I call Uncle Bill as I drive, the highway howling outside my cracked-open window. Tell him I need to come by again, that something’s happened. I can’t bring myself to explain the specifics, but I think he guesses.
“Sure, Ellie.” He hacks out a cough. Maybe hard living’s finally catching up to him. “Want to come by now?”
“I’m late for work. Can I come in the morning?”
“Sure thing. If I’m out, you know how to get into the garage.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime. Don’t work too hard.”
I laugh, but it sounds fake. Feels fake too. Maybe he hears it, because he says, suddenly, “You can’t put it off forever, you know.”
“Put what off?” I don’t feel like laughing anymore.
“I don’t know.” But he does, and I do too. He means stirring some Xanax into her tea and letting her fall asleep forever. Driving her out to the desert and ripping her throat out with my fangs. “Life’s a bitch.”
Yeah, or maybe bitterness is just the cost of living like we do. Just because he’s family doesn’t mean he knows me, what I’m capable of, what I can do or what I can stand.
“See you in the morning, Uncle Bill.” I hang up, resisting the urge to hurl my phone out of the window to blow away into the desert’s waiting maw like just another tumbleweed.
A long night of busted noses and sliced-off fingers cools my frustration. By the time I pull into Uncle Bill’s driveway, I’m almost hoping he’s awake early again, that he’ll offer me a cup of his nasty instant coffee, that he’ll apologize or commiserate or, I don’t know. It’s a little disappointing to find the door locked and all the lights off.
The garage is cold, like always.
His truck is gone, so he must be out. Everything looks normal, cables and power tools and paint buckets, but the smell is wrong. Subtly, at first, an unexpected sterile edge to the air. The closer I get to the freezer, the more it presses in on me, the sense that something’s off. Something’s missing.
I flip the heavy lid up. A pale tundra of ice chips and humming insulation stares back. The freezer’s empty.
“Fuck.” Uncle Bill really couldn’t be bothered to restock the freezer before he left? Or at least tell me to come by later? Is this some kind of sick punishment for disagreeing with him about my mom?
There’s a dark stain in the corner. The remnants of a smashed vial, slivers of glass stabbing up through the tattered label like glittering teeth through black-and-white gums. I drop the lid, and the slam of foam on plastic rings fuzzy in my ears. I press my thumbs into the space between my eyeballs and brow bones until my vision doubles, then quadruples, then goes black.
When I open my eyes next, the walls are dripping blood. Red runs from the seams in the wood, foams up from the cracks in the cement, dotted with twisting white worms.
Then I blink, and the walls are clean.
God, Ellis. Get it together. A trick of the half-dead fluorescent bulbs, or an afterimage of pressing my thumbs into my eyes. Uncle Bill probably tripped over one of the stupid coiling cables and broke some vials. That’s so like him, to say he’s got my back and then forget to follow through. So what? That’s why the truck is gone, he left early for work to replace the blood he ruined.
But when I try to swallow, a pebble of uncertainty rattles through my esophagus, past my stomach, my intestines, and settles like a lead weight in my feet.
Hey man, I text him before pulling out of the driveway,you could have told me the freezer was empty. Then I feel guilty and add,Is tomorrow morning okay? I can bring takeout or something.
My mom’s asleep on the couch when I get home. I take an extra-long shower and unload the dishwasher, then crawl into bed, set my alarm, and try not to be too pissed at Uncle Bill for letting me down.
I dream about a faceless ghost in a medic jacket, and the smell of lemons. I wake up to screaming.
6
I BOLT OUT OF MY BEDROOM TO FIND JOANNE SILHOUETTEDin the door and my mom in front of her, brandishing a wooden spoon.
“Get out!” she shrieks.
Joanne clutches the doorjamb, her quilted vest dangling off her gaunt frame. She’s in her sixties, withered by decades of faith in the goodness of the world, faith that’s constantly disappointed.
Her son died last year. Blew his own face off. An accident, Joanne says, cleaning his gun and didn’t realize it was loaded, but who knows. She doesn’t see much of her grandkids.
I want to like Joanne, but I don’t.
