Until the Devil Weeps

by W E DeVore

  Mr. Bordelon hands me her things and says, “We should get her to the hospital. She needs help.”

  “She needs to sober the fuck up and put her shit together.” I say it loud enough for her to hear me, too; letting all my rage at her treachery come through my words.

  It makes Ben’s father uneasy, so I pull him aside and tell him in a low voice, “She needs to remember how to fight. Us letting her fall apart isn’t doing anything but making her come apart more and more. You have to trust me. We’re out of options here. She needs to remember how to fight.”

  “That woman is my daughter, do you understand?” He stares me down, and he’s so tall, and I don’t know where he’s going with this. I shuffle my feet and he peers at my face before saying. “She’s my daughter. Maybe not by blood, but she’s mine nonetheless, and I need to know that you’re going to do the right thing.”

  I’ve always been impressed with the capacity for love that Ben and his family had, but I had no idea until this moment how far that went.

  “Mr. Bordelon, I’m in love with your daughter and I will not let her go without a fight. You have my word.”

  “Good man,” he says. “My son always said you were the best man he ever knew.”

  And I hope, more than anything, that he’s telling me the truth.

  PART 2: It Can’t Rain All the Time

  Wake Up, Clementine

  Q was weightless, floating above the ground as hot tears streamed down her face. She clasped onto Sanger, still sick and faint from the drugs rushing through her bloodstream, shivering from the cold. She watched Ben’s grave retreat in the distance, searching for her husband, but finding only darkness and tombs. Big Ben walked beside them, his hand reached out to brush her hair and her tears finally stopped. She was hollow inside. The comfort of her mourning had drained away at last and there wasn’t anything left to sustain her. An empty husk without a center of gravity.

  Sanger laid her down on the seat in his truck and she was seized by violent tremors. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her, reaching into her own coat pocket to retrieve Ben’s car keys.

  “Aaron,” she whispered, settling into the lingering heat from his jacket.

  He stroked her face but betrayal filled his eyes. “We’re done, Clementine. You and me are going to have a talk. This shit ends now.”

  Moving away, he stood beside the open driver’s side door with Ben’s father.

  “We should get her to the hospital. She needs help,” Big Ben said.

  “She needs to sober the fuck up,” Sanger replied, his voice full of anger, looking at her and not Ben’s father. Q turned away, curling into a tight ball around a fresh wave of nausea.

  Fucking great. Psych ward, here I come.

  The two men walked towards Ben’s car and Q stared up at the streetlight through the windshield of Sanger’s truck.

  Just a few more minutes. They were right there.

  She traced her lips with the back of her fingers and inhaled deeply, expecting to smell the familiar allspice and lavender fragrance of Ben and breathing in rot and decay instead.

  It was just a stupid dream.

  Sanger got into the truck and violently shoved her things down onto the floorboard beside her. He fired up the engine, his eyes fixed on the steering wheel. “You have officially lost your damned mind.”

  “Fuck you,” Q replied. Her tongue felt thick and her voice was raw. “I’m not going to a fucking mental hospital.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “But you’re going to knock it the fuck off. I’m so sick of this shit.” His voice broke and he wiped his eyes with the palm of his hand. “Goddamn it. This didn’t just happen to you.”

  He cursed and rubbed at his eyes again, before resting his hand on her head, threading his sturdy fingers through her hair. They didn’t speak as they drove through the silent city streets. Q watched the light dance through the overhang of live oak branches beyond the windshield, making tracers through the night, and blinked against her intoxication. Sanger parked the truck and got out, walking around to the passenger side to pick her back up and carry her into his house. He sat her down on the couch and left the room. Q heard water running in the bathroom and he came back several minutes later. Crouching on the floor, he took off her shoes and socks, then stood her up on wobbly knees.

  As he stripped off her jacket, the cold seized her and she folded her arms, unable to stop shaking. If Sanger noticed, he ignored her discomfort, unbuttoning her jeans instead and pulling them down to her ankles. As soon as she stepped out of them, he scooped her up and carried her to the bathroom, depositing her into the hot bathwater. He grabbed a towel from the vanity and shook it out to cover her with it.

  “You probably have hypothermia,” he said. “You need to warm up.”

  She shuddered, pulling the towel closer, the water scorching her skin. “It burns.”

  “Good. It’s better than you deserve.” Sanger leaned against the sink. “You could have died. You get that, right?”

  “That was the plan, cowboy. How did you find me?” she asked, feeling the groggy weight of her drug cocktail still tugging her down into unconsciousness.

  “Yvie. She was worried. Went to check on you. You destroyed your house, I hear. That’s fucking productive.” He set his jaw and continued to stare at her as if he could no longer recognize his friend.

  “I don’t want it,” she said. “It’s not mine anyway. It never was. Ben should have let me die. We were all supposed to die. I shouldn’t have made it out alive. I don’t want to breathe anymore. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up. I’m tired, Aaron.”

