Текст книги "Finding Mr. Brightside"

Автор книги: Jay Clark

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

7

Juliette

JOGGING.

A six-hour period of insomnia has passed since the premiere of my fake movie, Prescription for Love, starring me, in a role I was born to play, as “the crazy girl at CVS,” and that other guy, whom I’m no longer allowed to think about starting now. One last thought: it was sweet how Anonymous took those heavy trash bags from my hands and didn’t act like he was my knight-in-drooping-sweatpants for doing it.

Sprinting.

I’m home and stretching in record time. Brewing my father’s morning coffee in what he refers to as “that fancy-schmancy machine your mom bought.” (Doesn’t help if I tell him, in an edgy tone, that it’s just a Keurig.) I grab his mug and walk into his office. He’s still asleep on the couch.

Looking down at his handsome face, the three distinct stress lines on his forehead, I make a wish to the fickle Writing Gods that he wrote a few paragraphs last night, even if they were horrid. I’ll help him smooth over the clichés; I’m great with the delete key. He stirs, opens his eyes, and almost catches wind of my affectionate expression. Embarrassed, I quickly show him a picture of his mostly empty closet on my iPhone. Then another, as he sits up to process what I’ve accomplished on his behalf. He looks relieved. And also suspicious.

“You really hauled all those clothes out of here last night without any help?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

“I had pharmaceutical assistance,” I say, handing him his coffee.

“I wish you wouldn’t take that crap, Juliette. It makes you jittery, you can’t sleep, and if anyone has ADHD around here, it’s me.”

“What? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” I walk over and try to open the window, but it won’t budge. “Why don’t you join me today, Dad? There’s this new thing everyone’s breathing called ‘fresh air.’”

I can’t even see his mouth anymore, he’s so against the idea. I’d have more luck reasoning with the three-hole punch on his desk. Then I see the wheels turning, his mind working like mine does when it’s trying to escape the topic at hand.

“I’m serious about your Adderall,” he says.

“I’m serious about your air quality,” I say, from halfway down the hall.

I go back into the kitchen and make my coffee, staring at the picture of Mom’s empty hangers. I’m not getting the hollow sense of closure that I guess I was going for. In fact, I feel more anxious than anything else, like I’ve made a mistake. No, that can’t be it—maybe I just need a pill.

I unscrew the decoy Centrum bottle on the window ledge, taking out the CVS bottle I hid inside it last night. I pluck out an Adderall, break it in half, then decide to place both halves into my mouth, oops. I wash them down with a swig of my extra-bold, extra-black coffee. Once you go black, it’s harder to go back to getting cracked-out on anything else.

I learned that from my mother, no stranger to CVS herself.

ABRAM

MOM INSISTED ON accompanying me to the Salvation Army this morning to drop off the clothes. She used the Just want to spend time with my son guilt trip on me, and it was hard to be, like, No thanks, Mom—I’m all set.

The problem with her being in my car as I pull into the parking lot is that I have about a million extra bags in the trunk from Juliette’s house, and only a bad joke about those bags having babies overnight by way of explanation. I find a spot near the entrance and quickly get out of the car, Mom following suit. Reluctantly, I pop the trunk, and then box her out from trying to grab a bag and hoist her way to the chiropractor’s office for the next six months.

“Abram?”

“You’re not lifting any of these, Mom.”

“Thanks, honey, but why are twenty more bags here than what we had last night?”

I start poking through some of them as if searching for the answer. “They’re all the same type of bag,” I throw out there. Mom nods like that’s really saying something, but I can tell she’s still skeptical. She agrees to go inside and let them know we’re here with a sizable donation.

I’m a few bags from getting away with not explaining myself when one of them starts to rip right in the entryway of the building, women’s clothing items leaking out the bottom.

“Wait, are those mine?” Mom asks, rationally. She walks over and sorts through a few garments, picks up a black lingerie number with red cups, and holds it out in front of her. Not hers. She’s frowning. This is tremendously awkward.

“I walked over to Juliette’s house after you went to bed. Saw her hauling this stuff around, so … I helped. And I’m pretty sure that’s not hers.”

Mom drops the nightie (teddy?) when she realizes whose it was.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Not good enough, of course, but had to be said.

She shakes her head like it’s not my fault, even though this reminder of it is.

“It’s for a great cause, right?” she says.

