The Spectacular Now (24 page)

Chapter 61

Thirty minutes. An hour. An hour and a half. No Dad. The sprinkling turns into a hard rain clattering on the roof of the car. Fat streams cascade down the windshield.

“I don’t think he’s coming,” I say and take a long pull on my whisky and Seven.

“Too bad you don’t have his cell phone number.”

“Wouldn’t help anyway. I don’t have a cell phone.”

“I thought you got a new one.”

“I lost it.”

Lightning flashes and thunder cracks so close you’d think the sky’s splitting open right above the car.

“It’s getting pretty bad out,” I say. “We probably better head back home.”

“We don’t have to. We can wait as long as you want.”

“What’s the use? Same old Dad. Long gone and no goodbyes.” I crank the ignition and pull away without bothering to take a last glance at the duplex.

For a while, we’re both quiet. I don’t even put on any music. It’s just the thunder and the windshield wipers sloshing. By now, I’ve had plenty of time to let the grand, long-awaited meeting with Dad sink in. What a bust. I can take it that he really did cheat on Mom. She could be pretty mean. But the guy doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone but himself. Jesus, he didn’t even remember I was coming down to visit. And then there was that lame business about how he wanted to be there so much for me and Holly. But what? He lost track of time? You don’t lose track of time if you really love your kids.

Now he’s scamming crazy Mrs. Gates. Does he care if he breaks up her marriage and makes her kids hate her? No. He doesn’t understand the first thing about family. If he did, he couldn’t have left me sitting in my car in the rain outside his crummy duplex after I drove all the way down here to see him. But I guess my forty-five minutes’ worth of love was up a long time ago.

All these years, I cut him slack. I made up excuses about how Mom chased him away and it was her fault he never called or visited. He was really a good guy, I told myself. At least there was one parent out there that still cared about me—my great, majestic dad.

Yeah, right.

Nobody had to chase him away. He was all too glad to ditch us. He probably ran up a bunch of debt before he skipped off too, left it for Mom to pay off, or to round up Geech to pay it off for her. No wonder she can’t stand having me around. I remind her too much of the old man.

And that’s what’s really scary. Maybe I am like him. Maybe I’m headed nowhere but to the same Loserville he ended up in.

From behind, a car horn blares. I guess the Mitsubishi must’ve meandered about six inches into the other lane, and some dude back there thinks he’s traffic control. I’m like, “Fuck you, dude.” There are a lot more hazardous types on the road than me—cell phone talkers, chicks putting on makeup, guys searching their floorboard for some crappy CD they dropped.

Truth is—if I have any skill at all—it’s that I’m a magnificent driver under the influence. My record’s completely clean, not counting a couple of parking lot scrapes and a light pole. That thing with the dump truck was in my mom’s car and I didn’t have a license then. The cops didn’t even get involved. I mean, it’s not like I’m driving around with a four-year-old lodged in my grill. So that dude can just fuck off with his horn blowing. He has a lot worse things to worry about than me.

Finally, when we’re back on the interstate north of the city, Aimee starts trying to make me feel better, going on about how she actually likes the old man and how it’s too bad that Mrs. Gates turned out like she did. “I don’t understand how she could get so mad about your dad having affairs when she’s obviously cheating on her own husband.”

I’m just like, “I guess it’s because people suck.”

I’m not in the mood for feel-good bullshit. This is an abnormally dark stage in the life of the buzz. Darker than dark, like God has forsaken his very own drunken boy.

“Not all people suck,” Aimee says. “You don’t.”

“Are you sure? You saw what kind of guy my dad is—a big fat liar and cheater. The kind of dude that sheds his family like a snake sheds its skin. Are you sure I won’t slither down that same rut? They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Do you really want to move off to St. Louis with a snake-apple bastard like that?”

“You’re not a snake or an apple. And you’re not your dad. I think it’s a good thing you found out the truth. You can learn from what he did wrong. If you don’t want to be like that you don’t have to. We all have free choice.”

“Free to choose what? Some kind of spectacular new future for myself? You heard my dad. Mom wanted a future and he didn’t have one to give her. Well, I don’t have one to give you either. It’s like a birth defect, you know? The boy born without a future.”

“That’s not true, Sutter. You have so many options.”

