“You know it.”
We take our seats on the bed. Clark’s eyes turn to me. “Truth or dare, little brother.”
“I think we’ve had enough daring for the time being. Truth.”
His green eyes don’t leave mine as he pauses, pondering what to ask. Finally he says, “Describe me in three words.”
Vivi looks at me with anticipation. I take a sip from my glass and roll the question around in my head. There are so many words flooding my mind, most of which probably shouldn’t be said aloud. They flow through my consciousness like a river.
Narcissistic.
Self-obsessed.
“Egocentric.”
Brash.
Audacious.
“Bold.”
Arrogant.
Ignorant.
“Proud.”
I can see by the expression on his face that he doesn’t know what to make of these words. He seems neither pleased nor displeased.
“Okay,” he says, his mood less cheerful than it was earlier. “Your turn.”
“I choose you, Clark. Truth or dare?”
“Considering I’m still traumatized from my last dare, let’s go with truth.”
There is one question that has been on my mind lately, but I hesitate, not knowing how it’d be received if I were to ask it. After a pause, I decide to forge ahead. “We built a fort in the woods together when we were kids. Do you remember that?”
He nods, waiting to hear where this is going.
“We spent weeks building that thing. Then when it was complete, you kicked me out and let your friends take over. Why did you do that?”
He remains silent and motionless, not knowing if I’m being serious. When he realizes that I am, he shakes his head.
“Why? Because we were kids, Coen! Kids do cruel and awful things. Please don’t tell me you’ve been holding on to this for that many years.”
I notice Vivi look down at her hands, and my face goes flush with embarrassment. I don’t answer him, but he goes on. “Do you want me to tell you how terrible I was as a brother? Is that what you want to hear? Fine. I was the worst fucking brother. In fact, I still am. I am just an awful, egocentric, poor excuse for a human being who doesn’t give a shit about anything but himself.”
“Do you at least regret it?” I shoot back. The hum begins in my ears. It’s faint, but it’s there.
Clark’s face softens. “Of course I regret it,” he says, his tone gentler. “I regret a lot of things, Coen. How many times do I need to apologize to prove that to you?”
I don’t answer him. The room is silent except for the rumble of the storm outside. “Your turn,” I manage to say.
“Coen, truth or dare?” he responds immediately.
“Truth.”
His eyes try to penetrate mine. He has a question he wants to ask, I can tell, but he’s debating whether or not to ask it. I know him well enough to know he will go for it in the end.
“Do you blame me for what happened eight years ago?” His tone is steady and resolute.
“What do you mean?”
I know exactly what he means.
“For what happened with Adam and everything that followed — do you blame me?”
I feel the shadow run its fingertips along my arms. It awakens every cell in my body.
I can’t speak, but I look into Clark’s eyes. He already knows the answer.
“This isn’t necessary,” Vivi says. “Let’s move on.”
“This is necessary,” he protests. “Coen, you have punished me for the past eight years. I’ve just been taking it — the constant abuse, the coldness. I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.”
“So you’re the victim here?” My voice is sharp. The needles dance freely throughout my body now.
“I’m not the only one who did nothing,” he says, his tone louder and bolder. There is no going back now. “Everybody else saw what was happening to you, and nobody did a thing. Yet I am the one who is made to suffer still for that mistake we all made. I want to know why.”
It sounds like the storm is inside my head now. It screams through my ears. The patterned wallpaper in this tiny candlelit room begins to close in on me. I need to get out.
“Where are you going?” I hear Vivi say over the shrieking of the storm. Pulling on my jacket, I march out the door and into the night. I don’t know where I will go or what I will do, but I need to get away.
I take one of the electric lanterns that line the halls and run down the stairs. The shock of the rain as it strikes my face and the force of the wind bring relief. My nerves are both numb and on fire. The storm permeates my body inside and out.
I walk toward the expanse of darkness beyond the hotel. As I approach the swimming pool, a hand grabs me firmly by the arm from behind. I spin around to see Clark, his sweatshirt and shorts already drenched.
“Coen, stop it!” he screams over the noise of the rain as it pounds our bodies and the tiles below us. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You want to know if I blame you for what happened eight years ago?” I shout. “Yes. I do blame you. I blame you for leaving me alone with Adam that night. I blame you for making me feel like it was my fault. I blame you for doing nothing to help me.” The words spill from my mouth so forcefully that my body trembles.
“Why me?” he screams, rainwater rolling down his face like so many tears. “We were all to blame. Nobody did anything. Why am I still being punished?”
“You are my brother. You’re supposed to protect me. More than anyone else in my life, you had the power to help me. From the time we were young, you could have made me stronger.” I pause, breathing heavily. “Instead, you just made me feel more defective. More damaged.”
The storm rages around us. I’ve never seen him look so helpless as when he says, “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything you can do.”
“I can’t change the past, but I won’t give up on you again. You can push me away, but I’m not going anywhere. Do you hear me?”
