Thirty Hours: a semi memoir of psychosis and love

by KL Evans

  You know, I pride myself on my progressive nature and ability to avoid calling women sexist names when they’re being completely abrasive and combative, but I was tempted to use one because you were acting like an asshole that afternoon. “Did something happen since I saw you last?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You’re being kind of catty today,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “What’s going on?”

  “I just realized we’re not friends. I don’t have to be nice to you anymore.”

  “Well… Charlie. To be fair, we’ve never been friends. I’ve just been trying to interview you. If it seemed like something more, that was your doing.”

  You scoffed. “Says the guy who fooled around with me two nights ago.”

  “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “But you did.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have. That was a mistake. I’m sorry if it hurt your feelings, but I—“

  “I have no feelings,” you growled as Sir Chivalry gallantly returned and set the water down. “Especially not about you.”

  “Feeling better?” he inquired, eyeballing me as much as you.

  You nodded and forced a smile at him before he left.

  “Charlie, I am sorry about the other night, but I honestly—”

  “So about a year after Mom died,” you went on, ignoring me and speaking to the water glass, “my dad went to prison for the first time. My Aunt Lynette moved in with us and became our temporary legal guardian. She was my dad’s sister and she was really nice to us. Kind of like a mom should have been. My dad got paroled in 2010, but it wasn’t long before he got busted again and he was back in prison the next year. So we kept living with Aunt Lynette and things were kind of good. I guess. As good as they can be when you’re the children of an infamous meth dealer in a small town. I graduated from high school in 2011 and started working as a receptionist at the brick company. I worked there for a while. Jade was at UNT. She studied English and got a teaching certification. Dad died in 2013 about a month before she graduated. After that—“

  “Your dad died,” I interjected. “You were an orphan at twenty years old. What does that feel like?”

  You glared at me and your gray eyes suddenly turned to red hot steel. “My dad was an infamous meth dealer. It felt awesome!”

  With that, you leaped out of your chair and started to march away.

  “Please don’t leave, Charlie,” I said, jumping up and grabbing your arms. “I realize this is probably—“

  “You are the most insensitive, inhuman, heartless person I have ever met. Do you care about anyone but yourself and your job? All of those poor people you’ve written about, did you ever care about any of them? I know you spent at least as much time with them as you’ve spent with me, and you don’t give a shit about me. Did you give a shit about any of them?”

  You—I mean we, because we’re both responsible for this—we were making a scene and the Great Sir Galahad was eyeballing us from a distance while speaking with someone who looked like a manager.

  “I’ve upset you,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “That wasn’t my intention. I’m sorry. Please sit back down.”

  “I really don’t want to talk to you anymore.” You pulled away from me and I noticed I was fighting against you to keep my grip on your arms, and I really shouldn’t have been doing that, and why was this happening? I had never so much as laid a finger on any other source beyond a handshake and I’d managed to lay all kinds of body parts on you, and likewise you had on me. What was this?

  “Miss,” came the voice of the manager. “Do you need some assistance?”

  You glowered at me, glanced at him, and then looked back at me before jerking your arms out of my grasp in one deft movement. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  After waiting a beat, you stepped off the patio and left.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” I said, handing him a twenty. “I work for the paper. I’m just trying to interview her.”

  He took the money. “You could be less of a dick about it.”

  I pondered that for a moment and decided he was probably right because I already knew at that point I was an asshole. I left the patio and joined you next to the fountain, where you were standing with your arms crossed over your chest.

  “Charlie, I really am—“

  “God, will you stop calling me that? How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “What am I supposed to call you instead?”

  You shrugged.

  We stood in silence. The weather was pretty warm, but still pleasant, and I got an idea. I told myself I wasn’t being manipulative, rather that I was appealing to your emotions to bring you out of your defensive state, and placed my hand on the small of your back to guide you toward the fountain.

  “What are we doing?”

  I gestured at the edge of the concrete barrier. “Have a seat.”

  You did, and then I sat next to you. I removed my shoes, socks, rolled up the cuffs of my pants, and stuck my feet in the water. You looked at my bare feet and laughed before following suit and plunking your feet in as well.

  “Nice, right?” I asked, putting on the most charming smile I could muster. I kept telling myself I wasn’t being manipulative. I told myself that when I inched closer to you. I told myself that when I rubbed your back. I told myself that every time I smiled at you. I told myself that when I kissed your temple. I told myself that when I told you, “I do care about you.”

  I kept telling myself that, but I wasn’t buying it. And neither were you, apparently. But it also didn’t seem to bother you.

  “I can see right through what you’re doing, Seth McCollum.” You pressed your cheek against my shoulder. “It’s okay though. It’s working.”

  “I’m not doing anything but trying to be nice because I was rude and insensitive back there.”

  “No, we’re playing a game right now. You’re giving me what I want so I’ll give you what you want.”

  “I think we’ve just got our feet in a fountain. You’re making it sound kind of sordid.”

