Drowning Erin

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  “If you’re coming up,” I say, “I need to tell you two things—first, Rob is on his way back from Amsterdam. Second, my parents still think Rob and I are engaged.”

  His jaw tightens. “You broke up him with him two months ago. How can they not know?”

  I try to speak, and my mouth twists with the effort not to dissolve into tears. “My dad wanted to see me married so badly. He still does. I figured he’d drink more if he knew it wasn’t happening.”

  “Are you going to tell him the truth now?”

  “I can’t,” I whisper.

  Brendan makes his disapproval clear, but his opinion is irrelevant. The chances of my dad living through the surgery are so poor. If he’s going to leave the world, I want him to do it feeling like it’s safe for him to go, and I’ll tell whatever lie I have to in order for that to happen.

  Upstairs, I enter the room holding my breath, both expecting the best—my dad awake, laughing—and the worst—my mother weeping, all the monitors unplugged. It's neither one, really. My dad is asleep, and my mom sits, looking older and more rumpled than I've ever seen her.

  "How is he?" I ask.

  She sighs. "The same."

  "You should go home, Mom. Get cleaned up and rest a bit. I'll stay here."

  "I shouldn’t leave you here alone. What if you need to leave and he wakes up?”

  "Oh…um…" I stutter. "I won't be alone. Uh, Brendan is here."

  My mother's mouth pinches. "Why is he here? And where's he staying?"

  When I tell her he stayed with me last night, she looks as if I told her I’d been running a brothel out of her condo. “Is he the reason you were too busy to answer your phone on Saturday?”

  “Oh right. Because Dad getting drunk and hitting a telephone pole is my fault.”

  “You could have prevented it.”

  “Don’t,” I say, rounding on her. “Don’t you dare blame me. It wasn’t my job to prevent this. It was Dad’s, and it was yours, and you never lifted a finger. You yelled at me when I tried to get Dad to go to rehab. So if you’re hell-bent on finding a culprit, start with yourself.”

  Her mouth opens, but no words emerge. And then, predictably, her eyes well. “I can’t believe you chose right now to attack me.”

  “I’m not attacking you. I’m telling you the truth. Grow up and listen to it for once.”

  When Brendan enters a few minutes later, we’re sitting in stony silence. She's drawn herself up, shoulders back.

  “I think I’ll go home for a while,” she announces, looking at neither of us. “Make sure to let me know when your fiancé arrives.”

  After she leaves, Brendan takes the seat beside me and squeezes my hand. He knows. He knows exactly what I’m feeling: that I’m so tired of supporting my mother and taking the blame, but that part of me agrees with her assessment. He just knows.

  We look at my father. He’s so still I’d wonder if he was already gone were it not for the heart monitor.

  “All he wanted was to see me married, Brendan,” I whisper. “And now he won’t, all because I was scared he’d make a fool of himself at the wedding and because I didn’t want him to drink more leading up to it.”

  He squeezes my hand. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “Yes, I can. Why did I dance around the whole thing? I should have made him stop drinking. I should have forced him to go to rehab. Instead I did everything I could to smooth the way.”

  “You did try to get him to rehab, remember?” he asks. “He’s a grown man. There’s nothing you could have done, especially without your mother’s support. Don't start finding ways to blame yourself, Erin. This was your father's problem, and you about killed yourself trying to be a good daughter to him."

  “He thinks Sean’s coming. He asked if Rob and I could get married here, and I lied and said maybe. What am I going to say when he wakes up?” I start crying again.

  Right now I’m hardly better than my mom, with her constant flow of tears. In a single swift move, Brendan picks me and deposits me in his lap.

  “Tell me what to do,” he says. “I hate seeing you like this. Anything. Name anything.”

  If I were my mother, I’d keep crying and ask him to fix this. To make it go away. To find my brother, to make my father not care about seeing me married, to make it all better.