“No, I don’t. I saw it in a dream. The same dream over and over. It’s me and Ricky playing this game we used to play in junior high with a neighborhood dog, a big black Doberman. Only in the dream, we don’t make friends with him the way we did in junior high. Not hardly. No, he opens his huge slobbering maw and swallows Ricky in one bite, and then it’s just me with the dog growling and snapping, chasing me down the drainage ditch until I run into this concrete wall. There’s no escape. And then I wake up. It’s too brutal for my subconscious to face. It’s the season of the dog, all right, only this time it’s a mean season. But that’s how life is. Just like that. You’re just running and running with a wall in front of you and a big black dog snapping at your ass.”

She lays her hand on my thigh. “It just seems that way right now. You have to remember to have hope.”

“Hope? Are you kidding? That’s one thing I’ve learned for sure—hope is absolutely unnecessary. What there is instead of it, I haven’t found out yet. Until then, this drinking will just have to do.”

I take a swallow of whisky and Seven but it goes down stale. Nothing helps. I’m a black spot on the chest X-ray of the universe.

Aimee’s like, “You know, your dad probably just got hung up having to do something for Mrs. Gates. She seemed like she had some kind of mental problems. I’m sure he really wanted to come back and hang out with us. If it wasn’t for her, we’d probably be spending the night with him.”

“Yeah, right. And if he hadn’t cheated on my mom and run out on me and Holly, then we’d still be a family, and everything would be cozy, and I’d be president of my Sunday school class, and you and I’d ride silver stallions to Pluto.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Maybe I should feel bad for going all sarcastic on her, but there’s no room inside for feeling any worse.

Finally, she’s like, “I know it looks bad right now, but parents are just people. They don’t always know what to do. That doesn’t mean they don’t love you.”

“I don’t need any psychoanalysis from you, Dr. Freud, Jr.”

That doesn’t faze her. “And even if they didn’t, that doesn’t mean you just give up. You know? It’s like you have to make love work where you can. Like with me, because I do love you. You don’t even have to question that. I do.”

“Come on, Aimee, you sound like a soap opera. You don’t love me. You may want to tell yourself that, but this isn’t love. It’s more like you’re all drunk and feeling grateful. You’re just happy someone came along and showed some interest in you as more than a sex doll for a night.”

She leans away and crosses her arms. “Don’t say that, Sutter. Don’t try to mess us up by saying mean things.”

But I’m on a roll. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? There aren’t any Commander Amanda Gallicos. There aren’t any Bright Planets out there. No one’s coming with the inner prosperity. All we have is the great Holy Trinity of the atomic vampires—the sex god, the money god, and the power god. The god of the beautiful soul starved to death a long time ago.”

She uncrosses her arms. “But we can change that.”

I shake my head. “It’s too big to change. It’s too heavy and all sharp-cornered and shit.”

“No, it’s not. It just seems that way right now because you’re afraid, but everyone’s afraid.”

I stare at her, hard. “Afraid? Afraid of what? I’m not afraid of a damn thing. I’m the guy that jumped off a thousand-foot-tall bridge.”

“You know what I mean. You’re—hey, watch out!”

“Huh?”

“You’re swerving into the other lane!”

Chapter 62

Again, a horn blares over my shoulder, only this time it’s the pissed-off blast from a tractor-trailer rig. I crank the wheel back to the right, but the road’s slick from all the rain, and we hydroplane hard. The Mitsubishi fishtails crazily down the highway, first one way, then the other. The truck rumbles next to us—a gas tanker—so close that it looks like for sure we’ll lurch back and slide right under the belly of it. With no seat belt on, Aimee’s busy struggling to squeeze into the floorboard, and a newspaper headline flashes through my mind: D
UMBASS
K
ILLS
S
ELF IN
F
IERY
A
UTO
C
RASH
; R
OBS
G
IRLFRIEND OF
S
HINING
F
UTURE
.

The tank looks like it’s about two inches away. We’re just about to slam into its ribs when the car fishtails back the other way. Now it’s only concrete abutments we have to worry about. There’s one just ahead to the right, but we only scrape it before I finally regain control and wrestle us to a stop in the high soggy grass.

Aimee peers up from the floorboard, her eyes wide, her bottom lip quivering.

All I can get out is, “Jesus Christ!”

“It’s okay,” she says. “Are you all right?”

I can’t believe it. The girl should be slapping me in the face. “No, I’m not all right,” I tell her. “Can’t you see that? I’m far from all right. I’m a one hundred percent flaming screwup!”

She crawls up from the floorboard and throws her arms around me. “I’m just so glad no one was hurt.”

