Complicit Page 12

  The doula looks back at me.

  “I don’t think you should be driving,” she says slowly.

  “I’m fine. I really am.” I smile and attempt to appear normal, not deranged or drug-crazed or whatever it is they’re thinking about me. I sidle toward the Jeep and try not to panic when Skinny Jeans pulls out his phone and starts dialing. That’s when I jump in, slam the door, and start the engine.

  As I peel out and drive off, I don’t look back.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m at home. I’ve also locked myself in the bathroom.

  I’m in a state of mild hysteria, a feeling akin to waking up with my hair full of water bugs or being forced to walk blindfolded across a long stretch of thin ice. Not helping matters is the fact that I’m pretty sure Angie’s on the phone with Malcolm right at this moment. This makes me feel shitty, like I’m a shitty person, because I know he’s probably at the golf course, trying to spend his Sunday alone, the way he always does, and now his tranquility’s being ruined with the news of how I came home with a bleeding head wound, a broken back window, and no memory of how I got hurt.

  My lungs make a frantic wheezing sound. I put the lid down on the toilet and sit there.

  I can’t catch my breath.

  My chest hurts. Everything hurts.

  What the fuck just happened?

  Goddamn Cate.

  I start shaking then. The vibrations originate deep inside me, a sick and fallow rumbling, like something volcanic.

  I kick out with my left foot, tipping over the stainless steel trash bin and scattering tissues and cotton balls all over the floor.

  But it’s not enough.

  I reach out and sweep one arm across the glass shelf above the sink. Toothpaste and toothbrush and dental floss and razor go flying.

  Still not enough.

  I stand halfway and press harder on the shelf, leaning more and more with my body weight until it snaps and shatters, glass falling on porcelain. Falling everywhere.

  Still.

  It’s not enough.

  I am only beginning to erupt.

  My breath comes in sharp bursts. I bend over to pick up the chrome scale Angie bought for me when she was worried the Prozac might make me fat, and with a yelp, I hurl it straight at the medicine cabinet. The mirror explodes in a giant crash, sending shards of glass shooting back at me, peppering my neck and hands, before hailing down onto the floor.

  For a moment I don’t move.

  At all.

  I simply stand there, in the middle of the bathroom, blinking and shell-shocked.

  Then I drop to the ground. I quickly grab the trash can and a hand towel and start sweeping up the awful mess I’ve made. My knees crunch on glass, my hands bleed and sting, but I don’t stop. I work faster. Frantic and frenetically. I need to get rid of this before anyone can see what I’ve done. I don’t even want to see what I’ve done. Getting mad, losing control like this, it’s not like me.

  It’s like her.

  Once I’ve got all the glass cleaned up and I’ve washed my hands and lined all the non-broken toiletry items neatly on the edge of the tub, I use my shirt to wipe at my brow and sit back on my haunches. My foot brushes against something. I turn and look.

  And groan.

  It’s Cate’s pink bag. The shiny one. I’d found it sitting on the passenger seat of my Jeep where she must have left it before abandoning me unconscious in a public parking lot for strangers to find. I mean, who does that? I could’ve been dead for all she knew. I snatch the bag up with a snarl. Part of me wants to toss it away and be done with my sister. Be done with all of this for good. But I don’t.

  I open the bag and reach inside.

  My fingers touch tissue paper, all crumpled and thin, and because hope and anger can’t coexist, my ire melts away. I’m seeking images of my dead mother. I need them. I need her. I’m owed that much, aren’t I? The only things of hers I’ve ever touched besides Cate and myself is her looping handwriting on the back of that photo I’d found hidden inside Cate’s own bathroom all those years ago.

  Catie and Jim.

  My fingers grab something at the bottom of the bag.

  Two things, really. I pull them out.

  They aren’t pictures.

  Of course they aren’t.

  The first item is a ratty piece of fabric, small, worn, grayed with age and time and God knows what else. Grimacing, I hold it up to the light. There’s a silkiness beneath the grime. I realize what it is and my mouth goes dry. It’s Pinky.

