These Dreams Which Cannot Last

by Matt Flickinger

  “We will,” Toni says, with an impatient smile. Zain hurries past the other end of the couch, not looking back.

  He’s never run so fast down Charlotte’s cul-de-sac. When he turns the corner he slows down. Standing between streetlights, he looks back to the entrance of Spruce Circle. He waits, listening until he hears the echoes of closing car doors. Zain watches the little car turn and drive away down the street. He stands in the darkness, long after the taillights have faded, replaying the conversation. The excitement he felt when Charlotte walked into the room, until she crossed her arms. His attempt at apologizing, a total failure even if he hadn’t totally screwed up what he wanted to say. Maybe there are times when considering doesn’t matter, he thinks. You’re just fucked either way.

  When he reaches Rio Verde he doesn’t turn. Not even his head to look down the street. Not even to watch the porch light not come on at his house at the bottom of the hill. Not even to wonder where his childhood went. He knows without looking. It is just gone. So he runs on. Down off the sidewalk, over the asphalt, onto the next. The next street and the next mile and the next.

  An hour later he sneaks into the dark, quiet house. He doesn’t bother showering, just falls onto his bed. He is still breathing hard from the run, from the hundred falling thoughts and questions he couldn’t shake. He’d passed by Jackson’s house. So many days separating the now from when that house felt like a second home. Tonight, it was just another reminder of something else he hadn’t anticipated. The crumbling of friendship. Zain never considered he and Jackson might someday not be friends. That his best friend might just get tired of him. Not a sudden “we’re not friends anymore because you did this.” Just over. The end of the friendship was gradual, just time and a lack of attention on Zain’s part, and Jackson’s too. Standing across the street from his old friend’s house, just to see it. He hoped to remember when things weren’t so confusing. The longer he stood, though, the surer he felt that it was always that complicated, and that simple. Fucked either way. He didn’t cross the street, didn’t knock. Just ran on, deeper into the night.

  Lying on top of his covers, Zain stares up at the spinning fan. So much for planning, so much for maturity, he thinks. He’s winded, but not sleepy. Just so tired. Tired of feeling like there is always too much to consider, too much to anticipate, even when it doesn’t matter. Tired of feeling like he is never ever ready.

  35

  Darkened Doors

  The light has changed. A dull gray has settled across the room now, so dim that the room is almost completely dark. Zain looks to the ceiling. There is no light bulb, or hanging fixture, just flat smooth gray, like the walls. He can barely make out the room’s features, the chair, the sofa at his heels, the doors, all sitting in a strange and dim silence. Everything is the same but the light. No, he sees it now. Something is different about the doors. The one on the right is dark, a recent development but not new. The slight crack at the bottom of the left door, usually bright, however, is dark now too. A chill blows through the room, through his chest. Where the wind comes from he can’t tell. For all the times he’s been in the room, Zain has never wondered how he got here. But he does now. And, growing more frightened, he wonders if he can get out. He moves to the door on the right first, knocking over the chair. The knob is like ice in his hand. Impossibly cold, it won’t turn, doesn’t budge at all. He pushes on the door, pressing his hand against the freezing wood. A tingle of panic shoots through his arms. Wake up, he thinks. That is how to escape! “Wake up!” The walls absorb the scream, instantly fading as it leaves his lips. He grips the knob of the second door. It is wet and warm. Please, he thinks. Please turn. He turns it a quarter turn and pushes. Nothing. “No.” He pushes again, jiggles the handle, leans against the stubborn door. It feels like it has never been opened. Maybe it isn’t a door at all, Zain thinks, just more wall. He looks back on the quiet room, once boring and dull, now a terrifying prison. The dull couch and the overturned chair. He is certain he has seen the chair like this before, certain this is how it ended up that way. It was him who knocked it over, on his way to the door. Trying to answer the question “how do I get out of here?” No one else knocked it over, or will answer, because no one else has ever been in this room. No one but him, ever. And never has he wanted out of anywhere more than this room, right now. “Wake up. Please. Please!” he screams.