“Are you kidding?” I peel her arms away. “I nearly killed you and you want to hug me? You need to get as far away from me as you can.”

“No, I don’t,” she says, crying. “I just want to hold onto you and make sure you’re okay.”

“Well, holy crap, then, I’ll get away from you.” I sling the door open and stomp down the shoulder of the highway, rain pelting me like nails. “Drive the car back yourself,” I yell over my shoulder. “You’ll be safer that way.”

But, of course, she doesn’t do that. Instead, she stumbles onto the shoulder of the road and hollers for me to come back. I just keep walking as fast as I can. It’s like if I move fast enough I can even get away from myself.

“Sutter,” she yells. “Stop. I’m sorry!”

Unbelievable. She’s sorry? For what? I turn to tell her to just get back in the car and let me go, but I don’t get the chance. A pair of headlights zoom in right behind her. All I can get out is, “Aimee!” before she staggers left onto the highway. For a second the lights blind me, then there’s an awful thump, and the next thing I know she’s rolling across the shoulder into the high grass.

My skin feels like it’s on fire as I run to her. The rain nearly blinds me. My stomach feels like a crazed animal that’s trying to scramble up through my chest and out of my mouth. I’m like, “What have I done? What have I done?” I don’t even know if I’m saying it out loud or not. She’s lying in the grass, her hair soaked, mud slashed across her cheek. Or is it blood? I kneel beside her. “Aimee, God, Aimee, I’m such a fucking idiot, Aimee.”

“Sutter.” She doesn’t open her eyes. “I think I got hit by a car.”

“I know, sweetheart, I know.” Somewhere I heard that you’re not supposed to move a person who’s been in a car accident, something about not damaging the spine, so I just kneel there next to her, afraid to even touch her face.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get some help,” I tell her, but I’m such an idiot I’ve lost my cell phone and don’t have any way to call for an ambulance.

She opens her eyes and tries to sit up.

“Hold on,” I say, “I don’t think you should move.”

“It’s okay.” She leans her head into my chest. “I think I’m all right. It just clipped my arm.”

Looking closer, I can see that it is only mud on her cheek, and I gently smudge it away.

“Can you help me get back to the car?” she says. “We’re getting soaked out here.”

“Sure, I can, baby, sure I can.” I cradle my hand beneath her arm to help her up, but she winces and tells me to stop.

“What is it?”

“It’s my arm. I think it might be broken.”

“Does it hurt bad?”

From behind us, a voice calls, “My God, is she all right?”

It’s a guy and a girl, a couple of years older than us, college students from the look of them.

The guy goes, “She just kind of like stumbled out in front of us. There wasn’t anything I could do.”

“It was only the side mirror that hit her,” says the girl. She’s holding an open magazine over her head to keep her hair dry, but it’s not helping much. “The whole mirror’s ruined. I mean, she was just walking in the road.”

“I’m sorry,” Aimee says.

The guy’s like, “No, don’t worry about it. I just hope you’re all right.”

“I’m fine,” she says, but I’m like, “I think her arm’s broken.”

“She’s lucky it’s not worse,” says the girl. “What were y’all doing out here?”

I start to tell her it’s none of her business, but Aimee goes, “We were looking for something. Something fell off our car.”

The guy wants to know if we need them to drive us to the hospital, but I tell him that we’re all right, we’ll handle it ourselves. He seems relieved, and his girlfriend’s like, “Y’all really need to be more careful.”

I help Aimee up and everything seems to be in working order except for her left arm, but there’s no bone sticking out or anything. The guy follows us to the car and opens the passenger-side door for Aimee. His girlfriend’s already heading back to their car.

“You sure you’re going to be all right to drive?” he says, once we have Aimee tucked safely inside.

“We’ll be all right,” I tell him. “I don’t care if I have to drive ten miles an hour. I’m not going to let anything else happen to her.”

As I slide in behind the steering wheel, I tell Aimee I’m driving her to the emergency room, but she refuses. She’s afraid they’ll call the police on me and her parents on her. “I can wait till tomorrow and go to the doctor then. I’ll make up something to tell my mom.”

“But doesn’t it hurt?”

“Kind of.”

“That’s it. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

“No, Sutter, you’re not.” She’s sitting there holding her arm, but there’s determination in her eyes instead of pain. “I told you. I’ll go tomorrow. I don’t want anything to get in the way of us going to St. Louis.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She’s drenched and bedraggled, but I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love her right now. That’s how I know I’ll have to give her up.