The Debt

by Tyler King

  Open, closed.

  Open, closed.

  Her fingers twitched. Hadley held her breath. I wanted to do...something. Say something that might, I don’t know, help. But I’d learned that lesson. Interfering only led to arguments and the nearest object within her reach flying at my head.

  Her hands balled in fists, she huffed a breath through her nose. The rest of the routine wrapped up quickly after that as I went around turning off lights while she set the alarm and locked dead bolts, but I noted her frustration when Hadley slammed her bedroom door shut without letting me say good night.

  I wasn’t sure if it was my shit attitude that had affected her. Maybe I was an asshole for assuming I had anything to do with it. Fact was, I never had a fucking clue what was going on in her head, but I’d give anything to still have the right to ask.

  Chapter 6

  Session 5

  “A lot changed for both of you after your first intimate experience with Hadley,” she said.

  Her eyes scanned the iPad in her lap, then up to my fingers drumming on my notebook. That sound drove her nuts, which was why I kept doing it.

  “For you it was the panic attack,” she said. “What happened after you left her house that night?”

  “I almost didn’t make it home in one piece. Between the shaking and dark spots clouding my vision, I lost control of my car and wiped out in a ditch, inches from wrapping my car around a tree.” Convulsing, I had thrown myself from the driver’s seat and collapsed in the mud. Vomit splashed around my hands and knees, soaking into my clothes. There was no voice to my screams as I had fought the vivid memory of that man—his hands on me, even the smell of him coating my skin.

  No panic attack since has matched the same level of severity as the first, but that was like talking about the difference between being mauled by a bear or a tiger. Did it really fucking matter? The outcome was the same—an unrecognizable heap of human meat in the dirt.

  “When I finally dragged my ass home that night, I stood in the shower until the water ran cold, then crawled into bed to stare at the ceiling until the sun came up.”

  “When did you find out about what happened to Hadley?”

  “The next morning. Hadley’s godfather, Tom, called my dad. He’d gotten home to find Hadley asleep in their attic. She’d hidden there after hearing glass shatter downstairs. She swore someone had broken into the house, that she’d heard voices and footsteps. So she’d stayed in the attic all night, terrified.”

  Tom had called the police to take an incident report, but it was more for Hadley’s peace of mind than anything. There was no sign of forced entry. Nothing stolen. All the police came up with were a couple of broken beer bottles outside her bedroom window. Rowdy neighbors had partied too hard. Maybe some kids passing through the neighborhood had thrown the bottles at the house. Case closed.

  But not for her. Hadley never again slept a full night in that house.

  “It got to the point where Hadley couldn’t stay at Tom’s anymore. She’d have nightmares and jump at the slightest sound. Too many mornings he would find her hiding in the attic. We had a spare bedroom at my house, so my dad invited her to stay with us as often as she liked. By senior year of high school, she was living with us full-time.”

  “And you were okay with this?”

  “What could I do? It was my fault. I’d left her there alone. If I had been there...”

  “But your relationship didn’t improve,” she said. “Even after your mother—”

  “Don’t.” My ears stung with a sharp, shrill ringing. All the blood was sucked from my extremities. I wasn’t ready to talk about her. I hadn’t been for four years.

  Just once, she took pity on me. “You had the opportunity to get away from Hadley. To, as you said, move to New York with your father and try to escape the memory she represented for you. But you didn’t.”

  “I couldn’t. She was being stubborn. A couple weeks before high school graduation, she turned down her acceptance to Emerson and said she wasn’t moving to Boston. Hadley wouldn’t admit it, but I knew she was too afraid to face living in a new city with a strange roommate. She was terrified. So I declined my acceptance to Columbia and talked her into enrolling with me close to home. She was going to college if I had to drag her to classes myself. I didn’t want that night, what I did, to ruin her life.”

  So I stayed behind while Hadley continued to live in my house, and we existed under an excruciating agreement to never speak of that night again.

  “What about your friends? Corey and Trey. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like they wanted to help.”

  “They don’t know.”

  “About that night?”

  “About our foster home. They don’t know what happened to me. I don’t want them to know. As far as they’re aware, I’m just an asshole who slept with his best friend and then ditched her.”

  “Why haven’t you told them?” she asked.

  “Would you want people to know? That kind of information changes the way people see you, how they look at you. Suddenly you’re not the same person anymore. Now you’re...”

  “What?”

  Dirty. Weak. Damaged. “Different.”

  “Is it difficult for you to trust people? Even the ones closest to you?”

  “Who are we talking about?”

  “Tell me about Corey,” she said. “Why is he your friend?”

  I rubbed my hands over my face. For fuck’s sake. “I don’t know. I guess he’s fun to be around. Corey’s one of the few people I know who is never in a bad mood. It’s almost impossible to wipe the smile off his face. I mean, he’s a fucking child, but he seems to enjoy himself, so who am I to shit in his cereal, right?”

  “That must be nice.” Her tone took on that taunting inflection. The one she used to lead me around by the nose. “To go through life with such optimism. To feel so unburdened.”

  “Sure. Ignorance is bliss, or whatever.”