  A literal piece of my childhood.

  I smooth the blanket’s frayed stitching with my thumb. I don’t know how or why Cate had this, but I also don’t remember the last time I saw it, which is strange. It’s like, Pinky was important to me and then it wasn’t and that makes me feel sad. And selfish. Like, what else have I forgotten about because I don’t need it anymore?

  “Sorry, Pinky,” I whisper.

  Pinky doesn’t answer.

  I pull out the second item, which is bigger. It’s a book. A paperback book.

  I turn it around and right side up to get a look at the title.

  What the ever-loving hell, Cate?

  It’s a play by Sophocles. Well, three of his plays, apparently: Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Electra.

  Sophocles?

  I get up and walk to unlock the bathroom door. I peek out.

  My lungs deflate with relief. Angie isn’t standing there, waiting to concern-pounce or ship my ass off to one of those troubled-teen schools you see advertised in the backs of magazines. My room is empty. I slink over to my desk, where I switch on a light to inspect the book more closely.

  The words “Ventura Youth Correctional Facility” are stamped in purple ink on the inside cover. Stolen property, apparently, which feels like it should be funny only I’m not in the mood to laugh. On the opposite page, someone’s scrawled the words “fuck this shit fuck motherfucker,” and given what I know about Oedipus, I’m not sure whether that’s irony or literary criticism.

  I go to flip through the yellowed pages and something slips from the book. Right onto my foot. I stoop to pick up what turns out to be an index card. A makeshift bookmark, I guess, only I have no idea what it had been marking. I squint as I straighten up and hold it under the light. There, written in blue ballpoint pen on the bottom left of the card is the message:

  just so you know …

  What? Know what? I have no idea what this means. But Cate definitely wrote it. No doubt about that. I’d recognize her scribbly handwriting anywhere—besides, she always dots her j’s with x’s. Like she’s wishing death on anyone who might dare to read what she has to say.

  I skim the rest of the pages, looking for margin notes or messages, anything that might give me a clue as to what this book has to do with me or what Cate’s trying to say. I’m not all that familiar with Sophocles. I mean, yeah, I remember Oedipus because we read about him in ninth grade, and who can forget a guy who kills his dad, bangs his mom, then pokes his own eyes out? That’s pretty much a hot-mess trifecta, right there. Antigone, I don’t know a thing about, but that same ninth-grade English teacher did tell us Electra was supposed to be the female equivalent of Oedipus, so maybe she gets it on with her dad or does something equally gross. Like kills her mom.

  I keep flipping.

  I keep looking.

  For something.

  For meaning.

  But there’s nothing.

  Just tragedy.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Monday morning, I come up with a plan.

  It’s a plan that quickly gets derailed when it starts to rain again and I have to tape up Dr. No’s broken rear window with a sheet of plastic and duct tape.

  Predictably the plastic leaks. I wrestle with it on the side of the road on my way to school and end up soaked. The whole thing’s a lost cause so I ditch out on my early classes and drive straight to an auto body shop to get the glass replaced. The guys working there take one look at the brick
in the back and ask if I’ve called the cops or filed an insurance claim. This sounds like a total hassle and an even further derailment from my Plan, so I tell them I’ll pay out of pocket to have it fixed.

  “Must be nice to have parents with money, huh, kid?” The guy who takes my credit card looks like he wants to throttle me.

  “You want to switch?” I snap back. I feel surly. I’m not in the mood for his poor-little-rich-boy mockery. It’s not like I haven’t heard it before, but the Henry wealth is something I refuse to feel guilty about. Why should I? I mean, I gave up a lot to live with my parents and I sure as hell didn’t have any say in the matter.

  I walk over to the candy machine and jam a quarter in. A bunch of sour chewies spill into my hand. I stick them in my mouth one by one while I wait.

