Curly – The Departed
You wake up in the car.
Sunlight breaks through the tree branches above, making everything appear white and fuzzy around the edges. You're stretched across the backseat, a monster too big for its cage. The world is tilted at an odd angle, and your mouth is dry and foul-tasting. Vodka, you think, just as it comes out of your throat and into the bag your brother's shoved under your chin.
"Jesus, don't blow chunks all over the goddamn seat," he swears.
You try not to. After the nausea has passed, you sit up carefully and rest your head against the door. "Where are we?"
"Cathy's."
The last thing you remember is Tim helping you down that hill, your legs dragging underneath you. Then, like a dam breaking inside your head, the horrors of the past three days rush back, and you see a highway and a cigarette in Angela's mouth; your aunt's red eyes and your uncle's shadow on the porch; the glare of the kitchen lights as Tim set the phone down, his mouth twisted and ugly and afraid.
"God," you moan.
"That's one word for it."
There is the flick of a lighter, and cigarette smoke wafts into your nose, combined with the fresh air that's coming in through the open windows. You have no idea what time it is, and sure as hell aren't going to ask, because it's one thing for your brother to find you, but another entirely to help you out. Part of you wants to know why he didn't just leave you there in a puddle of your own vomit, like you both know he should have, while the other part is too drunk to confront him. For a long time, the two of you sit in silence, the radio on low, watching some kids scream at each other down the road, their bikes coasting up and down the sidewalks.
When you were younger, before Angela was born and your father was still around, your mother would shove you and Tim together for hours in the backyard while she ran errands and made dinner and did all the other motherly things someone like her was supposed to do. "Go on, play," she'd say, wiping her hands on her apron (the few times she cooked), and you'd pick up a stick or an empty bottle – or, one time, a dead snake – and pretend to hit each other with whatever was in your hands. That summer, it was just the two of you, and you were naïve enough to think that it would stay that way forever. Until your mom got knocked up, and – well, you know what happened next.
"Tim," you say now, drawing his attention away from the box of Marlboros he's holding. He's on his fourth or fifth cigarette and has yet to offer you any, let alone tell you why the fuck he's acting so desolate. He only sits like that, totally quiet and motionless, when someone has either wronged him or slashed his tires.
"What?" His eyes are lighter today, the color of gunpowder, and you find it hard to stare at him directly.
You swallow, fidget with the plastic in your lap. (You've always sucked at talking about your emotions, and to this day, can't understand why girls talk about theirs so goddamn much.) At last, you sputter out, "Thanks," and he nods, as if he understands what the word actually means.
xxx
Angela returns around eight, just as the last bit of warmth is swallowed up by the darkness, like dirty water swirling down a drain. Though you ate dinner over an hour ago – canned soup and day-old bread your brother found in the pantry – you're starving. Oddly, your aunt is nowhere to be found, and neither is Lydia. (When you bring this up to Tim, he lets out a "hmph" and goes back to dunking his bread into the broth.) Her car is still parked in the driveway, an empty metal shell, and you wonder when she's going to come back to get it.
You and Tim are in the living room, sitting on opposite sides of the couch. The TV is on, but you aren't paying attention to what's on the screen – some stupid news broadcast. There is a spark in the air, a restlessness that wasn't there before you'd left this afternoon, and it is making you choke on your soda. As you take a sip, the carbonation fizzling in your throat, your sister bangs inside, the screen door slamming behind her.
Tim turns to the sound, half-rising from his seat, (he must've been expecting her, you realize) and just like that, a switch flipped, he goes off.
"Where the fuck did you go?"
The last time you saw him this upset, it was years ago, right after your dad had split town, leaving behind a messy stack of bills and an imprint of his palm on your sister's cheek. Both of you were still young and stupid and small, too weak to take on the world and what responsibilities came with it, but now his shirt stretches across the muscles of his back. He is older, smarter, the softness inside of him worn down to nothing but bone, and sitting there, looking up at him, he is taller than a bear, a building, a god.
Angela slouches into one hip. The hem of her skirt has risen, exposing a strip of tan leg, and is slightly crooked, as if she hastily put it back on. "What the hell do you care?" she slurs, narrowing her eyes. Her purse, dangling from a finger, clunks awkwardly to the floor.
Tim steps forward, the heels of his boots ringing out on the wood, boom, boom, boom, and it makes you think of fireworks, the sound a muffler makes right before it explodes. You want to look away, get out of here – know you should do both – but you can't. Your legs are cemented to the floor, a bubble of air trapped in your lungs.
"I was worried fuckin' sick about you, you bitch," he sneers. "You think you can fuckin' talk to me and then run off like that, go God knows where and do God knows what… What the goddamn fuck is wrong with you?"
