The Bet (Persaud Girl)

by Mott, Teisha

  Andie’s body shivered involuntarily, and Nathan noticed that goose bumps had appeared on her arms. She was cold. The air conditioning in the suite was up too high. He found the control and adjusted the temperature, then removed a quilt from the closet, and spread it over her. 9.47. He would wake her at ten fifteen and take her home. In the meantime, he would get some sleep, too. He lay on top of the blanket next to Andie, and casually draped one arm around her, and promptly fell asleep.

  ***

  The light was shining in her eyes, and Andie wondered why Rosilda had come into her room and opened the curtains. She had done it once before when Andie was on summer holidays, and Andie had been livid. She had complained to Theresa since her parents had gone on their vacation and there was no one else to complain to. Rosilda had argued that it was after ten, and Andie should not be in bed until that time. Besides, she wanted the sheets and the curtains to wash. Theresa and Rosilda had stood off for three days after that, and Nursey had to be the mediator. Andie had felt bad because Rosie had threatened to quit. Despite her faults, Rosie was a good housekeeper and Andie liked her. Nursey promised she wouldn’t tell the Persauds about the argument if Rosilda promised not to open the curtains on Andie again. Rosilda had grudgingly agreed, and all was well.

  Now, Andie could not understand why lights were shining in her eyes. She forced them open and looked around. That did not look like her room. It took her a while to figure out where she was.

  “Oh my God!” She exclaimed when she got her bearings. She was still in Aunt Phoebe’s suite at the Ravi P Hotel. She and Nathan had fallen asleep. It was still night and the city lights seemed dazzling. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was ten forty-five. She had fifteen minutes to get home before curfew.

  “Nathan!” She shook him. “Nathan. Wake up! You have to take me home.”

  Nathan bolted up in the bed, startling Andie.

  “Nathan? You okay?”

  He looked at Andie looking at him. He blinked twice. Why was she there?

  “Andie, you have to go!” He said hurriedly.

  “I know,” she replied. “It’s almost eleven. That’s why I was waking you up, and…”

  “You have to go now!” He was pushing her off the bed. “C’mon! You have to leave before they get here!”

  “Before who gets here?” Andie was confused.

  “The Police!”

  “The Police?”

  “They’re coming to get my father. I don’t want you to be here when they come. You might get hurt! You have to go!” He was breathing hard, and his eyes were wild. Andie was scared. Nathan was having some sort of panic attack. She wasn’t even sure he was awake.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” He screamed. “Why don’t you go? Get out!”

  “Nathan, you’re scaring me! What’s the matter with you?”

  Nathan was clutching at his head. “I – I – I – I can’t breathe…” He began pacing the room, “I can’t breathe. Why is there no air in here? Why?”

  “Nathan!” Andie did not think she could ever be more frightened than she was at that moment. She held on to him. “Nathan you have to calm down…”

  “Oh my God! It’s going to happen again…”

  “What’s going to happen again?”

  “The Police…my Dad…Andie, I don’t want you to get hurt…”

  The wild look on Nathan’s face reminded Andie of when she was little and used to wake up screaming in the night. She used to be terrified for no particular reason, but her mother or father was usually by her bedside in an instant.

  “What did they do? What am I going to do?” She thought. She had never seen Nathan like that before, and she did not know what had caused this sudden attack. He was positively freaking out. She tried to control her emotions. She had to stay calm.

  “Hey, hey!” Andie said, trying to soothe him. “Nathan, I’m not going to get hurt…” She managed to hold on to his hand, and lead him to the bed. She sat next to him, and put her arms around him. “You’re going to be fine, and I’m going to be fine. Everything is fine…”

  “No!” Nathan murmured, calming down a bit. He hugged Andie so tightly that she could hardly breathe, and buried his face in her hair. “Everything is not fine, Andie. Everything is all wrong. You, me, life… It was not supposed to be like this. Everything is out of whack, and it will never be okay again…”

  “Well right now it is,” Andie said. She rocked him to and fro. “No Police is going to come here. We are at the Ravi P Hotel in Auntie Phoebe’s suite, remember? We’re safe. Everything is going to be fine!”

  Nathan opened his eyes, and looked at her. He looked dazed and confused.

  “What?”

  “There’s no one here but us!” Andie murmured. “It’s just you and me.” She held him even closer. His body was shaking, as though he was cold, and his fair skin was red. “You’re going to be fine. I think you’re having a panic attack or a night terror or something, but you're going to be just fine. I'm here…”

  As she held him, Nathan began to shake harder. Then he began to make a strange guttural sound. At first, Andie thought he was laughing. She would kill him for teasing her like that... She quickly realised that he was actually crying.

  “I’m so sorry, Andie!” He sobbed. “I’m so very sorry…”

  “What are you sorry about?” Andie asked. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “It was the most awful thing that could have ever happened!” Nathan continued as though Andie had not spoken. “Why didn’t I stop him, Andie? Why didn’t I try?”

  “Stop who Nathan?” Andie asked.