Suddenly the sky above cracks open as a streak of lightning explodes toward us. Its veins splinter overhead, illuminating the darkness with brilliant white light. We cower to the ground, guarding our faces with our hands, reminded of how small and perishable we are.
I prepare myself for the worst as the jagged bolt dances in the sky before connecting with the earth. A deafening sound crackles through the air, and sparks erupt from where the lightning has struck. From our vantage point by the swimming pool, we can see only the top portion of the bolt’s victim: the neon sign of Casa Paraíso.
Clark and I seize this moment of safety to run for cover. We slip and slide along the wet tiles before finding refuge in the nearest covered hallway. Eyes wide and chests heaving, we huddle inside a stairwell and lean against the wall to regain composure.
We look at one another with a renewed sense of mortality, and there is nothing to do but laugh. We burst into fits of hysterics, wrapping our arms around each other while we shake and shiver.
“We’re invincible!” Clark screams at the sky.
There is a sudden crashing noise so loud and near it could only be the hotel’s neon sign colliding with the pavement below. Clark’s eyes meet mine. “The car!” we scream in unison.
I hold the electric lantern in front of us as we run down the hall, across the pink carpeted floor of the hotel lobby, and out the front door. What was once a beacon of fluorescent nostalgia is now a charred pile of metal and glass. The outlines of the palm tree and waves are twisted into abstract shapes. The individual letters have managed to remain mostly intact, now scattered across the parking lot. The O lies at our feet. Smoke drifts toward the sky from the heap of debris.
Clark and I walk carefully along the wall of the hotel, stepping over fragments of the damage. Once we get to the car, we see that it remains untouched. The sign landed directly beside it, but there doesn’t seem to be a scratch on the car’s shin
y black exterior. We look at each other, and for the second time tonight there is nothing to do but laugh.
“Maybe the gods were on our side all along,” he says.
SANTOS SERVICIO AUTOMOTRIZ
Thirteen days after the crash
I awake in the morning to stillness. The sounds of rain and thunder no longer scream from outside our room or inside my head. The curtained windows are orange with warmth. The sun has returned.
I roll over to see that Clark’s bed is empty. Even the sheets and blankets have been stripped off. Sitting up and rubbing my eyes, I’m surprised to find the missing bedding stretched across pieces of furniture. The sheets hang from the top of the vanity mirror and fan outward to four wicker chairs arranged around the dresser. Blankets are draped across the chairs, creating thin walls of a makeshift tent.
“Clark? Are you in there?”
He appears all of a sudden, his head poking out from the small opening in the middle of the tent. “Good morning, sunshine.”
“What the heck are you doing?”
“I built a fort,” he says as though it should be obvious. “It’s not quite as elaborate as the one we built as kids, but I think it’s pretty decent under the circumstances.”
I shake my head at how ridiculous he looks crouching through the doorway of his blanket fort. “Clark, this is stupid.”
“Just shut up and come inside,” he says before disappearing.
I groan, unsure of what to do, before throwing my hands up in surrender. I lower myself to the floor and crawl inside on my hands and knees. The interior of the fort is lined with pillows and lit by the flame of the Santa Muerte candle. Clark is seated on a cushion with his back against the dresser. He offers a box of biscuits that I happily accept.
“You’re right,” I say, taking a seat beside him. “It doesn’t quite have the same craftsmanship as our forest fort, but there is a certain cozy charm.”
“I went for a wicker-and-floral motif,” he says, “to confuse the enemy.”
“Smart.”
His smile slowly vanishes, and his face becomes serious. “I know this doesn’t make up for how terrible I was to you when we were kids, but I hope it’s a start.”
“You didn’t have to do any of this,” I say. “You were right. We were just kids. I need to let go of the past.”
“There’s something broken between us. I want to fix it.”
I don’t know what to say. I just nod.
“Last night, you said that I made you feel more damaged. What did I do to make you feel that way?”
I lean back against the dresser with a silent sigh. “I always felt like there was something wrong with me. You just had a way of reminding me of it. It wasn’t always your fault. You just being yourself was enough. You were always stronger and cooler and more confident. I suppose I wanted you to give me some of what you had, even just a fraction of it.”
“Growing up, I thought you despised me,” he says. “It seemed like everything about me was the opposite of what you wanted to be. I never thought you would have wanted, or needed, my help with anything.”
“It would have helped if I knew how to talk to you then.”
“At least we’re talking now.”
I look down at my hands.
“If it’s any consolation, I was never as cool or confident as I tried to appear,” he says.
“That may be true, but at least you were strong.”
His laughter fills the tent. “You should know better than to believe I am anything but a helpless child, scared that he’ll never be a real man. I’m damaged too, just like everybody else.”
“You? Damaged? Since when?”
“Always, little brother.”
My eyebrows crinkle with skepticism. “I can believe you’re not quite as perfect as you want everyone to think you are, but you’re still a modern-day prince in most people’s eyes.”
“Did you know that I still get nervous when I’m around Dad? He terrifies me.”
“Seriously?”
“My palms start sweating and my ears go red whenever I’m around him. I can’t help it. I guess it’s because I know what he thinks whenever he looks at me — I’m not good enough.”
