Stepping Into Sunlight (31 page)
I forced an answering smile, but it came out as a wince. “Not funny, Alex.”
“Sorry. Look. I know I have a lot to explain. But it’s your turn. I want to know how you’re doing. I got some garbled version from Mom—just enough to make me worry.”
My lips flickered upward without effort. “I can imagine.” Suddenly, Alex slipped back into place as my older brother—the brother I’d always confided in when I was a little girl. I took another gulp of coffee and launched into my story of Tom’s deployment, the challenges of moving to a new part of the country, and the shooting. He was easy to talk to, although I skated carefully away from my fears that I might break down one day as he had. A comment like that didn’t seem very polite.
He listened with his whole body, focused like an English pointer on a duck. I finished my summary with the recent visit to the police precinct. He nodded with something like admiration. “Imagine: all my years on the street with no efforts at personal safety, but it’s my cautious, reliable sister who’s nearly shot. The world’s a funny place.”
“Yeah. Real funny.”
He sobered. “Is it getting any better?”
“It was rough for a while, but I think I’ve just about got it licked.”
Alex watched me. He didn’t take my confident statement as a hint to brush aside the topic. Didn’t hurry to a new subject. Didn’t offer advice. Just waited.
A quiet voice nudged me.
Tell him the truth.
He’d been open about his own struggles. I didn’t need bravado with him. A fellow visitor to the dark valleys wouldn’t despise me for admitting my fears. “I had a really bad nightmare after I went to the police station. And last night—” I clamped my lips together. Idiot! Don’t bring up mental hospitals.
“Spiders? Snakes? Swirling down the drain at the neighborhood pool?” he teased.
I sputtered. “Those nightmares were your fault. You told me that if I didn’t kick hard enough, the drain would suck me down. I had bad dreams for months.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but you learned how to swim.”
I stuck out my tongue.
“Watch out or your face will freeze that way. Come on, sis. It helps to talk.”
A throw pillow captured my attention, and I fingered the fringe along the edges. “In the dream I was in a hospital. A mental hospital.” I glanced up.
His brow furrowed. “Ooh. Super deluxe nightmare. That’s about as bad as it gets. What happened?”
“Some orderlies were dragging me to a room where they were shocking people. I couldn’t get away. They were going to scramble my brain cells, and I kept fighting.” I shook my head. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
“No. Electro-convulsive therapy is a scary idea.” His voice rasped, and he reached for his coffee and drained it.
“Did you . . . did they . . ?”
“Yep. I should have known Mom and Dad never told you. They were horrified when the doctors recommended it. Appalled that neighbors might find out their son was that defective.”
“Oh, Alex. You were never defective. You were brilliant and sensitive and so terribly sad. There were days when I wanted to yell in your ears—force happy thoughts into that sad place inside your skull.”
He grinned. “It probably would have worked better than everything else they tried. But why were you having nightmares about ECT?”
I gnawed a cuticle on my pinkie finger. “Maybe because I’ve been so . . . unpredictable lately. I kind of figured it would be my turn next.”
“Your turn?”
“To go . . . you know, crazy.”
To my surprise he leaned back and laughed. “Penny Penguin, you are the sanest person I ever knew. You can’t have changed that much in all these years.”
I hadn’t heard that nickname in decades.
“Oh, yeah? Well what about not being able to sleep for days, and then spending weeks doing nothing but sleeping. And the botanical garden—some guy bumped me and I thought I was having a heart attack . . .” Suddenly, my words couldn’t come out fast enough. Alex had plenty of experience at the frayed edges of sanity. I told him each bit of evidence that I was nuts. No matter what I admitted, he didn’t seem alarmed. He continued to nod, listen, and reassure.
When I ran out of proof of my frazzled mind, I rubbed my temples where my headache had reasserted itself. “You can see why I’m worried. I’ve even been going to a support group.”
He didn’t laugh. “Sounds like a good plan. I wish I’d accepted help sooner. But Penny, you’re not crazy. You’re having a normal reaction to incredible stress. You’re already improving.”
