Page 26 of Liquids

“How long were you with him?”

“Five years. This is going to sound like I’m making excuses for him—I’m not, believe me. If he came through that door now, I’d stick a knife in him—but he was okay most of the time, mellow, easygoing. But he had a friend he’d meet up with sometimes who gave him speed. When he did that, all the rage came out.”

Rig flexes his shoulders. “Fucking hell. What happened?” I can tell from his expression that he doesn’t really want to know, that anger is building under his skin like it’s lived under mine all these years, so I dodge the question.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been right in my head, you know? He kept going on at me about how I didn’t understand things a lot of the time.”

Rig’s face darkens. “You seem pretty fuckin’ okay to me.”

I laugh and sweep my hand around the living room. “You think? The mess this was in when you first came here. It wasn’t exactly the Ritz, was it?”

“So, being messy means you’re not right in the head?”

I eye him balefully. “How many bottles of vodka did you find in your great apartment cleanup?”

His mouth tightens. “My great apartment cleanup? Are you fucking with me?” His neck starts to go red.

“You’re all fired up to set me straight, just like he was, but you’re …”

“You’re comparing me to some bastard who beat his girlfriend so bad that she went into labor and his kid died?”

“No, of course not, I …”

“Fuck that, babe.”

He throws the picture on the bed and stomps through to the kitchen, and I stare at the wall of the bedroom and pull in a shaky breath. I don’t want to tick him off. When I follow him in there, he’s yanking on his boots, coat stretched across his broad back.

“I’m going out,” he says.

“Don’t storm out, I didn’t mean …”

“Too angry now, babe. We’ll talk when I get back.” And he opens the door and the whole apartment shakes when he slams it behind him. He’s been hiding in here all day but is going out now? I bite my lip. I guess it’s dark and there are a lot of deserted places to walk at this time of night. No one in their right mind wanders around this town after dark.

I don’t know how long I stand in the kitchen, but I do know what cabinet Rig tidied all the vodka into. Grabbing the nearest bottle and a glass, I head to the bedroom. And I sit down on the bed and place them on the nightstand, hand shaking as I pour myself a generous measure. The first sip is like bliss burning down the back of my throat. I pick up the picture from where he threw it on the comforter.

Charlie had been deteriorating for days when this photo was taken, and they’d lifted him out of his incubator to put him on me—all his wires and tubes attached, his small body curled up on my chest. And I have the happiest smile on my face, because when I was sitting there in that blue hospital chair, I felt a love so strong it seemed to take over every thought I’d ever had. Even though I knew it was near the end, I still hoped. He was alive, and despite knowing he wasn’t going to make it, I loved holding him, loved how his tiny body tucked so neatly into mine.

I take another swallow of vodka. Mark disappeared after he laid into me. He never came to see Charlie. I sent him pictures, and he blocked me. I had to make the decision to turn off the life support on my own. I couldn’t tell him about the funeral or anything. I don’t know if he has any idea whether his son is alive or dead. If he ever cared. I had Charlie cremated in St. Louis and brought him with me in a box in the car. There was just me at the funeral the pastor here did for me, standing by that tiny hole in the ground, burying his ashes in my best black dress, the pain in my body a living thing. One of the nurses from my hospital job came with me. I haven’t seen hide or hair of Mark since he disappeared.

How do people deal with the pain? I don’t understand how to stop myself trawling through it over and over again. If I’d done something about his friend Dray earlier, if he hadn’t come home and slept it off at Dray’s, if Dray hadn’t come back with him and been egging him on. I can’t sit on the anger, and so I drink until it all goes back down again.

I don’t know how much I drink or how much time ticks by, but I wake in the dark with a start to find a shadow looming over me. My hand flutters up to my chest.

“Who knows?”

Rig. “Fuck, you scared me. Don’t creep up on me like that.”

“Babe, you were dead to the world. A herd of elephants could have stampeded through here and you’d have slept through it. I’ve been trying to wake you for about five minutes.”

I push my hair out of my face with a shaky hand and roll onto my back, and Rig leans over and turns on the light by the side of the bed. He sits down next to me as I scoot my hips over.

“Sorry I scared you, babe. Who knows about him?”

“No one.”

“What do you mean, no one?”

“I have no family to speak of. A distant uncle who cleaned out the house, but he never contacts me.”