  “And Trey? What special quality does he possess?”

  “He’s a fucking snowflake. What do you want me to say? Trey’s probably the least complicated person I know. Dull, but happy. You’d love him; he’s freakishly well adjusted. Born with a perfect understanding of the universe and his place in it. So of course he finds constant fault in every other thing I do.”

  She contemplated me for a moment that stretched on until I began to fidget in my seat, tapping at a rhythm with the barbell against my teeth.

  “What?” I said.

  “We tend to make friends with people who possess personality traits we covet. Just something to consider.”

  Chapter 7

  Monday morning I began my junior year of college sitting in the dean’s office. The space reflected a man who wanted to appear interesting. Laminate bookshelves held paperbacks with uncreased spines. A layer of dust bordered leather-bound classical volumes. His desk was a playground of tabletop art meant to represent the exotic places he’d been and people he’d met. I’d pay him a hundred dollars if he could show me just one that didn’t have “Made in China” stamped on the bottom.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting, Mr. MacKay.” Dean Alcott walked in and took a seat behind his desk. “How was your summer?”

  “Fine.”

  “Thank you for stopping by. I wanted to mention—”

  “I have a class—”

  “We’re holding a seminar next week, featuring distinguished faculty and a few invited guests. There will be a panel discussion, and I’d like to invite you to participate, add your thoughts to the conversation.”

  “On what?”

  “Contemporary classical music.” He smiled, folding his hands on the desk. “Something you are uniquely qualified to speak on.”

  The man had a serious hard-on for me. Well, for my name and reputation. To Dean Alcott, an old man who dressed how he thought Harvard professors looked in the fifties—bow ties and sweater vests under wool or tweed jackets—I was just the accumulated sum of my CV.
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  But that wasn’t me anymore.

  “Not interested.” My fists flexed in my lap. “I told you this.”

  “You’ve experienced a level of success that other students here will only dream of. What you’ve given up—”

  “I sat in this office. With you and my undergraduate advisor freshman year. I was very clear.”

  “I hoped I could convince you to reconsider. Just think about it.”

  “I’m not interested in returning to the piano. I have no inclination to write contemporary classical anymore, and I’ve nothing else to say on the topic.”

  Somewhere in his misguided imagination, he believed I’d spontaneously wake up one morning and declare that my muse had returned and I’d composed a new concerto. He probably yanked it to fantasies of the speeches I would give professing my love for my alma mater and the reawakening I’d experienced while in its hallowed halls.

  “A talent like yours—”

  “Is mine to waste. We done?” I grabbed my bag and walked out, rushing to my first class of the morning.

  * * *

  What was it about me that made people think I had a mind that wanted changing? Every semester was the same ordeal with Dean Alcott. Since I first sat in his office two years ago seeking late acceptance to the university, he’d made it his mission to convert me. He considered it a great tragedy that the former child prodigy had walked away from touring as a concert pianist four years ago. The real tragedy was losing my muse and my motivation in the same horrible month.

  It wasn’t as if I had stopped playing out of spite. I wasn’t so high on myself that I needed men like the dean to beg in order to shore up the foundation of my ego. I loved playing. It was my passion. If I could physically tolerate putting my fingers to the keys, I’d do nothing else. Scott was right; I had washed out, because the thought of even looking at my mother’s piano...

  Damn it.

  I took a deep breath and shut my eyes. My stomach rolled with grief and nausea. The ache in my chest was as pronounced as ever. My fingers curled into fists in my lap.

  Sitting in the lecture hall of my music theory class, I sank into my seat at the back of the room, begging my body to calm the fuck down. My knee bounced. The barbell in my tongue flicked between my teeth. It clicked against the hard enamel like an anxious metronome. As the professor elaborated on the PowerPoint presentation projected behind him, the room deflated, closing in. My vision became a warped, blurry bubble of bleeding colors. I tried to think of anything else, but the memory insisted:

  Three days of avoiding Hadley after the night I’d run out on her four years ago were consumed with rehearsing for my upcoming show. While I was hiding in the music room, my adoptive mother, Carmen, came to sit next to me at the piano bench. For a while, she just listened to me play. I adored the way she smiled and hummed along while my fingers danced over the keys. In those moments, I knew she was proud of me.

  “That’s a beautiful song. Will you play it this weekend?”

  “No.” I transitioned the second movement into a new composition I’d been tinkering with. “That’s Hadley’s song. I don’t play it for the public.”

  My mom set her right hand to the keys beside me, improvising as I continued to play. “She called again this afternoon. She’s come to see you twice this week while you’ve locked yourself in here.”

  “I can’t...You don’t understand—”

  “You’re right, Josh. I can’t possibly understand. And neither can Hadley. But she loves you. She wants to be there for you. I know she’ll forgive whatever you think is unforgivable.”

  “It isn’t about forgiveness.” I’d been at the keys for hours, but it was the topic that had me exhausted. As if Hadley wasn’t on my mind every moment. “I’m broken. I’m not capable of…She should just move on.”

  “Could you? Just move on from your best friend?”

  “No.” Hadley was it for me. She always had been. “But if I wait it out long enough, she’ll learn to hate me. It’ll be better that way.”

