Westlake Soul

by Rio Youers

  “Bitch,” Wayne said. He spat on the carpet, then turned to leave. Our eyes locked for half a second. They seemed to, at least, but then he walked right through me . . . and I felt him, I swear to God. His anger and insecurity. His unkindness. It gathered inside me, brick-heavy. A block of poison. I stumbled—my floaty soul stumbled—while back in the groovy room my shell moaned and curled a fist. Then he was gone, slamming the door so hard the blinds jumped in the windows and a waft of hall-smelling air blew the hair back from Yvette’s face. I went to her. Held her ineffectually. Followed her into the bedroom as she threw her face into the pillows and cried.

  The next morning—Monday—she sent him a text: LAST NIGHT WASN’T GOOD. LET’S TRY AGAIN TONIGHT. IF U CAN BE KIND, I COULD BE “IN THE MOOD” ;-) XOXOXO And that was when he texted her back, her iPhone jingling as she pulled into my driveway: UR LUCKY 2 HAVE ME BITCH I CN GET ANY PEICE OF ASS I WANT ANY TIME SO FUCK U. So she came in and touched my trophies and pulled the band from her hair and cared for me, and for a long, sweet moment forgot all about Wayne the Fucktard.

  Je trouve l’existence incompréhensible.

  Those crumpled Kleenex, like the snipped heads of lilies. Alicia Keys singing, “Fallin’.” That crescent of purple skin beneath her left eye.

  It happened while I was away—either looking for a branch point or swimming with glowing lobates—but I have been able to piece together events from telephone conversations and text messages. Not that I needed to piece together events. Yvette didn’t walk into a door or fall down the stairs. Wayne hit her. He punched her. One of those ugly fists connected with the delicate structure of her cheekbone hard enough to rupture tiny veins and capillaries. I knew this as soon as I saw her. Learning that Wayne had been drunk at the time, and that they’d had a thunderous argument, changed nothing. It didn’t heal the contusion. It didn’t rewind time and make everything right. The son of a bitch hit her. Nothing else mattered.

  I went to her, and held her in my special way. We listened to Alicia, wrapped together. Fragile, yet strong. Her heartbeat bounced through my soul like light in a house of mirrors. She crumpled Kleenex while I considered my own source of woe: Dr. Quietus, gliding like a hawk, just waiting to strike. Then I thought of the Joker and the Penguin, Lex Luthor and Doomsday, the Green Goblin and Venom.

  And now, of course, Wayne Hubbins, AKA Wayne the Fucktard.

  So many supervillains. Not enough heroes.

  I stroked Yvette’s face. Kissed the bruise beneath her eye.

  He’ll pay for hurting you, I said.

  And he will. I’m not sure how yet, but one way or another—from the grip of this vegetative condition—I’m going to kick that bad guy’s ass.

  It’s what superheroes do.

  12. ?!?!?!

  Still the box has not stopped rolling. My hands, my hands. Clay and plastic. Sometimes all I can move. Expressions cast in the flexing of fingers, the twist of a thumb. Some desperate language. While inside, the train puffs on tracks once edge-straight, now hook-crooked. Toward—choo-choo!—a bridge they never finished building. A bridge blown to nothing by bandits with faces like pearls. Outside the world pulsates. Green no more. A hateful, purple mouth. An open heart. I release through skin and smoke. Scream all the way nowhere. And disbelief hangs above me, as light as a balloon. Bopping with laughter against a ceiling painted Surf City Blue.

  13. Respite.

  I need some time alone. Need to think this through. Really, I’m too stunned to do anything more than float right now. If you could see my soul, it would be hovering above my body. Shimmering, like polished bone. Attached by threads that break too easily, too quickly. Guitar strings made of cobweb. So I need to find a place—inside me, probably. A central place where I can unfloat. I want to scream and run at the walls. I want to cry for understanding.

  This world hurts my eyes. My heart.

  I’m not sure when I’ll be back.

  Or for how long.

