by Willow Rose
Everyone in the room nods.
“I can take Cape Canaveral,” Danny says. “I’ll hit Grills, Rusty’s and Milliken’s. They’re like pearls on a string.”
“Don’t forget Fishlips,” I say. “The deck upstairs.”
“I’ll take Sandbar and the Irish pub by 520,” Joey says.
“What about Salter?” I ask and nod in his direction.
“Your dad is with him?”
“My dad can’t move. He won’t be of any help if anything happens.”
“He’s turning ten next month, Mary,” Joey says. “He can stay here for the hour that it takes.”
“Yes, Mom. I can be alone for an hour,” Salter says with a deep sigh.
“I can stay with him,” Chloe says. “I’ll try and track her phone from your computer.”
“Thank you, Chloe,” I say. I know Joey is right. Salter is big and a very responsible boy. I am just not comfortable leaving him home alone yet.
“I’ll take Slow & Low,” I say. “Then hit the Sportsbar.”
“Alex and I can take Coconuts and the Beach Shack,” Sandra says.
I stare at them, wondering if I should say anything. I decide they’re not children and don’t make an issue of it. This is not the time. Right now, all that matters is finding Marcia and getting her sober.
Chapter Twenty-Four
January 2006
The new technique works brilliantly for Peter. A few days after Kristin starts working with him, he is able to pick out word-blocks and form sentences, asking for a newspaper or something to eat. Just three weeks into his training, Kristin introduces him to a keyboard, and soon he is spelling things on his own, supported by Kristin’s hand under his arm.
To Daniel, it is a miracle. Every time he drops Peter off at Kristin’s office, he waits excitedly outside, wondering what new things his brother has told her, what wonders have been revealed about the world he lives in.
It took some convincing, but eventually the rest of their family has understood the miracle that is taking place in their youngest brother’s life. Only their old mother doesn’t seem to trust this new technique fully yet. It doesn’t matter, Daniel tells himself. Peter has been given a voice, language. He has freed himself, and that is what is most important. Their mother will learn to see it with time.
Now, three months later, Daniel is waiting excitedly outside Kristin Martin’s office, as always on Saturdays, as the door opens and she comes out smiling. For the first time, their mother has agreed to come and see it for herself.
“I believe we reached a milestone today,” Kristin says. “Come and see for yourselves.”
“Come on, Mother,” Daniel says to his mother, and grabs her hand to help her get up from the chair. “Now you’ll get to see it. Then you’ll understand why we are all so excited for him.”
Holding his mother’s arm, Daniel walks into the office, where Peter is sitting in his chair. It’s hard to tell that he is actually five feet tall the way he sits, with his skinny arms and legs and his drooping head. He is rocking from side to side and bangs his face against his hands again and again. Seeing Daniel and his mother makes him agitated, and, as always when excited or upset, he puts his hands in his mouth and bites them, leaving open sores.
“Peter seems to have a lot to say to us,” Kristin says, as they approach him in his wheelchair.
Kristin helps their mother to sit on the leather couch, while explaining to her how the training works.
“At first, when we began this, his messages were simple and often misspelled, but his skills have improved as has his fluency. By a lot. You should be very proud of him. Now he hits a letter every second. It’s truly amazing. I have given him books to read. He reads very fast. We’re going through the books very quickly. And they’re not just easy books. He’s reading about everything from politics to fiction, and gobbling it all up, I might add. I should know because I turn all the pages for him. And then we talk about the books afterwards, and he tells me what he thinks of them. His knowledge of politics is quite extensive. And his math skills are amazing. We worked on fractions today.”
Daniel sits next to his mother and holds her hand. Her hand feels stiff in his. She looks skeptically at the professor.
“We had no idea,” Daniel says. “Did we, Mother?”
Their mother doesn’t answer; she looks at her son in the wheelchair and Daniel can sense her hostility towards the professor. It makes him uncomfortable, irritated as well. All he wants is for her to see what he sees.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Mother? Aren’t you happy that he finally is able to communicate with us? To think that he is that smart, but never has been able to express it. I can hardly believe it.”
“I understand if it takes a little while for you to get used to the fact that your son is communicating after all these years. I can’t blame you for being skeptical. It is very remarkable,” Kristin Martin says. “But it is vital that he learns to develop his skills and not just treat his illness. That’s what I believe, and what I want to tell the world. In fact, our results here are so stunning, I want the world to know about it. I was wondering if I could borrow Peter for a couple of weeks. I want him to write an article about his progress. I want him to go with me to a conference next month, and together, we’ll present this article to a room of professors and scientists like me. What do you say? Will you let me borrow him?”
“Under no circumstances,” the mother replies. “My son is not a guinea pig.”
“Now, wait a minute, Mother,” Daniel says. “Peter’s progress has made a huge difference in his life. For the first time in twenty-five years, he can actually talk to us, tell us that he is in there; he has opinions, and he is a lot smarter than we thought. What if him attending this conference could help others like him? Don’t you want that?”
