by V. L. Holt
Chapter Twenty-Five
I was boundlessly happy today. I felt so free and like the future was made just for me. It had been easily the worst week of my entire life, but was turning out to be the best year of my life to date. And it was all because of my adorable mugger. It was probably for the best that Mama and Daddy were gone. I didn’t think they’d entirely approve of my choice for a future husband, though I thought they would be very pleased if they knew about his Baptist ways. Some might even call him Puritanical. Like me, for example. But that was okay.
These thoughts followed me around as I scrubbed and polished my place to a shining sparkle with my one good hand. I found that using my sling was much more comfortable, and couldn’t believe I hadn’t begun using it as soon as I got home from the hospital.
Brenda showed up about noon.
“Hey girl!” I said brightly.
“Hey yourself,” she said. “Where’s Zack?”
“I kicked him out. He was hovering and it was driving me batty. How’s the lounge doing?” I asked her.
She waved a hand. “Please. You’ve been gone, what? Twelve hours? You haven’t missed a blessed thing,” she said.
I laughed. “You’re right. It’s just that so much happened in that time that it feels like a lifetime ago,” I told her while wiping down my chair legs.
She piled up pillows and sat on my living room floor.
“Pure craziness, Lulu. I can’t even imagine,” Brenda said.
I thought about asking her not to call me that anymore, but I found I didn’t care after all.
“So when are you going to ask me about my relationship with Zack?” I said while rubbing the stubborn paint splotches on my tabletop.
She laughed. “I figured you’d get around to it eventually. What is the story? He’s gorgeous!”
“We’re boyfriend and girlfriend,” I said with a little pride in my voice.
“Well good for you,” she said with genuine happiness. I looked up from my scrubbing and smiled.
“I’ll have to tell you how we met sometime,” I told her with a secret smile. She raised her eyebrow at me, but Zack knocked and came in the door right then.
“My ears were burning,” he announced as he looked from Brenda to me and back. We both busted out laughing.
“I knew it!” he said.
We had a nice chat for half an hour or so, and then it was time for him to get ready for work again. I offered to be a domestic goddess and do his laundry since I didn’t have anything better to do, other than scour the classifieds for a one-armed paper hanger job somewhere.
He left after I gave him a kiss that guaranteed he would wake me up upon his return very early tomorrow morning. I’d already given him a key, so he could just come on in. We were waiting, per his request, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t convince him to make out with me for a while. Especially since he was planning on moving back in with Dave for a short time.
He’d said, “Lauren, this is too hard.”
I pulled away from his firm and sensuous mouth.
“Too hard?” I asked him.
“The kissing and hugging. You know I want to go further, but I’m not budging on it. My grandparents raised me, and it was taught to me from a young age. I can’t do that to my grandparents. So I’m going to stay with Dave,” he lectured.
I pouted and stamped my foot. I was a Southern girl after all. I could work my bottom lip like the want ads.
“Don’t be like that, Lauren,” he whispered and pulled me close. I finagled another few kisses before he pulled away again with a groan. “You’re killing me, here,” he said.
I giggled a little wickedly.
“I know,” I said.
He closed his eyes and put his palm to his forehead.
“You’re an evil, evil child. Spawn of the devil,” he said, teasing me. Only it reminded me of something I still hadn’t told him. Something he needed to know before we made everything really really official. I pulled away this time.
“You better get on to work,” I had told him. He probably sensed something was wrong, but he really did need to scoot, so he touched my cheek.
“We’ll talk more, Sugar,” he said to me, using my own endearment. It sounded even sweeter from his handsome lips.
With my place to myself, I took the time to finish up laundry. In between loads I surfed my phone for job openings. I tried talking to Pete again, but no dice. I found that terribly ironic considering I was one of his hardest workers. He never was very pleasant to work for. Oh well. As Mama used to say, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!
Since I was googling things on the internet, I decided to try and find that treatment protocol that Zack had talked about. He said it was in Bethesda, and that it was something like a six week program involving a strict regimen and slightly unorthodox treatments. I plugged those parameters into the search engine and found the likely candidate. A Dr. Gutierrez.
On a whim, I tried doing a search for something else. If it panned out, it would be a wonderful surprise for Zack! I looked for a good hour, and then I found something so unbelievable, so wonderful…that it had to be Providence. Of course, I had to do my part, but I had every confidence that I could do it. I couldn’t wait to tell Zack about it when he got back. The only thing that dampened my excitement was the cloud hanging over my head that I had to share with him. I didn’t think it would change anything, but I hated talking about it.
I just had to get my courage, that’s all. I decided to get that box out of the recesses of my closet. I hadn’t looked at its contents for a long time, but I’d moved it up here with me.
I had arranged a bunch of my pillows on the living room floor, making a kind of nest for myself, and carefully lifted the lid to my shoebox. My Mama had shoeboxes, hat boxes and coat boxes. She also had a wedding dress box. I just had this shoebox but I sure as shootin’ didn’t have shoes in it.
