Hope For Garbage

by Tully, Alex

  “We’ll do,” Lorene showed her to the foyer. “It was so nice to meet you Jean. I will definitely be in touch.”

  Jean nodded and headed out the front door. As she walked down the brick pathway, Lorene’s thoughts turned to Tom Tyminski. He must’ve been a special man; it was obvious his daughter loved him very much.

  And it was obvious that Trevor loved him very much as well. In the midst of their terrible loss, maybe the two of them could find some comfort in each other.

  CHAPTER 33

  “I’m glad you called me. How are you feeling?” Dr. Fisher closed the office door behind her. She sat across from him and picked up a yellow pad from the side table placing it on her lap.

  “Do you mind not taking any notes…I need to get this out. Can you just listen?” Trevor knew he sounded like a desperate ass, but he didn’t care. He just needed to start talking; just let it out now.

  “Sorry, bad habit.” She put the pad on the side table.

  He looked over at the window. Nothing but blue. Talk Trevor. “I never told you about my nightmares—about the man-in-black?”

  She shook her head, “We didn’t get that far.”

  “Well, I’ve had these dreams for as long as I can remember. They are always pretty much the same. I’m flying over this open field and there’s this man on the ground chasing me. He’s wearing all black. I keep falling toward the ground and I know he’s trying to catch me…”

  “Does he ever catch you?” she interjected.

  “Sometimes, and then I usually just wake up.” His head felt so heavy; he was exhausted. "Well I figured out who he is. He’s an arson investigator.”

  Trevor looked down and concentrated on the zigzag pattern in the carpet. “He came to the hospital to see me. I recognized him right away as the man in my nightmares, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen him before.”

  He felt a huge lump forming in his throat. “He wanted to ask me some questions about the fire at the Box.” He felt like he might choke on his own words, “And then he told me.”

  “Go on Trevor.”

  Tears began dripping from his cheeks and falling into his lap. “He told me that he was there.”

  Dr. Fisher reached over and handed him a tissue, “Where Trevor? Where was he?”

  He looked up at her, “Four years ago.”

  The empathetic gaze on Dr. Fisher’s face changed before him. He could see a spark of realization in her eyes. She spoke softly and asked him the one question he never thought he’d be able to answer, until now. “Trevor,” she said, “Can you tell me what happened four years ago?”

  His heart was racing and his head was pounding. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer. “I think I need to go back further. I think I should start at the beginning—at least the beginning that I remember.”

  ***

  Trevor woke up to screaming.

  Mom was really mad this time—shouting louder than he had ever heard before.

  “That bastard! His soul mate? His fucking soul mate?! He leaves me with two mouths to feed! A fucking baby to take care of!”

  Jacob, Trevor’s little brother, wasn’t even a year old yet. He was screaming too, but Mom ignored him. After a few minutes, things finally got quiet and Trevor felt like it was safe to come out of his bedroom.

  He walked out into the small living room and found Mom sitting on the couch with a piece of paper in her hands. He walked over to her slowly; he wanted to hug her and tell her it would be okay.

  Mom looked different, her eyes looked crazy. “Do you know what this is Trevor? It’s a note from your father. You can read now, can’t you? Here!” She forced the paper into his hands and screamed, “Read it!”

  Why was she angry with him? He didn’t do anything. The tears filled his eyes, but he tried to hold them back. Mom didn’t like it when he cried—she said she had enough crying with the baby.

  The black writing on the yellow paper looked like scribble to him. He was only seven and didn’t know how to read cursive yet. “What’s it say, Mama?” he whispered, trying to hide the fear in his voice.

  She shook her head, “You don’t just look like him—you’re an idiot like him too!” She ripped the note out of his hands.

  Now she began talking in her quiet, calm voice. That was the voice that scared Trevor the most. “What it says is that your father has left us. He has found his fucking soul mate and is never coming back. That is what it says.”

  Trevor felt sadness and anger set in. It couldn’t be true. How could Dad do this to him? How could he leave him and Jacob with Mom?

