Gun Shy

by Lili St. Germain

  She’s talking, but I’m not listening to what she’s saying. Instead, I’m making a list in my head of all the things I need to buy for Thanksgiving dinner.

  Yams

  Turkey

  Cranberry Sauce

  How the hell do I make cranberry sauce?

  “Cassie,” Amanda’s voice cuts through my Thanksgiving meal planning.

  I stop daydreaming and look up, not answering. I’ve figured out that what people hate more than anything is an awkward silence, and if I don’t rush to fill it, someone else inevitably will. She searches my face, her expression one of concern more than anger.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  I clear my throat and take the plates from the pass. “I’m fine.”

  I set my face to resting bitch, surveying her calmly, and she almost seems to do a double take.

  I have that effect on people these days.

  “Oka-ay,” she says, breaking our stare-off. I win again. I always do. I learned from the best.

  My toes are cold. I didn’t dress in enough layers this morning, and my head is pounding from all the alcohol I drank last night. I bide the rest of my shift as patiently as I can, wondering if Leo gets to eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

  I doubt it. Even for someone in prison, it seems unfair. But then, I suppose, my mom won’t be eating Thanksgiving dinner either. She’ll be fed through a tube, she’ll breathe through a tube, shit through a tube, and eventually, we’ll take all those tubes away so the poor woman can finally die.

  I don’t know why I care about anything in Leo’s life. Why I’m drawn to Pike. Why I’m so pissed off that he won’t give me anything. Because I should forget the boy I loved ever existed.

  I am a horrible person. Because even though Leo’s the reason my mother is waiting to die, I’d still do anything to feel his fingers against my lips one more time.

  The kitchen bell rings. My head throbs. I collect more plates, dispense them at more tables, run into Amanda again.

  “Cassie,” she says. “You have two tables waiting on water and bread. Do you need a hand?”

  She’s nicer to me than I deserve. Her green eyes are wide with genuine concern. “I have a headache,” I say, glancing at the highway. “Have you got any aspirin?”

  She looks worried. “Cassie, you always have a headache. Have you been to a doctor?” She leans in a little. “Have you been eating? Sleeping?”

  She reaches out, pressing the back of her hand against my forehead softly. I flinch at the sudden jolt of sympathetic skin on mine, an unfamiliar sensation. She sees me react and pulls her hand away slowly, letting it fall at her side.

  “I’m worried about you, Cassie,” she says. “This isn’t an easy time of year…” she trails off, searching my face.

  “Please don’t.” I swallow back the hard tennis ball lodged in my throat. I’m not going to start crying now just because somebody cares. She’s just doing her job. I mean, if I hang myself in the bathroom while everyone else is out here, it’s going to fall on her. She doesn’t care enough for it to make a difference to me.

  Her eyes fall to the bruises on my wrist. I don’t want to talk about that.

  “I just need aspirin,” I say firmly.

  “You know, there are people who can help you,” she says.

  I can’t help the smirk that forms on my mouth. Amanda looks horrified.

  “You think this is funny?” she asks, her cheeks turning red.

  I shrug. “Kind of. Do you have aspirin, or do I need to walk over to the store?” If I could get my hands on some of those codeine pills Pike used to have—

  “Here.” She reaches into her own apron and pulls out a bottle of aspirin, shaking several pills into my palm. “You’ll get a stomach ulcer if you keep eating these like candy,” she warns, but there’s no strength in her words.

  “Thank you,” I say, tossing the pills back and swallowing them dry. I smile at her, but she doesn’t return the gesture.

  It’s because my smile doesn’t reach my eyes anymore. It’s just a meaningless gesture, muscles pulling skin up over my skull.

  “Table eight and thirteen,” she says, pushing two glasses of water into my hands. For someone who was so concerned five minutes ago, suddenly she doesn’t want to look at me. I get it. It’s the same reason I want to cover all the reflective surfaces in our house.

  I wouldn’t look at Cassie Carlino if she weren’t staring back at me, accusingly, in every mirror.

  I fought with Leo. He crashed his car with my mother.

  The weight of my sins is a burden that breaks me every time I have to look at my own face.

  I take the water and baskets of bread to the tables and wait patiently for the aspirin to start bubbling in my veins.

