Call Me Sugar

by Lacee Hightower

  “But I did! I felt it this morning. I knew something bad was going to happen.” I grip my stomach. “If I had been home. If only I’d been here for her. I didn’t need any stupid jeans or my toenails painted.”

  Mom doesn’t have the answers. Dad doesn’t respond. And I already know that we won’t be welcomed in the Fisher household. I just know I’ll never find out what made Rylee do something so desperate. So final.

  ****

  Four days later, Mom, Keith, Jason, and I sit in the second row of the church, one of my hands in Keith’s, the other in Jason’s. Words from the speaking minister are nothing but a dizzy blur in the row after row of black clothing and white sullen faces. Clay and Ladonna Fisher stare straight ahead with little to no emotion in their expressions, while the sound of sniffles somewhere close fills me with even more anger. I want to squeeze Ladonna by the throat until she tells me what happened. I want to look Rylee’s practically non-existent dad in the eye and tell him this is his fault. But I’ll never do either. Ladonna already refused a visit from Mom and me, claiming she wanted space, whatever the fuck that means. I’ll probably never speak or see either of them again or find out exactly what pushed my best friend to the edge.

  I feel like a part of me is gone forever.

  Her coffin is open, her hair styled, but not the way she wears it. Her makeup is applied nicely, but way too heavily. And she’s wearing a bright pink dress that I absolutely positively know she would detest. Rylee only wears dark colors, other than the occasional rock band t-shirt, thanks to her mother’s constant nagging and belittling her up-and-down weight.

  Was that what was happening the night Rylee took those drugs? Were she and Ladonna arguing? Was Ladonna telling her that her thighs weren’t shapely?

  I stare blankly at her soft pretty face and wonder why, how, what if. Was she crying as she drowned the pills with alcohol? Did she regret it the instant they slid down her throat? Was she scared? Was she desperate? Would she have called me first had I been home? Had she felt lonely and lost and unloved?

  Tears flow steadily down my cheeks, and I don’t bother wiping them. I don’t care. My best friend is gone. My heart aches, my insides bruised.

  “Rest in peace, Rye,” I whisper softly. “She can’t hurt you now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Jen

  At just past ten, clouds loom over the morning sky with a soft gentleness blowing through the air. Fall is right around the corner, and today, the Texas sun is almost gentle, the temperature a pleasant seventy-six degrees.

  As I stare out the back window wondering and wishing so many things, nerves come flooding in and I’m suddenly shivering and wishing for a sweater.

  I exhale slowly while trying to relax when I know it’s the last thing I’m going to do. Not with where we’re going, who we’re planning on seeing, or without even knowing if she will talk to us. Jason is driving. Keith is staring down at his phone, ominous silence hanging between the three of us as I cross and uncross my legs in the back seat of the Escalade, unable to focus, unable to speak, and watching my hands, which are also cold, and thumbs do the nervous jittery thing they do when I’m uncomfortable or on edge.

  The blinker sounds like a gunshot when Jason makes a right into half a dozen rows of mainly single-wides and all shapes and sizes of RVs. Springhill Meadows is about two miles outside of the city limits. It’s been here since I can remember, but I don’t recall ever visiting or knowing anyone here. A lot sooner than I’d like, my stomach is shifting uneasily as we come to a stop in front of a blue mobile home with a nice-sized attached front porch with white peeling paint.

  “This is it.” Jason’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. I force a small smile and try ignoring the thickening inside my chest and the knots in my belly.

  “Oh, shit. I feel sick.” Just seeing the door of the Escalade open turns my breath rapid, and I feel my pulse beginning to pound behind my temples. I run fingers through my hair then take Keith’s hand and reluctantly let him help me step down from the SUV.

  “You can do this, sweetheart.” Jason gives me a soft smile as he presses the lock button on the key fob, and like magic, just the small gesture has my confidence returning. “Both of us will be right here beside you. Let’s just knock on the door and see what she’s willing to tell us, if anything. She’s always been a fucking head case.” Jason’s tone is strong and determined, which warms my blood and relaxes me further. I nod, wordlessly, then squeeze at Keith’s hand.

