by Bromberg, K
Ten minutes seemed right.
Darla’s phone rang and she thrust her hand into her back pocket and dug around, finally pulling it out and flipping it open. “Yeah?” she said. “Okay, yeah Amy. What’s up?”
Why was Amy calling Darla when she wasn’t answering any of my texts?
I looked pointedly at Darla, raising my eyebrows when she glanced at me. In response she frowned, standing up and walking across the living room away from me and Trevor, pressing the phone hard against her head and using a finger to cover her spare ear.
“You okay?” she asked. “Yeah. What? Why do you assume that I would know? So you called me?” Her voice got louder as her tone became incredulous.
And angry. This was not a happy conversation.
I turned, throwing one arm behind the back of the couch, all my muscles feeling tense. Whatever was going on wasn’t good.
Trevor caught my eye and shrugged. “What’s up?” he mouthed.
“Don’t know,” I said in a low voice.
“You just assumed that someone like me,” Darla said in a mocking tone, “would be able to help you with this?” I could hear Darla’s heavy breathing, her outrage taking over the room.
Trevor grabbed the remote, pausing Charlie in mid-scream on the screen.
“Okay, alright,” Darla said, her voice progressively more compassionate. It was a tone that very few people could pull off, simultaneously pissed and nice. “I’m coming. I’m coming, and we’ll figure this out.”
She flipped the phone shut, avoided eye contact with me, and addressed Trevor directly.
“I have to go. We’ll have to watch the rest of this later.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Is Amy okay?”
“She’s fine,” Darla said, but the fact that she wouldn’t look at me told me that Amy wasn’t fine, that she was anything but fine. My mind raced. Was Amy sick? Was it me? Had she changed her mind? Had something gone wrong? Was this her way of reaching out to Darla?
“What do you mean?” I asked Darla. “Why are you so upset that Amy called you?”
Darla opened and closed her mouth so many times she started to look like a fish that you put on the wall that sings when you walk by. “I can’t explain, Sam,” she said, “I’m sorry, but it’s none of your business.”
“I’m going with you,” I said as Darla grabbed a lightweight sweater to go out the front door.
She halted and turned to me slowly. The blend of anger and determination in her eyes stopped me. Even Trevor took a step back; she was that startling.
“Sometimes people have business that they don’t want other people to know about,” she said slowly. “Amy called me. Not you. So, let me be, Sam. Let me go and help her because I’m the one who has to go in and clean up the crime scene.”
“There was a crime?” I said.
She held up her hand, weighing her words, the expression on her face almost comical. “I don’t want to say whether there was a crime or not, but let’s just say Amy is safe.”
“What’s going on?” Trevor asked, folding his arms across his chest, looking pissed.
“Look,” Darla said, “she’s not pregnant, she’s not physically injured, she’s not... it’s not as if she lost her phone up her hoo-ha.”
Trevor and I looked blankly at each other. Sometimes Darla’s Ohioisms were baffling.
Darla waved her hand, exasperated. “What I mean is, she’s not harmed, but if you don’t let me get going, you’re just going to make it all worse. I’ll make sure she calls you.” Darla reached out and touched my arm, squeezing it with assurance. “I promise.”
And with that she walked out the door, leaving me with more questions than answers.
Leaving me alone to wonder.
Amy
“You fucking piece of shit,” I hissed in Evan’s ear.
“Ooh, your girlfriend’s pissed,” said one of the guys in the waiting room as the guard brought Evan out. The guy held two fingers up to his lips and wagged his tongue between them. I rolled my eyes with disgust and turned away. Darla was waiting in yet another room. She’d walked me through the bond process.
It turned out Evan’s bail was $7,500 which meant that somehow I needed to come up with seven hundred fifty cash, and sign over some sort of guarantee. The only thing I had with that kind of value was my car. Once I realized I didn’t need it in the Fenway, I stored it back home at Mom’s—with strict instructions NOT to let Evan use it. It was paid for, and the blue book value was just over $7,000. Between next month’s rent from my checking account and the title to my car, I was able to bail him out.
I didn’t worry that the entitled little son-of-a-bitch would skip on me. Evan wasn’t the type to forge out on his own in the big bad world.
I had to hand it to Darla—she might have been angry that I called her, that I made the grand mental leap that she was the one person in my life that could walk me through bailing somebody out of jail – but I was right.
She was.
Keeper of secrets and finder of smartphone extractors, she also was the only person in my life who had any experience with this kind of thing, or, at least, that I knew had any experience with this kind of thing. Darla knew what to say to the judicial clerks, knew what to say when we called a bail bondsman, knew how to tell me where and when to gather my things.
And here we were, a handful of hours later. It was 9 AM, jail had opened, and Evan was barking bullshit in my ear.
“Thank you Amy, thank you so much Amy,” he said, hugging me. “You wouldn’t believe the kinds of assholes in there.”
“I’m staring at one.”
“Ha ha, no really. It’s not like I did anything.”
“What did you do, Evan?”
“Like, nothing!”