  Above an oil-stained couch is a wall map. I peer at it, tracing my finger from Danville all the way out to Richmond. When I woke up this morning, I decided it was where I needed to go. That’s my Plan. I found the address of where my mother, Cate, and I all lived together. It was written on my mother’s death certificate, and if Cate can’t or won’t tell me what it is she knows about her, maybe I can figure it out on my own. It’s not like Cate has any more of a right to this knowledge than I do. No matter what she says.

  It’s time to end this dysfunctional canon of ours. I decided that, too. This maddening refrain of me after her. For the first time in my life, I’m going to play outside the chords.

  I am my own force.

  I can have my own vision.

  I need to believe that.

  Jenny finds me at the water fountain in the main classroom building some time before fourth period. I don’t know how long I’ve been there. Minutes. Hours. Days.

  “Save some for the rest of us,” she says, and my heart’s thumping before I look up because I instantly recognize her voice.

  Jenny smiles her sun-in-winter smile at me and leans her shoulder against the wall. She’s got purple sparkle rain boots on and this tight gray sweater that hugs her body in ways that make my brain go kind of nuts. I don’t want to be that guy, though, so I straighten up quickly. And stare into her eyes.

  I want to lose myself in those eyes.

  She lets me.

  Standing in the school hallway with Jenny, this girl I like so damn much, I’m flooded with my familiar sad-because-I’m-happy feeling. I don’t get why this is, but you know, there you go.

  “Hey,” I say softly.

  “Hey,” she replies. “Where were you this morning?”

  “Fixing my car.”

  “It was broken?”

  “Yeah. And it was still broken after I tried fixing it myself. Had to get professional help and everything.”

  Her head tilts. “This is a metaphor for something, isn’t it?”

  “Most definitely.”

  She reaches out and takes my hand. Pulls me to her. “Well, it’s good to see you again.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What happened here?” she asks.

  I look down. Her finger is tracing a cluster of small, scabbed wounds that line the back of my hand and wrist. I tug at my jacket sleeve to cover the marks and give a loose shrug. “I don’t know what happened. I forget.”

  She frowns and pulls me closer. Our hips are almost touching. Behind her, I see Hector Ramirez stroll out of the guy’s bathroom. He looks over at us. I stare at him for the briefest of moments.

  “Jenny,” I say. “Will you go somewhere with me?”

  “Now or later?”

  “Now.”

  “But you just got here.”

  I take her other hand in mine. “I know. But it’s important.”

  There’s a moment of hesitation. I don’t know if that’s about me or her, but then Jenny nods and her deep brown eyes are shining. With trust.

  God, I hope it’s trust.

  We start walking to the exit door.

  “Where are we going?” she asks as we step outside into the rain.

  “To a place from my past.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Jenny and I make out in the back of the Jeep before we hit the road. I try to be gentle with her, not ask for too much, but that’s easier said than done when she’s the one pushing me against the seat, crawling on top of me, pinning me down with her hips and her heat. I can tell she likes knowing how she drives me crazy, but when she fingers the button of my jeans, that’s when I pull back. Her boldness sets off my worrying thing. It’s dumb, but I can’t help it. I start thinking maybe she’s done this before. With some other guy. Or maybe other guys want to do this with her and I won’t be good enough at it to keep her interest. Or maybe she needs me to be the strong one. I’m not Cate and I won’t let her be. It’d be easy to get carried away, it really would, but this is too fast. Too soon. It feels dangerous. I mean, we’re in the school parking lot, of all places.

  My head’s still spinning when I sit up. Jenny stares at me, chest heaving, hair all in her face, and it’s like my pulling away’s the last thing she expects. Or wants.

  I know better than to tell her what it is I’m thinking, so I cup her chin in my hand and kiss her quickly on the lips.

  “We should get going,” I say. “Before there’s too much, you know, traffic.”

  Jenny laughs. It’s a strong sound, like a ringing bell.

  It grounds me.