His mother stares into Daniel’s eyes. “I know my son,” she says. “I gave birth to him. I have been taking care of him for twenty-five years, every day. Peter likes to play with PlayDoh and mash it between his fingers. Peter likes to eat, he loves to be taken to the ocean, he likes the fresh air, and the highlight of his day is staring out of the big window and watching for the mailman to come driving in his small truck up the road. Peter doesn’t know about politics. He doesn’t do fractions or read books.”
Daniel watches as his mother gets to her feet. She walks up behind the wheelchair and starts to push it. “Now, if you’ll excuse us. Peter and I are going to our favorite place for ice cream.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
January 2016
“Heey, Mary! What’s up?”
I look at Marcia. Her eyes are hazy and blood-shot, her speech slurred. Even more than usual. I find her sitting in the bar at the Sportsbar on A1A. She is smoking a cigarette and kills it in the ashtray.
“You want a beer?” she asks. “Com’ on have a beer with me. Hey, my friend here is a famous writer,” she yells to the people in the bar. Everyone turns to look at me. Marcia is loud and clumsy. “It’s true. A reporter in New York, and now she writes this awesome blog that has like millions of followers. She’s really awesome. Isn’t she awesome? I think she is…awesome.”
“We have to go, Marcia,” I say.
“Where are we going?”
I try to speak in a low voice, but the music and the people are being very noisy. “You need to go home.”
“Home? But we just got here. Now, have a beer with me.”
Her behavior angers me. I try to stay calm. I can’t believe she sits here all drunk while some stranger takes care of her children. Who does that?
“Say, why don’t we go outside?” I say. “It’s easier to talk. Too much noise in here.”
Marcia laughs and a beer lands in front of me. I grab it and signal for her to follow me outside. Finally, she does. She almost knocks over the barstool as she jumps down.
“Be right back,” she says to the other drunks in the bar. They don’t seem to care. I wonder what makes her want their company in
stead of that of her children or us. Why has she chosen this life?
We sit at a table outside. The air is nice and warm. Today has been a warm day for January. The cold spell has come and gone, and now we’re back to temperatures in the eighties. It feels good outside. And less noisy.
“So, how have you been, Mary?” she says as we sit down. “I can’t believe we haven’t seen you in twenty years. How time flies, huh?”
Suddenly, she seems less drunk. Maybe the fresh air sobered her up a little.
“I’m good,” I say. “But I am worried about you, and so are the others.”
“Ah, I’m fine. Never been better, as a matter of fact. Say, what are you doing back anyway? Are you here on vacation?”
I look at her. “What do you mean? I moved back, Marcia. Three months ago. Don’t you remember?”
Marcia shakes her head with laughter. “Of course I remember. Duh. Guess I’ve had enough to drink, huh? It just slipped my mind.”
She doesn’t seem convincing. For a split-second I am certain I see great fear in her eyes, but it is soon replaced with something else.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” she asks.
I show her the letter. She grabs it and reads it. She looks up at me, surprised. “What is this?”
“Marcia. You haven’t been going to your meetings. They’re going to put you away if you don’t go.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Marcia. Stop lying. It says here you haven’t, and by the looks of how drunk you are, I don’t believe you have been to any meetings.”
She looks like she doesn’t understand. She puts a hand on her forehead and shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know what is going on, Mary. I swear, I remember going to the meetings. I can’t seem to…it’s like the days…they are so blurry.”
I grab the beer in her hand and take it from her. “Because of this,” I say. “The drinking is destroying you. You haven’t been to a meeting in months. You risk losing your kids if this continues. You have to act now. We’re all here for you, but you have to do your part.”
Marcia looks at me seriously. Her speech is less slurred, but her eyes still give her away. She puts her hand on my arm.
“I want to get better. Tell me what to do.”
“We need to get you sober,” I say. “You have to quit drinking.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
January 2016
“I swear, there was someone with binoculars watching the house.”
Kelly looks at Andrew. It angers her that he refuses to take this seriously. But that is so him. He never worries about anything.
“Worry is like a rocking chair,” he always says. “It gives you something to do, but never gets you anywhere.”
“You’ve got to relax,” he says this time. “You’re winding yourself up. It’s not healthy. How do you even know he was watching our house? It was probably just some guy who likes to watch birds, or maybe a tourist. It’s not illegal to look at our house, you know.”
Andrew sits on the couch. Lindsey is asleep upstairs after a long day of fishing with her dad. Kelly grunts, irritated.
“And what about the truck I always see, huh? And the phone calls when I pick up there’s no one there, huh? Is that also a coincidence? Or the tipped over telescope on the night Lindsey heard a loud bang?”
“Come on, Kelly,” he says, and puts his feet up on the coffee table. He knows she hates when he does that. He leans back in the couch with a smile. “I am exhausted after a long day. I just want to relax with a beer and watch some TV. Can we talk about this later, please?”
Kelly groans, annoyed, and walks back to the kitchen, where she starts to clean up after their dinner. She washes a pot and slams it on the table so it makes a loud noise. She slams the doors to the cabinets when she shuts them and grunts in anger. Andrew doesn’t seem to even hear her. He is watching a game. Either that or he is simply ignoring her outbursts. It makes her even angrier.
