Everything You Are: A Novel Page 5

  The pictures catalogue his absence. One, he had taken himself. Allie, gap toothed and precocious, Trey just moving out of toddlerhood, standing together on the front porch heading out for their first days of kindergarten and preschool. A day he remembers, unlike all of the others in which those two faces alter and mature, Allie’s into the young woman currently slamming cupboard doors in the kitchen.

  “You want a drink?” she asks. The floor plan is open, one of the things Lilian loved about the house. Braden looks up to say yes, please, water would be welcome, only to see a bottle and three wineglasses set out on the counter.

  “Allie—”

  She doesn’t look at him, busy with the corkscrew, which she clearly has operated before. The sound of the cork popping out of the bottle is directly attached to a sick sensation in his belly. She splashes wine into three glasses.

  Alexandra’s voice precedes her arrival from the hallway. “Shall we order in for dinner? Pizza maybe? Something simple. God knows I’m not up for cooking . . .”

  She stops short at the edge of the living room, her gaze sweeping over the bottle, the glasses, and settling on Braden.

  “My God, Braden, couldn’t you wait one hour for a drink? Out of respect to Lilian, I’d think, if not concern for your daughter. This is exactly why you are not a fit parent. Put that glass down at once, Allie. You are too young to be drinking.”

  Allie, rigid with defiance, takes a long swallow, staring at Alexandra over the edge of the glass.

  “Mom let me drink wine.”

  “Your mother isn’t here . . .” Alexandra catches herself.

  “No,” Allie says. “No, she’s not. But my father is. And he likes to drink, right, Braden?”

  She crosses to him, a drink in each hand. He smells oak and tannin, his eyes drawn inexorably to the burgundy liquid in the glass. He says nothing but puts his hands behind his back, out of the way of temptation.

  “What’s the matter?” Allie challenges. “I thought drinking was your thing. More important than anything else in the world, right?”

  She takes another long swallow.

  Which is when it really and truly hits him that Lilian is dead, and he’s the only living parent of a teenager who is all fangs and claws. Lil was a good mother. She would have handled this situation decisively and well. Braden doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to do. His parenting experience is limited to small children he could pick up and carry off to time-out or bed.

  “This is not a good idea.” It sounds lame even to him.

  “Right. And you’ve had so many good ideas in your life.” Allie’s voice drips sarcasm. “Let’s get something straight. The only reason you’re here is because you’re the best of a bunch of intolerable options. No offense, Aunt Alexandra, but I’m not moving to Canada.”

  Braden needs a wall to lean on. He needs to be nicely inebriated, lubricated, sloshed, to protect him from his daughter’s venom and the overpowering presence of the cello. He needs it so bad he can taste the wine in his mouth, warming his throat, creating a shield between him and his emotions.

  Doubt wells up in equal proportion to his need for a drink. Maybe Allie would be better off with her aunt after all. It’s too late for him to become a parent. Allie doesn’t want him here, not really, in a parental capacity or any other. She just needs a punching bag. Sobriety in the face of this onslaught of reality is a laughable idea.

  “Here’s how this will work,” Allie goes on. “You don’t get to tell me what to do or how to do it. You live here to make the authorities happy. I do whatever. And when I turn eighteen, you’re out.”

  “Not acceptable,” Alexandra objects. “Clearly. You are not in a state of mind to be making decisions, and you are still a minor. You are coming with me, Allie, and that’s the end of it.”

  “I’ll run away,” Allie says, eyes still fixed on Braden. “You’ll never find me. This is harm reduction. Braden knows what that is. They teach it in AA, right?”

  Braden’s heart twists and twists again at his daughter’s words, at the sight of her drinking, at the thought that his faulty genetics and personal weaknesses have infected her despite his long absence. Or maybe because of it.

  It’s nearly impossible to think, to find any words at all, let alone good ones.

  “AA is about total abstinence,” he finally says. “They aren’t much into harm reduction. Drinking is not a good idea for you, especially right now.”

