by J. J. McAvoy
“You, competitive?” he replied. “Ms. I-brake-for-squirrels?”
“I didn’t brake, I swerved!” I said quickly.
He nodded, the corner of his mouth coming up. “Which is why a man on foot was able to beat you while you biked.”
“Correction—a trained athlete was able to beat a New Yorker in heeled boots.”
“Running a few hours a day does not make you a trained athlete.”
I couldn’t help but gasp. “A few hours? What? You were probably running slowly for my sake too!”
He paused for a moment and I prepared myself for his smartass response, but instead he said, “What were we arguing about again? I’m not sure if I’m proving or contradicting my point anymore.”
I thought about too and then laughed. “Fine, let’s go back. Okay?”
“You’re my friend and family so you can talk to me about your…memories. I’m not a judger.”
“Everyone’s a judger.”
“Okay, but I’m nice about it. So tell me what you were feeling.”
“I forgot that too.”
I groaned. It was like he was trying to forget. “Fine, I can be stubborn too. I have questions.”
“What type of questions?”
“Therapist type questions.”
“That sounds judgy.”
“Malachi.” I took a deep breath. It was like I was playing a never ending game of chess with him and I could feel my hair slowly going gray.
He grabbed the water jug from the center of the table and filled his cup which was a shocker on its own. “Ask away, friend. But do know I’m not a fan of criers.”
“You don’t need to be a fan. You just have to have tissues on hand. First question,” I tried to think of where to start. He had so much knowledge about so many things. I was curious about him and I really wanted to get into his head. “That scar, how did you get it? And is that when your memories came back?”
“When I was eight.” I wasn’t sure what look I had on my face right now. But whatever it was made him nod. “Yes, I’ve been like this for a little over twenty-two years.”
That was my whole life.
He’d been suffering like this for my whole life.
“My father was a cop in the St. James Parish, Louisiana, which is where I ironically died in another life. He was the man of the town and everyone loved him after he saved some kids from a burning church. Everyone thought he was the second coming of Christ. Handsome, upstanding, a law enforcer, with a loving wife he physically, emotionally, and sexually abused, and a proud son he liked to beat on after a stressful day of being a hero.
“One day he used his beer bottle as a bat and my face was the ball. I woke up three days later and I had all of my memories back. And then he wasn’t so scary anymore. I didn’t fear him. I’d seen worse. A few months later I was able to convince my mother to leave him and together we ran away.”
“I’m sorry about your father.” I really was. How much could one person suffer? “Did it hurt when all the memories came back?”
“No.” He shook his head sounding surprised. “It didn’t then. It was like I’d watched a movie.”
“So what happened?”
“I moved to New York with my mother and I’m guessing that I was too close to wherever Li-Mei was at that time,” he whispered. Normally he’d refer to her as her or she but this was only the second time I’d heard him call her by name. “But each time it would happen my mother would rush me to the hospital and soon enough the bills were beginning to pile up. So I forced myself to stop thinking about it and I started trying to hide my black outs. I did it for her sake, but then she died…she killed herself, but I’m sure your grandfather already told you that part of the story.”
“He did but only because I was jealous, remember? I wondered why he always had to see you. You were already a teenager then. I might have wished you harm…sorry.” Jeez, I was such a terrible and jealous person.
“Don’t be. I understand.” He took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair, his plate now sitting empty in front of him. “You had no one else, right? I at least had my father.”
“You went back to that S.O.B?”
The wide smile that formed across his face was as genuine as I’d ever seen. “No. We haven’t spoken since I left Louisiana. But Alfred got me a lawyer and sued him for back child support and threatened him with jail time for abuse. Once I was sixteen I became emancipated. I lived on my own in a small apartment in Brooklyn. Alfred tried to get me something better though I refused. I didn’t like the thought of being so in debt to him.”
“In debt…to him?” That didn’t make sense to me. “I thought he was in debt to you. That’s always how he made it sound.”
He shook his head. “Alfred…my mom...it wasn’t his fault. There was nothing he could do. The night she was to perform as Fantine in Les Miserables she didn’t get drunk. She was drugged by the back-up who thought it wasn’t fair that a nobody had gotten the leading role. My mother didn’t realize what had happened and was so overwhelmed and angry that she killed herself.
“Alfred didn’t realize until one of the other actresses confessed upon hearing what my mother had done. There was nothing he could have done to stop her. He was only doing his job. Alfred is a good person. One of the few. Good people don’t understand how bad people think. He’s spent his life trying to take care of me while the person who did it and those who knew what had happened continued acting and living their lives while forgetting their pasts. ‘They didn’t kill her, she killed herself. They’d only been messing around. This type of thing always happened’… they will make excuses until the end of time before they take responsibility.”
I now understood why my grandfather never let me go any deeper into the arts. I think every kid thinks at one point they’d like to be in the movies…but my grandpa always pushed me away from it. And I, being the easily distracted person I am, even worse so as a child, would find myself enjoying everything so I went to piano classes and volleyball club instead.
“You aren’t crying.”
