Burning September

by Melissa Simonson

  “Is she pretty, at least?”

  He shrugged, looking down at the fine mist of blond hair on his forearms. “Hard face, too much makeup. I don’t know. She’s not unattractive, I guess, in the grand scheme of things.”

  “Why don’t you just cut it off if you’re not that interested?”

  “It’s nice to get out of my house sometimes. Going to bars by myself gets old. My best friend is married. He doesn’t get out much these days.” My skepticism must have shone through my eyes. “What, you’ve never submitted to being around people you’re not too fond of because of restlessness, loneliness? A million years of evolution makes us want to be around other people.”

  The only people I didn’t mind being around were Caroline, him, and Professor Lawlis. I’d never been the type to have a lot of friends. Acquaintances came easily in high school, but those I’d collected were now flung across the U.S. at their various colleges. “There’s only a few people I like being around, and their availability is limited.”

  His gaze skated across my sucked in bottom lip, my white-knuckled grip on the mojito, my too nonchalant to be believed expression. I was lonely and he knew it, my only saving grace would be for him to not actually voice the opinion. I couldn’t tell if he knew he was one of the few I liked. I didn’t want to know. I’d inherited Caroline’s pride, though I hoped that didn’t mean I’d go to the lengths she’d reached to avenge it.

  “At least you’ve got a few. A few good friends are better than a bunch of acquaintances.”

  It was always people with loads of friends who said stuff like that, I’d noticed. But I couldn’t even count any of the three as friends, and the knowledge only served to make me feel more pathetic.

  Isolation is the artist’s condition, babe, Caroline said back when I was young and naïve, asking why it always seemed like every other child in my school got playdates, birthday invites, Six Flag parties. They see that I’m your mother, for all intents and purposes, and they make their own assumptions. You must come from a bad family if it’s your young paint-splattered sister who’s raising you. They might think I look irresponsible, wouldn’t trust their kids around me. Maybe it scares them. I don’t know. But you don’t need them. Stuff like this, it’ll suck for now, but the same thing happened to me, and I think it made me a better artist. I got so used to the sidelines, observing, and it overlapped into other parts of my life.

  And those people didn’t know what they were cultivating, shunting Caroline to the sidelines. They’d given her all the ammunition she’d needed, handed her the accelerant and book of matches. She knew them better than they knew themselves. All that watching and waiting had only honed her skills, made her natural intuition that much better, culminating into her way of making a bold and brutal stir in the world of anyone she came into contact with.

  You just wait until you’re about fourteen, she said. Past the awkward stage. Everyone will part like the Red Sea for you, just wait and see. That’s how it went for me.

  “They’re not even acquaintances. That’s the sad part.” My sister who was practically obligated to love me, a professor who took pity on me, and a lawyer who didn’t even know he’d made my list.

  “It’s probably stress, you know. You’re isolating yourself because of this mess with your sister. It’s a coping mechanism, but if you keep it up, you’ll come undone. Trust that I’ve got it handled. I’m not getting paid the big bucks for nothing. “Accept the things you cannot change.” Some AA jargon for you to consider. My dad was in the program for fifteen years before he died.”

  “My dad was an alcoholic, too.”

  He bobbed his head over his drink, fiddling with the lime wedge jammed on the rim. “Nobody’s immune. But he got sober two years before I was born, so I don’t know how bad he actually was.”

  “I only remember the drunk stories of my dad. I asked Caroline once what he was like before he started overdoing it, and she said “you’re lucky you don’t remember. I knew him; I know. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “It’s amazing how much a father can screw up a daughter. So many things can be traced back to a dad’s fuck-ups. Domestic abuse, drug addiction. The list goes on.”

  I thought about all those catastrophes and open wounds a father could leave festering in their wake. They could walk away, take an extended vacation, never to be heard from again, and the daughter would turn to an older man, or an abusive man, or cling onto any guy who showed her attention, no matter how badly he might treat her. Anything to quench the thirst her father had left burning in her throat. An addicted father could pass on his ways, turn his daughter into a junkie turning tricks to satiate the habit or numb all the bad memories swirling in her veins. A cold, distant father might have a daughter who looked outwardly normal, no scar tissue or track marks, but he could wreak hell on her eventual relationships, cause communication breakdowns, emotional divides.

