Always You

by Roxie Noir

  My mom starts crying. I wish I could cry, but instead I just stare at his coffin.

  After this, he’s going down there, I think. I’m really never going to see him again.

  “Eli was a son, but more than a son. He was a brother, but more than a...”

  The reverend glances up, though he doesn’t break pace, just plows along through the platitudes. I keep staring at Eli’s coffin, trying not to think about the finality of being buried, about what the phrase six feet under really means.

  I should have had him cremated, I think. Then he wouldn’t be stuck here, at least.

  In the distance, off to my right, I finally realize something’s moving. The reverend drones on about souls going home to Jesus, and I look over.

  It’s a person.

  It’s running.

  It’s Darcy.

  She’s in a black dress and bolting across the million-degree grass, dodging headstones and running hell-for-leather over where people are buried, because of course Darcy doesn’t give a shit about that.

  I have no idea how the fuck she got here and I really have no idea how the fuck she knew this was happening now, but the middle of the absolute shitshow of my little brother’s pathetic funeral, I’m suddenly happy.

  Maybe not happy. It’s harder than that. But seeing Darcy right now lights up a secret, buried part of my heart, suddenly makes all this just a little more bearable.

  Twenty feet away, she slows to a walk. She’s breathing hard, bright red and sweaty, and she smooths her hair down and tries to catch her breath like we didn’t all just watch her sprint from the road to here.

  “I’ll be right back,” I whisper to my mom, squeezing her hand. She’s frowning at Darcy as I stand and walk out from under the tent.

  The reverend just keeps going. I guess I could ask him to stop, but I’m not sure I see the point.

  “Trent,” Darcy whispers when I’m in earshot. “I’m so sorry, I should have come—”

  I wrap my arms around her and just fucking squeeze until she stops talking and squeezes me back. I don’t give a shit that a funeral is a weird time for this, I don’t give a shit that a man in a suit is going on about the valley of death, and I don’t give a shit that my mom is glaring daggers from her seat.

  I just fucking care that Darcy’s here to make this dark day a little brighter.

  I lead her back to the seats. She nods and half-waves at my mom, who nods back slightly.

  Then she holds my hand in both of hers, and I finish burying my brother.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Darcy

  “And thus we say,” the minister drones on, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust...”

  I just sit there, rigidly, spine perfectly straight, sweat sliding down it like a waterslide as the minister talks, Eli’s coffin right in front of us. There’s no one else here, just me, Trent, and Trent’s mom, which only made my entrance that much worse.

  Don’t think about it now, I tell myself, staring at the shiny wood box hovering over the void. You got here. That’s the thing. The minister barely even noticed.

  Now that I’m here, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. I think this might be it, though: sit next to Trent, hold his hand. Just sit here. Just be here. So I sit, and I hold, and I be, and I hope it’s what he needs.

  After ten, maybe fifteen minutes, the minster stops speaking, not that I’ve really been paying attention. Solemnly, he takes two carnations from a plastic vase next to the grave, hands one each to Trent and his mom.

  They rise. Trent’s mom holds onto him as he helps her to the coffin, and they put the carnations on top. She’s sobbing, practically all her weight leaning on Trent, like having to bury Eli like this has completely broken her. Even though I’ve never met her or Eli before, I’m crying too, just watching them.

  The minister goes over to them, all professional sympathy, says something to each. Then he comes over to me, still sitting in a folding chair and sweating.

  “My condolences,” he says, and shakes my hand.

  I swallow the lump in my throat, force myself not to say it’s okay, I didn’t actually know him.

  “Thanks,” I say, and he nods, then walks out into the sun and away. Trent and his mom are still graveside, his arm around her. If he moves I think she might just crumple, and suddenly I feel like I’m intruding.

  I stand and walk back into the sun myself, give them about twenty feet of space, look at the shared headstone of a couple who died sometime in the 1980s. Phyllis and Phillip.