  She shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have hurt him. But the whole fucking day had been shouldn’t haves. Shouldn’t have laid around getting bored all morning. Definitely shouldn’t have gone with her family when they went Christmas shopping, which she didn’t. But she shouldn’t have felt sorry for herself as soon as they were gone, smoking a bowl that left her feeling worse. She shouldn’t have agreed to go with Toni to Carlos Vasquez’s house, where she shouldn’t have taken a terrifying Salvia trip. Mostly, though, she shouldn’t have hurt Zain just because she could.

  The ice queen has always been Charlotte’s default when she’s upset. And even though Zain was obviously sorry and looked so sad and young and awkward, standing so small in the big empty living room, and it was too easy to be mean, she had done it anyway. Because old habits don’t die at all. He didn’t deserve it. Because he should have texted, but that really isn’t reason enough to treat him that way. Because she wouldn’t have missed Zain the way she has if she didn’t really like him. Which she does. Because there is mystery in him, interesting and untapped. He isn’t some guy playing damaged artist. Zain is real. Too young and legitimately hurt to be anything but honest and actual. And that is a rare and special thing, she knows. He isn’t devious, but pure and dark and sad and kind of beautiful. Most people she knows are just decorative shells hiding a shallowness they are terrified to expose. But Zain is different, deeper. Beyond that cute-on-the-way-to-handsome-crust he doesn’t yet see, there is depth to that boy, true and innocent vulnerability and promise. What a thing to have fall into a backyard pool, she thinks.

  Shitty house music thrums from the living room speakers. A small crowd yells every time the bass drops. Toni is grinding on a greasy senior Charlotte recognizes from the art hallway. His eyes zone in on Toni’s ass and he bites his lip. Charlotte looks around for her sister, but doesn’t see her. How, she thinks, did she end up here, again? All things being this, she would rather be at home. Or, better yet, running through the rain. She pulls her phone from her pocket.

  Zain breathes in deeply as he wakes. He exhales and coughs, the bitter burn of bile singeing his throat. The comforter is damp and itchy with sweat. Clicking on the lamp, he looks around his room, grateful to be back. He grabs his phone off the art desk, 3:38. He gets up quietly and heads for the kitchen, swiping the screen. A single message waits to be opened. Zain whispers a few words of hope and opens the text.

  “Sorry for being a bitch. Call me in the morning?”

  Zain stops in the hallway, his mind racing through so many possibilities. Should he text now? Technically it is the morning, he thinks. He could call her. Before he can decide what to do, a sound from the darkness distracts him. He sneaks around the corner of the hallway. The kitchen light is on. He crosses the living room. Stopping before the kitchen, he watches his mother from the safety of the dark. She sits at the table, face leaning against one hand, a half glass of wine in the other, looking over piles of creased papers spread out across the tabletop. She nods and takes a pen from the table, writing something on a legal pad. Her face is puffy, the bags under her eyes wet. Zain considers sneaking away, taking a sip from the bathroom sink and returning to his room. No, he thinks. He’s thirsty. Let her cry or ignore him while he grabs a glass of water. He breathes deeply and walks into the kitchen.

  His mother looks up and sets her glass on the table, “did I wake you?” She wipes her eyes.

  “No. I had a bad dream.”

  “Oh,” she nods. “Get some water.”

  Zain grabs a glass from the cabinet and turns on the sink. He can’t tell if the noise behin
d him is the shuffling of papers or his mother sniffing.

  “I’m sorry we had to leave in such a rush today.”

  Zain takes a sip and turns to his mother. “It’s okay,” he says, even if it isn’t.

  “No, it’s not,” she says. She takes a deep breath, looking Zain right in the face. She looks so tired, so sad.

  “I guess not,” Zain says.

  “Take a seat?” His mother gathers up the papers on the table.