  You could stay, Brendan. You could be the person I lean on, and you could never leave. That’s what you could do.

  Perhaps I’m more like my mother than I thought. No matter how many times I’m rebuffed, I can’t stop hoping for things another person can’t give.

  68

  Brendan

  Present

  Erin is in my lap, as fragile as a child.

  I tell her I’ll do anything, and I mean it, but she doesn’t reply.

  "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I destroyed your shirt."

  "You can destroy all of my shirts, Erin. Every last one."

  She removes herself from me and returns to her chair. I wish she hadn’t. I miss her weight and her smell and the feel of her, the way her cheek rests just about my collarbone, the way her lashes brush my neck when she opens her eyes. I miss everything. I’ve been missing all of it for a very long time.

  Rob arrives mid-afternoon, in a fresh suit. Did the douchebag actually drive home and change to come here? He looks distinctly displeased when he sees me sitting beside Erin. I think he already suspects something happened between us—even that girl I brought to the vineyard, whatever her name was, accused me of it on the way home that night. And if she could figure it out, anyone could.

  I stabbed him in the back, but I can’t bring myself to regret it. Those weeks with Erin were the best of my life, and Rob and I were never going to be friends again anyway. Not after I realized how he’d bullied her into giving up the things she loved. I left for Italy because I couldn’t stand seeing them together, but I left believing she’d be better off with him, and I was wrong.

  Erin stands and walks over to him. It seems to me that she rises reluctantly, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking. He hugs her, a hug that lasts way too fucking long.

  Rob turns to me. "I'll walk you out," he says.

  It’s impossible to miss his meaning. Time for you to leave, asshole.

  I want to stay, but I no longer have a place here. I wish I did. I wish it was my job to be the one comforting her.

  Once we're halfway down the hall, he stops walking. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s staring at the floor.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” he asks. “You’re the one she was with while I was gone.”

  He isn’t actually asking. For Erin’s sake, I’d have denied it, but it’s clear he already knows.

  I meet his eye. “Yeah. It was me. It was a shitty thing to do, but I don’t regret it. I walked away a long time ago because I thought she was better off with you, and she wasn’t.”

  “Oh, but you think she’d be better off with you?” he demands. “You can’t stay with any girl for more than an hour, and that’s about how long you can keep a job. All those years you spent trying to talk me out of shit—telling me I shouldn’t ask her out, telling me we shouldn’t move in together, and I shouldn’t propose—that was all just you wanting to take your shot.”

  “I didn’t want you with her because you don’t deserve her. You never deserved her, and I knew you couldn’t make her happy. You still can’t. And you proved me right when you started fucking around with Christina over there. I don’t care if Erin believes your little story about how innocent it was. I know there was more to it than that.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, so what? Even if there was, I’m not going to take shit about it from you. Let’s see you date someone for even a week before you start criticizing me.”

  “This isn’t about me. It’s about you. And if you were a better person, you’d admit you can’t make her happy and walk away.”

  He wants to hit me. I can see it. And I want him to do it, because God knows I’d
like to hit him back. I’ve never wanted to hit someone more. But neither of us will go there, not with Erin just down the hall.

  “Well, I’m not walking away. I’m going to marry her,” he says calmly. Too calmly, as if he knows something I don’t. There’s certainty behind his words.

  “She doesn’t want to marry you. I think she’s made that clear.”

  “But she will,” he says, with a hint of smug triumph surfacing in his eyes. “Just watch.”

  He turns and walks back in to her. Every bone in my body wants to chase him and beg her not to listen, to turn down anything he suggests.

  Except I’ve got nothing to offer in its place.

  69

  Erin

  Present

  Rob settles into the chair Brendan just vacated, grabs the same hand Brendan just held. It’s not the same, but chocolate isn’t the same as broccoli, and that doesn’t mean you’re only meant to eat the first.

  “How’s he been?” he asks. “Has he woken up since yesterday?”