  “That she has,” Keith agrees. “Come on, sugar.” He links my arm in his and leads the way to the stairs up to Ladonna Fisher’s home.

  Soon enough, Ladonna answers the knock on the door, and for a split second, she doesn’t speak and only stares at the three of us with her eyebrows squished tight. Then, it’s almost as if a light goes off. She reaches out and brushes a hand over my arm.

  “Jen? My gosh, I didn’t even recognize you at first, honey. I knew these two.” She eyes Keith and Jason. “Good grief, it’s been years.” She gestures us inside. “Come on in, you three.”

  We enter to a grim silence, other than the faint sound of Dr. Phil on the television screen. When I see a fuzzy yellow cat on the top of the sofa, I reach out to stroke it, but it jumps down and runs off like it’s seen a ghost.

  “Oh, that’s Goldie for you,” Ladonna says in a raspy, harsh voice that sends ice through my veins. She motions us to take a seat, which I do. “She’s not much of a people person. Days pass and I don’t even see her at all, but she still keeps me company the biggest part of the time.” Decades of smoking and drinking have left Ladonna’s voice sounding like grit and gravel, but her voice isn’t what surprises me the most. It’s how slender she is. Rail thin, she almost seems emaciated, which has me wondering if she’s ill. She’d always been slender, but today she looks tired and worn. Pale and exhausted. Her fingers are bony, veins are popping out on top of her hands, and her cheekbones are overly prominent. And her hair, which she always kept perfectly styled and freshly colored in a shiny chocolate brown, is pure snow white. “I’ve got fresh sweet tea if you’ll are interested.”

  Jason turns on his natural charm like the lady-killer he’s always been. “That sounds real good, ma’am. Nothing better than chilled Texas sweet tea.”

  Ladonna twists her lips into what looks like a forced smile. “Be right back then. Please make yourself at home.”

  “Sure appreciate it, ma’am,” Jason replies, his voice a low, creamy-smooth rasp as he flashes Rylee’s gaunt mother a million-dollar smile. A ding sounds from somewhere in the kitchen, and Ladonna smiles back at Jason. “I have cookies too. Some days I just wake up craving them. They’re just slice and bake, but they’re still good fresh out of the oven. Be right back.”

  I turn away, deliberately, and take a long look around the room as Ladonna walks into the adjoining kitchen. I immediately notice that there’s no remembrance of Rylee. No baby or school pictures lining the walls like they’d once done in the big house. No soccer trophies from when she played in elementary school that once filled the fireplace mantel. There’s not a trace of anything other than crosses and Christian art lining the walls. It’s like Rylee never even existed.

  “Where are all of Rylee’s pictures? There’s not a single one.” I turn toward a silent Keith while he looks around the room as I do.

  “Fuck if I know. Looks like our friend Ladonna has found Jesus.”

  “Sure does,” I agree then stop speaking as Ladonna walks in with a tray holding iced tea and chocolate chip cookies.

  Ladonna’s eyes soften and warm as she hands me tea with ice and lemon in a tall glass with blue butterflies swirling around the bottom. That’s all it takes to make me fall apart. Nostalgia ricochets through me, rousing memories and grief that have been locked inside for what seems like an eternity. Tears blur my eyes, and a sob chokes my chest. Pain, unlike anything I’ve felt in many years, come flooding back through my head. I remember these glasses like it was just yester
day. Rylee had saved her allowance money to buy the glassware set for Mother’s Day because blue was Ladonna’s favorite color, and she loved butterflies … and Rylee loved her mother. My stomach feels nauseous, and an overwhelming need to talk to my best friend just one more time has me trembling, cold, and overwrought as heartache surges through every breath. Why did you leave me, Rye? Why didn’t you wait for me to get home? Why aren’t you a successful doctor living the beautiful life you deserve?

  Bitterness has bile lifting into my throat, and I don’t even realize I’m speaking until I hear the words fall from my mouth. “Why did my best friend take her life that day? Why wouldn’t you visit with Mom and me afterward? Why have you left me in the dark all these years? Why? Why…”

  “Sugar.”

  At the sound of Keith’s voice, I blink away from Ladonna Fisher. His hand feels warm and strong and the security that I need as he rubs those long fingertips over my palm with his eyes shining with compassion and sympathy like he knows how badly this hurts and how angry I still am after all this time. He squeezes then motions to the glass of tea. “Why don’t you take a drink of tea?”

