by Lynne Hugo
Carley fakes a hollow laugh. “Sure. In some fantasy universe of yours. Why would you think I’d do that? Haven’t you heard? Rehab’s either court order or voluntary. I don’t see any court order, and I don’t see one coming.” From where she’s plunked on the double bed, she leans back against the pillows and looks out the window, trying to appear casual about it.
“He’d best not be out there,” I say. “Look, you love him, right?”
She nods, suspicious.
“Good, then. Because in my experience, people will do anything to protect someone they love. You’ll go into rehab voluntarily for the day treatment program. You’ll live here and not see Roland while you’re in it, or I will put a private investigator on him to document every buy and every sale he makes—I mean photograph or videotape every move—and then all of it will be turned over to the police.”
Carley’s face contorts with disbelief and anger, reddening. “That’s blackmail. You can’t do that.”
“Somehow I doubt I’ll be prosecuted.”
She’s shaking her head. “I’m not going to do it. You’d be having me arrested, too.”
“That might save your life. It’s sure not my preference. But that’s not my choice to make.”
“What do you mean, ‘not your choice’?” Her voice is dregs-bitter, and now she’s crying. “You could choose to treat me like an adult, which I am, and butt out. None of this is your business.”
“You may be right about that.” I sigh. “But I cannot forget how beautiful you were, Carley. Inside and out. I remember when you were little, shining with the horses, my father whispering to me, Your Carla Rose has the gift. Animals just came to you. Horses, dogs, the barn cats. And you were so smart in school, funny, kind. So much promise. So I take a shot—bad choice of words there—at giving it back to you. If I’m wrong, it’s on me.”
“Oh, it’s on you all right. It’s all on you.”
“Here’s your antibiotic,” I say, taking two vials from my pocket and putting a pink capsule from the first one next to the bottle of water on the bedside table. “Please take it now. You can have your painkiller, too.” I parcel out a Percocet. “I brought up a granola bar, to make sure there’s enough in your stomach.”
“Really? I think I can handle it,” she says, mocking, reminding me that she has an exquisite knowledge of narcotics. Her eyes glitter like a distant forest after rain, a forest in which I cannot see the individual trees.
“I need a phone,” she says. “Or is that too much?”
“No phone. The only thing I’m going to enable is your getting to rehab. I’ll take you over there for the intake assessment tomorrow morning.”
“I’m on drugs, you moron. You know, the ones the vet gave me. They won’t take you when you’re using. Or are you saying I can’t have painkillers even though you shot me?”
I hadn’t thought of this, although she could be making it up. “I realize that, Carley,” I lie. “But we can go over and talk. I’ll check with Summer about what you’ll need for your hand, see what the rehab people say, too.”
“Better be careful. They have real doctors around rehab centers y’know, not vets. Real doctors who recognize gunshot wounds. I can tell what happened to me. Wanna bet I won’t?”
I meet her eyes and shrug. “Let the chips fall, Carla. You tell your story, I’ll tell mine. But this drug business is over, one way or the other.”
“She’ll be back, Louetta said, not waiting for a commercial during Wheel of Fortune. “Jewel thinks she’s makin’ some kinda point is all. She’ll be back.” She hadn’t even been trying to solve the puzzles or reminding Hack what letters Vanna had already turned over. She’d been studying her angel collection, which covered every available spot in the living room and needed dusting badly, trying to fight off doubt. The disarray of the room didn’t suggest that the angels were pitching in much.
“No one to blame but yourself,” Hack said to Louetta, his voice filled with I told you so, and then he shut down.
Louetta was trying to buck the two of them up, but she was scared that she’d gone too far. The problem was she’d gone so far that she wouldn’t even know how to cross back over the line if she decided she wanted to. She wasn’t going to throw Cal out. He was her son. It wasn’t right for Jewel to make her choose between her children.
After a five-minute silence, Hack spoke during a commercial. “And you’re not? Makin’ a point? Only your point is stupid and gonna kill us both. We gotta have help. You can’t keep fightin’ with every worker the agency sends. Cal’s useless. Even you’ve gotta admit that.”
