by Noir, Roxie
So I never told anyone, not even my brothers. Thalia was the first.
“Did he hurt anyone else?” she asks, softly, looking at me like she’s afraid of the answer, but I just shake my head.
“Even the tree lived,” I say. “It’s still there with a marker in front of it, though I never go that way unless I have to. It happened in January. Everyone blamed black ice, and no one but my mom and I know the truth, and we’ve both been lying about it for years.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I raise her hand to my lips, flip it over, kiss her on the palm.
“Everyone is fucked up somehow,” I say. “Don’t apologize.”
“You forgot to tell me how you’re fucked up,” she says. “Other than lying to your brothers, I guess.”
I start laughing again, despite everything. She pulls away and gives me a puzzled, amused look.
“Come on, Thalia,” I say, leaning forward and planting a kiss on her shoulder. “I slept with my student.”
“Right,” she says, and she’s laughing and wiping tears away all at once.
“Come on,” I tell her, holding out my hand. “Let’s go to Richmond.”
Chapter Forty
Thalia
When we get to the hospital, Bastien and my father are both outside, standing next to a bench in front of a dilapidated flower bed. They’re not speaking, but when they see Caleb’s car pull into the parking lot, they both nod once in exactly the same way.
Chapman Memorial isn’t as nice as the last hospital Caleb drove me to. The outside is ugly, the gray concrete weathered and stained, the windows faded and ugly, a patchwork of slightly different colors. The first M is missing from the sign over the door that says Chapman Memorial. The garbage cans and ashtrays outside the door are overflowing.
It’s also clearly in a bad neighborhood. I don’t know Richmond very well — hardly at all — but the houses here are all in disrepair and all the stores have bars over the windows, even during the day. Tents dot the sidewalk, and I’m pretty sure I saw a drug deal go down on the way here.
Not that I should be surprised, given why I’m here in the first place.
Caleb parks his hatchback, jerks up the parking brake, turns to me.
“We’re all fucked up,” he says, softly. Despite myself, I smile.
“Thanks,” I say, and give him a quick, chaste kiss.
We talked the whole car ride over. Or rather, I think I talked for most of it and he listened: the Javier I remember as a kid, the big brother who taught me to roller skate, who helped with my homework, who used to drive me to my friends’ houses sometimes.
I talked about the brother Bastien and I both adored, who was sweet and gentle and kind. The brother who loved to draw, who had notebooks filled with sketches, who used to win every art show he entered in middle and high school.
And I tell him how he used to fight with my father. How he joined the football team just to get my father’s approval. How, suddenly, my father was his biggest supporter who went to every game, learned every cheer.
He didn’t apply to college. He didn’t apply to art school. He joined the Marines straight out of high school, the only other thing he ever did that my father approved of.
Caleb and I walk up to the entrance holding hands, because there’s no point pretending we’re just friends. The whole walk from the parking lot, I can practically feel my father’s eyes burning a hole through the back of my hand, he’s looking at us so hard.
“Hi,” I say, when I get up to them. “You remember Caleb, right? How’s Javi?”
“Alive,” says my father, stepping forward, offering Caleb a handshake while Bastien gives me a hug.
“Sir,” Caleb says behind me, and I fight back a smile.
“He’s already sucking up,” Bastien whispers. “Dad’s gonna hate him anyway.”
“Stop it,” I whisper back.
“Thanks for bringing her,” Bastien tells Caleb when he releases me, shaking his hand as well.
“Of course,” Caleb says, and takes my hand again. My father looks at it, looks at me, and then leads us through the doors of the hospital.
The inside isn’t nicer than the outside. We walk past a gift shop that’s got a crack running the length of the plate-glass window, masking tape over it. The tile floor is mismatched. Here and there, a fluorescent light flickers.
Bastien drops back to walk beside us, lets our dad lead the way down hallway after hallway, always walking as if a drill sergeant is watching.
I turn to my brother.