  Dad wasn’t around that much, but when he was home, he was nice to Trevor. Sometimes Dad even bought him gum or Pokémon cards. Dad never smacked him, or called him mean names like Mom did.

  “I’m so sorry Mama.” He walked toward her and tried to hug her.

  She put her hands up in front of him and stopped him. “No Trevor. Not now.” She crumpled the note into a ball and threw it across the room. “Go back to bed Trevor.” She walked away, into her bedroom, still ignoring Jacob who had cried himself to sleep.

  ***

  “Trevor, do you want to take a breather?” Dr. Fisher asked.

  “No. I want to keep talking if that’s okay.”

  Dr. Fisher walked over to a mini-fridge on the corner of her desk. “Would you like one?” She was holding out a bottle of Dasani. She smiled, “It’s important to stay hydrated.”

  “Sure.” Trevor took a long drink of the bottled water. His throat was dry from all of the talking, and it tasted good. He would lecture her about the bottles another day.

  Dr. Fisher sat back down across from him. “So was this about the time your mom started her phobic behavior with the kleenex?”

  “No that came later. She just started hiding in her bedroom a lot—like most of the day. I mean, she got me up for school in the morning. She would get me a bowl of cereal and make my lunch, you know help me get to the bus… But, then she started going out at night and sleeping in. I started missing a lot of school.”

  He took another sip of water, “So, she bought me an alarm clock and showed me how to use it. She also showed me how to get my cereal, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and how to do laundry.”

  “Trevor, what grade were you in, do you remember?”

  “I don’t know—like first, second maybe?”

  Dr. Fisher nodded, “That’s a lot of responsibility for a first grader.”

  Trevor shrugged his shoulders, “Well, she did have to take care of Jacob. She would always say to me ‘Trevor, I get no sleep taking care of a baby. I am exhausted and I need my sleep when I can get it. I need you to be a big boy and get yourself ready in the morning.’ So, that’s what I did.”

  “Did she ask you to help take care of your brother?”

  “Not yet.” He went on, “She kept Jacob in the bedroom with her. He seemed fine until that one day…”

  “What day?”

  Trevor felt his eyelid begin to twitch, “The day I came home from school and he was screaming.”

  His hands instantly became wet with sweat and he wiped them on the front of his jeans. “It was such a weird scream, not like his normal cry. I ran back to Mom’s bedroom and found him lying in his crib. His face was all red, and when I picked him up, I noticed his diaper was soaking wet. I looked over at the bed, but mom wasn’t there. Then I saw an empty pill bottle on the floor which just seemed weird. I don’t know why, but I walked around to the other side of the bed…”

  He had to get it out; he took a deep breath, “She was there, just lying there on her side. It looked like she was sleeping but I knew she wasn’t. I ran out of the room and left Jacob screaming. I went to the kitchen and dialed 911. I had learned about it from TV.”

  He took another long drink of his water, “I couldn’t go back in the room. Jacob was screaming so loud, but I couldn’t go back. I just sat in the kitchen and waited.”


  Trevor now noticed how much his leg was shaking. “Finally, the ambulance came and the paramedics rushed into mom’s room. Then, this nice lady got Jacob out of his crib. She took my hand and led us out to her car. She told me we would be staying with another family for a while, just until Mom could get better.”

  “Was that your foster family?”

  “Yeah. They were nice enough people, but they had three kids of their own. I just kind of felt like a stranger there, like I didn’t belong. And I knew we would be going back to mom, so I didn’t want to get too close to them anyway.”

  Dr. Fisher nodded, “And how were things after that, after you went back to stay with your mom?”

  Trevor tilted the water bottle from side to side, watching the bubbles slosh around inside. How were things? Could he even put it into words? He would try.

  He looked Dr. Fisher straight in the eye, “In one word—Hell.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Slam!

  The front door banged shut, and Trevor jumped up in his bed. God damn it…every time! He glanced over at Jacob’s bed. The little guy had flipped over onto his stomach, but the noise didn’t wake him. Fortunately Jacob was a heavy sleeper. Trevor wasn’t so lucky.