I focused on him and found him staring at me intently, waiting to see how I’d react. I reached up to touch the corner of my eye.
“I guess not.”
“So you only cry for romances?” He teased.
“I guess so.”
“You know, your answers are a little disconcerting for a therapist.”
I smiled at that as I put my fork down and rested my elbows on the table. “Friend, remember? With a therapist’s ear then?”
He leaned forward too. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” he whispered. “When you aren’t talking you’re thinking, Oshaberi.”
I groaned as I put my hands to my face. “I hate that nickname so much.”
“I like it.”
“Only because no one is calling you that.”
“True. And now you’re deflecting.”
Why was he reading me so much? I guess it was fair to pry after I’d just drilled into his life. Frowning I looked down at my now empty plate… apparently I’d eaten on autopilot.
“My grandpa is a good person,” I said my voice barely above a whisper. “But I’m not.”
He frowned. “I don’t think everyone who came up to you to say good morning would agree.”
“That’s because they don’t know me. You don’t know me either.”
“Are you a serial killer?” He asked me.
“NO!” I said a little too loudly and a few people turned to stare at us. I nodded to them before glaring at him. “I don’t feel like a good person because… because I feel like a fraud some days. I try to do the right thing—be kind, respect and help others. But sometimes I feel like I’m doing it not because I really care about other people… but because I want people to think I’m a good person. Most people know who my grandpa is back in the city, so they know who my mother was, and so when people look at me it’s with this look of e
xpectation. Is she going to crash and burn and throw away her life like her mother? Or is she going to become something great like her grandfather? In school I didn’t want to be the loud black girl. So I didn’t speak much and buried myself in books. I dressed as rich as I possibly could because I didn’t want people thinking I had no class. I wanted to be the best so that I could make grandpa proud. So they would say good things about me. Look how well she plays Mozart. Did you know that she won the chess tournament? Oh, she clocked the most volunteer hours. She’s one of the good ones…I feel like I’m a fraud.”
“You’re not,” he replied and I realized he was sitting there again while I was merely talking and voicing my thoughts.
“You don’t—”
“I know bad people and bad people don’t care if they’re being fake. Bad people don’t worry about whether or not they’re being good for goodness sake. They don’t care. You do. And you do so thinking of others, therefore you are not a bad person, Esther Noëlle.”
“Could you say the same about yourself?”
He glanced back up at the poster on the wall. He didn’t need to think much because he was already nodding his head yes. “I’m a good person. I am not the best of the good people. I’m probably last among the good people, but I am a good person.”
I smiled as I rose from my seat. “As a good person will you accompany me to the festival tonight?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Didn’t you say you were already there? Why not stay and see the fireworks?”
“Did you just—”
“Use your personal suffering as a joke to get you to come to the Lieber Falls Founders Day Festival? Yes. Yes. I did. Cause I’m bad…bad to the bone.”
He covered his mouth and shook his head as he stared at me bewildered.
“Malachi, I can make lame jokes all day.”
“Does it get lamer than that one?”
I tilted my head from side to side and pretended to crack my neck before clearing my throat singing, “Bad Boys, bad boys, whatcha—”
“Whatever it is she wants, give it to her before she sings more,” Pete said to Malachi as he walked over and picked up the plates from another table.
“Hey! What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re an awful singer. Just awful,” Malachi muttered as he reached into his wallet and set a few bills onto the table…much more than was needed.
“You are hurtful. People love my voice.”
They all snickered, even Millie. I looked up at her feigning hurt and she bent her head and pretended to check the receipts in her hand.
“See?” Malachi leaned in so close to me that I jumped a little. But he didn’t seem to notice, instead, he looked between Millie and Pete. “They’re good people towards the front of the good people line…they don’t want to hurt your feelings. I, on the other hand, at the back of the line, feel that I must tell you that you sound like three cats who’ve been thrown into a washing machine and left to die.”
“HA!” Pete put his fist to his mouth as his body shook but he couldn’t hold back anymore and he erupted into laughter.
“Pete…Pete…stop…haha! Poor cats,” Millie giggled.
“Poor me!” I told them and they laughed harder.
Pete finally managed to compose himself as he looked at Malachi teary-eyed. “Why three though?”
“Her pitch changes…ahh…uoooo...ieee… One creature can’t make all of those sounds.”
At this point Pete was going to bust his gut.
“Okay. Sure. Make fun of me. I don’t care. I’ll sing if I want to!” I muttered as I marched towards the glass doors of the diner.
But when I looked back at Pete talking to Malachi I couldn’t help but smile. At least they didn’t think he was a freak. I could handle being the butt of the joke for today… only today. I’d get my revenge on him soon.
12. UN-SAVEABLE
ESTHER
“Wow,” I whispered looking up at all the stars which shone in the moonless sky like diamonds over black silk, while the lake, which was slowly starting to freeze over, lay before me. On the edge of the beach, the waters had already iced over. Had it been silent, the beauty would have been immense, but all of the town had converged on the lake and small campfires dotted the circumference of its shores.