  14. Why Fat Annie Quit.

  You’re all laughing at me. I just know it. All this time I’ve been telling you how smart I am—how I flipped the iceberg and can bury Stephen Hawking. Goethe, too. The most powerful mind on the planet, I said. I’m a superhero. I can talk to dogs and astral project. Swim with whales. Think in five thousand languages. Yeah, maybe in my own rotten apple of a brain. But I’m obviously not smart enough to think my way out of this permanent vegetative state. Or even to read the writing on the wall.

  The clues were there, baby. They were there all along.

  Fat Annie quitting, out of the blue. The heavy vibe. The solemnity and silence. Hub—all but forgotten in this fog of misery—not being taken for a walk. The atmosphere in the house has been shitty, he’d said. And I for one don’t dig it.

  Dad crying as the rain fell outside, his face in my lap. Everything grey. We love you, Wes. You know that, right?

  And Mom, too. All those tears. What do you want, Westlake? So much tension between her and Dad. I thought maybe they were surfing the marital heavies. It happens, right?

  And then there was the way he’d snapped at her when they were loading the dishwasher. What’s the point, anyway? Talking about interviewing a new caregiver, and Mom had replied, I haven’t decided anything. So many clues. So much writing on the wall. Impossibly large letters. All bright colours. Jesus Christ, I was so blind. So stupid. I bet even Darryl figured it out, behind the wheel of his green Camaro, Lady Gaga shooting from the speakers. But things will get easier? Turning it into a question by lifting the last word, and Dad had looked out the window. Not before they get a lot harder, he’d said.

  Some superbrain, huh?

  I feel so sick.

  And I’m scared. So scared.

  They’re ending my life support. They’re doing it. Really doing it. They’re going to remove my feeding tube and starve me to death.

  I still don’t quite believe it . . . and it’s because of this naïveté that I failed to see it in the first place. I never thought—not for one second—that my family could even consider such a thing. They love me, right? Right? Any other explanation for the shitty vibe seemed more plausible. Divorce. Erectile dysfunction. Fucking alien invasion. Dumb trust, on my part, and even dumber love. I’m like the dog that jumps into the back seat of the car, thinking—all excitedly—that he’s going for the king of walks. Maybe chase some birds or swim in the river. Tail flapping and head out the window, tongue like a windsock. When all the time he’s on his way to the vet’s office. A quick shot of Euthanyl and no more walkies. Not ever. Only difference . . . it won’t be quick for me. It could take weeks for me to die.

  Fuck.

  I can’t let them do it.

  I’ll jump into their minds. I don’t care about their secrets. Their privacy. I’ll hammer against their walls until they hear me. What else can I do? Just let it happen? Just give in and die?

  Not this kid.

  I found out . . . Jesus, I can’t even remember. Three days ago? Five? That’s how scrambled my brain is. Anyway, I found out. And the only reason I did was that Mom told Yvette—called her into the living room for a meeting. At first I didn’t grasp it. Or I refused to grasp it, more like. See . . . even then, hearing Mom articulate the words, it still wouldn’t compute. Perfect denial or perfect stupidity. It amounts to the same thing.

  I was on the rear deck with Hub, parked in the shade. A couple of dudes enjoying the fresh air. But Hub suddenly jerked up, ears cocked and eyes wide. It was how he sometimes looked when Mom and Dad played Just Dance on the Wii.

  Jesus Christ, he said.

  What? I said.

  Seriously, Wes, didn’t you hear that?

  Maybe . . . I’m not sure, I just . . . But of course I heard. The back door was wide open. The windows, too. It was so still outside that I could hear everything inside. The clock in the hallway ticking, the radio turned down low, even the refrigerator humming. So yeah, I heard Mom talking to Yvette. Loud and clear. Something about . . . I think . . . Informat
ion barely computed, discarded with dumb and trustful abandon. My head out the window, in other words. Tongue like a windsock. Yeah, it was—

  Mom just said that they’re going to remove your feeding tube.