“Look, sooner or later the agency is gonna tell Jewel that nobody else works out. She’ll come around that way. And you know it’s true. Nobody takes care of us like Jewel.” Louetta wheeled her chair the few feet between them and piled Hack’s dirty dishes together, moving them off the end table next to him over to the coffee table where he was less likely to knock them over.
“So call her up and tell her you’re sorry. Tell her you’ll have Cal move on.”
“Jewel can’t have her way about everything. It’ll work out. She’ll settle down.” She was quiet for a calculated minute, then said, “You could do something. You could give him the money.”
“We need that money to live on. Let him get a job.”
They’d been having some version of this argument daily during their TV shows, the exhaust of their words adding to the summer heat of the room, as Cal never thought to close the blinds according to where the sun was beating against the side of the house or open certain windows according to the possibility of cross-ventilation. Louetta could manage blinds but not opening or closing windows, especially the ones in the living room, which stuck and were too high for someone in a wheelchair, anyway.
Hack, who rarely raised his voice, finally shouted. “You’ve always picked Cal over Jewel. You pushed her too far this time. Too far.”
Like everyone, Louetta had her secrets, and the one about Cal was a doozy. Truth be told, which it never would be, there was a small chance he was Hack’s but a lot more chance he wasn’t. The alternative was a terrible idea, regardless of its likelihood: it would make Cal the result of a disastrous evening with a married man, one she’d fallen for like a rock through scotch and water, all chiseled good looks and attentive enticement. Louetta had always been one to believe in love at first sight and thought her guardian angel had led her right to it. Turned out the man didn’t see it the same way, even said the notion was a bunch of hooey, yet she’d never forgotten him. But had that made her favor Cal?
“You and Jewel, all you two ever loved was the horses. Did’ja ever think, maybe Cal loved me?”
“No horse is dumb enough to chase its tail like that.” Hack said. “Never once occurred to you he knew how t’ play you? Never occurred t’ you, a girl needs her mother?”
“I guess nothing ever occurred to you, sittin’ up at the bar chuggin’ down those beers? Wish I had a nickel for every time I had to go up there to haul you home.”
“And had a couple yourself before we left,” Hack muttered under his breath. Not quite quietly enough.
“Oh right. You callin’ me a drunk? You think I never knew you got Cal to bring you booze? I didn’t go blind y’know.”
And Jewel would come around. Though when Jewel came back, Louetta decided she was going to be nicer, tell her “thank you.” It was possible Hack had some point in there somewhere. There were things Jewel did for her that no one else knew. Like the times Louetta didn’t make it to the bathroom, and she’d wait all day or the rest of the night for Jewel to come help her. It was embarrassing, even with the padded pants Jewel had been buying her.
When Louetta heard a car out on the road, her heart would rise thinking, See, I was right, she’s come back. Late afternoons, when she knew Jewel was finished at the office, she’d position herself near the window because Jewel just might come by to check on the horses. Louetta had a plan. She was going to call out the open window.
“Jewel,” she’d say. “Come see me, girl.” If Jewel was too stubborn and kept walking toward the barn, Louetta would break down and add, “Please.” She might even go on to say, “I miss you.” Which was so true that she couldn’t rehearse the words in her mind; Louetta wasn’t one to cry.
Sometimes Louetta couldn’t fight off fear. What if she was wrong and Jewel never came? And there was more: her body was acting up. Sometimes it was hard to breathe. Louetta attributed it to the stifling heat when it got to be like a stone on her chest. If Jewel had been around, she might have told her, but she wasn’t talking to these strangers the county kept sending in who didn’t know how to cut a sandwich straight. So far she’d mainly managed to make it to the bathroom on time, but it was a constant worry. She was trying not to drink much liquid, and she’d cut out taking her water pills.
It was a matter of hanging on. Nadine was lost, but this much would work out, and she would have her other two children. Her guardian angels would come through in the end and bring Jewel back.
The Right Thing
EDDIE PROPPED OPEN THE back door into his in-laws’ kitchen with his knee. “Cal?” he panted. “Wanna come give me a hand here? Cal!” Both arms hugged overloaded paper grocery bags like too-heavy toddlers, and his left hand clutched the handle of a plastic jug of milk, sweating as much as he. The heat in the yard was enough to make a camel beg for mercy. It hadn’t rained in days, not that there was any want of humidity. The screen door slapped his heel and caught on it. “Cal!”
