Fluke

by David Elliott

  I watched Sara, somewhat frightened, but unable to really react except to just let her work through it on her own. She sat in her daze for close to an hour. I had never seen anything like it, not even from her. Previously, her episodes had seemed to last forever, but in actuality had only been a matter of minutes in their duration.

  I grabbed the bottle of Jack and the bottle of Coke that we had, and set them on the table next to Sara’s glass which was now soaked with condensation. I managed to suck down her virtually untouched glass, and three glasses of my own while she was away in that other place. Courage was something I wasn’t good at. I knew that we had to hash things out, and that it was paramount in the process of us moving on, to have something solid together. I didn't know what to do right now, and I doubted that I was going to make any progress unless I could hide the fear behind a wall of alcohol. The liquor was going to help give me the courage, I decided. Otherwise, I might let this go on until things just fell apart between us.

  It was as I was tipping the glass back, knocking out the third and strongest drink, when Sara’s head turned slowly towards me. I choked a little on that last swallow, lowering my glass, returning her look, her stare. I shakily set my glass on the table maintaining eye contact with her, waiting.

  “Make me one of those?” she asked. Her tone was different than the other times she “recovered.” Her voice was pensive, and she looked tired. She looked tired, and a little dreary, as if we were standing next to a casket at a funeral instead of sitting on the couch.

  “Sure” I told her. I picked up the Jack, and filled her glass about a third of the way. A moment’s thought, and I went ahead and filled it a little over half-way. She probably needed this like I needed this, except for some other reason. The bottle, and glass, clanked together in my trembling hands. I set the bottle down, and topped the glass off with Coke. “Here you go, Sara” I said, handing her the glass, and watching as she drained half of it without batting an eye.

  “I think that now is going to be the time we talk” she said, adding, “about everything.”

  The alcohol in my body didn’t seem to be working too well, and my entire body felt shaky, like my hands. My hands were clammy, and I wiped them on my jeans. I realized I hadn’t responded to what she said. I licked my lips to moisten my mouth and alleviate the drought which seemed to be going on there.

  “Yes,” I croaked. I cleared my throat, and watched her as she took another sip from her glass. “We do need to talk. Are you going to be okay, if we talk now?”

  “I think…” she started, glancing down at her glass, giving the whiskey a stir with her finger, “I think I’ll be okay. I realize that sometimes I have behaved a little strangely.” She looked up from the glass, and settled her eyes upon me. I nodded at her, acknowledging what we had previously not spoken of. Acknowledging the episodes which I wasn’t even sure she was aware of until now. “I just don’t know where to begin.”

  I nodded my head again having had the same uncertainty of what to attack first. I leaned over, grabbed my glass, and quickly poured another drink. All Jack, no Coke. “I don’t know where to begin either, Sara. I have a lot of questions, and I don’t know which are important, which I should ask, what to start with.” I stirred my own drink with my finger unconsciously imitating Sara until I realized there was no need to stir it, and I stopped. I wasn’t going to change the composition of a straight glass of Jack.

  “Why don’t you ask me a question? We can go slowly from there.” She drank some more from the glass, and I saw that she was almost finished. I drank some of my own, and the aroma that it left in my nose, and mouth, tickled the recesses of my mind. A fleeting memory of having thrown up an entire bottle of Jack Daniels, years ago, crossed my mind. I winced, and my eyes watered. I looked at Sara, and thought for a few seconds before I asked her the first question. My nerves were raw, my senses shot, as I asked her: “Who is the man in the picture, Sara? Who is the man that looks just like me?”

  My question out, I swallowed more of the whiskey, quickly, and let out a sigh of relief. It was finally out there. The question had been in my mind for so long, and even though I had tried to push it away, it was as if there were a little man screaming, kicking, and pounding the inner walls of my head, bellowing “WHO IS HE, SARA? WHO IN THE HELL IS THE MAN WHO LOOKS JUST FUCKING LIKE ME?” Some of the anxiety and pressure was relieved, although, certainly not all of it. I watched Sara. She wasn’t in a trance, but instead in deep thought. The little man in my head was gone, for the moment. I inhaled, and exhaled deeply again.