  “Well, that’s just fucking great, Clementine.” Sanger closed the toilet seat and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees. “The day I brought you home from the hospital, I told you I made a promise to Ben. You remember?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “About a month before he died, Ben came to me. Asked me to be Jasper’s godfather. He ever tell you that?”

  “Yes.” She started to tremble as the chill left her body. Sanger reached over and turned on the hot water in a slow drip. Still shivering, she explained, “We had a fight. About him buying the crib. He said one of us had to make plans and he told me about talking to you.”

  “Well, when he asked me to do it, he said that I was more than his best friend. I was his family. That he loved me like a brother.” Sanger looked down at her, his eyes traveled over her face. “Ben was my friend, Clementine. And I loved him. He made me promise that day that I would take care of you and Jasper if anything ever happened to him. Made me promise to make sure you were happy, that you took care of yourself. Made me promise to be there for his child, too. To walk them to the chuppah with you, if he wasn’t able. He told me he knew I was the only man he could trust to do it. And I promised him - and I’ve been doing a piss poor job of it so far. My friend stood between you and a bullet to give you and his child a chance to live. And what you’re doing to yourself right now is disrespecting that sacrifice and I’m not going to watch you do it anymore.”

  He stood up and left the room. When he came back, he held his gun in his hand. He turned off the safety and set it down on the towel on the vanity.

  “You want to kill yourself?” he asked. “Get it the fuck over with. I’m tired of watching you do it slow. Poisoning yourself. Starving yourself half to death. Raging at everyone who loves you. Just get it the fuck over with, so the rest of us can move on. I’m breaking my promise to Ben, right here, right now. It’s too damned hard to watch what you’re doing and I don’t know how to stop it. I’d rather visit your grave than see you like this one more day. So, go ahead, Clementine, blow your fucking brains out, and then you can explain to your husband in person why he died to save you, just for you to be a fucking coward and willingly stop breathing.”

  He left the room, locking the door behind him so he couldn’t come back in.

  Q stared at the gun. Ben’s words floated back to her from her dream
and she knew that Sanger was right. That somehow, someway, she needed to start breathing again. Even if it hurt. Even if it was agony. She drifted in the narcotic haze of the pills still flooding her bloodstream, watching the steam rise off the water. When the heat made its way to her bones, she reluctantly pulled the plug in the bath and watched the water swirl down the drain. After the bath emptied, she got out and picked up the gun. She put the safety back on and set it on the other side of the sink.

  Slowly peeling off her dripping t-shirt and underwear, she dried herself deliberately, studying her reflection in the mirror for the first time in months as she moved the towel over her skin. Her ribs protruded unnaturally and the once well-defined abdominal muscle that Ben loved to trace from her ribcage to her thigh was slack and sallow. She followed the long horizontal scar where Jasper had been cut out of her up to the puckered bullet wound on her side. She was unrecognizable to herself. Ben wouldn’t recognize her like this. Ben wouldn’t love her like this.

  “Ben would hate you for doing this to his wife,” she slurred at her reflection.

  She noticed Sanger’s long sleeve shirt and sweatpants hanging from the back of the door and pulled them on. As she inspected herself one last time in the mirror, she picked up his gun and quickly unlocked the door. Steadying herself against the doorway, she saw Sanger in the kitchen cooking onions on the stove and moved closer.

  “What’s for breakfast?” she asked, setting the gun on the counter nearby.

  “Chili. Figured you could use some warming up.” He glanced over his shoulder at the gun. “You decided you didn’t need that?”

  “How did you know I wouldn’t use it?” she asked.

  He walked over and took it off the counter, putting it back into its holster before setting it on top of the refrigerator. “I didn’t.”

  “That was pretty risky, cowboy.”

  “Not really. It wasn’t loaded. Did you really think I’d let you kill yourself with my service weapon?” He smirked. “I didn’t really feel like checking you into to Psych, so thanks, for not forcing my hand.”

  Without warning, tears started to pour from her eyes. “Oh god, Aaron, what did I do?”

  Sanger pulled her to his chest and gasped, “Don’t do that to me again. How are you feeling?”

  “Sick.” Her stomach churned and she fought the urge to gag.

  “If I take you to the hospital, they’ll admit you. I could call a doctor…”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m ok, I think. Did Ben really say those things to you that day?”

  “Yes. He also begged me to get you to see to reason and let him start picking out some baby names and I made him talk to my dad to teach him not to fuck with Jewish traditions.”

  The memory of Ben telling her about the conversation with Sanger’s father on their last morning together incapacitated her and her knees gave way as she collapsed into a fresh torrent of anguish. Sanger caught her and picked her up. Carrying her to the couch, he wrapped her in an old quilt and held her in his lap.

  He rocked her silently for several minutes before whispering, “Nowhere to go from here but up, Clementine.”

  She looked up at him. “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  He pulled her closer and exhaled slowly. “I want you to stay here with me until you’re ready to be on your own again. You can stay here as long as you need. The holidays are coming up and I don’t want you to be alone. I’d like you to stay until the New Year, at least.”