“How is he?” I ask, voice low, dread and anxiety knotted in my stomach. “And don’t just tell me he’s alive.”
I shoot a quick glance at my father’s back. I’ve spent a lot of the last nine or so months trying to, if not forgive him, reach a place of some understanding, some acceptance that he did what he thought was best.
It’s quickly going out the window, now that I’m here. Now that I’m going to have to look my older brother in the eye.
“Please,” Bastien mutters, then takes a deep breath.
I squeeze Caleb’s hand, without really meaning to, and he squeezes back.
“He’s bad, Ollie,” Bastien says, simply. “He’s not Javi any more. He doesn’t look like Javi. He doesn’t talk like Javi, he doesn’t...”
We’ve come to a stop, my father standing outside the door to a hospital room, arms folded, facing us. Bastien, Caleb, and I are ten feet away, and it’s obvious that we’re trying to talk without him hearing us, but I don’t care.
“He wasn’t Javi when he left,” I say.
“He was more than he is now,” Bastien says. “Someone found him on the sidewalk in front of a 7-11, sitting on the curb, doubled over. The only reason he’s not dead is because he was holding the dose of Narcan he couldn’t use in time, and whoever called 911 gave it to him first, then ran off.”
I look at the door to the hospital room, my father standing in front of it, and suddenly I’m afraid of what I’ll find. I’m afraid to look at him like this, afraid to confirm what Bastien just said, that Javier is really gone.
Next to me, Caleb is silent and I squeeze his hand again, grateful, because there’s nothing he could say right now and he knows that.
“I need to ask you a favor,” I say, looking up at him.
“Anything.”
“Would you mind waiting while we go in?” I ask, softly.
“I can do that,” he says.
“I don’t want you to meet him like this,” I say, the words rushing out, a little faster than I mean them to. “I don’t — it’s not fair to him, or to you, for you to meet him now. You should meet him once he’s in recovery, once he’s —”
I almost say better but I’ve already learned that addicts never are, not fully. They’re forever in recovery, but I can’t let this be Caleb’s first impression of my big brother. I can’t.
“—improved,” I finish.
“Of course,” Caleb says softly. “Just shout if you need me.”
Then he bends and gives me a quick, sweet kiss on the cheek, and I squeeze his hand, and then I steel myself and let Bastien and my father lead me into Javier’s hospital room.
It’s not a nice hospital room, just like it’s not a nice hospital, just like it’s not a nice neighborhood. I can’t help but compare everything to the last time I was in a hospital, three months ago, in Norfolk for my mom. I wasn’t really paying attention at the time, but in comparison, it was the Ritz of hospitals.
There are three beds in Javier’s room, separated by curtains. He’s in the middle, and while I can’t see either of the people in the other beds, I can hear the man in the first one breathing heavily and coughing occasionally the whole time I’m in there, and the man in the third bed keeps up a low, painful moan the entire time.
When I enter, my father’s already pulled back the curtain around Javier, just enough for Bastien and I to enter, so I don’t have time to prepare myself.
Not that
I think I could have.
He’s thin, cheeks hollow, once-golden skin nearly gray. The circles around his eyes look like black holes. His hair is combed but dirty. Someone’s cleaned his face, but it’s obvious from the smell behind the curtain that it’s the only clean part.
There are bruises down his arms, most old. There are scabs and rashes, his fingernails dirty and broken. He’ll be twenty-seven in May, and right now he looks a rough forty-five.
But none of that is the worst part. I stand there, just inside the curtain, taking it all in. I tried to prepare myself but it didn’t help because I’m shocked, horrified, standing here gawking at him like he’s a freak show and I’ve paid fifty cents to ogle.
The worst part is when he finally looks at me, his eyes flat and lifeless. They linger a moment, then look away again as he turns his head.
“Not her, too,” he says, his voice rough. “Come on.”
“Javi?” I say, his words finally breaking the spell. I step forward, into the space between curtain and bed, stand at his side next to my mom. She’s still got one arm in a cast, the other holding Javier’s hand.