“Why do you care so much about what he thinks?”
“I honestly don’t know. I just care, and I always have. I’m a thirty-three-year-old man and the most important thing in my life is trying to prove to my father that I’m not a disappointment.”
“That is pretty pathetic.”
“Isn’t it?” he says with a laugh. “It’s not just Dad. I’m generally afraid I’m never going to be good enough for anybody. Every relationship I’ve ever had has failed. I wouldn’t trust most of my friends with a houseplant. I certainly don’t have friends like Vivi or Decker. When I think about the future, I picture myself alone.”
“That’s awful, Clark,” I say, looking at his solemn face. “It does make me feel a little better about myself though.”
His face brightens as he laughs, and he looks like the carefree boy he was before he became conscious of what people thought of him.
“See?” he says. “Everyone is damaged in one way or another. We are all hopelessly and spectacularly flawed.”
“Amen, brother.”
He hesitates before going on. “I’ve never felt more helpless than I did eight years ago, after what happened with you and Adam. I look back at it now and hate myself for how I handled the situation. What you said last night was true. I misplaced the blame on you. I saw what it was doing to you, and I did nothing. There is no justification for that. The truth is I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to help you.”
“It was a long time ago,” I say, as though the healing is complete.
“It weighed on my conscience every day. But one day I cracked,” he continues. “I never told you that I confronted Adam about what happened. I told him I knew everything. I threatened to tell Theresa unless he turned himself in. I could see in his face that everything you told me was true. Then I quit my job.”
My heart pounds like a sledgehammer against a steel beam as I picture the scene Clark describes. “I heard you were fired.”
“That’s what I told everyone. It would have raised too many questions if Mom and Dad knew I quit. I couldn’t bear being around him or seeing his face every day. I worried that one day I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from beating the shit out of him. A part of me wishes I had. I also knew he’d have leverage as long as I worked for him. The only option left was to quit.”
“Did you follow through with telling Theresa?” My throat tightens, holding my breath inside.
“No,” he says, casting down his eyes. “I was planning to tell her. A few days later, I found out you were in the hospital. It seemed less important then.”
Silence hovers between us as the light of the candle’s flame flickers against the bedsheets.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“I don’t know,” he confesses. “You became really closed off to me after that. I didn’t know how to bring it up. I guess I didn’t know how to talk to you either.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s my turn to confess. “I was so angry. I couldn’t help but direct all that anger toward you. It wasn’t fair. You weren’t the one who raped me. You didn’t make me jump off that rooftop.” I wince as these words pass my lips. It’s the first time I’ve stated what happened to me so plainly. No euphemisms, no fairy tales. I was raped. I tried to end my life. That is what happened to me.
I can tell Clark finds this difficult to hear as well. “I’m the one who is sorry,” he says. “I should have been there for you. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I can’t change that, but it’s not too late to change the way things are now. I can be better.” He looks at me with his emerald eyes, and I notice the bruising is beginning to heal. “Let me prove that I can be better.”
We sit there on the floor, two grown men in a fort made of bedsheets, and for
the first time in a long time I feel protected.
• • • • •
The sun blazes above from a cloudless sky as Vivi and I make our way along the rear of the hotel to the restaurant for breakfast. Except for the debris that covers the ground, mostly empty cans and lifeless foliage, one would never have known that a storm had ravaged the site such a short time ago. It’s already just a memory.
The restaurant is located at the far end of one of the hotel’s three wings. We see what lies beyond the swimming pool for the first time. Last night, it was a vortex of darkness. Today, it is nothing but a peaceful stretch of alabaster sand framed by the infinite blue of the sea and sky.
We slide onto the vinyl cushions of a booth and feast on chilaquiles drenched in green salsa and cream. I watch as seagulls soar overhead and dive for the garbage that scatters the ground. Two of the birds fight over a piece of bread, squawking at one another with their wings beating the air.
“Today is the day,” Vivi says, holding a steaming mug of coffee close to her body. “Have you thought about what you’re going to say when we get there?”
“I’ll probably just vomit my emotions all over them. Or maybe I won’t be able to say anything at all. I really can’t predict what’s going to happen.”
“Clark and I will be by your side the entire time.” She reaches for my hand across the faux-wood tabletop.
“I know. Don’t let me make a fool of myself.”
“That’s a promise I can’t make,” she says with a sly smile. She pauses, staring thoughtfully into her coffee, before going on. “What if they haven’t heard the news about Elias? Are you prepared to break it to them?”
I nod resolutely, hoping I appear more confident than I feel. “They should know what happened. I can do it if I have to.”
She squeezes my hand and gives me an encouraging look. “Yes. You can.”
After breakfast, we take a walk around the hotel grounds to survey the damage from the storm, carefully stepping over mysterious fragments from unidentifiable objects. We hear voices as we round the corner and find Clark with five other men. He’s wearing a pair of old gloves and helping one of the men carry a large piece of the neon sign — what’s left of the palm tree — to the edge of the parking lot.
After Elias Page 23