  That must have been confusing, I think.

  I stare at Phyllis and Phillip for a long time. They were both born in the 1906, though she outlived him by nearly ten years. I wonder if they bought the headstone when he died or when she did. If it was when he died, did half of it just sit blank for all that time, just waiting?

  “Hey,” says Trent’s voice behind me, and I turn.

  He’s standing there, in a suit, his hands in his pockets, and he’s also sweating like hell.

  “Hey,” I say, suddenly all nerves. I bite back I’m so sorry for everything I said and I didn’t mean it how it sounded and are we okay? Can we please be okay? Because none of this is about me.

  “How are you doing?” I ask instead.

  “Pretty shitty,” he says.

  I just nod.

  “It was a nice ceremony,” I say, a little at a loss for words. “I thought the minister was really good, some of the stuff he said was really touching, and putting the flowers on the coffin at the end was really beautiful...”

  Trent looks me up and down. The corner of his mouth twitches up, like he’s amused.

  Then in one big step, he wraps me in his arms for the second time in half an hour, and even though we’re both disgusting and it’s stiflingly hot, it feels good.

  “Thanks,” he says, his voice low and gruff. “I know you’re bullshitting me, because he was terrible, but thank you.”

  I squeeze him back as hard as I can.

  “I really am sorry about Eli,” I whisper. “That’s not bullshit.”

  “I know.”

  After a long time, he lets me go. His mom is still standing graveside, looking small and frail, and we both look over at her as Trent takes my hand.

  “She’s gonna forget this in another fifteen minutes,” he says. “I’m glad you were here, so at least someone else remembers that this happened.”

  Just then, she looks over, but her face is different from before. It’s not the same mask of anguish and pain. She’s still crying, but she looks confused, lost, like she’s not quite sure why she’s where she is.

  “Does she remember that Eli’s dead?”

  “She does. I had to remind her four times yesterday.”

  “Jesus, Trent.”

  “That’s not the worst part,” he says, his voice low and quiet, nearly slipping away in the hot wind over the cemetery. “When she first saw me, she thought I was my father. Just for a second, but it was there.”

  “You’re not. You know that.”

  “I know.”

  Trent’s mom looks around. She takes a step back from the grave, looking at it a little uncertainly, clasps her hands in front of her, and Trent looks down at me.

  “I should go get her,” he says. “We’re going to dinner. Come.”

  “I don’t want to intrude,” I say carefully.

  He smiles at me, faintly.

  “If you don’t intrude I might lose my mind,” he says. “Come with us. Make me feel normal.”

  That can be my job, I think. That’s a service I think I can offer.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll just meet you there and introduce you two then,” he says, watching his mom a little warily. Now she’s looking around, then slowly and uncertainly takes a seat in a folding chair, glancing back at Trent every few minutes. “No point in introducing you twice, you know?”

  I get to La Cocina first. The interior is done like it’s the inside of an a
dobe in Mexico City or something: fake building fronts with Spanish tile, colorful banners hanging everywhere, waitresses wearing full, brightly colored skirts and serapes.

  Not quite where I expected Trent to be going after a funeral, but I guess he’s full of surprises.

  A few minutes later he shows up with his mom, and I stand, nervously. I don’t think I’m very good at meeting parents, and this is a hell of a way to meet someone’s parents.

  On the other hand, I’ll have a second chance. And a third one.

  I feel bad instantly for thinking that, but I smile as they walk over. Trent’s smiling, but his mom has an expression of stone and eyes of flint.

  “Mom, this is Darcy,” Trent says. “I’ve told you about her before.”

  “Hi,” I say, holding out my hand. “I’m so sorry about Eli.”

  She nods, stiffly.

  “Gwen,” she says, her hand frail and delicate in mine. “Thank you so much for coming. We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, clasping my hands in front of me, just as polite as polite can be. “But I’m his bandmate, so we may have met briefly at some point.”