I took out the stack of faded envelopes with red and blue stripes around the edges of some, and delicately scented pink ones for the others. They were tied with ribbon, and I left them that way and set them aside. The next thing I took out was a yellowed envelope stuffed to bursting with photographs. I took out the stack and settled in to my nest. I stared at each one, occasionally touching a smiling face with my finger. My parents had a passionate relationship. They were completely devoted to each other, but fought like cats and dogs every other day. It seemed like a constant struggle for them to communicate. As kids, Curtis Lee and I would hightail it to the creek out back or climb trees or ride bikes to the duck pond. We didn’t want anything to do with it, and sometimes things got thrown. It was wild. The next thing we knew, Mama and Daddy were hugging and crying and telling us to watch TV while they went to their room and locked the door.
Now that I was grown, I realized what that was about. But at the time, we were just glad they were done shouting at each other. When Daddy was gone at work, Mama would tell us things like, ‘don’t blame your Daddy. Blame the Gulf war. He’s not the same as he was before,’ and she would stare off into space. When I was in high school, I got on the internet and tried to learn about the casualties of the Gulf War and I found that there were less than 300 deaths. I couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal. Then when I dug deeper, I learned that the deaths were slowly creeping up as injuries sustained during the conflict eventually caught up with the vets. All of that still didn’t explain why Daddy and Mama fought all the time.
I had friends at school whose daddies drank and got mean. My Daddy never did drink. He wasn’t exactly mean, just serious all the time. He taught me how to clean a gun, load it and unload it, break it down and put it back together. He taught me how to defend myself and to not let fear paralyze me. He taught me to listen to my instincts about people too. Ray excluded, I was usually a good judge of people.
I finally started to understand my Daddy when I learned about post-traumatic stress disorder. I read up on the symptoms, and saw so much of my Daddy in those lists. One day
at school, I printed out a list and brought it home to Mama and showed her. I thought she would be happy to get some explanation!
Instead, she looked it over and gave it back to me.
“That’s not your Daddy, Sugar,” was what she said, and she turned away and finished up the dishes. I was brought back to the present, and my eyes focused on the photograph in my hand.
My Mama and Daddy posed for the camera with Curtis Lee and me in front of a slightly tilted Christmas tree. We all had smiles. I couldn’t see any of the pain reflected in my parents’ faces. I decided I needed to keep this photo out. And I should call Curtis Lee too. It had been a while. In fact, once I told him about Ray, he would want to fly up here and tan my hide for not asking him for help. I felt terrible. Maybe that would have prevented Ray’s death too.
The more I thought about stuff, the more I felt my spirit sink. There were some other deaths I could have prevented.
Zack’s key rattled in the lock, and he came in, stopping off between jobs. He’d been busing at the sports bar, and he had time to eat and change before he went to Lonely Nights. He must have seen something in my face. He came right over to me and knelt down in front of me.
“You look cozy,” he said softly. He reached a hand and swiped something wet off my face. Had I been crying? “What’s the matter, Lauren?” he asked with concern on his face.
“There’s something I need to tell you, before we go any further,” I said. I watched his face carefully, afraid to see him shut down or pull back or something that could mean the death knell for our fresh relationship. He only looked worried for me, and he grabbed my hand.
“Go ahead,” he said, and sat down to get more comfortable.
“We don’t know that much about each other, do we?” I laughed softly. Suddenly I felt young and naïve and stupid. He shrugged but didn’t say anything. “I mean, I don’t know your parents or if you have any siblings. You’ve only mentioned your friend Dave once or twice but I haven’t met him,” I started in and I found my Southern voice again. “And me. You don’t know me hardly at all. I mean, I have a big brother down in Texas. He builds office buildings and is a really good skeet shooter. Curtis Lee is going to come up here and put me over his knee when he finds out about Ray and how long I let him take advantage of my Southern hospitality,” I said, shaking my head. “I graduated high school with honors, but no college would give me a full ride scholarship for music, and I just got tired of waiting and left home a few years after graduating,” I continued. It was like I was trying to give him my life history in three paragraphs or less. He just nodded and smiled and looked so encouraging that I felt like I could go on. “I mean, I’m impatient and curious and impulsive. And Mama always told me I talked too much and got my nose in people’s business and attracted crazies and strays and I never did do anything right,” I said. I sniffed a little, and realized with horror that I had forgotten to put my face on this morning. At least crying wouldn’t mess up my makeup. “I mean, Mama was always right,” I said, and I started sniffling a little more erratically.
“I used to bring home little stray animals all the time. But not just precious little kittens. I brought home injured ducks, mangy dogs, maimed toads…anything that looked homely and unwanted and required a lot more work than I expected,” I said, looking up at him. He had pulled a wad of tissue out and handed it to me. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes, not in that order, and tried to compose myself. “More than half the time Mama told me to get those dirty creatures out of her house!” I laughed. “Oh, I was a scrapper back then. Didn’t mind getting dirty, got in fights with school kids, just not the daughter Mama wanted, you know?” I continued.
“Everything changed when I was in high school. I started doing some searching on my own, because my parents had these arguments all the time. I thought I had it figured out. I learned about this affliction that military veterans were getting diagnosed with. PTSD,” I said. He nodded. He must have been so curious where I was going with all this, but it was just tumbling out of me so fast, and my momentum was the only thing carrying me to the ugly hard nugget in the middle of everything.