“I forgot to tell you about the tinfoil helmets I made so the aliens couldn’t read my thoughts.”
His eyes widened.
I grinned. “Gotcha.”
He groaned and clasped his head, tilting back to look at the ceiling. “For this I drove all the way to Virginia?”
I giggled. “Are you hungry?” We’d been talking for over an hour, and lunchtime was creeping closer.
“Now you’re talking.” He surged to his feet. “Where’s your bathroom?”
I sent him down the hall and hustled into the kitchen to whip up some fried-egg sandwiches. He’d loved them when he was living at home.
A few minutes later he meandered into the kitchen and sniffed the air with appreciation. “I should have gotten in touch a long time ago.” Behind the breezy words, a shade of genuine regret colored his voice.
“Make yourself useful. Can you get out the iced tea?”
“Got any Coke?”
I stiffened. “I don’t drink it anymore. I was at the convenience store to get some that day . . . when the . . .”
Instead of a murmur of sympathy, he tsked. He found two glasses and squeezed past me to open the fridge. “Sis, you’re doing a great job healing, but you know there’s something you still need to do.”
“Drink Coke? Puh-lease.”
He laughed. “No. But you said you haven’t gone back. Where it happened.”
A cold draft hit the back of my neck, and I whipped around to close the refrigerator door—but it was already shut. “That’s not gonna happen. Do you want cheese on yours?”
“Of course. But, sis, you really—”
“Nah-ah. Your turn. No food unless you promise to tell me how you got better.”
“Blackmail! Extortion!” He pulled out a chair at the table in the alcove.
“This from the guy who hid my diary until I convinced Mom we needed a swing set.”
“It worked.”
Laughing, reminiscing, and filling our mouths with gooey egg and cheese, the years fell away. He told me about Cindy’s new baby, how much older Mom and Dad seemed to him, and revealed snippets of how he’d spent the preceding years. He nagged me to consider facing down the Quick Corner and paged through my photo album, admiring my wedding photos and Bryan’s baby pictures. It wasn’t until he glanced at his watch and pushed away from the table that I realized he hadn’t explained how his life had stopped its downward spiral.
“I need to go, sis. I’ve got a meeting tonight, and my car’s been overheating, so I wanted to take it in to get looked at first.”
“Bryan is dying to meet you.”
“I’m free again tomorrow. I could take you both out for dinner.”
A generous offer. His car was rusty, and his jacket was worn. Wherever the years had taken him, a win on
Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire
hadn’t been one of his stops. “Sounds good. No, wait. I have my victims’ group tomorrow night.” I chewed my lower lip. “Dr. Marci said I should invite you. She thought you’d have some insights for our group.”
“Insights?” His chuckle was warm. “Sure. Why not? But you still have to eat. What time is the meeting?”
“Seven.”
“Okay. I’ll pick you both up at five. Where do you like to eat out around here?”
“I haven’t had time to try many places.” Eating out didn’t mesh well with agoraphobia, but I didn’t bother reminding him of that. “I’ll do a Google search for someplace close to the victim support center, okay? What do you like?”
“Anything I don’t have to make for myself.”
“Maybe there’s a Cheesecake Factory around here. You could do with some fattening up.”
“So could you,” he shot back. “It’s a deal. Major calories. I’ll be here at five tomorrow.”
He breezed out the door, and his car sputtered as it pulled away. I collapsed on the couch. Memories and emotions swirled like dust in a cyclonic vacuum, and I closed my eyes against their force.
“So, is he big? Does he play football?” When Bryan got home from school, his questions fired at me faster than I could follow in my post-nap fog.
“He’s pretty tall. I didn’t ask if he’s played football lately. Bryan, where’s the costume information?” His classroom newsletter had warned parents to watch for the list of supplies needed for the upcoming Thanksgiving play.
“My backpack. Know what? He could stay here until Dad gets home. Then he could fix things, and play football with me, and lift heavy things. Stuff like that.”
