Stay (ARC)

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  heard everybody say, “Hi, Roy.”

  But if my brother was sharing, I never heard what

  he said.

  Maybe five minutes later the door flew open behind

  me. Light spilled out, followed by the sound of voices,

  followed by people. I got up and dusted off the seat of

  my jeans.

  Roy came limping out on his crutches and we walked

  off toward the bus stop together. Slowly.

  “Did you talk?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “Oh. I heard them say hi to you.”

  “Yeah. That guy Joe called on me to share. But I

  didn’t want to. But he said, ‘Well, anyway, who are you?’”

  “Oh.” I tried not to let on that I was disappointed. I

  was guessing I failed. “Well, at least you said your name

  was Roy and you’re an addict. That’s something.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said my name was Roy.”

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  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  We traveled the rest of the way home in complete

  silence.

  * * *

  “That guy Joe” was leading the meeting on Friday. The

  one where I got to come in and listen again.

  He was a compact little guy with neatly combed

  hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Sort of the opposite of

  the tattooed motorcycle guys. Joe looked like more of a

  college man or a bookworm. Somebody you wouldn’t

  expect to see at an NA meeting, except for the fact that

  I was already learning not to cling too much to types.

  Addicts were more different kinds of people than I might’ve

  imagined.

  “My name is Joe and I’m an addict,” he said, when it

  was time for him to lead the sharing.

  Everyone in the room said, “Hi, Joe.” Even me.

  That is, everybody except Roy.

  “I don’t usually tell my whole story,” Joe began.

  “Because it’s a small town and I figure you guys have heard

  it, like, a gazillion times. But we have a newcomer, so…”

  His eyes flickered up to my brother Roy. Roy’s eyes

  did not flicker back. They remained glued to the table

  in front of us.

  “I never touched drugs ’til I was nineteen,” Joe said.

  “Never wanted to touch them, and never thought I would.

  And then I was in Nam. Sixty-five and sixty-six.”

  At that, Roy’s eyes flickered. They darted up and met

  Joe’s for just a fraction of a second, and then both guys

  looked away again. Quickly. Like the way you recoil after

  touching a hot stove.

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  “You hear a lot about the drugs guys do over there,

  and everybody always figures you’re talking street drugs.

  Well, there was plenty of that, and I’ll get to it. But it

  didn’t start with that. It started with the drugs the army

  gave me.

  “I probably should’ve mentioned that I was never

  drafted. I joined up and volunteered to go. I thought

  there was something going on over there that was worth

  getting behind. I thought my government knew exactly

  what it was doing, which I guess is why, when they issued

  me drugs, I thought they must be okay. I mean, they

  wouldn’t give them to us if they weren’t okay. Right?”

  He paused for just a brief second, and I could feel Roy

  hanging on the pause. He was listening in a way I hadn’t

  seen him listen before. I could see it on his face.

  “When we’d go out on a mission, they’d issue us

  Darvon and Codeine, which I didn’t much use. They

  were for the pain, and I was lucky enough not to have

  gotten injured. And then they gave us Dex. You know.

  Dexedrine. Heavy-duty speed. Really good-quality stuff

  straight from Uncle Sam. And sometimes they’d give us

  a steroid shot. We kind of knew what they were doing.

  They were experimenting with supersoldiers. Pharma-

  created supersoldiers. I didn’t get tired so easy with Dex.

  I could do so much more in a day and hardly feel it. But

  it wasn’t just about physical energy. The Dex made me

  feel powerful. Hell, it made me feel invincible. I could

  face anything on that stuff.

  “I didn’t find out until about a year after I got home

  that there was another reason for all that ‘better living

  through chemistry’ stuff. They were trying to get on top

  of combat stress. They figured out that drugs could help

  guys hold it together through the worst Nam had to offer.

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  Guys break down under the stress, and this was mostly

  keeping it from happening. I had a counselor at the VA

  after I got home, and I don’t know if he was supposed to

  tell me this or not, but he told me the breakdown rate was

  ten percent in World War Two. Four percent in Korea.

  But Nam? One percent. Better living through chemistry,

  like I said. But then he told me the downside. What they

  learned in the long run. You give a guy enough drugs

  to hold it together during combat, it doesn’t keep him

  from the effects of the trauma. Just postpones it. It’s all

  there waiting for him when the drugs wear off. But, hell,

  I didn’t need him to tell me that. I was a case study in it

  by then.”

  He stopped to take a breath, and you could’ve heard

  a pin drop in that room. And everybody but Roy and

  me had heard this a gazillion times before.

