Lowdown and Lush

by Selena Laurence

  Joss looks at me, his gaze filled with so much sorrow that I can’t stay. I just can’t do this anymore tonight.

  “I’m going to take off. I’ll see you soon, man. Stop by the studio and listen to what we’re putting together. I think you’ll like it.”

  “For sure,” he says as he gives me a handclasp.

  I make my way to Walsh and Tammy to say my goodbyes then give JR, Mel, and Jenny a little wave before I walk into the cool, dark nighttime air.

  I’ve just reached the Explorer when I hear her call to me. “Michael?” Her soft voice cuts through the silence.

  When I turn, she’s just a few steps from me, her blond hair glowing in the moonlight.

  She looks up at me, her eyes shiny and sad. “I’m sorry,” she says. “About this afternoon.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know why I did it—lied, I mean—but I can’t live with myself if you think that’s what was happening.”

  “Sunshine, what are you talking about?” I ask, trying to decipher her disjointed confession.

  “I lied.” She swallows, obviously pulling her words out of someplace painful. “I didn’t think you were JR, and I wasn’t all that groggy. I wanted to kiss you.” She holds up her hand when I start to interrupt. “I always want to kiss you, Michael. I always want to touch you, I always want to have you touch me, and even after everything that’s happened, I still want to sleep with you. I know you don’t feel the same way, but I just can’t pretend I don’t feel what I do.”

  She shifts uncomfortably then rushes on before I can say anything in response.

  “I understand if you think it’s best for someone else to work on the album with me. I know it must be awkward to spend all day around someone who wants things from you that you aren’t interested giving. But I just couldn’t bear for you not to know anymore. I couldn’t live with myself if you thought that I was wishing you were JR. I’ll never wish you were anyone but you. The only wish I’ve ever had is that you’d feel the same way about me.”

  Then, before I can think what to say or do, she turns on her delicate little heel and walks away, leaving me bleeding all over Tammy’s perfect driveway.

  I DON’T answer Jenny’s confession, and we go on, working together, spending hours in Studio B, day after tortuous day. Walsh comes in to add some rhythm tracks and I get some backup singers to begin layering the vocals. I make sure that we aren’t alone, because if we are, I’m not sure I can continue to ignore the fact that the woman I love has said that she wants me.

  Two weeks after Walsh and Tammy’s party, I’m home from my day at the studio. My dad’s been really tired the last few days and I’m starting to worry about his recovery. He’s asleep in his bedroom when the doorbell rings. I know it’s Joss, who’s stopping by to drop off some paperwork for Lush to license the photography book Mel made of our last tour.

  I open the door and usher him inside. “What’s up? You spend your whole day looking at bridal magazines again?”

  He throws himself down on the sofa. “God. You have no idea. Mrs. D. has completely lost her mind. I mean, I don’t mind the money. I’ll spend whatever it takes for her and Mel to be happy, but I’m so sick of this shit. I don’t know how much more I can take, dude.”

  I can’t help but laugh. With the competitive nature of the relationship I’ve always had with Joss, it’s hard not to get a little bit of joy out of his misery.

  “Just tell them that you’re the checkbook and don’t want to have anything to do with the rest of it.”

  He lays his head back against the cushions. “If only. I think Mel’s using me to keep Mrs. D. at bay. She makes me weigh in on every single decision, every little detail. She keeps saying it’s my wedding too and I need to be happy with it, but honestly, I don’t give a flying fuck about any of it. I just want Mel, a judge, and a big damn bed afterwards. A ring on her finger and parts of me inside parts of her are the real story here.”

  “Glad to hear you have your priorities straight. I was afraid Mel was turning you into a pussy.” I give him a punch on the arm and he snarls at me before he puts his head back down and closes his eyes.

  He opens his mouth to say something else when a loud thunk sounds from down the hall. We look at each other, wondering what the hell it was.

  “Dad’s been sleeping, but maybe he’s up now. I’ll be right back,” I tell Joss.

