The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels

by Valmore Daniels

  “Is it bad?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “Is she going to be all right?”

  The nurse tilted her head and lifted her eyebrows. “That’s not for me to say. We’ve got her on an IV drip and oxygen. She’ll have a sore throat from the vomiting and the procedure. She’s out right now. We’ll keep her here for observation.”

  “How long?” I asked, my voice thin.

  “That’s up to the doctor. Maybe a day or two, depending.” A moment later, she said, “According to our records, this is the second time this year she’s been admitted for this.”

  I tried to keep my expression blank. “Yeah.”

  “We have a treatment facility right here in the hospital, you know. I could bring you some literature.”

  When I glanced at her sharply, she said, “There are financing options available.”

  “When is the doctor coming back?” I asked.

  The nurse pursed her lips, and her tone once more became clinical. “He’s already checked on her. He isn’t scheduled for his next set of rounds until tomorrow afternoon.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.” I pulled a plastic-backed chair close to the bed and sat down.

  The nurse paused for a moment before stepping out of the room and drawing the curtain closed behind her.

  My first impulse was to reach out to touch my mother’s arm, but I stopped halfway. Instead, I rested my chin on my palm, my elbow on my knee.

  As far back as I could remember, my mother always had a drink in her hand. When she came home from work, she went directly to the liquor cabinet and mixed herself a cosmopolitan, even before thinking about making dinner for the two of us.

  As a kid, I never thought there was anything out of the ordinary about it, except on the rare occasions when I would catch her staring out the window with a tear in her eye, ignoring whatever television program was on at the time. When I asked what was wrong, she would wipe her cheek and smile at me, then ask whether I did all my homework.

  During my early teens, as I stayed up later and later, I started to notice that sometimes she never made it to her own bed at night. Many times, by ten or eleven o’clock, she would be passed out on the sofa. By then I was old enough to realize she was going to drink herself into an early grave.

  One night when I was fourteen, I confronted her about it. She slapped my face and told me to shut my mouth; it was none of my business.

  Until then, I had always thought of us as a unit, mother and son. Sure, we’d had our problems. I was adjusting to being an adolescent, trying to figure out who I was. She didn’t want me to grow up; I knew that much.

  Admitting I was getting older meant admitting that one day I would be out on my own and I would leave her behind. In effect, I would be abandoning her. That, I knew, was what she feared the most. My father had split before I was born. I remember thinking I could never leave my mother; it would devastate her. As I grew older, however, the relationship between us changed, and I started to believe I had to get out on my own.

  By the time I was fifteen, my friends started became more important to me. Soon, enough friction grew between my mother and me that we could barely speak a word to one another without it descending into a shouting match. When you are in that no-man’s land between a child and an adult, it doesn’t register how much everything you do affects the people around you. I admit I had become more and more belligerent and self-absorbed as the years went on; abandoning her emotionally, even while I still physically lived at home.

  We got into a few roof-raising fights when she caught me sneaking her into her liquor cabinet a few months before I turned sixteen. At that point, I didn’t care how much she yelled. I figured that she was a hypocrite, and that gave me the right to do what I wanted.

  On my sixteenth birthday, she caught me smoking pot in my room. We yelled for hours, and dragged up every bit of ammunition we had. But it was when I called her a ‘drunken bitch’ that she slapped me in the face.

  I ran away that night. I believed I was better off on my own. I didn’t see her again until eighteen months ago.

  I had hated her for trying to stop me from doing what I wanted when, at the same time, she drank herself into a stupor every night. I thought I was old enough to make my own decisions, and I didn’t need an alcoholic to tell me what to do.

  As it turned out, if there was a right way and a wrong way to do anything, I pretty much found a way to make it worse.

  My life for the next three years had been one big screw-up after another: dropping out of school; panhandling on city streets; sleeping in fast-food restaurant bathrooms in winter; rooting through trash bins for something to eat. I shoplifted whenever I hadn’t scrounged up enough money to buy what I needed to survive.

  It was a wonder I had survived as long as I had without being collared by the cops. Of course, they had finally caught up with me, and a judge had put an end to me living on the street.

  Before assigning me to a series of basic skills courses, the first question the prison counselor asked was if I had any employment history. At nineteen, I had no education and no trade. The thought of trying to find a legitimate job hadn’t crossed my mind the entire time I had been away from home. Getting a nine-to-five job had been the last thing on my mind, even though I’d had a good enough role model for it.

  As far as I could recall from memory, my mother had never missed a day of work, or been late, however much she drank.

  Of course, that was true right up until this year, and that was because of me.

  I knew, deep down, it wasn’t my fault that she had drowned her misery in alcohol all these years, but I had no doubts that I was the one who had made it worse for her. I had run away and abandoned her.

  Since my release six months ago, I’d tried my best to make life easier for her. At first, it had been good, but over the past three months, things had started going downhill. At times, I believed my return had been worse than my leaving in the first place.

  Over the past few months, her drinking had become uncontrollable. She was usually incoherent by eight o’clock, and passed out on the couch by nine every night.

