The Night Always Comes

by Willy Vlautin

  They went back to the living room. Her mother got a glass of chocolate milk from the fridge and sat down on the couch. Lynette sat in the wooden chair near the door and took another drink of Jägermeister.

  “Where were you last night?” her mother asked.

  “Nowhere really . . . I am sorry I didn’t call. I know it must have made you worried. Are you going to work today?”

  Her mother shook her head. “I didn’t sleep last night. I already called in. You get any sleep at all?”

  “No,” said Lynette. “But I’m okay. Look, I’ve been thinking a lot since we last talked, trying to figure things out. I want to say first that I know I haven’t been easy. I’ve tried to apologize as much as I can. Maybe you’re right, maybe apologies don’t make up for the way I was. But I’ve worked hard on myself. After Jack I really did struggle. You know that more than anybody. What I didn’t tell you was that I went to a therapist twice a week for over a year, but I had to pay for it. The free place had a long waiting list and I was recommended to a different therapist and she was really good but expensive. I didn’t tell you because I was spending so much money on it. I was scared you’d think I was stupid because I put all that on my credit card. I paid a lot of our bills on my credit card, too, because as you know I couldn’t work full-time until I got stronger. All of that’s my fault. . . . And I want you to hear me apologize one more time and I hope you’ll accept it. I really am sorry for being so difficult. For a lot of years the only way I used to know how to get control of my life was to get mad. It was the only way I knew how to stand up for myself. I’m not making excuses, I’m just saying I’m sorry. I know that I was difficult to be around. And I know it hasn’t been easy between us. That’s your fault and my fault and us just being who we are living together. Mother and daughter . . . And then there’s Kenny, and we both know he takes a lot out of us. I guess we’ve been connected a lot longer than most mothers and daughters because of him. That’s hard in itself. I think it’s right to say we both love him and have tried our best for him. Maybe you think my best isn’t that good, maybe it isn’t, but I’ve always tried as hard as I could. And one other thing came to me last night that I wanted to thank you for.

  “I want to thank you for letting me be with Jack. I know it was hard on you having to pay for everything on your own and I didn’t help with Kenny the way I should have when I moved in with Jack. I’ve never thanked you for that. For a while that was the nicest time in my life. So I just wanted you to know . . . If I get angry now, it’s just because I want to help us and I get frustrated. But I’ve controlled my anger and my depression and each year I’ve gotten better. I know I have. And I hope you’ve seen it. You’ve had to, at least a little, I hope. . . . And one more thing I want to say. I want you to know that I appreciate all the nice things you’ve done for me and Kenny. You’ve sacrificed a lot. Maybe I haven’t thanked you enough for that. But I am now. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, for when I came home after running away and then again after Jack. I know I have a hard time telling you about things. I think I just get so ashamed. I’ve been so ashamed of myself for so long that it’s just hard to talk about, to admit that to you. So I’m also sorry that I couldn’t explain myself better. . . . I don’t want to leave us. It’s the last thing I want. I don’t do well alone. I know that. I always fall apart when I’m alone. All I’m saying is please, please, listen. Buying this place is the first lucky break we’ve had in a long time. I know you don’t believe it, but it’s the truth. Rents keep going up and Mr. Claremont’s basically giving us twenty thousand dollars by selling it to us as cheap as he is. Think about how much money he’s giving us by selling it to us at that price. That’s luck. . . . Finally, after all these years we get some luck. This house will give us something to work on, something of our own to be proud of. This city is changing so much so fast that I don’t know what to think. It just makes me scared. I drove around last night and there are neighborhoods I don’t even recognize anymore. There are streets I went to as a kid that don’t look anything like they did. Division Street is like a different city, Belmont, Mississippi, Alberta, Williams, Interstate. . . . You know how Kenny counts cranes?”

  “He loves cranes,” her mother said and took a drink of chocolate milk.

