He opens and closes his mouth a few times like a fish out of water, and then his eyes slide away from mine and onto the table. And because I know my brother, I know he’s in falling into the middle of a shit storm of guilt right about now. But at the moment, I can’t bring myself to care.
I turn on Dutch. “What about you, sissy? You got that four grand to give back? You planning to sell the Benz out there so you can pay them back for the cost of your wedding? Because I sure don’t remember — ”
“Anika, so help me God, don’t finish that sentence.”
“Why not? How’s the sentence going to end?”
“It’s going to end with ‘I don’t remember them paying for my wedding.’”
I roll my palms skyward, shrug. “What’s wrong with finishing my sentence that way? You talked about telling the truth earlier, right? Well, that’s the truth. They didn’t contribute a dime to our wedding. They didn’t even offer. Jenny and I paid for everything out of our own pockets.”
“Grow up, Anika.”
“Seriously, guys,” PJ says in a warning voice, “this really isn’t help — ”
But I’m not done.
“I grew up a long time ago, Dutch. Unlike some people, I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
Sherry cries harder. Dutch bounces her up and down, but keeps her eyes locked on mine.
“I am so sick and tired of you using your sexual orientation as a whiny excuse for all the things that didn’t work out in your life exactly the way you wanted them to.”
My head jerks back. “Since when have I used the fact that I’m gay as an excuse?”
“Since you were in high school!” Dutch spits. “But you know what? Have you ever considered that maybe the fact that Mom and Dad are closer to the rest of us has less to do with the fact that you’re a lesbian and more to do with the fact that you’re a selfish bitch?”
I slap my hands on the table, push myself up to my full height. I usually avoid towering over my siblings, but for once, I don’t care that they have to crane their necks to look up at me.
“I don’t need this,” I say. “And I don’t know where you think you get off, when it’s the rest of you who’re responsible for this restaurant going under. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You’d always rather point fingers than step up and do the work.”
I turn to leave.
“That’s right, Anika, just walk away. Talk your big game about showing up for us and doing the work, and then walk out. Because that’s what you do best.” She flaps her hand at me condescendingly, like she’s shooing away a pesky fly. “Run on home to Switzerland. Let everyone else pick up the pieces you leave behind. Just like you did to Jenny.”
I spin around. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me. Whine about us not supporting your relationship all you want, but everyone knows how hard Jenny tried to get you to stay. You think we don’t know about how she begged you not to leave? The same way you begged her after Rhianna?”
I feel like I’ve been slapped. “How do you even know about Rhianna?”
“How do you think? We live in Marcine.”
I throw my hands in the air. “Oh my God. This is exactly why I fucking hate Ohio.”
I let the door bang shut behind me, hoping it’s not too late to apologize to my baby brother.
Chapter 33: Gerry makes a speech.
I find Gerry around back, smoking next to the dumpster. His eyes are cloudy and red, but I suspect it’s not from cigarette smoke. He takes a last, deep drag when he sees me coming, then shakes his head, crushes out his cigarette on the brick wall and flicks the butt away.
“I’m sorry,” I say when I get close enough. “Dutch pissed me off, and I said something I didn’t mean.”
He grunts. “Dutch pisses everyone off, eventually.”
It’s his way of saying he accepts my apology.
“Yeah. But I still shouldn’t have said it. And it’s wrong, anyway. You’re not fucked-up.”
He shrugs. “May as well call a spade a spade. I’m the family fuck-up. Everybody knows it. Always have been. Always will be.”
“You’re not. You’re the family success story.”
He scoffs. “Says the professional fucking athlete.”
“You are. It took guts, getting clean, coming back here.” I fall silent for a moment. We stare out together at the grey horizon. “You know how this town is,” I continue, glad he wasn’t inside to hear Dutch’s comment about Rhianna Fucking Jerkins. “Everyone always running their mouths. Everyone up in everyone else’s business.” I nudge him with my elbow. “Everyone knowing your story. But you came back anyway. That’s not what a fuck-up does.”
He shakes his head. “That’s exactly what a fuck-up does. Comes home with his tail between his legs, begging his Mom and Dad to take him in because he has nowhere else to go and they’re the only people left on Earth he can even ask.”
“You could’ve asked me,” I say softly. “I would’ve taken you in.”
“You live in Europe. I have a record. They probably wouldn’t even let me into the friggin’ country.”
He’s right, but I don’t say so out loud.
We go back to staring at the horizon. Soul Mountain’s on the outer edge of town, so behind the restaurant, there’s more-or-less nothing. A vacant lot. A boarded-up convenience store. A patchwork asphalt road that stretches into a no-man’s-land of empty fields until it hits the highway.
“You know why I started using?” he asks, pulling another cigarette from a crumpled cardboard box.
“Because your friends were doing it?” I guess.
