by Gina Watson
“I may be about to turn eighteen, but that doesn’t mean I’d turn down that offer.”
She kissed his cheek and he smelled the Attar de Roses perfume she wore. “When will Harmony be back? You’ve been kind of quiet since she’s been away.”
“She said her grandparents rented the beach cabin through the tenth of July, but I’m trying to entice her to ride back with her father, who has to be at work on Monday.”
“I hope she makes it Monday so you can get back to normal. You two have a connection. You’re two halves of one body.”
“I know.”
“I think we’ve lost your father.”
“No we haven’t. He’s just taking a piss out by that grove of trees.” Ashton pointed.
“Good God, Ashton! Go and get him!”
Ashton complied, but more than once he’d thought his parents drank way too much.
“Dad?” He heard his father zip his pants. “I’m coming. Just had to take a leak.”
He staggered back up the small hill. “Why don’t you let me drive? I’ll take it slow.”
Boisterous laughter erupted from his father’s chest. “I just got this thing off the showroom floor today, son. I’m driving. End of story.”
End of story. Well he’d tried. Weren’t parents supposed to be responsible? Ashton knew his mom and dad had sat around drinking and smoking pot with their friends tonight. Luckily it was less than five miles back home.
“I want Dairy Queen.”
“I believe I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
“Ashton wants it too.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, that is so.”
Ashton watched his mother’s arm lace through his father’s as he started the engine. He leaned over and kissed her lips. “Blizzards coming right up, Mrs. David.”
The Dairy Queen, however, was not near the house. They’d have to get on the highway. From the backseat Ashton resolved to be his father’s eyes.
A few uneven swerves and a near incident with an Oldsmobile and they were pulling into the drive-through. Ashton exhaled the breath he’d been holding and moved over behind his father to take a look at the menu. “Ooh, I’d like to try the cookie dough cheesecake.”
On the ride back to the house Ashton was so focused on his cookie dough concoction that he neglected his previous post. He smiled as his mother’s moans of appreciation for her Oreo blizzard filled the cabin.
He should have refastened his seatbelt after he switched seats, but he hadn’t. Headlights shone where they never had before when he’d ridden in the backseat, and then his ears localized the sound of a horn blowing before his hearing failed him altogether. His body lifted from the seat despite his efforts to grip the headrest in front of him. He felt hard pellets hitting the exposed skin of the right side of his face, arms, and legs. The sound of metal hitting metal was so loud it made his ears scream. His shoulder rammed hard into the door, scraping and burning on impact. His face he knew would hit against the broken window, but he couldn’t pull back and his cheek hit the jagged glass. Warm water gushed into his eyes, making his vision blurry.
His body finally stilled. Muffled voices came to him like he was underwater. His face was wet, but his eyes confirmed there was no water around him. He reached his hand to his cheek and felt the moisture. Removing his hand he saw lots of blood. His blood. Not water.
He tried to call for his dad, but his voice carried no sound. To his relief his body still worked and he used his strength to pull himself up.
His dad was hunched over the steering wheel, but he wasn’t speaking. He pulled him using his shoulder and his upper body came back to rest on the seat.
“Dad?” Ashton croaked.
“I fucked that up pretty bad, didn’t I kid?” He laughed a sickening laugh full of delirium.
When Ashton heard the wet coughs he turned to his mother. “Mom!”
She smiled at him, “Baby, are you okay?”
“Yeah, are you?”
“Oh, I’ll be all right.”
Distant sirens penetrated his stuffy hearing.
“You’re bleeding, baby.”
“It’s just my cheek, but Mom, your dress is soaked with blood. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Oh yeah honey, I’ll be fine.”
“Your mom’s a tough ole gal.” His father couldn’t hold his head up and so he let it drop to his chest and Ashton thought he’d fallen asleep.
The fire department was on the scene first. They pulled Ashton and his father from the car, but not his mother.
“My mom!”
The firemen looked at him strangely.
“Somebody help get my mom out.”
Ashton crawled back in by way of the driver’s seat and reached for his mother.
“No, son. Just stay with me here. I don’t have much time. I can feel it.”
“Mom!” Ashton cried. He looked through the window and shouted at the firemen, “Help!”
From her side of the car he heard a saw buzzing.
“Just let me hold you, baby.” She grasped Ashton’s arm. “I want to tell you something, Ashton.”
“Mom?”
“You were always my favorite one.” She softly giggled. “I love you. I hope that was never a question.”
“Mom,” he cried. “I love you.”
“Baby, I’ll be watching you. I’m sorry, honey. We made a mistake. Don’t you make the same.” Her voice warbled and she coughed. It made a wet gurgly sound and then blood sputtered from her lips.
Her eyes closed and her body went limp. “Mom!” Ashton cried next to his dead mother for twenty-five minutes before they were able to remove her from the car.
***
Ashton woke covered in sweat. His right cheek felt wet and hot. With his palm he tentatively tested the area and discovered it warm to the touch. He’d fallen from the couch and was on the floor.
