by Eden Butler
Fingers against the strings, I focused on the melody, hearing the small line as it matched the notes, only good I’ve ever known… coming out from a G chord, my voice low, a little raspy, and just when I started to build on that sound, that line, it left me, floated into the ether.
“Fuck…”
I wanted to smash my guitar, pop the strings or beat that dark oak wood against my head, but the acoustic Gibson in my hands wasn’t new and it meant something to me. It meant more than the song I was fumbling with. An old blues musician called Mix Mandarin gave it to me five years back. Well, “give” was a nice way to say I’d won it during the fifth hand of Texas Hold ‘Em, but the old man laughed about losing her.
“She’ll do you right,” was all he said, passing over that sweet Gibson like a wary daddy handing off his girl on prom night.
Mix hadn’t been wrong. Leia, as I called the pretty Gibson, had been good to me. I’d written my second Grammy-winning album on her, and two number ones. She was my good luck charm. Wasn’t her fault I couldn’t get passed this damn block.
Outside the store window in front of me, Christmas morning activity was heavier than I’d expected. Kids, tucked into their thick coats and mittens, pulled their parents down the sidewalk, hauling them toward the hot cocoa stand at the corner of Main and Dempsey; or weaved in and out of the puddles of melting ice and snow as their parents carried gift bags and large wrapped presents. I’d almost forgotten what this looked like; Christmas in Willow Heights. It reminded me of something out of a Hallmark movie—picturesque and too fucking sweet for words, but the people and their milling activity did something to kill the frustration I felt trying to get more than one line and a few chords to sound remotely like a song.
My fingers seemed to move on their own, strumming, left hand tight on the neck as I watched two kids, brother and sister around six or seven from the look of them as they took turns jumping into a muddy puddle near the entrance to Hawk’s Deli. They turned, laughing at a man I guessed was their papa, wearing gray scrubs and a wool coat as he headed toward them, coming from the direction of the small hospital in the distance.
Mindless now, I thought of nothing really as I played, that line looping in my subconscious as the man picked up his kids and kissed the woman who’d been leaning against Hawk’s front window, sipping coffee as the kids played.
They were a family. Together. There was no pretense in the way the man looked at his people or the look he got back. It felt real, authentic, something I’d only gotten glimpses at but had never really seen for myself. I knew nothing about that kind of honest look. Not really. Mi familia had always been about survival and struggle. Except Iris, but then I’d messed that up beyond the fixing.
“You’ve been messing about with that bloody chord for ages now. Can you not move past it?”
Wills’ voice pulled my attention from the window and I stilled my hands on the Gibson, and a quick rush of awkwardness and a little bit of embarrassment rushed over me until my skin felt hot.
“I wake you?” I asked because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t answer. Instead the old man came the rest of the way down the stairs, waving Jimmy away and back up the stairs when the big man tried to help him. There was a folded paper under Wills’ arm and a mug of something steaming in his hand. One lone tea bag tab bounced against the ceramic surface.
He followed my gaze when I shifted my eyebrows up, staring at the teabag. Wills’ flared nostrils and eye roll made him look like a caricature of the rock legend he was.
“I’ll thank you to not laugh. This rubbish is all the tea you’ve got.” He motioned with the mug, coming to sit on the only other chair in the shop, this one a metal-backed wooden barstool behind the cluttered front counter. Wills took advantage of the spot, making himself comfortable by sweeping at the dust on the counter to set down his mug and toss the paper next to it.
“Now then,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Do you have another guitar? Mine are at my hotel, and I’m guessin’ the snow will keep us in today.” He pointed with his chin toward the window behind me and I glanced over my shoulder, frowning when a slow drizzle of snow started to dot around the sidewalk. It was coming down fast, already thickening on the sidewalk.
“Coño,” I said, head shaking at how empty the streets had suddenly become. Resting my arms against Leia, I glanced back at Lager, watching as he sipped on what I knew had to be weak tea. “Why do you need a guitar?”