“Naw. I mean, they were, but that’s not why I got into it the way I did. I started using because I was like, ‘What’s the fucking point?’ I was looking around at everybody, and it was like, what were they doing, really? Why were they working so hard?” He lights his cigarette up, takes a drag, exhales the smoke through his nostrils. “Take Dad, for example. He runs away from Nepal, gets treated like a fucking slave at his brother-in-law’s restaurant, scrimps and saves, gets to Ohio, slaves away some more, only to get laid off from his job a few months after he gets here. And he and Mom, they go from job to job, plant to plant, layoff to layoff, and they work and pinch pennies and they scrimp some more and finally they open the restaurant, and they bleed for that fucking thing, and meanwhile their kids are all fighting with each other, and fighting with everybody else, and nobody’s all that fucking happy, and it’s just like… why? For what? People struggle and struggle and struggle, and then — then they just… die. And that’s it. A bunch of struggling with a fucking death at the end. And I figured, if I had to go through all that too, at least I was going to have some fun along the way. At least I’d find a way to get high.”
I turn my head, study my brother’s profile. “That’s pretty fucking bleak, Ger.”
“Yeah, well. That was how I saw things for a long time.”
I note the past tense in his words. “And now? You still see it that way?”
“No. I don’t. Which is why I came back. I mean, besides the fact that I needed Mom and Dad’s help to get on my feet again.”
He smokes in silence for a minute or two, and I just wait, because I know this side of Gerry. He’s always had a dark, philosophical streak to him that none of the rest of us really have, a deep vein of nihilism that I’ve never really understood. And he doesn’t show this side of himself to many people, so when it comes out, I just give him space, let him say what he needs to say.
“You know how they say addicts have to hit rock bottom before they’re ready to get clean? I kept falling and falling, and I thought I just didn’t have a fucking bottom, but I finally hit mine,” he says after another drag. “Right before I decided to get clean once and for all. I was in Texas. San Antonio. Don’t ask me how I got there, I don’t even fucking know. I was with some guys, and some skanky meth-head girl, holed up in some shooting gallery or another outside of town. You know what a shooting g
allery is, right?”
I nod, remembering the term from one of the “family days” I went to during Gerry’s first couple rounds of rehab. It’s a place where junkies go to shoot up, the kind of place that used to be called a “crack house,” until crack went out of style and heroin came back in.
“Anyway. We’d been pushing too hard for too long, me in particular, and I overdosed.” He crushes the cigarette out, flicks it away. “I died, Ani. Literally fucking died.”
He turns, searches my face a moment, maybe checking to make sure I’m taking him seriously, then looks away. “I saw the tunnel, the white light, all that shit. And I was floating away, looking down on my body, looking down on all the other nodding fucking junkies, and I felt better than I had in my whole sorry-ass life. Higher than any high I’d ever known. Because that white light? It was like… just love, man, pure fucking love. Connected to everyone. To everything. So there I am, floating up into the light, right? Merging with all this love. Disappearing into it. And I’m looking down on my body and on everyone else in the shooting gallery, and then I have this thought: ‘What a waste.’ That’s what I think. ‘What a waste, there’s so much love to give, so much love to have and to share, and these guys? They’re never going to know that. They’re just going to go from shit hole to shit hole, thinking that’s all life is. Just like I did.’” Gerry sniffs hard, meets my eyes. “And as soon as I have that thought? Boom.” He snaps his fingers. “I’m back in my body. Sitting up. Gasping for air. And you can call bullshit if you want, but I know I got sent back here for a reason. I’m supposed to share that love with people. To make things better. To help people get a little taste of what I got.” He turns away from me, shakes his head a few times. “I probably sound like I’m fucking crazy,” he mutters.
“It’s not crazy, Ger.” I feel the tears spill onto my cheeks, let them stay there a few seconds before I wipe them away. “That’s why you came back home? Because of… the love?”
He attempts a smile. “Yeah. I have a lot of love I want to give back. Figured I should start with my family.” There’s a pause, and he sighs. “I get that I owe everyone. But sometimes? With all the drama? It’s hard to remember that’s what I’m here for.”
His words trigger another round of tears for some reason, and with the lump that’s clamping around my vocal cords, I just nod instead of trying to speak. Finally, I clear my throat a couple times and say quietly, “Yeah. Yeah, I hear ya on that one, baby brother.”
We stand in silence next to the dumpster for a few more minutes. Gerry starts to pull another cigarette from his pack, thinks better of it, puts the pack back in his pocket.
“Hey, can I ask a favor?” I say.
He shrugs.
“Could you give me a couple hours between lunch and dinner? Just maybe from three o’clock to five o’clock? And then I promise I’ll be back before the dinner rush.”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you take off for now?” I suggest. “I can handle lunch by myself. Maybe you could come back at three, when I leave.”
He adjusts his baseball cap. “It’s okay. It’s not like I have anywhere else to be.”
“Oh yeah? How are those applications for school coming along?”
“They’re not. I haven’t really worked on them in a couple weeks. Not since we found out Momma’s sick.”
“Then go home,” I say. “Work on your applications for a while. Just be back by three.”