I carry the rest of our donation to the counter as Mom speaks to the clerk. I overhear her saying that the women’s clothing belongs to a “free-spirited cousin” of hers who moved to Oregon recently, the clerk nodding like, What does that have to do with the 50¢ sticker I’m going to put on all of it, regardless? Anyway, I love my mom and her free-spirited-cousin alibi.

Meanwhile, Juliette is probably leaving for her mysterious Saturday ritual right … about … now.

“I actually feel a little better about … everything,” Mom says on the drive home.

“Me too, Mom.”

She decided to keep four of Dad’s bags.

8

Juliette

THIS CAB SMELLS to the point where I need to distract myself. Where did I leave off?

That’s right, my mother and her Adderall habit. Well, she liked to refer to it as her “vitamin B12,” more so back when I was a little girl who knew something was off about Mommy but couldn’t put my finger on it. Back when we were as close as we were ever going to be. She’d get home twenty minutes before my bedtime every night and read me e-mails from her laptop in lieu of Dr. Seuss. She’d make a comment afterward, like, Can you believe what Bob from legal is saying about this contract? And I’d be all, No, is he kidding us with that, Mommy? Anyway, I was wondering … could you sleep in my bed with me tonight? Sometimes she would, and I’d fall asleep to the sound of her outraged typing. It was nice.

As I blossomed into a grouchy teenager, we drifted apart like all non-television mothers and daughters do. Then, a year or so before the accident, Mom developed a staring problem. I wish I’d reacted more calmly to being her target. Instead, I was more like, What? Not my best phase, but I was angry. Maybe even jealous because she’d begun allowing herself the luxury of giving up on the impossible: my father, his reclusiveness. When she started asking questions like Do you talk to Abram Morgan much at school? I knew. She’d found herself a replacement, a married man right down the road who’d appreciate her for who she truly wasn’t. (It’s easy to be an irresistably, sexy version of yourself for two-hour stretches, especially around someone who doesn’t have to live with you.) From then on, the most I ever saw of her was at “breakfast,” a meal neither of us ate. We’d sip our coffee, and every now and again she’d glance at me from over her mug, probably wondering if I was going to offload my suspicions to Dad. Turned out I didn’t have to.

ABRAM

JULIETTE’S CAB SPEEDS down the road as I’m raking up the grass I should’ve mowed a week ago (that’s what I get for ignoring the future like there’s no tomorrow). Funny, she got a van this time. She never gets a van. I wave. She waves back but looks away while doing it. She’s been crying. Have to stop myself from going over there and making everything worse. Hey, why is the van-cab pulling into her garage?

Juliette

MY DAD PAID two-hundred-plus dollars to get my mom’s clothes back from the Salvation Army, not including the bribe I just gave the cab driver for helping me unload the bags into the garage. I don’t anticipate him becoming aware of this, considering I went online and set all his bills to auto-pay a few months ago, after our electric got turned off.

9

Juliette

LATER THAT EVENING, my friend Heidi keeps calling me and getting side-buttoned. I don’t even have the courtesy to silence the ringer and fake my unavailability—just send her straight off to voice mail. She deserves a best friend who doesn’t hate Saturday nights and other people.

I decide to walk to CVS, maybe buy her a just-because-I-suck gift. She really likes those sporty headbands that keep the hair wisps from her eyes; the more vibrant the color, the better she plays tennis. I’m about to ask my father if he wants anything when I hear his fingers tapping the keyboard. I close my eyes and enjoy the sound of progress for a moment, then leave him be, quietly triple-locking the door behind me.

I slip out into the night in my all-black track jacket and yoga pants combo, your unfriendly neighborhood rape target. I walk down to my favorite jogging path, which happens to run toward the Morgan residence, a coincidence beyond my control. It’s muggy out, the kind of late-September night that sweats on you, summer’s last hurrah.

I take a slight right and weave along a narrower side path, drawing closer and closer to Abram’s house. Someone’s left on every single light in the place, blinds open, probably him. Didn’t he say he lives in the basement? By choice? I creep down the slope of the lawn toward the sliding glass doors of the walk-out basement. I can see the right side of his face in the room adjacent to the living area. He’s lying on what I guess is his bed, eating what looks to be pizza … on a bagel. Jesus. He’s watching a nature show—hey, are those blue whales?—and looks oddly content to be doing what he’s doing, which is nothing. He’s also shirtless, for all my ladies out there who enjoy bare skin with tiny blond hairs on it.

