Chapter 31

31

Joey

Ignoring Nick’s calls and text is eating me alive. The guilt is an acid burning through my stomach, my heart, my bones, and straight into my soul. He’s worried. He has to be. I left without a word and it wasn’t what we had planned. My ass was on the bus for an hour before I realized I should have called him.

I’m not good at relationships. This is exactly the kind of shit I was worried about. He’s going to be pissed and he has every right to be. I would be furious if he had done this to me.

By the time I get to the terminal, I’m an anxious mess. Between worrying about Nick’s reaction to me running home with zero communication and the berating I know is coming from Mom, I want to puke.

I get off the bus, grab my bag from underneath, and quickly find my sister. Charlotte throws her arms around me and immediately starts sobbing. I have to drop my bag to hug her back. Fear wraps itself around my throat and squeezes my heart.

“What? What happened? Is Matt okay?” I want to shake her. What the fuck? I’ve been stuck on a fucking bus for hours and no one updated me of a major change?

“Matt’s stupid ass is fine.” She studders through the tears. “I’m just so glad you’re here and I don’t have to do this alone.”

I sag with relief and my knees damn near give out. Fuck.

“I’ve got it now, you can breathe.” I squeeze her for another minute before she pushes me away, frustration and anger on her face when she slaps at me.

“You shouldn’t be here! Matt isn’t your problem! I told you not to come back.” Her emotions are going to give me whiplash. “What about school? You can’t miss classes. You’re almost done.”

“It’s spring interterm. No classes. I finished my last final this morning, I have, like, a week before classes start again.” I grab my bag and usher her toward the parking lot. I can’t drag this out any longer. Like ripping a Band-Aid off, I have to just go and deal with Mom and see what Matt’s deal is. “How’s Matt? Is he home?”

“Tomorrow. He broke his right leg and had to go in and do something, I don’t know. He should be released tomorrow, but you know they’re going to give him narcotics, so you’ll have to lock up the pills.” She’s bitter about it all and I wish I had the mental space to be mad about it too. Anger gets me nowhere. I’m…resigned. It’s the way my life is and I just have to deal with it.

“Seriously, why did you come?” Char asks once we’re on the road heading toward our childhood house. It’s not home. It hasn’t been home since before Dad was diagnosed. Now it’s a building that holds my worst memories. I wish it would burn down. Maybe then Mom could move on.

“I had to. You know I did.”

I lean my head on the headrest and sigh. My soul is tired and all I want is Nick. I should have asked him to come with me. How fucked is it that I didn’t even think about calling him until he called me?

“You didn’t. Am I happy to see you? Yeah, I am. I missed you, but you shouldn’t have come back.” The dashboard lights illuminate her face enough to see a tear trail down her cheek. “We have to let him hit rock bottom.” Her words are thick with emotion, and it breaks my heart to hear. My fearless, sassy sister is hurting and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t fix Matt, logically I know that, but I want to so fucking bad. Him being a mess feels like my fault. I was trying to navigate my father’s death while trying to pass my classes and raise my siblings. Char was able to pull her shit together, but Matt wasn’t. He lashed out and I was never able to get through to him. Not really. It’s my biggest failure.

I failed my father.

Clearing the knot from my throat, I look out the window so I don’t have to face her when I say my next words. “I can’t give up on him.”

Mom’s car is in the cracked driveway when we get to the house. The porch light is off but it’s probably because the bulb is burned out. The grass in the front is mostly brown dirt with some patches of weeds and the porch is starting to droop in the center. It’s depressing. Grief soaked into every crack of the foundation, anger poisoned the air, and failure rusted the pipes, turning my home toxic. There’s nothing good here. Not anymore.

“You can stay with me, if you want,” Char offers. “Wait to face her until you have Matt as a buffer.”

“No,” I sigh, soul weary. “It’s better to just get it over with.” I open the car door and grab my duffle from the back seat. I wait on the uneven sidewalk until my sister has driven off and I can’t see her taillights anymore before I walk across what used to be the lawn to the wood steps. I learned how to play street hockey out here with my dad. He taught me to play goalie, how to read people and anticipate their next moves before letting me play another position. It wasn’t long before we had a whole team of kids out here being coached by him.

