Delicate Monsters (17 page)

Hope and desperation faded from the public eye, leaking into smug validation like air deflating from a balloon with a hiss, not a pop.

Depressed kid. Never saw him smile.

Dad did it. Now the boy did it, too. Damn shame.

Those things run in the family, you know.

Mom is crazy. No wonder.

Probably queer. He looked queer.

Meth'll do that …

Need to drag the river.

Check the train tracks.

Look in the woods. I'll bet you anything he did it in the woods.

*   *   *

She even told me why.…

The day May told him about it, Emerson hadn't bothered asking
why
her Harvard-bound cousin had taken pills and killed herself at the age of twenty-two, when she had her whole shining life ahead of her. He hadn't asked because it didn't seem like he had the right to know. And now he couldn't ask, he realized, because by asking, it might break him. He just might fall apart for good to see the sweet, sweet sorrow in her eyes. Her pained reflection of grief. Everything wonderful got ruined eventually.

By guilt.

By
him.

Had that moment at the party been the tipping point? Is that where it had all started to fall apart? Miles had been lying in a hospital recovering from his seizure while Emerson had been at Trish Reed's, up in that lonely bathroom with May. She'd passed out while he was looking at her, just rolled those pretty brown eyes shut, and then he couldn't
stop
staring. At her body. Her face. At how still she was. Just barely breathing. After that, it'd been such a simple thing to do. To unzip his jeans, to reach down to—

Emerson got to his feet abruptly. Told his mom he needed air. A lie, but a necessary one. Once outside in the smothering afternoon heat, he got into his car and drove right out of town. He headed south, which was where the famous Sonoma Raceway was located, along with the auto repair shop where his dad had worked up until his death. And while no one at Brewster's Classic Cars & Automotive Care had ever crewed for NASCAR or IndyCar or even set a tire on the neighboring racetrack in any official capacity, Emerson's father told him once that
proximity mattered.

“Listen to me, Em. Being close to greatness makes a difference. It just does. You date the prettiest girl or sit with the most popular kid at school, people start believing there's something special about you. After a while, you might start believing it, too. That's when you know a little bit of their shine is yours now.”

The owner, Paul Brewster, stood outside the red brick building with a hose, washing down the flagstone patio where customers liked to wait in the sun while their cars were being serviced. He did a double take of recognition as the Mustang nosed in. Then he nodded and waved Emerson forward, pointing for him to park by a wine barrel planter filled with sprawling vines and some sort of purple flower.

By the time Emerson unbuckled himself and got out, Brewster was already running his hand along the Mustang's hood. His gray eyes were misty, like a watercolor gone bad, and he pulled Emerson into an awkward embrace before stepping back and gazing down at the car again.

“How's she running?” he asked.

“Pretty good.”

“You're leaking oil.”

“I know.”

“Suspension's dragging, too. And I bet that air filter needs changing.”

“It does.”

“Better bring her in sometime, okay? Let me look at her.”

“I will,” Emerson said firmly, although they both knew he wouldn't. He couldn't afford to.

Brewster nodded again. Touched the hood with scarred fingers that were as long and slender as the rest of him. He'd been one of Emerson's father's oldest friends. They'd grown up together. Emerson's dad always said he'd looked up to Brewster like a big brother.

But that's not the way Miles looks at me.

“Why'd he do it?” Emerson blurted out.

Brewster squinted at him. “Who?”

“My dad. I want to know why.”

“That why you're here? To talk about that?”

“Yeah. Well, Miles is missing and I think maybe he had some real, you know, mental issues. Now they're saying … now they're saying he might have—” Emerson couldn't finish the sentence. He just shook his head.

“Ah, shit.” Brewster's face fell. “Shit. That's terrible. Just terrible. Miles was always such a sweet kid. Tenderhearted, you know? I was hoping he had just run away. That he'd come home when he was ready.”

“Maybe that
is
what happened,” Emerson said, thinking of his own heart, which was anything but tender. “But if what they're saying, if it's true, it'll kill my mom. It really will.”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Look, if there's something about my dad that you can tell me,
anything,
maybe it'll help me find Miles. That's why I'm here. I don't know what else to do or who to talk to.”

Brewster blew air through his cheeks, rolled his neck side to side. There were tiny pockets of red in his eyes, like maybe he hadn't slept in a while. “I miss your dad every day. Every goddamn day. But it's not a simple thing, talking about Mark, about what happened to him.”

Nothing
happened,
Emerson thought darkly. It wasn't some passive thing. His father did exactly what he set out to do. “Tell me what you know. Tell me anything.”

“Let's go to my office.”

Emerson followed him toward the back of the garage. The raw scent of motor oil and coolant filled his nostrils and brought waves of memories flooding back: the hours he spent here as a young boy, crawling through the bays and stealing sips of beer from cans that had been left out; eavesdropping on the mechanics while they bitched about illegals coming to steal their jobs and girls they wanted to screw. Eventually, he and Miles had to stop coming because of some stupid liability issue, but until then, this place had been the one spot where Emerson had felt a little bit of independence. Of
freedom.

“You look like him,” Brewster said when they'd both sat down. “It's eerie.”

“I know.”

“You're taller, though. Probably got a good two inches on him.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely,” Brewster said. Then: “He didn't leave a note or anything, your dad. He just did it.”

Emerson leaned forward in his chair, which was wood and squeaked beneath his weight. “The thing is, no one told me what he did when it happened. They just said he died. I guess I thought he'd had a heart attack or something. I don't know. I was a kid, and we didn't talk about it. We still don't talk about it. My mom, she's kind of fragile, you know? I had to find out what he'd done at
school
. From the girl whose dad arrested my mom.
She's
the one who told me he killed himself. Isn't that fucked up?”

