by Jay Quinn
Maura shook her head and gave him a rueful smile.
“He really didn’t have to do that,” Kai said evenly. “I certainly don’t want to get in the way any more than I have to. I don’t want you both to break your routine because of me. I’m a big boy. I can handle you having a boyfriend.”
“Thanks,” Maura told him. “But we agreed it was a good idea to let you get settled. Matt’s coming over for dinner on Wednesday night and won’t be going home. This really is his home now.”
Kai lit his cigarette and replaced the lighter by his box of cigarettes carefully. “Where is his place? I mean, when he’s not here?”
“He has an older home in Lighthouse Point, where he’s lived since his divorce,” Maura told him. “He’s been so busy helping me fix up this place in the past year that he really hasn’t had time to focus on doing any remodeling there.”
Kai looked around the small house’s great room which included both the sitting area and the dining area and smiled. “Sawgrass Estates is a comedown from Lighthouse Point,” he said. “You should sell this place and move in with him.”
“That’s something to think about,” Maura admitted. “But I’ve been on my own a long time. Moving in with somebody or getting married again is a big deal at my age. Besides, neither of us is in any big rush. If it happens, it happens. If not, I’m happy here in my own little house that’s nearly paid for.”
Kai looked at his mother with sympathy and said, “You’ve always had to be the one who thought about safety and security, haven’t you?”
Maura nodded her head and thought before she spoke. Finally, she replied, “I’ve been the breadwinner since I was twenty-three years old. Your father did his best, God love him, but he still isn’t grown. I had to grow up fast in order to take care of you and him. My mom and dad helped with you, of course, but when it comes right down to the fine point, you’re totally correct. I’ve always been the one to think about our security. I can’t get out of the habit.”
“But Matt is well-off, isn’t he?” Kai countered. “You should feel a bit more secure now that you two are together. Unless you don’t trust him. Do you trust him?”
Maura envied Kai his cigarette, but she had made a promise to herself not to start smoking again, as tempting as the thought was and as convenient as Kai’s near chain-smoking habit was. She gave herself a moment to carefully consider answering his last question without the comfort of a cigarette to occupy her fingers and figure in her body language. At last, she said, “Kai, I don’t know the answer to that question yet. In many real ways, I trust Matt absolutely. But I don’t think I’m ready to lean on him, if that’s what you’re asking. Leaving your father so long ago taught me to stand on my own two feet. I can’t unlearn something that was so hard to adjust to so long ago.”
“I knew Dad really fucked you up,” Kai told her quietly. “But I don’t think it would be so bad now if you had been able to quit loving him long before you did.”
Maura sighed. “That’s all said and done, Kai. No use in looking back. I don’t think I gave up believing Rhett would come for us until you’d graduated from high school. Somehow, I always thought he’d love me or you enough to put us all back together.”
“You’re still in love with him aren’t you?” Kai asked her as he thumped his ash from his cigarette into the crowded ashtray.
Maura chuckled. “A little part of me will love your father for as long as I live. There’s no use saying anything different. Part of it is, I know he still loves me a little. What we had was pretty intense.”
“God damn, Mom. That was so long ago,” Kai said tiredly. “I gave up on Dad by the time I was seven and we were settled right here in this house. After living here for a year, I knew he wasn’t coming to get us or live with us. I realized I couldn’t count on him for anything.”
“I know, and I’m sorry about that, son,” Maura replied sadly.
“Don’t be sorry,” Kai told her calmly. “I’m not sorry.”
“No reason for you to be,” Maura assured him. “None of it was your fault.”
“Jeez, Dad was my age when we’d been here a year,” Kai mused. “I thank Christ I don’t have kids. No way.”
Maura was tired of the subject. It was familiar territory, after all. Kai’s relationship with his father was his own affair these days, and she knew what she knew. There were hot nights spent in that first little house in Avalon Beach that would stay with her as long as she lived. They were hers, those memories of Rhett before they became parents. She’d never felt that way with anyone else. It was a fundamental part of her now, inextricable from who she was. Maura wasn’t sorry either. Not for any of it, including her years alone rearing this strange boy-man sitting beside her on the sofa. She knew she could never convince Kai of that, or communicate what she felt for his father. Instead, she asked, “Did you eat anything?”