  “Oh please. If ever there was a perfect time to drink, this is it.” Allie lifts the glass again.

  Before it reaches her lips, Braden’s hand acts without any conscious direction from his brain. As surprised as everybody else in the room, he watches it lift in a smooth arc and strike the glass from her hand. Time stops for an instant, just enough for him to know that the intensity of her hate is about to ratchet up three notches. Her eyes widen, her mouth drops open. The glass catches a rainbow of light before gravity brings the inevitable.

  Glass shatters on the floor. Wine sprays out over the carpet and onto the wall. A red stain on Allie’s breast looks like blood.

  Braden, observing his fingers carefully so he doesn’t fumble, lifts the other glass from her unresisting hand and carries it to the sink, where he empties it, sets it next to the untouched glass on the counter, and dumps what remains in the bottle down the drain.

  “What the hell?” Allie’s voice is closer to tears than rage.

  Alexandra’s could cut diamond. “And this is how you plan to parent?”

  Braden dredges up a rusty voice of authority. “If I’m going to live here, there will be no alcohol in this house. No alcohol, period, for either you or me. You’re a smart girl, and I’m sure your mother has explained why you, in particular, are at risk.”

  Allie still stands, unmoving, in the middle of a dramatic stain that mars Lilian’s once pristine white carpet.

  “Mom’s not here.”

  “I think we’ve established that.”

  Lilian’s absence is loud. She’s not scurrying around blotting up the spill and planning how to get the stain out. She’s not berating or lecturing. She is, simply, not anything.

  Alexandra, on the other hand, is overly present and keeping up a stream of unwelcome and unhelpful commentary. “How on earth are you going to get that out? That was new carpet, what, just a year ago, wasn’t it, Allie? Lil was so excited about it, and now look!”

  Braden is too exhausted to move away from the sink. The empty bottle is still in his hand, the intoxicating smell of alcohol filling his sinuses.

  “I wish—” Allie begins, then breaks on a sob. Deliberately stepping on the broken glass so it crunches beneath her shoes, she stalks out of the room. He hears footsteps on the stairs, the slamming of a door.

  Alexandra switches up her approach. “Look, Braden. I’m not saying you don’t mean well. But surely you can see this isn’t going to work. Walk away. I’ll give you a ride back to your apartment. Allie will be much better off in a structured environment with two adults.”

  He weighs the logic of the words against all of his weaknesses.

  “And if she runs away?”

  “She won’t. You know nothing about teenagers, Braden. She’s just making threats. She has no idea what she wants and certainly doesn’t know what she needs.”

  Alexandra is offering him an out. If he takes it, he can tell himself it was all for Allie’s good, that he made a noble sacrifice of his own wants and desires for her best interests. But he’s already told himself that lie once before.

  He’s endured half a year of visitation, once a week, on Sundays. Lilian would drop the kids off at McDonald’s after church. Braden would feed them burgers and fries, watch them play in the ball pit, on the slides. And then he’d hug them, kiss them, watch them get into the car, and drive away.

  Every time, it broke him. Once, he couldn’t bring himself to do it and stayed home drunk. Twice. And then the phone call from Lilian.

  “Let’s just cancel visits,
Braden. They’ll be better with a clean break. It’s hard on them, this weekly visit. Allie cries for hours afterward, asks about you all week. And when you missed? Both of them were devastated. Do the right thing. Break it off. If you ever get sober, call me, we’ll rethink it . . .”

  Of course, he’d never called. He’d told himself they were better off without him. Maybe that was true, but it wasn’t the reason he’d stayed away. His own pain, the drinking, that’s what stopped him.

  Now, though, Allie has asked him to be here. He failed at the last thing she asked of him. Unforgivable. But she still needs him, and if that need makes him a punching bag, a living body on whom she can take out her grief and rage, then he’ll be that for her to the best of his ability.

  “I’m staying,” he says.

  Alexandra’s face flushes. “You’re a poor excuse for a human, Braden Healey. Always have been.”