  “So I started doing a ton of Dex,” Joe said. “You

  would think there’d be a limit to how much I could get,

  but there wasn’t. There was an amount the army recom-

  mended, but in my unit they were handing the stuff out

  like candy. I don’t know what it was like in other guys’

  units, but that stuff flowed like a waterfall in mine. But

  the problem was, it wore off. And when it wore off, you

  felt so bad. I mean, you just wanted to chew somebody’s head off. So here we are, a bunch of guys with guns who

  were just about ready to murder somebody over nothing

  because it’s so hard to come down off that stuff. The more

  Dex I took, the worse it felt at the end of the day. And

  I couldn’t sleep. I tried the Darvon and Codeine, but it

  wasn’t enough. So that’s when I started smoking scag.”

  I thought he would say what scag was on his next

  breath, but he didn’t. So I missed a sentence or two of

  his sharing, catching Roy’s attention.

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  “What is that?” I whispered in his ear.

  “Heroin,” he mouthed back. No real sound.

  “…like, two dollars for a hit of really pure stuff, and

  it was everywhere. So I leave to go over there like this

  perfect Boy Scout, and I come back stateside addicted to

  both speed and heroin. Lost my marriage and my little

  boy. My wife took him away and never told me where. I

  have no way to get in touch with her and tell her I have

  seven months clean and sober. I’ve been looking for them

  this whole time, but nothing so far. But my sponsor’s

  always telling me it takes time to clean up the
wreckage

  of my past. Anyway, I have a decent job now, and a car

  that runs about ninety-five percent of the time. And that’s

  not bad for seven months. And I can get to sleep at night

  without using anything. I still don’t usually sleep too long, though. Like, two hours at a time. If I get down too deep,

  the nightmares start to get their hooks in.”

  His eyes tracked over to Roy again.

  I wondered if Roy had nightmares. If so, he had them

  quietly.

  “That’s all I got to say for now,” Joe said. “Roy? You

  got anything you want to share?”

  “No,” Roy said.

  This time Joe did not even push him to say his name

  before the sharing moved on.

  * * *

  “Give you guys a lift home?”

  We were walking through the parking lot when we

  heard it.

  I stopped and turned. Roy kept going.

  It was Joe.

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  “Roy,” I called. “Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier on

  your foot to take the ride?”

  I watched him teeter to a halt on his crutches. Secure

  his balance. I watched his resistance crumble.

  “I guess,” he said. “Yeah.”

  I knew he didn’t want to get into a car with Joe, so

  I took his agreement to mean that he was in even more

  pain than I realized.

  We moved off toward Joe’s car together. Slowly.

  Joe drove a powder-blue Corvair, which was a model

  of car my mother once told me she would never so much

  as go near. Apparently they were not big on safety, those

  Corvairs. I didn’t care. I could tell Roy was tired and

  discouraged, and I just wanted to get us home.

  Joe slid the seat way back on the passenger’s side to

  accommodate Roy’s crutches and bad foot. He helped my

  brother ease in. Then he came around the driver’s side

  and held his seat forward, and I had to practically fold

  myself in half to fit into the tiny back seat.

  He started it up, and it was loud. It either had those old

  glass pack mufflers on it, or maybe even no mufflers at all.

  “You guys brothers?” he asked as we drove out of the

  bank parking lot.

  I waited for Roy to say something, but he didn’t. I

  caught Joe’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Brothers.”

  “Where do you guys live?”

  “Over on Deerskill Lane. Last block before the

  dead end.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I know where that is.”

  We drove in silence for a time. Joe rolled down his

  driver’s window and lit a cigarette, which he held in

  his left hand, his forearm resting on the edge of the

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  door. The air that flowed in felt hot and summery, even

  though it was heavy dusk. It smelled of cigarette smoke

  and contained a light stream of sparks. I couldn’t stop

  staring at them.

  “How long you been back stateside?” he asked my

  brother.

  At first, Roy said nothing. Then, when I guess the

  silence grew too heavy even for him, he said, “Not long.”

  “I’m gonna write down my phone number,” Joe said.

  “In case you need someone to call.”

  “I won’t,” Roy said.

  “Never know what you’re gonna need.”

  He pulled up in front of our house when I pointed it

  out to him. My mom had left the porch light on for us.

  I could see moths playing in the beam of it. Or maybe it

  wasn’t play to them. Maybe it was desperate. Some crazy

  way to satisfy a need.

  Roy threw the passenger door open and jumped out.

  Right, I know. I would’ve thought the word “jumped”

  was a stretch, too, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

  “Here’s my number,” Joe said to me, scribbling on

  the inside of a cardboard matchbook cover with a pen

  that didn’t seem to want to write. “Give it to him when

  you get in the house.”

  “I don’t think he’ll call,” I said.