“Did you have to get everyone?” he asks, his eyes still closed. “You just had to make sure that Ollie and Bossy saw me like this, too, didn’t you?”
“Javi,” my mom starts, squeezing his hand.
“They wanted to come,” my dad says, standing at the foot of the bed, curtain still open behind him, arms folded over his chest. He’s standing ramrod straight, as always.
“Raul,” my mom says, without looking at him.
Silence takes over for a long moment, and then she turns and looks at my father.
He leaves without another word.
“He’s right, I wanted to come,” I say. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“I’ve been looking harder than she has,” Bastien says, standing across the bed from me, on the other side of Javier. “She’s kind of been slacking.”
“I’m not slacking,” I say, making a face at Bastien. “I get through my list of phone calls once a week, I just don’t fart around finding out which shelters are in buildings once used as hideouts on the Underground Railroad.”
“So you admit I’m more thorough than you,” Bastien says, and now he’s grinning.
“That doesn’t mean better.”
“Bastien! Thalia,” my mom says, in a tone of voice I know very, very well. “Knock it off and show a little respect, your brother’s in the hospital.”
Bastien gives me a smirk that clearly means yeah, Thalia, knock it off, but then we both look down at Javier.
His eyes are open again, he’s looking at us, and I could swear there’s the hint of a smile on his face. My heart doesn’t exactly leap, but it sits up.
“You two need to help me convince him to go back into rehab,” she says, sternly. “That’s why you’re here. Javier, look at your brother and sister. Don’t you want to see Thalia graduate this spring? She’s even got a boyfriend!”
Anything that was on his face a moment ago is gone now, replaced by the same blankness that was there when I walked in.
“Bastien doesn’t have a girlfriend yet but I’m certain the right girl is out there, just waiting for him,” she goes on. “And for you, Javi. You just have to go to rehab and get clean before you can meet her.”
I reach out and gently touch my mom’s shoulder, and she looks over at me: red-faced and puffy-eyed, her white-streaked hair pulled away from her face in in a low bun, her reading glasses perched on her head.
“Could Bastien and I have a minute with Javier?” I ask, softly. “Just a minute. Please?”
She looks from me to Bastien to Javier and then back up to me. She squeezes Javi’s hand again, then nods and stands.
“Of course,” she says. “I’ll be back, Javi. Promise.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he says, and she takes me by the shoulder, then kisses me on the cheek before she leaves. Bastien watches her go, then closes the curtain, walks back to Javier’s bedside.
“Sorry, I needed to do something before she started naming your grandchildren,” I tell them.
I love my mom dearly, but the way that she deals with hard emotions is often by imagining a happy-but-far-away future, and I don’t think Javier needs that kind of pressure right now.
“Well, Raul and Paloma, obviously,” Bastien jokes.
“Are those the names you and your future girlfriend will be using?” I ask, sweetly, teasing him right back.
Bastien just grimaces.
“Right,” he says. “The sweet, innocent girl who’s out there just waiting for me, and who is very definitely female and not a six-foot-one lacrosse player named Liam from Colorado.”
My eyes go wide.
“Is there a Liam?” I ask.
Ever-so-slightly, Javier’s eyebrows go up, and there’s a flicker of interest in his dark eyes, but Bastien just snorts.
“I wish,” he says. “Sorry, that was more of a request from the universe than a statement of fact.”
“Colorado?” Javier asks, rough and scratchy, and Bastien shrugs.
“People seem like they’re always outdoors in Colorado,” he says. “It’s rugged, you know?”
It’s still weird that Bastien and I have the same taste in men. It makes sense, but it’s weird. I like to think that it would also be weird if he were my straight sister, but who knows. Maybe I’m homophobic in this very specific way. Something to contemplate later.
“He still hasn’t told Mom and Dad,” I tell Javier.
“Can’t blame him,” Javier says.