You're expecting her to burst into tears, mumble an apology about back-talking and how I'll never do it again, Tim, I promise and then slink upstairs, a scolded puppy with her tail between her legs. In the end, however, she laughs, a bitter and hollow sound, like bone being struck by metal, and it makes your toes curl inside your shoes.
"Oh, that's rich, Tim! You want to talk to me about doing God knows what? I know what you did… Did he tell you, Curly? What he did?"
Oh, God, now you have to be a fucking part of this, too? "No…" you start, not sure whose side to take, "he didn't tell me –"
"Of course he fucking didn't," she interrupts. "He left Lydia on the side of the fucking road. That's why Cathy's not here – she went to pick up her daughter, who probably got jumped and raped and –"
Boom, boom.
Another step closer to her. Another away from you.
"Shut the fuck up, Angela."
Right, left, right, left, right.
Boom, boom, boom.
"No, no, no." She shakes her head at him, disgusted, delirious. "I'm fucking done listening to you! You're not my brother, and you're certainly not my goddamn father!"
When his hand first curls around her jaw, you think it must already be a memory, or a dream. There is a flash of denim and flesh, and then the roaring sound of skin on skin as he hits her. The unexpected momentum sends her backward and into the wall, her hip catching the side-table, and she lets out a cry, shocked and hurt and outraged. And for a completely terrifying second, as he reaches for her, his life preserver in the sea because he is drowning and needs to grab onto something, anything, you realize that whatever you have just witnessed – whatever he has done, what they have done to each other – is irreparable, unforgivable.
"Ang…" he begs, his voice raw and choked, the way it was that July when the sun was white and the dirt under your feet was burning-brown as you ran across the yard to get her ice, to do something with your hands, to stop them from shaking, why couldn't you stop them from –
"Get the fuck away from me!" she sobs, swinging at him. Her elbow connects with his face, and he swears, his foot catching on the antique rug. Blood erupts from his nose, messy and red, smears across the wall and the banister as he collapses against it, unable to chase after her.
This time, you throw up on the floor.
xxx
"What the fuck are you doing?"
The doorknob hits the wall. One second, the joint is between your teeth, waiting to be lit; in the next, Tim has pressed you against the wall and flicked the bud into the toilet bowl.
You can't move, can't breathe. You were hiding in the bathroom when it happened – the screams and the blood and the smell of dead skin – and found the weed under the sink, in an otherwise empty shoebox. You thought it would take the edge off. You thought it would work.
"They came back," you tell him weakly. "The alley…"
He lets go. You slide to the floor and put your head in your hands, exhausted.
"How long… how long was it?"
"I don't know. Maybe a few minutes."
He sits on the edge of the bathtub and pulls his hands through his hair. Finally he says, "I think – I think you should – you need to talk to somebody about… what's been happening."
He doesn't look at you as he says this, his eyes on the chipped hexagon floor tile that your mother's always hated. Since the visions and nightmares have started accumulating in your head like a storm cloud, all you've wanted is an explanation, a diagnosis as to why you hear voices that aren't there and why you have so much trouble sleeping and why he can't see the red that is so visibly everywhere, on your hands and your arms and inside of your mouth. It is coating you, suffocating you.
"And tell them what? That I think there's something wrong with me –" Your voice cracks, the frustration building. "They'll put me in one of those crazy houses, Tim, I know it –"
"No, they won't. You're not like the rest of 'em. You're not crazy, Curly."
"Then what am I?" Your voice breaks, although you can't hear it crack over the sound of your pulse in your ears."What the fuck is wrong with me?"
"Don't talk like that," he barks. He moves to stand in front of you, reaching down to pull you up. You're so close to him, suddenly, that you can see the lighter flecks of blue in his eyes, the small mole on his temple. Sometimes, only sometimes, you look so much alike that it scares you. If he didn't have that fucking scar, you'd be twins. "I just think it would help, okay?"
"What if it doesn't?"
"Stop askin' so many goddamn questions, would you?"
The spot where he places his hand on your shoulder burns.
xxx
In the morning, Tim is gone.
You wake up to sound of the front door slamming, and look out the window just in time to see him go down the front walk. After you'd vomited last night and his nose had eventually stopped bleeding, he'd helped you upstairs and into the guest bedroom, where you'd collapsed onto the bed out of drunkenness and fatigue. You're not sure what happened next, only that your cousin and aunt came home shortly after and nearly called the cops on the fucking mess in the living room. There was a burst of Lydia screaming at your brother and Cathy raising her voice at both of them, followed by a silence so loud there had to have been an earthquake.
