambulance, then another two cop cars.

  Ernie didn’t seem to take notice. He stuffed the banana peel in his back pocket and kept looking into Alice’s room. “I was wondering. At the club. You know. About the private dances. I was just curious. Like, how much are they?”

  Alice finally stepped toward her room and stood halfway inside it. “I just pour drinks, Ernie. I gotta go.”

  The office phone started ringing again.

  Ernie nodded. “Okay. But, like, the private dances—are they more than twenty bucks?”

  “I tell you what, Ernie. I’ll talk to Tia when I get back. See if she’ll give you a private for twenty.”

  Ernie’s face went a dark shade of red. “Oh. Tia? Really? I don’t know.” He picked at one of his burning ears. “Like, what happens in a private dance? You know. Like if you pay more than twenty?”

  “I really got to go, Ernie. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  “I’ll probably just come in for a few drinks. When you get back. I don’t know about the private dance with Tia.”

  “Well, think about it.”

  “Okay. Saturday, right?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Good. And you sure about the laundry? I’m sure the maids won’t mind washing them. They’re women and everything, and they get their thing once a month, too.”

  “I’m running late, Ernie. I’ll see you around.”

  And Alice closed the door. Through the curtain, she saw Ernie linger out on the sidewalk for a second, looking from Terry’s truck and back to her room. He picked at his ear, wiped the finger on his khakis, then made his way toward the office.

  Alice glanced around the room. All the trash gone. No more bottles of booze.

  Her eyes drifted to a small pink scar on the inside of her forearm, about an inch in length. She traced her finger over the raised skin a few times, pushing down the welt like the effort would make the blemish disappear, and all Alice could think was, God, I could really use a drink.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OCTOBER 2005

  THE STAINS ON the comforter still clung stubbornly to the fabric. It had been washed a few times, but the fingernail polish wouldn’t come out. Light red spots near the foot of the bed. Might just as well be bloodstains. The first thing Alice saw in the morning, the last thing at night. Constant reminders.

  She tacked a poster over the fingernail polish doodles on the wallpaper. Gwen Stefani and No Doubt’s Rock Steady covered Jason’s last attempt at wall art. Alice thought it might help to cover up the scribbles—to hide them. But it didn’t. Not really.

  Her mom had added a small throw rug to cover the spots on the carpet. A rug she bought at Target that didn’t match her room at all—dark brown, and it stood out like a pimple on the tip of her nose. Alice’s dad brought her a different comforter from the linen closet, but Alice put it right back. They all made an attempt to cover up and replace what really couldn’t be covered up and replaced.

  Jason was gone. A poster, a rug, and a different comforter wouldn’t change that.

  His room hadn’t been touched since the accident—the only word used when referring to what had happened to Jason—like it had been contaminated. A toxic place barred from entry. The bed still unmade. Toys scattered on the floor. Legos, an electric racetrack that didn’t work anymore, an Oscar the Grouch puzzle that was missing a few pieces, three or four Superman figurines. A USS North Carolina T-shirt hung over the bedpost. A Star Wars night-light continued to glow orange in an outlet.

  Alice sat on the edge of her bed, dressed for school in a pair of jeans and a red blouse. She showered that morning as she always did. Combed and blow-dried her hair. Brushed her teeth. Applied some makeup. All the stuff you were supposed to do every day. All part of the routine of getting ready for school.

  She didn’t really want to go to school, but didn’t want to stay at home either. Both places were equally unbearable. Everybody at school knew what happened. Everybody. A lot of the kids steered clear of her, staring at her and getting real quiet when she passed them in the hallways. Hardly anybody said anything about the accident. Not many of the kids, anyway. What were they supposed to say? Sorry your brother’s dead. Sorry that he died in a dryer. Sorry that you were the one that was supposed to be watching him.

  Mr. Houck, her swimming coach, said that he felt awfully sorry about everything. Tragic. Just tragic. He even got a little teary-eyed. Asked if there was anything he could do. Told her that it was okay if she didn’t participate in the upcoming swim meet if she wasn’t feeling up to it. Alice knew that part of him didn’t mean that—she was not only team captain, but the team’s best swimmer as well, and without her in the water, they would stand a good chance of losing the meet.

  Alice kept up with her homework though. She studied for all the quizzes, handed in reports, even read Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey for English class. Better to keep busy, she thought. She participated in swim practice after school each day, drawn to the sense of freedom that she could only find in the pool, the silence and solitude under the water cherished commodities.

  Her best friends, Shelly and Rhonda, still ate lunch with her and walked to class with her, but even they were uncomfortable and a little weird around her. Yesterday, on the bus after school, Shelly started talking about her little brother, Barry. What a pain in the ass he was. How gross he was. Barry had walked in on her when she was getting out of the shower and saw her naked. He stared at her breasts, pointed at them and laughed. Shelly said that he was so lame and stupid, that she hated her little brother, then suddenly stopped in the middle of her story when Rhonda gave her a look. Shelly got all quiet and awkward. Her face turned red and she didn’t say anything else the whole bus ride home. She wouldn’t even look at Alice when she got off at her stop.

  Alice stared down at her shoes. The laces weren’t tied yet. She really, really didn’t want to go back to school. It was only Wednesday. Three more days until the weekend. Three more days until she had to sit around the house the entire weekend and try to avoid her parents.

  She could stay at home. Her parents would let her. They were both wallowing in their own private cloud of grief and didn’t seem to care what Alice did on a daily basis. They were all supposed to go see a family psychiatrist the following week. Someone that specialized in helping families through tragedy. A grief counselor. Alice’s parents wanted her to sit and tell a stranger how she felt about Jason dying. It’ll help you come to terms with what happened, her mom said. And help with the guilt.

  But staying home from school didn’t seem like such a great idea either. Her mother usually slept most of the day because she didn’t sleep at night. Alice could hear her moving around the house in the middle of the night. Walking up and down the stairs, moving from room to room. Doing what,
Alice had no idea. She didn’t really want to know.

  Alice finally stood up. Grabbed her books and notebooks from her desk and stuffed them inside her backpack. She walked down the hallway, forced to pass by Jason’s room. She tried not to slow down or look inside, but when she heard the gurgle of the fish tank, she stopped at the threshold and stared inside at her little brother’s room, at four years of his life and at what used to be. She wondered how long it would take for someone in the family to finally gather the fortitude to pack up all of Jason’s belongings and either store them in the garage or donate them to charity, and how long it would take to strip the room down entirely and remove all semblance of the fourth member of the family.

  She watched three goldfish circulate in their tank, scanning the surface of the water in the endless search for food, and she thought that Jason was probably the last person to feed them some pellets.

  She stepped into the bedroom and it smelled of Jason. Baby shampoo and graham crackers and dirty socks. Her eyes began to burn and everything around her blurred as a twisted knot lodged and expanded in her throat and made it painful to swallow. She crossed over the shag carpeting and sat down at Jason’s play table. Dried chunks of red and yellow Play-Doh scattered all over the surface, along with scraps of construction paper and felt markers and a pair of kid scissors. She flipped through a stack of Jason’s drawings and sketches, pictures of cats and dogs and what appeared to be a cow. Then she came to a drawing of a stick-figure family. A mother, father, and two children, one bigger than the other. A boy and girl. Alice wiped the tears that leaked from her eyes and noticed a piece of the Play-Doh had been molded into a shape of a head, complete with eyes, a mouth, and long hair.