by Piper Lennox
“I’m not sure.” Tillie flicks her cigarette into the watered-down cola between us, holding the lid open for mine. I listen to them hiss. “I never cared for her, though: she wasn’t good for him. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear she got him into it.”
“What happened to them?”
“The day he got fired—from what I understand, at least; I didn’t know about this until later—he overdosed at a party, and all his friends just left him out on the street. Thank God, somebody found him and called an ambulance.”
“They left him?” I can’t help the pain in my chest, my heart going out to him. “Where was his girlfriend in all this?”
“She left, too. Didn’t want to get arrested.” Tillie shakes her head, scoffing. “He was in the hospital two days, and not one person visited him. If I’d known, of course, I would have gone to see him.”
“His parents didn’t visit?”
“His mother sent a bouquet. But, no, they didn’t go see him.” She waves at a kid in the minivan that pulls up beside us. He laughs, ducking out of sight. “His girlfriend showed up at the house when he got home.”
“Did she apologize?”
“No. In her mind, she hadn’t done anything wrong. She even brought heroin with her.”
“Whoa.”
“Exactly. I’d already had my little heart-to-heart with him, so he told her he was going to rehab the next day. She got angry, trashed a bunch of furniture, hit him, then finally left when I told her I was going to call the police. As far as I know, he hasn’t seen her since.”
As far as I know. As far as I know, he’s already called this girl to meet up with him somewhere warm and beautiful, his pockets lined with stolen money, hers with drugs. I feel every bit as stupid as he said this trip was in the first place: I don’t know him at all. If he was the person I thought he was, he’d be in this car with us.
Actually, I think with a jolt, he wouldn’t. At the end of our trip, we were going to part ways. That was the deal all along.
If it hadn’t happened yesterday morning, it would have happened at the diner last night, or along this same highway today, at some rest stop in the fading gray light. I probably would have forced him to take even more than that $100, just to make sure he’d be okay. His leaving was inevitable.
For some reason, realizing this hurts even worse than waking up to that empty bed.
Nineteen
Shepherd
When I’m an hour from Indiana, I finally let myself think about Jess.
“You’re such a goody-goody,” she teased, waving the baggie in my face. I didn’t know where she’d gotten the heroin—probably Shelton or Takashi, our usual sources for anything we needed—but I was surprised, and weirdly offended, that she hadn’t asked me. I like to think I wouldn’t have gotten it for her, but I probably would have. I got her everything.
“I promised myself that was the one thing I’d never touch.”
I watched as she set to work ripping up tin foil. We were in Tillie’s shed, while she slept on the sofa inside with a DVD menu on loop, unaware as ever.
I always felt ashamed when we did anything here. Jess’s house was out of the question, since she still lived with her folks. My car, our usual spot, was impounded. The only options left were a friend’s house (though that required sharing our stuff, which Jess hated) or the shed. So, here we were.
“Right,” she chuckled, “because coke and Oxy are where you draw the line, huh?” She fished through her bag for her lighter. “I’ll do it alone, then. This isn’t some afterschool special. I won’t peer-pressure you.”
Every word of hers was jeering and sharp, but I noticed her hands shaking. Mine were, too. We pretended our chills were from the cold, instead of fever.
“So Shel didn’t have any Oxy?” I asked, kneeling beside her to watch.
She shook her head. “He didn’t have anything. Takashi had some bars, but he didn’t want to share. Asshole.”
I thought about reminding her that she hoarded her pills too, but decided it wasn’t worth the fight. Things were really bad between us, by then. After we got arrested for robbing her neighbors—an elderly couple on vacation, with two fully-stocked medicine cabinets—things hadn’t been the same, even though I took the fall for both of us and spent six months in jail, while she got community service. Most of our time together lately was spent high, passed out, or arguing during a crash.
“So if they didn’t have anything, where’d you get this?” I felt blood rise into my face, like a hot flash, before a full-body shiver and bout of nausea rolled through. I fought it, clenching my fists inside my coat sleeves.
“My friend Shannon knows a guy. He said it’ll help.” She glanced at me. For a second, I didn’t see the arrogance, the wildness. All I saw was the same girl I met that night at the bonfire, new and a little scared, but determined to learn it all. Asking me to teach her, but really just wondering if I’d walk alongside her. Keep her company.
“I’m just going to do a little,” she said, her voice quiet. “You know, to take the edge off.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I got some for you, if you want it. But you don’t have to.”
In rehab, I learned there was a word for what Jess and I had: codependency. My therapist made me recite the definition ad nauseum, as though simply by saying it enough, I would accept it.
“I still love her, though,” I protested in group therapy. “I want to help her get clean.”
“Addicts can’t be with other addicts. They enable each other,” the doctor, leading that day’s session, told me. Around the circle, other guys nodded.
“Why not, though? If they’re both in recovery, what’s the problem?”
“Familiar surroundings—the places you used drugs the most—can trigger chain reactions that make you relapse. Hanging around the same friends you had while using introduces an even stronger trigger. It doesn’t matter if they’re clean. The memories will still be there.”