  “No. I don’t think so, either. But you never know.

  This way at least he’ll know he can.”

  “Thanks,” I said. And took the matchbook from him.

  I pushed the passenger seat forward to let myself out.

  But then I stalled and didn’t move for another few seconds.

  “How did you know?” I asked him.

  “How did I know what?”

  “That my brother was in Vietnam?”

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  “Oh. That. Well, I didn’t know, now did I? I couldn’t

  really know. I just took a guess. Seriously injured is a clue, but he could’ve been in a car accident or something.

  Mostly I just had a good long look at his eyes and took

  my best shot.”

  * * *

  My mom was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking some-

  thing that looked and smelled alcoholic. She looked up at

  me as though I’d wakened her from a dream.

  My dad seemed to be absent. Again. I almost opened

  my mouth to ask if he still lived here. Really, officially

  lived here. But I never got the chance.

  “So, how’s that going?” she asked me.

  “The meetings, you mean?”

  “That’s what I had in mind, yeah.” A little bit sarcas-

  tic. As always.

  “Not sure. Maybe not great so far. But I think maybe

  it takes more time.”

  She stared down into the brown, liquid eye of her

  glass again.

  “Connor came by. He wanted you to come over. He

  said he had something he wanted to show you. But then

  I told him when you’d be back, and he said you’d best

  wait until morning.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I walked upstairs, knowing that now I would have to

  lie there and try to get to sleep, wondering. Wondering

  what Connor could possibly have to show me that I hadn’t

  seen a million times already.

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  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Promises and Repayments

  I showed up at Connor’s house a little after six a.m. I could see lights on inside, so I knocked on the door. I thought

  his mother would scold me for coming by so early, but I

  had to do it. The suspense was killing me.

  Instead she answered the door with a smile on her

  face. I was stunned. I don’t think I had ever seen such a

  thing before.

  “Oh, Lucas,” she said. “Good. You’re here. Connor

  will be so glad. He can’t wait to show you his kitten.”

  “Connor has a kitten?”

  “He does! We picked her out yesterday afternoon.

  And she’s just the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen.

  Snow white, with the most beautiful … oh, but why am

  I telling you? You’re just about to see her. Go on up.”

  I walked down the hall and was dazzled by something

  like … light. When I got level with the living room, I

  saw she had just one curtain open in that one room. On

  the side with a view of no neighbors. Just the woods.

  I walked up the stairs and knocked on Connor’s door.

  “Mom?”

  “No
, it’s me. Lucas.”

  “Oh, good. Come in, but quick. Don’t let the cat out.”

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  I dashed through the smallest space of open door I

  could possibly manage, then closed it behind me.

  Connor was sitting cross-legged on his bedroom rug.

  He was holding what I thought was a pretty inventive cat

  toy. It was just a little fabric mouse, but he had tied it on the end of a string and tied the other end of the string to

  a stick, so he could dangle the mouse like a caught fish

  on a rod and line.

  Just for a moment I saw nothing else. No kitten.

  I had a sudden panicky thought. What if there was no kitten? What if Connor and his mother were all happy

  and excited about something that turned out to be …

  you know … completely imaginary? How horrifyingly

  weird would that be?

  A split second later a completely nonimaginary kitten

  came zooming into view.

  She had apparently been crouched under Connor’s

  bedside table, gearing up to attack. And hoo boy, did she

  ever attack. She flew across the rug and leapt into the air, jumping maybe three or four times her height. She swung

  at the mouse. Missed. Landed on her feet. They say cats

  always do. Then she spooked at nothing. A ghost. Her

  back arched up wildly high, like a cat on a Halloween

  decoration, and she crow-hopped sideways at nearly the

  speed of light until she was under the bedside table again.

  Connor and I both laughed out loud.

  “She’s a riot,” he said. “I’ve been laughing pretty much

  since we brought her home.”

  I sat on the rug near him. He reached over and scooped

  the cat out from under the table and held her close to his

  belly, and I petted her. I was surprised when I touched

  her, because so much of what I’d thought was cat was just

  fur. She barely seemed to be under there at all.

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  She was snow white, like Mrs. Barnes had said. Her

  ears were a delicate pink. I felt as though I could see right through them. Or almost. Her eyes were the most brilliant

  shade of blue. Like the sky on a summer afternoon. The

  contrast of those eyes on the otherwise white canvas of

  fur was really stunning. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  “She’s so pretty,” I said.

  “Yeah, she is. She’ll be a gorgeous cat.”

  “Why do you think your mom broke down and got

  her for you?”

  “I think she figured it would keep me home more.”

  I instinctively lowered my voice. “Oh. Right. Where