by Neliza Drew
We were not only on different pages, but in different books. I got a hole big enough to stick my hand through to unlock the door.
She moved away and curled up in the corner beside the toilet.
She’d slashed her wrists. Again. As usual, she’d cut across just deep enough to make a big mess, but not deep enough to really kill herself absent copious amounts of blood thinners and some extended, unsupervised time. For a second, I wished she’d figure out how to do it right already.
I grabbed her wrists and wrapped them in a towel. “Old scars get too faint?”
“You!” She stared at me, terrified, and tried to back away. She slipped, hit her head on the toilet tank, and started screaming again.
I reached behind me and turned the water off, keeping her cornered. “You feeling okay?” I checked her eyes, but they didn’t seem abnormally large or small. “Did you take something?”
She shook her head without taking her eyes off my face. “You’re not real.”
“Do you remember why you cut yourself?”
She rocked. “I can’t even do this.” Tears fell out of her eyes and I noticed bits of broken glass in the greasy spikes of her inky-indigo hair. She suddenly yanked her right wrist away and grabbed a stray piece of glass. “You’re not here. I’m in hell.”
I grabbed her wrist. Blood squished through my fingers. I felt disgust and a simmering rage.
“You fucked it up!” She squeezed her fist around the glass.
I pried her fingers open and threw the glass across the blood-streaked tile before yanking off some toilet paper. “Hold this.”
She threw it in my face and spat.
I tried again, holding her fist closed around the paper as I jerked her up.
I frog-marched her across the wet floor to the hallway. “You haven’t tried to off yourself in almost seven years, Charley. What the hell?” I knew I was trying to reason with the unreasonable. Old habit.
She dragged her feet and wriggled like a giant toddler.
I dumped her writhing, bony frame on the bed and dialed 911. She had the bed shoved in the corner, covered with mounds of garbage and dirty clothes. The whole place smelled like a seedy motel room. I told the person on the other end of the phone I had a suicide attempt near Newport and rattled off Charley’s address.
Charley, her features distorted and puffy, her lips cracked, skin splotchy, screamed, “I hate you!”
The dispatcher asked if this was a domestic dispute.
Charley kicked me in the leg and ran for the door.
“No,” I told the woman. “It’s an addict.”
I dropped the phone, launched myself at Charley. Tackled her around the waist, sent us sliding on a cheap rag rug. She reached for a dresser she shouldn’t have been strong enough to move and pulled on a leg until it toppled toward us. Drawers fell, clothes spilled. I pushed her out of the way and rolled up against the wall as it crashed to the floor. “Dammit, Charley.”
She ran for the hall and I followed her. My feet sloshed in the water and my leg hurt. The place looked like a stupid horror show: blood smeared on the floor, the doorframe, me.
At the end of the hall, she beat the glass out of the door leading to the balcony with a footstool and threw it through. She grabbed a chunk of glass and held it to her neck. She stood, in her dingy white cotton panties, looking more deranged than she had in years. “Fuck you.”
I searched my brain for the tricks we’d used on her when we were younger.
Tears streaked her face and her hands wavered. “I’ll be good. I swear.” She wasn’t talking to me, if she ever had been.
“Charley, please don’t do this.” Shit.
“I tried so hard.” Her eyes were glassy, unfocused. “He’s dead.”
I nodded and shook my head, not sure what to do.
“You’re not real.”
“Then you can tell me, right? If I’m all in your head, you can tell me anything.”
Her eyes swam into focus. “Shut up.” She backed up through the metal doorframe, not even noticing the glass under her bare feet. “Get out of my fucking house!” She stamped her feet in the glass and scrunched her face. Held the glass out like a knife.
“Please put the glass down.” I inched forward.
Her eyes went through me. “Why?”
Behind me, the wall still bore a bullet hole from a moment like this years ago. The look on her face was the one she should have been wearing then.
I stepped closer.
She put the glass back to her throat.
“It’s okay.” My voice betrayed none of the anger I felt, none of the pain.