He tilted his head, the mug stilled in front of his mouth as he watched me. Then he blinked, wobbling where he sat as though some rush of weakness came over him. Wills rested an elbow on the counter and held his forehead between his fingers.
“You aright, gringo?” I asked, resting my guitar against the counter as I watched him, frowning at his shaking fingers. “You look pale. Should I get that Jimmy guy? Maybe you need your doctor?”
Wills squeezed his eyes tight, but didn’t answer, seeming irritated at my worry. I got that. Pity was something I couldn’t stomach from anyone. This was a man who set his own rules, who lived by his own law. He earned respect from the amazing things he’d done in his career. You don’t pity a man like Wills Lager, a fact that seemed plain to me when he exhaled, lowering his hand away from his face to lift his chin and glare at me.
That look made me feel stupid and small.
“I need a guitar, you wee arsehole, because it’s clear you’ve yet to master your craft.”
“Master my…” I got what this was—the reaction, the defensive attitude, but that didn’t mean it didn’t piss me off. “The Grammies and multiple gold records on my wall says I’ve mastered it fine…”
“Oh, aye?” He laughed then, as though I was simple and stupid. Wills’ smile was humorless and condescending. “And what have you done since that night you showed your bits and Iris’s to your fans? Been writing much since then, have you? Been a fount of inspiration?”
I kicked off from my stool, walking to the front window. “The fuck do you know about it?”
“Oh, I know enough.”
“This,” I said, pointing to my guitar, “has nothing to do with what I did to her. This is just me being stuck. My band will be here after the New Year. We’ll jam and work this mierda out. It’s the process. It’s what we always do.”
“So you’re saying that you can’t do it on your own?” This time when Wills laughed, it was a dry, humorless sound that I found insulting. “You’re saying you need someone else to get you past your block?”
He’d nailed the problem— the problem I wasn’t admitting to myself. There was a block, and it was hefty. But it was just a fluke, I knew that, and I damn well didn’t need anyone to help me get beyond it. “I…I don’t…”
“Because I can help you, can’t I? Christ knows why I should, but I can.”
“I don’t need your help.”
He stood in front of me, staring, his expression softening, eyes less severe. “Son, you do, and you know it, don’t you?”
“I’m not your son.” I clenched my jaw, feeling something old and familiar burn inside my chest. “Don’t call me that.”
“Much as you may not like it, that you are.” Wills only waited long enough for me to step back before he went on, this time bringing back that sarcastic tone. “I’m offering my help. With the song, with your work…with Iris and…other things.”
“What other things?”
He hesitated, fiddling with the rim of the stool as he sat back down. Just then he looked so young. Still tough, still commanding but something in his features reminded me just how old he was. “Your mum.”
“What about her?”
Wills nodded to the chair across from him, but I didn’t take it. He moved his fingers into the back of his neck, massaging but didn’t stop with the explanations. “She’s ill. How can you not know that?”
“I haven’t bothered with her in eight years.”
He nodded, moving his lips together as though he wasn’t
sure if he wanted to yell at me before he nodded, releasing a breath. “She’s your mother.”
I finally took a seat, just because I felt like an asshole making the old man crane his neck up to look at me. “You really want to lecture me on family? You?”
For a second, I recognized the hard set of Wills’ expression. I’d seen it a thousand times before looking back at me in the mirror when someone had gotten under my skin or when things weren’t going how I’d planned. My father looked exactly like a guy who wanted to pummel something, and the something that had caught his notice just then was me. I’d come to realize in the brief time he’d been around me that Wills was good at refocusing his mood. He did that just then, taking in a deep breath before the tightness around his shoulders and the anger hardening his features relaxed.
“I am not trying to be your father, lad. But I would like to help where I can. Juanita is sick. Not sick as me, but still sick and on her own.”
“Not my problem.”
