by Calia Read
I place five bottles of Svedka into my basket. A man lingering in the aisle glances down at it. “Rough day?” he asks with a smile.
“Oh you have no idea,” I reply straight-faced.
I walk toward the front of the store and groan. Six lanes are open and each one has a long line. I choose the one closest to me and wait. After awhile the basket starts to make my arm ache. I set it down in front of me and cross my arms over my chest. My skin starts to tingle. I feel slightly woozy. I try to ignore the people around me, but that’s pretty damn hard to do when the store is packed.
Get out. Right now, I tell myself. But then I’d have to go out again later and get the alcohol. I’m already out now. I just need to suck it up and deal with the crowds.
“No one is going to hurt you,” I whisper to myself. “You’re okay.”
I repeat that a few times over and take a few deep breaths. After a few seconds I feel a bit better. I lift my head and see the people in line to my left, a man and woman, staring at me like I have two heads. I fight the urge to flip them off and all but sigh with relief when it’s finally my turn to check out.
“Hello!” the cashier chirps.
“Hi,” I say back.
“Is there no end in sight to this weather?” the cashier happily asks me. According to her badge her name is Steph.
I blink rapidly, trying to think of how I should reply. It’s like normal, everyday conversations have become impossible for me. All I can do is nod.
Her smile fades and she goes silent as she scans all my precious Svedka.
“That’ll be one hundred and fifteen dollars,” Steph says without any trace of her previous smile.
I pull out one of my credit cards that isn’t completely maxed out and insert it into machine. As I type in my pin I look at Steph and all but snarl at her. Hasn’t she seen someone purchase alcohol before?
Quickly she looks away and busies herself with straightening up the magazine rack to her left.
I grab my receipt and bags and hurry to the exit. It’s still pouring down rain as I run back to my car. It’s only when I’m in the safety of my vehicle that I take a deep breath. I have a plan. And a plan is better than nothing.
I can do this on my own if I have to.
NOW THAT I’M finally home and I’ve consumed a half a bottle of Svedka, I feel great. Music blasts from the speakers of the living room sound system—Frank Sinatra crooning have yourself a merry little Christmas. I don’t even care that it’s not Christmas. I feel amazing right now.
I take another swig of Svedka. About an hour ago the shots I was taking started to lose their effect so I’ve been drinking straight out of the bottle. It tastes like water.
Stumbling down the hall, I follow the trail of Frank’s voice, the Svedka loosely dangling in my left hand.
When I reach the living room I see Mom sitting in her chair. But instead of her usual uniform of a ratty robe and slippers, her long hair is pushed back with a headband and she’s wearing a long green skirt with a black tank top. She always wore that outfit on uncharacteristically hot days at school.
Damn alcohol has dulled my senses so much that I’m not even shocked to see her. It’s as though I’ve been expecting her. As if we’ve both been expecting this meeting for a while now.
I point an accusing finger at her and slur, “Glad you decided to finally show up.”
She rolls her eyes, but says nothing. But she doesn’t have to say a word for me to know what she’s thinking. She doesn’t like me drinking this much.
“If you were in my situation wouldn’t you be a little… down, too?” I say aloud.
She doesn’t say a word.
I continue, “From the beginning, this year took a big shit on me and it’s been nothing but bad news. Forgive me if I want to take a bit of a break.”
Again with the silence. She, like everyone else, probably just thinks I’m depressed.
“There’s a misconception about depression. People think that it suddenly consumes your life, but it doesn’t. Are you listening to me? It’s a monster hidden behind one singular action. You don’t notice the clouds slowly blocking the light because just for a second you get to think. You think you can beat it, this heaviness pressing you down. You think that you can find yourself. Even if I saw the signs beforehand I don’t know if I would’ve been strong enough to stop it.”
I stare down at the ground. When I lift my head, I see Jackson sitting on the couch, right next to Mom. He’s dressed in jeans, a black Henley and a brown jacket. He’s freshly shaven, hair windblown, like he just came in front outdoors. He looks so real. Like I can reach out and touch him.
I don’t.
The three of us stare at each other in mock silence. No one seems to be inclined to say the first word. I’ve been hearing the walls talk for days. It’s time for me to do the talking for once.
“What are you two—the judge and the jury?” I ask with a slow smile. I raise my hands, palms facing up and laugh. “I admit it. I drank half this bottle, but don’t arrest me. I didn’t drink and drive. That’s gotta stand for something, right?”
Neither one says a word. They share a look and it sends me over the edge. They have the audacity to judge me when I’ve been trying so hard to keep things together?
“Fuck you both!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
If there were another bottle near me I would throw it at the two of them. Deep down I love them, but right now I hate them. They continue to stare down at me, like I’m a filthy, dirty person for drinking. But not once do they say anything.
Two can play at that game.
I grab my MacBook and open it up to my latest manuscript. My hands fly across the keyboard as I type away. They say drinking does so many bad things, but for me it creates magic. My inhibitions are lowered and the things I want to type but normally am too afraid to come out of me. A new world comes alive. And it’s one that doesn’t judge or hurt me. One filled with people that don’t leave me or gawk at me.