  For two more hours, my mom sat with me as I gave up rehearsing and just let my mind wander while the two of us improvised together. It was sort of a pastime of ours. My mom would start a verse and then I’d come in next to her, and on and on.

  She would never abandon the cause of pulling me out of my depression and masochism, but Carmen knew when to push and when to retreat. Hadley had always been my creative muse, and her song was the first I’d ever composed on the piano, but Carmen was my motivation in music.

  My mother died of a brain aneurysm that afternoon during Rachmaninoff’s Third, collapsed across my lap with blood trickling out of her nose, while her pained, vacant eyes stared up at me.

  The lecture hall was empty when I opened my eyes from the memory and took a deep breath. I gathered my stuff and got the hell out of there.

  * * *

  On the third floor of the student union, I found a quiet place to sit in an overstuffed chair by the window that looked out on the brick-paved courtyard. The wide walkways were cluttered with frightened-looking freshmen navigating the folding-table market of student clubs and thinly veiled cults smiling under Greek banners.

  Tuning out the noise and chatter of those around me in the study lounge, I dug into my pocket and pulled out my phone. My father picked up on the second ring.

  “Josh, hello.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “You’re up early.”

  True. I wasn’t usually functional before 11:00 a.m.

  “Hadley likes early classes. I worked around her schedule this semester.”

  “That was diplomatic of you.”

  “Yeah, well...How’s your day going?”

  “Oh, you know. The same. No one is ever happy to see me when I walk into a room.”

  My adoptive father was psychiatrist at a hospital in Manhattan. Dr. Simon MacKay had briefly entertained the hope that I might find an interest in medicine but supported me when my aptitude for music became apparent.

  Simon took the job in New York after my initial acceptance to Columbia. The two of us were all we had left after Carmen died. We needed each other. Then Hadley needed me more, so I stayed behind while Simon tried to get on with his life. Whatever that meant.

  He was still talking. Somewhere in the middle, I realized I’d not been paying attention. I was content to listen to his voice rather than the words.

  “Josh?”

  I leaned back and fixed my attention to the woven patterns in the upholstered chair. “I’m here. Sorry.”

  “I spoke to Hadley last night.”

  Her weekly informal therapy session. As if I wasn’t supposed to understand the coded language there. Sunday nights I knew to make myself scarce on the other side of the house so I didn’t hear Hadley’s voice traveling through the walls as she talked about her level of anxiety during the week and told my father what an insufferable jackass his son was on any given day.

  “You brought a woman home.”

  Fuck. “I had too much to drink and uh…” Fuck. Fuck. “Well, Hadley didn’t want to leave the bar yet…So, yeah. It’s not like I make it a habit. Why, did Hadley say something?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if she did,” he reminded me.

  I was his son, but Hadley had been his patient before Simon and I ever met.

  “I ask out of concern for you. Are you sexually active?”

  “Dad—”

  “If something’s changed…”

  “Yes, I’m having sex. No, nothing’s changed.” I blew a breath through my nose, pinching the bridge between my fingers. “Can we not do this right now?”

  “Talk to me, son.”

  “I was thinking about Mom. And about playing. Figured I’d call.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  It’d been four years since Carmen died, and still I was rendered nearly immobile when my mind slipped to her memory.

  My throat was dry when I tried to speak again. “I was sitting in class. Had an epi
sode. No one seemed to notice, I think. But by the time it passed, I was the only one left in the room.”

  “What do you think brought it on this time?”

  There wasn’t a good answer that was any different than the others. “I miss her.”

  “Of course you do. I promise that it will get easier in time. But not allowing yourself to feel the grief and deal with it will only prolong the healing process. Don’t deny yourself her memory.”

  I felt my eyes begin to sting. My fingers went a little numb. “I have to go. Class.”

  “I love you, Josh. I’m here. Anytime.”

  “I know. Love you.” I hung up the phone and escaped toward the stairs before I had another public meltdown.

  * * *

  When a child’s first memory is abandonment, he tends to latch on tightly to those who show him affection. Losing Carmen four years ago was just one loss too many, and I didn’t know how to deal.

  That first memory—I was maybe three at the time—was of a woman sitting on a public bus next to me. She told me to stay in my seat, that she’d be right back. I saw her squeeze down the aisle toward the door, get off the bus, and that was it. I never saw her again. When the last passenger boarded for that stop, the bus driver closed the door and pulled away from the curb. I must have ridden along the route for hours until the end of the driver’s shift when he spotted me sitting toward the back. Next stop was the police station. From there, it was a series of foster homes.

  Hadley Mitchell saved my life. I’d gravitated toward her the first day she showed up in my third foster home when we were five years old. To this day, I don’t know what drew me to her.

  Her parents had been killed in some kind of accident. She had no surviving family. But the day Tom Hughes showed up to rescue her from that living hell—the state had finally gotten its shit together and tracked down her godfather—was both the best and worst day of my life to that point. She was getting out, but it meant I was alone again. While nothing Hadley could have done in that home would have saved me, having her there when it was over was better than suffering alone.