I placed my hand on his back. It still felt strange to touch people. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, honey. It’s been a long road. Something I had to accept years ago. He started doing them damn drugs when he was sixteen and they took over his life. Stole from me and his mama. Broke into the restaurant too many times to count. I didn’t have no choice but to call the police on him. I didn’t want to, but I had to. Couldn’t just let him keep robbing me dry.”
His words brought back memories of Rachel. I’d done such a good job putting her out of my life that most people didn’t know I had a sister. I didn’t talk about her and there weren’t any pictures of her in my house—not that I had any pictures to display. We hadn’t had a picture taken together since I was twelve.
Rachel had been my hero and it broke my heart when she got on drugs. She turned on my mom first, but I’d never expected her to turn on me. She’d been my best friend and closest confidante until the night I caught her smoking weed in the closet of the room we shared. I’d told my mom about it when she got home from work and Rachel freaked out on me later.
“How could you tell her, you little rat?”
“Because you’re doing drugs. I don’t want you to die.” I didn’t know anyone who did drugs. The only information I had about them was what’d they’d taught us in our DARE classes at school and every message I’d heard was that they ended in death. Finding Rachel with drugs was like finding her with a loaded gun.
“It’s weed, you moron. It’s not even real drugs.”
She pulled away from me after that night. It wasn’t long before she was stealing my babysitting money and the cash my mom tucked underneath her mattress for emergencies. She denied taking it even though we knew she had. It felt like such a betrayal and paranoia began to reign in our house as we walked on eggshells around her. My mom kept my babysitting money in an envelope in her dresser to keep it safe and started locking her bedroom door whenever she wasn’t in it.
I had no idea Rachel snuck out of our house at night until I was awakened by the sound of her stumbling through the window, crashing her head on the nightstand next to her bed.
I jumped out of bed, rushing toward her crumpled body on the floor. “Are you okay?”
She looked up at me and I looked down into the face of a stranger. Her eyes bulged maniacally out of her head. She frantically worked her jaw back and forth and her eyes flitted around the room in quick, jerky movements. She jumped up and began pacing the room, mumbling things I didn’t understand under her breath.
“Are you okay? Do you want me to get Mom?” I asked.
“Shit, fuck, no. Just like, you know. Chill. It’s all good. It’s really all good. Fuck. I mean well, no worries. I was just telling him the same thing.” Her speech was rushed and hurried, pressured like she had to spit the words out as fast as she could or something bad would happen if she didn’t.
“I’m going to get Mom. You’re freaking me out.”
She leapt from across the room. “Don’t fuckin say a word!” She grabbed both of my arms, pulling me close to her, her words came out as a hiss. “If you tell her, they’re going to know I’m here. They can’t know I’m here.”
“Who? What–”
She dropped my arms, rushed to our window. “Shh…. be quiet. Did you hear that?” Her voice was a whisper now. She was on her knees, peering out the window. I moved to kneel beside her. I peeked over the window, searching for any sign of people in our yard.
“There’s nobody out there. You’re fine. Let’s just go to bed.” I pulled on her arm.
She jerked it away. “I’m not fine. Never fine. Nothing’s fine. Everything’s fucked up. Do you know? Ohmigod, you know. You know. Shit.”
I was panicked and didn’t know what to do. I stood and she pulled me back down to the floor quickly. “They’re going to see you!”
“You’re totally freaking me out. I’m getting Mom,” I said.
“No!” she screamed and slapped me across the face.
I brought my hand up to my cheek, tears welling in my eyes. I’d never been hit before.
“I gotta go. I can’t stay here.”
She pulled the window back up and hoisted herself out. She didn’t look back as she ran out into the night. I rushed downstairs to alert my mom she was gone. She stayed gone three days that time. It was the beginning of a pattern. Each time she left she stayed gone longer until eventually she didn’t come home at all. My mom never would’ve admitted it, but part of her was relieved she left because it kept her from having to call the police on her for stealing from us. I was devastated. We’d been surviving the changes in our life together and she’d left me to battle them alone.
“He got hooked on that crystal meth. You heard of it?” Frank’s voice brought me back to the present.
“Yeah, my sister was on it too.”
I couldn’t believe I’d told him. I didn’t tell anyone about Rachel. It’d taken years before I told David about her and Robin only found out about her because she’d showed up strung out at our house once when she’d come home with me on spring break. It was easier to pretend she didn’t exist than to admit she was alive and wanted nothing to do with me.
“That shit is the doggone devil.” Frank’s eyes were on fire. “I don’t even know who Junior is anymore or where he is. I only know when I get the call from whatever jailhouse he’s in. Can I tell you a secret?”
I nodded.
“I like when he goes to jail. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But at least when he’s locked up, I know he’s safe and not gonna die.”
“My mom says the same thing about my sister.” She was never mad when Rachel called her from jail. Each time she told me how happy she was that Rachel was in jail because she knew she was okay. “Has he ever gotten clean?”
