Monsoon Season (15 page)

Alex nodded. And, for some reason, I looked at my watch.

When Alex and I were growing up, leaving the two of us home alone was disaster. At first it appeared to be normal sibling rivalry, but as we got older, the hostility became more extreme. He’d box my ears when he passed me in the kitchen, push me down the stairs. I’d throw one of his heavy sneakers across the room at him, missing him and breaking something else. We had family meetings about how my parents could keep us from killing each other. I’d have elaborate daydreams about Alex getting hit by a car and me refusing to go to the funeral.

Finally my mother installed a hook lock on my bedroom door. He figured out how to unlock it by sliding a butter knife through the gap between the door and the wall. Once when I was pushing my weight against the door to keep him out, he kicked it open and I fell back on the floor. He stood over me, holding my arms, and I kicked him in the crotch. He slapped my face so hard that my wraparound headband spun through the air and hit the opposite wall.

That was the first time I’d felt the bite of my own teeth cutting the inside of my cheek. It felt like my own body was betraying me, conspiring with the enemy.

In any other family Alex would have been the good kid. But next to Riley, forget it. His good grades weren’t enough; Riley was on the Honour Roll every quarter her entire life. She was never so much as five minutes late for curfew. She never skipped a class to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot. She didn’t challenge authority; she revelled in the order of it. She knew what was expected of her and she provided it. She was every teacher’s little darling. She stayed inside at family parties, chatting with the adults.

She wanted everyone to like her and they did. How could they not? She was perfect. She remembered everyone’s birthday and she always sent thank-you notes. She was polite and sweet and soft-spoken.

It was pathetic. It made Alex want to hurt her.

No matter how many times he made her cry, she still followed behind him, begging for friendship. She’d offer to play GI Joe or help build a fort in the woods behind the house. Alex would stick his foot out to trip her when she walked by and she’d fall and bloody a knee. He’d hold his hand over her mouth as she cried to keep their mother from hearing. He’d apologize and she’d try to be quiet so that Alex wouldn’t get into trouble. Then he’d agree to play one game of Crazy Eights. She’d sniffle quietly as she arranged her cards.

Riley had called when Alex was on his way to work. He turned the car around, pulled an illegal U-turn, and sped back to his apartment. Emily was still in bed. She had another hour before she had to get to the university where she taught Poetry and English Literature.

‘You’re back,’ she said, stretching her arms above her head and yawning.

Alex sat at the foot of the bed. He was shaking and trying to figure out how to say it like it was nothing. Maybe it was nothing.

He swallowed one too many times. It tipped her off, even in her sleepiness. She sat up and touched his arm. ‘What’s wrong?’ And when he didn’t answer right away: ‘Baby, what is it? Come on.’

Alex turned to her and smiled, pretended to make eye contact as he looked past her. ‘My sister just called.’

‘And?’

‘It’s fine,’ he said. He remembered calling his parents late at night once he had his driver’s licence, prefacing every conversation with ‘Everything’s fine,’ to keep from throwing his mother into a panic.

‘Okay.’ He felt the pressure of Emily’s grip.

‘My parents were in a car accident.’ It felt like a struggle to remember.
What had she said?
‘My dad’s okay but my mom’s in the hospital.’

She gasped and put her arms around him, squeezing hard and fast. Then she swung her legs out of the bed and stood up. ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said, like there was nothing more to discuss.

‘I don’t even know if it’s that bad. Riley sounded shaken up, but . . .’ Alex lost his train of thought.
But what?
‘But I could be back tomorrow.’ He stood up and got a duffel bag out of the closet, brushing past Emily in her cropped pyjama pants and little tank top. He started opening drawers, grabbing thoughtlessly at clothes.

‘Are you sure? I don’t mind.’

Alex kissed the top of her head. He liked doing that: she was so tiny. ‘I’m sure. I’ll call you when I get there. No sense you coming if it’s nothing.’

He hoped it was nothing.

Emily never paid attention to the weather. She didn’t own an umbrella, or even a raincoat. She never walked any faster through a parking lot just because of a few raindrops. At the beach, she never positioned herself at the right angle for tanning. She talked with her hands, crossing and uncrossing and recrossing her legs, shifting position so she could see whoever she was talking to. She’d come home with funny tan lines – the right half of her shin, an arc of pink on her neck, the backs of her thighs as white as a frog’s belly. She’d be sore, not having thought it had been bright enough to make sunscreen necessary. Alex would volunteer to rub her body with aloe, the only way she’d let him touch her tender skin.

They’d met at the beach. She’d been sitting by herself with a stack of papers. She had a cute blonde pixie haircut and she was wearing a white bikini. She had a tiny pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses on the tip of her nose.

Alex had been playing volleyball with some guys from work, but he was watching her. Every few minutes, she scribbled on the pages with a red pen. It was Alex’s good luck when a breeze caught a few and scattered them on the sand. She put her water bottle on the stack and began reaching for the stray papers.

He jogged toward her, bent to pick some up and handed them over.

‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, kneeling in the sand and squinting up at him.

‘So, what are these?’ he asked, crouching down so they were face to face.

‘Just papers for my class.’ She added the crumpled pages to the pile beneath her water bottle and settled back on her towel.

‘Where do you go?’

‘Uh, well, I don’t
go
. I teach.’