She tightened her grip. Blood flowed down her already bloody arm. Her eyes grew crazier and her hand wavered.
I ran.
She stared at me. “I hate you,” she whispered as I charged.
I dove and a feeling of déjà vu washed over me.
Charley held the glass in front of her. It caught me in the left shoulder when we collided. Pain shot through, then radiated. She let go of the glass and grabbed my ears, clawing at old scars.
We hit the deck of the balcony so hard it knocked the wind out of me. Slid on broken glass. She howled and left a bloody smear. My forehead slammed into the railing, which stopped us from falling two stories into a rose bush.
She grabbed another piece of glass and jabbed it in my back. I gasped, despite years of steeling myself against things that could hurt me.
I rolled her and tried to pin her, but the drugs were making her strong, the blood was making her slippery, and the crazy was making her wily.
She grinned, triumphant, picked up another piece of glass, tried to jab it in my arm.
I shoved her arm over her head and yanked the shard out of my shoulder.
She reached for it and I jerked her to a standing position, wincing as the glass in my back moved with the muscle.
She twisted herself free. “One of us has to die.”
I pulled her down into a modified wrestler’s hold. How many times had we been in similar spots or worse? How many times had she tried and failed? How many times had we stopped her? How many more before we failed?
She wailed and struggled and peed.
Chapter three
Somewhere behind us, sirens stopped. I watched the lights bounce off the trees, splashing the house and lawn in red. Parts of me hurt that hadn’t hurt in years.
A voice, rich and baritone, accompanied pounding downstairs. “Hello?”
Charley kicked me in the shin and lunged for the edge of the balcony.
“Out back!”
Charley screamed and shook the metal railing until screws rattled.
I couldn’t hear what the baritone said in response, but a few seconds later he ran around the jutting front corner of the house. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt under the bright orange volunteer rescue squad vest, and looked oddly familiar.
The railing broke; Charley plunged. I grabbed her wrist and a piece of the next section of railing as we tumbled off the deck. When gravity kicked in, the jolt felt like it ripped my already-bleeding arm out of its socket, but I held fast. I couldn’t feel my hand, but it worked on its own.
Charley continued screaming, kicking and making matters worse.
“I don’t even want to know how you two ended up like this.” He easily grabbed the flailing Charley around the knees. “You okay?”
I nodded and let her go.
“Super,” I muttered. I looked below me over my shoulder. “What the hell’s under me?”
“A piece of railing and a bunch of weeds. Why? You’re not going to—”
In answer, I dropped and cushioned my landing with a loose-limbed squat. “I hate this place.”
I got to my feet and pulled my shirt up to look for damage. I had a few nice bruises forming in addition to the bloody shoulder. I reached behind me and tried to pull the glass out of my back. It was wedged pretty tight about six inches below the base of my neck, a little left of my spine, a
nd it moved every time I did, making my stomach churn.
I looked at the new guy in front of me, a short blond “Got any tweezers?”
He nodded and disappeared. I examined the various cuts on my arms and hands. None seemed life-threatening. I rubbed my face but found no major damage there either. My clothes, on the other hand, were filthy, ripped, and probably needed to be burned.
Another day with the world’s greatest mother.
They’d driven the ambulance as close as they could and it looked like another weird addition to the house. A squishy woman and the runty blond fought to push a stretcher across the dead, overgrown lawn. I didn’t see the baritone.
I held my shoulder and felt dazed.
“Ma’am, are you sure you’re all right?” A hand touched my good shoulder. I tensed and nearly attacked him.
“Yeah, fine.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand and slowed my breathing.
“Can I see that?”
I turned. “Craig Silvano?”
“You probably need stitches.” He gestured at the bloody hole in my shirt.
I covered my shoulder again with my hand. “Stitches are overrated.”
The blond trotted over, handed Craig a plastic package. He looked up at me and held out his hand. “By the way, my name’s Scooter.”