You're hung over, you smell like absolute shit, and sometime during the night, the nausea returned. You run into the bathroom across the hall, barely making it to the toilet in time. Once it passes, you rummage in the medicine cabinet for some Tylenol, hoping it'll delude the pounding in your head. On your way downstairs, you pass Lydia's bedroom – Angela is staying there – and peer inside. Your sister is still sleeping, her face mashed into the pillows, though your cousin isn't.
You find her in the kitchen, sitting at the table, stirring a spoon around a coffee mug. Cathy is at the stove, scrambling eggs, her hair rolled into curlers. When you step into the room, they look up at you – Cathy in disgust and terror, Lydia in complete exasperation. Honestly, you should've been expecting this reaction, but you're still not ready for the force it brings with it.
"I want you gone by noon," Cathy orders, her grip tight around the spatula in her hands, as if she's waiting for the right moment to throw it at you. "You and that son of a bitch brother of yours ruined my home, abandoned my daughter… If you show up at the funeral, by God, I'll kick you out myself."
Lydia sniffs for effect. From the corner of your eye, you see her smile. Fucking bitch. "I'm sorry," you say, the words awkward and unfit in your mouth. "We just… we wanted to pay our respects."
The excuse is weak and, at best, a lie. Tim was always better at this than you – apologizing to higher authority – and you're not used to it, definitely not to a relative whose home you've trashed. But he isn't here and you are and there is something in the way your aunt sounds when she says, You did a hell of a lot more than that, Charles, that makes you feel ashamed for yourself and the trouble you've inadvertently caused.
You leave them without saying goodbye. There is nothing else to do but go and pack.
xxx
Mud sloshes over your feet as you run through the grass.
Like always, he is in front of you, the wind lifting the hem of his shirt to expose a dark back turned brown by the sun. Your chest is burning, the muscles in your legs tightening. You still have minutes to go until you reach the lake and the cold relief it brings.
He stops at the edge of the water, doesn't bother to take off his clothes before diving in. A second later, you join him, and it – this moment – is everything you need, have been looking for. Out here, he laughs, and he hasn't in so long that you've almost forgotten the sound of it, how it fills your lungs and makes you think that what you've been going towards your whole life is useless, that you can turn around and do something better. That you both can.
But you know better than to think of such things. He taught you that.
xxx
"Is Angela awake?"
That's the first thing he says to you when he comes back. His eyes are focused on the dresser across the room, where he'd unpacked your belongings and shoved them into the drawers. The suitcase lays in front of the bed, open and gaping. It was supposed to be empty for three more days, when you left on Friday. Like everything else, it wasn't supposed to end the way it has.
"Yeah," you say, stretching your arms over your head. After your near-assault in the kitchen, you went back upstairs and fell asleep within minutes. "Locked herself in the bathroom. Don't know what the hell she's doing in there."
"All right."
The hurt he's experiencing is visible. You want to tell him that Angela forgives him, but for the first time you're not sure she does, or will ever be able to. He can't fix the problem he's caused, and it's eating away at him, acid on skin.
"Cathy says we have to leave," you inform him.
"I know. She said that this morning, after I told her to fuck off."
You smile to yourself. He's always had a way with words, your brother. "What're we gonna do next?"
"Maybe stay at a hotel for a few days. I have some business to take care of."
"What kind of business?"
"None of your goddamn business is the type."
He walks over to the window and rests his arms on the sill. The same kids you saw yesterday are outside again, their voices muffled by the glass. It reminds you of when you'd go down to the junkyard in the summertime, amusing yourself for hours with the random crap people would throw away – unloaded rifles and deflated tires, their hubcaps missing, shattered mirrors and broken glass.
You wonder what he sees when he looks at his reflection now, after what he's done, at the bruise that is forming around Angela's right eye, purple and swollen. You wonder what he sees when he looks at you.
xxx
She's tried her best to cover the bruise with makeup. The only way you can tell it's there is if she tilts her head to a certain degree, or when the light catches the darkness underneath. Maybe it took you awhile to realize it, but that's all life really is: Heavy shadows, thick as mud, and hurried movements, the sinking feeling that something better is out there, just out of reach for you.
She refuses to get into the car. "I'll take the train back," she says.
"I'm not letting you go by yourself." He focuses on the steering wheel, the humming of the radio, the bird shit smeared across the windshield, anywhere but the place he wants to look at the most – her face.
"I'll go with her," you tell him. "I have money." Actually, it's some of his money you pocketed from his wallet to buy that alcohol the day before, but he doesn't need to know that. "Ten bucks should get us home."
He nods, reaches across the seat to open the passenger-side door. The hinges squeal, a final plea. "I'll drop you off at the station." Like you are complete strangers, like you have nothing in common at all.
Already, you know it's going to be a long ride back.