“I’m comin’, and shut up. Person sleepin’ here.” Cal’s voice came muffled by walls and doors, but there were no footsteps and no sign of him. Eddie waited, expecting help to appear. When none came, he dumped the groceries on the table, one bag spilling.
“Dammit, Cal, I need a hand. There’s two more bags in the car, and I’m dyin’ here.”
“I said I’m comin’.” Agitated now. “This ain’t exactly something I can leave half done.”
Eddie was already thoroughly pissed off. Cal had called him at home and said he’d have to bring groceries. Eddie was in such a hurry to get off the phone before Jewel heard him talking to Cal that he’d chopped off Cal’s story and just said, What d’ ya need? It didn’t take a genius to figure Jewel’s family was in its usual clusterfuck.
He kicked the screen door open with a disgusted sigh and went back to the truck. When he returned, awkward with the last two overfull bags, the kitchen was still empty. “Dammit, Cal!” got no response and he had to put one down to let himself in. Eddie set the bags on the counter and started toward the living room but was diverted when he heard sound from the bathroom. He went down the hall on cat feet and listened outside the door. Louetta was crying.
Cal’s voice came through the hollow door. “It’s okay, Ma. Don’t worry about it. You wash your face n’ come on out. Here, I’ll turn the cold water on for you. I gotta go help Eddie now before he shits himself.”
Louetta said something that Eddie couldn’t make out. “Ma, that was a joke. I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Cal said. “ S’okay. No need to cry.”
Eddie pulled himself back and had almost made it to the kitchen when Cal opened the bathroom door. “Hey, Hack,” he covered, calling toward the living room as if that was where he’d been headed all along.
Cal saw right through him. “In the bedroom. Asleep, like I already said.” He narrowed his eyes. “So what’s the emergency?”
“The groceries! The ones you wanted? Some of that stuff needs to be refrigerated, and it’s about ninety-five in this oven you call a house.”
“And you couldn’t find the refrigerator? Jesus, man, I thought you were a foreman. At what? A sheltered workshop?” Cal wasn’t budging from the hallway.
“I don’t need this.” The groceries could melt themselves into an indoor swimming pool for all Eddie cared. He’d be damned if he was going to put them away.
“Buy your damn wife a decent wig and get her over here. They’re her parents.”
“I hate to break it to you, buddy, but they’re your parents, too. The only person whose parents they’re not is me. So fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” Then it struck Eddie funny, the bit about the horse, and he chuckled.
“What’s so amusing?”
“The horse you rode in on. Y’know. You actually do have a horse here. Bunch of ’em.”
Cal fought it but broke. His missing tooth showed when he chuckled, obvious as a wheel missing a spoke. The tension between the two men seemed to dissipate or just couldn’t keep its shape in the heat.
“Weather sucks, don’t it?” Cal said, leaning against the wall. “Hot. Last night I slept in the tack room. Air conditioning,” he added when Eddie looked quizzical.
“Oh, yeah. Speaking of horses, they okay?” Eddie guessed it wouldn’t be altogether bad if there were some problem with them, one to scare Jewel enough to come.
“Couldn’t tell by me. Right number is in the pasture, so none’s dead.” No longer playing offense, Cal went on by Eddie into the kitchen. Eddie followed him, thinking Cal was going to put the groceries away. Instead, Cal grabbed the crust of a sandwich off a dirty plate and stuffed it in his mouth, then wiped his face with his hand as if something were finished.
“Where’s the agency person?” Eddie said.
“She’s thrown out two ‘emergency substitutes.’” Cal etched quotation marks in the air with his forefingers. “Stubborn old woman. First one could cook, too. I mean cook. Ma picks a fight, bitches ’em right out the door.”
“Told ya.” Palms-up shrug.
“Yeah. You told me.” He shook his head. “Crazy old bat. You wondering why there’s no food? For one, I got no keys to Carla’s piece of crap in the driveway, which makes it tough to use. Anyway, Ma insisted the agency girl that came yesterday take her to the store with her when she was going to get groceries. Right there, I knew was the end. Tried to warn the chick, but she’s goin’, ‘Oh me, I’ll be fine. See, I’m, like, trained to deal with the elderly and disabled.’” Cal said the last in a high mincing tone, flipping his wrists forward. “She was cute, y’know, and I liked t’ watch her bend over to pick up Dad’s cane, but, hell, then I just shook my head and told her t’ have at it. Knew what was gonna happen.”