“Davis.” He wore gloves and didn’t even flinch at the bloody paw print I left on them.
Scooter winked at Craig and took off.
I suddenly felt self-conscious, ridiculously so. I tried to smooth my hair with tragi-comedy results.
Craig didn’t look shy or self-conscious. Or bloody and rumpled. He wrinkled a dark, bushy eyebrow. “She gonna be okay?”
I grabbed the package and pulled out the tweezers. “Probably not.”
“You want some help?”
I reached over my shoulder. “Ow. Fuck.”
“Something set her off.”
I stared at the bloody shard.
“I haven’t seen her like this since prom.” He gave me a nervous, fake laugh and his eyes wandered first to my hand and then to the ambulance as the woman slammed the doors shut.
“She wasn’t this bad then. Well, different anyway.”
He made a noise like he disagreed, but didn’t push it.
“She’ll be fine. Always is.”
“And you?”
“Never better.” I dropped the bloody glass on the grass.
“Still full of family secrets?” He looked hurt, angry.
“I don’t need this, Craig.” I stepped past him. “I don’t need any of this.”
“What do you need, Davis?”
“It’s not your problem. Never was.” I felt kind of lightheaded.
“That’s low.”
Craig started to look kind of fuzzy. Drunk fuzzy. “How’s the wife?”
“We divorced. She lives in Claremont with the kids, but you’re changing the subject.”
“Things change. Even subjects.” I started across the lawn, feeling weak in the knees.
He closed the gap between us. “You should sit.”
Wooziness hit me and I stopped. “I’m just tired. It was a long drive.”
“Uh huh. Let me help you inside. Please?”
I realized the ambulance had left and we were alone. “You sent them away?”
“I know you. I knew I’d have to knock you out to get you to a hospital.”
I pushed off and headed across the yard to the back porch. A broken piece of railing caught my eye. “She tried to kill me. Again.”
“She was on something. She didn’t mean it, Davis.”
I turned and looked into his dark brown eyes before heading into the house. “She doesn’t even know who I am.”
“You’re shivering.”
“It’s cold.” I stumbled inside and collapsed on the eggplant-colored linoleum
“You need a doctor.”
“It’s just blood, Craig.” I pulled off my shirt and used it to wipe off as much as I could before reaching for a filthy dishrag.
He snatched the dishrag away from me and put the bloody shirt back over what seemed like a relatively small hole. “Stay here. I’ll clean it up.”
I sat. I still felt dizzy. I needed breakfast and probably a nap since I’d driven all night. I crawled to the fridge, opened the door and let my teeth chatter.
Nothing. Half a bottle of ketchup, a box of baking soda, and an empty vodka bottle. I yanked out the Popov with my good arm and hurled it as hard as I could at the opposite wall where it left a dent and bounced onto a cheap rug. To ensure that together we’d made a complete mess of the house, I threw the ketchup bottle after the vodka. The cap broke off and reddish brown splotches filled in the dent.
Craig rounded the corner with a small tackle box and a box of gauze pads.
“I should have let her. I sound like a horrible person, but I should have let her.” I pushed Craig away and crawled over to the nearest cabinet so I could lean against it.
“It’s the blood loss, Davis.”
“It’s not my flesh wounds. I’m a selfish, rotten human. And I’m tired.” And I’d seen the way she looked at me. And I remembered how she’d looked at me prom night. And I recognized the hate.
“She gave birth to you.”
I shook my head. “I left her here. With Lane. I thought I had to. I thought it was best. Now she’s in jail.”
“Lane’s in jail?” He moved closer, dabbed the shoulder wound with a gauze pad.
“Will you just fix that already? I have to do things.”
“You need stitches.”
“It’s a tiny cut.”
“It’s…” He gave up and dug around in his tackle box for something labeled sutures. He didn’t look so sure about that idea.
“That should work. Hell, butterflies, needle and thread, Elmer’s glue, bubble gum, whatever.”
“I don’t have a topical anesthetic.”
I took the package and jerked it open with my teeth.