  I make my way through the living room and down the long hallway toward the back of the house. As I get closer to the guest bathroom, a feeling of dread settles in my gut. It’s the same feeling that always lingers there, but it’s stronger this time for some reason. The light is on in the bathroom and it bleeds into the hall, mixing with the daylight that spills from adjacent bedrooms.

  As I get to the bathroom door, I turn to look inside. I’m still unable to pass the room without checking to see if she’s still lying there on the hard tiles, her eyes lifeless and her body frozen by the endless assault of her soul.

  Instead, I see him, and for a moment, all I can think is that her legs weren’t turned that way when she was there. Then I see the blood, and everything inside me goes to static.

  Her voice echoes all around me. “He’s gone now. You ruin everything! I hate you—do you hear me? I. Hate. You.”

  I feel a jolting pain as my head hits the wall over and over. She has me by the shoulders and she’s slamming me against the plasterboard again and again. I could stop her, but I know I shouldn’t—and even more, I won’t. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s my fault that she is the way she is. Maybe, if I’m gone, she’ll get better, be happier.

  She’s still shaking me, my head slamming against the wall more times than I can count now. I see dark sparks forming between my face and hers, and I close my eyes, deciding that it will all be easier if I just give in to the exhaustion overcoming me. I start to slide down the wall, my head bouncing against it as I lose consciousness.

  “Mike! Mike! It’s okay, man. It’s all right. The ambulance is on its way. Dude, talk to me.”

  I open my eyes and realize I’m on the floor, my dad’s head cradled in my lap. Tears are running down my face and my throat hurts like I’ve been screaming.

  “God, there you are,” Joss gasps as he kneels next to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Shit,” I rasp out. I look down. “Oh my God. Dad—”

  “He’s okay,” Joss rushes to tell me. “He has a pulse and he’s breathing. The blood is just from a tiny cut on his head. It’s stopped bleeding now. The ambulance will be here any minute. Just try to relax. Can I get you some water or something?”

  I nod, unable to say anything else. I look down at my dad’s face and all I can see is that same face hovering over mine.

  “Mike? Mike? Talk to me, son. Can you tell me where we are?”

  “Mom? Where is Mom?” I ask weakly, my head throbbing like it’s been pounded by a hundred sledgehammers. I try to turn to search for her, and my dad’s strong hand presses against my cheek.

  “Just look at me, son. Nowhere but me. There’s an ambulance on its way and you’re going to be fine. That’s all that matters. You’re going to be fine.”

  Joss’s hand extends in front of my face and I take the bottle of water from him. As I take a long, desperate drink, the doorbell rings.

  “There’s the ambulance,” Joss tells me quietly. “I’ll go let them in.”

  I nod, and within a few seconds, there are paramedics in the room with me. They take my dad’s blood pressure, which is low, and his pulse, which is weak. Then they put an oxygen mask and various monitors on him before placing him on the gurney to move him to the ambulance.

  After he’s gone I stand there, so shell-shocked that I’m unable to move. I look at the small spot of blood on the floor, and in my mind, it spreads, covering the room—blood in a puddle, blood on her hair, her clothes, his hands.

  “Hey.” Joss’s voice is soft. “I told them you’d meet them at the hospital. I’ll drive you.”

  “Okay,” I answer, sti
ll not sure how I’m going to move. My heart’s been frozen in this tiny room for twelve years—no reason why my body shouldn’t follow suit.

  “Mike?” Joss asks cautiously. “What happened?”

  It’s ironic that I don’t understand what he’s asking. He just wants to know why he found me screaming like a lunatic over my father’s unconscious body. But maybe some part of me that’s been keeping this secret for over a decade simply can’t carry it anymore. Maybe since I was the first person to know Joss Jamison’s dirty little secret, it’s only fitting that he should be the first person to know mine. For whatever reason, though, I don’t answer the right question, choosing instead to go straight to the confession I swore I’d never make to anyone.