  I tilt my head. “How did you know he woke up yesterday?”

  “Your mom called me. She did not appear to know we’d broken up.” My eyes fly open in alarm, and he squeezes my hand. “I didn’t tell her. It was pretty clear from what she said that you didn’t want them to know. My question is why you didn’t.”

  It’s an opening. If this were a movie, it would be the point where I tell him my father is an alcoholic, and my mother and I have danced around it my entire life. Except this isn’t a movie, and that’s not who the two of us are.

  “I didn’t want to upset them,” I reply.

  “I brought your ring,” he says, pulling it out of his bag. “I thought it might help, under the circumstances.”

  I hesitate, but decide it’ll make my dad feel better if he sees it. Just one diamond in that ring could pay someone’s mortgage for a year. I look at it and think showy, but my dad looks at it and thinks secure. And what he thinks matters far more right now. I slide it back on my left hand and move the emerald to my right.

  “She told me something else,” he adds. “She said your dad asked if we could get married here, and you said maybe?”

  I sigh heavily. Fuck if my mom doesn’t seem to go out of her way to make every aspect of my life harder. “I didn’t know what to say. I just couldn’t say no right then.”

  “We could, you know.” He recaptures my hand. “The hospital chaplain could do it.”

  “Rob, that’s crazy. We aren’t even dating.”

  “Erin, we were a couple for four years. It’s just a matter of time before we get back together. Why wait when we could do it now and give your dad what he wants?”

  I suddenly feel so, so tired. More tired than I knew it was possible to feel. Though it’s insane to even consider what Rob is offering, maybe it’s also insane not to.

  I could end all the chaos. I could give my parents something positive to focus on now and a little peace going forward. I could go back to the life I had—the nice house and the security of all of it. And maybe, when things with Brendan grow more distant, I could go back to feeling numb again. I want that, because being here, being me, missing Brendan—it feels like too much to bear.

  I can grant my father’s dying wish. One of them at least. But in granting it, I also know a piece of me will die too.

  70

  Brendan

  Present

  I find Sean holed up above some strip club north of Denver. It’s taken me a full day to find him. Erin must be worried sick.

  I guess I am too, but for different reasons. That sense of foreboding I felt yesterday is still with me, as if there’s an hourglass somewhere, its sand spilling quickly. I don’t even know what happens when it reaches its end—I only know the result will be one I can’t live with.

  I knock on the door and a girl answers, peering at me through the tiny opening allowed by the door chain. I tell her I’m Will’s younger brother, and she slams the door and deadbolts it again. It occurs to me, too late, that maybe I shouldn’t have led with Will’s name since Sean got busted for possession while Olivia was staying at his apartment.

  I knock again. A minute later I hear the slide of the chain. Sean opens the door and lets me in. He looks jittery and strung out, but given that I’d expected to find him with his arm tied off and not knowing his own name, he’s surprisingly cogent.

  "You don't know me..." I begin.

  He laughs unhappily, derisively, still refastening the locks. “I know you.”

  He says it like he knows I’ve done something wrong, but I’m not sure how he would. Erin hasn’t spoken to him in weeks.

  “Is Erin okay?” he asks.

  "No, not really. She hasn’t been able to find you. She’s worried sick.”

  He sneers. “You found me.”

  Not exactly. The manager at the restaurant where Sean was waiting tables had no interest in talking to me until he got a call from Beck. It was only once I was vouched for that he reluctantly directed me to the people on staff who might know where Sean had gone.

  “Look, I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but your dad is in the hospital. And it’s pretty bad.”

  He stiffens. “How bad?”

  “He needs surgery, but they don’t think he’ll survive. They’re holding off on it until you get there.”

  Sean fastens the final lock and sinks into a chair, burying his face in his hands. Sweat beads at his hairline. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t leave.”

