Tailspin (Better Than You) (2 page)

              Joshua starts to cry, which doesn’t help anything at all because I’m starting to feel a little sick myself. The crying makes him throw up and it’s all I can do to keep it together. I need Mom and Dad. I may be twenty and full grown, but I can’t deal with this shit.
Maybe they didn’t leave right away. Maybe they stopped to get medicine
. But a part of my mind tells me that these excuses make no sense. Something’s not right, but there’s nothing I can do. I’ve called both of them at least twenty times, so I just put my phone on Dad’s nightstand and help Joshua as best as I can.

              Another hour later, after Joshua is asleep and Emily still isn’t home, there’s a knock on the door. It feels like someone just knocked on my heart instead, took a fucking sledge hammer to it. After a few minutes, there’s another louder, more impatient knock. I get up quickly but quietly, walk down the stairs on numb legs and swing open the door without checking to see who it is. The two cops standing there have their backs towards me but turn with surprise. I can see in their eyes what they’re going to say; can see that nothing will ever be the same. God, it’s hard to breathe.
I can’t fucking breathe
.

              “Are you Nathan Hawkins?” cop number one asks. I wonder if they’ve ever been on
Cops
, if they’ve ever had to chase a drug dealer through the slums or have ever been involved in a car chase down 95. It happens pretty often. I bet they have.

              “Son?” he says to me.

              “I’m not your fucking son,” I tell him, my jaw clenching and my fists balling. I’m not mad at
them
. I’m just mad at what I know they are going to tell me. I’m mad at the world. I’m mad at God.
Fuck.
I take a deep breath. “Yes. I’m Nathan.”

              Cop number two steps forward, sighs long and loud, dips his head to the floor. “There’s been an accident, Nathan. Your parents…” He trails off, but he doesn’t have to finish the sentence. Never even needed to start it in the first place.

              “What happened?” I ask, calmly, in control. That’s who I am now. That’s who I’ll have to be.

              “We’re not sure of the specifics, but the highways are soaked. It looks like they lost control of the car and there was a semi coming the other way….” I look past the two cops, out into the front lawn and notice that it’s raining. A light mist that can only be seen from a certain angle falls from the sky, coating everything slick. It’s deadly rain. Killing rain. Nothing will ever be the same.

              Cop number one clears his throat. “You’ll need to get in contact with your family lawyers, get everything settled. I know this is hard to understand-”

              I cut my eyes to him. “I understand perfectly.”

              They both nod their heads, look anywhere but in my eyes. “Let us know if there’s anything we can do,” cop number two says, handing me a card. My hand reaches out for it, but it’s not my hand. My voice tells them thank you, but it’s not my voice. I am not me right now. I am no one and everyone and all Emily and Joshua have left. I am no longer Nathan Hawkins, star quarter back at UM, or Nathan Hawkins, eldest son to Sarah and Wesley Hawkins. Right now I feel like a little boy who lost his parents in the furniture store. The need to find them is desperate. The fear of never seeing them again is agonizing. As I fall to my knees, I cry. It’s the kind of crying I’ve never done before and I know I‘ll never do again. It squeezes my lungs, grates against my esophagus and pours out of my mouth uncontrollably. I cry for Joshua, the parents that were taken from him too fucking early, the parents that he’ll never really get to know. I cry for the just barely seventeen year old girl who will be forced to grow up without a mom to help her pick out a prom dress and without a dad to walk her down the aisle. I cry for myself, for the tailspin my life has been sent into. I cry for the injustice of it all, but mostly, I wish it was me instead.

3

April 16, 2006

I don’t know what I need. Everyone keeps asking and I don’t know what to tell them. I want to be left alone. I want to be surrounded. I want Heather to stop looking at me like I’m fucking up her life and I want Emily to stop crying at night, so loudly that I can hear her through the walls and I want Joshua to just
say something
. I want to comfort them, I want to leave them, I want to forget everything.