  When it’s my turn to take a break, I go into the bathrooms and pull up Shelly’s Instagram account on my iPhone; it’s not hard to find her. She checked into the diner thirteen minutes ago, a selfie of her and her precious little family her most recent post. I dig further. They live in Miami. Chase plays football for the team Leo was being scouted for before the accident. I already know all of this. I scroll through photos of her lounging by a pool, her stomach bigger than the rest of her body. There are photos of her daughters eating ice-cream, of her fucking lifestyle blog, the baby football jersey she’s hung over her impending arrival’s crib. My skin feels hot and prickly as I imagine them all getting into a terrible accident and dying, the entire family, because this was the life I was meant to have with Leo. I hate her. I hate them all. I wonder if she believes that she deserves the things she has, hashtag #sofuckingblessed, or if she knows that she’s the consolation prize. I hit the button on my phone that will give me a notification every time she posts something. What can I say? I don’t need to eat real food, because I’m a glutton for self-punishment instead.

  When I come out of the bathroom, they’re still there. I bring them their dessert, plates of pie and ice cream balanced up and down my arms, Chase glaring at Shelly.

  “Cassie,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it after I’ve dropped their plates in front of each of them. “We’re having a get-together next Saturday afternoon. Just a few people. You should come.”

  “Unless you’re busy,” Chase says quickly. I glance at him. He’s deeply, deeply uncomfortable with the thought of me being anywhere near him. Maybe because he fucked me up against a set of bleachers three times in one night after Leo went to jail and Shelly was at cheer camp. Or maybe it was the time I sucked his dick in a closet at a party and swallowed because Shelly thought fellatio was gross.

  “Sure,” I say, squeezing Shelly’s hand back. “I’d love to.”

  I look back at Chase, smiling as I lick my lips. He pretends to break up an imaginary fight between two of his daughters. Of course, I’ll be there. He doesn’t get to forget me that easily.

  I watch their table from the safety of the kitchen pass as they finish dessert. Mid-morning, just as they’ve finally packed up all their children to leave, a trio of high-school girls bursts into the diner.

  Chase’s little sister Jennifer is among the threesome. She works the evening shift for pocket money; not that she needs it. Her family is loaded. I read on Business Insider that Chase’s net worth is fifteen million dollars. She’d be lucky to earn fifteen dollars in tips here, but I guess she is young and beautiful and sultry in a Lana Del Rey-esque way. I watch as she squeals in delight and picks up one of the toddlers, while her two friends stand by patiently and eye-fuck her football star brother. Everybody always wants the celebrities. Not me. Every time I let Chase Thomas fuck me up against the locker room wall, on the nights Shelly worked in this very diner and I pretended I was at home, he could barely last long enough to get the condom on.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CASSIE

  After the shift from hell finishes, Damon picks me up. We get the frozen turkey for next week and drive home in silence. He seems to have something on his mind because he’s gripping that steering whe
el again like it’s somebody’s neck he wants to snap.

  After I pack away the groceries, I wander into Mom’s room, a makeshift assortment of furniture and windows that used to be our den. We’d never be able to get her hospital bed up the narrow staircase, and besides, I think Damon prefers that she’s away from him.

  I feed Mom through her feeding tube and then I clean the equipment and tubing in the sink. When I go back in, Damon’s already there. He’s pulled an old armchair up to the far side of her bed, the TV on low, sports playing as the background soundtrack to cover the silence and the way Mom’s chest rattles when she breathes.

  He does this. He has some sixth sense that tells him when I’m about to talk to Mom, and he makes sure he’s included. I ignore him, taking up a spot on the edge of the bed and laying my ear ever-so-gently to her chest.

  “It’s snowing outside,” I whisper, my eyes itching as I hear my mother’s heart beat slowly inside her rail-thin chest. Won’t you please wake up?

  I lie to her as I paint bright pink polish onto her fingernails. I tell her I’m getting a new haircut. I tell her I saw Chase and Shelly at the diner. I tell her that I’m happy because even though most of the time I wish she would die, I don’t want her to die thinking about how horribly sad her daughter is.

