by Ashley John
Monica gave him a soft smile, the kind a mother might give to her child when she wanted to believe them, not that he had seen that smile from his mother, but that’s how he imagined it would look if she had. He could tell Monica had seen hundreds of people like him, all swearing to stay clean. He wondered how many came back, frail and shaking because their bodies were screaming out for a substance it should never have had? Rehab wasn’t the cure, Elias knew that. Rehab got him clean, Caden kept him clean. If he didn’t have Caden in his life, could he stay clean? I don’t even want to think about that.
“Can I go now?” he stood up, not wanting to give her room to chat more, “I really do need to be somewhere.”
“Sure,” she handed over a piece of paper, “hand this in at the desk and they’ll schedule for you to come back to see the Counselor.”
He wanted to refuse to take it but he knew that he could get out of there quicker if he just accepted the paper. He checked the time on his cell and he had fifteen minutes before the start of Kobi’s party to find Caden. Was it enough time to apologize for being such a jerk? Maybe Caden was worrying about it as much as he was? They hadn’t called or texted but maybe they were waiting for the other to do it first? Too many maybes and not enough answers for Elias’ liking.
“Congratulations, Mr. James,” she handed over his results, “you should be proud of yourself.”
“Sure,” he nodded, feeling less proud and more anxious.
As soon as he handed the paper into the receptionist, he bolted out of the center with his results in his back pocket. He hoped he would be able to say that he never had to see it again but he was scheduled to return in three weeks.
First, he headed to his apartment. Caden wasn’t there, despite having a key. He checked every room twice for a sign that somebody had been there but nothing had changed since he had spent a lonely night there. There was no note on the refrigerator and no message on the voicemail. Swallowing his fear of finding out what was in store for him, he headed for the door. His silenced cell phone started vibrating in his pocket and for a moment, he thought it was a sign from above, letting him know that Caden was looking for him too.
It wasn’t.
It was Ellie.
Reluctantly, he answered the call.
“Hey,” he closed his eyes, hovering on the top step of the staircase, “what’s up?”
“What isn’t up?” she snapped, a mixture of children’s screams and laughter surrounding her, “The cake woman dropped off the cake and let’s just say she’s going to be getting an angry and very public message on her profile when this party is over. I asked her to make a cake of one of Kobi’s favorite anime characters. Haraso, or something like that. I’m looking at it right now and it looks like somebody melted a Lego figure’s face and then stuck it on a little girl’s head. I need you to run to the store and get something, anything that I can stick candles in without giving these kids nightmares. Cindy’s brought her kids half an hour early so I can’t go myself.”
When she paused for breath, Elias inhaled with her, forcing a smile on his face, not wanting to let her know that he didn’t want to do it. He couldn’t say no on Kobi’s birthday.
“Sure thing,” he nodded, his eyes still clenched, “chocolate or vanilla?”
“It’s your call. Are you okay for cash?”
“I got it.”
“I’ll pay you when you get here,” she mumbled, “listen Elias, I gotta go. Charlie put that down! You’re a lifesaver.”
She hung up and hurried off to rescue whatever Charlie was holding. Elias grabbed the manga comic books from under his bed, which Caden had helped him wrap neatly in a comic book style wrapping paper. Everything he wanted to say to Caden, he couldn’t say over the phone, but he would have to try. Ellie had taken away those precious fifteen minutes, which had quickly turned into five by the time he was at the grocery store.
With the biggest cake he could find in the shape of a caterpillar, he tossed the dollar bills at the check out girl before jumping in a taxi to Ellie’s. When they were on the road, he pressed his cellphone into his ear, each ring making his heart quiver.
“Pick up, pick up!”
“Huh?” the driver asked through the mirror.
“Sorry, not you. I’m on the phone.”
Caden didn’t pick up. It went to his voicemail after the fourteenth ring. What he had to say definitely couldn’t be said over a message so he tried again. He counted the rings again and on the fourteenth, he was back to the generic recording asking him to leave his message after the beep. He hovered over the picture of Caden that he had taken for the profile picture. His smile was beaming, so carefree and easy. Would he ever show Elias that smile again? He was about to try calling again, unbothered by how desperate it looked but the car stopped and he was outside of Ellie’s house.
“Keep the change,” he told the driver as he grabbed the cake box.
The outside of her huge white house had been decorated in colorful balloons that screamed ‘I hired a party planner so my kid’s birthday party is better than your kid’s birthday party’. At the same time Elias arrived, three other cars pulled up. Parents, followed by their kids clutching gift bags hurried towards the gated entrance, which for one day, had been swung open and garishly decorated with a neon green and blue banner letting everybody know that it was ‘Kobi’s Seventh Birthday Party’, just in case people didn’t already know.
Elias hurried inside, heading straight for the kitchen. A plastic solo cup was already clutched in Ellie’s fist but he guessed it was filled with a little more than orange juice.
“Thank God,” she cried when she saw her brother, “let’s see it.”
He suddenly had a thought that she wasn’t going to be as easy going about the random design he had chosen but she seemed happy that the cake wasn’t as horrifically themed. The offending cake was already deep in the trash so nobody could ever see her mistake.