“Why? You ever done it?” Antagonism, but Cal didn’t seem to pick it up.
“Did Jewel ever take Ma to the store with her?” Cal said.
“Nah, she bought groceries on the way here.”
“That’s cause Jewel actually knows what she’s doin’. ’Cept when it comes to hairstyles. What’s that about?” Eddie knew he should keep it to himself how much he agreed about Jewel’s hair, but it was too hard. The men shook their heads, back in concert, and Cal went on. “Soon as you put Ma in the car, which takes the first hour, all you’re doin’ is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”
“Huh?”
Cal backed up to lean against a counter and laughed. “Shit, man, they never made it out the driveway in that poor chick’s little agency car. A Toyota Tercel, little Tinkertoy, man. Now you know the size of Ma, her with her wheelchair to get out the door, down two steps, across the gravel. Wouldn’t fit in the trunk or backseat, of course, but Ma still wants to go, says she’ll sit in the car with the air on, or maybe they’ll have one of those motorized shopping carts she can ride. So, like forty minutes later, there’s Ma finally shoveled into the front seat with her knees wrapped around her ears all the while it’s a hundred six in the shade, both of ’em sweatin’ like pigs, and then the agency chick loses it when Ma says oops, she has to go to the bathroom. The chick drops the f-bomb, which Ma’s virgin ears only heard a million times before, but Ma flips out and bombs her right back along with a few hundred other choice names. It takes another fifteen minutes for her to untangle Ma and get her out of the car, both of ’em sweatin’ and swearin’ so bad the fire ants dove for cover, and the agency chick zooms off, leaving Ma in her wheelchair in a cloud of Toyota dust.”
“She q
uit?”
“Or Ma threw her out. Or they spent the time fightin’ about who could do it first. Dunno. Didn’t wanna know. I stayed in the house till the chick was gone. Then I got Ma back in.”
“Jesus.” As if Cal had handed Eddie a little snapshot out of his wallet, they looked at it together and then at each other, both shaking their heads while the image animated in their minds. The men had a moment of silent communion and then erupted into laughter.
“Shit creek …” Cal managed to get out.
“Paddle on the bottom about a half mile back,” Eddie choking on mirth, in accord.
Cal used his grungy undershirt, the muscle type, to wipe the sweat off his face, and as he did, the scar on the web of his hand moved across his forehead. Jewel’s teeth, defending herself in a different lifetime. Eddie thought Jewel would shoot him, shoot to kill if she saw him standing here all easy, laughing with Cal. He swallowed his trail of chuckles like too much spit several times, guilty, confused by his lapse into camaraderie. He took a step backward, which put him against the refrigerator. His head went down into both hands as he tried to clear his mind. Too much at stake, too much. Sometimes you just had to reach down into the muck and pull out what you had to save, he thought. Do the right thing, Eddie, and things will work out in the end, his mother used to say. Back when she was alive, she used to annoy the crap out of him with her advice. Now, sometimes it took his breath away how much he missed her, now that he had no one to ask, What’s the right thing?
“Hey, man, want a beer?” Cal said. “Just keep it on the QT.”
“No. Yeah.”
Cal laughed. He went into the hallway and toward his parents’ bedroom. “Ma, you need anything?” he called in that direction.
A moment later he was back. “Sweet. Both asleep.” He opened the refrigerator and rummaged in the far back on the bottom shelf. “Got it pretty well hidden here. Old buddy of mine brings stuff now and then, but I run low. Appreciate it if you could bring more pretty soon or the keys to that heap out there. You got ’em?”
Eddie popped the beer Cal handed him and ignored the question. If he got the keys from Jewel it would be perfectly obvious that he’d been out here, and his ass would be grass for Jewel to mow. “Look, man,” he said, unconsciously falling a bit into Cal’s lingo and rhythm, “you need cash?” He was trying to figure what it would take to get Cal gone so Jewel might take over again.