  If there was nothing like a father to ruin a daughter, maybe Caroline had been right. All girls marry their fathers, I once heard. Caroline snorted into her tea after Dr. Phil said so. Marriage is an illusion. A piece of paper people cram into the junk drawer and lose track of. Vows take an hour to write and a minute to forget, and the woman always draws the short straw. The second I say I want to get married, you feed me some cyanide.

  But I’d seen all those sketches of wedding dresses she’d kept in her art binders.

  His eyes were kind, soft and focused right on mine when I looked up. I couldn’t fully execute the smile I wanted to give him, but it seemed like he understood the attempt.

  “Thanks for staying. I know you didn’t have to.”

  “Who can ignore the call of a mojito?”

  Why did men always make light of things that mattered?

  “Ready for another?”

  I surrendered my glass. My coping mechanism may have been isolation, but his was definitely masking everything with humor.

  He pinched a mound of mint leaves between his fingers, distributed it between our glasses. “So, hey, I’ve decided I’m going to talk to Caroline tomorrow. Any tips?”

  I watched him squeeze the lime, fleshy pulp guts oozing between his thick knuckles. “Bring a fire extinguisher.”

  ***

  Beating Kyle to Breakthrough was order number one the next day, hangover be damned, so I’d set my alarm clock and dragged myself out of bed, a barbed wire headache of Captain Morgan’s circling my skull.

  The rickety bus ride swirled minty-lime bile around in my stomach, and it was with more than a little relief when I finally made it into the facility’s ice-cold lobby.

  An aide in white scrubs led Caroline by her elbow as I signed the visitor’s log. She shook out of his grip and stared at me, hands turning palms-up, a quirk in her eyebrow. “Boy, you’re looking bright eyed and bushy tailed. What’s with the impromptu visit?”

  I waited for the aide to leave and returned Caroline’s arched brow. “There’s a lot of things I need to talk to you about, and they couldn’t wait.”

  Her arms fell to her sides. “What is it?”

  “Mr. Brown.” I rubbed the dark circles beneath my eyes, fighting back a yawn.

  Confusion clouded her face, but it came and went within a second. “What about him?”

  “I found your letters.”

  “You went digging through my shit?” She didn’t look mad, exactly, more surprised than anything as she sank onto the couch.

  “Not for nothing. Your lawyer isn’t some public defender, which is what I originally thought. He charges a shitload of money, and I wanted to know who was paying him. How you got all that money in your bank account to start with. I don’t think I’m buying the sponsor thing anymore. What the hell is going on? I’m going crazy, here. I’m all alone, I miss you, and I think I have a right to know.”

  She fell silent for a long time, expressionless, but when she spoke, her voice was acidic. “You don’t, actually.” Her fingertip traced the dizzying floral pattern on the sofa which look
ed like it belonged in an old folk’s home. “You have no right. But since you’ve brought it up, let me tell you something about Graham Brown.”

  I ducked my head to meet her gaze. “I’m all ears.”

  She studied me with hard honey eyes, but after a slow blink, the animosity had gone. “Do you know how much it costs to attend USC? A lot. You know how I paid for it? Do you know how hard I had to work to get through four years? Scholarships only cover so much. There’s a reason I had so many freelance gigs. Do you think I wanted to read tarot cards at the fucking fair? Do you think it was easy for me?”

  Of course I didn’t. I remembered those days. She’d been the Energizer bunny. Going, going, going. Drinking black tea by the gallon, blinking tired eyes as she drove me to school, swallowing yawns over her textbooks late into the evening, forgetting to feed herself. She would pace at night. I’d hear the floorboards in her room creaking, would squint through the dim pink rays of my nightlight to find the shadows of her feet padding catlike down the hallway.

  “I’m not following your point, Caroline.”

