Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  I still felt punctured. The IV fluid stuck out of my wrist and it all seemed so fucking perfect, for I’d be dying from a needle soon enough. The plastic hospital bed crinkled each time I moved. I lay there as if in my own casket, an open one, but this funeral home would be by invites only. Mom and Dad would be embarrassed to explain how their daughter died, so it would be a private, exclusive affair. Here lies our daughter. Finally, she’s dead and will stop causing so many problems.

  “We do believe you,” my mom said. “We know it was your first time relapsing after many months. We know, that is why you overdosed. Your body didn’t have the tolerance, it couldn’t handle it. Plus, doctors say there was fentanyl inside. Fentanyl. This is how people die. Tara.”

  I turned my head on the plastic pillow case. Without my Hippy-trippy mom, I’d have probably sliced my wrists deep enough to let everything spill out. I still may.

  “Do you know what it’s like seeing you two here? I hate being the cause of all your problems. Why don’t you just let me die.”

  “I will do everything to keep you alive. Everything,” my dad said.

  I waited to feel the burn of his eyes, staring at me, waiting for me to look back, like he always did in times like these. But not now. His eyes looked everywhere but at me, as if tracing an unseen bug flying about the room.

  “People are running out of options to help you,” my mom said. “In the end, it’s up to you to find out if you’re more scared of dying, or more scared of not using heroin again.”

  “You’re just repeating shit the therapist said, Mom, you know that. It’s easy for people like you.”

  “It’s him!” my dad said with a thunder-clap, and I wondered what took him so long to get angry. “It’s always been him.”

  “Or it’s you!” I shot back. “Ever since the day you gave me that first pill, so I wouldn’t miss States.”

  I hadn’t pulled that one out in a while, but this bomb was a perfect shot. I knew it hurt. It was the perfect kryptonite for my super-dad. After an injured knee was going to keep me out of the state championship soccer game my junior year, and the doctor’s cortisone shot did nothing, my dad refused to give up. He never gives up. He gave me one of my gramma’s OxyContin, and I ran without pain. One worked good, two worked better. The energy that filled my body was glorious. I had met my soulmate.

  We lost, in a shootout, but it wasn’t long before I was busting into my grandmother’s medicine cabinet.

  Reminding my dad about my first pill never failed to send him guilt-tripping, and I got ready for him to scream back in self-defense, but he said nothing. He’d given up. This wasn’t a hospital; it was my hospice.

  I glanced at the machine next to me. Blood pressure was 110 over 64, my heart rate 88. My insides hollowed out. Last three days, they’d been giving me suboxone, and this morning was my last dose. If I went back to the NA meetings, it would be clear I’d relapsed again. I’d have a flock of vulture men coming over to sponsor me, promising to help me stay sober, pulling my chest into theirs a bit too tight, giving me their phone numbers, promising salvation.

  Stacey. I will get Stacey to be my sponsor. But Brett will be at that NA meeting, looking for me, expecting me.

  My stomach gurgled, the insides squishy from hospital Jello, apple sauce, and grilled cheese sandwiches. The noise from my hospital roommate’s TV hurt. All of it was too high–pitched and squeaky. Commercial voices talked on and on about things like having whiter looking teeth.

  “It’s not Brett’s fault. It’s me. Something about him, I don’t know what it is. Like we were born to either hate or love each other forever. Maybe there’s nobody who knows me like he does, who loves me like he does.”

  Another argument starter, but instead, silence.

  On the TV, a car commercial. If you act now, you can get zero percent financing.

  Mom and Dad had no energy to fight. They were as tired as I was. All of them just part of the sickness, wishing they could cut the cancer out, but unable to, Mom loving too loose, Dad loving too tight.

  “You haven’t heard from him, have you?” my dad finally asked. “I bet he’s on the run, and will never come back to you. To drop your body off at the hospital like that and then dash? That’s not love. He’s a coward.”

