The After of Us (Judge Me Not Spin-off)

by S. R. Grey

  With my father gone, I had nothing to do. Our TVs were gone, the stereos too. Video games? Forget it. Those were among the first things to go. So, I wandered around the house barefoot, padding around on neglected hardwood floors. I trudged from one empty room to the next.

  Then I took a minute to look in on Will.

  My little brother slept on an air mattress in the middle of his now-barren room. The twee house sketch, the only thing left on his four stark walls, had fallen. It lay abandoned on the floor, close to Will’s hand, close to where his little arm was dangling off the side of the mattress. To me, it looked as if my brother was subconsciously reaching for the drawing. Three years had passed since I’d drawn Will’s tree house—and I’d sketched hundreds of other things for him since that sunny day—but that particular piece of made-with-love art was still my brother’s favorite. I think to him it symbolized something more. He’d once said my sketch gave him hope. I guess it reminded him of when things were good.

  I stepped into his dark room and picked up Will’s hope. I kissed the top of his head and gently placed his twee house next to his sleeping form. I made my way back down to the living room, feeling solemn and too fucking worn for seventeen. Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Hell with that shit. The paper bag that had held the Chinese food was still on the floor. Frustrated, I kicked it out of my way. A fortune cookie shot out and landed at my feet. I picked the projectile up, ripped the plastic covering off, and slid a tiny piece of paper from the confines of the cookie.

  The fortune stayed in my hand, the cookie ended up in my mouth.

  Truthfully, I was still hungry. Crunching away and savoring sugary goodness, I read the words on the little slip of paper I held between my fingers.

  As I stand before you, judge me not.

  It sounded a little hokey and I almost threw the fortune away. But there was something about those words that made me hesitate, something almost prescient. I ended up folding the little piece of paper in half and tucking it in to my pocket. Maybe I needed some symbol of hope just like my brother. I knew the things happening in my life would eventually define my future, and I guess I hoped no matter what occurred those things wouldn’t ultimately define me.

  My mom came back later that night, but my dad never did.

  Jack Gartner had gotten on route 160, heading west to California. But he never made it out of Nevada. His car was found at the bottom of a ravine, below what the officers who came to our door to break the news termed a treacherous curve.

  Killed on impact, we were told.

  Did he lose control, or drive off the road on purpose? Maybe his plan all along had been to leave us and start a new life in California. That’s what my mom believed at the time. Still does, in fact.

  I, however, am not so sure. My father didn’t pack a thing. Sixty dollars and a cancelled credit card, that’s all he had on him. I think my dad just gave up. He quit on us, and that was the way he chose to end it. My mom can delude herself all she wants, but I know in my heart that I’m the one who’s got it right.

  Anyway, the bank took the house soon after my father’s death. My mom sold off what little was left. For a while, we became nomads in the desert. We lived in the only big-ticket item that hadn’t been repossessed, a white minivan. The Honda Odyssey was home…until Mom won enough money gambling to move us into a cheap apartment. Our new residence was a dump, but at least it had running water. And it was furnished. Kind of.

  When we first stepped across the threshold and Mom caught me scowling at the rusty fixtures, the water-stained ceiling, the musty olive-green carpeting, she tried hard to convince me our new place had its good points.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “It’s close to The Strip. That’ll be convenient.”

  “Convenient for who?” I sniped. “You?”

  “Chase,” she said pointedly, “it’s better than living in a minivan.”

  She had a point there, so we moved in the next day. Will’s first reaction was to run straight to one of the two back bedrooms and hang up his tattered twee house sketch. I followed him and watched as he stood on a soiled mattress on the floor—in a shoebox of a room we were going to have to share—and pinned hope on a wall.

  After we were settled, time, as it does, marched on. Will and I attended school, while my mom—still fevered and sick with the gambling virus—spent her days in the casinos.

  I turned eighteen that April. But no one really noticed. Well, Will did. Not much got by that kid.

  He stuck a candle he found in the back of a drawer in the kitchen on a stale snack cake. He made me sit on the only kitchen chair that didn’t rock when you shifted, and then he placed the snack cake on a card table we used as a kitchen table.