Instead of saying any of those things, I just nod and smile, thank people for coming by and for their kind words. Words I could do without. Words that mean absolutely nothing, because honestly, what the fuck do they know about losing their parents? About becoming a parent to a teenage girl and nine year old boy when I’m only twenty myself? What could they possibly understand about having to give up their lives, their futures, their dreams and goals and aspirations, overnight? Nothing. They know nothing.

When the house finally empties, when all of the sniffling and the whispering and the pitying are gone, I feel like I might finally be able to breathe. Except the silence is suffocating; it’s unfamiliar. It’s
wrong
. My mind is running in circles, going a million miles an hour and it just needs to stop. It needs something to focus on, something to get lost in,
someone
to get lost in. Small footsteps pull my attention to the doorway of the kitchen and I look up, into the face of a conflicted Heather. I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t want this, us, anymore. I can see that she’s about to say it and god, it’s overdue, but right now, in this moment, I need her. More than anything, I need her to fill my mind, I need to fill her body, and I need to forget that I’ve lost everything that matters to me.

As I push off of the kitchen counter, I push back all of the guilt that I may feel over what I am about to do. It slides away easily, my mind for once listening and complying. It leaves and is replaced by something more carnal, primal; something that doesn’t require excuses or feelings. I make my way over to her, fast and completely set on fulfilling this need. And thank God, Heather doesn’t pull away. Her movements meet mine, but I’m more concerned with extinguishing the fire inside of me than deciding whether she wants this as much as I do.

Heather pulls away from my mouth and I move my lips to her neck, roughly pressing kisses along the line of her jaw and down her chest. “Emily and Joshua?” she asks breathily.

“Gone,” is all I say before I yank her silky black tank top over her head. My Uncle Drew and Aunt Kristie decided to take them for a few days, to give me time to readjust to this life that is now mine. But they’ve got seven kids of their own and so Emily and Joshua will be back here and under my care by Wednesday. A part of me is dreading that and the guilt for feeling that way is almost enough to consume me. But like everything else, I push it away and instead focus on the button on Heather’s black slacks. On the way her hair feels, fisted in my hand. On the taste of her skin and the heat of her breath and the sound her moans.

After it’s done and the only sound in the room is the ticking of the grandfather clock and the occasional passing car, the emptiness hits me. It expands inside of me, pushes against my skin and threatens to tear me open. Suddenly I’m panting for a whole different reason. Suddenly the feel of Heather’s slippery skin on mine is too much. Her nearness is too much. Luckily, she senses it. If there’s anything I can say about our relationship, it’s that she understands me. Always has. So when I begin to shift, she stands and finds her clothes. Disappears upstairs and leaves me with the deafening silence of the empty house.

It’s only minutes before she’s back, but it could have been hours or days for all I know. Time is inconsequential. It’s suddenly insignificant and predictable because it will consist of things I never wanted, a life that was never supposed to be mine. Anger boils inside of me, heats my blood and makes the room swim.

“I’m gunna go.” Heather’s soft voice breaks into my thoughts. It makes me angrier than I already am, because Heather is never soft. She’s demanding, high-maintenance, in control. This voice she’s using now, it’s pity and I don’t want any of it. Not when she’s about to walk away. Not when she’s using this circumstance as an excuse to leave. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she adds.

My hands, hanging limply between my knees, tighten into fists. “Don’t bother,” I snap. The sound of her taking a step back infuriates me. Like I’d ever hurt her. Like all I haven’t done is please her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and then she’s gone, the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut echoing throughout the entire house. The sun has sunk beneath the ground and the moon is barely visible through the cover of clouds. The house is dark, and I am naked and alone with my thoughts. I can’t go back to my dorms, because I’ve pulled out of my classes. My former teammates are at a game, with their new quarterback and their new lineup. There is only me and this damn house and all of the shit that belongs to
them
. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to remind myself that it’s not their fault that they are gone. But all I can manage to do is ask questions. Why did they
have
to go out that night? Why did they drive in the rain? Was Dad drinking? Were my hurried pleas the cause of their accident, and ultimately their deaths? Is it all my fault?