  My mom came to my side as if to protect me from his words. Her familiar fingers brushed my hair and pushed the black strands off my forehead. The touch sent warm waves down my spine that I never wanted to stop. When I was little and got sick, Mom would come into my room to check if I was feverish by gently placing a hand on one side of my face. I loved how it felt on my cheek and pretended to be asleep. Just lay there with my mom standing nearby and felt her skin against mine.

  This wasn’t the first hospital bed of mine she’d stood by. I’d overdosed before, and mom found me and took me to the emergency department. Another time I had tried to kill myself with a flurry of razor slashes and was involuntary committed for 72 hours. Not long after walking out of that psych hospital, I was shooting up some heroin.

  And there I was, going back home, again. The social worker gave me referrals for follow-up care to all the usual places (I had already been to them all). The drive home was full of awkward silence, waiting for lights to change from red to green, resisting the urge to glance up at the mirror and see Dad’s eyes looking back at me. All of us were gauging each other’s energy, looking for intentions, deceit, plans for what lay ahead when we got back home. They were terrified of me going out to get high again. They had every right to be scared.

  T-Rex, our Boston Terrier, slept in my bed that night. I lay there awake listening to his breath rustle in his nose and feeling the heat radiate from his body. I laid my hand on his side and felt his heart beating underneath, a heart I was braking bit by bit. Dad told me he’d sleep in my bed even when I was off somewhere, gone for days at a dope house or a treatment center.

  I was his drug, never staying for long, any comfort I provided only temporary, and only made cruel by my absence.

  God damn I wanted to just walk out the front door, but instead of leaving I lay there and soaked in the silence of the empty house. When the dark silence hit its highest note, I pretended I had died. I imagined that my parents had gone to the hospital to identify my body, then came back home in silent shock and flowing tears. I was a ghost, haunting them, wandering the hallways, still looking for money, still trying to get high.

  My parents used to have locks on their doors to stop me from stealing (I’d unscrewed the locks when home alone), but they kept it cracked these days to hear if I was sneaking out at night. Hard to believe they could sleep at all, unless, perhaps, they’d given up on me.

  By 4 a.m. I finally fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until I heard my dad outside my door.

  “Wake up Tara. You need to eat. You’re going to start hitting meetings. Every day. I’m driving, and waiting outside in the parking lot, and then driving you home.”

  I could feel his skin vibrating with agitation. Maybe the anger I’d been waiting for was finally there. Whatever it was, the world was different now. Coming out of an overdose alive had put a different shade onto the world, like when you go into a dark theater and come out to daylight. Noises were sharp, like tiny bits of glass scratching at my ear, and the walls whined like they had violins playing unseen behind them. The sunlight hurt where before it seemed safe. Somewhere inside me, above my stomach but below my heart, a chunk had been sucked right out of me. Even though I survived the overdose, life seemed not worth living but death not worth it either. I kept waiting for someone to come tap me on my shoulder and whisper, Psst… excuse me. You’ve had enough of this life. We’re taking you out. And I’d be removed from existence.

  But nope, I was still expected to move forward, and to do so clean and sober.

  I started going to NA meetings each day. I cooked eggs for dinner once, did the dishes afterward, scheduled a haircut, and thought about jobs. I called Coach Dawn, my high school soccer coach, who said
I could still come back to be an assistant once I got my shit together. My shit wasn’t together, not just yet, so instead I just waited as time dragged by, me always out of sync with the clocks. Always waiting for something, a ship on the horizon that would not show, carrying the cargo of my real life while I lived this fake one.

  In moments of clarity, I knew what I was waiting for: Brett to show up. The voice of my dope cravings was silent because it knew Brett would show up soon. Then it would show its ivory fangs and roar: Feed me. Make yourself happy. You know you can’t live without it. Go ahead and pretend to be clean, you’ll come back. You always do.

  Sometimes I saw chances to take cash from my parents and imagined how many days in a row the haul would get me high. No need, Brett will be here. Sometimes I peered out the window, waiting to see his Jeep creeping out front. It’s okay, Brett. I understood why you dumped me at the hospital. I’m not mad.