“A few times, but never more than a couple of months. We refinanced the house to pay for treatment once. Never did much good. He left before his days were up. One time when he got clean, Joe worked with him every day trying to help him stay sober. Picked him up in the morning. Gave him work on his construction crew and took him to meetings every night. He drove him all over the place making sure he got to meetings. Then, one morning I got up and he was gone again. Just left in the middle of the night. No idea what set him off. He was just gone. Didn’t see him for over a year.”
“Where’s he at now?” I asked.
Frank shrugged. “No idea. Last I heard from him was two years ago when he was locked up in Chicago. He might be dead. It’s so hard when he’s missing. There’s no end. You’ve got no idea how to feel. Lois used to say she’d wish he’d die because then at least she could grieve for the son she’d lost.”
His words hit like a ton of bricks in my gut. I spent so much time thinking about David, but never thought about my mom. Everyone she’d loved had disappeared on her. Vanished. What was it like for her to live with a family of ghosts? I’d spent my life trying not to hurt her any more than she’d already been hurt, but I’d done the same thing everyone else had done. It’d never occurred to me someone might think I was dead. David probably wished I was, but what about my mom?
She’d been so devastated when my father left and even though she tried to pretend Rachel’s leaving was different, I heard her crying behind her locked bedroom door. Was she still crying for me? How could I be so selfish?
“Would you want to know if he was dead?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Then, this whole thing would finally be over. It could just be done. No more thinking about it. No more wondering. No more worrying.”
“Wouldn’t you miss him?” I asked.
“Honey, I’ve been missing my boy for over twenty years. He’s been gone.”
I felt the tears rise in my throat and swallowed them back down with force. I couldn’t let Frank see me cry. As soon as we finished cleaning, I hung up my apron and left. I waited until I was past the end of the street and then took off running. I ran all the way home, smashed through the door, and th
rew myself on the bed sobbing. I knew who I was. I was a monster. I cried myself to sleep for the thousandth time.
Chapter Eighteen
When I arrived to the meeting on Monday, the chairs were arranged in rows unlike their usual circle. I took a seat in the back row. I’d barely slept all weekend. My thoughts were running wild about all the people I’d hurt and searching for a way to make it better. I’d thought about calling in sick to my shift yesterday, but couldn’t bring myself to do that to Frank. Meredith did it all the time, but he’d grown to count on me showing up for my shifts.
“Hey stranger.”
Joe slid into the seat next to me. My heart started pounding in my chest. “Hey.”
“I’m glad you came. It’s a great speaker tonight,” he said.
“A speaker?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, you’re new, huh? Sometimes we have a speaker that comes and shares their story. Usually it’s somebody we get from out of town because we all know each other’s stories here. Christ, we’ve heard them a million times.” He laughed.
“Oh, I didn’t know there were those kind of meetings.”
“I don’t know whose speaking tonight. Dick picked him. Someone from the cities. I guess he’s just in town visiting. Might be good. Might be terrible. Who knows. You never know what you’re going to get when it comes to speakers.” The faint smell of Cool Water wafted up my nose. My first boyfriend used to wear Cool Water. Maybe that was why his presence was so unnerving. “I knew you were one of us. How long you been coming to meetings?”
“I-I’m just…. it’s…. uh….”
I was torn. I wasn’t one of them, yet I was, but how did I explain that to him? I liked that he referred to me as being one of them. Was I pathetic for feeling proud to be a part of a group of alcoholics?
“Don’t worry. You don’t need to explain yourself. Just keep coming back,” he said.
“Thanks.” I fidgeted with my purse, pretending to look for something important buried inside it so he wouldn’t say anything else to me. It wasn’t long before the meeting started and the speaker took center stage in front of us. He stood behind a wooden podium they’d borrowed from the sanctuary upstairs.
It was a man in his late fifties who looked like he might have been a linebacker at one point, but unlike Joe, all his muscles had turned to fat. He had huge biceps but a round belly protruded over his pants. His hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail flowing down his back. I couldn’t help but wonder if he kept his hair long to hide the fact he was losing it on top. He launched into describing what his life used to be like, what had happened to get him sober, and what his life was like now. I was fascinated.
He talked about hating his father because he’d left him when he was only a year old. He’d walked out on his mother and four siblings. He went on to describe a series of stepfathers who infiltrated his house and each one was more abusive than the last. He started fighting back when he was a teenager and eventually joined the army to escape his house.
His experiences in the army were graphic and awful. He described instances of throwing up and coming to in his own urine. As was my custom, I watched the faces around me to see how people reacted. Everyone was as enthralled as me and most nodded their heads in eager agreement as he described his public humiliations. He laughed at himself, but his tone changed as he neared the end of his drinking, becoming serious as he talked about marrying a woman as soon as he got out of the service and having his first child.
“I missed my son being born because I was passed out on my buddy’s couch after we’d been out drinking all night. I’ll never forget stumbling home totally hungover and walking into an empty house to find a note from Regina that said—at the hospital. See, it wasn’t like she gave birth suddenly. She was over a week past due. I was supposed to be there with her at night in case she went into labor. I told her I was going to go out to get a pack of smokes and I wasn’t lying when I said it. I really wasn’t. I thought I’d go get a pack of smokes and come back, but then I decided it wouldn’t hurt to stop in at the bar real quick. One of my buddies talked me into having a drink and before you know it—well, you know how it goes. I had another and another. Regina went into labor that night and I missed it.” His words hung in the air, thick with emotion. It took him a moment to continue. “After that, I swore I was done drinking forever. Like we’ve all done, I really meant it. I was going to be a good dad. There was no way I was going to be like my father. I stayed completely sober for the first two months of my son’s life. I tried to pretend like it didn’t bother me not to drink, but it was so damn hard. I really wanted a drink. I wasn’t prepared for how much a baby would change my life. If you have a kid, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Half of the room nodded. I found myself nodding too.