  Will sang me the most beautiful off-key and from-the-heart rendition of “Happy Birthday” that I have ever heard, before or since. When he was done, I leaned forward to blow out the candle. Will stopped me and told me to make a wish first, so I did. And then I blew out the candle. Will clapped and cheered. He asked me what I wished for and I told him it was a secret. I didn’t want to tell him I wished for him to be given a better life than what we were, at the time, living. My brother and I split the snack cake in two, dinner for the night, and ate in contemplative silence.

  Summer arrived that year and I somehow managed to graduate. But—with my trust fund long gone—college was no longer on the table. With no real guidance, and a lot of pent-up frustration, my downward slide took hold. I was angry all the time, and ended up getting into too many fights to count. The places in Vegas where I’d started hanging were tough. Early on, I got my ass kicked…often.

  But then something happened.

  I learned how to use my strength, my quickness, and my anger. I started to win. I had a real knack for fighting and rapidly turned into a badass nobody messed with. I earned street cred. All that really meant was guys started showing me respect and girls suddenly wanted to have sex with me. I happily obliged more than a few of the latter.

  But all that shit meant nothing, I was empty inside. I had no one to talk to about the mixed-up emotions I didn’t know how to deal with. Like, why was I so angry all the time? Why did I like to fight so much? Why did it feel so good to make someone else hurt?

  But mostly I wondered why I missed my dad so much.

  I missed talking to my father, seeing his face every day. I had relied on him, I still needed him. But he was gone. He took his own life. Why couldn’t I just accept what had happened and forget him?

  But I couldn’t, and, worse yet, I longed for answers.

  Every day, for a while, in my quest for enlightenment, I’d grab the bus outside our apartment and visit my father. Well, I’d visit his grave. At the head of where my father rested eternally, I’d sit under a big stone angel kneeling by his grave—thankful for the little bit of shade she offered under the hot, beating sun of the desert.

  Sweaty and lost, I’d ask her if she could tell me why my dad wasn’t still alive. Why had God allowed Dad to take himself away? Why did my father choose to leave me? Why would he leave Mom and Will too? Was our love not enough for him? Did he regret his decision when he realized there was no going back?

  Of course, the stone angel had no answers, and one day I just quit going. No more sitting in the shadow of the angel, no more hot and beating sun. No more asking questions that could never be answered.

  My trips to the cemetery were over, but that didn’t mean I wanted to forget that someone—even though he’d left—had once believed in me. Despite everything, I still loved my father and part of me yearned to be just like him.

  So, July of that year, I had his angel’s likeness—the stone one at his grave—inked in profile on the middle of my upper back, between my shoulder blades.

  I shift in the passenger seat now.

  I can almost feel her back there, watching over me, like my dad’s angel watches over him. And like his angel, mine is kneeling. The edges of her heavy robe lie i
n a puddle of fabric around her. Her wings are folded against her back. Her hair is long, obscuring the side of her face. And her head is bowed. In supplication or in shame, I haven’t decided which. But if she’s been watching the shit I’ve been doing these past two years, it’s probably in shame.

  After the angel tat healed, Mom hit for more money. I successfully talked her into paying for another tattoo, guilted her into it really. In any case, I ended up with big, intricately detailed wings inked up and over my shoulder blades. The top feathers curve onto my shoulders, while the wings dip down the sides of my back, effectively framing the angel.

  But the angel and the wings weren’t enough. I wanted something more to remember my father, something to remind me always of that final night, when it was just him and me, eating Chinese food on the floor of an empty home, a last supper shared.

  I kept coming back to the cookie, the fortune inside, the hope it symbolized.

  As I stand before you, judge me not.

  Words printed on a piece of paper, but really they were so much more. So I had those words inked—in concise and script letters—around my left bicep.