  “Tell me a thing I don’t already know.”

  “You’ll be drunk by the end of the week and I’ll have to come back for her.”

  “Possible. I’m still staying. I don’t suppose you have any idea how to get that wine stain out of the carpet?”

  “I would have thought you’d be an expert at that.” Her voice drips venom.

  “Where I’ve been living, stains didn’t matter very much.” He turns his back and imagines to himself that Alexandra doesn’t exist. Broken glass he can manage. Big pieces first. The vacuum is still in the hall closet where Lil always kept it, though she’s bought a brand-new model. He welcomes the noise, which blocks out both the cello music in his head and further possibility of conversation with Alexandra.

  When he glances up, she is no longer standing there.

  Once the glass is all vacuumed up, he keeps going, cleaning the rug from one side to the other, welcoming the opportunity to do something, anything, rather than think and feel. Over by the door, he runs up against a pair of sensible shoes.

  Alexandra stands there, holding her suitcase in one hand, an oversize purse in the other. He raises his eyebrows in a question.

  “Leaving already?”

  She shouts to be heard over the humming of the vacuum cleaner. “My flight is in the morning. I’ve arranged a hotel for tonight. In case you change your mind. When everything falls apart, or social services refuses to allow you to stay with her, you can put her on a plane and send her to me.”

  “Fly safely,” Braden says, and mostly means it. If there could be airplane fender benders, he might wish that inconvenience upon her, but he can’t summon enough hate to wish her or anybody wiped off the face of the planet.

  Her lips purse together, and she gives her head a little shake of disapproval. And then she’s gone.

  Braden stares at the closed front door with mingled relief and panic. It’s not too late. He could still run after her. She’d love nothing more than to see him grovel and beg her to take Allie after all. Instead, he puts the vacuum away. Finds a washcloth in the bathroom and uses it to wipe wine splatters off the wall.

  An amoeba-shaped blotch remains on the carpet. It looks like blood, and he feels guilty that he’s the one who put it there. If there are ghosts, and if Lilian is one, she will haunt him for this, on top of all of his other sins against her.

  His relief at Alexandra leaving dissipates almost immediately. He’s alone with his memories. Alone with the cello. The music is louder now, and is taking on the shape of his name, first calling him, pleading, then summoning.

  Braden.

  In all of the years since he walked away from his music, his home, and his family, the cello has followed him into his dreams, inhabited all of his waking moments. A phrase of music here, a sensation of strings beneath his fingers there, a phantom bow in his hand when he’s drowning his memories in a bar.

  This is the first time it has called him by name.

  Braden.

  Feeling like he’s dreaming, he steps over the stain, walks down the hallway, opens the door to his old music room.

  Nothing has changed. The old desk where he once sat composing music still sits in the corner. His favorite chair is in place by the window, sheet music on the stand in front of it. The cello case, scuffed and scarred, stands beside it.

  He glances at the music, and the room around him spins. Bach’s Suite in C Minor. The same music he’d been practicing before music was torn out of his life. His own handwritten notations to himself are still there.

  It makes no sense that the music would be sitting on the stand, less sense than the fact that the cello is still here.

  He undoes the latches on the case, swings the cover open.

  The cello steals his breath. Same burnished red gold. The perfect curves, the tiny chip on the scrollwork where he once caught it against a door. A new scratch on the body that he traces with an insensate finger, imagining that he can actually feel the smoothness of the wood beneath his touch.

  He plucks a string, surprised that it is perfectly tuned.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he whispers.

  The cello hums an invitation.

  “I can’t,” he murmurs. “You know I can’t. Hush now.”

  He lays his hand across the strings. The connection is immediate and fierce, the lock of a powerful magnet to a shard of iron. It was like this when he was twelve years old and met her for the very first time. It was like this every time he touched her.

