by Amy Reed
“What?” I say. I think I am whispering. “Dad, what happened?”
“She’s in the hospital,” he says, his voice cracking. “She had an accident. Too many pills.” I can hear him breathing hard, trying to push the tears away. “The doctors said she had enough in her to kill a large man twice over. But her tolerance was so high. That’s what saved her. She’s been taking so much.”
Silence. We are waiting for each other to speak.
“She was dead, Max,” he whispers. “Her heart stopped.”
“Oh, God,” I say. “Oh, God.”
“They revived her. She’s in the ICU. She—”
“Dad?”
I hear him stifle a cry.
“Dad!”
“She hasn’t woken up yet.”
“I don’t understand.” My body is disintegrating. I can barely feel the phone in my hand, against my ear. It is hanging there in the air, held up by phantom limbs.
“She overdosed, Maxie,” he sobs, his voice blasting through the phone with so much force, it’s like he’d been holding it in for years. “The police searched the bathroom and found pill bottles from seven different pharmacies. Oh God, Max.” His heaving pushes air through the phone, his pain running through the lines from Seattle to Nebraska, reaching me, entering my skull. I see raindrops starting to fall outside. The wind throws them against the window like a million angry teardrops.
“It’s going to be okay, right, Max?” He sounds desperate, crazed. “Right?”
“Why are you asking me?” I say, anger running through my veins like lava. “You’re the dad. You’re supposed to know the answers. Not me. I’m the kid. I’m the fucking kid, Dad.” There is fire where my body once was, where numbness once was, fire replacing a ghost, destruction replacing the destroyed. I wish I were with him right now. I wish he were right in front of me so I could pound on his chest with my little kid fists.
“Max,” he says, trying to sound strong. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Everything’s going to be okay. Mom’s going to wake up and get the help she needs. We’ll all help each other through this. Right, Maxie? Like a family. Right?”
“I don’t know,” I cry.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says, his voice so frail in its attempt to be firm.
“I don’t believe you.”
I can see him sitting on the stool at the kitchen counter, the sink full of dishes, a frozen pizza half eaten next to him, the rest of the house dark with our absence. I imagine him sleeping on the sofa with the TV on all night, rather than sleep in their bed alone with the silence.
“I have to go,” I say, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.
“Max, are you okay? Are you going to be okay?” The half-eaten pizza has been sitting out for days. The cheese has turned to rubber. It is collecting flies.
“I don’t know,” I say, and I hang up, the feeling and sound of the receiver hitting the old-fashioned console so much more satisfying than just flipping off a cell phone could ever be.
I know it is cruel. I know I am hurting him. But I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. My mom could be a vegetable. A tornado is coming, and maybe it will take me. Maybe none of this will even matter in the end. I hear the phone ringing as I walk out of the living room. It took him a few seconds to find the number to call back. He had to search through the pile of unopened mail that has collected since I’ve been gone. I wonder what bills have gone unpaid. I wonder how he’s managed to survive this long without me or her to take care of all the things women take care of.
I am done. I am done loving all of these broken people. I am done allowing them to keep breaking me. I am done caring so much, done trying to put them back together again, done hoping, done wondering why it never works out. It is not my job anymore. I quit.
The phone keeps ringing, but I walk out the door. The rain pounds, the sky thunders, and lightning flashes in the distance. People are running around, moving things inside, tying things down, taking the fragile solar panels off roofs. I head toward my yurt because I don’t know where else to go, even though it’s probably the least safe structure on the entire farm. I can’t bear to be in the house with the ringing phone and the trails of my father’s words.
Sadie and Dylan are sitting on Dylan’s porch, drinking beers like none of this is happening. She is talking, but I can tell he’s not listening. He’s looking at me, a snarl on his lips. I should turn around. I should go back to the house, where it’s safe. I should run away from this man who does nothing but make me feel like shit, away from this girl who does everything she’s not supposed to.
“Max!” Sadie yells, waving her arms like she’s worried I won’t see her.