  The drive to Richmond’s a long one, almost an hour, and I’ve already explained where we’re going. And why. Jenny sits and plays with the music on my phone. She’s looking for something to listen to. My shoulders, which felt loose and relaxed when I first slid behind the wheel, grow tighter with each passing mile. I squeeze my hands open and shut to release tension.

  “Ugh,” Jenny says.

  “Ugh, what?”

  “Your music. It’s all angsty boy stuff.”

  This gets me to smile. “What’d you expect? Happy girl stuff?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a musician. I expected something good.”

  “Put Jobim on,” I tell her. “You’ll like it.”

  “That’s jazz, isn’t it?”

  “Latin jazz. Just put it on.”

  She does. Warm guitar chords fill the car, and a rush of painful longing fills my chest. Jenny wasn’t wrong about the angsty thing.

  “Your car reeks, you know,” she says. “Like an ashtray.”

  “That’s the cost of having chain-smoking mechanics work on it.” I flip on the air and pray Jenny doesn’t ask why I took the Jeep to the shop in the first place.

  “God, it’s so terrible about your mom.” She stares out the window as she says this. The hills on both sides of us are green, lush. Grateful for the rain. “I had no idea about any of that.”

  I shrug.

  “I didn’t even know you were adopted. I think that’s pretty interesting. Adoption.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Yeah, sure. Who doesn’t fantasize about not being related to their parents? Parents are everyone’s worst nightmare. They wear Crocs. They refer to Chipotle as ‘Cha-pottle.’ They think having ‘Me So Horny’ as their ringtone makes them cool.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Things could be a lot worse, believe me.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love my parents. I do. It’s just, no one wants to look at them and feel like they’re looking into the future, you know?”

  Well, no, I don’t know. But I do like that she’s telling me. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Soon the green hills are gone and the traffic slows. On the right, out Jenny’s window, the San Francisco Bay is visible, but the tall smokestacks of an oil refinery blight the view. We’ve entered Richmond city limits. Jenny leans back against her seat and gazes up at an enormous roadside billboard advertising a cemetery whose main selling point appears to be its proximity to an auto mall.

  “So where’s your mom buried?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Nope.” I t
ry to sound casual, but we’ve just passed the sign for the exit I want, only a quarter mile more, and it’s suddenly hard for me to breathe. I rub at my chest, pressing down on the space between my ribs.

  I feel Jenny looking at me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You look upset. Shit. I shouldn’t have asked that. I swear, I lack some sort of sensitivity gene. I do realize this.”

  “Nah, it’s fine. I’m good. Really.”

  Jenny nods, relaxing, and it’s like last week when my parents told me that Cate had been set free—I’m relying on the fact that it’s what I say that counts.

  Not what I’m thinking.

  This is all too much for me.

  Any more stress and I’m going to lose my damn mind.…

  The deeper we get into Richmond, the more I regret bringing Jenny along. No, she doesn’t need my rescuing, but that doesn’t mean I want to be the one to put her in danger. And this place is downright scary. It’s a type of poverty and ruin I’ve never seen before.

  Except, you know, I have.

  Making the whole experience exponentially worse is the fact that this grungy, industrial city is impossible to navigate by car. None of the streets run at right angles and GPS is no help. I keep crossing over train tracks, turning down dead ends, and every time I have to back the Jeep up, I spy clumps of people loitering on every corner, even in the rain. They watch us with a cool sort of curiosity and a cruel sort of resentment. My arms start to itch under the weight of their gaze. Is this who I would’ve become if my mother hadn’t died? I don’t have an answer to that question. Or hell, I guess I do. Because growing up in Danville with the Henrys I’ve always understood that when you’re adopted, your successes are chalked up to nurture. But the bad stuff, like arson and assault charges, well, those things are all nature, baby.

  In other words, sometimes fate is what other people make of it.

  I don’t like that. At all.

  “You want me to ask for directions?” Jenny points to a corner store with a handwritten sign that reads: JUG LIQUOR: NOW OPEN! “What’s a Jug Liquor?”