  Tonight had been one of the worst. She had gone beyond the point of no return, and had nearly drunk herself to death.

  The scene kept playing out in my head:

  I had come downstairs for a glass of water before bed and found my mother lying on the living room floor in a pool of her own vomit. I froze in fear. Was she dead?

  But there was no time to think. I raced over and felt for a pulse. She was alive, but her breathing was shallow and raspy. I knew there wasn’t time to wait for an ambulance. I picked her up and drove her to the hospital, speeding and running lights like someone possessed.

  Over the past two hours—the waiting driving me mad—I had made a dozen vows. Once I got home, I would find and trash all her booze. I knew that wouldn’t stop her. I wanted to get her into a treatment program, like the one the nurse mentioned, but I knew neither of us had the money. With my past, there was no way I could get financing, and my mother had always lived paycheck to paycheck. I racked my brains for a way to make things right. But I couldn’t think.

  I felt powerless.

  I had always felt helpless when it came to my mother. Thinking about it, I’m sure that was part of why I was so easily frustrated and angry with the rest of my life.

  “Richy?”

  At first, because her voice was so small and soft, I didn’t realize my mother was awake.

  I looked up and winced. She was in pain, but the tears in her eyes were not from her physical discomfort. It was from shame.

  “Mom?”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, turning her head away. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

  I knew she didn’t want to hear it, but I said it anyway: “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Mom. It’s going to kill you.”

  Instead of getting angry—and I knew I deserved it for what I’d put her through—she turned away and buried her f
ace in the pillow to hide the tears.

  I sat there a few more minutes, not knowing what to say that wouldn’t make her feel worse.

  To fill the silence, I said, “The nurse told me they were going to keep you here a while longer, just to make sure you’re going to be all right. Did you want me to get some things from home for you?”

  Without turning her head back to me, she made a shooing gesture with her hand.

  Her voice was weak. “I don’t care. Just leave me be.”

  I saw her chest expand and contract quickly several times, and I realized she had started crying again.

  I reached out, but before I could touch her, she said, “Please go. Just go.”

  Feeling about as bad as I could, I stood, staring at the floor. “All right, I’m going, Mom. I’ll try to stop in tomorrow morning before work.”

  She didn’t answer me, but I could hear her sobs long after I left the hospital.

  Chapter Two

  The rain fell on the back of my head and neck like a thousand tiny needles. I hadn’t had time to grab a jacket when I left the house, and my thin shirt stuck to my shoulders and back, hugging my skin like plastic wrap. I was thoroughly soaked by the time I reached my mother’s car, fumbled for the keys, and got in.

  After turning the ignition, I sat there, letting the car idle while I sorted out my thoughts.

  I was trying to turn my life around, and do the right things. It seemed no matter how hard I tried, though, nothing made a difference. Maybe I had screwed up so bad in the past that my mother would never believe I had changed.

  Or maybe she was so far gone in her alcoholism that there was nothing I could do to help her. I couldn’t accept that our relationship was so broken that it could never be fixed, but I didn’t have any idea how to go about it.

  In the past six months since my release, I’d walked the straight and narrow. I went to work every day and did my job without complaint. I contributed a good portion of my pay to the household bills and the debts my mother had accumulated—mostly for my legal bills. I tried my best to follow the conditions of my parole, no matter how stupid some of them were. For example, I was forbidden from entering any residential property without written consent from the owner. Under that condition, I couldn’t have gotten a job delivering pizza if I’d wanted to. I was banned from any place that served alcohol, which meant I couldn’t wait tables in most restaurants. My options were limited.

  My mother pulled strings at Worldwind Avionics, where she worked, and got me a maintenance job. It wasn’t very exciting, but it was a paycheck.

  It was edging on one in the morning, and I had to be at work in six hours. There wasn’t much time left for sleep, even if my brain shut down long enough to let me drift off.

  Maybe I needed a sympathetic ear; maybe I didn’t want to go home. Instead of going back to my house, I pointed the car in the opposite direction and headed for Stacy’s condominium, which she shared with her brother, Chuck.

  I had been seeing Stacy for a few months, and though we mostly hung out at my place, I had been over there several times. I had never gone over without an invitation—even a casual one—but tonight I needed to talk to someone.

  The lights were on at their place, and several vehicles parked at the curb outside. It looked like Stacy and Chuck were having a small house party.

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle. I pulled up behind a pickup and turned off my ignition, but didn’t get out.

  I didn’t really know any of Stacy or Chuck’s friends. Although I’d met some of them more than a few times, I suddenly felt uncomfortable dropping in unannounced. It was getting late, and I was going to pay for it the next day.

  With a sigh of resolve, I turned the car back on and slipped it into gear.

  I tapped the accelerator—and immediately slammed on the break as someone jumped out into the street in front of me.

  It was Stacy. She skipped back. Putting her hand to her mouth, she let out a tittering laugh.

  After putting the car into park, I threw the door open and jumped out, insanely worried.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, my heart still thumping in my chest.

  Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “Yeah.”