I should turn around, but I don’t. There is no good place to go. There is only one path, and both directions lead to heartbreak. I approach Dylan’s porch, but I do not look at him. Maybe it is possible to ignore his presence. Maybe I can just be with Sadie. Maybe I can sit so when I look at her, he will be on the other side, hidden. Maybe if I stare out at the lake, I can pretend nothing ever happened; Dylan never touched me, and I never touched him back.
“Max,” Sadie says, her voice too loud. “I’m not scared. Are you?” How is it possible that she is already drunk?
“No. I’m not scared,” I say, taking a seat beside her.
“Dylan says not to worry,” she says. “It’s only a tornado watch, not a tornado warning. They’re totally different.”
“Uh huh.” I am looking straight ahead. I am like a horse with blinders. I see nothing beside me.
“And they give a tornado watch, like, every time it rains. Right, Dylan?”
“Something like that,” he says.
“You’re not mad at me?” Sadie says. “Because I didn’t go secure the trailer like I was supposed to?”
“Give me a beer,” I say. Sadie hands me a can of something cheap and I force myself to chug about half of it. I fight my gag reflex. I have always hated the taste of beer.
“God, Max,” Sadie laughs.
“Is there anything stronger?” I say.
Sadie hands me Dylan’s flask. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“I just want to catch up with you,” I say. It’s my turn to be reckless. It’s my turn to not care. I pinch my nose and gulp down as much whiskey as I can until my throat catches on fire. I wash it down with the beer, still holding my breath. I beg my stomach to not send everything back up.
“Should we be doing something?” Sadie asks. The camp is like a giant stage in front of us, all the actors running around, the wind howling like a bad orchestra. We’re sitting here in our box seats, spectators to everyone’s fear.
“Nah,” Dylan says, lighting a joint. He sucks in a big toke and passes it to Sadie. The herby sweetness of the smoke mixes with the electricity in the air.
“Wow, this is good,” Sadie says, holding the smoke in, passing the joint back to Dylan.
“Hey,” I say, grabbing it out of her hand. She looks at me, her eyes wide with surprise.
“But you don’t smoke pot, Max,” she says slowly.
“I do now,” I say, taking a huge drag. I hear Dylan’s cruel laugh coming from Sadie’s other side. “What’s so funny?” I cough.
“Nothing,” he says. I drink the rest of my beer and grab a new one. I take a few more gulps of whiskey. It is spreading through my body, turning all my cells warm and numb. Maybe this is what I’m supposed to do. Maybe this is what letting go is supposed to feel like. I’m supposed to run away like Dylan and Sadie, make myself so drunk or high that I forget why I was upset in the first place. Run away from the phone, run away from my father’s voice, run away from my mother and her pain, run and run until it all goes away, like it never even happened in the first place.
Sadie is clueless to the tension in the air. We pass the joint back and forth in silence. We watch Marshall drive from house to house collecting solar panels in the back of his truck. Skyler and her mom join the others on their way to the house, carrying
flashlights and lanterns, bags full of valuables. Skyler is clutching a stuffed blue bear to her little-girl chest.
“They’re all so paranoid,” Dylan says.
“What about your crop?” Sadie says with a conspiring voice, proud to be in on the secret.
“What about it?” Dylan says.
“Don’t you have to go secure it or something?”
“It’s taken care of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry about it.” The tone of his voice tells her this line of questioning is over.
But Sadie can’t stay quiet for long. “What happens in a tornado?” she says, passing the joint back to me. I’m already way past the point when I usually stop drinking, when the buzz turns into something more serious, when I’ve always felt like I was starting to lose myself. But right now, I can’t remember why I’ve always thought that was such a bad thing. Right now, that’s all I want—to lose myself. I fill my lungs with smoke. I hold it until I’m sure it has seeped into every cell of my body.
“All this shit would be gone,” Dylan says. “The fucker would pick up all these tents and trailers and throw ’em across the state. Trailer parks are the worst. If a tornado hits one of them, forget about it. Poor people are the first to go.” Sadie laughs nervously.
“That’s morbid,” I say, despite my promise not to talk to him. For a moment, I forgot. For a moment, I thought we were just talking about tornadoes.
“Nature’s morbid,” he says. “Survival of the fittest. Only the strong survive.”