Kai took a long hit off his cigarette and nodded. “I ate a couple of slices of bread and a banana yogurt I’m fine.”
Maura shook her head without saying anything. She knew he could have made a sandwich, or heated up any of a variety of microwave meals in the freezer. But from long knowledge of her son, she knew if all he wanted was bread and yogurt, he was sated and fine. “What are we watching?” she asked, turning her attention to the television.
“The History Channel. Nostradamus.” Kai said idly. “I don’t really watch TV anymore. Robin and I used to get all these movies from Netflix. TV sucks.”
“What kind of movies did you and Robin watch?” Maura was curious.
“All kinds. New stuff, old stuff. Robin likes British movies, Merchant Ivory, stuff like that.” Kai answered without animation.
“Did you enjoy British movies as well?” Maura asked.
“Yeah, kind of. They’re well made. I like the history part of it,” Kai admitted.
“You always did like history,” Maura commented. “When you were small you read all of those books by Will and Ariel Durant. What was it?”
“The History of Civilization series,” Kai told her automatically. “I’d forgotten about that set of books. Do you still have them?”
Maura motioned toward the foyer. “Of course, they’re in the bookcase you built by the front door.”
“Funny,” Kai commented as he put out his cigarette and stood. He leaned over his sleeping dog and lifted her head. “Come on Heidi. Wanna walk? Let’s go walk!”
“Want some company?” Maura asked hopefully.
“No need. We’re not going anywhere but the backyard so she can pee. I’ve got to crash,” Kai said tiredly. “I took two Valium about an hour ago and I’m finally starting to feel sleepy.”
Alarmed, Maura asked before she thought, “You’ve got Valium? How?”
Kai laughed as Heidi got to her feet and looked up at him expectantly. “The Valium is legal, Mom. I have a script for it.”
“If you have a script for the Valium, what about your regular meds?” Maura pressed. “Can’t you just get them refilled like you do the tranquilizer?”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” Kai said defensively her as he led Heidi to the back sliding glass doors that led from the great room to the backyard. “Those scripts are too far out of date. I need to see Dr. Roth to get new ones.” With that, he opened the door and followed Heidi outside.
Maura watched until they faded into the darkness of the small yard beyond. She cautioned herself not to press or pry. Kai had told her he was going back on his meds and he seemed determined. She picked up the control for the cable TV and pressed the information button. It was now nearly nine o’clock.
Snorting to herself in exasperation, she switched off the information panel from the TV screen. Compared to some of the meds he’d been on, two Valiums for him was the equivalent of her taking two antihistamine tablets. He’d get sleepy for only a little while, then it would soon pass. How many nights had she awakened to find him sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, staring out into the darkne
ss outside the bay window? For him, it was going to be a long night, but she had to get up and go to work the following day. She decided she might as well go to bed herself.
When Kai returned a few minutes later, he walked Heidi to the dining room table and unsnapped her leash. Freed, the big dog made her way toward his room, as if she knew it was bedtime herself. Kai looked at his mother tiredly and said, “Thanks, Mom, for putting up with me. I promise I’ll get it together soon.”
“No problem, sweetheart,” Maura said as she reached once more for the cable remote and switched off the TV. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
Kai smiled at her gently. “Somehow, when you say that, I can find a way to believe it.”
Maura switched off the lamp by the end of the sofa as she passed on the way to her son. Once she reached him, she lifted her arms to place her hands on his shoulders and drew him near. As he embraced her she said, “You better believe it. When have I ever let you down?”
“Never,” Kai said as he returned her embrace and quickly stepped away. “That’s why I’m back.”
“Goodnight,” she said simply.
He nodded and turned to take the few steps toward his bedroom door. Maura watched as he walked into his room and carefully shut the door behind him. Suddenly she felt very old and very tired. She turned and stepped into the kitchen to turn on the light over the stove in case Kai got up in the middle of the night, before she headed into her own room and closed the door behind her.