  Oh, I said, and snapped out of my body. A reflex action. A cobra extending its hood. I floated, trembled. Imagined myself: heat haze.

  A couple of weeks had passed since the incident with Wayne the Fucktard, and I’d spent most of that time with Yvette. Throwing comfort vibes at her, trying to resonate with her biofield. I also spent hours—maybe even days—thinking of ways I could get back at Wayne. The bruise beneath Yvette’s eye gradually faded, but my anger didn’t. Thusly engaged, I missed what was happening back at the homestead: Dad and Mom discussing the issue of removing my feeding tube in depth, and then involving Niki in their conversation (she tore from the room, slammed her bedroom door—cried for six hours). I missed them surfing through countless stories on the Internet about families who had made the excruciating decision to discontinue life support for a loved one, and in each case saying they would do it again, that they had made the right decision. They had two meetings with the doctor. Not Dr. Thinker, but a youngish dude who looked like the guy who played Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. The first meeting was to see what was involved. The second to see when it could be done. They arranged counselling sessions. For Niki, too. Apparently, killing a family member is a traumatic experience. Who’d’ve thunk it?

  No. Wait. They’re doing this because they love me.

  They love me.

  “It’s what Westlake would want,” Mom told Yvette.

  Hub ran to the bottom of the garden and whined.

  I flexed and shimmered. Stretched out. The sky beckoned, so clean and open, and the temptation to soar into it—high enough to punch a hole through its thin blue skin—was overwhelming. I stayed close to my body, though. Close to Mom and Yvette. And to Hub, his ears flattened, paws covering his eyes.

  “You’ve obviously given this a great deal of thought?” Yvette said. I couldn’t tell if it was a question or not, but I like to think it was.

  “Until we could feel our heads splitting under the pressure,” Mom said. “It’s not a decision we arrived at lightly.”

  “Of course,” Yvette said.

  “It’s been awful,” Mom said. “The most difficult, heartbreaking decision we’ve ever had to make. Constant turmoil. Constant doubt. Long periods of hating ourselves. And each other. It’s been . . .”

  Her lips moved for a while but no sound came out. She tried to hold back the tears but couldn’t. Yvette went to her, perched on the arm of the chair, one hand on her shoulder. A gentle squeeze. I cried also, but nobody saw. I screamed. Nobody heard.

  “We’ve been in contact with people who have been through the same ordeal,” Mom continued, smearing her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “E-mails and telephone calls. Trying to gain some perspective. We’ve had second and third opinions—spoken to specialists and explored possible treatments, from deep brain stimulation to so-called miracle drugs. But in each case the doctors have assured us that the damage to Westlake’s brain is too advanced. Nothing can be done.”

  Yvette grabbed the Kleenex from the kitchen counter. The box was peach and baby blue. It had flowers on it, and a butterfly. Mom plucked at one but two came out, as if the clever little tissues knew that one would not be enough. They were right.

  “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve prayed to a God I don’t believe in, or how many wishes I’ve spent on first stars and fallen eyelashes.”

  Mom has become adept—not to mention eco-friendly—at getting the absolute most out of a single Kleenex. She will fold it into a firm rectangular pad, then dab until the surface is sodden, turn it over, dab again, unfold, refold, dab . . . and repeat until every square millimetre of the tissue is wet.

  “Two years since the accident,” she said, folding and dabbing. “We thought it would get easier, but it’s only gotten harder. And for the longest time we held on to the fantasy that Westlake would recover. You read about miracles sometimes, don’t you?”

  Yvette nodded and squeezed Mom’s shoulder.

  “But that won’t happen. God doesn’t exist, and wishing is for dreamers. Nothing can bring Westlake back, and it’s tearing us apart. With nowhere to turn we’ve had to face facts, look each other in the eye, and answer one simple question . . .”

  Dab and unfold.

  “What would Westlake want?”

  I jumped from my body and wrapped myself around Yvette, hoping she would absorb me the way the Kleenex absorbed Mom’s tears. This is where you tell her about the cracked window, I wailed. Tell her how you can sometimes see in . . . that there’s a light inside.