Brewster gave him a funny look.

“What?” Emerson asked.

“That's not true.”

“What's not true?”

“You were definitely told what happened to your father, Emerson. I know because I was there. Your mother had me come over and help the night Mark died. Shit, she was a real wreck. She didn't know what to do. None of us did. Your uncle was there, too. He and I sat you boys down, and we told you that your father had a sickness inside of him that made him do things he didn't want to do, and that this time his sickness made him kill himself. We told you what a terrible thing his sickness was because he wanted to live and because he loved you so very, very much, but that he'd died and wouldn't be coming back.”

The back of Emerson's neck grew hot. Then hotter. “I don't remember that.”

“Hardest damn thing I ever had to do.”

“I seriously don't remember that.”

“Well, I don't know what to say. I thought you understood. You seemed to. Miles, I couldn't tell, he was so little and scared, like a lost pup. But you reacted. At the time you were very…”

“Very what?”

“Angry,” Brewster said.

Emerson took a deep breath. He felt sick. And dizzy. The night of his father's death was vivid and clear in his mind, all the tears, the confusion, his mother's wails. So why didn't he remember being told it was a suicide? Who could forget something like that?

“So he was depressed?” he managed.

“Sometimes, but it was more than that. Your dad, he was on the other end a lot.”

“Other end?”

“Manic, you know.” Brewster made a set of fluttering wings with his hands. The wings went up toward the ceiling in a shiver of shadows, before making a diving swoop for the floor. “He was impulsive. Always flying high before he came crashing down. He thought he could do anything when he was like that, but he didn't really think sometimes. That was the problem. Mark ruined a lot of relationships that way. Almost ruined ours more than once. And the one with your mom. They say it's a brain thing, chemicals out of balance, but he didn't ever want to hear that when he was up.”

“You're saying my dad was bipolar or something? That's why he killed himself?”

“No, it's not
why
. Not directly, although it had to factor in somehow. But it was regret that did it, I think. All that guilt over things he'd done.”

“Guilt for what?”

Brewster picked a pen up off his desk, a silver one. He spun it across his knuckles, around and around. Emerson's heart pounded. It was the same trick May had done in class the other day, before this whole nightmare with Miles had started.

Before
.

“Let me ask you this,” Brewster said, after a moment. “You ever done something you felt really terrible about? Something you shouldn't have, but that you can't take back?”

yes oh yes

all the time, really

“What kind of thing?” Emerson asked.

“Anything.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, me, too. And I'm going to tell you my biggest regret because it's the only one I know, but I think it's important for you to hear about.”

“Okay.”

“Your dad came to me, maybe a week before he died. He was in real pain, after one of those crashes, and he asked me that same question. The one I just asked you. Only he followed it up with, ‘how do you make it stop?' How do you make the guilt go away when it's eating you up inside? When you feel like you've let down the ones you love? At the time I was pissed. Some of the things he was doing, drinking, missing work, spending money he didn't have, it was hurting my business. Hurting
me
. So you know what I told him about getting rid of guilt?”

“What?”

Brewster's eyes went misty again. “I told him sometimes you don't deserve to.”

*   *   *

Emerson drove to the town library after leaving Brewster's. He had to go somewhere. He couldn't face seeing his mom again so soon. Not with all the turmoil inside him. Not with all the questions chewing at his nerves.

He parked beneath a cypress tree, pulled the whisky bottle out from under the front seat, and let himself drink a little. The guilt was there, the way it always was, but Emerson kept on drinking. It didn't seem like adding more guilt on top of what was already inside him was going to matter too much at the moment. When he was done, he got out of the car, tossed the empty bottle into the bushes, and bounded up the steps to the stone building. He took them two at a time like the athlete he was and ignored the stares of the children and parents, who all surely knew his name and why his family was in the news these days.

Inside the library, a row of computers sat against the far wall, directly beneath a display of posters with information about registering to vote.
I should really do that,
Emerson thought. He was eighteen now. A damn adult. He ought to act like one.

He logged in to a computer with his city account and opened a web browser. He'd never been a big reader, but the library was where he'd spent a lot of time as a kid, especially in middle school, when they couldn't afford DSL payments. Here the internet was free, and unlike the school library, no one ever looked over his shoulder or restricted what sites he could visit.

Ducking his head over the keyboard, Emerson googled
bipolar disorder
. He'd heard of it, of course, but didn't know a lot about it, or about any mental disorders, really. He certainly didn't know his dad had had one, although it made sense, considering. Emerson's chest tightened. Was he about to find out that Miles was like their father, full of inner torment and destined to implode? Emerson clicked onto the first site that came up. He scanned the symptoms of mania, which included:

• Euphoria

• Grandiosity

• Pressured speech

• Racing thoughts

• Decreased need for sleep

• Increased sexual behavior

• Reckless use of drugs or alcohol

• Delusions or a break from reality (psychosis)

Emerson frowned. None of these sounded like Miles at all. Miles was gloomy and sickly and didn't talk to people if he could avoid it. No doubt, he fell more on the depressive side of things, although even that didn't seem quite right because the depression part didn't say anything about getting sick all the time and having to go to the hospital.

But reading over the manic symptoms again, a funny tickle grew in Emerson's throat. Like a laugh or some sort of rising sickness. Because Brewster didn't tell him that his father had died of euphoria or racing thoughts or even some kind of psychosis. It was
guilt
that killed him, Brewster had said. Along with the seasick sway of regret.

Two things Emerson knew a lot about.