  I stare at him. What kind of selfish prick won’t go see his dying father? “You’re leaving, Sean, if I have to fucking carry you out of here. Even if you don’t give a shit about your dad, you owe this to Erin. For once in her life, she shouldn’t have to carry all this alone. So pull your shit together and be there for her. For once.”

  “I can’t leave, okay? I walk out of here, and I’ll have a bullet in my head before I ever reach the hospital.”

  I exhale. I don’t know how Erin’s put up with his shit for so long. I’ve only been around him for two minutes and I’m over it. “Why?”

  “I was trying to get her money back,” he says. “I felt bad when I heard she and Rob broke up. I thought if I ran a few big deals for this guy, I could at least get some of it for her. But during the last one, I got robbed. They took everything. So now I owe this guy 15 grand I don’t have. I walk out of here, and I’m a dead man.”

  “You can’t ask him to give you time?”

  Sean looks at me like I’m the biggest idiot he’s ever seen. “This isn’t the IRS. A guy like Danny isn’t going to fucking garnish my wages until I’ve paid it back.”

  “You realize that if I could find you, they probably can too, right? You’ve got to go to the cops. Tell them you’ll give them information on this guy in exchange for immunity.”

  “Even if that worked, they’re not going to let me just saunter off to the hospital. I’d need to make bail. And believe me, no one I know has that kind of money.”

  I don't have a lot of sympathy for him, but the only pertinent fact here is that Erin loves him, and she would rather die than see him hiding here or locked up for life. If she learns what's going on, she'll somehow get the money together to pay this dealer off—probably by going back to the shitty job that made her miserable. Or worse, by getting it from Rob, leaving her beholden to him.

  I'd rather lose my whole business than see one more thing weigh her down right now.

  “I have that kind of money,” I tell him.

  The police station eats up most of the day, and bail eats up every penny of the money I need to keep my business running this winter. If Sean doesn’t return when this is over, my company is done. He’s said little to me all day, acting more like a resentful teenager than a grown man who just got his ass bailed out by a stranger.

  “Why are you doing this?” he finally asks as we drive to the hospital.

  “Because your sister needs you,” I tell him. “And because she’s been through
too much shit to have to deal with your shit too.”

  The sky is the brightest blue, the color of the Caribbean as your plane dips beneath the clouds. Cool outside today, too. A perfect day for biking. I hope when this is done I can hang on to my business, but there’s not a doubt in my mind I made the right decision. If her father were to die without seeing Sean, Erin would never forgive herself.

  “Erin told me all about you,” Sean says with disgust.

  I glance over at him. “Is that why you’re still acting like I’m a piece of shit even though I bailed you out?”

  “I appreciate what you’re doing. That doesn’t mean I trust you with my sister,” he replies. “Rob’s an asshole, but he wouldn’t fuck her up. I could tell from the moment she started describing you that you would. It was like she was upset in advance, like she knew you were going to hurt her.”

  Which is exactly what I did.

  I deliver him outside the same hospital doors where I dropped Erin yesterday morning.

  “Room 1108,” I tell him.

  “You really don’t want me to tell her it was you who found me and bailed me out?” he asks, his hand on the door.

  I tell him I don’t. She’s better off thinking of me as the guy who didn’t care enough than the guy who cared a little too much all along.

  Dissatisfaction gnaws at me as I drive away, and for no reason I can explain, I want to talk to my brother. We’ve barely spoken since I started hooking up with Erin. But like every other fight we’ve ever had, this one will end when one of us is struggling. And right now, I’m definitely struggling.

  “Why the fuck are you helping Sean?” he asks after I tell him what’s going on. “You don’t even know him.”

  “I’m not doing it for him,” I reply. “I’m doing it for Erin.”

  He laughs. “Right, Erin, the girl you don’t want a relationship with.”

  “What’s your point?”

  Will sighs. “You just risked your entire business to keep her from being upset. You realize that, right? And when you love someone so much you’re willing to give up everything on her behalf, getting nothing in return, committing is the easy part.”