  “Maybe you just look familiar, then,” she says, like she’s slightly suspicious.

  “That’s probably it,” I say.

  “She’s in a lot of photos with me, Mom,” Trent says, and they sit opposite me. Trent grabs a menu. “Last time you were here you really liked the enchiladas...”

  We have an almost-normal four-thirty-in-the-afternoon-after-a-funeral dinner. Gwen asks me where I’m from, I tell her, she says she’s heard Madison is lovely. We have that conversation three times. We discuss Gavin’s recovery a few times, she asks Trent when he’s moving from Los Angeles back up to the Bakersfield area at least twice.

  She only brings up Eli once, when she tells Trent that he should be buried next to his father, and he just tells her that Eli didn’t want that and moves on. I can tell it’s not the first time they’ve had this talk.

  Somehow, Gwen’s not what I expected Trent’s mom to be like. The memory problems and the shaky hands are what I expected, sure, but from the way he talks about her, I was expecting someone much meeker, much frailer, a little more afraid of everything in the world.

  But instead she seems oddly tough. She pushes her way through conversations, even when we’re having them for the third or fourth time, and she’s very brusque and matter-of-fact.

  Also? I don’t think Gwen likes me.

  It’s hard to tell. She just got back from her son’s funeral, has serious brain injuries, and doesn’t remember what I said to her fifteen minutes ago. I can’t quite tell where her personality ends and the mental problems begin, but I’m getting pretty strong Gwen doesn’t like me vibes.

  After dinner, Trent turns to Gwen. She’s in the middle of telling me again how the shower curtain rod in her apartment keeps coming down and the staff simply won’t fix it right, because all it takes is one good tug and then the darned thing is on the floor again.

  “Maybe you should stop yanking on the shower curtain, Mom,” Trent suggests, again.

  “I’m not yanking,” she says. “I’m just trying to shower, like any decent person.”

  He looks at me across the table, a look I can’t quite decode. It seems like it’s partly a warning, partly something else. Gwen sighs and looks at the dessert menu.

  “Where are you staying?” he asks me.

  “Nowhere yet,” I say. “It’s still early, I might just drive back to LA tonight. Traffic shouldn’t be too bad by the time I get into the city.”

  Trent reaches into his pocket, then slides a plastic Holiday Inn room key across the table.

  “Room one-forty-one, if you want,” he says. “I’ve gotta drive Mom back first.”

  Gwen, still reading the menu, side-eyes the fuck out of our interaction, but I ignore her, putting my hand over the key and sliding it toward myself, trying not to smile.

  “Where?”

  “It’s the one on Palm and Mira Loma.”

  “I don’t think I’m hungry for dessert,” Gwen announces, and I slide the key card into my purse, heart beating faster.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Trent

  “I don’t think I like that girl,” my mom says as we drive into the parking lot of Sunset Acres.

  I knew it was coming, just from her silence on the way over. Of course the one thing my mom remembers of today is that she doesn’t like someone.

  “Darcy?” I ask, just to remind her of that girl’s name.

  “She’s rude,” my mom says, frowning slightly at my car’s windshield as I slow, looking for a parking space. “And she has a dirty mouth.”

  I can tell she doesn’t remember why she thinks Darcy’s rude, but apparently Darcy made an impression. Probably by sprinting into the middle of my brother’s funeral.

  My mom can think whatever she wants. She clearly doesn’t remember the actual event.

  But I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see someone. Fuck that it was at a shitty funeral with a terrible minister in the hundred-degree heat, and fuck that no one came because my brother didn’t have anyone else who wasn’t in prison.

  She came. I said something fucking terrible to her and then disappeared, and she sprinted across graves anyway. It’s better than I deserve and I know it.

  “I know, Mom,” I say. “I like her anyway.”

  “I don’t think she’s right for you,” my mom goes on as I swing the rental car into a parking space. “Don’t you think she seems kind of damaged?”