“Jamie…”
“No,” I said getting up to move around. I needed something to do with my hands to keep from punching something. Wills had gone too far, stepping over a line he had no right to. Father or not, he had no clue about my mother and me. He’d never taken the chance to find out anything about us. He didn’t get that chance now. “You don’t get to do that. Mierda! You don’t get to barge into my life and point out what a shitty friend and son I’ve been. I know how fucked up I am. I know the mistakes I’ve made, and I’m trying like hell to work that out.”
“By leaving voice messages and sending flowers?”
I took a step, then half of another one, before a voice popped into my head, reminding me this old man wasn’t some asshole heckler booing me off the stage. This was Wills Lager. This was my father, and he had information about Iris I wanted. I’d have to rein in my temper.
“I have to do this my way. I know her better than you do.” Calmer now, I threaded my fingers through my hair, reaching for my shades in the front pocket of my shirt. I didn’t put them on, but needed to feel the comforting curve of the metal in my hand.
“You…just don’t get to come into my house and start dictating what I should and shouldn’t do and then, on top of it all, tell me what a pendejo I’ve been to my mama. Not when you don’t know what she’s done to me or how many times I’ve picked up the pieces she left behind. I stopped counting the number of men that she put before me, or how many of them slapped her around, slapped me around, or tried to hurt Iris.”
I shook my head, trying to push back the faces, so many of them, none I could name with any real certainty. “I can’t tell you how much money she stole from me, or how she shamed me in this town when I was a kid. Or Christ, the amount of money I’ve paid to get her sober or safe or on her damn feet because she is utterly useless by herself.” Wills frowned at me when I looked at him, still twirling the glasses between my fingers. “There comes a time when you’ve done everything you can do for people, and there is nothing left for you to do but walk away.”
Just then, that’s what I wanted. To walk away. To get away. To clear my head in the frozen temperatures outside. I managed a final look at him before I went to the cluttered front counter and pulled on the jacket lying across the surface.
“Where are you going?”
“I need air. Right now, I need to walk away.”
“Jamie, this is your home,” he sighed, seeming to realize he’d pushed too far. “If I overstepped…”
“Save it,” I told him, zipping up the front and pulling a beanie from my front coat pocket. “You may have made me a long time ago, but you aren’t my father. You didn’t bother with me then, stop thinking you can now.”
Chapter Four
Everything I needed to reach in Willow Heights, I could do on my feet. It hadn’t always been that way. My mother’s old place had been in a shadier section; just far enough that walking would take too long. Hector’s shop and the apartment I’d help renovate were in the center of town, and all points of interest or necessity I could reach in a ten-minute walk. If I was hungry, I needed only to cross the street and sit at one of Hawk’s counter stools. If I needed groceries, I could fill my canvas bags six shops down at Nettie’s General Store. And if I ever got sick or hurt something that required more than a Band-Aid, I could get myself to Reynolds Memorial Hospital in under seven blocks.
But it was Christmas morning, and the snow was coming in sheets now. The sidewalks were slick and icy, and the wind bit through me like whip as I tugged up my leather coat and pulled my beanie over my eyebrows. The frigid temperatures and wet snow was easier to face than my father and all the advice he had no right giving me.
I leaned against a light pole half way between the hospital and the strip of businesses that made up Main Street. Just a few blocks in front of me, Reynolds Memorial loomed large and bright. The wide stucco and brick building was only three stories, but expanded across nearly five acres and held two ambulance bays and a wide ER doorway. Snow collected on the awning at the front entrance and along the thick, pre-lit garland with white and colored lights that covered the doors, windows and covered walk way columns.
All that snow, all the glittering Christmas accoutrements should have made me feel something similar to the good vibes the smiling, sweet family had just an hour before. It did not. Nothing would, especially not that hospital.
Once, not long ago, Iris had been there. Sick, nearing something that could have killed her. Without thinking, I found myself walking toward the entrance, dusting snow from my shoulders as I made it into the lobby. As habit, I pushed up the large sunglasses that covered my face and tugged up the collar on my coat. I didn’t need the attention I usually got when I went out in town.