  “He killed her,” I say. “She was going to kill me, so he killed her instead. My own mother. The woman who carried me inside her body for nine whole months. She would have killed me, but he stopped her.”

  I continue to stare at that bit of blood on the floor. Joss stands with me, seeming to understand that I’m going to get it all out if he just gives me the time to do it.

  “It was a Wednesday, one of those once-a-month early dismissal days we’d get in high school. I wanted to go downtown to Rico’s Guitars and look at this new Gibson they had. I stopped off at home to grab some food and see if I could bum gas money off my mom.”

  I take a breath and shudder. These are things I’ve kept from my conscious for over ten years and it’s like opening a door to a room full of rotting corpses—the horror of it all is that intense.

  “I looked all around for her and she wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room or the garage. But her car was here, so I knew she was home. Then I started to worry that she was having one of her bad days and had locked herself in the closet. I needed to tell my dad if she was that bad off, so I headed back to their bedroom. When I got closer, I heard sounds. Grunting, heavy breathing. I remember how much my heart raced. I was so scared of what might be behind that door, but I never imagined what the truth was.”

  I can almost feel the cold, brass knob in my hand as I turned it and swung the door open, my eyes adjusting to the lower light of the room that had the curtains drawn. Then I saw the shapes, the shadows, the motions.

  “The guy was on top of her, pumping away. As much as I wanted to think it was against her will, I could tell right away from the sounds she was making that she was enjoying it. She was moaning and her hands were digging into his back, pulling him closer. Most kids might have assumed it was their dad fucking their mom at one p.m. on a Wednesday but I knew it wasn’t.”

  I hear Joss’s intake of breath as he realizes that he and Tammy weren’t the first couple I’ve interrupted in an illicit act. Some of us just have a knack for it, I guess.

  “I started yelling, asking my mom what the hell was going on. The guy got off of her and everyone was screaming. Then my mom was begging him not to go. He was grabbing his clothes, pulling on his pants while I yelled at both of them. It probably wasn’t more than three minutes before he was out the door, telling her he didn’t have time for ‘bitches with brats.’

  “My mom was standing there in one of my dad’s T-shirts and I was crying. I couldn’t believe she’d do something like that. Not after all the crap my dad and I had put up with all those years. My dad had defended her, protected her, given her a safe place for twenty years, and she’d repaid him by being a constant burden. She was vicious and destructive, and she was cheating on him to boot. I just couldn’t believe it.”

  Joss swallows hard when I finally look up at him. “I’m so sorry, Mike,” he chokes out.

  I shake my head, so far into the memories that I almost don’t hear him. “Once the guy had booked, she got this look in her eyes. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. I’d seen her sad and wild. I’d seen her up as high as the clouds and down so low that we worried she’d finally end it, but I’d never seen her look like that.

  “It started in the bedroom. She slapped me, screaming about how I’d made him leave, that I didn’t understand how much she loved him, that he was going to take her away from the ‘crappy house’ and my ‘fucking father,’ who she apparently couldn’t stand. I tried to get away. I really did. She was hitting me. On the head, on the face, the arms—it was just emotional, no plan to it. And she wasn’t really hurting me. I mean, I was already six feet and about a hundred seventy. She was nowhere near my size. She couldn’t hurt me. At least I didn’t think so.”

  I reach down and pick up the bottle of water and take a long, cool drink. I’m in the homestretch now and I know I won’t stop. It’s like vomiting the truth; I have to get it all out or I’ll never feel any better.

  “I went into the bathroom, trying to get away, but she came right in after me. She got more and more violent. She was screaming shit at me, stuff about how I’d ruined her life and how much she fucking hated me.”

  I turn to look Joss in the eyes, now more aware of his presence.

  “She was my mother. Even on the days I hated her, I loved her, and my dad had raised me to treat her right. I would never hit my mom, man. You have to understand that.” I squeeze my eyes tight for a moment, the sharp reality of what comes next pinching my throat closed.