“Are we going to get struck by lightning?” Sadie says.
“Only if you run around the fields holding a golf club in the air,” Dylan says.
“A golf club!” Sadie cries hysterically. “Oh my God, what if we all went to my dad’s golf club? Everyone here! What if we just showed up and said we wanted to golf there? They’d have to let us in, right? If they didn’t, it’d be discrimination.”
“You’re wasted,” I say, and I realize I am too. This is exactly the feeling I was looking for, like I’m someone else entirely. I’ve been turned into someone who doesn’t care about anything. I don’t care that I’m drunk and sitting outside on a rickety porch in a storm that might turn into a tornado. I don’t care that my mom OD’d on prescription pills and might die. I don’t care that I’m hanging out with a guy who called me a bitch two hours ago for not fucking him. I am done caring.
The joint has burnt down to a short, brown, wet nub. I hold it with the tips of my fingernails and suck like I’ve seen Sadie and so many others do, all those countless times I stayed sober while everyone else got high, when I was so determined to stay in control, watching from the sidelines and resenting them all. I suck at it until I feel my fingers burning, and then I throw it into the rain.
“Let’s go swimming!” I yell as I jump up. The porch buckles below me like it’s made of Jell-o. I grab on to Sadie as I fall to the floor. I laugh as I try to prop myself up. Somehow my head lands in Dylan’s lap. I look up at his face, and he’s not so scary from down here. The lines separating his skin from the greenish-gray sky behind him are fuzzy. He sinks into the clouds, into the storm, just a piece of cruel weather.
Sadie pulls me off him, and we run toward the lake. We are throwing our clothes off. The rain is pouring so hard now, it’s not even raindrops. We’re running through a waterfall. I can’t even tell when we reach the lake. It is water all over, water everywhere, from above and from below, sideways, diagonal, upside down. There is no difference between floating and flying.
Dylan is in the water too. We circle him like rabid mermaids. The sky starts falling in cold chunks the size of gravel, pieces of clouds made solid, splashing into the water.
“It’s hailing!” Sadie screams, and she spins around with her hands out, trying to catch the balls of ice. The winds turn sinister, pounding us with the hard pellets, stinging us with the poison of a million frozen bees. The lake laps against us in tight waves, like hands pulling at our skin, hands trying to pull us under. The water is a whirlpool around me, below and above, water everywhere, spinning out of control. I reach out for Sadie for balance. She holds me by the elbows and yell-whispers into my ear, “You get his back and I’ll get the front. Go. Now!” and I follow her through the sea in slow motion, fighting against the current trying to pull me away from shore. She parts the water and I follow. “Attack!” she says, and I do as commanded.
Then Dylan is the only one standing. We are curled around him, flexible as fish. He is holding us up. Sadie’s mouth is on his, and I am only eyes, just watching. I am her mirror, and the sky is melting.
“I don’t think this is a warning anymore,” I say. I am spinning. I am corkscrewing into the sky. There is no land and no lake, it is just me and the rain and the sky and the tunnel, up and up and up into the heavens. I can’t see. Only wet black in front of me. I hear a dark voice through the spinning: “You two. Kiss. Now.” Then a laugh like from the bottom of a well, faraway and flimsy. Then lips on mine, unfamiliar, soft and hot and messy, a mouth tasting of beer and whiskey and pot and too much history. A foreign tongue darting in and out of my mouth, lost, flailing, like it knows it’s not supposed to be there. We are wrapped inside the water, tangled. We become water. Then a faraway laugh. It is the laugh of someone who’s won. It is the sound of being defeated.
I push and kick and I spit the tongue out. I am going down or up or sideways, as far as I can swim or run or fly, far away where no one can touch me. There are hands and then no hands, air and then no air. I am sucked into the lake or the rain, it doesn’t matter which, just that I’m gone, away. There is no me left. Just a body full of water. Just a lake full of tears.