  “My Dad!” He sobbed. “I was right there, and I didn’t do anything. I just stood there and made him do it…. I always just stand by and watch bad things happen…”

  “Nathan…”

  “He made us think everything was okay – that we were safe. He knew everything was not okay. He knew what was going to happen, that the police would have come eventually. He knew it all along…”

  “What did he do?” Andie was not sure what Nathan was talking about, but she was positive that whatever it was had to do with his father’s death.

  “He punked out! I was standing right there, Andie. I saw him put the gun to his head, and I saw him pull the trigger. Why did he do it, Andie? Why didn’t I stop him?”

  The sobs that wracked his body caused Andie to shake too.

  It all suddenly came to Andie what happened. When Nathan was nine years old, he had seen his father commit suicide. That was why he never spoke of his father, why his mother did not keep any pictures. She even recalled when she had said that Joie would meet her father in Heaven, and that Nathan had said that he was certain she wouldn’t. It suddenly dawned on her what could have happened that night. Nathan must have had a nightmare about his father, and because she had woken him suddenly, she must have triggered a panic attack. He thought it was his fault because he was there when it happened. She could not image the turmoil Nathan was going through. She was just glad she could be there for him.

  “It’s going to be okay, Nathan!” She said. She stroked his hair, and pressed closer to him. “There was nothing you could have done to stop him. You were only a little boy. It was a long, long time ago. You’re safe now…”

  She held him as he cried, rocking him. The shoulder of her dress was soaked with his tears and perspiration. She had to fight to stop her own tears from running down her face. Nathan’s heart was breaking. She wished there was something she could do to ease his pain. She hoped that sitting there and just holding him was help enough.

  Eventually, his sobs turned into sniffles. His body stopped convulsing. He looked up at her, his eyes and face swollen by his tears.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” he said. “I’ve ruined your dress.”

  “I have a hundred more in my closet!” Andie kissed the top
of his head. “This one isn’t even my favourite. It’s okay.”

  “My grandfather says it’s never okay for a boy to cry.”

  “Yeah,” Andie said. “But it’s perfectly acceptable for a man. You lay down. Let me get you some water.”

  There was no water in the minibar, so Andie left the suite and went downstairs to the bar to get some. Her legs were shaking. She felt that at any moment she would have a breakdown too. She looked at her wrist watch. It was eleven thirty. Her mother was going to kill her for staying out after curfew and not even calling. She would have to check her cell phone for messages, but her first priority at that moment was Nathan. As she passed reception, the two girls behind the desk began whispering to each other. She fought the urge to give them a piece of her mind for jumping to conclusions, but she really could not blame them. She, too, would have thought that some amount of lovemaking would be going on upstairs. She was, in fact, very disappointed that there wasn’t.

  “This really is a five star hotel!” She commented, as she pushed open the door of the suite. “I asked at the bar for a bottle of water and the bartender offered me rain water from Australia, spring water from Denmark and even iceberg water from Canada! I told him Catherine's Peak was quite fine.…”

  She stopped short when she noticed that Nathan had fallen asleep again. She looked at him closely. He appeared to be resting well. She noticed the bottle of pills on the nightstand next to her purse. Andie read the prescription. They were Nathan’s, to be taken when necessary. Andie felt chills run up her spine when she read the label. She knew all about those particular pills, and their horrible side effects, especially in teenagers and young adults. She looked at the bottle of pills and wondered how long Nathan had been taking them. The prescription was fairly new, and showed that they were from the UWI Health Centre. Andie looked at Nathan again. His breathing was deep and even. Clearly, he had taken one while she was out of the room - at least, she hoped he had only taken one. She had to talk to him about the pills. Andie covered him with the same quilt he had used to cover her earlier. She dropped Nathan’s pill bottle into her purse, removed her cell phone and slipped into the bathroom. She looked at the phone. There were twenty missed calls, all from home.

  “Crap!” Andie thought. She dialled her house number. Her mother picked up even before the phone had completed one ring.

  “Andie?”

  “Mommy, I am so sorry…” Andie began.

  “Anne Dru Janine Persaud, you are in so much trouble that even your grandchildren are in trouble!” Mrs Persaud was livid. “Where are you? Why didn’t you call? Where is Nathan? Put Nathan on the phone right now. I was worried sick…”

  “Mommy, I’m sorry!” Andie repeated. “We left the party early, and then we fell asleep. And then, when I woke Nathan up to take me home, he got really sick…” Andie was trying in vain not to start crying now that it was all over.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Mrs Persaud asked.

  “I don’t know,” Andie did not want to explain what had happened to her mother —especially the part about the pills. She was afraid her mother might believe that Nathan was unstable and forbid her from seeing him anymore. “But he seems to be doing better now.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Still at the hotel. Nathan is asleep. When we left the party it was still early, so I got the key to Aunt Phoebe’s suite, and we were watching TV and fell asleep.”