  “It always took you a while to connect dots.”

  I recoiled, stung, and it seemed like she regretted saying as much. She covered my hand with hers. “Graham Brown didn’t have a lot of money when I was enrolled at USC. Teachers make next to nothing, and his wealthy great aunt hadn’t died yet. That happened recently. A few months before you got your acceptance letter. I’d been corresponding with him for a while when that happened.” She paused, giving the side-eye to an aide wheeling a patient noisily through the lobby. “I didn’t want you to have to bust your ass to make it through college the way I did. So I dropped a few subtle hints about the financial situation in one of my letters. I’d remembered him telling me when I was sixteen he had some rich old biddy for an aunt, how he was her only living relative. So when he said she’d died, I knew he was getting all the cash. He didn’t even remember telling me about her, it was so long ago. He thought it was his own wonderful idea to help me out with your school.” She flicked a stray strand of hair off her forehead. “Call me a horrible wretch. I don’t regret it. Your tuition’s paid. You don’t have to struggle the way I did. That’s all that matters.”

  I didn’t like being her reason, her excuse. I never asked for any of it. I could have done the same, read tarot cards, sold art on the boardwalk, and it still would have been infinitely easier, since I wouldn’t have had a little sister to take care of on top of it all. I’d have done anything to keep from forcing Caroline into the debt of some moron, even if said moron never intended to collect.

  I slid my hand out from under hers. “So you robbed him, practically.”

  She snorted. “Don’t turn over rocks if you don’t want to find worms. Who told you to play private eye? And I’ve never robbed anyone. That money was willingly given.”

  Willingly given. More like expertly liberated by a siren’s silver tongue. If I didn’t find him so repellent, I may have felt sorry for Graham Brown. “Kyle says he isn’t the one footing his bill, though.”

  She belted her arms across her rib cage, blindly groping through the ice and fog between us, searching for the crack in my exterior. “Perhaps I should invoke my client confidentiality in regards to this case. Kyle,” she said, saccharine sarcasm drenching her tone, “has a bad case of loose lips. I could put the kibosh on this whole unlikely friendship thing you two seemed to have started.”

  She always could ferret out weakness.

  “That’s bullshit, completely unfair, and you know it.”

  “What’s unfair is having an attorney who can’t keep his goddamned mouth shut. This is my life. My case. Not yours. I want you to listen hard, because you need to hear me.” She put her finger under my chin, forcing my eyes on hers. “I love you. So much. More than anything. But when I tell you I’ve got things handled, I’ve got things handled. I appreciate your concern. And if the tables were turned, I’d probably do the same thing. But please. Stay out of this.”

  But you’re locked up, Caroline. I don’t have to listen to you anymore.

  ***

  Beneath a halo of sunlight streaming through his empty classroom, Professor Lawlis shot me a sideways glance over his guitar, fiddling with a pick. “You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

  I didn’t know how it was possible to think of everything and nothing at the same time. Thoughts were smoke, hard to grab hold of as they crept through gray coils in my brain. Someone needed to turn off the sun. If this was a hangover, I never wanted another drink.

  “I’m not even sure I have a mind anymore. My head kills.”

  “I take too many pain pills to keep that stuff away.” But the way he said it made me think he was referencing more than just headaches or the issue of a bum leg. I still didn’t even know how he’d lost it, but came up with a new theory daily. Car accident, gangrene infection, shark bite. Couldn’t have been born without it, the way he’d stare down at that metal rod. He never spoke about himself; maybe he preferred to let music speak for him, but I didn’t know all of the lyrics.

  “I’d say you can talk to me about whatever it is, but I’m not so good with advice. I always say the wrong thing. Insensitive or something; someone called me that once. I’m not a people person, you might have gathered.”