  My tats were but temporal attempts to heal my soul, as my heart remained an open wound. There was no solace to be had at home. In fact, things were getting worse. I started to drink and do drugs to ease the pain and fill the void. I hated what had happened to our family. Seeing Will transformed from an energetic little boy to a sullen nine-year-old left me sad and frustrated. And watching my mother try to heal her fractured heart with gambling—and eventually men—just pissed me the fuck off.

  But at least Mom wasn’t indulging in one-night stands like I’d been doing. Nope, Abby actually went out on dates. Still, her attempt at dating led to a revolving door of boyfriends. Some lasted a week or two, some a little longer, but the one common denominator they all shared was that not a single one liked me.

  Mom told me to try harder, give these guys a chance for her sake. I laughed and told Abby her men could blow me. “Chase, don’t be crude,” was her response.

  By the end of the summer Mom hooked up with what turned out to be steady boyfriend number three. I was no fool; I immediately sensed my days were numbered. I would’ve had to have been blind not to see the writing on the wall, a wall I didn’t realize I was hurtling toward. But it wasn’t just Abby’s lame new boyfriend disliking me that was a problem. There was something else, something she’d never admit to. There was no escaping it though, not really.

  I saw Abby’s problem every day when I looked in the mirror.

  Standing in a cramped and steam-filled bathroom, hot water running, can of shave cream poised in hand, I couldn’t deny the truth in front of me. I’d swipe at the misted mirror with my free hand, leaving it streaky, but mostly clear. And it wasn’t me I saw in the reflection, it was my father. That’s how much I looked like Jack Gartner, even at eighteen. And that was my mother’s real problem.

  Shit. Even thinking about it now—two years later—fucks with my head.

  I glance over at Tate. He’s quiet, taking long pulls from the bottle. I shift in my seat and wind up the window the rest of the way. Time to assess my bleary reflection, time to compare it to what it was, time to compare it to the man who made me…I sometimes do this just to fuck with myself.

  When I take in my reflection, I laugh. Hell, the resemblance is still uncanny. And just like when I used to stare at the steamed-up mirror in the bathroom, it’s my dad’s eyes staring back at me now. But these pale blues are all mine. Yeah, his whites were never shot with red like mine.

  Still, even with the bloodshot eyes, similarities far outweigh differences. Though it’s not short and tidy—like Grandma Gartner would like it to be—my hair is the exact same shade as her son’s once was, light brown. Jack also blessed me with his straight nose, his square jaw, and his defined cheekbones. Everyone used to say my dad was good-looking, I guess I am too. Girls seem to think so, that’s for sure. And my mother sure was smitten with my dad.

  Abby used to lean across the front seat of the sporty car my dad bought for himself during the good times. Will and I would be in the back, rolling our eyes at each other. My mom would kiss my dad, making him swerve a little as he drove. She’d tell him he was gorgeous, and that she loved him. Dad would laugh and tell Abby he loved her even more. He’d say his love for her burned hotter than the Vegas sun above us. My mom loved that shit. Will and I, however, would groan in disgust and make gagging noises.

  Shit, I feel like gagging now. Not because of the memory, but at how closely I still resemble my dead father. I turn away from my reflection. I can’t bear to endure this self-inflicted torture any longer. No wonder I was fucking sent away. Too bad I couldn’t disappear completely just as easily right now. Guess, in a way, that’s why I live my life the way I do, filling it with drugs…sex…violence.

  Back then my very presence in my mom’s life must have been a constant reminder of all she had lost. When you’re striving to move on, you don’t need an anchor to the past. She could move forward with Will, he was just a kid. Besides, he looked like her, not like my father. But I was eighteen, an adult, and far too much my father’s son for everyone’s comfort. I guess it was just too difficult for Mom to look at me—see him—and be reminded of all she’d once had.

  So the day steady boyfriend number three, a guy named Gary, told her she could move in with him, I kind of fucking knew the invitation wouldn’t be extended to me.

  Sure enough, on a blistering hot afternoon, my mom sent Will out to ride his bike and told me we had to talk. She sat me down on the ratty couch in our shitty apartment. I felt like a condemned man waiting to hear his fate, and all the while the noisy air conditioning unit in the window behind me kept blowing gusts of lukewarm air across the back of my neck.