  Even though it doesn’t matter, and it’s impossible, and she’s probably not even in there anymore: I don’t want her to know what a fucking mess I turned out to be.

  Damon glances at me from the other side of the bed. He’s lounging back in his chair, his feet crossed at the ankles and resting on the edge of the bed. The chatter of a football game hums around us, or maybe it’s baseball. I have no idea who’s playing what game, and I don’t care. He turns back to the screen, completely unaffected by the sight of the comatose woman between us. He never says anything to Mom. His wife.

  “You shouldn’t lie to your poor mother, Cassandra,” he says absently, popping a Milk Dud into his mouth and chewing enthusiastically as one of the teams scores a goal, or a point, or whatever. I wish he wasn’t here. I wish he was never here.

  “Why don’t you talk to her, then?” I ask him bitterly. “Why don’t you tell her the truth?”

  He snaps his gaze to me, the game forgotten.

  “And let your mother know what an epic disappointment her only child turned out to be?” he asks coldly.

  “What about her husband?” I challenge. “I think disappointment is an inadequate word, don’t you?”

  And then he says the words that punch me in the gut like a lead bullet. “She’d still be here if it weren’t for you, Cassandra.” His words cold, his tone measured. “If it weren’t for you and your deadbeat fucking boyfriend, she’d still be her, instead of this bag of bones you insist we hang out with.”

  My throat starts to burn with sadness, with crushing guilt. He’s right. I never used to believe him when he told me it was my fault Leo ran off the road that night, but it must have been. If I hadn’t fought with Leo, he wouldn’t have stormed out. He wouldn’t have been driving when he’d been drinking all afternoon. He wouldn’t have taken the pills. We wouldn’t be here. I slide off the bed and go back to the kitchen. I really should spend more time with my mother, but there’s really only so much you can say to a person who won’t wake up.

  I’m peeling potatoes when I hear a knock on the front door. Adrenaline spikes in my stomach and then moves out like a stealth ninja, bleeding into every cell of my being until the peeler is shaking in my grip. Nobody visits us. Only Damon’s brother Ray, and he’s not due here until tomorrow. I have a brief flash of panic as I imagine Shelly standing at the threshold, full of fresh fucking pity, or maybe Amanda, coming to check on me.

  I busy myself with the potatoes, letting my breath go in relief as I hear Chris’s voice in the hall. Of course, nobody’s coming to check up on me. Thank God for that.

  Damon enters the kitchen, Chris trailing after him. Boyish even though we’re the same age, he always looks like he’s just seen something unpleasant. Or maybe that’s just because when I see him, he’s looking at me? Either way, he’s an odd choice for a small-town cop. I imagine him as an accountant… or a vampire. He’s pale and lanky and when I fucked him during senior year, he wanted me to bite him really hard, like hard enough to make him bleed. It was kind of weird and totally hot at the same time.

  He looks uncomfortable, like he doesn’t want to be here. “Hey,” I smile, looking up at Chris at the same time that I slice through the tip of my finger.

  “Fuck!” I mutter under my breath, looking down at my clumsiness. Yup, I’ve sliced my index finger, and it’s deep. I suck my finger, meeting Damon’s glare. He just looks at the knife, then me, shaking his head as he disappears into the garage.

  “Are you okay?” Chris asks.

  “I’m fine,” I wave him off, talking through a mouthful of blood. “You working overtime?”

  Damn, this cut is deep. Too deep to be sucking on it and hoping it’ll stop bleeding. Yuck. I grab a dishtowel and wrap it around my hand, opening drawers along the kitchen counter in search of a first-aid kit.

  “Just picking something up,” Chris says. I nod in acknowledgment, walking past him. I’ve remembered where the bandages are. I pad down the hallway on bare feet and into my mother’s room, my finger starting to throb. “You doing anything special for Thanksgiving?” I call out to Chris, rummaging through a drawer beside Mom’s bed. My headache from this morning has finally abated and I’m feeling a little better — hence, the small talk. Chris appears in the doorway, stopping at the line where the polished wood floor butts up against brown carpet. “Just the usual family stuff,” he says, casting a glance at Mom.