  The shock of loss hits him all over again, as fresh and overwhelming as it was that very first morning when he woke up in a hospital bed with bandaged hands. Every day for the last eleven years, he has wakened to the same shock and disbelief, the dark wonder that life can go on, day after day after endless day, when he is barred from the music that gave it all meaning.

  Now, though, a faint joy threads through his grief. The cello has been cared for, played. The bow has recently been re-haired.

  Allie. It would have to be Allie, just as he had always hoped. He set up music lessons for her when she was twelve, the same age he’d been when the cello came to him, but he communicated the plan through an attorney and never inquired about her progress. All he knew was that money transferred from his account into the cello teacher’s every month.

  He allows himself the small pleasure of lifting the cello out of the case and setting her on the stand, a fierce hope rising within him. Maybe he and Allie still have a chance. Maybe they can connect over the music. If he could teach her, it would be almost like playing himself.

  His left hand circles the cello’s neck, his fingers settling onto the strings. Such a familiar gesture, and yet so different and so wrong. If he focuses, he can vividly recall the sensation of finger pads on strings. It’s the very last memory fragment he retains from the far side of a black chasm of nothing.

  He inhabits that memory as fully as he can, hoping and fearing it will carry him on into the next one.

  In the first memory, he’s alone at his parents’ cabin in the woods and he’s deeply, devastatingly sad, faced with a decision that is going to break him, no matter what choice he makes. The cello rests warm against his knee and he’s playing, not the C Minor that he’s meant to be practicing but something different, Allie’s song, a lullaby he created for her when she was just a baby.

  That’s one bookend.

  In the next, he’s in the hospital. His cheek is stitched back together after being flayed open somehow. His hands are bandaged from serious frostbite. And his sister is telling him that Mitch, his brother-in-law, is dead. People keep asking what happened. How did Mitch come to fall through the late ice on the lake? He’s a big man, so how did Braden get him from the lake to the cabin?

  Then, as now, he doesn’t know the answers.

  As always, when he tries to push his way into the blank space, panic hits him with hurricane force. He can’t breathe, his chest hurts, his vision narrows down into a tunnel, and, oh God, what is he doing here? Everything he has been running from is in this house. Who does he think he is that he can face it all, especially sober?
<
br />   For Allie, he reminds himself.

  He staggers to his feet, away from the cello, slamming the door behind him. But this house is a minefield, trip wires of memory hidden everywhere he walks. He wants, needs, requires a drink.

  Water. Librium.

  He makes it to the kitchen, manages to fill a glass with water, although his hands are shaking so violently he spills half of it when he tries to drink. There’s the bottle of Librium in his suitcase, meant for withdrawals, but he knows from experience that it’s also good for anxiety. He’d packed in five minutes, stuffing clothes and toiletries into the bag without folding or sorting, and the whole thing is a twisted mess he can barely navigate.

  By the time he locates the bottle, jeans and socks and underwear are strewn everywhere. The childproof cap nearly defeats him. Between his shaking and his numb fingers, it takes him three tries, and then as the cap opens, the whole damn thing slips from his grasp and lands on the floor, the contents spilling everywhere.

  Which is when the doorbell rings.

  He ignores it, chasing down one of the capsules and trying to pick it up. He hears himself laughing like a maniac.

  The doorbell buzzes again, and then again, and relief floods through him.

  Alexandra, surely, come back to press her point. Perfect timing. She was right, he was wrong. He’s not up to this, can’t do it, in fact it’s going to kill him. He’ll let her care for Allie and he will hit the closest store, buy a bottle, and drain it.

  He dry swallows two of the capsules and then flings the door open without bothering to look through the peephole, words already spilling off his tongue. “Fine. You’re right.”

  Chapter Eight

  PHEE

  “I am?”

  Phee has a rudimentary plan. She’s brought flowers. She’ll offer condolences to Allie and Braden. But when Braden answers the door, uttering the last words she expects to come out of his mouth, shock steals all of her words and apparently also her brain cells.

  “I mean, yes, of course I’m right,” she says, pulling herself together.