That was who.
I left as soon as I pulled from Corrine’s body, leaving Jonathan and Curtis without even saying goodbye. I would never hear the end of that from them, but I was suddenly feeling suffocated by the bar lights and loud music. Even the thought of going to sit on the deck to feel the fresh air on my skin felt suffocating. The alcohol I had consumed throughout the day and night was souring in my stomach, making me feel nauseated and dizzy.
Regret settled into my center, and my chest burned with guilt. I didn’t understand why I was feeling these things, but it was making my body stiff with emotions I never felt or understood.
When the valet brought it around, I climbed into my silver Tesla, a gift I had recently purchased for myself, and peeled out of the parking lot.
I was drinking and had no business driving, but I knew I could make it back to my house. I also knew that with the windows down, the fresh air rushing through my car would help to sober me. It was less than a ten-minute drive, and I wasn’t that drunk. At least, I didn’t feel that drunk, but when an ancient Oldsmobile pulled out in front of me, I was too inebriated to turn my wheel quick enough. I clipped the back bumper of the old car with a loud crack.
“Fuck!” I slammed my hand onto my steering wheel.
As if the heavens were punishing me, a police officer was right behind me, and within seconds, his blue lights lit the night sky. Reflecting in my rearview mirror, the light filled my car and the perimeter around me with a blue hue. I blinked my eyes, the flashing making me dizzy.
At least it wasn’t my fault.
I jumped from my car, ready to argue.
“Sir, please get back in your car!” a deep voice demanded from my side.
Tugging my car door open, I fell back onto the heated leather seat and waited. Looking over, I was met by a tall, dark policeman standing over the side of my car and glaring down at me.
“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter how fast I was going. That car pulled out in front of me.”
“I’m going to ask you again. Do you know how fast you were going?”
I sighed in aggravation.
My brand-new car would be in the shop. I would have to drive one of my other cars for a while until the damages were fixed. It was going to be a massive inconvenience.
“I don’t know. Fifty or fifty-five?” I asked, unsure of how fast I was going.
He chuckled, shaking his head and making a note on his little pad.
“No. You were going seventy-five in a thirty.”
I whistled, impressed I had gotten my new toy up to those speeds without even feeling it.
“Seventy-five’s good, but I had her up to one-twenty last weekend. She drives like a dream,” I said, caressing my steering wheel similarly to the way I had caressed Corrine earlier in the night.
The policeman wasn’t impressed.
Just then, an older man climbed from the Oldsmobile, speaking with another police officer.
“Of course!” I yelled. “He’s a hundred years old. Old people shouldn’t be allowed to have a license. They’re a menace to society.”
“You know who else shouldn’t be allowed to have a license?” the policeman at my window asked. “Drunk people. Please step out of the car.”
Within thirty minutes, I found myself chuckling drunkenly from the back seat of his patrol car as the tow truck driver pulled my brand-new hundred-thousand-dollar car onto the bed of his shitty truck.
“Hey!” I called out through the glass, beating on the window with my palm. “Watch it, buddy. If you fuck up my car, I’ll kick your ass.”
The officer smacked the window, startling me. “Knock it off, Mr. Ellis. If you break my glass, I’ll kick your ass.”
I sobered up a bit on the ride to the police station. I wish I could say it was my first visit with them, but I would be lying. Honestly, over the years, I’d lost count of my run-ins with the police. It wasn’t that I was a troublemaker; it was that I didn’t really give a fuck about consequences all that much.
I dreaded the phone call I had to make once I was at the station, though. I had gone almost six months without having to call her to bail me out, but I knew it was the only way.
My mother entered the dirty police station as if she owned it. Her crisp white Giorgio Armani blouse made the room around her look dingy and faded. A matching handbag hung from her wrinkled wrist while her nose pointed at the ceiling, showing her superiority to everyone who looked at her.
She moved past me to the front desk, demanding someone speak to her immediately.
“I’m here for my son.” Her haughty tone cut through the lady working the front desk. I saw her plump fingers trembling when she pushed her glasses up her nose.
“What’s your son’s name, ma’am?”
Leaning closer to the counter, she brought her nose down to whisper my name. “Matthew Ellis.”
Feeling her embarrassment in my chest, I stood. “I’m right here.”
My buzz was wearing off, leaving me with one hell of a headache and a turning stomach. Somehow, her being there seemed to intensify it all.
“Really, Matthew? Drinking and driving is so beneath us. Why not call for a car?”
I snorted and shook my head.
“Or better yet,” she continued, “you could’ve called me, son. You know I would’ve been there to make sure you made it home safely.”
I clapped slowly, enjoying the show she was putting on for the police station. The lady behind the counter looked away, ignoring the tension in the air around us.
“Good show, Mrs. Ellis, but I’m afraid your stage days are long gone. You’re a little too old, and it’s a little too late to try to play the part of a good mother.”
She hated when I talked about her past. She hated for me to remind her she was just a poor actress working on stage when my father scooped her up and gave her a life of luxury. But more than anything, she despised when I reminded her what a terrible mother she was.
She moved across the room in my direction, closing the space between us so only I would hear her next words. A disgusted grin tilted her maroon lips.
“Aren’t you a little too old for childish games, Matthew? Calling on your mommy when you get in trouble like an errant child. It all disgusts me. The lavish parties and loose women. The outright no-care attitude toward your responsibilities to this family and its name? The Ellis family is a proud family, and your father is probably rolling over in his grave because of the things you do with your life.”
I shook my head.
She had gotten in her digs, as well. She knew I hated when she talked about my father. He was the only person in the world who really gave a shit about my happiness. My mother, on the other hand, threw some money on the problem to cover it up. Everything I had ever done in my life, she just brushed it under the rug without regard whatsoever to the reason I was acting up.