Chapter Six
KAI WAS BACK HOME by eleven. He let himself into the house and greeted Heidi, who was very excited to see him. She had grown accustomed to not being alone. Though it was only a couple of hours since he’d been gone, Heidi acted as if she’d been alone for a week. Kai took the CVS drugstore shopping bag into his bedroom and opened the stapled-shut paper bag inside. He let the four bottles of pills fall onto his bed as Heidi promptly jumped up onto the bed to nose them curiously. Kai smiled as he joined the dog on the bed as well. One by one he picked up the pill bottles and looked at the names: Risperdal, the antipsychotic; Strattera, the attention deficit disorder drug; Sertraline, the generic form of Zoloft, an antidepressant; and the last bottle held lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug. Dr. Roth had approved of the same regimen he’d been on before he’d stopped taking his medicine months before.
All in all, his appointment with Dr. Roth had gone well. Kai liked his old psychiatrist and could almost claim that Dr. Roth had seemed happy to see him again after the two years he’d been back up on the Outer Banks. He’d been honest with Dr. Roth about everything that was going on with him, except for taking the painkillers. Dr. Roth had known him a long time, and Kai knew that he’d have reacted very negatively about that and the vacation from his legitimate meds.
He’d been more interested in Kai’s quandary about Robin. Kai guessed that the doctor, like his mother, found the fact that he’d fallen in love at last to be pretty significant. Dr. Roth had strongly suggested Kai go into counseling with one of his staff clinical social workers, but Kai had told him no, he couldn’t afford therapy. With no job and no health insurance, there was no way he could get into therapy. Dr. Roth understood, but rather than schedule Kai for a routine meds renewal in three months, he’d insisted that Kai come back in three weeks so he could evaluate how he was doing once he’d resumed taking his prescription medicine.
Kai had agreed to those terms, of course. But he knew already what he would have to report. The Risperdal would wipe away not only the demons, but a great deal of the affect in his personality. The Strattera would allow him to concentrate and actually get work done. The Zoloft would minimalize his insecurities around other people and keep the blackness at bay. And, the lorazepam would keep him from crawling out of his own skin. What he wouldn’t be able to tell Dr. Roth was how detached, remote and divorced from himself he would feel. The drugs worked, but who they left him as was not really who he was.
Kai picked up each bottle in turn and placed them in a row on the nightstand by his bed. He stared at them briefly and sighed. He couldn’t help but feel he was back in the game once more. He stood and walked over to his chest of drawers under the window and opened the top drawer. In the back, tucked under a layer of boxers, was a brown prescription bottle that held the painkillers. He twisted the cap off and shook the blue pills into his hand. There were fewer than thirty left. He knew how many were left to the last quarter of a pill. It was time now to quit them.
Kai glanced at the clock. He decided he wasn’t hungry and he needed this drug worse right now. He needed some clear space to relax and think about things. There was plenty he should be doing, but for the next three hours, all he wanted to do was float and think. He carefully tipped all the pills but one back into the bottle and screwed on the lid. He thoughtfully raised the pill in his palm to his mouth and let it fall in. With his tongue, he guided the pill to his back right molars and crushed it there, before the bitter taste could flood his mouth. That done, he placed the bottle back underneath the boxers in the corner of the top drawer and slid it closed.
“Want to go pee-pee?” Kai asked his dog. She stood on the bed and leapt to the floor in reply, her paws never slowing down as she headed out the bedroom door and toward the foyer where she knew her leash waited. Kai picked up the empty plastic CVS bag and stuffed it in his back pocket in case his dog produced more than urine, and followed her to the foyer. Heidi stood by the door looking up at the shelf that held her leash. Kai took the leash from its perch and snapped the business end onto the D-ring on Heidi s collar. The big dog waited patiently after he let them out the front door and then turned to lock it behind them. At last, he said, “Let’s go, pretty girl,” and the dog took off, happily given permission at last to stretch her legs.
