by Chloe Garner
“Not good,” she admitted. “But I’m doing what I can.”
“At least he has all of their friends to take care of him,” Robbie said.
She knew about their friends? And approved?
Lizzie blinked quickly.
“He isn’t really coping right now, so I’m trying to arrange the funeral.”
“Whatever he wants,” the woman said.
“He… He doesn’t want a funeral.”
“Okay,” Lara’s mother said. Lizzie would have stared at the phone, if it hadn’t been against her ear.
“I’m still planning on holding one,” Lizzie said. “I think he’ll change his mind.”
“This is going to be hard enough for him,” Lara’s mother said. “If he doesn’t want a funeral, we won’t come.”
“That’s not fair to you,” Lizzie said. “You deserve to have a time to remember her.”
The woman laughed and there was a sniff.
“Lara talked about you a few times. I know you’re going to do your best, but you can’t change them.”
Lizzie wanted to ask how Lara had done it, how she’d brought Robbie around, but it wasn’t the time.
“Do you want me to send her body home?” she asked instead.
“What does Robbie want?” the woman asked.
“To cremate her.”
“All right,” she said.
Lizzie was at a loss. She shook her head.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.
“Be there,” the woman said. “Take good care of him. That’s what Lara would really want.”
Her hands were shaking. She had no idea what she was doing.
“Are you sure?” Lizzie asked, still at a loss.
“Yeah.”
“Well, you have my cell number, now, if… If you want.”
“Thank you,” Lara’s mother said and hung up. Lizzie sat with her phone in her lap for several minutes before she got up and went into the kitchen to get herself a glass of juice. She didn’t know what she was going to do, now.
She was supposed to be helping Robbie, but even that, she didn’t know what to do. With him gone…
Was he coming back?
Had he just walked away from his whole life?
Had she been the one to push him out of it?
She cleaned.
She swept the hallway and she cleaned the windows. She went out and bought mousetraps, just in case, and put them in the bedrooms and the pantry. She found a loaf of bread she’d missed the first sweep, completely unopened and covered in mold, and she threw that out then went to tackle the freezer.
The freezer in the garage, at least, was cold and everything packaged in butcher paper or more commercial cardboard - popsicles and the like - and looked okay. No water damage to any of the paper like it had thawed and refrozen. She unwrapped one of the steaks just to be sure, and apart from a slight freezer burn, it looked entirely edible. She brought it back into the house and started cooking dinner.
At one point, she looked up from her marinade to find the man with the odd smile and the leather jacket sitting in the corner chair again.
“Hello,” she said, surprised. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Most people don’t,” he answered. “Robbie doesn’t talk about you.”
“Not really surprising,” she said, returning to the batter she’d started for brownies. “Family life wasn’t the highlight of his past.”
The man nodded.
“That’s true for a lot of these guys.”
She looked up at him, then put her bowl down.
“Is this a drug house?”
He laughed.
“No.”
“He just hangs out with all drug addicts?” she asked. The man shrugged.
“We all do what we have to, to cope.”
“That’s an excuse,” she said. “Some people have it harder than others, but calling it coping makes it okay, and it isn’t.”
He laughed again.
“Said the child blessed to not have issues.”
“Look, I’m here,” she said. “I’m doing what I can. And I know it’s hard.”
He shrugged without seeming to give her credit for what she’d said.
“Is he out getting high?” she asked.
His mouth twitched down at both corners, noncommittal.
“Some of them are,” he said. “Don’t know if Robbie is or not.” Intense blue eyes zeroed in on her and he scratched a stubbly chin. “If I had to guess, I’d say he isn’t, though.”
She nodded.
“Is he coming back?”
“Can’t tell you that either,” the man said. “But I’d guess he is.”
“Why do you have a key?” Lizzie asked. “I checked to make sure the door was locked, and I brought in the spare key.”
“Because we’re family,” the man said. She tipped her head at him and the corner of his mouth came up again.
“I’m Trevor,” he said.
“Lizzie,” she said. She didn’t add her ‘nice to meet you’ because she wasn’t convinced yet.
“I’ve known Lara since before she met Robbie,” he said. “She was the best of us.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lizzie said. He nodded.
“Thank you. Too common, you know, but you still never really see it coming.”
She nodded, squinting.
He had an odd build. Just a shade too skinny to be really healthy, with the brown leather jacket that kind of hung on him like it weighed too much. At the same time, he had strong, straight posture, and healthy brown hair that made a contrast to the scraggly four-day beard. She didn’t see any missing teeth.
“You don’t use, do you?” she asked. He shook his head.
“Not that I don’t get it, but I’ve never seen the need.”
“Then why do you hang out with them?” she asked.
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about all of this,” he said. “Lara was clean as sunshine, and there are a few others who have never touched anything stronger than a wine cooler.”