  “When you left the party why didn’t you come home?” Her mother asked sensibly. “Did you think it was a good idea - you and Nathan being alone together in a hotel suite late at night, Andie?”

  “We weren’t doing anything, Mommy!” Andie could not believe what her mother was saying to her. “I thought you were okay with me and Nathan dating. I thought you liked him.”

  “I do like him Andie,” Mrs Persaud clarified. “What I am ‘not okay’ with is the feeling of complete terror when my eighteen year old daughter is not in her own bed at eleven forty five at night, and not calling to let me know that she is safe. And I am certainly ‘not okay’ with the other feeling of terror when I then hear that she is at a hotel with her boyfriend who is clearly as giddy headed and irresponsible as she is! I am your mother, Andie. I am not stupid. And I certainly remember what being eighteen and in love is like.”

  “It’s not like that with me and Nathan!”

  “Then how is it?” Mrs Persaud asked. “Tell me, Andie, because I really want to know.”

  “Mommy, I said I was sorry. I told you we fell asleep, and that Nathan got sick.” Andie was determined not to cry. “That’s all that happened. Nothing else, I swear!”

  “Nothing happened tonight,” Mrs Persaud raged. “But what about another night, when you go out and stay out until all hours, showing disregard for the fact that you have a curfew, and a mother who was out of her mind with worry that you were not home, and that she could not get you on the cell phone that was given to you for situations just like this? A million different scenarios ran through my mind tonight, Anne Dru, and all of them ended with the police calling to tell me that they pulled your mangled body from a silver Honda Civic that was wrapped around a light post, and you will never understand that kind of terror. Never!”

  Andie thought her mother was going to start crying. “Mommy…”

  “You need to be very careful, Anne Dru. You need to exercise common sense and good judgment in matters like these! You are not a baby anymore. You are a young woman, and you have to start using the brain the good Lord blessed you with!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “I know you are sorry, Andie, and you are going to be even sorrier if anything like this ever happens again. Do I make myself clear?”

  Andie nodded, although her mother could not see her across the phone lines. “What am I to do now?” She asked. ”Since it’s late can we just stay here tonight? I don’t think Nathan should be driving.”

  “Andie have you gone crazy?” Her mother asked. “I am not allowing you to spend the night at a hotel with Nathan…”

  “Mommy, please!” Andie begged. “It’s late, and Nathan is sleeping. Please don’t let me have to wake him up…. Please, Ma!”

  Mrs Persaud thought about it. “All right, I think given the circumstances, you can stay for the night,” she conceded. “Let Nathan get some rest, and tell him to feel better. And since Nathan was ill, you aren’t going to be punished. But you better be home by eight o’clock, tomorrow morning, and we are going to have a long talk about your going out privileges from hereinafter.”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Andie said.

  “Go and get some rest too,” her mother instructed her. “I love you, Andie.”

  “I love you too, Mommy.”

  She hung up the phone, and sat on the side of the bathtub. Her mind replayed the entire evening’s events. She recalled the wild look on Nathan’s face. She recalled how he had cried when he told her about his father’s suicide. She felt the panic and the fear and guilt that he was carrying around for the past eleven years. Andie could not hold back any longer. The watermelon that had formed in her stomach the moment she had woken up and realised that she only had fifteen minutes to get home before curfew finally broke. Her shoulders began to shake, and her teeth chattered. Andie buried her head in her hands, and wept as though she would never stop.

  ***

  Nathan slowly opened his eyes and saw Andie smiling at him.

  “Hey! How are you feeling?” She asked.

  “I have a bitchin’ headache!” He said. “But this is the best way ever to wake up – with you smiling down on me…”

  Andie leaned over and kissed him lightly on his forehead. “Go back to sleep, and when you wake up again I am still going to be here. I called my mother and told her you were not feeling well, and she said we could stay the night, as long as you take me home by eight.” Andie did not tell him how angry h
er mother had been. “And it’s a good thing, too, because I had no intention of leaving you tonight – not even for a minute!”

  Nathan sat up and took her hands into his. “I am so sorry I scared you, pretty girl!” He said.

  “Stop apologising, and go back to sleep,” Andie told him.

  “I don’t want to sleep anymore,” Nathan said. “I want to talk to you. What happened with my father…I never told anyone about it before.”

  “And you don’t have to tell me now…” Andie began.

  “I know I don’t have to, but I want to,” Nathan told her. “My dad was a futures trader. He was the blue-eyed boy of his brokerage, I understand. I was little, but based on what I could pick up, he raked in millions for his company every year. But then he got into heavy speculation, and he began to lose, and every time he lost money, on the different indices, he would trade more to try to recover it. One thing led to another, and then he began embezzling. It was just me and him the day he was to be arrested…” He sighed and closed his eyes as the images came back to him once more. “I remember he was telling the police not to cuff him in front of his kid. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it couldn’t be anything good. He said he had to go upstairs…I don’t know why I went with him…”

  “Nathan don’t say anymore,” Andie said, hugging him. “Don’t continue to relive it…”