  I kept these thoughts to myself and sat near Stacey at each NA meeting I went to. I finally got her number, but never dropped the will-you-sponsor-me bomb. I did text her once each day, and Stacey wrote back things like: Stop half-assing. We all see it. Go to bed clean tonight—come with me tomorrow.

  So I did and started to follow Stacey to each NA meeting, tiny crumbs of contentment feeding me enough to keep me going. My spirit took root in sand. The air I breathed seemed foreign, and I exhaled fears that had kept my defective cogs chugging along.

  At each NA meeting, I’d scan the crowd for Brett, oftentimes tracing my wrist tattoo with my fingertip as if rubbing a genie bottle thinking poof, he’d appear. But nothing. No Brett.

  The day I got the tattoo, we’d been staring into each other’s eyes, light massages, both of us naked and my fleshy white skin was clean from a steamy shower. “Your eyes hypnotize when you’re high,” he said, “like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.” Soon after, I was in a smoky basement getting inked by a tattoo artist who’d learned his trade in prison. Going over each letter these days was like reading braille, and I could hear Brett’s voice through my fingertips. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

  Weeks went by, and the memories of Brett stopped oozing and started to scab. Holes inside started to heal, scar tissue started to form. I spent time writing dark poems with cartoon pictures in my notebook. I jump-started my quadricep muscles by doing weights in my basement. Squats, crunches, lat-pulls, time on the stair-stepper. My insides were getting squeezed out in poison sweat, all of it the venom of the snake.

  But no matter what I did, when the pain of being alive hit, the voice inside begged me to get high. You know what will fix this? You deserve the warm embrace you long for. You already proved you could stop, so just use once. Just once. The defective part burrowed deep, waiting to show its head after the tiniest frustrations hit—a computer freezing up or needing to reboot, a phone call from a telemarketer, my parents nit-picking me about meetings, waking up each day—anything triggered me. I fought back. I spoke with T-Rex, listened to Slipknot, and ate all kinds of chocolate. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrappers lay crumpled by my bedside and surrounded me as if to ward off demons. Anything to keep the dam from breaking loose.

  And it was getting easier, each day better than the last. I started to realize how much Brett really did love me, for only someone who loved me would set me free like he had. He let me go to be my own person, just a tattoo to remember him by. He knew not to come around. Wherever he was, he knew that I was safe and okay.

  My dad still insisted on driving me to NA meetings and waiting in the parking lot. Each day I waited for his post-overdose blow-up, but instead we just sat in awkward silence. Gone were the rage-filled lectures, the accusatory shouts about my lies. It was all somehow stuck inside his chest, and at times, I felt like poking a pin into his head to let them whistle right out.

  At each NA meeting, I’d hang by Stacey’s side, the NA prophetess, then I’d drag my black leather boots across the parking lot pavement, slow and deliberate enough to strip the bottom right off, making Dad wait.

  Dad would drive home as the night sky darkened, and rather than shooting north on Telegraph he went east on 8 Mile, and then pulled into the driveway of mom’s new project: ‘Garden of Friends.’ I remembered working with my mom and dad alongside the smart dude with scraggly-facial hair, digging his grave, fucking around, having lots of laughs. The guy was high as hell the whole time, I knew it, I could see the weed in his eyes, and there we were planting more seeds. Basil, sage, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, an eggplant transplanted from our own windowsill.

  Dad took me there at night as if to stand guard. He would aim his headlights at the place and I got used to watching the beams of light shine across the tiny bits of garden growth, like gazing at a Chia Pet’s little hair plugs coming out of the earth. All of it felt a touch miraculous, but my dad didn’t seem happy. He felt heavy. Tiny sighs under his breath. He wasn’t sitting there with answers, but with questions. The silence between us was just as loud as the screams of earlier years. The radio was on but not loud enough to tell which song, the car running, and it felt like someone outside was watching us from the shadows.

  “What are you waiting for, Dad? What are you looking at here? I mean, I don’t mind it, kind of like it out here, but why?”

  “Your mom worked hard on this. I want to make sure it’s okay and not hurting.”

  “You think someone is trying to hurt it?”