I kick and kick and go nowhere. It’s impossible to fight water. It’s impossible to win when you don’t know which way is up. Fear and panic and kicking won’t save me. I can’t run when I’m held in place. I can’t win if I’m the only one fighting, if what I’m fighting is water, if what I’m fighting is bigger and stronger than I will ever be, if it doesn’t even bother fighting back, if it bends and dances around my thrashing, letting me think I’m doing something, holding me in place, holding up my war with myself, softening my screams with liquid silence. I can’t breathe if I don’t know which way is up, which way is air, with the weight of the world holding me down. But a vacuum must be filled, it is a law of the universe, emptiness cannot stay empty for long, the body wants to breathe even if the mind doesn’t, it does it on its own, the lungs heave even if I’m screaming No! No! in my head. My mouth opens. The water enters. The cool wet relief. First. But then it burns. Then the water catches on fire in my throat, my lungs. I am burning with water. It is not water but gasoline. Someone lit a match. Fire. Fire. Fire inside. Fire everywhere.
But just as fast, the fire goes out. Water is stronger than fire. My lungs keep breathing this strange air like pudding. They are full. They got what they wanted. There is no vacuum. I am done. I am full.
The only thing left to do is let go. After all that struggle, all that fighting these impossible wars. Stop kicking and become water. Liquid. Soluble. Look up or down at what might be the surface, what might be the bottom, feel myself heavy, remember gravity, here it is. Here’s my toe touching something squishy. I remember what down feels like. I am going there. I am going to the lake floor. I am gravity. I am going to rest with the things that sink down to decay and become fish food. I am letting go. I am breathing the syrup of death. Life blooms inside me like a showy flower going all out for its big finale.
So this is what peace feels like. This is what it means to stop fighting. This is darkness. This is my eyes closing. This is the end of the war.
There is silence here. Warmth in the darkness. Not like the tunnel I found in the cornfields. Not like that hallucinated light. This is the real thing. Here I am. You can take me. I am ready to let go.
But first, flying. I am out of the water. I am weightless. I am watching forms turn into fish. Bodies entwined, eyes cl
osed. They don’t even know I am dead in the water just two feet away. They don’t know there is another me flying up here, don’t know I can see them kissing their pain away. They don’t know how much they’re not seeing, how closed their eyes, how lost in the storm.
My poor loves, I could never save you. I’m sorry I promised so many undeliverable things.
Voices. Barking. It is the hell dog Cerberus come to take me home. I am drowning in the river Styx. The hands of the dead grab at my feet, pulling for me to join them. People running, yelling words I can’t hear. Water above and below. Desperate bodies torn apart. Someone covering you with a blanket. Doff punching Dylan in the face. Those peaceful hands so full of fear. Those calloused hands reaching into the water, pulling me out like a net full of fish. You screaming. You clawing your way to me. Someone holding you back, holding your arms in the blanket, shushing you like a baby. Dylan runs off into the night, into the storm, and no one cares. Goodbye, goodbye. I cannot remember his hot hands on my body. The taste of his mouth is nothing against this lake in my lungs.
Sadie, you are screaming unintelligibly. But I know what you’re saying. I hear you from somewhere deep down—I’m sorry I’m sorry—it’s all you can say. I wish I could wrap myself up with your shame and take it to death with me. I wish I could show you how to let go. But that was never my job. I know that now. I’m sorry I’m sorry, you keep screaming in this language of water only I can decipher. Oh Sadie, I know you’re sorry. That was never the problem. I want to tell you, but you can’t hear me. I want to tell everyone not to worry: Doff pulling me out with his strong arms, Lark holding you like her baby, everyone else surrounding the scene wanting to help, wanting to be useful, wanting to mean something, wanting to give something back to life.
Maria, take your baby inside. Don’t stand here crying in the storm. Bean, it’s going to be okay. I know that now. You can stop crying. You too, dogs, stop barking. There is nothing to be scared of. You’re the only ones who can hear me. You’re the only ones who can see me floating up here. Everyone else is too busy looking at that soggy old shell of me on the ground, the one Doff is trying to breathe life back into. Only the dogs and baby know where I really am. They look up while everyone looks down. I tell the dogs, “Sit,” and they do. I tell the baby, “Shh,” and he does. While everyone keeps screaming and crying, and the wind keeps howling, and the raindrops keep pounding out their pain.