Possessed by something cosmically dumb that I don’t have the energy to question or make fun of, I hold out my fist and knock on the glass, right as it starts to rain. I watch Abram’s brain process the sound, probably doesn’t hear it very often unless he’s got a late-night side-skank I’m unaware of, and he better not. He turns his head, sees me outside getting my bun wet—Hi, I can’t believe I’m here, either—and I’m impressed by how fast and agile he is in jumping off the bed and bounding toward the door. His excitement kind of makes me want to laugh, or run in the opposite direction, or do an aerial cartwheel, which means I must be getting ready for my even-crazier time-of-the-month. Always something to look forward to.

He slides open the door and rushes me inside.

“Hey,” he says, with more eye contact than I’m comfortable with.

“My laptop died,” I say, looking around at nothing in particular. “Can I use yours?”

“Sure, yeah … it’s over there being dusty,” he replies nonchalantly, like I swing by for fake favors all the time. He has a knack for absorbing all the toxic energy I bring to a room.

I walk over to his dresser, pick up the computer, and there really is dust on it, he wasn’t just saying that. I wipe off the top with a Taco Bell napkin I find on the floor and carry the laptop over to his bed. I sit down, sign in to my Dropbox account, pull up my dad’s latest draft, and start typing over any future small talk. Abram must’ve expected me to take the laptop and leave, because he continues to stand off to the side until I give him a look like I’m probably not going to kill myself if he joins me. He flops back down on the bed and reunites with his bagel bite. He holds one out to me, I’m assuming as a joke, but I accept it just to keep him on his toes, biting into the crust. He nods like, Good, aren’t they? He’s going to be waiting awhile for my reply.

*   *   *

“There aren’t any bugs down here, are there?” I ask Abram later, taking another bagel from his plate.

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

There’s a huge cobweb in the corner of the room. Intricately woven, as if the spider sensed she had all the time in the world. Am I going to let that go? I think I am. Because I feel comfortable existing here, in this space, with Abram and his whale show and his hidden tarantula. My mind is almost, but not quite, quiet.

“Is this whale show okay with you?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Cool,” he says, and goes back to watching.

All conversations should be so brief.

Maybe we really did meet as whales in a past life.

10

ABRAM

I TOOK A PAGE from Juliette’s book and pretended not to be surprised when she showed up at my sliding door last night. Between the dog and me? I thought she was either a super-dedicated UPS guy or a polite serial killer. She stayed until I fell asleep, which is another way of saying that once again I have no idea when she left. Her note on the top of my laptop said: Thx for the Wi-Fi. There looked to be the beginnings of an X or O toward the bottom, but I’m thinking that was an accidental pen mark. I put it in my wallet and saved it for my next rainy day.

The problem with good things happening out of nowhere with minimal effort on my part? Can’t think of any, except maybe that I want the magic to happen over and over again afterward. So tonight I’ve been doing my best to re-create the miracle that was last night. Got the door unlocked, my snack at hand, a fresh whale documentary on TV, and my shirt in the off position.

Approximately two beluga segments later, I hear the door sliding open. I squeeze my fingers together in a silent fist pump because I knew she’d prefer letting herself in over the blah-blah formalities that go along with her knocking and me answering. She doesn’t say anything when she walks into my room, just grabs my laptop from the same spot on the dresser, sits down on the bed, and opens it. Takes everything I have not to point out what I remembered to do for her.

“Thanks for charging it,” she says, looking at me with a newfound something-I’ve-never-seen-before in her eyes. Seems too presumptuous to call it admiration. Appreciation, maybe.

I give her a lazy, it-was-nothing smile and proceed to fill my facehole with popcorn, letting her get settled for a minute before holding out the bag. She reaches her elegant hand inside and brings a few kernels to her lips. Then she does it again. I like this documentary, starring her in captivity, better.

Even if she’s not into me, per se, we’re definitely developing a connection per my snacks.

Juliette

HE SURE DOES fall asleep a lot. Must be the Paxil. He takes his pill and a half hour later it’s like he’s roofied himself. Now I’m sitting here, observing him like a science project, wanting more popcorn. I scrape the last kernel from our second bag and give Orville Redenbacher a look like I’m going to punch his face off, with all my rings on, for not putting more inside. Then I wonder whose idea it was to make that face the face of the brand. His good friend, Colonel Sanders? Then I google “Orville R.” and learn he died of a heart attack/jacuzzi drowning. I didn’t need to know that, Wikipedia!