#
Dutch and PJ are gone by the time I get back inside, which is probably for the best. Lunch is a little busier than usual, since it’s a Saturday, but nothing we can’t handle. Gerry returns a little before three, giving me a chance to run home, change clothes, air up the dusty playground ball at the bottom of my closet and still make it to the park by Jenny’s old house before three-thirty. Since it’s Saturday, I’m expecting to have to fight for court space, but it’s cold and the grey sky has turned into the lightest of drizzles, so there’s only two little kids there when I arrive, and I take the side of the court they’re not using.
It’s nice to have a ball in my hands again; I’ve spent nearly a week away from courts and balls and sneakers, and the first shot I take brings pure relief. It’s that Ahhh… feeling that Dutch gets from shopping and PJ gets from eating and Gerry used to get from sticking a needle in his arm.
We all have our addictions, I suppose. Maybe the four of us are more alike than we like to admit.
I chase the ball, shoot, rebound, shoot, chase the ball again. I fall into a comfortable rhythm, find myself wishing Alex were here so I could kick her ass. Wishing Alex were here so I could talk through all the things going through my head right now. Because there’s a lot on my fucking mind — Soul Mountain, money, Mom’s cancer, Dad, Dutch, Amy, Jenny, divorces, drug addictions. And the speech Gerry gave out by the dumpster in between pulls on his cigarette.
It’s mainly the speech that I keep coming back to, rebounding it in my head over and over again, like it’s a ball that just fucking refuses to fall through the hoop.
Love.
Family.
Connection.
The past.
The future.
Paying it back.
Paying it forward.
Getting my life together.
“You came home because your career’s over and you don’t know what else to do. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.” That keeps coming back to me, too. And as much as I hate to confirm Dutch’s high opinion of herself and low opinion of me, I have to admit that she usually has a way of being right about these sorts of things.
By the time the alarm I set on my phone goes off at four-fifteen, I think I have a plan. It’s a crazy fucking plan — scary as shit, too, that’s for damned sure. But it’s a plan.
Chapter 34: The beginnings of a backbone.
A text from Dutch appears on my phone screen when I’m almost back to Soul Mountain.
Sorry. I was out of line
it reads.
“Goddamned straight you were,” I mutter, but I don’t slide the message to reply because, you know, texting and driving and all that shit. Besides, I’d rather make her stew on it a while.
In all, it’s very typical Dutch behavior. When she gets freaked out about something, especially if said “something” might be just a teensy-weensy bit her fault, she tends to revert to blaming other people. I’m not angry about it, not really. It’s just Dutch. Just like running off to the basketball court until I calm back down is just me.
The good thing about Dutch is that, while most of the time she’s high-strung and loud-mouthed and bossy like our mother, she has just enough of our father in her that she can eventually be made to see reason. Which is why I’ll be able to get her to hear out my plan.
I get another text right as I’m walking into the restaurant, this one from Amy.
Dammit. I cracked my coffee grinder.
It’s pretty much useless now.
#1stworldproblems
I grin like a giddy schoolgirl, because it’s the first time Amy’s texted me something like this. And by “something like this,” I mean the kind of silly, mundane little details of daily life that friends and significant others send to each other. They are the details that, in and of themselves, don’t carry any weight, but when taken as a whole, form the glue that binds two people’s lives together.
I know it sounds like a minor fucking thing, but the text about the cracked coffee grinder lights me up from the inside out, like it’s the best news I’ve heard all day. And given how my day has played out so far, it’s kind of true.
You traveled all the way from Europe
with your own coffee grinder?
I text back.
Doesn’t everyone?
Amy asks.
Umm… no.
Why are you making coffee now? It’s
almost 5. You won’t sleep 2nite.
I’m hoping I won’t. ;-)
The grin on my face gets
a little bigger as I shoulder open the door into the foyer. Just to mess with her, I write:
Cuz you have big plans to help Grace
decorate the church until the wee hours
of the morning?
No. Try again.
Cuz you have a work conference call
that starts at 5am GMT?
Work? You blaspheme.
I laugh to myself. Katie, the teenage hostess, is standing behind the podium when I walk in, a spray bottle in one hand and a damp, white-grey rag in the other. I lift a hand in greeting.
“What do you think?” I ask her. “We gonna have another busy night tonight?”
She blows out a breath between pursed lips. “I hope not. You missed it last night. We literally had forty-minute wait times at one point.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What was the problem?”
She shrugs. “Nothing. We were just really, really busy. People kept coming and coming. Gerry had to call your dad in to come help. And even with your Dad and Becker both on hot prep, it was still slammed until almost closing time.”
I wince inwardly, guilt flashing briefly through my chest. I’d come back to Ohio to help, but I’d spent the busiest night of the restaurant week getting my rocks off at Grace Adler’s bachelorette party.
My phone dings, and I glance down at it.
I should probably hang onto that guilt, but it gets slippery when I see Amy’s text, which reads:
Anika takes the long way home up soul mountain: A lesbian romance (Rosemont Duology Book 2) Page 21