  In seconds, I’m back on my feet and glaring into her eyes with Keith right beside me. “Tea? I don’t need any fucking tea! I need to know what happened to Rylee. And how,” I add, powerless to stop speaking. Unable to walk out of this mobile home without some sort of closure.

  Keith doesn’t say another word but places an arm around my lower back. I look at Jason, who has a blank expression, then back at Ladonna, who is whimpering a destitute, agonizing sound. Tears slide down her face, and she stares at me with sorrow and misery and grief covering her expression. She suddenly resembles a much older person than she had just five minutes ago. Like she’s lost, overcome with grief and sorrow and torment. Like she’s nothing but a cold hollow shell.

  “I laughed at Rylee that afternoon,” she tells us with big dark eyes filled with guilt and remorse and shame. “I laughed at her for hiding candy and cookies. I yelled at her for taking a regular Dr. Pepper when I’d bought her diet. I only had those damn sugary Dr. Pepper’s in the house because her father insisted that I buy them for him. I should have thrown them out when he left. Instead, I told her she needed to take more pride in her health.”

  “Jesus.” Disgust rings in Jason’s tone.

  I want to scream and shout and ask why and how a mother could possibly say such things to her own daughter. I want to ask her how she sleeps at night or looks at her face in the mirror. Revolt and repulsion are all I see when I look at Ladonna Fisher.

  “It wasn’t only that Thursday that I hounded her about her diet,” Ladonna adds. “It was every time I was drinking—which was five out of seven days a week. My mother did the same thing to me when I was young. I was overweight as a child. Mother was a past Miss Texas contestant, and she couldn’t stand the fact that I wasn’t her perfect model daughter. I always swore I’d never treat a child that way, but I did. And that afternoon, Rylee said she wasn’t feeling well. She begged me to stop, but her dad and I had argued earlier in the day over the phone. And I wasn’t only drinking. I’d taken pain pills on top of alcohol. I just kept on and on when I found candy bars in her drawer. I lost it. I said some really terrible things. And then the next thing I knew…”

  “My God.” With the words falling from my lips in a whisper, I turn toward Jason and his heartfelt eyes while wishing he were beside me, his arm around me with Keith’s. Images of Rylee sends aches and pains shooting down my belly that feel like I’ve been beaten with a steel bat as I think of all the fad diets, the pills and canned meal shakes, fasting, cleansing, all for nothing. She wasn’t even overweight. She never was. Gorgeous curves and dips … strands of thick dark hair falling down her back … pink lips, pouty and full … perfectly straight crystal-white teeth. Rylee Fisher was beautiful, inside and out.

  Bitterness pulls at my chest, a scream lodged deep in my throat. I’m angry. I’m disgusted. Resentment burns through my heart. Ladonna Fisher is everything I never want to be. Everything I would never allow myself to be with a child, my own or any other. A heart frozen. Evil in her blood like a villain’s. A soul ugly and vicious and vile to a daughter, her only, that still loved her. Still bought her pretty glassware sets and butterfly pendants and flowers. Never stopped hoping that she would one day end the alcohol abuse, the pills, the anger, the bitterness. Never stopped hoping for that loving mother/daughter relationship she wanted so badly.

  For what seems like an hour, she just stares at me with eyes haunted and dead, the brown of her irises still lost, lonely. There’s a part of me that wants to reach out and grab her frail throat and hold on until she tells me why she was so horrible to her only offspring. But there’s another side of me that’s willing, almost pushing me, to reach out, take her hand in mine, and let her exhausted head rest on my shoulder. It’s a feeling I don’t want to have, but it’s there just the same, and I can’t help but feel sorrow and sadness for this woman in some strange uncanny way.