  She wasn’t wearing any shoes, and when she stepped into a puddle, she lost her balance as she tried to jump out of the cold water. She caught herself by grabbing the rear gate of the pickup. Her feet must have been freezing.

  She was wearing a denim skirt and a thin white shirt. Both clung to her like a second skin. The rain quickly flattened her normally curly black hair to her head and shoulders, and the mascara on her gray-blue eyes had slightly streaked down her high cheekbones. The cool night air had turned her tanned skin pale.

  “What did you think you were doing?” I asked. There was a little heat in my question now that I knew she was all right.

  “I saw you sitting out here in your car. I thought I would scare you.” She moved up to me and leaned in, cupping my cheeks in her hands. She drew me in for a kiss, oblivious to how much she had upset me. I let her kiss me, and after a moment of resistance, I returned the kiss.

  “You certainly did,” I said, my tone softening after tasting her warm lips.

  She pulled back and, with a smile, said, “You should have seen the look on your face.”

  My heart was still thrumming in my chest. “Stace.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “I could have run you over.”

  She gave me a playful slap on the arm. “You’d never do that.” Then she tugged my shirt and pulled me toward the front door of her condo. “Come on in. Everyone’s here.”

  I didn’t know who ‘everyone’ was, and despite wanting Stacy’s company, I didn’t think I was in the right frame of mind to be sociable. I stopped, and her hand fell from my shirt. She turned around, a puzzled look on her face.

  “I don’t know, Stace,” I said. “It’s late. I just came from the hospital and—”

  She sobered. “The hospital? Are you all right?”

  “No, not me. My mother.”

  “Bridget? Oh, God. Is she all right?” She came back and put her hands on my forearm, her brows knitted with concern.

  I nodded. “She will be. They’re keeping her a day or two to be sure.”

  Stacy looked penetratingly into my eyes. “What happened?”

  I hadn’t wanted to bring up my mother’s alcoholism to Stacy, especially since our relationship was so new, but when she stayed over at my place the first time, she had quickly figured it out.

  I said, “She just, I don’t know, went too far tonight.”

  Stacy put her fingers over her mouth. “I’m so sorry.” Then she pulled me by the arm. “We’re going to drown standing out here in the rain. Come on in and get dry.”

  I glanced through the window into the condo. There were several silhouettes of people standing, talking, and drinking. “I don’t know. I have to work early.”

  “Then stay over,” she said. “It’ll save you from having to drive all the way across town in the morning. I’m sure Chuck won’t mind.”

  Stacy’s house was a mile from Kingsway Airfield. I could get there in a matter of minutes tomorrow morning, rather than the better part of the hour it usually took me to get there from my place.

  Once more, however, I glanced through the window. “You’ve got company.”

  “Don’t worry about them. Everyone will probably be going home in a while, anyway. We’re just blowing off some steam after our shift.” She pushed herself up on her tiptoes and gave me a light kiss upon the lips. “What do you say?”

  “All right,” I said after a moment, and she smiled.

  I let her lead me into the house.

  * * *

  I knew Stacy didn’t have to go to work until tomorrow. Six days a week, she waited tables at Hangar Hank’s Bar and Grill from four until eleven. The restaurant was a few blocks from her place and just outside Kingsway Airfield.

  Sometimes it took Stacy a few hours to wind
down after she got home at night, especially if she’d had a hard shift or a few particularly difficult customers.

  She usually had a couple of drinks with friends—hers was the closest place to the restaurant, so the party started there. Sometimes she didn’t go to bed until after three in the morning.

  When we got into her condo, I recognized two of the girls, Janet and Alice, both waitresses from the grill, and Martin, one of the bartenders.

  There were four other girls there who I hadn’t met before. They stopped talking and stared at me. It was only for the briefest of moments, but I could feel their suspicion.

  I was starting to get used to that look from people who found out I was an ex-convict. It’s a natural human reaction. I couldn’t blame them; after all, I was a felon, and that knowledge evoked any number of negative emotions. I got anything from mild looks of distrust to outright hostility from strangers.

  “Guys, this is Rich,” Stacy said to them. “I told you about him.”

  “Uh, oh, yeah,” one of the girls said, recovering from her shock. She drew her lips into a smile. “Hi.”

  “That’s Lisa,” Stacy told me. She pointed to the others. “And that’s Bets, Gloria and Karen.”

  “Hello,” I said to them, careful to be as polite as I could without showing any signs of self-consciousness.

  I spotted Chuck near the back of the living room. He sat on the sofa, his feet up on the coffee table next to a bottle of beer. He had a game controller in his hands. He spotted me and shot me a smile, lifting his elbow to wave.

  I waved back.

  Stacy said, “We’re going to head upstairs. You guys are more than welcome to hang out, or crash, or whatever.”

  “Actually,” Karen said, glancing at the watch on her slim wrist, “I gotta bolt. Thanks for the beer, though.” She did a little skip-step up to Stacy and gave her a hug.

  Grabbing a thin jacket from a hook at the door, she slung it over her shoulders and looked back with a smile.

  Stacy said, “See you tomorrow!”

  The others quickly followed, and soon, only Chuck and Stacy remained.