“I did my research, and I just knew I had the answers. I even found the address of a VA clinic about an hour from my little town that Daddy could go to. I brought a printout of the symptoms to my Mama and showed her,” I said. My body started doing those mortifying sucking breaths that were like sobs with hiccups. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, trying to control myself. I felt Zack scooch over to me and sit right by me and put his arm around my shoulders. I was grateful for his support.
“She shoved the paper back at me and told me I was wrong,” I said. By now, the tissue was obliterated, but I used it anyway to try and sop up some tears.
“Three weeks later Curtis Lee and I came home from school to find Mama dead. Daddy shot her and killed himself,” I whispered. All my tears were cried out by now, and I felt like a dried up husk. Plus I was mad at myself because my timing was all wrong. Zack had to get to work. He couldn’t be here trying to fix me all up. “I’m sorry. You have to get to work!” I took deep breaths and wiped my eyes a final time.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said in a deep voice. I shot him a look. He had wet eyes. “Who have you talked to about this?” he asked me.
“Oh there was a round of counselors in high school. Curtis Lee was old enough he could take care of me. We went to therapy for years and finally got a clean bill of health. I tried to transform myself into my Mama too. She was always so put together. That helped me feel connected to her, you know? Trying to put into practice all those things she always tried to teach me.”
“The thing is, I never could bring myself to hate Daddy for what he did. I mean, I knew it was wrong and terrible and irreversible. Maybe it was all that studying up on post-traumatic stress, but I felt in my heart it wasn’t his fault. Not really,” I said. “Curtis Lee felt otherwise. We haven’t spoken much really, because of that,” I said. I slumped back in pillows, still holding Zack’s hand. “Thanks for listening. I feel much better.”
He lay back right beside me, not saying anything, but stroking my good arm. He did finally say something.
“That must have been hard. Living through that, and then trying to move on, finally,” he paused and looked at me. “Sharing that with me. Considering my, uh, situation,” he said.
I studied his face. His masculine jawline and firm mouth projected strength. Yet his eyes showed concern and compassion. I wondered again what those eyes had seen. I brought my casted hand over to his face, and let my naked fingers trail down his cheek and follow the curve under his jaw.
“You’re a special man, Zack. Any girl would be lucky to have you. If you still want me after finding out all this stuff,” I waved toward my shoebox and its contents, as if they could symbolize my entire life and its upheavals. “I would be thankful for all my days.”
He leaned in and gave me a gentle kiss on the lips. It was chaste but filled with tenderness.
“Are you okay if I go?” he asked gently.
I understood he needed to get going, and I was okay. I really was.
“Of course! I have cold cuts in the fridge. You can make a quick sandwich,” I told him. I was carefully placing all of the things back in my box.
He ate and then changed, and then I walked him to the door.
“You can wake me up if you want,” I told him shyly.
He kissed me again, this one a little wetter.
“If you insist…” he said to me with a little smile.
My heart fluttered and I closed my door.
I did it. I told him the most awful thing about me, and it was over and he didn’t do or say anything that made it seem like he regretted his decision to be with me. I felt all kinds of relief, and decided to get to the thing that was going to make the rest of my day just right. It was time for full hair, full makeup.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Zack felt like his insides were torn up. He knew better than
he thought Lauren did…he was falling in love with her. And that was exactly why he needed to break it off as soon as it was humanly possible, or rather, humanely possibly. He couldn’t justify doing it right after she told him her story. That gut-wrenching prophecy of what their lives could be like in a few years scared him spitless. But it would be cruel beyond words to do that to her. She was not going to understand where he was coming from.
The horror those kids witnessed, coming back from school expecting to do homework and maybe call a friend. Expecting that they’d sit at the dinner table and tell their parents that classic kid answer: I don’t know, when they asked them how their day went. To be met with that scene…
Zack got choked up about it. He’d seen horror. He knew all too well what those feelings were like. The shock, the terror, the sense of displaced reality. He felt jittery just thinking about it, and his leg started tapping while he rode the People Mover to his stop. He could actually feel a panic attack coming on. He couldn’t let Lauren know about this. Ever. She would blame herself, when there was nothing to blame. She blamed herself for her parents’ accident. She didn’t have to say it for him to see it. She would blame herself for anything he did here on out. It was her personality, to take others’ burdens and make them her own. She had a heart of gold, and wanted to ease suffering any way she could. It was what he loved about her.
He was so wrong for her on so many levels. He couldn’t willingly give her his burdens. They were too much for him to bear, how could a little thing like her help carry him?
By the time he got to Lonely Nights, he was barely keeping it together. It was a weeknight, so hopefully the crowd would be manageable. He needed an uneventful night to make it through his shift.
He tried counting by threes, but it wasn’t working. Then he resorted to as many digits of pi as he could. All the guys in his unit called him The Pi-man because that what he would do right before a mission. He couldn’t explain it. It just worked.
So guests came up to the door, and he quickly assessed their IDs and he checked bags and if his mouth seemed to be reciting something, nobody said anything.