  “There are eleven downtown. Eleven new buildings and that’s just right now. He counted sixteen last summer. We’re gonna get pushed out if we don’t buy. That’s a fact. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a decent rental, but most likely we’ll have to leave this neighborhood or pay a lot more. But if we buy this place we can be in charge for once. We’ll have some say. I know you think of it as just being in debt. That’s not exactly true. Paying rent we never get anything. With this we will. So I’m begging you. I’m really, really begging you with everything I have. Can we please buy this place?”

  She stopped for a moment and waited for her mother to respond, but when she didn’t, Lynette kept going. “Last night, why I was gone was because I was trying to get all the money I could, that was owed to me so you wouldn’t have to have as big of a loan. So you wouldn’t feel so handcuffed by a loan . . . I got greedy and I panicked, but I’m okay. I just wanted to bring as much money as I could. I’m not sure exactly, but I think I have almost ninety-three thousand dollars now. And I’ll try to see if I can get a loan. Maybe they’ll give me a fifty-thousand-dollar loan, and if they do, then we’ll be partners. Equal partners. That means it’s not all on you. It’s on us together, exactly the same.

  “And I’ll do whatever I can to get you another car or to figure out how to get a loan and keep your new car. There are so many different ways we can make this work. I just wasn’t thinking about all the possibilities. I wasn’t being smart. And we really can make this place great if we try. I know we can and I have so many good plans and ideas on how to do it. But I’ll need you to be on board. I’ll need you to help and be behind it. So please, please, please, let’s do it.”

  Lynette looked at her mother, but when she did, her mother turned her eyes to the TV. She held on to her cigarette and ash fell onto the blanket and she left it there. “I’m too tired to talk about this again,” she said.

  “I know. I’m tired, too. We’re both exhausted. But we have to figure it out.”

  Her mother’s voice lowered until it was barely audible. “I told you what I thought yesterday. I don’t want to again. I’m sorry, but I meant what I said.”

  Lynette nodded and took a deep breath and exhaled. “Okay, okay. I was thinking about something else last night. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we need to find a different place. This house does have a lot of bad memories. Maybe too many tough times to get over. We could find a place farther out, not in this neighborhood but out in Gresham or Clackamas or Milwaukie. There’s gotta be a house out there that we can afford and I don’t mind commuting if you don’t.”

  Her mother began to fidget but kept her eyes on the TV. Her face was gray and bloated and her lips were chapped and there was tomato sauce on her chin. “We’ll just end up in another version of this house and I don’t want to commute.”

  “Even in your new car?”

  “You sure can be nice when you want something.”

  “I want to be nice because I want to be better. I want to be the kind of person who is nice.”

  Her mother looked at her cigarette and leaned over and knocked the ash from it onto the pizza box. “I’m exhausted and I was so worried about you I couldn’t even sleep and now I can’t work. I’m beat and I know this is going to upset you, but, Christ, for once I have to put myself first. I don’t want the loan and I don’t want this house. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you.”

  Lynette slumped forward in the chair. She put her elbows on her knees and took another sip of her drink. “I’m not that smart, but I think I’m beginning to figure out what you’re doing. . . . You don’t want to live with me, do you? This is about me. That’s what’s going on?”

  Her mother picked up her glass of
chocolate milk, finished it, but said nothing.

  “At least say it,” Lynette whispered. “At least let me hear it so that I know it’s real.”

  Her mother took a long pull from her cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and looked at her. “I’m sorry, Lynette, but I don’t want to live with you. I love you, I do, but I’m tired of living with you. I’m tired of being around you.”

  Tears leaked down Lynette’s face and she nodded. They sat for nearly five minutes in silence. The TV played and her mother stared at it.

  Lynette wiped her eyes. “Okay. Do you really want me to take Kenny?”

  Her mother half nodded. “I was so upset last night that I gave him a pill and packed most of his things. If you want him, take him.”

  “Where are we supposed to go?”

  Her mother let out an exasperated laugh. “You’re the one who said you were leaving this morning if I didn’t do what you wanted. I don’t know where you’re supposed to go. I barely know where I’m gonna go.”