“Jake cried all the time and I couldn’t handle it. Regina and I started fighting constantly. I was pissed at her because we’d fought for so many years about my drinking and I thought she’d be happy because I was sober, but she was still pissed off at me. I’ll admit. I was a total idiot. Completely selfish and self-centered, but I didn’t know it. Back then, I thought it was totally justified. What a moron.” The regret edged his face in thick lines. “And then one night, I just snapped. We were fighting about who was going to take the trash out and I lost it. Over the fuckin trash. I took off and ended up at the bar. I didn’t even think about it. I got drunk and stayed drunk for five years. It wasn’t just that I got drunk. I walked out on Regina and Jake. I moved down south and worked on the oil rigs. I never called, wrote, nothing. I did exactly what my dad had done to me and what I swore I’d never do—I walked out on my kid. I was a complete failure as a dad.”
His story continued but I was catapulted into my own childhood living room the day my mom received the Dear John letter from my dad. I remembered how the letter fluttered out of her hands like a butterfly and drifted to the floor. She fell to her knees, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed. Rachel and I ran next to her, standing beside her.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Rachel asked.
“Your dad…. your dad….” She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t form words.
“Is he dead?” Rachel asked.
Even at six, I knew it was the word we’d been waiting to hear. Nobody said it out loud, but I read between the lines of their hushed whispers. I knew what the police thought happened and what my mom was referring to every time she said she was afraid something bad happened to him. It had finally occurred. My dad was dead.
Rachel sat sobbing next to her, but my tears were lodged in my throat. What did it mean that my dad was dead? Something about Rachel crying next to her on the floor brought my mom out of her pain for a moment.
“He’s not dead,” Mom said.
Rachel brought her head up, tears streaming down her face. “He’s not? What’s wrong, then? Where is he?”
“He’s…. he’s…. in love with someone else. Your daddy met another woman.” Her voice was low, barely a whisper.
“What? I don’t understand. I don’t get it.” Rachel’s voice was the opposite of my mom’s. Hers was loud, bordering on yelling.
I was frozen to my spot. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.
“He moved away to be with her. He’s going to live with her in Spain,” Mom said.
Where was Spain? I’d never heard of it before. Was it close? Could we visit him there?
“When’s he coming home?” Rachel demanded.
“He’s not.”
Her words came down like lead shattering a bomb inside of me.
“My daddy isn’t coming home?” I’d found my voice.
“No. He’s not. He’s gone.”
“Why isn’t my daddy coming home?” I asked.
“Because he left us!” Rachel cried. She stormed out of the living room and ran down the hallway to our bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
“Why isn’t my daddy coming home?”
It didn’t make
any sense. Daddies didn’t leave their families.
“You’re too young to understand. He’s just not.”
My mom followed Rachel to her room, leaving me standing alone reeling. I picked up the letter from the ground, wishing I knew how to read because it held the answer. I stared at the letters swerving in front of me.
My mom had apologized to me many times for how she dealt with my father leaving. She thought I was too young to understand what was going on and wanted to shelter me from the reality of knowing my father rejected our family for a chance to be with another woman. Instead, she told me nothing other than he was gone and wasn’t coming back.
I was left trying to fill in the pieces of the puzzle with my childish mind. I spent hours trying to figure out what I’d done to make him leave. I couldn’t accept he’d simply abandoned us so I began imagining all kinds of scenarios as to why he couldn’t come home. I created stories about him being an undercover superhero and that he’d been called away on a secret mission to save the world or imagined he was a doctor and the woman he was with was very sick. He was the only doctor who’d figured out the cure and the only place to get it was in Spain so he’d had to take her there.
My mother thought Rachel was old enough to understand more than I was so she told her everything. She spared no details as she ranted and raved about who the women might be and how hurt she was that he could fall in love with someone else after everything they’d been through. My mom’s personal disclosures left Rachel feeling more like an abandoned wife than an abandoned daughter.
As I got older, I decided it was my mom’s fault he left. She’d been too needy, weak, and dependent on him. I vowed to be the perfect wife when I grew up so my husband wouldn’t leave me. I would make sure my life was designed differently so my family stayed intact. Nobody would abandon me again and I’d never leave my family.
I couldn’t help but see the parallels between the man’s story and my own. I’d sworn never to become like my father. It was a crushing blow to realize I’d done what I swore I’d never do. I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt Joe’s arm around me. The woman sitting next to me handed me a Kleenex. I wanted to stop crying, but couldn’t. The tears streamed down my cheeks. They were warm tears filled with sadness and grief, not the hot sting of bitterness and pain I’d gotten used to.
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