“How much do I owe you?” she reached for her purse on the edge of the kitchen counter.
“On me,” he knew he didn’t have much money in his own wallet but he was grateful just to be there.
Ellie appreciated the gesture but she still slipped a twenty-dollar bill into his jacket pocket, despite the cake only costing him fourteen.
“Where’s Caden?” she glanced over his shoulder, “Is he not here?”
“I don’t think he’s coming.”
“Why? Is he busy?”
The blank expression in her eyes revealed that she was in the minority of people who hadn’t seen yesterday’s paper. When he mentioned it, she looked even more confused. Between work and the party planning, she didn’t have time to read the paper. After a quick search on her cell phone, she scanned over the article, her hand rising to her mouth.
“Poor Caden,” she sighed, “how did this -,”
Ellie stopped herself, apparently putting two and two together in time to figure out who it was.
“And now we’re in a fight, I think,” Elias clung to the wrapped gift for support, “when he found out, I said some things, we both did. We got carried away but I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“Call him?”
“I have. Twice. No answer.”
“Maybe he is busy after all?”
“Yeah,” he forced a smile, trying not to show how worried he was.
When Ellie vanished to play her role as hostess to the rapidly thickening crowd of parents, all eyeing up the wine bottles on the opposite side of the kitchen, Elias checked his cellphone in vain. No new messages. No new calls. The empty notification screen stung but he wasn’t going to give up. He called Caden again to be greeted with the voicemail after fourteen rings. Just when he was about to try again, a small figure ran in from the garden, grass stains on his knees and a blue party hat on his head, reminding Elias of why he was there.
“Uncle Elias!” Kobi screamed at the top of his lungs, running and jumping into Elias’ arms.
He was heavy, so mu
ch heavier than the last time he had picked him up. It was a reminder of how much of his only nephew’s life he had missed.
“You came!” he exclaimed, so much joy in his airy voice, “You really came!”
“I wouldn’t have missed it!” he dropped Kobi back to the ground and examined him over with sober eyes, “Look how big you’ve grown! You’ll be as tall as me soon.”
“Maybe even taller,” he grinned, “is that for me?”
Kobi was eyeing up the brightly wrapped gift on the counter. The official pile of gifts was neatly stacked on a large round table in the hall, most likely waiting for all his friends to arrive so Kobi could open them in front of everyone. Elias could only remember one party from his childhood and he was sure, looking back, that the nanny at the time, Jenny, had arranged it instead of his mother. Despite that, his mother tried to control the day and insisted that he open his presents in front of all of the guests, which he hated. The mayor got him a stack of encyclopedias. Elias had only been nine.
“Can I rip it open?” Kobi clutched the gift, looking around for his mom.
“Only if you keep it a secret,” Elias ruffled the thick black hair poking out from the party hat.
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” he puffed out his chest, “daddy’s living in a hotel but I have to tell people he’s away on business.”
He didn’t seem affected by the divorce yet but Elias guessed that was because he didn’t understand the seriousness of it. The novelty would probably blind him because he would get two birthdays, two Thanksgiving dinners and two Christmases, but one day it would hit him. Maybe he would be lucky and suppress it until later on in life where it might all pour out in a therapy session if his own future relationship turned sour.
“Manga!” he clutched them to his chest, “How did you know?”
“Good guess,” all of the credit went to Caden, which was another slap to the face, “are they the right ones?”
“They’re awesome. Does this mean you’re all better now? Mommy was saying that you weren’t sick anymore.”
Elias was touched that Ellie had laid the groundwork for him. The drug test was folded messily in his back pocket but Ellie hadn’t asked to see it yet. He guessed she was too distracted with everything else going on, for once in her life, her brother wasn’t her biggest problem.
“I’m all better,” Elias crouched down so he could be face to face with Kobi, “and you’re going to be seeing a lot more of me now. I promise you that.”
Kobi flung his tiny arms around Elias’ neck, giving him a tight, choking hug. The outpouring of love he had felt from an innocent child like Kobi was just as strong, if not stronger than what he had felt from Caden. Different, but powerful.
With his first opened gift, he ran into the garden to show his friends. Elias felt proud when the boys all gathered around him gasping with jealousy. Have I just become the cool uncle?
The clown arrived and the party finally settled down for a while. Standing at the back of the crowd, Elias watched as the other parents looked on as their kids laughed. They all had soft smiles on their face as they watched the children with such unquestioned adoration. Elias had never seen that smile from his own mother.
“You’ve checked that phone every ten seconds since you got here,” Ellie nodded when they were both in the kitchen, slicing up the caterpillar cake, “you can go if you want.”
“No, I’ll stay. I want to.”
“You’ve made his day, Elias. You don’t have to stick around. Last year when you came to his party uninvited, you couldn’t wait to leave after passing out in his cake but that was for a different reason. You actually have a real life issue to deal with.”
She was giving him permission to leave but he was scared to go in search of Caden. What would he find? A man waiting with his arms open or a man who never wanted to see him ever again? He wished he had an idea of how these things worked. Caden had been in a serious relationship; was he playing by a set of post-fight rules that Elias didn’t know?