His old shoulder injury burned as he pushed himself into a sitting position. The dusk brought with it shadows that played against the walls of the house like a movie. Long moss-covered arms of oak trees fluttered in the shadows. The hair on his arms and neck rose. Sheer terror gripped him and he shook in its wake.
His teeth banged together hard as his anxiety level rose. He wrapped his arms around his body and rocked, trying to soothe himself. He wanted out of the house more than anything, but he couldn’t take the first step.
He rose and walked to the kitchen for some water. He stood over the sink and drank three glasses before his heart started to slow. His breath was heavy and forced. At the counter he went down on his elbows, placing his head in his hands. He massaged his scalp, hoping to clear his brain of the images that played in an endless loop.
The sickening background laughter was the worst of all the memories.
“Ah!” He yelled, and then he remembered the pie.
Stepping on the pedal to open the garbage can lid, he removed the tin from the trash. He grabbed a fork and ate large bites—as large as he could fit into his mouth until he’d eaten half the pie, but it didn’t work. She wasn’t there—the old lady who smelled of lemons.
Leaning over the trashcan he wretched.
“Ugh.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Ashton wanted life to not exist. But it did and he needed to find a way to exist within it.
Chapter 6
Dusk. Ashton’s most dreaded time of day. He apprehensively walked toward the den. Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah softly played. It was always the same song. The low glottal rasp of the artist sent chills racing down his spine. He hated that song, and yet it played on an endless loop all night. He’d unplugged the stereo once before, a mistake he hadn’t made since. Logically he knew it was impossible for the song to play through the unpowered stereo, but it had. Tonight of all nights he didn’t want to hear that fucking song. He grabbed the ear buds that had come with his phone and walked out onto the porch. The night was still and quiet and tinged with biblical raspin
g music that he couldn’t escape.
He rolled onto the hammock and stuffed the pods in his ears. Tuning his playlist to The Libertines, he lost himself in the upbeat millennial indy rock. With one foot touching the floor he swung the hammock in a soothing back and forth motion. His breathing slowed and his body began to unfurl from its coiled state. Can’t Stand Me Now’s strains began to fade as the song approached its end. The first two chords of G hit his eardrums like a sonic blast. Then that haunting guttural voice said the words: Now I’ve heard.
Ashton jumped so quickly from the hammock that he was dumped to the porch floor. He jerked the ear buds from his ears and threw his phone across the porch.
What the fuck was that song doing on his phone?! The sickening laughter of his father from that dreaded night enveloped him in a cocoon from which there was no escape.
***
Harmony was excited to visit her friends, most of them from her undergrad days at LSU, but some of them lifelong. She dressed in jeans and a sleeveless silk cream blouse. She curled the ends of her dirty blonde hair and wondered, not for the first time, if she should get a few highlights—maybe caramel colored to match her eyes.
She slid her feet into strappy sandals that had a two-inch heel. Not much, but enough to make her five-feet eight inches just like the runway models.
An application of light lipstick and a little eyeliner were required before she grabbed her purse and walked downstairs to find her brother.
She found him in the kitchen drinking a beer, speaking with their father.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you if Chelsea’s going to be there tonight.” Ethan asked.
“She is.” Harmony smiled knowingly. Ethan had pined after Chelsea since they were kids.
“You actually gonna ask her out?” Dad asked.
“I’m working up to it.” He touched Harmony’s arm, “You ready?”
Harmony nodded.
“Hey, who’s the DD?”
“I am, Dad.” Ethan answered.
“You’re drinking beer!”
“It’s just one beer.”
“It’s one beer too many.”
“Dad, I’ll be the driver.” Harmony volunteered. She didn’t want to, but she didn’t want to hear her father’s lecture, tonight of all nights.
“Have you been drinking?”
Yes, I chugged a forty-ounce Schlitz in my bedroom. “No, Dad.”
He held a finger in the air, “One drink as soon as you get there and then try and order something to eat.”
“I will.” She leaned in to kiss his cheek.
“Call me if you overindulge. I love you, baby.”
“Love you, Dad.”
She and Ethan piled into her Toyota 4Runner. “Sorry about the DD thing. I know you’re excited about tonight. I’ll drive us home.”
Harmony buckled her seatbelt. “Yeah, Dad’s kind of a buzz kill.”
“It’s one beer.”
She shrugged. “He was in law enforcement.”
“I think he’s like that because of what happened to the Davids.”
“Maybe.” Her eyes narrowed on the road ahead.
“Have you seen him yet?”
She inhaled long and deep, and then slowly exhaled.
“That bad, huh?”
“It was horrible. I went over with Everett, who had some legal work for him, and when he saw me he went ballistic. Threw an ashtray through a window. He said my father ruined his life.”
“I don’t get that—it was his father who did that.”
Harmony got it. She understood Ashton’s point of view, but she also understood her father.
“Anyway, let’s get off that topic—it’s quite the Debbie Downer. Talk to me about Chelsea.” Ethan crossed his arms and waited for the scoop.
“She updated her Facebook status last week from in a relationship to single.”
“Sweet, so she’s single. Did she seem to have any prospects?” He checked his look in the vanity mirror.
“She hasn’t posted anything since then. What happened when you asked her out before?”