  Yvette looked at the floor, where the shadow of a bumblebee danced in a sun-puddle. Her lips were pressed so firmly together I couldn’t see the join.

  Save me, Yvette. Tell her that we CONNECT.

  She said nothing.

  Desperate, without alternative, I leapt into her mind. Chaos in there. A wild array of data, growing bright and then fading. Swirling and separating. I tried to convert it into images—see it in my mind the way Yvette saw it in hers. This is nothing like the psychics you see on TV, who hook thoughts like they are hooking rubber duckies in a carnival game. It’s more like downloading. Processing binary code. I stole incomplete imagery that meant nothing to me: the front of a building I didn’t recognize; water lapping against the stern of a corn-yellow boat; the hem of a summer dress. Scattered thoughts, possibly triggered by the sun-puddle, maybe the bumblebee. I saw myself, too. My legs like kindling. My hair one shade too dark. I hacked into this image before it could fade away, found another complex string of binary, and converted it. A vibration this time—a feeling, rather than a thought. Impossible to accurately represent in words. That would be like trying to count the facets of a snowflake at one glance. To expound the analogy: snowflake = fluffy, feeling = doubt. In other words, I knew that Yvette was resonating with that connection, that light inside, and she wasn’t sure that ending life support was the right thing to do.

  TELL HER! I screamed. Please, Yvette.

  But she didn’t. For all her admirable qualities, there remains a broad strip of insecurity. I’d seen it with Wayne the Fucktard. Constantly doubting herself, apologizing when she didn’t have to, and taking him back when she should have known better. I pushed deeper into her mind, faced the blockade of her conscious, and willed her to bypass all insecurities—to challenge Mom’s assessment of what was best for me.

  I hammered on that wall until I was weary.

  Hub howled in the garden. Ears still flattened.

  Fold and dab.

  “He used to be so active,” Mom said. “Always, and from such a young age. He was walking at eight months. Eight. My sister couldn’t believe it. We just knew he’d be an athlete someday. All those trophies and medals . . .”

  “Yes, I’ve seen them,” Yvette said.

  “You’ve seen some of them,” Mom said. “There are more in the basement. Three boxes more.”

  She started on the second Kleenex. I pulled myself from Yvette’s mind and sagged in the air. I always felt so vibrant when I left my body, like a reflection on rippling water, but now I felt drab and tragic.

  “Westlake wouldn’t want to live like this,” Mom said. Her jaw stiffened and she nodded. “I know that with absolute certainly. I have always known that.”

  Mom was right, of course. A future imprisoned in a vegetative state is no future at all, but she’d given up all hope—belief—that I would recover. He’s a fighter, she had said to Dr. Thinker when he’d shown her and Dad the scans of the rotten apple. She didn’t think that any more. Neither did Dad. As far as they were concerned, the fight was over.

  Mom reached back and clasped Yvette’s hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been so wonderful, Yvette. And I just want you to know that we were still undecided about this when we hired you. We’d talked about it with Georgina, and she
. . . well, I guess she didn’t want to be around to see how it played out. So she handed in her notice, which was neither helpful nor professional. But you came along, and we’ve gotten to know you, and that has been a real blessing.”

  Yvette’s pursed lips twitched. Perhaps a smile, or perhaps the realization that she was soon going to be superfluous to requirements.

  “How long will you need me for?” she asked.

  “Until the end,” Mom said, turning to look at her. “I’d understand if you found another caring job and needed to leave, but this is going to be a difficult time for us, and we’d really appreciate your support.”

  “Yes,” Yvette said. She looked at the sun-puddle again. “And when will the tube be disconnected?”

  Mom took a deep breath and blinked her wet eyes. “Soon.” Barely a word. She clutched Yvette’s hand. Dabbed with the Kleenex. “We’ve met with the doctor. He agrees that it’s the best course of action. So now we just need to . . . mentally prepare.”

  “I understand.”