I was surprised to find her awake, sitting up on the couch in bloody pajamas, face in her hands, crying. Jip tearing around in circles like a wind-up toy, out of his mind on the scent of blood and his little mother in pieces. I don’t think Dori understood what was going on.
I got some wet towels to clean her up, and changed her out of the old striped pajama bottoms of Vester’s she always wore now. Got her in a clean T-shirt and panties. Held her, rocked her, asked what all she’d taken that day and if she’d eaten. She just kept asking where had I been. Why didn’t I come home, why didn’t I answer my phone? I wasn’t used to having that phone yet, and given what it cost, I was so scared of losing it, I mostly left it locked in the glove. That’s where it had spent the day, buzzing to the expired insurance papers and oxy stash.
I tried to calm her down, saying I loved her, I was sorry to get home so late, and heartbroken of course. The pregnancy had to be over, with that much blood. This clouded her up. She wasn’t crying over that, it seemed. Just so confused and ashamed of her mess. Maybe she’d forgotten. After I brought it up, a whole fresh storm blew in. She’d lost her baby.
She was begging to shoot a morphine patch, and I wouldn’t let her. That’s what it came down to, our love story. Dori trying to wiggle away from me to reach for her junk, me restraining her on the couch, my grip like handcuffs on her tiny wrist bones. More tears, more blaming. Daddy had never treated her so mean. I didn’t love her, I wouldn’t let her have what she needed. I felt like the villain of the world, but this was the truth, another fix could have been the end of Dori. I had no way to know how much she’d already taken. Her kit was all over the table, cotton balls, lighter and spoon, today’s or yesterday’s I couldn’t tell. I smelled the vinegar she used with the fentanyl. Her patches scared the hell out of me, with those layers where the pure drug has to pass through the jelly to get to your skin. Poke a needle in there, it’s a game of chance. At least five times already, I’d come home from Tommy’s to find Dori thrashing on that couch, her lungs sucking hard and her eyes rolled back in her head. One of those times, she was blue around the lips. My blue fairy. I never hated myself more than those nights I had to shake and slap her to get her back. Throw water on her, pack ice on her neck if we had it. Things I’d not known how to do for Mom. For days after every OD, Dori would lie around whimpering, saying everything in her whole body hurt. I told her that was from her muscles trying so hard to draw breath. But I never truly knew if it was that, or what I’d done.
Let’s just get through tonight, I kept telling her now, needing to relax my grip so it wouldn’t leave bruises. It took no more than a minute for the fight to drain out of her. I stroked her hair and kissed her, saying we were okay, mostly talking to myself, trying to blot out the days ahead. Now we had no baby coming. No reason. I tried to ask her how sure she’d been about the pregnant thing. If she’d taken one of those home tests, I didn’t see it, or buy it for her. Did we really lose something here, or did we never have it? She wouldn’t talk about it. Dori always was embarrassed of her lady business and kept it to herself, but living with a person, obviously you know the basics. Her monthlies were all over the place, sometimes gone a long while and then back with revenge, hurtful and bloody. I would have to accept this as one more thing I was never going to know. Did this baby join up with my little brother in the black hole of lost and nameless, or was he lucky enough to skip the draft pick altogether.
Dori was like Vester now, a person that wasn’t safe left alone. She’d stayed by his side for years, giving herself up totally, because in Dori’s book, that was love. And mine too. It hit me then, holding her while she fell asleep, how loving Dori had swallowed me alive, from day one. She just couldn’t see it. How I was her provider, facing down the world for our drugs and groceries, begging for further mercy at the co-op, where my job was on thin ice. Likewise our car, as precarious as everything else in our life. I carried a case of transmission fluid in the trunk that the Impala was knocking down like a wino. If I couldn’t get the ring job done and paid for, we’d have to wait for somebody to find us starved in our bed. Even Jip’s chow had run out. None of this would sway Dori. She would cry all day and sleep at night with the back of my shirt balled up tight in her hands. That sure I was going to leave her. Because everybody does.
Even after she fell asleep, I stayed with her on the couch a long time. But got more and more restless, feeling a near violent need to set things to rights. The soiled blankets, the kit, the plates on the floor with crumbs of her nothing meals. I made myself keep still as long as I could stand it, listening to her slow breathing. I watched brown beetles come out of the corners and move across the floor with their feelers twitching, hunting out their rewards.
Somewhere around two in the morning I carried her upstairs to bed. She weighed even less than the day before. She was turning into air.
I couldn’t get in bed with her. Even as tired and wrecked as I was, after such a day. She was curled up so small with her knees pulled against her chest and her fists on her face like an unborn baby herself. I tucked blankets around her, then came back downstairs and stripped the filthy mess of clothes and quilts off the couch and stuffed it all in the washer. I picked up the dishes and put them in the sink. Came back to the naked couch and lay down and wished some flood would come and wash out the dry, grainy sockets of my eyes. My only job and purpose now was to keep Dori alive, and I didn’t know how to do it.
55
June was sending Emmy away to some residence place that would get her clean. None of this quickie rehab business that Mom wore out like a doormat, nor even the upscale three weeks that Stoner paid for, prior to shaming her over it to the point of death. We’re talking possibly years of Emmy’s life, starting it all over from scratch. In Asheville. There is no such reboot camp around here. Lee County being a place where you keep on living the life you were assigned.
June called to let me know if I wanted to say goodbye, this would be the day. What kind of bucks is this gold-star cure going to cost, you wonder. But it’s rude to discuss money. I just asked the polite things like, Does this establishment have bars in the windows because you know Emmy’s going to try and bolt. June was pretty confident Emmy would stay put. The reason: Rose Dartell. She’d contacted Emmy, offering to relieve her of some body parts. Holy shit.
I said I’d come over after work. I was still unfired at the co-op, probably because any other kid they hired would be as strung out as I was. I’d drag my ass in late, Rita and Les would hit pause on their Medicare war to join forces in eye-rolling. You get used to a routine. I needed the job, and if I lost my line on cheap livestock syringes, I’d be in trouble at home.
It was late winter now, where sunset puts its claim on much of the day. I drove up towards June’s place, looking at pink sky through the black trees. June opened the door, looking worn out. “She’s upstairs packing, hon. Hang on, let me go see if she wants you to come up there.”
Emmy came downstairs with her coat on, wanting to go for a walk. We headed up to the ruined cabin. She pulled her hat on fast, but I saw attempts had been made to salvage the wreck. Some kind of pixie cut, spikes and wisps. It had been a few weeks since the rescue but she still looked too thin, too jumpy, old in a young body. Rode hard and put up wet, guys like to say. But in some other way, she was restored to full Emmy. She wanted a cigarette.
“She’ll know you smoked, if you go back in there smelling like a chimney.”