Raising my hand to knock on the door, I freeze. I don’t think I’ve ever knocked on this door before and I don’t know how to feel about it. Am I welcome? Probably not, but when was the last time I was in the last decade?

The TV is on but I can’t tell what’s playing. Mom is probably sitting on the left side of the couch with a folding table in front of her with her dinner, a beer, and the remote. That’s where she settles after work. Always has. Dad used to joke that she would die in that spot, now I kind of hope she does.

Does that make me a bad person? I shouldn’t wish that about my own mother. A grieving widow who lost herself when she buried him. Since I’ve never been in her shoes, I shouldn’t judge her, but what about us? What about her kids? She may have been physically here, paying for groceries and clothes and the mortgage, but mentally, she abandoned us. She left us in the ocean during a storm and told us to sink or swim.

I knock on the door and wait. Seeing if she’ll open the door or just yell from the couch. Does she expect me to be here tonight? I texted her that Char was going to pick me up at the bus depot but she didn’t respond.

The door opens and the yellow light from the lamp on the half-circle table in the entryway spills out. She looks older. Gray hair and wrinkles and gaunt. Like there’s no life left in her. No joy.

“About time.” She turns around and heads to her spot on the couch, dismissing me and my existence. I guess I should have expected it. The only time she remembers me is if she needs to yell at me for messing something up. If she had to deal with Matt or Char, she remembered me.

All I’m good for is keeping her responsibilities out of her face.

With a sigh, I come inside and close the door. The house hasn’t changed in years. The couch is sagging on the side she sits on every day, the carpet is worn from the furniture being in the same spot for decades, and I no longer remember what the original color of the walls was but it’s dingy and dusty now. The house isn’t piled with trash but I doubt it’s been deep cleaned since I moved out.

“Do you know what time Matt is supposed to be released tomorrow?” My voice is quiet and calm. A hope she won’t snap and rip into me but at this point I’m not sure which is worse, being completely ignored or yelled at. At least if she’s yelling at me, she sees me.

Mom huffs like me asking the question is the biggest inconvenience. It makes me drop my head toward the floor, looking at my feet instead of at her. I may be six-foot-two and a defender for a college hockey team but right now, I’m a gangly teenager who hasn’t grown into his body yet.

“It depends on what the doctor says during rounds tomorrow. You’ll have to answer your phone when someone calls you.” The harsh tone of her voice tells me exactly how annoyed she is that sometimes I’m not able to answer when she calls.

I nod and step past her to head up the stairs to my room. At least, I think it’s still my room. Since nothing else in this place has changed, I doubt she did anything with it.

I’m halfway up the stairs when she speaks again. “Get some rest, wouldn’t want you to be too tired to go pick up your brother from the hospital after he fell off a roof and had surgery.”

The condemnation she throws at me is another weight on my shoulders. I should do better, do more, try harder. Matt is like this because of me. It’s my fault. I’m a failure.

In the dark, I pass Matt’s and Char’s rooms on the way to my own. There are no shoes, crumbled school papers, or jackets on the floor. There’s no cologne and perfume scents fighting for dominance. The pictures on the walls show us as little kids, but nothing past it. Sometimes I think Mom has been frozen in that era all these years. Back before I became a teenager. When Matt still wanted to be the baby and coddled. When Charlotte would beg for girls’ days with Mom and sleepovers.

Opening my door at the end of the hall, I’m surprised at how easily it opens. It’s been over a year since I was here. Has someone come in here since then? The air is musty and when I flip the light on, dust dances in the space. It looks just like I left it. Hockey posters still up on the walls that I got from Dad right before he passed. The corners have been ripped a hundred times so pins are a good inch from the edges which are curling with age. The bed is stripped down to the old mattress but at this point, I don’t care. I put my duffle down on the dresser that no longer holds clothes and is missing half of the knobs and sink down onto the floor.

I don’t want to be here. Every breath is tinged with pent-up emotions I was never allowed to have, building up in my lungs. Soon I’ll suffocate on them. Anger, guilt, shame, worthlessness, grief, sadness. Ugly emotions that no one ever wants to talk about or feel. No, just shove those into a little box and pretend to be happy. Fake it till you make it.

I didn’t make it. I went numb. And I can feel myself sinking into it again.