I should leave Abram a nicer note tonight. Something less robotic than Thx for the Wi-Fi with half an X at the bottom, which I’m hoping he mistook for an errant pen mark. Still trying to figure out why I started writing that kiss in the first place. Must’ve seen it in a terrible movie once—Prescription for Love?

Having issues focusing, obviously. Worried that I can’t stop worrying about Abram’s lack of tennis motivation, his excessive sleeping and eating and whale-show watching, his growing dependency on my unreliable presence, and, most of all, his Paxil prescription. All of this is a sign, right? A big red STOP sign with a Seriously, girl, you’ve gone way too far subhead. And yet my eyebrows continue furrowing. I’ll have to pluck the movement out of them tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s check out these comments I just found on a sketchy online drug forum re: Paxil.

PaxilSkeptic: Worked okay at first, but then I gained forty pounds and became even more depressed!

BradG77: Ruined my life for the three years I took it, then experienced horrible zings and zaps, like I was being electrocuted, when I tried to get off of it.

JFWhatever: Why does anyone take this **** of their own free will?! Here’s my prescription: Get some Adderall and go exercise!

Okay, that last person was me, just typed it in, couldn’t help myself. In summary, Abram needs to get off of this FDA-approved brain poison—slowly, to prevent spontaneous electrocution—and I guess I’m the only halfway-invested bystander around with the organizational skills to help him do it.

I open up an Excel spreadsheet and name the file “Abram’s De-Paxilization.” I’m confident it’s going to be the first decent plan he’s had in a while. When I’m done, I leave him a note straight from my heart murmur:

Hi. We need to talk (without the TV on). I’ll be back tomorrow night. Probably. And you were right—the popcorn was “extra tasty” tonight. I should have let you make a third bag.

11

ABRAM

“WHAT ABOUT ADDING a ‘Juliette’ tab next to mine?” I suggest on night seven of her using my bed as a Wi-Fi hot spot, the second consecutive weekend we’ve hung out. I point to the “Abram’s De-Paxilization” spreadsheet as she ignores my legit idea and reiterates the exact dosage I’m supposed to be taking each day to safely taper off the Paxil in under a month. When she’s finished, I thank her for the detail-oriented plan.

“Why do you look like you’re not going to follow it?” she asks.

“Isn’t this the same face I’ve been making all night?”

Her eyes widen like, Yes, Abram, that’s why I’m not convinced.

“Sorry, Juliette, I’m ready to stop taking this stuff.… I was just thinking it’d be more fun if I had someone to stop with me?”

“I can’t be that person,” she says.

“You can be that person. You just refuse to realize it yet.”

“True. Plus, my withdrawals would be five hundred percent worse than yours.” And with that figure in mind, she turns back to the computer and starts stabbing the keyboard, filling the “Abram” tab with even more clear-cut directions. I like to give her intermittent breaks from my presence, and now seems like an opportune time. So I mention something about making popcorn, her only known snack-food weakness, and sure enough she un-tenses her neck and tells me twice to remember the napkins.

I’m surprised to find my mom upstairs in the kitchen; Aunt Jane was supposed to pick her up for the casino a half hour ago.

“She’s running late,” Mom says, as I rip open the popcorn package and plop it inside the microwave.

“Aunt Jane’s never late,” I say, setting the timer and pressing Start.

“She was trying to make it past the Rainbow Runway on Candy Crush,” Mom says, glancing longingly at the iPad by her purse.

“Are you out of lives?”

Mom nods, goes over to the cupboard on the far side of the kitchen, and pulls out the Crock-Pot. She’s not slow-cooking a roast, just getting one of the money envelopes she keeps inside there, I’m guessing the one labeled CASINO FUND. Mom has a fund for everything. NEW CAR fund. NEW PATIO FURNITURE fund. ABRAM NEEDS $$$ fund. I put that one in there as a joke.

“Is there anything you want to tell me before I go?” she asks.

“Good luck?”

She knows. Moms always know, according to her. Not sure where the dads are when they’re getting the eyes surgically implanted into the backs of their heads, but I bet my dad was familiar with the tennis courts in the area. Speaking of Dad, she’s wearing red again, even though I overheard Aunt Jane, a loud phone talker, specifically forbidding it.

“Oh, and your hair looks good,” I add.

“Really?” Mom touches her highlights, her face going through about fifteen different hair emotions. “I’m thinking of going a little darker next time.”

She’s always thinking of going a little darker, or getting bangs, but she doesn’t really want to do either.