  “You can come in,” I say, waving him in as I open another drawer. “She won’t bite.” Then I remember biting him and I try not to laugh. It’s worse when I look up at Chris and see him biting his lip, too, clearly on my wavelength. His hands are stuffed into his jean pockets and he looks like he can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.

  So when he steps closer to me and offers his help, I’m kind of stunned. He can see me fumbling with the package of Band-Aids and holds his hand out. “Here. They’ve all got these damn tamper-proof seals these days.”

  Wordlessly, I hand him the package and he opens it easily. “There,” he says, unpeeling a Band-Aid and holding it out to me.

  “Thanks,” I reply, nestling my bleeding finger on the small white padding inside the bandage and letting him wrap the sticky plastic around my finger. It’s about the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a long time.

  “Can I ask you something, Cass?” Chris says suddenly.

  I meet his gaze. “Of course.”

  He’s so serious I’m almost anxious for him. “Why don’t you put your mom in a nursing home? I mean, you could go have a life. Away from here. Away from Gun Creek.” He glances back at her like he doesn’t want her to hear, which is ridiculous since she can’t hear a damn thing in her state. “I’m sorry,” he adds quickly. “That’s a terrible thing to ask someone.”

  I shake my head. Is this the first genuine conversation I’ve had with a human being outside of Damon in years? Yeah. It is.

  “It’s okay,” I reply. “It’s not terrible at all. When we brought her home from the hospital after the accident, it was for palliative care. They said she’d go quickly. I’ve thought about the nursing home thing a lot. ”

  “So why don’t you do it?” he presses.

  I smile wanly as I look at my mother. She was so beautiful, once. “Because she’d die in there. It’d break her heart and she’d die alone, and I would have to live knowing that I killed my own mother.”

  We go back out to the kitchen and Chris hovers awkwardly. Everybody is awkward in this house except its inhabitants. It’s like when you step over the threshold all the air in your lungs is vacuumed out, and you’re walking around and drowning at the same time, until you can get outside and cough and take deep lungfuls of cold winter air and thank God you do
n’t have to live here.

  I pick up the knife and rinse it off under the faucet, resuming my chopping. Damon clatters about in the garage. Chris paces. I chop. Blood seeps through my flimsy Band-Aid. I watch him pace.

  Chris is a nice boy. Well, he’s a man now, isn’t he? A nice, regular guy. Single. I size him up for a moment, wondering how quickly I could go back down into the den and kill my mother. It’s not like she’s alive anyway, right? One sweep across her throat and she might finally find some peace. And that’d just leave Damon.

  I could take him by surprise, slide the blade into his midsection before he even notices I’ve murdered her. Then I could go and get into the deputy’s car and we could go and have dinner with his family while mine started to decompose here.

  I mean, not that I’d ever do that.

  “Cassie,” Damon says. I look up from where I’ve been staring at the knife in my hand.

  Chris is gone. I hear his car in the driveway. I’ve zoned out again; I do that a lot these days.

  “Cassie,” Damon repeats, his tone sharper this time. He takes the knife from me and sets it down. “You’re bleeding all over the food.”

  The Band-Aid was useless; the potatoes need to be trashed. I wrap another dishtowel around my hand and let Damon guide me to the sink. He takes the towel away and holds my hand under running water, washing away the blood so he can get a better look at my self-inflicted wound. It’s deep. It’s disgusting. The water stings, but I don’t say a word.

  “We need to get you a doctor,” Damon says. Under his breath, he mutters, “Jesus Christ. This is deep. You need stitches.”

  I glance at the knife on the counter and wonder how far away Chris is now.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LEO

  They don’t serve nachos at Lovelock.

  But they do serve them at Dana’s Grill. Gooey, thick cheese, so yellow it’s almost orange. Dana’s homemade salsa, fresh guacamole…. It’s almost like a sexual experience when the waitress slides them in front of me. All of my senses are on high alert, tucked into a back booth of the diner with a baseball cap pulled low so nobody I know will see me. I should be at home, but I don’t have to check in with the sheriff’s department until Monday morning, and I know it’ll be a shit show as soon as Ma sees me. So I’m taking the scenic route home, from the Greyhound bus stop outside the diner to Ma’s property a mile down the road. And I’m taking my fucking time.