by Paula Cox
“I’ve checked on her,” Patrick says, poking his head around my office door. “You should see the car she’s driving, man. A beat-up old thing, barely looks like it can move.”
“Yeah?” I say, trying to sound as disinterested as I can, like I haven’t been thinking about this for the last three days.
Patrick sits in his usual seat in the office, opposite me. It’s mid-afternoon; the clubhouse is empty apart from me, Patrick, Declan, and a few of the pledges. Everyone else is busy with minor jobs, small protection jobs that don’t require my presence.
He looks me directly in the eyes, his eyes mirror images of mine. In the blue of them I can see myself, miniature, and I look lost. I look how I imagine Declan looked when he came home one night to find that his wife was gone. I look like a man on the brink of madness. I look like hell. Or maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see in my brother’s eyes.
“Well?” I say, when Patrick doesn’t talk.
He chews his cheek, and then lets out a long sigh. “It isn’t good,” he mutters. “I went by the restaurant, and she was—”
“Wait, what?” I interject. “What the hell? Why is she working there?”
“Debt?” Patrick offers. “But I don’t get it. You paid her well for those paintings, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I mutter, thinking. “Damn well.”
Then it hits me, just as it hits Patrick; I see it in his face. We both say, at the same time: “Rehab.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “She had to pay off Dawn’s rehab, and then there were her bills; she mentioned them in passing to me once. She must still have some left over, but after all that—”
“She’s playing it safe?”
“Yeah.” I nod.
“Well, I went by there, and she was there, and that bastard Lucca was screaming at her—right in her face in front of everybody. She didn’t do anything, Killian. Just stood there and let the fat fuck scream at her. So then I went to the art gallery, and the woman behind the desk told me Hope hasn’t submitted any new pieces, even though you bought all the ones she had there already.”
Hearing this is like being punched repeatedly in the face. I’ve made her miserable, I think. But then: No, she made herself miserable.
“There’s something else, too,” Patrick says.
“What?” I demand, my voice rising as image upon image of Hope in pain stacks high in my mind.
“I saw Lindsey hanging around the restaurant. I’m sure it was her, even though she’s looking pretty weird these days. She’s shaved the sides of her head. She has this one long braid starting at her forehead and going all the way down her back, and it’s dyed pink. But she’s as thin and crazy-looking as ever. She was wearing a goddamn suit.”
“It was her?” I breathe, my voice weak. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” Patrick says. “And I think I saw her outside the art gallery, too. That’s weird, isn’t it? Hanging around places where she might see Hope?”
“It’s more than weird, brother,” I growl. “It’s absolutely insane.”
Then Patrick says what we’re both thinking: “What if Lindsey is stalking Hope?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hope
I remember reading about pathetic fallacy in school and thinking it sounded silly, it could never happen in real life. How could weather—or a tree, or anything like that—imitate somebody’s mood? How could it represent how somebody felt? It was nonsense. But as the weather grows colder—California cold, anyhow—the rain more frequent—California frequent, anyhow—and the days shorter, my mood gets worse and worse. The worst part is that I’m not just sinking into a pit of despair. I’m digging a pit of despair for myself.
I just can’t stop thinking about it. The despair doesn’t spring from the fact that I’ve lost Killian, though that stabs at me like a knife, digs right deep into my chest and twists. It’s that I have absolute no memory of doing it, none at all. I’ve never taken drugs, not once, in my entire life. I’m probably the only Jackson who can say that. I’ve never taken drugs and yet I lost the man I adored because of drugs. No matter how many times I turn it over in my mind, it doesn’t make sense.
I’ve paid off Dawn’s rehab bills, our rent and utility bills, and money Dawn owed to a dealer—which she only told me about two weeks ago and was a rather large sum—and I’m left with about eight grand. A fair amount of cash, sure, but not enough to retire on. So I go back to work.
But I’ve never taken drugs in my life! I roar at night, in my mind. I’ve never touched a single drug!
But I can’t deny the track marks. They’ve healed over, scabbed, and scarred, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. There were track marks in my arms. Drugs were in my system. I was high.
But I didn’t take them!
Sometimes, in the evenings, I sit on the edge of the bed with my eyes closed, retracing that night, trying to figure out what exactly happened. I see the meal clearly, see Dawn and Patrick leave together, see Killian smiling and asking me to come to the coast. I hear him describing the stars and I feel his body pressed against mine on the boat. I feel our sex. I feel it all.
But I don’t see, feel, hear, smell, or taste a single thing that makes me think I took those drugs. I just can’t accept it. It doesn’t make any sense. Where did I get them? If I don’t remember taking them—which I don’t—surely I would remember buying them, or finding them? They can’t have been on Killian’s boat, not Killian, who would never touch a drug. But there’s always the problem that we were in the middle of the water, in the harbor, sure, but still in the water, at night, a chilly autumn night.
