Unburying Hope (24 page)

“I know.
 
Really.
 
What job am I going to do after the crazy shit I saw and did
in Afghanistan?”

“You could be a building contractor.”

“No one is building in
D-town.
 
It’s only demolition, and
only of broken down buildings or houses overgrown by bushes.
 
And now the city is using bulldozers,
no need for workers.
 
I want to
work for myself.
 
I think I can be
a success, because everything will depend on me.”

She smiled at him, “You’re
wonderful.
 
I bet you could have
your own business.”

“You are the only one who
sees it.”
 
He said ruefully.

“What about your mom?”

“We don’t talk.”

“Is she still in that
house?”

“Nope,” his voice choked.
 
“Lost it to a bank.”

“Damn.
 
That is terrible.”

“Yeah.
 
She lived in it for twenty-eight years
and always paid her mortgage on time but the bank sold off the note and the new
bank called the loan when it didn’t get payments from the old bank.
 
No one gave her the new bank’s info, so
she kept sending in the money to the old bank, who kept the money and didn’t
pass it on.”

“That should be
illegal.
 
Can’t she fight it?”

“You can’t fight
banks.
 
They lose paperwork, point
fingers.
 
She was evicted a few
years ago.
 
I’d been sending her my
paycheck since my 3
^rd
deployment, since…”
 
His voice wavered and fell silent.
 
”But she said she wanted to live simply, that an old lady
didn’t need a big rambling place.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well she thinks I’m
a fuck-up anyway, so I don’t go around to see her much anymore.”

Celeste kissed Eddie’s
cheek.
 
She wondered if he could
outgrow the leave-taking, the walking out the door.
 
Could he ever feel safe enough to stay home with her?
 
Maybe in a different home that didn’t
reek to him of all the things that tore him up.
 

“What about you?” he asked,
cocking his head sideways.

“What do you want to
know?”
 
She had told him so many
things about her childhood, there wasn’t much left to say.

“You had stencils in your purse,”
he said.

She froze.

“You can’t be the HOPE
person, can you?”
 
His voice was
incredulous.
 
“Is it Frank?”

She shook her head.
 
“Are you going to tell the cops?”

He laughed out loud.
 
“Are you kidding me?
 
Cops?
 
I don’t interact with cops.
 
They’re glorified MPs.
 
Out to fill up their prisons, keep their pensions coming.”

She lowered her head.

“Was it really you?
 
You’ve pissed off the Detroit
Department of Transportation,” he said.
 
“I heard they’re gunning for whoever defaced their buses right on their own
property.
 
They threatened to
release video from lot security cameras.”

She choked in fear.

“But they ain’t got the
money to have security cameras, I went by after I found your stencils.
 
They didn’t have any way to videotape
the lot.
 
They were just
bluffing.
 
You made the New York
Times, though.
 
I clipped the
article for when you can see and read again.”

Her shoulders relaxed just
a bit, but her stomach was a knot.
 

“Look, I know I’m broken,”
he said, breathing warmly on her forehead.
 
“But I try to keep it together.
 
For our sake.
 
I
had no idea I was hanging out with a felon, though,” he said thoughtfully.
 
“But your secret is safe with me.”

“I’m a little tired,” she
said, her eyes sore again.

“Rest a while.”

“I’m afraid you’ll leave,”
she said truthfully.

She felt the sorrow in him,
it was visceral in the coat of sweat that erupted on his skin.
 

“It’s not you, I’m not
leaving you.
 
Or us.
 
I just have to get outdoors.”
 
He stood up and pulled back the
covers.
 
“Celeste, I sleep in your
buildings,” he said, touching her eyelids and then his own heart.
 
“I’m not leaving you and I want us to
grow old together.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“He knows, Frank,” Celeste said, seated at a
side table at the Italian restaurant near the office.

Frank’s eyes widened.
 
“Oh, crap,” he said.
 
“How?
 
I knew he’s a spy.”

“No,” she answered, “he found my stencils when
I was home in bandages.
 
To be
honest, I forgot all about the tagging when I couldn’t see.
 
It’s funny how being aware of blindness,
wanting to see again eclipses all other thinking.
  
I totally forgot about my papers in my closet.
 
I heard him going into the closet a few
times but I was too focused on what I couldn’t see to think about what he
could.”

“Is he going to report you?”

She shook her head.
 
“I couldn’t really tell what he thinks about it but he’s not
going to tell.
 
And he doesn’t know
you were with me.
 
Actually, he
couldn’t believe it was me, he kept thinking it was you!”

He smiled wanly, “I guess I come across as a
badass.”

They both laughed softly.

“I feel like I’m losing you, “ Frank
said.
 
He smoothed the white
tablecloth on the restaurant lunch table.
 
“We don’t party anymore.”

“I know,” Celeste responded.
 
“It’s a Catch-22.
 
I wanted a boyfriend so badly but now
that I’ve got Eddie, I forget what it was like when I didn’t race home.”

“I see that he’s hot.
 
He’s got that yoked body from the
Service.”
 
Frank signaled the
waiter for two drinks, “Let’s just have one cocktail to celebrate being back at
work together, even if we get fired soon.”

Celeste laughed giddily, “I know!
 