  I doubted he knew the extent of what I’d gathered. He had a dog, I could tell from the long hairs which clung ever-present to his rumpled clothes. A collie, I thought, based on coloring and the sheer amounts of shedding. He pretended not to care about the goings-on in the world, but he knew a lot about politics, followed the Republican debates, immigration concerns; mentioned that no Mexicans equaled no tacos, and what kind of world would that be? Like Kyle, he brushed off important things with humor, acted colder than I knew he was. He wouldn’t have ‘adopted’ me and a dog if that were the case. I had a feeling he’d been married at one point; he wouldn’t have said ‘gay people have the right to be as miserable as straight married couples’ if he hadn’t.

  I would have asked him point-blank about all of the above, but I was too scared to broach the subject. Too scared to run the risk of losing the few hours a week I had with him, which was pathetic. I knew it wasn’t the same for him. The people I loved never seemed to love me as much as I did them.

  I stabbed my temple, attempting to alleviate the pounding in my skull. “You might be better with advice than you think. It’s the ones who don’t brag about their counseling skills who wind up having the best points of view.”

  “With my luck, I’m the exception to that rule.” He knocked on his fake leg and set the guitar aside. “Bad luck follows me around. Like one of those rainclouds chasing after Charlie Brown.”

  “Is everyone invited to this pity party?”

  “As long as they bring some beer.” But he settled for a sip of coffee from a chipped mug. “Well, if you want to talk, go ahead and talk. I’m no good at beating around the bush.”

  I kneaded my forehead with my palm. “I’m just…hungover, I guess.”

  He laughed derisively. “No, you’re not. Get back to me when you’re face down on a park bench with piss stains and vomit all over your clothes. Then we’ll talk about hangovers. What else have you got?”

  I wanted to cut my throat and spill my whole sordid life story. Tell him all about Caroline, what she’d done, what she was still doing, this business with Graham Brown. Ask his opinion on Kyle, on lawyers in general. Could you trust them? But I didn’t even know if I could trust Professor Lawlis—what if someone, perhaps a prosecutor, spoke to him? Subpoenaed him, forced him to regale a packed courtroom with my guilty words about my own sister? Was that considered hearsay? I made a mental note to ask Kyle.

  “It was a long night,” is all I wound up saying.

  He looked away, mindlessly strumming a chord. “Bullshit. If you’re going to be a liar, you might as well be a good one.”

  I set my loaner guitar on the floor. “Have you ever met an extreme survivalist bef
ore? Not someone who forages for berries or spears snakes.”

  His forehead rumpled into a ruddy accordion. “I think I need a little more background information.”

  “Someone who does whatever it takes, uses people to get what they want, feelings be damned.”

  He propped his bad leg on a guitar case, silent for so long I figured he’d chosen to ignore me, but when he spoke, his voice had turned softer than usual. Barbed silk. “Well, when I was stationed in Ukraine a hundred years ago, I met a girl. Alena. Blonde hair, big blue eyes, exotic accent. I thought she was something special, and she seemed to like me, too.” He laughed without humor, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. “I should have been warned off just by that, even when I was younger I was no James Dean. Anyway, it wasn’t long before her crazy ex started hounding her, so she needed a new apartment. Then it was a new hairstyle so he wouldn’t recognize her. Then a new wardrobe, then a green card to go back to the U.S. with me when I got out of the army. Claimed she wanted to marry me. So, chump that I was, I bought her a ring. Later I figured out through the grapevine that she’d done the same thing before with other guys stationed there. They all caught on quicker than I did, cut if off before she’d started hinting about marriage. Of course that didn’t happen until I’d given her damn near all my money. It was a pretty sharp lesson.”

  A tiny flame of hope flickered in my chest. Caroline hadn’t done anything that despicable. She didn’t demand luxury items, ask for engagement rings. She used everything she’d gotten to advance her career, take care of her baby sister, keep a roof over our heads. Clothes and diamonds were the least of her concerns. She never even wore the jewelry she had.

  “Did you hope something awful happened to her after you figured out her game?”

  He smiled at his memories. Not in a happy way, but not quite sad, either. “No. I think it was a lesson I needed. You can’t walk around with wide bright eyes your whole life, thinking everyone has only the loveliest intentions. That’s not the way the world works.”