  “Well, Adam,” Sara began, her voice betraying a lack of comfort in the way her words warbled out from between her lips, in a very non-Sara way. Here it comes. That’s her father, and you are her brother. A small noise escaped my lips, and I wiped my wet hands again, waiting. She continued, “The truth is that I am not sure who the man in the picture is.”

  A huge feeling of relief swept my entire being, and at the same time I was perplexed. I sat, staring, unsure what to think, do, say. She knew who her father was, I knew that much. They were just distant. But, she knew who he was, and she didn’t know who the man in the picture was. This, above the other things, was a very good start even if it confused the hell out of me.

  “Whew…” I finally said. Nervous energy seemed to pour through my body, and I swallowed down some more Jack Daniels in the hopes that somehow it would penetrate my nerves, and calm them. I looked at Sara, and it dawned on me that she gave no signs of feeling the relief that I felt. “For a while, Sara, I thought you and I might be…” I cleared my throat and finished with, “brother and sister.” I was nervous and felt silly saying the words out loud. I laughed a little, watching. She didn’t laugh.

  “No, Adam. Not my father. I shouldn’t have said that I didn’t know him. He was a friend of the family, so to speak. A friend of my parents, anyway.” She reached to the bottle, uncapped it, and poured more whiskey into her glass. She left it uncapped on the table, and drank.

  “Well, this is good, right? I mean, I didn’t intentionally go through your things, but ever since I saw that picture…I couldn’t shake the awful feeling that we were related.” I waited briefly for a reaction to what I said, and seeing none went on, “That’s why I threw up when you told me that you were…well, you know, late. Well, that was the main reason. The oysters and beers didn’t help.”

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly, and then I saw the wheels turn, and understanding in her eyes. She knew the man wasn’t her father, therefore, she never considered that I might have been killing myself with those thoughts. The fact that I was potentially fucking my sister and that she now had a monster inside of her, wasn’t the issue at all for her. These things fell together in my mind, and I slowly began to wonder just what in the hell it was that was bothering her. My stomach groaned as the unknown came into play, yet again.

  “Adam. I don’t know how to say this. I never told anyone. Not my parents, not anyone.” She paused, and I saw that my relief was probably going to be short-lived. “The man used to…” she began crying, and I moved to hold her, but she pushed me away, “He did things…to me…awful things, sexual things…and, I just could never tell anyone. I didn’t know what to do. I was so young!” She cried in earnest now, and a new wave of feeling crashed over me. Sorrow for Sara, disgust for this man and whatever it was he did to make her feel like this, confusion about what to do. I tried again to get closer to her and was again pushed away. I sat confused and numb. I was at a total loss for words, and in classical Fluke fashion, I didn’t know what to do, either.

  “You look so much like him, Adam. So much. And, when you said you were adopted I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he could be your father. And I don’t know what to make of that.” Her tears began to gradually taper off. I sat dumbly, waiting. She was looking at me, and I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  He could still very well be my father! The sick fuck who molested your possibly pregnan
t girlfriend could be your father!

  I couldn’t put an end to the sudden onslaught of anger I felt towards this man. My mouth came open again, and again I closed it, shook my head, and opened it again. Nothing was all that came out. I closed it again.

  “Every now and then, I kind of lose control. I can’t seem to stop it. I look at you…and I do love you. But, then I think of him.” She moved close to me now, on the couch, and pushed her hand through my hair, leaving her hand on the back of my head. “I love you, Adam!”

  I looked at Sara, down to my lap, and back at Sara. I wanted to kiss her, but I didn’t want her to think of that man kissing her. The man that could be my dad. The friend of the family. I felt guilty, as if it were somehow partially my fault.

  “I love you, too, Sara,” I finally said. We watched each other. She pulled me gently towards her, and we held each other.When we finally pulled apart Sara’s eyes were red and puffy from crying, but still beautiful. “You are so beautiful, Sara.”