  She curled against him and wiped her eyes. “You only have one bedroom, Aaron. Just what do you have in mind?”

  “We take turns on the couch. It’s not ideal. But it’s here or with Constance or the Bordelons. I won’t let you be on your own anymore. It’s not what you need. I’m putting my foot down. Family or a hospital. Or me. Those are the options on the table.”

  “You are my family, Aaron. I don’t want Bubbe to see me like this. She can’t know. It would kill her.” She started to quake as she realized what her suicide would have meant to everyone around her, including Sanger. “God, I feel like shit.”

  “What did you take?” he asked.

  “Percocet, Ambien. A bottle of vodka. A few left-over blood pressure pills and a Vicodin for good measure. I'm freezing.”

  He stood up and left the room, coming back with a pillow and another blanket. “Lay down.”

  Covering her with it, he placed the pillow behind her head. “Close your eyes, if you want. I’ll wake you up when breakfast is ready.”

  Q lay back and watched him move around the kitchen, breathing in the smell of the onions and cumin. Her stomach grumbled at her and she realized she hadn’t eaten in at least two days, a fact that had probably saved her. As he cooked their breakfast, Sanger sang a song in a language she didn’t understand. The melody combined with the comfort of companionship and it lulled her to sleep. Just before she slipped into unconsciousness, she heard Ben’s voice in her ear.

  One month, darlin’. You just have to make it one more month. You just have to try.

  ◆◆◆

  Q sneezed and pulled the quilt more tightly around her shoulders. Reaching for a tissue, she tried to focus on the movie she wasn’t really watching. Her head pounded uncomfortably at her temples. She couldn’t decide how much was her hangover from her failed suicide attempt and how much was from the head cold she’d given herself by sleeping outside in near freezing temperatures.

  The doorbell rang and she lurched to her feet, wrapping the quilt around her body to drag herself to answer it. When she opened the door, she found Elaine Jeffries on Sanger’s front porch holding a bag of beignets.

  “Did Aaron call you to babysit me?” she asked, wondering why Sanger’s ex-girlfriend was standing on his porch. “I told him I’d be fine. But you’re here now, so come on in.”

  Jeffries followed her into the house and Q went to the kitchen to pour herself some more tea from the kettle on the stove.

  “I see Aaron finally got what he wanted,” Jeffries said.

  Q walked back to the living room and curled up on the couch. “What are you talking about?”

  “You, in his bed,” she said, throwing down the paper bag onto the table and slumping into a chair.

  “You mean, me on his couch with the flu,” Q corrected.

  “Come off it. Obviously, you’re together now. Good for him. Good for both of you, I guess.”

  “What in the good fuck are you talking about?” Q asked, reaching for a fresh tissue. “I was on your side. I tried to get him to patch things up with you the day I found out about it.”

  “He told you?” Jeffries squinted at her in disbelief.

  “He tells me everything. I’m his best friend.” Q blew her nose and brought the quilt closer.

  “Looks like you’re more than that, now.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Elaine. I’m sick. I have a 102˚ temperature. Aaron’s letting me stay on his couch.”

  Jeffries folded her arms. “Why isn’t your family taking care of you?”

  “Why are you so fixated on that? Aaron is my family,” Q breathed out her frustration in the form of a loud sneeze. “Nothing’s going on between us. There never was. You’re the one that broke his heart. Now you show up with beignets after six months and have the balls to get jealous?”

  “I called him. I’ve been calling him. He won’t take me back.” When Q looked at her in confusion, Jeffries said, “Looks like he doesn’t tell you everything after all.”

  Q grasped the damage her descent into madness had inflicted on her friend’s personal life and she decided to put an end to it.

  “I tried to kill myself two days ago,” she explained. “That’s why I'm here. It was either Sanger’s couch or a mental institution. He doesn’t trust me to be alone. He’s at the drug store. Getting me cold medicine. He flushed every pill and poison in the house while I was passed out yesterday. You understand?”

  “Why did you try to kill yourself, Q?”


  Her stomach convulsed in humiliation. “I got really drunk and decided that I wanted to spend my wedding anniversary with my husband. I just lost my mind for a minute.” Her voice broke and she paused to control herself before she fell into another crying jag. “Look, Sanger didn’t tell me you’d been calling. I would have told him to work it out with you. I did tell him that, actually, multiple times.” She stood up and moved to the hallway. “I’ll go take a shower, then I’ll leave. You stay here until he gets home. He loved you. Still does, most likely. I’ll get out the way.”

  Escaping to the bathroom, Q closed the door and turned on the shower, letting the room fill with steam and breathing it in. She showered slowly, closing her eyes, remembering Ben’s hands on her body, his fingers in her hair. The crying jag she’d prevented moments earlier broke through and she sat on the bottom of the bathtub, letting the water run over her as her tears fell.