She scanned the room in her mind’s eye again, remembering the look of so many of them, so many classic signs of long-term, hard drug use.
“Are they all psychotic?” she asked. “Is that what keeps them together?”
He laughed.
“Depends on your definition of psychotic.”
“I think there’s only one,” Lizzie said, and Trevor laughed again. There was no humor there at all, though it wasn’t unfriendly.
“We might all share that, then,” he said. “But probably not like you think.”
She frowned.
“It isn’t that complicated,” she said. He nodded.
“Of course it is.”
“Why are you here?” Lizzie asked.
“Because I figured you would be here on your own, trying to figure out what to do with yourself,” he said, then looked around. “Though I can tell you’ve been busy.”
“And you thought you’d come keep me company?” she asked. He stood, walking across the small living room and coming to lean against the countertop on his elbows, looking at her with an even expression.
“I thought I’d come have a conversation with you, without Robbie being here to try to tell me what to say.”
“Robbie wouldn’t like that you’re here?” Lizzie asked, putting the bowl of brownie batter down again. He shook his head slowly.
“No. He doesn’t want you here.”
“What do you have to do with that?” Lizzie asked. He smiled.
“If anyone encourages you to stay, you’re going to do it,” he said. “We can all tell.”
“I’m staying either way,” she said. He nodded.
“That’s what you think, now,” he said. “But if Robbie can stay away from you, being in this house alone for long enough is going to drive you back to your nice life.”
“I love my brother,” Lizzie said. “I’m here until I know he’s okay.�
�
Trevor shook his head.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Your brother is never going to be all right the way you want him to.”
“Lara made him better,” she said. “Even if she addressed him through the delusion, she helped him so much. I’m going to find a way to help him.”
Trevor shook his head, still leaning on his elbows.
“It won’t work,” he said.
“Do you want me to stay or not?” she asked.
“It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “I just want to know who you are, and whether or not we need you to stay.”
“What does that mean?” Lizzie asked. “Was Lara like den mother, or something?”
He grinned and looked at the counter.
“It’s actually not a bad way to put it,” he said. “It really isn’t.”
He pushed himself up off the counter and leaned back against the couch, a motion he could make without moving his feet.
“I’m going to go,” he said. “I’ll probably be back tomorrow. You think about whether or not you really want to stay, whether or not you really want to help him, and we can talk tomorrow.”
She frowned.
“If you see him, tell him he’d better come home, or else I’m going to hunt him down. I’m not just going to disappear just because he thinks he doesn’t want me here.”
“Oh, he knows he doesn’t want you here,” Trevor said. “The only question is whether or not he’s wrong.”
***
She heard the door open and close and got up from her bed, going to find Robbie in the front room looking disoriented.
“I’ve got a steak marinating in the refrigerator,” she said. “Do you want me to fry it?”
He looked at her as though he were surprised to see her, even though her car had been outside.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“You said that before,” she answered, “but I told you we’re going to talk, and I meant it. Do you want steak or not?”
“It came out of the freezer?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Is there something wrong with it?”
“No,” he said, coming to sit on the arm of the side couch.
“What did you do after you left?” she asked.
“Went hunting,” he said. She stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him. He looked surprised that he’d told her, as surprised as she was to hear him say something like that.
“For drugs?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I have plenty here.”
She was going to have to clean better tomorrow. He shook his head, still disoriented.
“We were hunting….” He shook his head and stood. “I’m going to bed.”
“I thought you wanted steak.”
“I don’t remember,” he said.
“Robbie,” she said. “We’re doing this. Sit down.”
She put the steak into the oven - it would have done better to sear off in a pan first, but she was losing him - and went to sit on the main couch, turning so she was facing him. “Your wife died.”
“She’s dead,” he agreed.
“You loved her,” Lizzie said. He slid down over the arm of the couch onto the seat and lay back with his knees up over the arm.
“I did,” he said.
“It sucks,” Lizzie said. “And it isn’t going to get easy any time. Ever.”
He looked at her.
“This is your pep talk?”
“This is reality,” she said. “You need to deal with it, and while most people could take a few days and just be numb, you need to deal with it right now, because your version of numb is one you can’t take back.”
“You think I’m going to kill myself?” he asked.
“No, I think you’re going to go back down the rabbit hole and never come back, because it’s always going to hurt up here.”
He scratched his nose.
“I don’t do as many drugs as you think I do.”
“I thought you were clean,” Lizzie said. “I’m beginning to realize that I don’t know as much about you as I thought I did.”
He laughed, bitter.
“Liz, I know you mean well, but you don’t know anything about me at all.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m here. Tell me.”
“I loved her so much,” he said.
He was coping better than she’d thought he would. It was like he’d expected it. She’d seen that before, men and women who thought that the natural state of things in their lives was bad things happening, but she hadn’t really thought that that was Robbie.