  “Everything has something trying to get inside and hurt it. I wake up each day and my job is to stop the outside from getting in.” I watched his eyes trace the liner on the windows and across this dashboard, something that he helped design.

  “I failed you in this,” he said.

  “Failed? We all fail, nobody wins, but, you think you caused this?” I motioned my hands over my heart, in a little circle, and I swear my own heart beat back in response. “You say that like I’m already dead and gone, or like I can’t learn to protect myself.”

  He turned to face me, too dark to read his eyes, but I felt his smile as much as saw it.

  “No, it’s not over,” he said with promise. “It’s just starting. I never give up, because things can change fast. You were meant for more. You’re just a seed that’s been planted, and my job is to pluck the weeds so you can grow.”

  Usually that kind of talk would make me nauseous, but I could listen to him talk in the darkness of the car at night parked by the garden. There was something different here, I was a witness to some hidden spot inside his skull, some line between us erased. His life of neck-choking ties and schedules, men with secrets learned in college; none of that mattered. Once he turned off the headlights and the last light on earth seemed to go off, the walls between us disappeared into the black.

  But on that night, something caught his attention. As soon as the headlight beams spread over the sprouting plants, I saw it, too. Despite the scarecrow stuck on a wooden pole like a crucified straw man, someone had not been scared off and had trampled over the garden.

  “You see that? Someone’s been trespassing. The tomato plants been messed with for sure, maybe more.”

  He slammed his door, dashed into the darkness, and left me alone. I felt suffocated, so I opened the door and swung my legs to dangle outside. The night air felt good on my face and my sober skin bathed in its pitch-black coolness. It brought with it familiar scents, the world like a deep ocean at night, and I wondered what type of creatures were swimming in the distance.

  And creatures there were. I heard one, too dark to see, but I could hear it approach.

  A rattle-rattle, clank, clank, clank, rattle-rattle, was moving along the sidewalk. It got louder, as if coming for me, a shark below the surface, the sound just its fin. Then I saw it.

  A grocery cart with rattly wheels, full of clothes and garbage bags. Plastic bags that wouldn’t fit on the mound were tied on and hung over the side. The rusty metal cart was coming toward me at high speed. I was just an iceberg, watching a ship on a
collision course.

  Last second, I held out my hand, and the cart came right into my palm. I closed my fingers over the cold metal and it stopped.

  I heard some grunts and saw the shadow of a person. I felt it gaze into me, and couldn’t help but gaze back. He moved closer, and I could see he had the weathered skin of a man from the streets, old leather armor over his bones, a full beard splotched on his face. Seemed camouflaged for street survival.

  “Sorry. We’ll be out of your way in a second,” I said. I could hear my dad bustling about the garden, but he was nowhere in sight.

  “Nonsense,” the man responded. “No need to move, my girl. Stay here, stay here, in fact, I know you’ve been expecting me. My girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”

  Panic shot up my spine and I reached for the car door, but his cart was in the way. His words were too familiar for such a random encounter, something inside them stirred up memories.

  “Think logically, I am no harm to you. I can’t hurt you, you realize, you are stronger than me. Those arms, those legs, they’re strong. We always knew you were the strong one. Your dad made you, but he doesn’t know you.”

  Blood simmered and then shot through my veins. This man and his quirks had to be banished. I waited for his next move, ready to strike back if needed. He was rummaging through his cart, looked in one bag, mumbled, “Nope,” then looked in another. “Nope,” and then a third. “Yep! Yep! That’s it,” and he flashed discolored teeth in a smile.

  I finally remembered him.

  “Lorenzo, it’s me. You met me, you met my mom. Lorenzo, we’re leaving, and we’ll get out of your way.”

  The Lorenzo I met weeks ago would have walked away with a grunt, but something had changed inside this man, had taken him over. He paid my words no mind. Fat, dirty fingers fumbled with something in his hands. Everything on him shook. He finally had a grip on whatever treasure he’d found.

  A prescription bottle.

  I could make out the white-ridged top and the printed label wrapped around the brown plastic. He held it up to my eye and spoke with delight.