I couldn’t wait to e-mail Tom about Bryan’s description of the male role in the family. “Honey, Uncle Alex has his own life.” Although what that comprised was still a mystery to me.
“Did he like Gimli and Legolas?”
“Go get me the costume list.”
He scampered to his room and back in record time. “How many seconds did that take, Mom?”
“I wasn’t counting.”
He huffed loudly and planted fists on his hips. “Count this time.”
“But I—”
Paper still clutched in his hand, he tore back up the hall.
“One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi . . .”
He skidded into me before I reached eight. Triumph flushed his face as he thrust the crumpled paper at me. “I’m fast, aren’t I, Mom? Did Uncle Alex like playing with Gimli and Legolas?”
I smoothed the page, and my eyes crossed at the long list of suggestions for costume pieces. “He didn’t meet them this time.”
When the silence stretched, I tore my gaze away from reading. Bryan’s arms were crossed, and his scowl was fierce. “Mom. Why didn’t you show him my hamsters?”
Think fast, Supermom.
“I knew you’d want to introduce them to him yourself. He’s coming over tomorrow.”
Bryan leapt onto the couch, somersaulted across it, and bounded up to stand on the cushions with one foot planted on the arm. “Yippee!”
Last time I’d watched nature shows on PBS, the silverback gorilla pounded his chest in the same stance.
Time to stake out my own territory.
“Bryan, no jumping on the furniture. We’ve gotta figure out this costume.”
He plopped down to floor level. “You can just sew it. Can I play with Jim-Bob before supper? What’s for supper? Know what? I don’t think you should make grits anymore.”
He charged through the kitchen and out the back door before I could answer.
I pulled out my notebook and grabbed my pen.
Reminder:
shop for Pilgrim costume.
I finished reading the parent letter.
Bake
brownies. Sign forms. Schedule after-school rehearsal
. Basic errands were still harder than normal, and I faced new challenges as we drew closer to the play. I also needed to go in to meet Mrs. Pimblott. We’d spoken on the phone, and she assured me that some of Bryan’s attention problems had improved. But I couldn’t keep avoiding the basics of parenting—teacher meetings, being a room mother, school events.
I sighed as I closed my notebook. First I had to face the immediate concern: supper. Next came introducing Alex to my support group. And soon I’d have to do something about my car that was running dangerously low on gas. Weariness pressed into me like the lead apron at the dentist’s office.
I booted up the computer and ordered a pizza.
A
SHLEY SULKED, ARMS CROSSED
. “So who’s this?”
Henry, Camille, and Daniel all stared at me, waiting for an answer. The conference table felt smaller with an extra chair pulled up to it. The air smelled like burnt dust again. The victim support center really needed to get the furnace vents cleaned, but considering the flaking pea-soup paint, I wasn’t placing bets that it would happen anytime soon.
Dr. Marci placed her pen and steno pad on the table and folded her hands over them. “I asked Penny to invite her brother. He’s in town for a visit.”
Daniel tried a small smile, and then dropped his gaze to his corduroy pants. Camille ran a finger under the collar of her sweater set and glanced Alex’s direction. “Well, isn’t that nice. Where ya’ll from?”
Alex leaned back in his chair. Wherever the years had taken him, he seemed to have acquired the ability to feel at ease in a new group. “I’ve been living in Texas. Working as a counselor at an in-patient treatment center.”
My mouth gaped. I hadn’t gotten that much info from him in a whole afternoon of probing.
Henry frowned. “This is a group for crime victims. What are you a victim of?”
Alex chuckled and rubbed his arms, probably feeling the chill in the room. “There have been a few traumas along the way. But crime? The worst has been what I did to myself.”
“We’re about specifics.” Ashley’s smirk wavered somewhere between grudging acceptance and challenge.
Alex turned clear eyes her direction. “Okay. My name is Alex, and I’m an addict. It’s been six years since my last fix.” He spoke calmly. Not defensive, not hiding in shame, simply stating his brand of suffering and failure.