“What if he doesn’t want to know me? I’ve ruined his life.”
“How?” she laughed, licking chocolate frosting off her thumb, “You two are clearly made for each other.”
“You think?”
“I know it. You seem to help each other from what I can see. That’s what a relationship is all about. Becoming a unit and fighting the world. That’s what John and I never had. I got pregnant so fast and then we married and things just became about work and getting through the week.”
She seemed saddened by the ending of her marriage but she didn’t seem shocked anymore. It had settled in and she seemed to have accepted that it was for the best. Elias found that sad because even though he didn’t like John, it was the end of something they’d sworn to stick to. Caden had sworn to stick by him - so why did I ask him to leave?
“What if this has broken what we had? I don’t even know his favorite color,” it sounded pathetic out loud.
“So?” she laughed, “That stuff comes with time. Love is like a jigsaw. You have the box, you just need to put all of the pieces together.”
“What if those pieces don’t fit?”
“You’ll never know if you don’t try,” she cut the last slice and dolloped it onto a paper plate before handing it to Elias, “you’ve wasted enough of your life chasing something that didn’t matter. Start chasing something that matters.”
“What if it just doesn’t work?”
“Too many what ifs,” she shook her head, her sharp black bob springing out from behind her ears, looking longer than it usually did, “if it doesn’t work out, you’ve had a good month together, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged, “but I need more than a month. It was too fast. I want more months. So many more months.”
“Then I’m kicking you out of the party,” she grabbed his shoulders and steered him toward the door, “get out of here and go find your bliss.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m happy,” she squeezed his shoulders firmly, “for the first time in a long time I have nothing to worry about. Well, my impending divorce and crumbling family unit, but John isn’t going to drag this out any longer than it needs to be. A clean break, that’s what he said.”
She opened the door and Elias fell out onto her doorstep, the cake still clutched in his hand. He looked at his sister and she did look happy.
“Your hair looks different,” he noticed that it was past her jaw for the first time since they were thirteen.
“I’m growing it out,” she plucked the cake out of his hand and stuffed it into her mouth, “call me.”
Licking frosting off her fingers, she closed the door, allowing Elias to leave the party in a dignified and sober way. It felt good. Feeling invigorated, he stepped through the open gate, ready to fight for what he wanted.
***
Waking up, face down in a couch he didn’t recognize, Caden looked up, a crick forming in his neck. Sitting up, he rubbed his shoulders as his mind came forward. Why am I asleep in my brother’s living room?
The quickly forming headache reminded him of the bottle of wine he drank with Lucy, pouring out his heart to her until the early hours. Patting down his pockets, he couldn’t feel his cell phone. After a quick turn out of the couch, he still couldn’t find it.
“Morning, or should I say afternoon?” Lucy appeared in the door, “It’s just past four.”
“Four pm?” Caden jumped up, “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“We were up till five and you must have needed it. Coffee?”
Following his sister-in-law into the kitchen, he had the strangest feeling that he was supposed to be somewhere but he couldn’t even start to think about it until he had at least one coffee flowing through his blood.
“Why aren’t you working?”
“It’s Tuesday,” she said, “I don’t work Tuesdays.”
“Tuesday,” he mused, wondering why Tuesday meant something to him.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do next?”
Sipping the hot coffee, he was about to say it was too early in the morning to talk about that but he remembered that he had slept away most of the day.
“I’m just going to lie low and plan my next move,” the newspaper was probably still circulating the town, shocking and intriguing the residents of Havenmoore.
“I meant about Elias.”
Caden sighed and leaned against his hand as he stared out of Lucy’s kitchen window and into her garden. The sky was slightly grey, reflecting how he felt. If he had known what was happening with Elias, he wouldn’t have had to turn to wine.
“He told me to leave.”
“People say things they don’t mean. I’ll fix you a sandwich, you must be starving.”
Lucy didn’t wait for a response and like a typical mother, got to work making him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Caden’s stomach gurgled as he watched her make it.
“Have you seen my cell?” he looked around the kitchen for it.
“Nope,” Lucy passed him the sandwich, “when did you last have it?”
“I don’t remember,” he remembered hovering over Elias’ number, wanting to call but not having the courage to actually do it, “Tuesday! Shit! Today was Elias’ drug test at the rehab. Oh, damn. I said I’d be there.”
“Pre-fight or post-fight?”
“Pre, but I promised. I need to go. I need to find him and talk. This is dumb. The newspaper, that’s not his fault, it’s his mom’s. He was in the line of fire when I needed to explode and he got hit when he shouldn’t have. I need to go. I can’t sit around here all day talking about fixing this. I need to go and fix it.”
“At least eat your sandwich?” she pushed the plate closer toward him.
Caden thought about it for a second but he knew he had already wasted so much time sleeping off his hangover. Pushing the plate back to Lucy with an apologetic kiss on the cheek, he grabbed his denim jacket, pulling it over his creased white t-shirt.
Wasting no time, he headed straight for Elias’ apartment. His knuckles crashed down on the door. There was no answer but that didn’t stop him from knocking. What if Elias had been sleeping the day away too?