  “Alright . . . Alright,” Lynette said quietly. “I’m gonna get out of here in a day or two. My ribs hurt and I’ll have to get rid of a lot of stuff, so I don’t know how long it’ll take, but now I don’t want to stay here anymore either. So I’ll be fast. I’ll clean out the basement and the garage and Kenny’s room. You’ll have to do the rest, but most of this stuff is yours anyway. I’ll give you an extra month’s rent and bill money.” She stood up. “I’m gonna try to sleep for a few hours.”

  Her mother put out her cigarette on the pizza box. “I’ll look at your bandages when you wake up. Try not to sleep on your back.”

  “Alright,” said Lynette and went to the thermostat, turned the heat back down on the furnace, and went to the basement. She left her clothes on, got in bed, lay on her side, and collapsed into sleep.

  19

  The two small basement windows showed a dark gray sky and a steady rain falling. Kenny stood in his Superman T-shirt and pajama bottoms with his hands around Lynette’s ankle pulling her from the bed.

  “Leave me alone,” Lynette cried and pulled the covers over her head. But Kenny wouldn’t let go and finally after a minute she glanced at the clock: nine a.m. She sat up in bed and looked at him. “I’ll get up, but only on one condition. You brush your teeth and put on your clothes. I’ll make us breakfast after that, alright?”

  Kenny smiled.

  Lynette pointed her finger at him. “I’m serious. You go upstairs and put on your red sweats. I put them on top of your dresser with your red socks. And brush your teeth for three minutes. I’ll know if you don’t do it that long. That’s an order or I’ll start counting, okay?” Kenny began heading for the stairs and Lynette slowly got up from bed. Her chest was so sore that she could barely lift her arms above her head. She took off her mother’s old paint shirt to see that the bandages had leaked through and onto her sheets. She put the shirt back on and went upstairs. The carport was empty. In the kitchen she made coffee and checked her phone. There were six messages from Gloria, one from JJ, and one from the bakery. She deleted them all without listening. She called AT&T and told them she wanted her number changed and unlisted. They gave her a new number and she wrote it down, then hung up.

  She drank coffee and tried to think. JJ had never known where she lived but Gloria had been over to her house a half-dozen times. There was nothing she could do about that. And what about Rodney? She paced the room and then called three junk removal services before finding one that could do a pickup that day at one p.m. After that she went to the bathroom, took off her shirt, and stood in front of the mirror. Dark purple bruises covered her chest from getting pushed by Rodney. Her breasts were swollen and sore, the left one discolored with yellow-and-purple bruising. The two gauze bandages on her back were soaked in blood, but the smaller ones covered with Band-Aids had no signs of blood. She took three ibuprofen, brushed her teeth, and washed her face.

  In the living room she turned up the heat, put an Aladdin DVD on the TV, and set Kenny on the couch with a peanut butter and jam sandwich. When he was settled, she went down to the basement and began packing. Most of her clothes she set in a pile for Goodwill and put only the best of them in the one suitcase her family had. Her other things, CDs and books and shoes she didn’t wear anymore, she put in her car to drop off. She stripped the sheets from both her and Kenny’s beds and put them in the washer. She took off the plastic liner covering his twin bed and put it in the carport. His mattress itself was ten years old and stained from years of urine and she dragged it out there as well. Her mattress had been her mother’s and was thirty years old. She’d have the junk men come down to the basement and take it out. Both of their secondhand dressers she broke apart and set outside. A pile formed. Everything she couldn’t give away or fit in her car she put in the carport: a broken plastic dollhouse her father had given her, a bowling ball with a chip in it, an old red backpack with a missing strap, a Colman lantern that was in three pieces, old fishing poles, a box of cassette tapes, discarded framed posters of Superman, two chairs with broken legs, and an old salon-style hair dryer that sat on a stand that her grandmother had left them.

  Her mother had packed Kenny’s duffel bag with all his clothes. His TV, DVD player, and movies were also in a pile near the front door. In a cardboard box she set enough plates, forks, spoons, and knives for them to get by. She then locked Kenny inside the house and made three trips to Goodwill. By the time the junk truck arrived at one she was throwing more and more things onto the pile: an old popcorn machine they’d never used, a blender that needed a screwdriver to be turned on, two small lamps that had been glued back together, and an end table that had a two-by-four as one of the legs. Kenny’s room became empty, as did the basement.