“The police don’t routinely arrest and detain you, and charge you with shit for doing nothing. It’s not like you were sitting in front of the grocery store selling Girl Scout cookies now, were you?” Darla cracked.
“Who the fuck are you?” Evan snapped at her.
“I’m your fairy bailmother.”
“She’s the person who figured all this out Evan, so shut the hell up.”
He pulled his head back in surprise as we walked. Evan looked like our dad; tall, lanky, with slightly stooped shoulders, and no neck. It was a strange combination. With Dad’s brown hair, just like mine, and Mom’s blue eyes, there was a pinched quality to him. He had just turned eighteen, and all the juvie records were about to be put behind him.
This one, though? He was so nailed.
“What did you do?” I said, my voice like ice chips rattling around in a cup.
“I just stored some stuff for a friend —”
“Stored?”
Silence.
“You’re a dealer?” I groaned.
“No. More like held on to something else while driving. And then I got pulled over for ‘reckless driving’ and had more than the legal limit on me.” He threw up a hand to shield his eyes as we walked out the main doors, as if aliens were descending to take him away. I wished they were.
“Shut up!” Darla said. “You don’t exactly announce that in front of cop central.”
Evan glowered at her, but clammed up. She was right. A few hatted heads turned, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
“I was in Arlington,” he continued, as if that explained anything.
“You were in Arlington? You don’t live anywhere near Arlington.”
“I have friends in lots of places,” he said smugly. He grinned like a character in a John Hughes movie, the pastel-suited guy with the feathered, flippy hair. The guy you knew within three seconds of his introduction, was going to be the bad guy.
I went cold. “What kind of drug, exactly, were you ‘storing’?”
He shrugged. “Some heroin.”
“Oh, God,” Darla groaned. I joined her.
“Fuck off,” he sputtered.
“Good luck getting home. Call Mom for a ride.” I turne
d to walk away, my stomach shredded.
“You can’t tell Mom.” He grabbed my arm, hard. I could tell it would bruise. It wouldn’t be the first time Evan had hurt me, but it would be the last.
Darla grabbed his wrist, yanked his hand off of my arm, and twisted it. He howled in pain, and two cops nearby watched. I waved and smiled. They still watched.
“You touch her like that again and I will get two guys to come over to your house and kick the ever-loving-fucking-shit out of you, and your balls will end up so far up your throat you’ll think you’re suckin’ on two cough drops. You got that?” she hissed.
All we could hear was our breathing, a straining, primal whine underscoring Evan’s. In the bright daylight I could see how pale he was, how sickly, but his eyes were calculating and clever still.
Not afraid. He wasn’t actually afraid of anything.
Evan wasn’t real unless every speck of attention was focused on him. He was enjoying the idea that he could engage us in this nastiness. Everything he had done was based on some brokenness in him that would never heal.
Evan would never heal, and Mom would never change. Like the slightest bump that sends a perfect ball of dandelion seeds reeling out into space and time, Evan’s oily half-grin was all it took to knock off a lifetime habit of going along with this.
I almost wanted to thank him for the clarity.
Instead, I picked up my phone, went into my contacts and hit the most familiar number. She picked up on the third ring.
“Hi, Mom.”
“No. No!” Evan shouted.
“Mom, I’m here at Middlesex County Jail. Evan was arrested on drug charges last night. I put up my car as bail for him. I thought you would like to know.” I hung up before she could respond, even though of course she’d just call me right back.
“You put your car up?” Evan’s smug tone returned. Bending over, with his hands on his knees, he hacked out a laugh so derisive it made Darla flinch.
“What’s so funny?” I barked, ignoring the phone when, as I knew it would, it buzzed.
“Your car is totaled. It’s a junker.”
“What? What are you talking about? It’s fine. It’s at Mom’s. I left it… it’s in the driveway.” I stammered as I began to realize what he was saying.
His laughter faded out as Darla gave him a death stare in triplicate.
“What did you do to it?” she asked in a cold voice that fairly slithered.
I inhaled so fast and hard I sounded like I was having an asthma attack. “You drove my car?” I screeched. “You stole the keys from Mom?”
Darla’s face changed, her cheeks going pale, face turning sympathetic as she touched my shoulder. She said nothing, but she seemed to know something I didn’t understand.
“I didn’t steal anything. Mom gave me the keys.”
“Liar! Mom swore she would never...”
Oh, geez.
How could I be so stupid?
Bzzzz. My phone was still ringing. I could see that it was Mom. I cut the call off.
“Go away, Evan. Just go away. I’m done with you. Done.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. Not my fault you’re a sucker.”
“And you’re paying me back for this!” I screamed at him as he strode off.
A middle finger was my response.
Darla gently nudged my shoulder and guided me toward the T.
We were done here.
I left the jail that day, climbed on the subway, and didn’t say another damn word to Darla until we were almost home.
My phone buzzed in my pocket off and on the entire ride as my mother desperately demanded my attention, and I ignored it.
“You don’t have to go back to my apartment with me,” I told Darla, who was now buried in a magazine that she’d picked up back at the station.