  “Oh, stop.” She gave me a little push with her hand, and smiled slightly, “I’m not beautiful…I’ve been crying, and everything. I have to look really bad right now and…”

  “Shhhhh…No. You are beautiful.” I said again.

  “Well, thank you. I think.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Um, I do think that we should find some…things out.” She said. I nodded my head in agreement, and she went on, “Well, first, I would like to make an appointment with the doctor to find out if I really am pregnant or not.” She paused, and there was an odd expression on her face. “And, then, I think we should take a little trip to find out something about my past. To find out who certain people are from my past…and maybe find out whether there is any chance that you’re related to that person.” Her eyes were a little misty as she said that last part.

  I nodded my head, again, and my gaze fell on the coffee table. I zoned out for a few seconds, thinking, when my eyes came to rest on the whiskey. “Well, there’s no use in going to bed sober…”I began, shrugging my shoulders and looking at Sara.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” she said, letting a small laugh out, and refreshing our glasses with strong drinks. She handed me mine, and we simultaneously held our glasses up, as if to toast, but neither one of us said anything at first.

  “To luck…the good kind.” I finally said. It was all I could think of.

  “To luck,” she agreed.

  Then we got trashed.

  11.

  I was startled awake by the phone ringing. Sharp pain shot through my head. My first conscious thought was that I was in for an incredible hangover and that I might break down and cry from the awful, shrill, piercing racket that the phone was making. Rubbing my eyes, holding my head, I grabbed at the phone and picked it up. Sara was still sound asleep as I brought it to my face and grunted “Yeah?”

  “Hello. Is this Adam Fluke?” A vaguely familiar-sounding female voice. “Yeah?” I said again.

  “It’s Jennifer,” she paused. “Jennifer from school. Jennifer from the bookstore,” she added emphasis to bookstore, and I glanced over at the clock on the nightstand.

  8 a.m. Shit. I was supposed to open the bookstore today.

  “Oh, Jennifer…I’m really, really sorry. I had some problems…” I began. I tried to quickly think of an excuse for not showing up to work, but my brain just wasn’t functioning.

  “Rough night?” Jennifer asked. I thought about how she had started wearing sweats to work every day, and had talked profusely about her love for track. It made me wonder why a person so into running would choose a school with no track team. Sometimes I didn’t understand anything.

  “You could say that, yeah.” I rubbed my tongue along the roof of my mouth and felt what seemed to be a slimy, bitter film lining it.

  “Sounds like it. I noticed the store wasn’t opened while I was out jogging and stopped to check it out.”

  “Oh.” My mouth tasted like I had been licking mustard out of a dirty ashtray all night.

  “Yeah. I can cover for you, if you need me to.” She was a pretty nice girl, with two loves in life: running the track and running the college bookstore.

  “Thank you, Jen. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I just...can’t even move right now. I owe you.”

  “Yep, yep, yep…and we’re closed next week for Thanksgiving…did you remember that?” she chided me. Why was I always the unreliable one?

  “Well, no. The week after that…I promise…I’ll hook you up.” I glanced at Sara, who was now snoring lightly. “Promise.”

  “Okay, Fluke. I won’t forget this one. Have fun on your day off.”

  “Thanks, Jen. Really.”

  “Bye,” she said. I heard the quiet beeping of the cash register as she tapped the buttons. She was ringing someone up.

  “Bye.” I shut the phone off and set it aside. The glowing red numbers on the digital alarm clock read 8:08 a.m. “Fuck classes,” I said, under my putrid breath, and promptly went back to sleep.

  “Fuhhhck,” I groaned, looking at the clock again…8:45 a.m. The phone shrilled through the house. Sara still snored, far removed from the noisy waking world around her. “Hello?”

  “Good morning, Adam!” It was my mom, famous for her calls at inappropriate times. She was well aware that I avoided rising before nine a.m. at the earliest, yet she consistently called me at the crack of dawn.

  “Hi, mom.” Little fingers of guilt slowly started grabbing at my mind, reminding me that I hadn’t actually spoken to mom since I had met Sara.