  Not that it mattered. I barely noticed. I was mostly numb. In preparation for this “talk,” I’d done a couple of lines of coke in my room. Of course, I hadn’t brought that shit out until after Will had left. One thing I stuck to was that I never let my little brother see me taking part in any of my newfound vices.

  Anyway, that day in the living room, I couldn’t sit still. Fidgeting, fidgeting, tapping my foot. Mom took no notice, she was almost as bad. Pacing back and forth in front of me, smoking a cigarette, a new habit she’d just acquired. Gary smoked, so she’d picked up the habit too. Pathetic, I remember thinking.

  My mother appeared so edgy and wired I almost asked her if she was dabbling in drugs, like me, or if what she had to say was really just that fucking bad. She started speaking before I ever got the chance.

  “You’re not a kid anymore, Chase,” she began, still pacing, ashes peppering the olive-green carpeting.

  She took a drag, crinkled her brow, and leaned over to stub her cigarette out in a plastic ashtray on a low table.

  “You have to get started on doing something, somewhere, kid,” she said as she spun to face me.

  She stood right in front of me, and though my head was down I watched her every move. She blew out a breath and I watched her dark blonde bangs lift up off her forehead. A few strands stuck to her skin. Mom was starting to sweat.

  “So, Grandma Gartner called the other day,” she continued, her words deliberate, pointed, like a knife. “She said she’s got lots of room in that old farmhouse back in Ohio. And she sure could use some company.”

  I looked up at her in disbelief. This woman who’d given me life tried to smile, but she could not. She knew damn well she was spewing pure bullshit. She just wanted rid of me.

  “Just spit it out,” I ground through clenched teeth, my voice far from even.

  “Okay, of course, honey.” She looked everywhere but at me. “Uh, so, Gram thinks moving back to Harmony Creek might do you some good, get you out of Vegas, give you a chance to start over, and—”

  “Mom, I’m only eighteen. Start over?” I blew out a quick breath. “I haven’t even had a chance to get started here.”

  Her expression grew ste
rn. “Chase, don’t act like I don’t know the things you do behind my back.” I tried to protest, but she shushed me. “I know you use drugs. I know you bring girls back when Will’s not around. That shit isn’t going to fly once we move in with Gary. He won’t stand for it, Chase. He has standards—”

  I snorted, “The fuck he does—”

  “I’m not going to argue with you about it,” she said, her voice tired and cracking.

  When she reached for her pack of cigarettes, I noticed her hands were shaking. “Honey, I just think Grandma Gartner’s is the best place for you right now, okay?”

  I picked at a hole in my jeans. “Do I have a choice?” I asked, defeated, and, truthfully, feeling like I’d just been set adrift.

  She shook her head no.

  I’d known it was coming, but her words still flayed me up the middle and pierced my already damaged heart. I was shocked that my heart could continue beating, since it felt all smashed to hell. But beat it did. In fact, my heart pumped faster and faster, like it was going to burst right out of my fucking chest. Whether my reaction was from cocaine…or despair…I couldn’t quite figure.

  With my heart pounding like a sped-up death knell, I tried to push some words out of my cotton-dry mouth. “Mom…” I croaked, my voice catching.

  I just couldn’t finish.

  Verbal communication failed me, so I tried to meet her eyes, speak to her soul. Was this really what she wanted? Send her eldest son away? Give up on me? Just like Dad did with all of us.

  I searched and searched, but my mother had no answers in her big green eyes, no more than the stone angel had at my father’s grave.

  Abby took in a stuttered breath and turned away. She swiped at a tear. “It’s for the best, Chase,” she mumbled.

  And then she left me sitting there, all alone, warm air blowing across the back of my neck.

  I went back to my room and cut up three more lines.

  That was nearly two years ago and here I am. Mom is still in Las Vegas with Will, on steady boyfriend number six, last I heard. She’s still chasing the elusive jackpot too, hoping to recapture the life she once knew.