“I haven’t seen her in at least a week. I thought she might be on vacation or something. Holden hasn’t taken the bus, either.”
“What are you talking about? Excuse—” I don’t finish the words before I’m puking all over her.
“Oh my God!” Louise shouts, walking backwards, getting away from me. She looks disoriented.
I shake my head,
No, I feel disoriented. She looks disgusted.
“I’m sorry.”
“Jerry, where is Brenda?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she, Jerry? So help me God, I will call the police.”
“I don't know, woman. I don’t know!” I shout, scaring her in the process. “I’m sorry,” I mutter again.
She attempts to step inside the house, but she considers it and doesn’t.
Goddammit, why is it so loud in my head, and why do I feel like I’m going to throw up again?
She runs away.
Away where?
Somewhere, but I can’t step outside to see.
Everything’s too bright. My insides hurt. My eyes hurt.
I want another fucking drink.
Holden,Present Day
The lumpin my throat grows as he tells me the nightmare of whatever that day was. I don’t interrupt, and I sure as hell don’t make him hold himself back. It’s almost as if he’s reliving it.
“Time was made up. The concept of time was in my head and without your mother—the keeper of not only you and the house, but my schedule too—it disappeared. She woke me up before work, made my breakfast, packed my lunch, and, looking back, I don’t know how the hell she put up with my shit for so long.”
It’s infuriating to hear a grown ass man admit how my mother pretty much mothered him too and then was also there to fuck him?
The picket fence American dream is not really one if it’s at the expense of the dignity and happiness of the women behind it.
“So I can’t tell you if it took ten minutes or ten hours for them to show up.”
“Who?”
“The police.”
“This is where it gets blurry,” he says, rubbing his jaw as if the memory itself makes his skin itch. “I remember the knocks, the voices—too many of them to count and all different. Maybe it was two cops, maybe it was ten. I don’t know. My head was pounding so loud, I was sure the knocks were coming from inside me.”
I swallow hard, forcing down the dread crawling up my throat. “What did they say?”
He laughs, a pathetic, humorless thing. “They didn’t say much at first. They covered their noses, though. You should’ve seen them. Like stepping inside my house was the worst thing that had ever happened to them. And maybe it was; hell if I know. One of them walked around, calling out her name too.‘Brenda?’ Like she was gonna pop out from behind the couch magically.”
My stomach twists.
“I kept telling them she wasn’t there. That she’d stepped out. That she was fine. That she was always fine. And I believed it too. I really did.” His voice cracks on the last word. “But they looked at me like I was lying. Like I’d done something or like I was dangerous.”