  “I got your message saying you moved, but you didn’t leave a number, and you aren’t listed in information! I finally found your friend Sean’s phone number, and called him.” I could hear in her voice that it wasn’t the only information Sean imparted upon her; I hadn’t told her about Sara. Sean wasn’t the gossipy type, but he must have let something slip. My mom was also a predator when it came to needling information out of her unsuspecting prey, which was Sean in this case.

  “Oh, sorry, mom. I thought I left the number on the answering machine. Are you sure I didn’t?”

  My old-school mother, who refused to accept the fact that I had a cell phone. She only called the house phone, and she only looked numbers up in the phone book. She had seen news stories about cell phones supposedly leading to brain cancer and didn’t want to risk contributing to someone’s cancer. She’d never be able to live with herself, she had said.

  “Yeeesss, Adam. I’m sure,” she said, and I heard it again. She sounded a little too gleeful, and I could just imagine her with visions of grandchildren dancing through her head while she sat at the dining room table with her reading glasses on, probably making a grocery list. Little did she know. “How are you doing these days? You haven’t given your poor old mom a call in a while. What’s new?”

  “Oh…I don’t know.” I stalled, trying to clear my head. The pain was back now. Piercing the middle of my forehead, slicing it down the middle like a ripe melon. “I’m giving college another shot…the old college try?” I told her, dodging, avoiding, and throwing in a weak attempt at humor.

  “Well, that’s good, honey. You know what your dad and I say about the importance of an education. You are so smart, and I hate to see you waste it on that Paul’s Pizza Place. You can do anything, you know.”

  “I know, mom.” I didn’t bother to correct her on the name of my former employer; it seemed pointless.

  “But, that isn’t all, is it? Sean told me you moved in with someone.” She paused, trying to lead me into it, but I didn’t say anything. “A girl,” she added.

  Damn. Too early for this.

  “Um, that’s true, mom.”

  “Okay…Are we ever going to get to meet…” she trailed off, once again waiting for me to hand over the information. I don’t think I would have minded, but Mom’s little games were no fun in the state I was in.

  “Sara…Sara DuBeau,” I finished for her, quietly, looking agai
n at Sara who continued to snore.

  “Sara what?”

  “DuBeau, mom.”

  “Sara DuBeau,” she said, and I could tell she was contemplating the ethnicity of the name, trying to figure out what might be wrong with her based on that knowledge.

  My mom was from an old school of thought, the fifties and sixties school that generated many of the needless stereotypes that flew around the world. She was harmless enough with her stereotypes, but they infuriated me often. She once told me that the quality of service at the local smorgasbord restaurant had decreased significantly since “the blacks took over.” I was mortified when she told me this, nearly to the point of sitting mom down and having a talk with her, but the old adage about not teaching an old dog new tricks rang more than true with my old-school mother.

  “That’s pretty. Is that a French name? And, when did you meet Sara DuBeau?” she asked me.

  “Yes, it’s French, and I met her about three months ago.”

  “Well, that’s awfully quick, isn’t it Adam?” The Catholic schoolgirl in her made a brief appearance. I was living in sin.

  “I don’t know, I guess so. But, mom…” I stopped, realizing what I was about to say.

  “But, what, Adam?” she asked me.

  I faltered for a moment, but she already knew what I was going to say. My mom had an instinct for things like this, these matters of the heart. “I love her, mom.”

  “Ahhh. I see. So when do we get to meet her?”

  “Soon, mom. I meant to tell you sooner. Before. I just have had a lot going on.”

  “Okay.”

  “And…I have other things I want to talk to you about, too.” I told her. That’s when it came upon me, a fiery gurgling in my stomach and the immediate necessity of the restroom. The famous Fluke bowels. “Look, mom, I have to go…but, I’ll call you back sometime this week, okay?”

  “Okay, Adam. Your dad wants me to tell you he says hello. We love you, honey.”

  “I love you, too, mom. Bye.”

  “Bye, dear,” She said, and hung up.