I shook my head, sneering, refusing to believe this. It was psychology textbook fodder. He’d never been an addict. What did he know?
“Do you have any memories of Jessica where you weren’t using?” he challenged. “Have you ever been together while you were truly clean?”
“No,” I admitted, shifting in my seat. It was a hard metal folding chair, and our issued scrubs didn’t stop the chill from seeping through. “But—”
“More importantly,” he interrupted, “does she want to get clean?”
That was when it clicked for me. I couldn’t save Jess, because she didn’t want to be saved.
Actually, even if she had, I still couldn’t. We used this drowning analogy a lot in group: you can’t save someone from drowning when you’re just barely getting in the boat yourself. You need a sure footing and the right tools. “And even then,” my therapist was fond of adding, “there’s no guarantee you wouldn’t fall in after them. If their addiction is strong enough, it could pull you back into yours.”
When I got out, my thirty-day chip in hand and my nerves still raw from withdrawal, I went to her house to leave pamphlets from the rehab center on her porch. I didn’t knock.
She tried to get me back, just once. I was doing odd jobs around Tillie’s place until I felt stable enough to apply for something full-time. It wasn’t glamorous, but I was earning my keep and staying out of trouble.
“Hey, you.”
I was on the roof, clearing out the gutters, as she walked into view. I hadn’t seen her in so long, my memory had reverted to the night we met: her bleached hair and bright eyes, the healthy tan of her skin and manicured fingers. Seeing her now felt like a punch to the gut, even though she looked no more haggard or pale than the last time I saw her: right before I went into rehab, when Tillie had to threaten her to leave.
“Hey,” I said after a beat, bagging the gunk in my hand. I wiped my forehead on my sleeves. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to see you.” She put her hands into her coat pockets, shrug
ging as she kicked a fallen branch on the lawn. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m good.” I hesitated. “Been clean for six weeks.”
“Really?”
“Really. Got the chip to prove it.”
She smiled, squinting up at me as the sun hit her face straight on. It made me sad, how faded the blue of her eyes looked, even in the best light.
“I miss you, you know.” She looked back down at the ground. “Everyone does.”
Somehow, I doubted this. Our whole crew left me for dead in the literal gutter when I overdosed. Including Jess.
I believed her, though. She probably had missed me, as best she could. My therapist taught me that, too: users were still capable of love. They just couldn’t show it properly. They couldn’t love you, or even themselves, the way they were supposed to.
“I missed you, too,” I told her. “It might be stupid of me to admit that, but...yeah. I did.”
She smiled again, a little sad. “You want to come down and talk?”
Down on the ground, up-close, she did look worse than when I left. Maybe I was imagining it, but the circles under her eyes were even darker. I noticed her hands weren’t shaking; her pupils were huge.
“Jess,” I whispered, “what are you on?”
“Does it matter?”
I shook my head. “Guess not.” It didn’t matter, really. She wasn’t mine to save.
Still, I felt the urge to ask, “Did you get my pamphlets?”
“You left those?” she laughed. “I thought my mom sent away for them or some shit.” Slowly, when she realized I wasn’t laughing along, she quieted. “Yeah. I got them.”
“And?”
“What do you want me to say, Shep?” She got to her feet, pacing Tillie’s porch with her cigarette in hand, flinging ashes. “That I’ll do a stint in rehab just to make you happy?”
My answer—that I wanted her to want to go, to do it for herself—felt too trite, and I knew she’d blow it off. So I just stood there.
“I’m not like you,” she went on. “I can stop whenever I feel like stopping. I do it all the time.”
“Did you read that green pamphlet? Because it has a whole section on that. You can go days without certain drugs and still feel okay, so you don’t think there’s a real—”
“Thanks, Dr. Jones,” she snapped, stomping out her cigarette on Tillie’s welcome mat. “I didn’t come here to get a lecture. I just came here to say hey, see how you were, and ask if you wanted to chill.”
I lowered my eyes to my shoes. “I can’t hang out with you, Jess. My sobriety’s too new, and...and you’re still using.” I took a breath and remembered all the times I’d rehearsed this in rehab. Part of me had hoped, against all odds, I would come home to find her clean too, and we’d be able to make it work. I never wanted to have to say this. “I can’t be with you anymore.”
She was silent for so long, I was sure she’d started crying. I was, after all. But when I glanced up, she didn’t look sad. She looked pissed.
“So...what, that’s it? You get clean for a few weeks and it’s all, ‘So long, thanks for nothing?’” Her laugh was just a burst of air as she lit another cigarette and jumped off the steps.
“You’ve changed, Shepherd. Everyone told me you would—that you’d come back all self-righteous and shit—but I stuck up for you. You know? Like, I told Shel and Liz and all them there was no way you’d change. Getting clean, okay, I could see that, but...this?” She looked me over. Only then did I see any trace of sadness in her eyes, and it made me wonder if I looked different to her, too.
She pushed her hair out of her face and shrugged. “Guess I was wrong.”
My hand reached for her, automatic, but I pulled back and slipped it into the pocket of my vest. It was new, a thermal one filled with down: a congratulations gift from Tillie.