I felt the blanket fall over my shoulder before I heard his voice. “You like it?”
“David? Hey.” I looked up to him. He was out of his police uniform, and like most of us, he was bundled up with a red hat that covered his blond hair. He kicked his foot over the log and sat beside me as he cracked his beer can open and took a long drink. He already reeked of whatever it was that he’d been drinking and it started to give me a headache.
“Ah…” He shook his head and licked his cold, chapped lips as he handed it to me. “Want some? This will warm you up good.”
“No thanks.” I nodded to the fire a few feet from me. The whole town was bundling together and drinking in an effort to keep warm. As soon as the sun went down the air was filled with ice and a wicked chill took over the night. If it weren’t for heat packs they were handing out to everyone my fingers would have gone numb by now.
“Seriously, it’s good, have—”
“She’s good.” I turned to see Malachi standing a few feet away from us. Over his left arm he held my quilt and in his right hand a silver flask. I’d asked him to bring me my quilt since he’d gone back to the house to get changed but I hadn’t asked for the drink, not that I minded. He now stood in jeans, boots and a dark blue wool jacket and the flames of the fire flickered in the reflection of his eyes as he looked at us. “Officer.”
“Just call me David, and come have a real drink with us!”
Malachi ignored him and looked down at me. “Am I interrupting something?”
That’s what I wanted to know. I thought as I looked between the two of them.
“It’s—”
“Seriously, what’s your problem?” David snapped as he stood up. “We’ve been trying to welcome you since you got here but you’ve been nothing but rude.”
“I apologize,” Malachi said but he didn’t sound like it at all and David could tell.
Stepping up to him David dabbed into Malachi’s chest. “I don’t know who you think you are but I don’t like the way you’re speaking to me!”
“How should I speak to you, sir?” Malachi replied making it worse, considering that he was older than David.
“David, sorry we need to work—”
“You really ought to stop making excuses for him!” He snapped at me.
“David! I need your help with these.”
I looked over Malachi’s shoulder to see Eleanor, David’s grandmother and the Sheriff of Lieber Falls, calling him over, to help a few other guys who were bringing drinks towards the edge of the pool.
“Try to not act like a freak, hunchback,” he muttered before he turned back to me and smiled. “I’ll come back later, alright?”
I nodded not saying a word as he finished his drink and walked towards his grandmother. “He’s an…”
“An alcoholic, yeah. I’m sure the whole town knows. His grandmother is keeping him on a short leash,” Malachi said as he took the blanket I’d forgotten I was wearing and dropped it onto the log before handing me my quilt.
“You noticed?”
“He is exactly like my father, of course I noticed.” That was all he had to say and I understood. But he went on anyway taking a seat beside as I wrapped myself in a cocoon. “When he pulled up in the cruiser I saw the flask in the side pocket beside his seat. And the red headed woman beside him, Mandy—”
“Murphy.” I corrected.
He rolled his eyes as he twisted the top of the flask. “Whatever, Mandy, Murphy. If he called her any of those names she would answer. She’s in love with him, and covering for him too…like my mother once did.”
“If the love of your life commi
tted a crime would you cover it up?”
He poured the deep brown into his mug, the top cup part of the flask, and handed it to me.
“Coffee?”
“Hot chocolate,” he replied drinking directly from the flask. “And yes.”
“Yes?” I looked at him as I blew on the chocolate.
“Yes I would help cover up whatever crime,” he said looking up at the stars.
“Really?”
He smirked and looked to me. “You’ve never been in love, have you?”
“I had a boyfriend?”
He frowned at that as he tilted his head to look at me.
“What? I am pretty attractive if you haven’t noticed.”
“I haven’t,” he replied while drinking.
I wanted to smack him but instead I closed my eyes and drank too, enjoying how warm it made me feel.
“Having a boyfriend and being in love are two different things.”
“I know.” Which was why I’d broken up with him…he said he’d give me space, but not only did he fail to do that, I found myself annoyed each time he texted me. So before coming here I’d simply told him I wanted to see other people via text message. He hadn’t replied and I hadn’t given it another thought until now. I felt better to be free of him…was that a bad thing to say?
We fell into a comfortable silence and maybe it was the chocolate, or the fire, or maybe I was just too exhausted to care, but I slowly leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder.
“What are you doing—?”
“Shhh,” I whispered as I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky. “I know your story. Your life has been painful but I’m still jealous.”
“You really need to see someone about this jealousy problem of yours,” he said softly and I could tell he was uncomfortable so I sat up again.
“Anyone would be jealous. Could you imagine being one of those stars?” I pointed up at a random one. “There are thousands upon thousands of stars all around you, and your task is to find the one that’s perfect for you. It’s hard. Some stars you like don’t like you back. The stars that like you, you don’t like them back. Sometimes stars like each other for a while and then realize, for whatever reason, this isn’t the one. Sometimes…you start to wonder even among the thousands and thousands of stars if there is anyone actually out there for you. And you, Malachi, are the one star who always knows there is someone for him.”