“I know,” she said. “And she loved you.”
“She did,” he said.
“Are you taking any of your meds?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “They make me feel awful and they don’t help anything.”
“Will you see a professional?” she asked. “Even if it’s just a therapist, it might help.”
“No,” he said. She pressed her lips. She’d expected that, and wasn’t going to fight with it. The history professionals had with him was less than impressive.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Go home,” he said.
“I’m not leaving until I know you’re going to be okay,” she said. He slung his knees down off of the arm of the couch and followed them in a fluid motion until he was sitting on the floor.
“You have a job, Liz. A life. It doesn’t get better for someone like me.”
“Lara made you happy,” she said. “I’m not just giving up on that because she’s gone.”
He gave her an incredulous look, and she held up a hand.
“I’m not saying I expect you to be happy any time soon. I just want to know that you aren’t going to blow up whatever it was she did for you that got you there, the first time.”
“I don’t want you around my friends,” he said.
“Then they’re bad friends,” Lizzie said reflexively. She would have slapped her hand across her mouth except that it would have made it worse.
“They’re here for me,” he said. “They’re good friends. I just don’t want you around them.”
“Why not?” Lizzie asked. “If they’re dangerous, you shouldn’t be around them, either.”
“They aren’t dangerous to me,” Robbie said. “You just don’t understand.”
His head twitched and his gaze rolled up the wall and toward the ceiling.
“Did you ever feel like there’s more to the world than what you can see about it?” he asked.
“Like, religiously?” she asked. She was nominally religious, but not a joiner by any stretch. Their parents weren’t atheist so much as unreligious, and she’d never put much energy into it.
“Lara had faith,” he said, his face brightening. “She said that there were things we could do to make the world better, and all we had to do was figure them out and go do them. That the world was full of bad stuff, and we can’t change that it’s out there… But we can make it better.”
“I think that’s lovely,” Lizzie said. “What did you do?”
His face clouded again and he shook his head.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Please,” she said. “Try to explain it.”
He sighed, rolling his head to the side and eying the ceiling.
“We went out and found the bad things and she killed them,” he said. It might have been just a note of malice, there, and Lizzie wasn’t sure if it was aimed at her or not.
“The bad things,” she said. He nodded.
“The bad things.”
She didn’t know what that meant.
“How did she kill them?” she asked.
“By being her,” he said, a trace of the light coming back to his face. “Just by being her.”
Well, that was better than anything else she could think of.
Maybe it was metaphorical.
Given how he experienced reality when he
wasn’t medicated, it wasn’t entirely impossible. If Lara had just learned how to tick the boxes that made him calm, made him feel like he was winning in the reality of his own world… It was against all clinical advice, but it seemed like it had worked.
“Could you teach me?” Lizzie asked. Robbie sprung to his feet.
“I don’t want you here,” he said, storming down the hall and slamming the door to his room. A moment later it opened again and he was back in the living room, still agitated and angry.
“And stay away from the demon,” he said. The demon.
“Is that the one with the split tongue?” she asked.
“No, that’s Dennis,” Robbie said. He pointed at the chair in the corner. “That one. Stay away from him.”
“Trevor?” she asked. He dropped his arm and gave her a pleading look like she’d known from his boyhood.
“Don’t talk to him,” he said.
“He was here,” she said. “He’s… he’s strange, but he was nice.”
Robbie shook his head.
“I don’t want you around him.”
“Then why does he have a key to your house?” Lizzie asked and Robbie shook his head, backing away.
“No,” he said. “Go home, Liz. Please. Just go home.”
She bit her lip and watched as he left, then shook her head.
She ate alone.
***
She worked the next day, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do in an empty house. Robbie was gone when she woke up in the morning, so after she’d gotten the guest shower running - she was going to have to call a plumber to replace the showerhead, because it was completely rusted through - she’d taken her laptop out into the front room and just focused.
It felt good to do something for someone who appreciated that she was doing it.
Around lunchtime, she went and made herself a sandwich, throwing out a rotten tomato that she’d missed in the vegetable drawer, and then started going through the house.
She felt bad about it.
He was an adult, and this was his house.
He deserved the privacy of at least his own house, but Lara wouldn’t have wanted him to lose himself to the drugs.
She was beginning to believe less and less that she had known anything about the woman, but her mother’s words to Lizzie gave her some courage that she was doing the right thing.
She started in the kitchen, and then moved on to the hall closet, the bathroom, the guest suite, and then Robbie’s room and bathroom. At the first pass, she didn’t find anything, but as she was putting towels back away on a shelf, a pin fell down off of a higher shelf. She picked it up and looked at it. There was nothing ordinary about it, and it was clean, unlike everything else in the house. Something that saw consistent use.