  I shut the car off, the lights still shining at the building in front of us, and I think: whatever I say, she won’t remember in fifteen minutes.

  But then I look over at her, and she looks back at me. She looks twenty years older than she is, a slight dent in her skull on her left side, her right hand shaking very slightly in her lap, and whatever horrible thing I could have said to her flies right out of my head.

  “Yeah, she’s kind of damaged,” I say. “And I love her anyway.”

  I turn off the headlights, undo my seatbelt.

  “Well—”

  “You stayed married to Dad for twenty-five years, and now you’re in assisted living at fifty-six because of what he did to you,” I say, my voice deadly quiet in the dark. “I think you’re a pretty shitty judge of character, and I don’t care what you have to say about Darcy.”

  That pisses her off. She gets out of the car, shaky but furious, and walks slowly to the front door of Sunset Acres.

  I shouldn’t have said that, I think. I should have let it pass. She just buried Eli.

  I get out. I follow Mom in, nodding at the nurses and their sympathetic faces. When we get to her suite, she lets me walk her in, then sits in a chair and turns her head away from me, giving me the silent treatment.

  It’s the brain damage. I know it is, because she didn’t use to be like this, so I kiss her on the head, which she ignores.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mom,” I say, and walk out of her suite.

  Silence, but God help me, I don’t care.

  Outside room one-forty-one at the Holiday Inn, I lean against the frame and pause for a minute. My day is swirling through my brain, and I try to gather my fragmented thoughts together into some semblance of... something.

  I should say something, do something after she showed up and practically rescued me even after I treated her terribly, but I don’t know what. Every inch of me is tired, every bone in my body, and I don’t want to think or talk.

  I’m lost, adrift, and all I want is to be there, with her. I’m broken and she makes me feel whole. I’m wandering through the dark and she’s my North Star.

  Finally, I knock on the door. Darcy opens it, and I still don’t know what to say to her.

  Instead, I kiss her. In the doorway, in the hall of a Holiday Inn in Bakersfield, California, I kiss Darcy like my life depends on it, because it feels like it might.

  I put every
thing I have into it, because suddenly I understand that this is it, that Darcy is it. All the shit that happened today, all the shit that’s happened the past weeks, the past month, my whole life and what I want is her, plain and simple.

  She pulls back, breathing hard, looks at me. The door’s still open, so I nudge her inside, let it close behind me.

  “Trent,” she says, as I slide my fingers down her back, then lean my forehead against hers.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, eyes closed.

  I have no plan, no outline, so clue what I’m about to say.

  “It’s okay,” she whispers.

  “I didn’t mean it,” I go on. “I should never have said it. I know you’ve got a heart because it’s all I’ve ever fucking wanted, Darcy.”

  I kiss her again, just to make myself stop talking for a moment, before I pour my soul out right here in this hotel room that smells like disinfectant and air conditioning. She wraps her hand around the back of my neck, her fingers every bit as hard and desperate as I feel.

  “I shouldn’t have said that about your brother,” she gasps, the next time our lips come apart. “I wasn’t thinking, I can just be an asshole sometimes—”

  “I know,” I tease, and nip at her lip. I’m pushing her slowly back toward the bed, our bodies practically melded together. “You’re an asshole sometimes, you swear too much, you’ve got spikes a mile long, and I love you anyway.”

  I kiss her harder, forcefully. The backs of her knees hit the bed and I can’t believe I just told her I love her, but it’s true, so fuck it.

  I do, and I have, and I think I probably always will.

  Darcy’s knees buckle and then she’s sitting on the bed, her hand closed around the front of my button-down shirt, tie and jacket long gone, and she pulls my face down to hers.

  “I cried for a day because I thought you were gone,” she says, her voice low and rough, like it’s hard for her to say. “It was fucking pathetic, Trent. I was fucking heartbroken because since forever it’s always been us and then, suddenly, it wasn’t.”