  “You think I’m a lot more naïve and stupid than I am.”

  “I definitely don’t think you’re naïve and stupid.”

  “You think that getting all sweet and cuddly right now is going to make me open up a bit.”

  “No,” I insisted, even though it was my original intention; even though I was telling myself it wasn’t. “I care about you. I care that you’ve had a rough life. I want to do justice to that in telling your story. To do that, I have to ask you tough questions. Make you uncomfortable. But I do care.”

  Three times in less than a minute I said it. I care about you. It wasn’t true. But I kept saying it and even telling it to myself to justify almost having sex with you two nights prior.

  There’s a pithy little saying that was pulled from Hitler’s Mein Kampf known as große Lüge, or the Big Lie propaganda technique: "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." And in this instance, the “they” was me, not you.

  I care about you. I care about you. I care about you. I care about you.

  And that afternoon, while we sat with our feet in the fountain, me with my hand on the small of your back, and you with your cheek pressed against my shoulder, I started to believe it.

  “Jade got her job at the school,” you picked back up, “and I started taking some of my basic classes at the community college. Just in the evenings and on Saturdays. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but Jade said whatever I do, if I want to have some kind of permanent employability, I need to go to college. It was a place to start. Aunt Lynette was a nurse and she planted the idea in my head of eventually going to nursing school, but I had a while before I had to make a decision about that. It was around that time that my dad died and I got to thinking about my future more.”

  You paused to sigh loudly and kick the water, splashing the both of us. You laughed and I brushed the drop
lets off both of us.

  “Sorry, Seth McCollum.”

  I forced another charming smile, but also noticed it wasn’t entirely forced. “It’s okay.”

  “Anyway, that’s how it was for a while. Aunt Lynette lived with us, Jade was teaching, and I was working and going to school part time, kicking around the idea of finally pursuing nursing school.”

  “This was after your dad had died?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you mind telling me what his passing was like for you?” I asked, proceeding with extreme caution.

  “Seth McCollum. The entire city knew about my dad’s ordeal. I think even some of the national news outlets picked it up.” You turned to me, wearing those steely eyes again. “You read about it, right?”

  “I did.”

  “And what was my dad’s name, Seth McCollum?”

  “Charles Reid.”

  “Charlie,” you corrected. “Charlie Reid. And what’s my name?”

  Instead of answering, I pressed my lips together. It made sense and I felt a bit thick having not put two and two together before then.

  “Get it?” you asked.

  I nodded. “So you felt guilty by association.”

  “Basically. All anyone said when they learned my name was, ‘oh you’re the meth dealer? Ha ha.’ Like… I didn’t even know how to respond to stuff like that. So once he died, it felt like I could finally get away from that reputation.”

  “You weren’t sad at all?”

  “What is your obsession with me being sad?”

  I shrugged. “It seems like a logical feeling.”

  You snorted. “Logical feeling. Oxy-moron.”

  I had to laugh.

  “Feelings are very complex and not very logical, Seth McCollum.”

  “That’s true.”

  You rubbed your cheek against my sleeve. “I think part of me was actually glad. I just wanted to move on. Then again, his existence and the way he just… was… that was my entire existence, you know? All I knew was him acting kind of shady and erratic and hanging out with seedy people. And that was just the way it was. I didn’t know anything different until I went to friends’ houses and saw they lived in these nice, clean homes with their nice parents who had normal jobs. That wasn’t my life. It never was. And that’s the thing. My dad and my mom and all of that is my life. Or it was. So when he died, I had feelings about it. I don’t think they were all good or all bad. I don’t even know what they were.”

  “I can understand that,” I said, nodding and noticing I’d been rubbing my thumb back and forth across the ridge of your spine.

  “So that’s why I can’t just answer a lot of your questions, Seth McCollum. You ask complicated questions and want simple answers.”

  “No I don’t. What I want is what you just said. That tells me a lot about you. I feel like I understand you a lot better now.” You smiled at me in a way that appeared flirtatious, so I quickly added, “But not enough that I’m going to… I mean… you know.”

  You threw your head back and laughed. And I noticed, for the first time, how much I liked your laugh.

  “That’s not what I was thinking,” you clarified. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. You’ve made it one hundred percent clear you don’t like me like that, and that’s okay.”

  It wasn’t that I don’t like you like that. “It’s not that I don’t like you like that—“

  “I was just wondering why you don’t have a girlfriend,” you went on, not acknowledging me. Ignoring me. Exactly the way you are right now. “You’re a catch. What’s the deal with that?”

  “Ahh…” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t know. I guess I feel like my life isn’t really conducive to having a relationship right now. I’m sure someday things will calm down a bit and I’ll get my debt under control, and maybe then I’ll meet a girl.”

  “If you’re waiting for ideal circumstances, you’ll probably wait forever.”

  “I’m not waiting for ideal circumstances. Just the right ones.”

  “You’re kind of anal retentive.”