I lift my eyes away from the keyboard and peer above the screen to see that Jackson and Mom are still there. Still looking.
“God! Stop staring at me!”
Yet they continue.
Silence drives people crazy.
Typically, it’s my weapon of choice.
Tired of a conversation? Silence.
Sad? Silence.
Angry? Silence.
Hurt? Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
But now I’m on the receiving end of that silence and you know what? It aches. Like poison slowly taking over my veins. Frank’s crooning voice suddenly isn’t enough to fill the silence. I lift my eyes once more and see them staring. I’ve had enough.
Slamming my laptop, I stand up. “You won’t leave the room, so I will,” I announce loudly. I stomp through the hallway, feeling triumphant in my departure. “Assholes,” I mutter to myself.
But as I enter the kitchen I see Mom and Jackson sitting at the kitchen table, expectantly waiting for me.
“Shit!” I scream. I’m so startled my laptop slips from my fingers, slamming onto the ground with a loud thunk. I stumble back, my spine painfully hitting the doorframe. “How did you get here?” Shakily, I point behind me. “You were just back there.”
Neither one blinks. Neither one says a word.
The shaking spreads from my hands through my whole body. I take a shaky breath and grab my laptop before turning back around and rushing toward the stairs, not bothering to turn off the Christmas music.
“They weren’t there,” I say. “They weren’t there. It was all in my mind.”
I continue up the stairs, making sure to stomp my way up. I don’t know why, but the sound of my own feet reverberating throughout the hall makes me feel better. Right now, what I need to do is go to bed. It’s been a long day and I hardly got any sleep last night. My mind needs a break, that’s all this is.
But when I enter my room, there
they are again. Mom and Jackson. The two of them sitting on my bed.
I hit the wall and slowly slide down until my butt hits the floor. I don’t know what’s happening and why it’s happening to me. I can’t look at them. I can’t be in the same room with them, but no matter how hard I try to escape them, they just keep following me.
“Just leave me alone. Leave me alone,” I moan. “Leave me alone.”
I should know better. Things never go my way that easily because, of course, they stay. The three of us sit there in the room. I refuse to sit on the bed next to them. So I lean against the wall.
My eyes grow as heavy as my heart and finally sleep grabs hold of me and pulls me down.
THE NEXT MORNING I wake up in the upstairs bathroom with no clue as to how I got there.
I wretch into the toilet and rest my head on the seat.
Shame.
That’s what follows people after a night of heavy drinking, right?
Shame at what you said. Or what you didn’t say.
Shame at what you did. Or didn’t do.
But I have no shame.
Some people, if they drink enough, can completely black out. They don’t know how they made it to bed, what they said or texted. Unfortunately, I remember every thing about last night. I can still feel the weight of Jackson and Mom’s heavy gazes and how, out of everything, their silence was the most terrifying to me.
I take a deep shuddering breath and close my eyes.
I may feel like shit right now, but in twenty-four hours’ time I’ll be feeling as good as new. And you know what? I’m going to do this again. I found a form of medicine that makes me feel absolutely nothing. And I’ll keep doing it for as long as I can.
I smile at the very thought.
YOU KNOW WHAT I am not?
A liar.
No, I stay true to my word. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it.
I sleep the day away. I occasionally wake up to run to the bathroom and vomit or chug some water, only to collapse back into bed. By five in the afternoon I’m up, smelling like sweat and vomit. Strands of hair are sticking to my temples so I take a shower.
As the water pour downs around me I try to shake the images of last night. As much as I want to have Mom and Jackson back in my life, last night was all wrong. They weren’t there for good. They were there to torture me.
I tilt my head back and let the water wash away the shampoo.
You can Google why good things happen to bad people, think about the concept until you’re blue in the face, but the truth of the matter is that you’ll never understand why things turn out the way they do. I know I won’t give up on looking for Mom but a very small part of me thinks that it might be healthier if I accept the things I cannot change.
I finish showering and change into clean clothes and feel refreshed. When I sit down on my bed, I grab my laptop and re-read the message I sent to Jackson.
Jackson,
Haven’t heard from you in a while and I’m getting really worried. I’ve tried calling your phone but it’s shut off. Is everything okay?
-Selah
To me that sounds like someone who’s calm, cool and collected, not someone who’s on the brink of insanity. Yet there’s no reply from him. And maybe that’s all the answer I need, but it doesn’t sit well with me. Like Mom, I know something has happened to Jackson. The not knowing is killing me.
I jump up from my bed. If I remain idle, dark thoughts will creep back into my head, showing me all the bad things that could be happening to them at this very second. I need to keep myself occupied.
I grab my laptop and go downstairs. I turn on the Christmas soundtrack again that Mom has always loved. Apparently, I made it back downstairs last night and turned it off. Already I feel a bit better when I hear the music.