Despite the holiday, the hospital was busy; nurses in gray and green scrubs scurried around the hallways, offering smiles or long looks of recognition, but otherwise didn’t stop to watch. There were groups of families toward the right wing of the hospital, a place I knew was meant for the old folks, those dying or close to it. Off to the back of that wing was the nursery and beyond that the physician’s offices, but I headed toward the right, bypassing a group of girls no more than twelve who giggled when I nodded at them, then stopped walking altogether to whisper about me over the low hum of elevator music.
“Is that him?”
“Has to be. No one else in town dresses like that.”
“He looks tired.”
“Who cares, he’s still hot.”
“My sister said he’s nasty.”
“Yeah, well, your sister is nasty, too.”
It didn’t matter what a bunch of kids thoughts of me. I’d stopped worrying about the Midwestern horde a long damn time ago. In fact, I gave zero fucks about any hordes at all. People will judge you no matter who you are or what you do. May as well do what you want anyway.
“Can I help you?” a plump nurse with gray hair asked when I approached the nurse’s station on the second floor unit. I was familiar with this place. Juanita had tried it out at least five times before. I’d paid for each go.
“Juanita Vega.”
The woman didn’t have to look at a chart or thumb through folders to find my mother’s room. There was a brief shift of pity that moved across her face before she forced a smile and nodded toward the end of the hallway. 214. Last room on the right, down that hall.
I nodded, wondering what kept at me to worry about her. So many times I’d been at this desk asking the question that stuck in the back of my throat. It felt familiar, being here, wondering if she’d survive. Wondering how much damage this overdose, this round of alcohol poisoning had done to my mother.
The nurse watched me as I took a step back, shoving the sunglasses further up my nose, angling my gaze toward the hallway before I moved. “She’s better today,” the woman offered, lowering her voice. “I’ve been here twenty years. Juanita isn’t a stranger to me.”
I could only nod, wondering if I should just leave. Wondering
what walking into that room would do to me. To her. I’d kept away a long time. Had to. She needed to learn how to stand on her own. And no matter what she’d allowed to happen to me or how careless she’d always been, she was still my mama. She was the only one I’d ever have.
“Thanks,” I told the nurse, turning toward the hallway, toward my mother.
The tile was white, sterile but clean as I moved across it, taking slow steps as I came closer to room 214. There were handrails made of some soft-looking plastic in the center of the walls and carts of equipment and lunches, turkey and dressing from the looks of it, were parked between each door and half way in some of the rooms.
It was nearly two in the afternoon. Christmas day. Decorations of red and green, of Santa drawings and drapes of silver garland covered the walls. Holiday cheer had come to the detox floor as though it was normal for addicts and their families to spend Christmas among the rail thin patients with I.V.s protruding from their veins.
I slipped a glance into the rooms as I passed, catching glimpses of those patients, forcing smiles, looking as though it took mammoth effort not to cry or beg to go home. Just two doors from my mother’s room, a young girl lay in her bed, unconscious, her body covered with a thin hospital blanket and a thicker, festive Rudolph throw that a boy around her age tucked under her legs.
He doted on her, leaning forward with his elbows on her bed and one hand stretched toward her forehead, brushing the hair from her face. I recognized the look he gave her. I understood the worry. Whoever those kids were, they caught my attention, and I stopped in the hallway, leaning against the wall to watch them.
The boy was probably seventeen, might have been eighteen, with scruffy blonde hair and a lanky frame. The girl in the bed looked younger than him but not by much. Her auburn hair fanned out against the white pillow, the contrast vivid and I could just make out the bright red lashes that brushed against her pale skin at her cheeks. She was pretty, pale, thin, very sick by the look of her, but still pretty. And the boy watching over her loved her. It was in the deep line of worry that rested between his eyebrows and the large bags under his eyes. That worry showed itself in the puffiness of his upper lids and shake of his fingers when he touched her. He was scared. He was lost and I remembered exactly how that felt.