“I’m not saying he should,” I amend myself. “Just that he hasn’t.”
“They also don’t know that Ollie’s boyfriend is her calculus professor,” Bastien says. “He’s outside, she wouldn’t let him meet you like this.”
“He’s not my professor any more,” I point out. “Semester’s over.”
Javier swallows hard, and a bead of sweat rolls down his temple. His pupils are enormous, and it’s impossible to tell where they end and his irises begin.
“You did that?” he asks. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I admit, shifting my weight to my other foot, rubbing the back of my neck. “Yeah.”
Javier shakes his head, almost like he’s admonishing me, and for a moment there’s a glimpse of the older brother I used to have.
“They’re gonna freak the fuck out,” he says, still raspy, unnatural sounding, still shaking his head. Now he’s shaking it like he’s in a trance and can’t stop, his hands twisting in the bedsheets. “Dad’s gonna flip his shit. He really is.”
He’s right, and several minutes too late, I realize that Caleb and my parents are now all together, somewhere outside this room, and I say a quick silent prayer that my dad hasn’t made any veiled-or-not threats to him yet.
“That’s my problem,” I say, quickly. “We’re not here about my problems.”
Javier pushes his head back against the pillow, his hands still twisting, clenching, like he can’t stop moving.
“Rehab didn’t work,” he says. “I tried it.”
“If you look at the statistics, it almost always takes a couple of rounds,” I say.
“Jesus,” he mutters.
“Many people find Him helpful during the process, yes,” Bastien adds in.
“It’s not going to work,” Javier says, and now he sits up a little, his face going even grayer, pushing at the sheets he’s got over himself. “Last time I lasted a week after I got home. One whole week. Woo-fucking-hoo.”
“That’s got nothing —”
“Then stay clean for more than a week,” Bastien interrupts me, suddenly grabbing the rails of Javier’s bed and leaning over it. “Try two weeks this time, Javi. Maybe go for a whole three.”
Javier swallows again, twice, convulsively.
“And if you relapse we’ll put you back in rehab and when you come out you’ll go for four,” Bastien says. “You’re not escaping us.”
We both know that we’re not what Javi wants to escape, but neither of us say that out loud. I don’t know how to deal with that. Bastien doesn’t know how to deal with that, so we just stay quiet and hope that someone, somewhere will.
“If you go, I’ll give you all the dirt on Bastien,” I offer. “Here’s a preview: his college major isn’t what he told Mom and Dad it is.”
Bastien grins awkwardly and gives Javier a thumbs-up.
“I want the dirt on her, too,” Javier tells him.
“Done,” Bastien agrees.
“And I want to meet this,” he says, then swallows again, takes a breath, “shady-ass professor who thinks he can date my little sister while she’s in his class.”
“He’s older than you, too,” I volunteer. “I went full-on bad girl, and I’ll tell you about it if you go to rehab.”
“This is bribery,” he rasps.
“Yes,” Bastien and I both say at the exact same time.
I swear, Javier nearly smiles.
“All right,” he finally says.
Chapter Forty-One
Caleb
I take a seat in the waiting room. At least I think it’s the waiting room; the sign has come off the door, just leaving a few lines of glue where it was once attached. There are blue vinyl chairs arranged in rows, fake plants, and old People magazines scattered around, so it seems like a waiting room.
I take a seat. I pick up a magazine. The cover has a badly-photoshopped picture of two celebrities on it, and a huge headline screams THIS TIME IT’S FOR REAL - BRAD AND ANGIE SPLIT!
I open it to a random page and hope that Thalia’s okay. I understand why she didn’t want me meeting Javier right now. I think I’d have chosen something similar if it were me and one of my brothers, but I wish I could be there for her.
Even if I don’t know how, not really. The big tragedy of my life was a single gut-punch when I was a child, followed by an ugly, uneasy truth learned years later, and I only know how that feels. I only know how to slowly heal from something that’s happened, not how to stay sane when the wound gets re-opened again and again.