“Do you think your secret guest downstairs would like it?”

I give her what I hope is my most charming smile, but she’s not having any of it.

“Would you do me the favor of at least sending me a text when you’re planning on entertaining?”

I nod, even though I have no way of planning for that. I’m on Juliette’s schedule. The spreadsheet she’s modifying right now makes it official.

“And I want to meet her. Soon. Before it gets serious.”

“Mom,” I say, like she cannot be serious.

“I could just pop my head in and introduce myself right now, if that’s easier for everyone.” She walks toward the hallway, like she’s heading for the basement. She can’t fully commit to it. We both laugh, and then I’m saved by the car horn—Aunt Jane just pulled into our driveway.

“Gotta go,” Mom says, kissing me on the cheek. “But I was being Strict Mom just then, you know that, right?”

“Yes. Obedient Son will get something on the books, ASAP.”

When I walk back downstairs, I fully expect Juliette to tell me to get that off the books. But she’s not there. Ran away, forgetting to take me with her. She took my dog, though.

Juliette

AS WE WALK ALONG the jogging path, I apologize to the dog for spacing out and thinking back, once again, to a few months before my mom died. I was in the kitchen stressing over my taking the ACT later that morning. Standing at her usual spot by the Keurig, a wry smile on her lips, Mom said casually, “Why don’t you try one of my ‘B12s’ today?” She seemed genuine, like she wanted to help, not weaken my suspicions of her adultery with a bribe. I was putting just enough unnecessary pressure on myself to nod my head in agreement. “I’ll make more coffee,” she said, sliding a peach-colored Adderall across the countertop. I took it. Then I cleaned the kitchen, went to school, and made the ACT feel stupid about itself. The next morning Mom gave me an extra bottle she happened to have lying around in the cabinet where she hid her stash, and we laughed at the f’ed-upness of it all. Truthfully, I was relieved to be on the same page of crazy as her for the first time in a while.

The dog’s tail starts to wag, responding to the familiar sound of flip-flops.

“I can’t meet your mom,” I say, when Abram catches up to us.

“Why not?”

Because he knows me too well already, for starters, having skipped over being surprised that I was eavesdropping.

“Because I don’t feel comfortable introducing her to a crackhead,” I say instead. “It’s bad enough she had to share a husband with one.”

I explain how Adderall and I came to be such an inseparable pair, introduced by my mother. Abram listens, waits a little longer than when it’s his turn to talk, just in case I’m not finished, then says encouraging things that discourage me from letting my habit define my entire identity. He’s so frustrating sometimes.

“Do I really look like mother-meeting material to you?”

“More so than anyone I’ve ever met, yeah.”

“Well, looks can be deceiving,” I say. “I lie to you about food all the time.”

“That’s okay, I know how you really feel about the Doritos Locos Supreme.”

I ask him to please not talk that way in front of the dog.

“By the way,” he says, as we approach the basement, “if you’re not mother-meeting material, then what kind of material are you?”

“The black kind. That doesn’t go with anything else but black.”

He laughs, asks, “And me?”

I’m about to say something off-putting like Polyester! but then I glance over at him trying so hard to keep up with me, still managing to be interested in this metaphor that I blame myself for starting.

I sigh. “You’re linen.”

Warm, unpretentious, counter-intuitively better with each wash.

“Linen,” he repeats to himself. “Nice. Linen comes in black, too.”

ABRAM

JULIETTE AND THE DOG continue walking slightly ahead of me until the dog sits down in the middle of the path, her way of saying she’s over it. Juliette loves the dog’s honesty, and their bond deepens, which I’m happy about. We turn back around toward my place, which I’m ignorantly starting to consider ours already. Ignorance is bliss trying to pretend nothing will ever change. That saying doesn’t sound like me—probably borrowed it from someone. Juliette would tell me to give it back.

“We can do breakfast with Mom, less pressure,” I say, as we reach the patio area. “You don’t have to answer yet. Just think about it.”

“Count me in as a firm maybe.”

She frowns, slides the door open, and walks inside.

A short while later, she looks over at me and says, “Don’t let her go darker.”

“Huh?”

“Your mom’s hair,” she says patiently. “Darker is a mistake.”

“I agree.”

“Good,” she says. “If we ever do meet, I don’t want to feel sorry for her hair the whole time. I’ll feel bad enough because of my mom.”

I assure her everyone’s hair will be in proper order except mine.