Kai walked Heidi down the street to the corner and turned right to leave the neighborhood for a quick stroll around its high-walled perimeter. Heidi pulled him along, anxious to get to the sidewalk that ran between the subdivision’s walls and a line of live oaks that arched overhead. Already the dog was familiar with this same walk Kai had made with his other dogs as he grew up. He and his mother had moved to Sawgrass Estates before it was completely built out. The neighborhood had changed from being made up of mostly Italian and Irish transplants from New York and New Jersey to now being home to more Latins and West Indians, and it had remained neat and prosperous. Kai remembered the days when the walls had been only shadow box fencing the back boundary of the neighborhood’s perimeter lots, but in the late nineties, the city of Sunrise had built the concrete block and stucco wall to replace the wooden fencing when it had widened and reconfigured the intersection of Oakland Park Boulevard and Flamingo Road.
Kai still felt remarkably at home and at ease on this walk, though Flamingo Road was now a very busy highway and what had been a vacant lot across its seven lanes of traffic had sprouted a tight cluster of high-rise condos. He could have felt stalled being back to the same sidewalk he had first walked at six years old, but instead he felt safe. He let Heidi lead him as she walked, sniffed and left her own scent to mark their passage. However, when the sidewalk brought them to the Flamingo Road entrance to the neighborhood, he turned Heidi around to retrace their steps back home. His dog gave him a disappointed look; no doubt she had anticipated walking the full boundary of Sawgrass Estates, but she good naturedly turned and trotted ahead of Kai in the direction of home.
As he walked under the spreading arms of the live oaks, Kai began to feel the insistent tug of the drug. Soon he would have the full effect of the painkiller rushing to his brain. He was eager to be home, sitting comfortably at the kitchen table with his cigarettes and something to drink close at hand, and the radio playing jazz for company. Within a few minutes, that’s exactly where he found himself as the rush of the drug began to take effect.
Kai felt his body relax and his mind begin to drift on a slow current. He felt euphoric and happy. The demons that deviled him disappeared, only to be replaced by pleasant
thoughts. For the first time since he’d gotten up at six, he felt sane and centered. His normal anxiety was a bit more pronounced as the time lengthened between the morning’s events and the last time he’d swallowed the tranquilizers the night before. He’d slept only fitfully, waking every hour and a half or so. Kai had fought the urge to get up and sit in the kitchen rather than toss and turn on his bed. He had rightly figured that his hellish night spent thinking of all the things he’d fucked up so badly would give him the proper haggard look to present to Dr. Roth.
Kai still rose before his mother and started a full pot of coffee before feeding and walking Heidi. As she had slept next to him since she was a puppy, the dog was used to being awakened by Kai’s gentle strokes on her side as he soothed her in the middle of the night. Somehow the dog understood he was trying to soothe himself as he softly ran his palm over her side. She was accustomed to rising early as well. Kai rarely could tolerate remaining in bed past six in the morning, especially if the night had been a sleepless one.
Once Maura was up and about, Kai took his coffee outside to the porch off the great room. He chain-smoked when he got up as he fought to leave the images that had kept him awake in the night.
Now, with Heidi occupied with a new bone, Kai sat smoking in the kitchen and let his mind wander. Once he was high, his mind could take off on the most wonderful, confident course of plans and ideas. Starting with his plans for the afternoon, he mentally organized himself at the dining room table with his list of interior designers and custom home builders he had put together in the days he’d been back in South Florida. He had limited his search to areas he didn’t mind driving to. He’d immediately canceled out any firm or person in Dade County. There was no way he wanted to work south of Hollywood for any amount of money. That still left him all of Broward and Palm Beach County to draw from.
One by one, he was calling to try to get appointments to see these designers, architects, and homebuilders so he could introduce himself and leave them with his brochure. Kai was proud of his brochure. It was a nice little presentation piece that was substantial enough to show the full range of the fine cabinetwork, trim and boiseries he could create. He’d been very good about documenting his work with digital photographs as he’d finished each project. So far, he’d been successful in setting up a few meetings beginning the following week.