A new bottle of Svedka is just where I left it in the cupboard. I clean the shot glass from last night, though I don’t know why since I’m using it again. Before I start another rousing night, I open up my laptop again on the off chance there’s an e-mail reply from Jackson.
Pathetic? Absolutely. But I lost my pride around the same time I lost my sanity. I pour a drink and stare down at the clear liquid before I take a deep breath. “Bottoms up,” I mutter before I take the shot.
THERE’S A BANGING on the door that rouses me from my computer. About an hour ago Svedka and I made our way to the living room. “Go away!” I shout, thinking it’s Mom and Jackson back again to torture me.
“No!” someone replies.
“I said, go away!”
“I said no.”
“Fucking ridiculous,” I mutter to myself as I push aside my laptop and stand up. It’s a long walk to the front door, filled with a lot of stumbling and righting myself. When I finally get there, it takes me a few minutes to work the bolt lock. The pounding continues.
“You banging on the door isn’t going to make me open up any faster, asshole,” I say loudly.
The pounding stops around the same time I unlock the door. I make a small opening and peer out, only to see Noah standing on my front porch. My shoulders slump.
“What are you doing here?”
He looks haggard. He’s dressed in gray sweat pants and a Northwestern sweatshirt that looks like it’s seen better days. “I’m here because your music is too loud. That’s why I’m here.”
“So?”
“So?” He arches a brow. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you.” I turn away from the door, knowing that he’s going to walk in behind me. He does. And I’m okay with that. Because somehow I know that if he’s here, the chances of Mom and Jackson torturing me are slim.
Noah quietly shuts the door behind him, which I find ironic considering I have the music blasting. I walk into the living room and pick up the Svedka where I left it. I take a drink directly out of the bottle before I hand it to him. “Want some?”
“No, thanks. I already drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels at home,” he says sarcastically.
“Really? You handle your whiskey well,” I say with a smile.
He doesn’t smile back. Instead he makes a B-line toward the sound system and turns off the Christmas music. The silence that follows is almost louder than the music. It hurts my eardrums. Makes me want to hold my hands against my ears to make the aching stop.
“What is going on with you, Selah?”
I slowly circle the room, vodka in hand. “Do you know that you’re the umpteenth person to ask me that?”
“A lot of people are concerned about you.”
“Okay. I lied. You’re only the second person to ask me that. But the question has been asked multiple times,” I concede.
Noah doesn’t reply.
I stop my journey around the living room and look outside. I love this time of night. Well, technically morning. I love that everyone is asleep and everything is deathly still. The world aligns better for me at this hour. I can think clearer. Be myself and do the things that I always want to do in the daytime but don’t. During the day the world is alive and bustling. I find that overwhelming. Everything feels on hold and all I can focus on is breathing in and out and making it through the day.
You’d think Noah would interrupt the peace, but it’s oddly harmonious with him here. Who would’ve thought?
“How long have you been drinking?” Noah asks.
“You mean tonight or other days, because that might be difficult to answer.”
Noah flexes his jaw. “I mean this drinking binge of yours. How long has it been going on?”
“Define drinking binge.”
“Selah.”
To end the questioning, I give him an honest answer. “A few days.”
“So that’s why you’ve been locked away in your house.”
“Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.”
“You can’t drink away your pain, Selah.”
“Thank you for the PSA, Dr. Phil. I’ll keep that
in mind.”
“Can you just listen to me for one fucking second?” Suddenly he’s in my way, ripping the vodka bottle out of my grasp.
“Give me that!” I shout.
He holds it up in the air, out of reach, before he goes to the kitchen. I know he’s going to wash it down the drain. “Don’t waste good vodka,” I say as I trail behind him.
My words fall on deaf ears and I watch in abject horror as he pours the vodka down the drain. Noah slams the bottle onto the counter. His hands grip the lip of the counter. His shoulders are slumped. He takes one deep cleansing breath before he pushes away from the counter and stands up straight.
“I’m not leaving until I see with my own eyes that you’re sober and okay to be by yourself.”
I cross my arms. “Well, get a pair of glasses so you can see better because I’m sober and okay to be by myself.”
“Selah, I mean it.”
I throw my hands in the air. “What’s it to you?”
“Oh, I don’t know… just a few days ago you came to my house in the middle of the night on the brink of having a meltdown. And now I see you’re self-medicating by drinking yourself to death.”
“I can assure that I’m not drinking myself to death.”
“Then what are you doing?” he asks.
At that I hesitate; this conversation is becoming way too serious for my liking. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
Noah’s lips form a thin line. “I’m just worried about you. That’s all.”
I stare down at the floor. “I know that.”
We stand like that for a long moment, before Noah says, “Let’s go to the living room.”
I don’t budge from my spot. “Only if we turn the Christmas music back on.”
Noah sighs. “Fine. Christmas music it is.”
Shoulder to shoulder we walk back to the living room. I can feel my beautiful buzz wearing off and I know that I’m going to have a massive hangover tomorrow. Noah gestures to the couch but I shake my head because all I can see is Jackson sitting there, staring at me with unblinking eyes.