Alex chuckled at himself. ‘Oh. What do you teach?’

‘Well, these are from my freshman English class.’

‘Haven’t you heard that red ink can be traumatizing to insecure freshmen?’

She smiled. ‘Yeah, I have heard that.’

They’d been dating for about four months when the end of spring semester came. Emily had committed to a summer programme in France and Alex offered to take her to the airport. He carried her bag over his shoulder on the way to the gate. She walked beside him, in high heels, the top of her head barely reaching his chin. They sat next to each other in an unusual quiet. When her flight was announced over the PA, Alex began to stand up. Emily covered her face and her shoulders started shaking.

At first, Alex was confused. He sat down again, touched her arm. ‘What’s wrong?’

She rubbed her face and looked at him. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she said.

No one had ever cried over him before.

Alex had bought the diamond ring six months ago. It was white gold, square cut, one full carat. He’d kept it in its black velvet box in his jacket pocket. He’d waited. He was going to ask her, but it had to be perfect. It wasn’t that he had any doubt that he wanted to marry her but every time he began to formulate the words, every time he began to reach for it, he’d imagine her saying no.

So he waited.

Riley seemed to want to be alone with Mom that night. She’d stay at the hospital late, until she was ready to go to sleep. She gave Alex strict orders: get Dad some dinner and get him to bed early. He nodded and tried to arrange his face in a serious expression. Riley was worried about their father. He needed to sleep.

Mark didn’t seem tired. On the walk to the car, he didn’t wait for Alex to suggest restaurants. ‘Let’s go to Charlie’s,’ he said.

They sat across from each other at a square wooden table. The waitress set out a bowl of pretzels and wrote down their beer orders as they studied the menu. Mark was on his second beer by the time the burgers arrived. He’d asked about Emily, about work. By his third beer, he loosened up and let slip that Riley had been home most of the summer.

‘She’s been very cryptic. Your mother managed to get some of it out of her. It has to do with that guy she got hooked up with out there. I think they were living together but I never asked. Didn’t really want to know.’

Alex nodded. The don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy was in full effect in their family when it came to living with someone before marriage.

‘I’m sure your mother knew. Knows.’ Mark cleared his throat, finished his beer and went silent.

‘The police still haven’t found the driver of the other car?’ Alex asked, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘They’re not going to.’

‘I suppose.’

‘There was no other car,’ Mark said, holding up his empty beer mug and nodding at the waitress.

Alex thought his father had misunderstood. ‘The car that swerved into your lane. The one that pushed you off the road.’

‘There was no other car,’ Mark said again, looking Alex in the eye.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Here you go, sir,’ said the waitress, setting another beer in front of Mark.

He smiled at her, watched her walk away. Then he turned to his son. ‘I fell asleep,’ he said, lifting the mug to his lips.

‘You fell asleep?’

‘Yes. I fucking fell asleep.’ Mark slammed the mug against the table. It sloshed over the sides. His eyes were wet. It scared Alex that he might cry.

‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ Alex said, mopping up the beer with a napkin. ‘Riley told me—’

‘Riley doesn’t know.’

Alex just stared at him across the table.

‘Don’t tell her.’

Alex nodded, grateful for something to do.

Mark fumbled with his keys at the door. Then he staggered backward a few steps, doubled over and puked on the porch. Alex grabbed his shoulders and pushed him inside. Turned out Riley hadn’t locked the door anyway.

Mark could hold his liquor. Alex had never seen him like that. It must have been the sleep deprivation or the stress or the Catholic guilt. Maybe a combination. Alex nearly had to carry him up the stairs to his room. He lay flat on his back, closed his eyes, and seemed to fall asleep immediately. Alex took off his shoes and threw a blanket over him. Then he went back outside and stepped carefully over the threshold, holding his breath.

Alex debated whether or not to turn on the outside light, afraid it would pour through Riley’s window, waking her up. It wasn’t so much a matter of discretion: he didn’t want to have that conversation. In the end, it was easier than he’d thought it would be to find the bucket Mark used for car washing. Alex filled it three times, threw the water over the porch and, satisfied, went to sleep on the couch.

Riley went back to the hospital early the next morning. She didn’t know that Mark slept until noon. When his father came downstairs, Alex knew better than to suggest breakfast. They didn’t talk a lot on the drive, conserving their energy for the day ahead.

Riley met them in the visitors’ room. She was talking fast and not making eye contact. Their mom had woken up. She had looked Riley right in the face and asked, ‘Are you the Mother of God?’

And Riley had responded, ‘No, Mom, I’m afraid I’m not.’ The way she told the story, it was like it hadn’t even startled her, like it was funny that their mother would just go completely crazy.

All Alex could think was, what if his mother had asked
him
that, asked him if he was Jesus, or something. It made his stomach flip. He didn’t think it was funny at all. He had just been hoping and praying that she would wake up. He hadn’t realized that maybe he should have been more specific.

First they said it was the medication; then it was something about her sodium levels. Alex strained to listen when the doctors talked to Mark, to read between the lines. They never exactly said that it would get better, at least not that he heard, but that was what his father said they’d said. That was what he told everyone.

Mom slept a lot. Alex preferred to visit her while she was asleep. He could sit beside her and count her breaths. He imagined each one was a step closer to her being healed.