  This had become a nightly occurrence. Sometime between three and four in the morning, one of Mom’s ‘friends’ would leave their house, the storm door always slamming behind them. Trevor had tried everything to block it out—pillow over the head, earplugs, earmuffs—nothing worked.

  Two days ago he had tried to fix the door so that it wouldn’t slam. That was a big mistake. He took an old dishtowel and taped it to the edge of the door hoping it would eliminate the clang of metal on metal. When mom saw it she went ballistic. “Trevor! What in the hell is this?!”

  Trevor kept his eyes on the dirty floor, “I thought maybe I could fix the door. It slams really loud sometimes when I’m trying to sleep.”

  Mom snickered, “Oh it does?” She grabbed his face by the chin and forced him to look at her. She was wearing the wicked grin Trevor had seen so much of lately. “Well, genius, if you didn’t notice, now the door doesn’t shut completely. I can’t have that door open all the time. Take it off now!”

  Trevor got down on his knees and started ripping into the duct tape he had wrapped around the towel. Out of nowhere, something sharp hit him in the head. Pain radiated through the side of his face, and he saw a pair of scissors fall to the floor in front of him. He reached up to feel the spot that hurt so bad—just a little blood.

  “It’s barely a scratch! You’re going to need those scissors. Just cut the damn towel up! It’s ruined now anyway!” She was still shouting loud enough to make Trevor cringe. He knew a slap across the face could be coming next.

  “Now I’m going out. If that door isn’t the way you found it when I get back, there will be hell to pay.” She grabbed her purse and walked past him, her high heels clicking against the tile, missing his hand by inches.

  As she walked out the door, she yelled with her back still turned, “And if you could sleep like a normal kid, you wouldn’t have to worry about the slamming!”

  That was the day Trevor realized he would have to suffer through a lot of sleepless nights. Mom wasn’t lying; he definitely didn’t sleep like he should. But he thought he had some pretty good reasons why he couldn’t sleep.

  For one, he had to take care of Jacob which was a pain in the ass. After Mom would leave at night, he had to get Jacob a sippy-cup. He had to read Jacob a story, and then he usually had to rub Jacob’s back until he fell asleep. Oh, and Jacob slept in Trevor’s room, so if he ever woke up in the middle of the night, Trevor had to deal with it—not Mom.

  Of course she was too busy. Mom went out every night, and when she came home, she always brought a man back with her. The walls were thin in their house and he would have to listen to the awful sounds coming from Mom’s room. He would put his pillow over his head and sing to himself, but it never blocked it out completely. He was only ten, but he knew exactly what they were doing, and it made his stomach hurt.

  Tonight Trevor pushed the bad thoughts out of his head and thought about Dad. Maybe he would come back—it had only been a couple of years. Trevor imagined him bursting through the front door one day, “Hey buddy let’s go to a baseball game! I got tickets behind home plate for the Indian’s game!” He replayed these thoughts over and over in his head as he tossed and turned in bed. Suddenly he was startled by shouting.

  It was mom. “You son of a bitch! I told you it was twenty! This is a ten!”

  Then he heard a man yell, “What are you going to do about it bitch?”

  Crashing noises came from Mom’s bedroom. Trevor’s heart sank as he heard Mom scream, “No! No! I’m sorry, don’t hurt me!”

  Oh no! What should he do? Should he try to help mom? Should he hide? Trevor looked over at Jacob who was starting to move around but was still asleep. He had to protect his little brother.

  He slowly opened his bedroom door a crack to peek out into the hallway. A gigantic bald man covered in tattoos was leaning over Mom with his fist in the air.

  Trevor crept into the hallway and froze, terrified and unable to find his voice. Mom looked really bad. She had no shirt on and her face was red and puffy. She was trying really hard to get away, but the man was too powerful. Trevor tried to muster up his bravest voice, “Hey! Leave my mom alone!”