“Jess,” I called. She paused halfway down the lawn, another cigarette in her mouth, as I stood. “Will you just think about it?” This part was unrehearsed. I’d prepared to say my piece and walk away, chapter closed.
Instead, I saw this loose end in front of me and couldn’t stand it. I was in the boat; she was still out there. I knew I couldn’t save her, but I was suddenly desperate to try.
Inside my vest, I found the chip and held it tight. “Please,” I added.
Jess took a drag and exhaled. I watched the smoke hit the wind and swirl around her face, remembering the night we met: how easily she took the cigarette from my hand, how easily I let her.
“Fuck off, Shepherd.”
It was the last time I talked to her. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of her around town, but she never saw me. Or, if she did, she pretended not to.
I call a cab from the Indiana bus terminal and wait for it in the rain. I’m still shaking the water off myself when the driver asks for an address.
Tillie’s is the first that comes to mind, either because I grew so used to saying it as my own, or because it’s the one place in this town I feel comfortable. Probably because it’s empty. No people, no problems.
For some reason, though, I hear myself giving him a different one.
You shouldn’t be here, I think, as I put the money into the driver’s hand and tell him no, he doesn’t have to keep it running. I plan—at least, I hope—to stay here a few hours. Whether I’m wanted or not.
My hand feels like stone as I lift it and ring the doorbell. I hear it echo inside, my presence made known in two simple notes, like any other visitor.
It isn’t too late. I could leave.
My other hand slides into my jacket pocket and feels for the chip. Fifteen months.
The door opens. I pull out the chip and brandish it in front of me like a police badge: my only saving grace, the one thing that might allow me to stay.
Dad doesn’t even look at it, though. He barely looks at me, in fact, before lunging forward and putting his arms around me. I hear him crying next to my ear, and it’s only when I’m about to comfort him that I realize I’m crying, too.
Something comes back to me, just a flash: “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
Guess I remember more than I thought.
Twenty
Lila
“Give me back the phone, then. I’ll do it.”
Tillie looks at my cell phone in her hands, sighs, and passes it to me. We’re sitting in the car by a fast food place, an hour away from Indiana. I tried convincing her to call sooner—the minute we were out of Houston, in fact—but she told me to just keep driving.
She didn’t feel safe until we had entire states between them. We drove through the first night altogether, but last night both of us were too exhausted to go on and got a hotel. Even then, I heard her get up more than once to check the lock and peek through the curtains.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she insists. “He deserves it. And—and honestly, some part of me really, truly hates him, even though I don’t think I could say that about...well, anyone.”
I pause, the “9” already dialed, and look at her as she gets quiet and stares at her reflection in the darkened glass of the windshield.
“But,” she adds, “some part of me does still love him.” She wipes her eyes, almost furiously. “That’s really stupid of me, huh?”
“No,” I say, my voice gentler now. I think of Donnie again. A lot of our friends didn’t know why I stayed with him. Aunt Betty was definitely confused by it, and she didn’t even know how bad things really were—the little bit she saw of how he treated me was enough to pass judgment, and a pretty accurate one, at that.
Still, until the evidence got impossible to ignore, I convinced myself I loved him, and that he loved me. Maybe he did, in his own way. But not the way you should love someone.
“My last boyfriend,” I tell her, setting the phone in my lap, “was really controlling, and that’s how I felt about him, too. I hated him, but I cared about him at the same time. I’ve had a
few boyfriends like that, actually.” My brow furrows as this sinks in, even though I’ve known it, on some level, for years. Why did I put up with it for so long? I knew I deserved something—someone—better than them. Instead of going out and finding it, I wasted months or years, waiting for them to magically transform.
“Your father was like that,” Tillie whispers, nodding. When I look at her, she corrects, “Your biological one.”
“So this poor taste in men is genetic?”
She laughs through her sniffling. “I think it’s just a coincidence. If you’d grown up around him, that’d be different, but the fact is...sometimes, smart women get fooled. Simple as that.”
I think of Shepherd again. Now that I know why he left—why, exactly, he worried about dragging me down—it’s harder to be mad at him. I still am, but the feeling isn’t smoldering in my stomach, anymore. If anything, it’s just a slow burn in my chest. When I’m ready, I’ll let it die out.
“I still have to call,” I tell her.
“I know.”
I pick up my phone, unlock the screen, and finish dialing 911. When the dispatcher answers, I clear my throat and say, “Hi. I have the location for someone with warrants, Nicholas Lawson? He’s wanted in Indiana. And Crossbridge County.”
While I give the dispatcher the address, I see Tillie put her hand over her mouth, then her chest. I know that feeling. It’s the same one I had the day I left Donnie. Her heart is breaking.
Then, her hands slip down by her sides. She droops in the seat, relaxed and defeated, all at once.
I know this feeling, too. It’s when you think, No, my heart isn’t breaking; he already did that.
This, this is the feeling of breaking free.
Shepherd
“Fifteen months.” Dad turns the chip over in his palm and passes it back. “I’m proud of you, Shepherd.”
“Thanks.” I put it into my pocket, blushing. “It wasn’t easy.”