  Zain stands at the sink, looking back over his shoulder, out the window. He can barely make out the grass patches of the backyard. It is hours until the sun will rise. When he looks back at the table, his mother has stacked the papers into a neat pile beside her wine glass. The top paper of the stack has big block letters on the front announcing the OVERDUE status of whichever bill it is. Zain takes the seat across the table, setting his water in front of him. His mother looks at the legal pad in front of her and takes a sip from her glass.

  “Did you take a run tonight?”

  Zain looks down at his shirt, his wrinkled running shorts. “Yes.”

  “That helps you, huh?”

  Zain nods, looking at the list she has written on the legal pad in front of her. Two lists, actually, he sees. A line divides the page down the middle from top to bottom. The top of the page is labeled Pros on one side, Cons on the other. The Pros side is longer, but just barely.

  “Drawing too? Mellie tells me you’ve gotten really good.”

  “I guess,” he says, taking another sip of water.

  She sets her glass down and rests her hands over the list, shifting in her seat. “Did you have fun in El Paso?”

  This is the longest conversation they have had since the Beer Pool Mile. Her questions that night were convicting. This is different. She seems to be trying. She rubs her hands over the list, and pats the table nervously. Zain considers his words like stepping over the frame of his bike after a long winter.

  “Yes. It was fun,” he says.

  “You like it there?”

  “I like Aunt Mellie.”

  She nods, “she loves you, too.”

  “I know.”

  Zain’s mother stops rubbing the list, “I’m not very good at this.”

  “Good at what?”

  “Talking with you,” she says, taking a drink and sighing loudly.

  “You don’t ever do it.” The words are out before he can think about them.

  At first she seems like she might yell. She closes her eyes, flattening her palms against the table. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  Zain leans back and crosses his arms, foot bouncing under the table. His mother opens her eyes and looks at the stack of bills, the list, the spilled salt at the base of the shaker. “I’m not very good at any of it, really,” she says.

  He wants to hear her say it, needs her to admit. Not that it will change the silence, erase the excuses or distance, or warm the cold empty house of the past half year. But heavier now than the weight of her sad face, or any guilt from either of them, is his need to hear his mother speak the words. Zain closes his eyes and, through the darkness, the kitchen spins into spring time light around him. He watches his spring self walking aimlessly through the kitchen until his confused eyes found the cold stove where he learned to sauté vegetables. Standing with his eyes shut against the tears, trying to feel his father behind him, his soft hands on his shoulders. Trying to wish the cold coils back into red heat, he was unable even to turn the knobs of the stove, though. He sees his bare feet pacing the hallway, ignoring the emptiness in his stomach and chest, looking over the family pictures lining the walls. He feels the tears coughed out of his eyes when he thought his body too depleted to produce any more. He feels the prickly covers, curled up in the hot sheets of his father’s bed when his mother was gone. When she left him alone in the house. Off early to work, every morning, returning only after Zain had put himself to bed. Zain opens his eyes, gripping the white hot springtime memories in his mind like a branding iron. All of it outweighs whatever sadness he sees in her face and he needs to hear her say it. Jaw tight, his voice shaking and cold, Zain asks, “not good at what?” He annunciates the words, his eyes locked on hers.

  She looks back at him, fear breaking through for a second before it is gone again. Her eyes soften back into fatigue. Zain doesn’t look away. Finally, she says it, “being a mother.”

  “You haven’t been here. You weren’t here,” he says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not enough,” Zain says. His hands are sweaty balls in his armpits, clenched and shaking.

  “I know,” she says.

  Zain opens his mouth but says nothing. He won’t cry. Not now, he thinks, not for her. They sit quietly. His mother drains the rest of her wine. “He left me too,” she says. “He was magical and foolishly optimistic and beautiful and loved me more than I deserved, Zain—” she stops, choking. They sit, breathing through the silence. “And he loved you,” she says, finally, “more than anything.”