  While the two junk men loaded their truck, Lynette moved to the garage. She pulled out a kiddie pool, a metal Christmas tree, a Fisher-Price plastic basketball hoop, two pairs of ice skates, a Big Wheel, a cooler with a broken lid, two car tires, and four cardboard boxes of engine parts labeled RANDY’S STUFF.

  She was dragging out a lawn mower with two missing wheels when a black Audi A5 parked across the street. The driver’s-side door opened, and Gloria came out dressed in black jeans and a black leather coat, with a gray ski cap on her head. She walked past the junk men to where Lynette was. “Why the fuck would you do it?” she screamed.

  “What are you talking about?” said Lynette. She left the lawn mower by the truck and walked back to the garage, and Gloria followed her.

  “I know you stole my safe.”

  Lynette stopped in the middle of the yard. “Your safe? I didn’t steal anything. What’s wrong? Did you get robbed?”

  “I’ve known you too long and you’re a shitty liar.”

  Lynette could smell wine on her breath. “You really are a drunk, aren’t you?”

  “Fuck you,” Gloria yelled. “I just want my safe.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a safe. Why would you have a safe?” Lynette turned and walked into the garage, then bent down and grabbed a deflated soccer ball from underneath the workbench. When she stood up, Gloria grabbed her by her coat collar.

  “There’s only one other person besides Terry who has a key and the code to my place. I was with Terry last night and my other friend promises it wasn’t him. And you have the code and last night you were staying there. What am I supposed to think?”

  “But I didn’t stay there. I changed my mind and left the key on the counter. So get your hands off me.”

  “Just give it back and I won’t call the cops,” Gloria said and let go of her coat.

  “Call the cops? Call the cops for what? I left twenty minutes after you did. I didn’t feel like being alone, so I left.”

  “You’re such a fucking liar.”

  “You better quit calling me a liar. And I don’t have your safe.” Lynette put the soccer ball in a box that had a stack of rusted car chains in it and picked it up. “Why would I have your safe when I didn’t even know you had one? A
nyway, was it a big one?”

  “Big enough.”

  “Could you carry it?”

  “No,” Gloria said.

  “Then how could I carry it and where would I carry it to? You’re crazy thinking it’s me. And you can say you’re not drunk, but you smell like you’re drunk and you’re acting like you’re drunk. So just leave me alone. I’ve got a lot of things to do.” Lynette left the box with the men and walked back to the garage and dragged out a Weber grill with no legs and no lid.

  “I know you stole it,” Gloria said, still following her. “It’s why you’re already losing your temper and you won’t even look at me.”

  Lynette stopped, turned around, and glared at her. “I’m not losing my temper and I’m looking straight at you. I’m sorry about your safe, I am, but I didn’t steal it. I really didn’t. What was in it, anyway?”

  “You know what was in it.”

  “Goddamn it,” yelled Lynette. “I don’t know.”

  “Then I’m sure as fuck not telling you.”

  “You owe me eight thousand dollars. Did you have that in your safe?”

  “Fuck you. There was twice that in the safe and you know it.”

  Lynette left the grill with the men and walked back toward the garage, then stopped. “You’re saying you had twice as much money as what you owed me and still you didn’t give me anything? When I was begging? When I was begging for you to just pay me back what you owe me? Now you come here and have the nerve to say I stole it. And to think I gave you that eight thousand dollars as a friend. I gave it to you ’cause you’re a fucking drunk and got a DUI.”

  The junk men were now staring at them.

  Gloria backed away from her. Her voice shook. “I’ve done so much for you. Terry always said you were just leeching off me and he was right. And I’ve been so tired of hanging out with you. You live like a loser, still bartending at the Dutchman, and you’ll be there until you drop dead just like your pal, Shirley. Well, I fucking hate Shirley and you’re just like her. I know you took the safe, so give it back or I really will call the cops. There’s a lot of personal things in it and I need those.”