He’s got a six-pack!
 
When we were out on sick leave, I
started doing sit-ups when he wasn’t looking.
 
I hated being blind, but I felt so out of shape.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Frank grinned, “men
want women to be soft.
 
If they
want a super hard body, they should be gay and go to a gym.”

“I’ve never said it, Frank, but I love your
body.
 
You look good in a tight
shirt.”

He winked.
 
“You’re finally noticing my hotness!”

Celeste blushed, pushing away the newly
delivered glass.
 
“No thanks.”
 
She hadn’t had anything to drink in
weeks, shaking her head when Eddie offered her a beer or a glass of wine,
hoping and noticing happily that he didn’t drink if she didn’t.
 
She had read all about the
prescriptions on her phone in spare moments at the office when Frank wasn’t
looking, and she knew that any liquor would set Eddie down a steep slope to depression
and possible addiction.

“You have to!
 
It’s the only partying we have left.”

She winced.
 
It was true.
 
She hadn’t gone drinking at night as his wingman in eons.
 
“I know.
 
How bad is that?”

“Well, I’ve never dropped you for a boyfriend,
I’ve always carved out one or two nights a week for you,” he said.

“Yes, but you hate being in a relationship,”
she parried.
 
“I’ve been looking
for this for years, way before I met you.
 
I don’t want to pop the bubble and have him go away.”

“A good relationship should be able to handle
one night a week out with a friend.
 
Unless he’s jealous of me.
 
And my hotness.”
 
Frank
tapped on the tabletop.

“I don’t want him going out, to be
honest.”
 

“So you don’t go out yourself?”

“It feels like a fair trade to keep him from
finding someone else.”

“He can meet someone while you’re at work.”

She cringed.

Frank leaned forward, saying “To be honest,
Celeste, I know why you’re doing it, why you’ve cut off our nights out.
 
And I love you enough to want for you
what you want for yourself.”

She smiled sadly.
 
“This is so hard.”
 
She reached for her cocktail and clinked her glass against
his, “To doing what it takes to keep a relationship going.”
 
It was their lunch break but she could
use a drink to soothe her still present headache.

“You’d better be toasting our relationship,
Missy!” he teased.
 

They ate and drank in silence, and she didn’t
refuse the second round of cocktails brought by the waiter at Frank’s request.

“Frank,” Celeste leaned in, “I found a bunch
of meds that Eddie’s been prescribed.
 
Some of them are old.
 
Some
were filled in Europe before he got home.”

Frank looked at her, “I knew it!”

Celeste reached into her purse and pulled out
the schematic she’d made from the list of prescriptions in Eddie’s toiletries
bag.
 
There were 19 prescription
drug names, combined into 11 categories.
 
Adderal was under the heading ‘ADD’.
 
Haldol was under the heading ‘Anti-psychotic’.
 
Zoloft was listed under ‘Anti-depressant’.
 
She had clumped Oxycontin, Lyrica,
Percocet and Ultram under ‘Pain’.
 
Valium, Topomax, Flexeril and Neurotonin were under ‘Spams,
Anti-convulsants, Anti-Seizure’.
 
Clonodine was for blood pressure but was prescribed for withdrawal.
 
Ambien was for ‘Sleep’ but Seroquel was
jointly listed under ‘Sleep’ and ‘Anxiety’, along with Klonopin and Valium,
which was also under ‘Pain’.

Her chart had started as a clinical list and
ended up becoming an octopus of overlapping arms, interconnected, repetitive
prescriptions for multiple disorders.
 
Pills to go downward, pills to go upwards, pills to make you sleep
because the upward pills had worked too well, pills for anxiety because you
couldn’t remember all the pills you were supposed to take.
 
She didn’t know which pills helped the
part of his brain that must have been slammed or crushed by the dent in his
skull.

She showed the chart to Frank, her heart in
her throat, taking a last chug from her drink, returning the empty glass to the
table.

“Holy shit, that explains everything.”

She spit out a bit of her drink, interrupting
her swallow.
 
“What?”

Frank leaned in, “Don’t you notice him
changing?”

Celeste thought for a moment.
 
Eddie met her at the bus stop every day
after work and they walked together to the apartment.
 
He was short tempered sometimes but she was sure that was
because he couldn’t find a fulltime job.
 
He was distracted, but the fact that he was always at the street corner
was a good sign to her.
 
He was
stable.

“Something is nagging at him.
 
Does he drink a lot?” Frank asked.

“No, he never drinks.”

“Hmmm, well when he first came to the office,
he had that hard body plus what I call ‘happy flab’ on his face.
 
He was obviously eating.”

“He doesn’t eat that much,” she said.

“His cheeks are thinner.”

“He takes really long walks some nights,” she
said halfheartedly, knowing that he wore the same clothes when he met her bus
that he did when he walked her to it in the morning.
 
“What are you getting at?”

“I think he’s an addict.”

She sat back, stunned.
 
“That’s a terrible thing to say!
 
He’s not an addict.
 
He doesn’t drink; he’s just not eating
a lot these days.
 
All these pills,”
she said, quickly folding up her diagram and shoving it into the pocket of her
jacket, “they’re older prescriptions.
 
Some of the bottles are empty.”