  His shaky words came out in almost a whisper, but it was loud enough for the man to hear. He looked over at Trevor and then dropped mom to the ground like a bag of groceries, “What the hell? You have a kid here? You sick bitch!”

  Mom was crying really hard now, and the bald man seemed even angrier. He stopped for a minute and stared at Trevor, his huge body heaving up and down with each breath.

  To Trevor’s immense relief, he just hurried down the hall and out the front door.

  Slam!

  ***

  Silence filled the air as Trevor paused a minute to catch his breath. Dr. Fisher was shaking her head, “Wow. I am so sorry you had to go through that Trevor.”

  Trevor felt a twinge of anger stir inside of him, “No. Please don’t feel sorry for me, okay? That’s the worst. I don’t want pity from you, or anybody.”

  “It’s not pity Trevor. There is a difference in feeling sorry about something that happened to a person, and feeling sorry for a person. That is pity. But I understand where you’re coming from and it’s noted. Did things change after that night?”

  Trevor thought about it. That night probably was the turning point. “Yea, now that I think about it, that’s when mom stopped going out. I guess she realized it wasn’t worth getting beat up over.”

  He took the last sip of his water. “Her eye was all black and blue for weeks—that’s when she really began hiding in her bedroom. She rarely came out for anything. I would feed Jacob and then put him in his playpen until I got home from school. He didn’t get fed again or changed until I got home. He was never potty-trained and just stayed in diapers.”

  Trevor squeezed the empty water bottle, crushing it in his grip, “Jacob didn’t like his playpen, and I was always worried he would get out. But every morning I would put him in there and hope for the best. I had to go to school or mom said the family services people would come snooping around.”

  Dr. Fisher looked especially bothered by this part of the story. She seemed to be at a loss for words, “How did you eat?” she finally asked.

  “Actually, I remember this guy Tony used to come deliver groceries to us. Mom had some kind of arrangement with him.” He shook his head, “Man, did we get the bare necessities.”

  Trevor counted them off on his fingers as he said them, “Bread, milk, a jar of peanut butter, potatoes, Cheerios, bottled water, rice, Saltines, toilet paper, a bar of soap, and of course, the two most important things, kleenex and cigarettes. Same thing every time.”

  “So I assume your mother was on government assistance?”

  Trevor shrugged, “Yeah, I gu
ess. She got a check in the mail and she wasn’t quote, ‘working’ anymore, so yeah I guess we were on welfare.”

  Dr. Fisher nodded, “Hey I have an idea. Do you want to get a bite to eat? We can keep talking over some lunch.” She looked at her watch, “Well, a late lunch anyway. You know, a change of scenery.”

  Trevor was getting hungry and his stomach had started rumbling. He finally had his appetite back but didn’t want to stop the story. He didn’t know if he would ever have the courage to finish it, if he didn’t do it right then. “Yeah, I guess I could probably use some food.”

  ***

  Dr. Fisher swore this deli had the best corned-beef you’d ever tasted. Trevor must not have mentioned he was a vegetarian. He ordered the egg salad instead. The deli was noisy with the late lunch crowd, but they managed to get a quiet booth by the corner window. He took a large bite into the egg salad sandwich. It was delicious.

  As he chewed, he looked out the window at the busy people passing by. Everyone looked so normal, so transparent. But like Dr. Fisher had told him, things aren’t always as they seem. He bet most of them were carrying around some kind of baggage that stressed them out.

  They ate their sandwiches in silence. Trevor took another sip of his Coke, “You know, if you have somewhere to go or something, please go. I don’t want to take up your whole day or anything.”

  Dr. Fisher smiled, “When you called me from the hospital this morning, I cancelled all of my appointments for the day. You sounded like you really wanted to talk, and I’m glad you have. We can take as much time as you need. If you’re still up to it.”

  “Yeah, I feel like if I don’t talk about it now, I never will. You know?”

  “So, you were taking care of your brother, Jacob?” She coaxed.

  Thoughts of sippy-cups and shitty diapers raced through his mind. “I was taking care of him, and then Allison.”