How can he not take this seriously? How can he keep telling her she is being paranoid? How can he ignore her like this?
What if he is right? What if it is all just in your head? You know how you get carried away sometimes.
There was the time when Lindsey had an allergic reaction to the new piercings in her ears. The doctor said she was just allergic to nickel, but Kelly was certain she was going to die from a blood infection and refused to let her out of her sight for three days. Kelly even slept with her, waking up every hour to check if she was breathing.
Kelly draws in a deep breath and tries to calm herself down. Maybe he is right. Maybe she is just imagining things. Who would want to stalk her anyway?
Kelly chuckles and puts the last pan into the cabinet and closes it normally. She looks at the kitchen with satisfaction. It looks clean. She then turns off the light, and as she does, she notices the full moon right outside of her window. It is hanging beautifully over the water, lighting up the ocean. It is so bright she almost wants to go outside. She walks to the window and looks down at the beach, when she notices a figure down there again. She stumbles backwards, then calls out.
“Andrew!”
Her husband runs to her in the kitchen. “What’s going on?”
“He’s down there again,” she says, her voice shaking. She points to the window. Andrew moves closer and looks down.
“He’s standing right down there, wearing a hoodie, looking up at us with his binoculars.”
“I can’t see anyone,” Andrew says.
Kelly walks closer and looks down as well. But the figure is gone.
“No one is there,” Andrew says.
“But there was. Someone was there a second ago. I promise you. I am telling the truth. I saw it!”
Andrew looks at her, just as the phone starts to ring. Andrew picks it up. “Hello?”
He looks at Kelly with troubled eyes. “Hello?” he repeats.
He hangs up.
“Alright now,” he says and grabs her trembling shoulders. “Take it easy. Tomorrow, we’ll talk to the police, okay?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
January 2016
Sunday morning, I go to pick up Marcia. I knock on the door and Harry opens it, wearing nothing but shorts and sneakers. He is sweating.
“She’s almost ready,” he says with that handsome smile of his. “Just got back from my run; sorry if I am sweaty and smelly.”
“Great,” I say with a smile, and walk inside trying to avoid looking at him. This guy is unbelievable.
Marcia comes out of her bedroom. She looks terrible. I can tell she has been crying. I am glad to see that she gets the seriousness of her situation now. She seems sober, but with her, I am never sure.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
She nods with a sniffle.
“Are you here in case the kids need anything?” I ask, addressed to Harry.
He nods on his way up the stairs. I watch him from behind as he disappears. I feel like I am cheating on Joey and turn to face Marcia again.
“Shall we?”
Marcia grunts something, then follows me to my car. I drive us there, and we walk in together. A small flock of eight people are already there, speaking amongst each other. As we enter, a woman around fifty, or maybe older, it’s hard to tell, approaches us.
“Marcia!”
The woman opens her arms and hugs Marcia warmly.
“This is my sponsor,” Marcia says. “She’s also the therapist here.”
“Hi. I’m Jess,” she says.
We shake hands.
“I’m Mary. I’m a friend of Marcia’s.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m glad you have such good friends, Marcia. We haven’t seen you here for a while.”
“Well, I haven’t been doing so well,” Marcia says.
Jess puts her hand on Marcia’s shoulder. “I know how it is. But I am glad you’re here now.”
“I’m going to get some coffee,” Marcia says, and walks away.
“She ne
eds help,” I say, addressed to Jess when Marcia can’t hear us anymore. “She’s in deep trouble.”
“I know,” Jess says. “She’ll get what she needs here. But we can’t force anyone to get better if they don’t want to. She has to want it. I did try to help Marcia when she first came here, but I can only do so if she’ll let me. I hoped she would come back. We haven’t seen her in three months, I believe. She has to come to the meetings.”
I nod and look at her as Marcia fumbles with her cup. I can tell she is not well. It breaks my heart. “It’s just…it’s been really bad lately. She hasn’t been able to take care of the kids and it’s like…yesterday, she didn’t even remember that I moved back here three months ago.”
Jess sighs. “That is not that uncommon, unfortunately. Alcohol is a slow killer, but it will destroy your body from the inside. The brain is no exception.”
“So, you’ll help her?” I ask.
Jess smiles warmly at me. “Of course. I am glad she has such a good friend in you. Many of us barely have any friends left. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to begin the meeting, and I have to ask you to wait outside unless you yourself are struggling with an addiction?”
“Me? No. I eat too much, but hey, who doesn’t, right?”
“Food can be an addiction too, you know,” she says with a smile and a wink. Then she leaves me and starts the meeting.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
January 2016
The screaming won’t stop. Marcia’s head is about to explode as Mary takes her home. The only thing that usually makes it stop is the alcohol or the pills, but she hasn’t had any all morning and it is killing her.
The meeting went great. Marcia told about how she had fallen in and how she wanted to get back on track again. She managed to not say anything about the blackouts or the screaming. The images and the voices in her head, she keeps to herself. They’ll only think she is insane, that she has lost it.
“So, how did it go?” Mary asks with a smile.
