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I’m pissed at myself for wanting her to say something different.
Want is a bottomless black hole, sucking at me. Tentacles of faith and hope and trust, wisdom, good judgment, principles, pride—everything I don’t have—pulling me down.
I can’t. I fucking can’t.
I pick up a bottle of whiskey on the way home.
Ten minutes after Frankie goes to bed, I pour myself a glass.
“Hey, Joan.” I grab the bag with my lunch out of the fridge. “What’s up?”
“Are you at work?”
“No, I’m on my way in.”
I pull the apartment door closed most of the way with my foot, dangle lunch from a few fingers so I can use the rest to snag the knob and operate the key in the lock.
“You’re going to be late.”
“I’m never late.”
I hear her exhale. Blowing smoke out on the porch. “No, I don’t guess you are.”
St
epping up into the truck, I glance at the glove box, but I leave the pack where it is. I’m trying to cut back. Caroline wants me to quit.
Again and again, I come back to Caroline.
Come back to her accusations. Come back to the sight of her in her funeral dress and muddy feet, shoveling dirt.
I come back to Caroline’s laugh, Caroline’s mouth, Caroline’s body naked against mine.
I come in my hand in the shower, inside her, inside my own memories.
It’s almost a month since she left Silt, and I need to quit Caroline worse than I need to quit smoking.
“So listen,” Joan says. “Your uncle Jack is talking to a lawyer.”
He put my name down on the paperwork at the hospital, told them I’d pay for breaking his nose. Some fucking nerve. “I’m gonna pay the bill.”
“This isn’t about what you did to his face—it’s about your dad. The ambulance-chaser Jack’s hooked up with thinks he can make a case against Bo. Emotional distress or whatever—like what what’s-her-name’s family got against OJ.”
A civil trial, she means. Since the authorities aren’t pursuing a criminal case, my uncle’s going to take justice into his own hands. “What kind of case has Jack got? He’s a deadbeat alcoholic dickbag. What’s he going to say, Dad’s death made him more of one?”
“Watch your mouth. That’s my son you’re talking about.”
“Sorry.”
She sighs. “These guys only make their money if they win,” she says. “The lawyer must think it’s worth his time. I’m telling you because of Frankie.”
“What about her?”
But I have a sinking feeling I know exactly what.
Frankie wakes up thrashing in the sheets, shouting. Sometimes “Daddy.” Sometimes “Bo.”
Always, “Don’t!”