So I sit on the edge of my bed, night after night, going over and over the events of that night, trying to find an explanation.
And it’s not like Killian will even help, I think bitterly, tonight, sitting on the edge of the bed as I often do.
From next door, in Dawn’s bedroom, I hear music blaring. She’s much, much better now. She’s doing fantastic, in fact. She’s clean, happy, and marching forward into a new life—all whilst I’m locked on one particularly bad night that happened weeks ago.
No, Killian won’t even talk to me, I think, my voice a growl in my head.
I phoned him an embarrassing number of times during the first few days, but he wouldn’t answer. I texted him, but he wouldn’t respond. I went to the clubhouse, but I was told he wasn’t there. In the end, I stopped, holding onto what dignity I was able to salvage, and retreating.
I think I would be able to move on, I really do, if I just had an explanation. That’s all I want. Just to know. Just to be able to think: Okay, that’s that, that’s how it happened, time to move on. But I can’t have closure if I’m not even sure what happened, can I? I can’t have closure if I’m sure I’m innocent.
After about an hour of retracing the night and finding nothing new, I get up and go to Dawn’s room. When I knock, she sings, “Come in,” her voice chirpy.
She’s sitting on the edge of her bed, just as I was, but she’s not wallowing in the past or growing dark and brooding. Her foot is propped up on a stool and she’s painting her nails. Her face is full of color and her tongue sticks between her teeth. She tries to paint her little toenail, but she slips and smears her toe instead.
“Heck,” she grunts.
I smile, despite everything. Because I have my sister back, and that’s something to smile about.
I go to her and sit on the floor, just to the side of the stool. Then I take the brush from her hand and paint her toes for her.
“I can do it, you know,” she giggles.
“Oh, clearly.” I smile, nodding at her toes, which are smeared with pink. “You’re a regular Van Gogh. Anyway, don’t take this away from me. I have to paint something, don’t I?”
“You’re still upset,” Dawn comments, reaching forward to stroke my hair, just as she did when we were girls. “You’re still worrying.”
“Yes to both,” I laugh darkly.
�
��You know, sissy, one of these days you’ll have to—”
“Get over it, I know.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say!” Dawn cries, outraged, bringing her hand to her chest in indignation.
“No?” I turn to her. Her eyes are sparkling and her lips are twisted in sarcasm. “What, then?”
“I was going to say that you’ll have to buy a big fuck-off vibrator and ride it until all memory of that night is orgasmed into oblivion.”
“You, little sister,” I say, turning back to her nails, “are disgusting.”
Going back to work at the restaurant, I felt defeated.
I wasn’t a melodramatic, distraught woman standing at the edge of a cliff and crying into the rain because her man left her, though. No, I would never allow myself to become that. Being single doesn’t end a woman’s self-worth. Being single doesn’t stop you caring about your self-respect. I was defeated because I was defenseless. I had no way to stop it from happening.
When you work in service, your mind wanders. And when my mind wanders over these past few weeks, it is often to an image of me trapped behind bars in an old Victorian insane asylum. I grip the bars and I scream between my dirty hands: “I’m not mad! I’m not guilty! Please, I’m not like the others! I didn’t do anything! I didn’t! I swear!” But who’s going to believe me? Who’s going to believe a woman who was quite clearly high? Forget the girl with the dragon tattoo; I’m the girl with the goddamn track mark. The only problem is, I don’t remember getting the thing.
But at least Lucca has fun.
Tonight, the restaurant is relatively quiet. Alex, Lily, and I are the only staff members on the floor. Only one chef works the kitchen, and one person is on dishes. Lucca, as always, is on the prowl.
The other day, Lucca really went off on me. He screamed in my face in the middle of the day, right in front of the customers. He screamed at me and when I opened my mouth to respond, he shouted, “Say one thing and you’re fired!” And there was nothing I could do. I need this damn job. I need the money. I hate it, but I need it. He screamed and screamed and I just stood there, mouse-like, taking it, biting down a thousand caustic remarks.
Tonight, when I lean on the bar and exchange a few words with Alex, Lucca leaps from the kitchen door as though he’s been waiting for me to slip up.
“My office!” Lucca screams, and then turns on his heels.
“Sorry, kid,” I mutter.
“Not your fault,” Alex mutters in return.
I sit in Lucca’s office, the walls covered in those foolish motivational posters, and face him. His head is shinier than ever today, and his belly has gotten bigger over the last few weeks. It now hangs out of his shirt and over his waistband so heavily that it looks like a pouch of water, ready to burst. He wipes a hand across his comb-over and looks down his nose at me.
“What was that?” he asks, voice shaking.
“What was what?” I ask quietly, not looking him in the eye. If I look him in the eye, I’ll say something I regret, something which will steal this job from me. Instead, I look at the desk, at the cake crumbs leftover from lunch.