  Zain’s chin tightens and he blinks, tears streaming down each cheek. Not now. Not for her. Not for the woman crying her own tears without moving around the table to comfort her son. He sniffs and clears his throat.

  “But we have to stay strong,” she says. “Because we’re in trouble now, Zain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She rests her elbows on the table, rubbing her knuckles, looking at the pile of papers. “We owe too much. The insurance payout only covered part of the house.”

  “What does that mean?” Zain asks.

  “I’ve been looking at the numbers all night. Believe me, if there was any other way.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She starts to say something, then stops.

  “What are you talking about?” Zain says again.

  Then she spits it out. “We have to move,” she says.

  “Move?”

  She nods her head, looking up at the ceiling, “move away, Zain.”

  “Away where?”

  She looks at the walls, the table, anywhere but at Zain, “Mellie has the space and offered. If there was any other way, believe me—”

  “We’re moving to El Paso?”

  “I’m out of options here,” she says, grabbing the pile of bills and pinching them in her fist.

  Of course, Zain thinks. Bits of conversations come back now, clearer than before. All those confusing half conversations he listened to from the hallway at Aunt Mellie’s start to add up. You have to tell him soon. What other choice do you have? It’s been hard. Christmas is right around the corner. How, he thinks, had he not caught on? It is all so obvious now.

  “We’re out of money?” Zain is yelling. “We owe too much. Since when are we a we? Since when?” He lowers his voice, “you didn’t even ask me.”

  “There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Well, I’m telling you now,” she says, her usual cold face returning. “This is happening. We’ll be leaving at the beginning of Christmas break.”

  “What? This isn’t fair.” It sounds stupid, immature. Even if he’s right.

  “Things aren’t fair. The world, life,” his mother says, “isn’t fair.”

  “We can’t stay until the end of the school year even?”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Stop saying that!” Zain yells. For a moment his mother looks hurt, but he doesn’t care.

  “We’re out of money,” she says. “You can start at your new school after the winter break, get a fresh start, a running start for the rest of high school.” She has rehearsed this part, Zain can tell. She is almost smiling. Probably relieved it is finally out there. How great for her, he thinks. What does she have here anyway? An empty bedroom and work friends who never even stop by? Zain doesn’t remember the las
t time she even sold a house. If he wasn’t so pissed he could almost feel sorry for her, but he can’t, not right now. Because he actually has reasons to stay. River Valley will never be the place it once was, but it could be good again. It is getting better. He’s getting a handle on school, knows where to go, who to avoid and who he doesn’t have to anymore. Roger even nodded at him in the hallway before Thanksgiving break. Even if Roger’s neckless buddies still look like they want to break Zain’s face open whenever they see him, he can avoid them. He had a good cross country season and Coach Branson told him he was looking forward to an impressive track season. The art contest piece is all ready to submit next week. And none of that unanticipated goodness even compares to the reason. Her. He has Charlotte. The impossibly kind and beautiful Charlotte whose kisses make everything fade to a deep blue like the midnight, whose smile makes him forget.

  “If there was any other way—”

  “There isn’t. I got it,” Zain says, pushing his chair back quickly as he stands. His mother tries to call him back, but he’s already out of the room.

  Sleep isn’t coming, too much scattered across her brain like a mad woman’s quilt. Charlotte sits up in bed and clicks on the light. The clock reads 4:36. She must have fallen asleep for a while at some point, though it doesn’t feel like she did. She grabs her phone off the table. One text, five minutes ago: Are you up? She is about to respond when Zain’s name comes up on the screen. She slides her finger to answer. “Hey,” she says.

  There is a shuffling on the other end, then a whispered “hello?”

  “Hey.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No, I just got up.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you.” His apology sounds the same as it did earlier.

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry for being like that.”

  “I forgive you. Can you talk?” he whispers.

  “Ya. Why are you up? Is everything ok?”

  More shuffling, she hears a soft thud, then silence.