“It’s okay,” she said, shrugging. “Sometimes it helps to have someone there, even if you don’t feel like talking.”
“How do you know that?” I asked her.
“Know what?”
“How do you know that right now that’s what I need?”
Her eyes shifted a bit and she frowned, rolling the question around a bit with her tongue inside her teeth. Her nostrils flared, and then she said, “It’s what comes natural.”
It’s what comes natural, I thought. What came natural to me?
My phone rang again. I picked it up and decided to face my mom. “Hello,” I said, knowing and holding the phone about three inches from my ear.
“Evan! What happened to Evan?” she screamed.
Stay calm, I told myself, remember, you are no longer emotionally involved.
“I left Evan at the Middlesex County Jail,” I recounted. “He might need a ride. The two of you need to figure this out. Then again, it’s not like you can pick him up in my car.”
Mom let out a string of words that made no sense. Darla held her palms up and made a motion with her head that indicated she didn’t understand a word Mom was saying. Neither did I. The emotion was clear.
“What happened?” Mom finally said.
“Ask him.”
“Amy!” The chiding outrage didn’t work this time. Nothing. The sound of her voice smacked up against an emotional vacuum in me.
Another string of high pitched shrieking and groaning came out of the phone, and it surprised me to realize that’s all it was. There were no words, no sentences, and as Mom went on and on, I summoned my new clarity. It would always be like this.
It would always be like this.
Evan sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and Mom was right there, eager to enable him.
I couldn’t do anything. I could sign the title of my (trashed) car over as his bond and still get screamed at. I could probably give up my first born child, and it wouldn’t be enough. As Mom babbled into the phone, a comforting detachment seeped into my bones.
I didn’t have to play this game anymore.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Mom fumed into the phone. “My God, do you know what this would do to me at work, if people knew that Evan—that—well, there must be some mistake.”
“There’s no mistake, Mom.”
“Well, how did he—how did he get out of jail?”
“He had a $7500 bail set, Mom. He called me, so I went down there and paid $750 and put my car up as bond.”
“You… what? Why would he call you and not me?”
Unbelievable. Nothing about the crashed car. Nothing about my rescuing Evan. Nothing.
Yesterday—earlier today, even—I would have hoped that my sacrifice would have been acknowledged, that my mom would give me some attention for being the good girl. That was the dynamic that had been set up so many years ago, but now?
Recounting facts for her was just recounting the new emotional reality for myself. Just a series of factual statements, of transactions: $750, a car title, a statement of fact.
No hope.
“I—I mean,” Mom was sputtering, “I’m sorry that you chose to do that. You could have called me and I could have come down there and taken care of it.”
“I could have done that, but I didn’t. Evan wanted me to take care of it without letting you know.”
“Well, you should know better than to—”
Click.
If I wanted to be verbally abused, I didn’t need to hear it from her through my phone, did I? She’d already planted her voice in my head.
It was a weed, a vine that grew in darkness, tendrils digging deeper than I ever imagined.
The phone rang again. This time I really was done. I turned it off.
A day or two ago I would have started crying at this point, but again, once you let go of hope the only tears left are for the person you once were—who had hope.
Without it, there’s nothing to cry about.
The train lurched a hard left, and then it stopped, bringing us to my station.
“You okay?” Darla asked.
“I can take it from here,” I said. “You
go on to Trevor, and thank you. Thank you so much for everything that you did. It’s been a hell of a two days. I was really wrong about you,” I admitted.
“Go on,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “I got all day to hear this.”
Wisecracking Darla had faded. The woman standing before me was more vulnerable. More human. I really had misjudged her, and my words didn’t come easily.
Probably because the feelings didn’t, either.
“That day you met me on the subway? I’d just moved to the city. My boyfriend and I split up a few months ago and my mom was... well, you know more about what my family is really like now.”
“I can only imagine. Hovermom with a blind spot for that piece of shit,” she said, nodding.
I snorted. “That is the most cogent explanation of my family I’ve ever heard.”
“And you’ve been carrying a torch for Sam since high school,” she ventured, rolling her wrist in a circle, encouraging me.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I have. There’s so much more to it, and then there’s Liam – ”
“What does Liam got to do with anything?”
“Next time I shove a phone up my crotch I’ll tell you about Liam on the cab ride.”
A hearty laugh and kinder eyes were her answer. “Get back to the whole ‘You’re the greatest, Darla’ speech.”
“You are,” I said simply. “You’ve helped me out of two of the most bizarre, embarrassing, horrifying experiences of my life – in the same damn week – and I barely know you.”
“It’s called being a f-r-i-e-n-d,” she answered, spelling out the word.
“Most of my friends, I... I couldn’t go to with this.”
She let that sentence just hang there.
“Thank you for going places with me that most people wouldn’t. You’re a very special person, and I appreciate everything you’ve done,” I finished.
The words that came out of my mouth were what I had hoped to hear from my own mom, and Darla seemed to recognize that, throwing her arms around me in a quick hug and then scampering off.
She’d respected exactly what I’d asked of her. Maybe that was her secret.
She just did what you needed most.