“What was what?” He giggles maliciously. “You’re supposed to be working, and yet I see you chatting up a child?”
“I wasn’t chatting him up,” I hiss, but too quiet for him to hear.
“What was that?” he almost shouts, leaning across the table and cupping his hand around his ear. “A little louder, please. What did you say?”
“Nothing,” I sigh. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I don’t hire my waitresses so that they can talk their way through their shifts, you know.”
No, you just hire your waitresses so you can molest them, you sick fuck. Maybe I should take one of those crappy motivational posters, ball it up, and stick it down his fat throat.
“I’m a respected businessman,” he states proudly.
I just stare at those crumbs and wonder how many cakes he had for lunch. I see him sitting wide-legged on his chair, shoveling them in, as if the cakes are on a conveyer belt and he’s the end point.
“I was incredibly insulted by the behavior of that biker man. It wounded me, to be honest. I am not a sensitive man, but it wounded me. It hurt, Hope. It really hurt. So you must understand, it took a great effort to bring you back into the fold. But I did, because, despite what you think, I’m not a monster.”
He leans forward, his shirt bags down, and I see his hairy cleavage, two C-cups pressing together. “Look at me,” he says, in what I imagine he thinks is a lover’s voice.
Forcing down the sickness in my throat, I look into his eyes. Leering—Lucca is always leering.
“I can make life so much easier for you, Hope. Overtime, double pay, a pay raise. All you have to do is show me how much you want it.”
What does he think I am? I think in disgust. Does he think I’m a shattered woman? Does he think I’m completely ruined? Does he think I haven’t faced worse in my life than a fat perverted freak? Does he think because I’ve lost my relationship I don’t care about myself?
I want to spit across the desk in his face, but I can’t do that. Instead, I force a smile to my lips. “I don’t think that’s for me, Lucca,” I say reasonably. “But I’m sure if you look long and hard enough, you’ll find someone.”
He narrows his eyes at me as he leans back. Then he loops his hands through his belt. As he does this, he’s forced to push his fat out of the way, causing it to congeal like the residue of a week-old pork pie. “I’m a nice man,” he insists. “I just want a bit of kindness.”
I sigh.
“Can I go?” I ask. “I’m sure Lily doesn’t like being out there on her own.”
Lucca licks his lips. “Oh, Lily likes more than you might imagine. That’s why she’s on two dollars more per hour than you.”
“Good for her,” I mutter, rising to my feet. “I better get back to work.”
As I leave his office, I feel his eyes on my ass. When I felt Killian’s eyes, my body came alive. When I feel Lucca’s eyes, it dies a little.
I sit in front of my easel, old newspapers laid out on the floor around me, my paintbrush in my hand. I don’t paint portraits or true life, though I’m a realist. I don’t look and paint; I paint from my mind—or maybe from my heart, depending on how you look at it. But it’s all academic, because today I’m not painting at all. I sit here, staring at the canvas, willing something to happen, and nothing does. I hold my paintbrush, willing it to move, and it doesn’t. I just sit here, looking at the blank paper, my heartbeat getting faster and faster and faster, my belly like a pit.
I can’t paint, I think numbly. That’s it. I’m done.
When I try to think of something to paint—when I try to think of anything these days—my mind is pulled toward That Night. That Night is so important now, so all-consuming. That Night is all I can think about. It plays over and over and over and over . . . On a continuous loop that shows no sign of being interrupted.
How did I get the drugs?
Surely I’d remember something.
He wouldn’t even give me a chance to explain myself.
I didn’t take anything.
Am I going mad?
Have I always been mad?
Are Dawn and I on a seesaw; when one of us is doing well, does the other have to be doing terribly?
Focus—
I can’t focus.
Focus—
I’ll never be able to focus again.
I didn’t take the drugs.
And then I take a breath, and it repeats:
How did I get the drugs?
And while these thoughts are firing through my head, the events of the night are a movie in my mind’s eye. Painting anything, doing anything that requires more concentration than restaurant work, is too difficult.
I stand up, meaning to carefully take down the easel and pick up the newspaper. But then a shard of anger shoots into my chest. I see red. The couch, the TV, the door, the
carpet, it’s red. All of it is red.
I kick over the easel and throw the paintbrush at the wall, where it leaves a red streak. I Frisbee the paint platter across the room, where it leaves red streaks on the couch. Then I kick the newspaper sheets, like they’re dead brown leaves, kick and kick and kick until my leg is tired.
When Dawn comes home, I’m sitting in the armchair at the window, just as she was those months ago, when I came in.
She comes to me, kneels down, and takes my hands in hers.
“I love you, sissy,” she says. “And it will get better.” She squeezes my hands in hers. “I promise you, it will get better.”