“I don’t know? She gave me some bullshit line about not dating engineers.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“You won’t take this the wrong way, will you?”
“How the hell would I know? I have to hear it first.”
“I’m wondering if you’re her type is all.”
“What do you mean her type? I have a great job, I’m handsome”—he smiled at himself in the mirror—”and I’m good in the sack. Ask anyone.”
Harmony held up her hand. “Ethan, that’s not what I meant, and I’m sure you possess all of those qualities and then some, but this conversation is starting to get weird. I was going to say that she normally dates assholes. You know, bad boys.”
“I’ll have you know I haven’t been to church in over a month.”
“That’s awesome, I guess? The last guy she dated owned a biker bar.”
“What’s that, like a juice bar?”
Harmony broke out in fits of laughter. “No! A biker bar.” She used her hands to mimic riding a motorcycle.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, and the guy before him was a repo man.”
“The woman teaches kindergarten.”
“I know—maybe that’s why she likes to date dangerous guys.”
“I can be dangerous.”
“How so?”
Ethan scrubbed his jaw with his hand. “I wish I hadn’t shaved.”
At the winery, Ethan’s wish was granted when he was able to take the seat next to Chelsea.
Harmony shot him a smile that he returned. Next to Harmony sat Christine, her college roommate and Phi Beta Kappa sister in crime. When Harmony took out her wallet, Christine swatted it away. “The first round’s on me in honor of your return to the BR.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
She flagged the waiter over and he shamelessly flirted with the two friends. “What can I get for the two most beautiful women in Baton Rouge?”
Christine leaned back in her chair and whipped her long blond hair over her shoulder. “Aren’t you fresh? We’ll have zinfandel and a cheese plate.”
Ethan charmed Chelsea with tales from the old homestead. Harmony recognized his story—it was a funny one involving an incident with the riding lawn mower and their father. She hoped Chelsea would give him a chance.
“I’ll have a Shiraz and she would like a pinot noir.” Ethan ordered.
Harmony turned to Christine. “So how’s life at Girouard Advertising?”
“Puh-lease, spare me. We’re not going to talk about work. What I want to know is have you hooked up with Ashton?”
“No, I wasn’t able to catch up with him yet.” Harmony wondered how long she’d be able to use that line before her friends stopped buying it.
“Perhaps we all need to perform a little operation welcome wagon?” Christine sipped her wine.
“Welcome wagon?” Harmony grimaced.
“Yeah, I’ll bake a plate of brownies and we’ll all go knock on his door.”
Harmony fake-laughed off her friend’s proposal that she knew would be met with disastrous results.
Megan Price walked through the door and squealed when she caught sight of Harmony. Other than Ashton, Megan was her oldest friend in the world. Harmony stood and they embraced in a tight hug.
“Oh, my God you’re here! I can’t believe it!”
Megan greeted the others and then took up the free chair next to Christine.
Harmony smiled at her friend’s appearance. She wore a fancy red pantsuit and her hair was styled into a coif of big flowing auburn curls. Her makeup was intense and Harmony assumed she’d come straight from the set. “So tell me all about the anchor’s desk.” Harmony suggested.
Christine snorted. “Wait! You need to get a little of this action”—She sat up ramrod straight and placed her hands, one on top of the other, on the table.
“This is Baton Rouge thirty-nine, thanks for spending time with me. We hope your day was as good as ours.”
Chelsea and Harmony squealed at Christine’s spot-on portrayal of their friend. Megan laughed with them as she used a clip to pull her thickly styled curls into a ponytail. “That’s hilarious and pretty damn good.”
“Your hair is so big.”
“It doesn’t look this big through the television.”
Ethan nodded, “Oh yes it does.”
“Harmony?”
She turned toward the sound of the smooth, clear voice. Behind her stood Brice Williams. “Brice!” She jumped up and hugged him, fondly remembering the days when she and Brice produced the school paper together. Brice had gone on to work for the New Orleans Gazette.
She caught up with her friends and they filled her in about the local goings-on she’d missed. She watched as sometime during the night Ethan switched to drinking Dr Pepper and Chelsea seemed content as he sat next to her and continued to make her laugh.
“Perhaps the biggest news since you went away was that Megan had a one-nighter with Cameron David.” Christine offered.
“What?!” Harmony screamed. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I didn’t think it was something to boast about. I don’t regret it one bit, but I went in knowing it was definitely going to be just the one night.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Yeah, it was the best night ever!”
“How did it even happen?” Brice asked.
“The usual way—hot, indy rock star takes small-town girl to his bed. Coincidentally, he stays with Ashton when he plays in Baton Rouge.”
“Wait, you were in the house with Ashton?”
“I never saw Ashton. I don’t think he was home.”
“He had to be, he doesn’t leave.”
“Honey, as loud as we were, if he would have been home he would have come to check on us to make sure we weren’t killing each other.”
Ethan frowned trying to make sense of her statement.
They drank and talked until around midnight. When it was time to say goodbye to her friends, Harmony was glad that her brother was there to see her safely home.
Behind the wheel of her Toyota he said, “Guess who has a date with Chelsea?”