“It’s gonna hurt.”
“It already hurts. Just do it so I don’t have to.” Rage and disgust and a pain deeper than skin all swirled in my head. I slowed my breathing, controlled my emotions with it, and watched Craig lay out the contents of the packet on a layer of gauze.
He moved my hair and examined the jagged hole. “You could have severed something.”
“I can move everything, no nerve damage.” I eyed the web of scars on my hand. “I’m not dead, so I assume she missed anything major.”
“Do you not understand how serious this is?” He cleaned the blood from around the wound and pinched it closed. “Or do you just not care?”
“It’s not serious, Craig.” I felt drained, empty, but it wasn’t the blood loss, spent adrenaline, or lack of sleep.
“I’m sorry, Davis.” I watched the back of his neck ripple slightly. I smelled his shampoo. He touched a faint scar just below my ear, one I’d forgotten was still visible when my regrown hair was brushed aside. “Davis? Are you sure you’re okay?” He sounded petrified, like I’d gone off the deep end Charley-style. He fingered the scar again and I could feel his eyes following the stick-straight path my strawberry hair usually took down my back to find older, worn-out scars he’d seen before. And new ones.
I bit my lower lip. “Just because you mean well enough to try to keep me from bleeding to death this time doesn’t mean I have to tell you.”
“If wherever you were, if it was helping… Maybe you should leave this for someone else to take care of. Maybe—”
“Who, Craig? Lane? You?” I turned my head so I could see him in my peripheral vision. “This is my job, Craig. It’s just like the one you volunteer for: fixing people who fucked up.”
Craig looked at me with his serious-discussion face. The same one he’d always worn when he was getting ready to deliver an after-school special speech. “Just what iswrong with Charley?”
“Does it matter?”
He nodded.
“You reall
y want a label? There isn’t one. We moved around too often for her to get regular treatment. One guy diagnosed her as schizophrenic, wanted to have her committed if she wouldn’t take her meds. Another thought she had multiple personalities and wanted to study her like a lab rat. Nik thought he was a quack. Some other woman claimed Charley suffered from drug-induced psychosis. And another thought she had a psychotic break stemming from childhood sexual trauma. She worked for one of the jails Charley was in for prostitution, so there’s that.”
“What do you think?”
“She’s certainly fried her synapses with the drugs. Basically, she’s just some wannabe artist, who mostly didn’t have a stitch of talent for anything other than holding their liquor and painting with their toes, giving each other sponge baths in the park — that kind of crap. She’s never made anything anyone wanted to look at or listen to, but she’s affected a helluva persona trying. Doesn’t matter what you call it. Doesn’t change it.” I left out the day she’d gone from casual drug use to hard-core, suicidal abuse. That wound still hadn’t healed for either of us.
I tried to stand, but immediately grabbed the countertop.
“You can’t keep abusing yourself.” He dragged a stool over and stuck it under my ass. “Sit. I promise not to let the secret slip.” He set his supplies on a relatively clean section of countertop.
“Craig, I know you can’t understand, and that’s good.” I watched him open my palm and tape a fresh piece of gauze over a gash he seemed to know I would reopen half a dozen times. He didn’t bother commenting on the melted whorls in the shape of a stove burner that refused to disappear.
“I can’t tell you how to live.” He squeezed the cut on my arm that I hadn’t really noticed and put in two neat little stitches. I watched and ignored the urge to wince.
“I’ve done worse.”
“I can see that.” He cleaned up the shoulder wound, not commenting on the long white line running under it from my armpit to my collarbone, and started on another row of stitches. I took a long, slow breath and thought about the first aid kit Nik used to keep in a Hello Kitty pencil pouch, how she’d insist on sewing up cuts just to make me “think twice about doing that again.” It never worked.
“You’ve seen me naked before. You’ve seen me bloody. What the hell?” I closed my eyes tried to remember a time when I wasn’t in some kind of pain, tried to imagine a life where it didn’t seem necessary.