It’s all my fault.

Before I know what I’m doing, before I realize what my intentions are, I’m finding anything breakable and throwing it on the ground.  Destroying what’s theirs and what’s now mine and what I don’t want. Because, if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t want any of it. Not now, not ever. I just want to go back to school, go back to playing football and my easy relationship with Heather and throwing back beers with the boys and everything that people my age are supposed to be doing.

The sound of Mom’s favorite lamp crashing to the floor fills me with more comfort than it should. In my head I’m yelling a loud
fuck you
to them, even though I know it’s wrong, even though they can’t hear it. But this feeling, this anger that’s eating me up inside, is so much easier to deal with than the complete sorrow that will take its place once the fire is cooled. It makes me feel stronger, instead of feeling like a pussy that’s about to cry every second of the day.

A car passes by, the headlights sweeping through the house and illuminating the disaster I’ve made, but I don’t feel regret. I don’t feel anything at all except the coolness of the air against my naked skin and the heat of anger running through my veins. And I feel strong. Stronger than I have in the past days, since losing my parents. Strong enough to be undeserving of the pity in Heather’s eyes. Strong enough to be the parents that Emily and Joshua need. More than strong enough to let go of the person I was and become someone entirely new.

~~

When I wake up the next morning, lying on top of the sheets on my bed, I’m confused, blissfully so. It’s another morning, just like any of the other mornings I’ve had in my life. The sun is bright, the room is uncomfortably warm and familiarly messy, but the house is strangely quiet. Joshua’s early morning whining is nowhere to be found. Emily’s heavy footsteps can’t be heard. Mom’s soft humming isn’t floating through the house, finding its way up to the second floor and annoying me as usual. But before I can let it sink in, let the desire to go back to sleep and never wake up win, I grab onto my anger and fist it tightly. Just as I hoped, it gives me the strength to go on, to clean up the mess I’ve made and to accept the truth of my life as it is.

4

May 30, 2006

I’m starting to forget what his voice sounds like.

It’s been weeks since I’ve heard him say anything at all, weeks since our parents were taken from us. And while Emily is the extreme, voicing every opinion and every thought, Joshua has yet to speak one single word. I’ve stopped trying to coax it out of him. I may have the strength to keep going, to wake up every morning and make lunches and drive them to school and work at the bar Dad left behind and be a real, living, breathing adult, but I don’t have the strength to make him speak when I’m thinking it’s better that he doesn’t. His silent treatment feels like a form of punishment I know I deserve.

“You can still talk to him, you know,” Emily says, breaking into my thoughts at just the right moment. Any farther on that line of thinking and I may have lost all control I feel as if I’ve just gained. “You know how they say that people in a coma can still hear, and they encourage their family to talk to them, tell stories and all that? It’s kinda like that. Maybe he’s in some sort of living coma thingy.”

My eyes cut to the rearview mirror where I see Joshua staring out the window, as if he hasn’t heard Emily at all. She’s studying her nails as if she didn’t just speak the most profound words I’ve ever heard leave her mouth. “He’s not in a coma, Em.”

“It’s Emily,” she snaps. “I know he’s not. I’m just using it as a comparison.”

              “So you think I should put him in the hospital? Have him watched, monitored, poked and prodded? That’s what they do to coma patients.”

              She sighs heavily. “All I’m saying is that you should
talk
to him. He hasn’t said a word since they died, but neither have you. Not really.”

              What do I say to a nine-year old boy who’s lost the parents he barely got to know? Will he even remember them, the sacrifices they made, the trips we took? Again my eyes stray to the rearview mirror, and all I see is a small boy who looks exactly like Mom, exactly like me, and all I want to do is disappear. Like a fucking coward.

              The rest of the car ride is quiet, as usual. It’s like we don’t know what we are to each other anymore, so there’s nothing to say. Are we siblings? Am I still their brother, or their parents, or both? Have I lost the right to pester them like older brothers should? Where do I draw the line between friend and authority? I don’t have answers. I feel like I don’t have anything anymore.