  “She grabbed my shoulders at some point and shook me. I was against the wall, and she was shaking me over and over. My head was smacking against the wall hard, and she got angrier and angrier. I begged her to stop. I know I should have just made her stop, but she was my fucking mother. My head started to hurt—a lot—and I was feeling woozy. Having a hard time standing up. Sparks were closing in all around my vision, and still, she wouldn’t quit.”

  I gasp for a breath, and feel Joss’s hand come up to my back, where he just rests it, solid and real, an anchor in the now as I try to relate the past.

  “I don’t know at what point I realized that she wasn’t going to quit, that she wanted to kill me. But I did. It’s one of the last few things I remember, and it was the strangest sensation—the idea that your own mother would rather live in a world that didn’t include you. All those times I’d told myself it was her illness talking, but actually she just hated me.

  “I finally passed out, and when I came to, my dad was there. He talked to me and told me I was going to be okay. I kept asking about my mom and he wouldn’t answer me, just said the paramedics were on the way.

  “When they did get there, I heard them say something about someone else, and my dad asked them, ‘Can we get my son out first?’ Then they moved me to a gurney in the hall. I was still dizzy and disoriented, but as they were wheeling me out, I turned to look inside the bathroom once last time…”

  I survey the room, the view so unaltered from all those years ago.

  “There she was—my mom—in a pool of blood on the floor, her eyes wide open and glassy, her face still twisted up in rage. I was alive, but she wasn’t.”

  Joss clears his throat before he asks the same question that started all of this. “What happened?”

  “My dad came home from work. He knew I had early dismissal and wanted me to go out to lunch with him. Loretta wasn’t going to stop, man. She really wasn’t. He did what he had to.”

  “Fuck,” Joss whispers.

  “He was able to pull her off me, but then she came at him. When he shoved her back, he had adrenaline going and she had bare feet. She fell against the corner of the counter.” I point to the spot and see Joss shiver. “It cut her head open and then she smacked it again when she hit the floor. By the time the paramedics got here, it was already too late. I’ll never understand how I could get my head slammed so many times and come through it fine, but she hit hers once and it killed her.

  “The police came to the hospital and took one look at me coupled with Loretta’s mental health history and called it self-defense—an accident. My dad was cleared before midnight.”

  “Fucking hell, Mike. You’ve lived with this all these years and never told us? I mean, everyone assumed it was suicide, and t
hat’s not the kind of thing you question a family about. But this? You’ve kept this to yourself all this time? What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want anyone to know that even my own mother didn’t love me. I didn’t want people to look at my dad differently or think that he was some sort of a monster when the real monster was six feet under.”

  “Oh, Mike.” Joss’s voice is full of regret and sorrow and something else, a new understanding I’m not sure I even want.

  “So when you saw me and Tammy that night…” he trails off.

  “Yeah. It brought back some things for me, and in my mind you were the bad guy. But I know that was wrong now. I know the two things couldn’t be compared.”

  “It’s okay,” he tells me as he squeezes my shoulder and pulls me out of the bathroom to the front of the house. He grabs his keys from the coffee table in the living room while I stand there, at a loss as to what I’m supposed to do next. “Let’s go see your old man, dude. He needs you, and I think you need him too.”

  I’M LIKE a zombie at the hospital. I can hardly move my body, much less have the discussions with the doctors I’m supposed to. Luckily, Joss is there, and he never leaves me. It makes me sick, remembering the way I treated him during our last year with Lush. He’s a better guy than I am, and I’m humbled by how loyal he is to me in this moment.

  Once the docs get my dad hooked up to the monitors and various tests are run, the news is good. He hasn’t suffered another heart attack, the bypasses seem to be functioning just fine, and it looks like his dosage of blood pressure medication has been too high. The exhaustion he’s been feeling was low blood pressure and it finally dipped to the point that he fainted today. The doctors tell me that everyone reacts differently to the meds you take after a cardiac event like dad’s had. They’ll adjust his dosage, watch him for a few hours, and then cut him loose tonight before dinner.