  “I am not. I just like—“

  “You just think there’s a certain way to do things, a certain way to be, a certain way to think, and you have very logical, pragmatic reasons for thinking that, and if anyone doesn’t do things or think or act that way, they’re wrong.”

  “Well… I don’t know if… I mean…” I stammered. It sounded about right, actually. You are surprisingly perceptive. And smart. The more time I spent around you, the more you struck me as intelligent, which reminded me—

  “What happened with school?”

  Your face melted into that familiar sad expression and you said nothing.

  “You said you were taking classes when your dad died,” I pressed. “That was three years ago. Esther Harrison said you were in an EMT certification program when Jade had her accident. Can you tell me about that?”

  You dropped your chin so low I thought you might topple forward into the water. “Aunt Lynette died. About two years later. So then it was like, we really were orphans. Aunt Lynette was the last surviving relative we had. I knew I couldn’t make a lifelong career of answering phones at the brick company while I took one class a semester. And Jade couldn’t support me forever. So I decided I’d do right by Aunt Lynette and finally go to nursing school. But I also had this sense of immediacy, like I needed to do something to that end right away, so I heard about that EMT program and decided I’d start there. It was only a semester long and then I’d have a real job and a good starting point for the nursing program. I started last August.”

  “And then you quit in December.”

  You turned to look at me through a pair of wilting eyes. You said nothing.

  “And your first arrest was in February,” I prompted.

  Nothing.

  “And you were arrested how many times?”

  Still nothing—kind of like right now.

  “Do you plan to go back and finish?”

  “I’m not thinking about finishing school.”

  “Why not?”

  You sniffed and wiped your nose on the back of your hand. “Seth McCollum… those doctors told me Jade is never going to get better. That was in April. They want me to decide to take her off life support. So basically all I’m doing right now is trying to decide when to kill my sister.”

  I’ve heard people say awful things like that before. It’s always a punch in the gut, and it’s a punch in the gut because I do care. On some level, I do. I can’t completely avoid caring. But, once again, I have to keep that emotional distance. And right then, because I’d told myself the große Lüge so many times, the punch in the gut was worse. Way worse. And that’s why I held you the way I did. Hugged you. Stroked your hair. Kissed the top of your head and told you how sorry I was, while you wept silently for so long that I lost track of time.

  You pulled away and told me I didn’t need to be so sweet to you.

  I shook my head and told you I wasn’t sweet. I was actually kind of selfish, but I did wish things were different for you. That I hated that you were going through something so awful. That everything in your life had always been awful. That the hand you’d been dealt sucked and it wasn’t fair.

  I kept saying all of those things to you and, just like the day you leaped off the bridge, it was like I could sense something in the air. Like I knew what was coming.

  The color seemed to wash out of everything around us. You turned as gray as your eyes and the world became silent as you stood up and started to tell me goodbye. Maybe I only perceive it that way because I can see everything clearly in retrospect.

  You waved and smiled and said good luck with the article and to make it memorable.

  I asked you what the deal was with “make it memorable”.

  “I don’t want to die with people knowing me as the meth dealer’s daughter.”

  I don’t want to die a virgin, Seth McCollum.

  I love you, Seth
McCollum.

  Your hair fluttered in the breeze as you headed up the street. You didn’t look back. And then you disappeared around the corner.

  It wasn’t the last time I’d ever see you. Obviously. But it feels that way.

  Because the next time I saw you, everything changed.

  Hour Fifteen

  I really don’t understand the black nail polish. You aren’t the first woman I’ve seen wear it and I’ve never understood it. Isn’t the point of cosmetics to enhance your natural beauty? There’s nothing natural or beautiful about black fingernails.

  I’ve been a runner since high school and during my senior year I developed a subungual hematoma from the repetitive trauma of my toes sliding in my ill-fitting sneakers. One of my toenails turned black and a doctor had to drill a hole in it to drain the blood that had accumulated underneath. The nail died and eventually fell off. Therefore, black nail polish always reminds me of that dead toenail and I don’t understand why women would want to make their nails look like that.

  But I never say anything to women about this strange choice of color. After all, that’s what it is: their choice. It’s not for me to say what color these women should paint their fingernails. It’s your choice, too, this shiny, chipping, black polish.

  When I held your wrist, manically checking and double-checking and triple-checking to ensure your pulse was still thumping away, I stared at your black fingernails and thought about your choice; the choice of the death-like black polish and the choice that forced me to hold your wrist that way. Yes, these things were your choice. No, I still don’t understand them.

  Even now, staring at that glaring black polish, I want to chip off the rest of it. It makes you look too lifeless for the warmth and vitality I can feel in your hand. But I can’t do that.

  It’s not my choice.

  The story ran two weeks after we sat with our feet in the fountain. As usual, it garnered a lot of comments. In the typical, conservative fashion of the readership, many of the comments were harsh.

  “Is it really any surprise that a girl raised by drug addicts would be so severely lacking in modesty and morals?”