  “I couldn’t stop drinking. I tried. My God, I tried. And the pills…” she whimpers with an urgent plea of please forgive me in her eyes. “They made me a different person. An ugly person. A selfish and uncaring person, one who deserves exactly what I’ve got—which is nothing.” Her eyes turn cold and hard, and she wraps her arms around herself as her tone fills with rage. “And Daniel Ryker… Every time Rylee was upset, she walked out the door and straight up the hill to see that man. I knew there was more between those two than just friendship.” She jabs a finger hard into her chest. “I knew it right here. She’d been up there with him. I knew she had. And when she came home, she walked straight into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator for that sugar-filled Dr. Pepper. I just went off the deep end. And then I watched her toss the can back inside and reach for the vodka I kept in the freezer.”

  “And you did nothing? Who does that, Ladonna? Who?” I almost hiss, purposely stressing my response. Rage and disgust and spite flows from my words. “You watched her take alcohol when you were well aware that she didn’t drink? How? How does a parent do nothing? How does a parent badger and belittle a person about their shortcomings and flaws when there’s so much good, so much beauty, so much positive to see instead?”

  Voice hoarse, blood chilled, I’m two seconds from screaming when I feel Jason take my hand in his and Keith’s arm tighten around my lower back. Disgust and revolt and stomach-churning loathsomeness have bile rising up my throat.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Jason says through gritted teeth. “Let’s get out of here. I think we’ve got our answers, Jen.”

  I want to hate this woman. I want to feel endless spite and animosity and insolence. I want to tell her I loathe her and that she’s evil, the devil, the spawn of Satan.

  But I can’t. And I don’t know why. I. Don’t. Know. Why.

  She leans her forehead against her palms, a shiver moving through her body as tears run down her face and drip onto the thin carpeting at her feet. She’s sobbing, tears flooding from her eyes like rushing water from a waterfall. Her expression is doleful and joyless. “I’ve never slept through one night since her death. I’ve never had one day that I haven’t seen that image in my head. I’ve never forgotten the pain and sickness in my belly when they closed the lid of her casket. A mother should never have to see her baby being lowered into the dark ground. Especially when it’s her fault and she should have been the one being laid into the cold bowels of the earth.” That’s when I take a step forward and reach for her hand, because I don’t know what else to do and something tells me it’s the right thing, what my mother would want me to do ... what Rylee would want me to do.

  It feels right. It feels good and decent.

  Shivers move through her hand like she’s outside in biting, bitter-cold weather with no gloves, no jacket or scarf, no warm socks or winter boots. Keith and Jason both shift to give us space. Jason walks to the front window and stares outside, while, more and more, I feel a str
ong urgency to forgive and try to understand, because I need to forgive. I ache to understand.

  “Please forgive me, Jen. For being addicted to alcohol and drugs. For being a weak, selfish person. For leaving you and your mother in the cold when all you wanted was answers. For hurting you and destroying my daughter’s spirit.”

  I close my eyes, blink back tears, and wish more than anything that I could go back to that day or be absolutely anywhere but here, like this, with my heart feeling like it has just had a big piece removed and hating this helpless feeling. Hating alcohol. Hating prescription pain pills. Hating God.

  I’m sorry, Rye. God, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. Was Ryker hurting you? Were you more than just friends?

  “It’s my fault. I should have been home that day,” I respond. “I should have been with Rylee when she needed her best friend. If I had, none of this would have happened. I’ve never forgiven myself. I don’t think I ever will.”

  “No, Jen. Rylee would never want you blaming yourself. That much I can promise you. This was my fault. My mistake. And I’m the one who should suffer with forgiveness. Not you, sweetheart. Never you.”

  Guilt and remorse and pain claw at my chest. Rylee was only eighteen. Her whole life was ahead of her, a future that would have been wonderful and happy and just the way she intended it. But what has been done can’t be undone, and something inside me says Rylee would want her mother to be forgiven. She would want the past to be the past and want us to move on.

  “I know in my heart that Rylee would want us all to forgive. She would be relieved and happy and proud of you for overcoming your addictions. And I think, for her sake, we need to all leave the bad deeds in the past and find a way to start forgiving and move on the way she would want.”

  “I’ve never taken another pill or had another alcoholic drink. I don’t even take aspirin. All I do is sit here and pray. Wishing for some kind of sign or idea of something I can do, while I’m still alive and well, to let my beautiful baby girl be remembered always. She deserves that,” Ladonna all but whispers. “I’ll die trying to come up with something. Anything.”