Waking Charley Vaughan (11 page)

“That’s not what I mean, and I think you know that.” He said simply. “Why don’t you let me help you with things like standing, sitting, walking, calling the nurse, or getting you a glass of water?” His eyes were stern as he examined me, then they softened. “I mean, is it me? Did I do something to make you uncomfortable? I know this is a weird situation, but I honestly just want to…”

“It’s not you,” I cut him off. “It’s me I guess. I’m not always very good at letting people help me.” This felt like a huge confession on my end, but Brennan just looked at me with an expression that said, ‘duh.’

“Sometimes, I just don’t know if the help is worth it.” I said, hoping that explained things. It didn’t.

“Worth it?” Brennan pressed.

“It’s like this,” I told him, “I know that a lot of people are willing to just do you a favor, be happy to do it, and leave it at that.” I looked down at my hand resting in my lap. “It’s not like that with a lot of the people in my life though. Favors aren’t free. They cost a lot sometimes.”

Brennan looked at me, confusion coating his face.

“Most people in my family are more than happy to do you a favor, but it’s not because they care. It’s because it makes them better than you…gives them something to hold over your head…or makes them look good. It never has anything to do with the person they are doing the favor for, and some favors can never be repaid. You just have to hear them tell everyone for the rest of your life about this great thing they did for you, and how much of an imposition it was, and how they did it anyway. It’s disgusting, and there aren’t many favors that are worth the humiliation.” I looked at him, hoping this concluded the matter.

“Yeah,” he said, “But, Charley, sometimes people just want to help.” He looked sincere.

“In my experience, it’s not always easy to tell the people who really care about helping me from those who only care about helping themselves,” I explained. “So, sometimes it’s easier to just not give people the opportunity to hold something over me.”

He seemed to think about this, but made no comment as he sat beside me and watched a full hour of Spanish soap operas. I wasn’t sure if he understood any of it or not, but he was good at cracking jokes, and seemed to enjoy laughing at my imitations of the actors’ dialogue.

After Francisco’s evil twin, or Francisco with a mustache, we were never sure witch, kidnapped Maria, and the show ended with a cliffhanger, Brennan got up from the recliner and stretched.

“Well, seniorita Vaughan,” he said in an awful caricature of a Spanish accent—pronouncing my name like ‘Ba-hawn”, “I must be going. I have so many things to take care of before tomorrow, or as we say in my country, Feliz Navidad,” I burst out laughing.

“In your country, huh?” I said, still laughing.

“Oh yes!” he said excitedly, still in character, and saying it ‘jes’ instead of ‘yes’. “You did not know I come from Nicaragua? I only here on a work Visa,” by the time he hit ‘bisa” I was almost crying. It might have just been the medication, but I thought he was hilarious at that moment.

After a couple more minutes of his impressions and my laughter, he said, “Okay, seriously. I’m gonna go. Let me know if you need anything.” Then he looked at me and added, “Even though I know you won’t, I feel better if I say it.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Brennan. Have a good night.”

“You, too, Charley,” he said, and he held his hand out to shake mine. “Um, Charley,” he said, sounding worried. “You’re warm.”

“Yeah, I think it’s a little hot in here,” I told him.

“No,” he said. “Your skin is on fire. I’m getting the nurse.”

CHAPTER 7 – SARA

              My mom wasn’t exactly pleased with my intentionally late announcement that I would be spending most of Christmas Day with Charley. I hadn’t told her about the scam we had going on Charley’s parents because it would just upset her for a million reasons. She loved Charley enough that she didn’t give me too much of a fight when I told her where I was going. She’d heard stories from me about Charley’s mom, and I think part of her was relieved that Charley wasn’t going to be alone with them on Christmas.

              Part of the deal I’d made with my mother was that I’d stay until noon so we could have our Christmas brunch. It was rounding 9:30 when Matt still hadn’t shown. My mom had called him a few times to no avail.

At around 10 o’clock, my phone buzzed from its place on the counter. I was expecting it to be Charley or maybe Brennan, but instead, Matt’s name showed up.

              “Come pick me up. I’m at my house,” the screen said when I viewed the message.

             
What the hell?
I thought. “Why?” I texted him back, while grabbing my purse and coat from the table next to the couch. He was a jackass, but him being there would make Mom happy. So, it was for her that I got up from my comfortable place on the couch, put on my snow boots, (we’d gotten a surprise snow dump this morning, making it a white Christmas after all), and left to go get my dumbass brother. .

“I’ll be back in a few,” I shouted to my mom as I left, “Matt’s car must not want to start again,” he had a nice car, but it was a finicky piece of junk if the temperature hit anything below 25 degrees. It was currently 17 degrees, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d needed a ride.

Luckily, his house was only a few miles from our parents’ place. I was the one who had made mom cry by moving more than three blocks away from her house. I still spent plenty of time at home though—more than Matt.

I pulled into the driveway of Matt’s house. I sat for a minute, mentally preparing myself to try to be pleasant despite how angry I was at him. When he still hadn’t come outside after a minute or two, I went up and punched in his garage code. He came running out of the front door. “Don’t open that!” he yelled as the door slowly scrolled upward.

It was then that I noticed his car wasn’t in the garage. “Where’s your car?” I asked him.

“Don’t worry about it,” he huffed, punching the button to close the garage and climbing into the passenger seat of my SUV.

“I’m not
worried,”
I told him, “but if I have to come get you, you could at least tell me what you wrecked into with it,” I hadn’t been serious, but his eyes got big for second, as if he were ready to defend himself.

“It’s in the shop, someone hit it in the parking lot and didn’t leave a note,” he said defensively.

“Okay,” I said. “Calm down, I believe you.”

It was silent for just a second before he asked, “Is she OK?”

Oh. That’s why he’s so upset,
I thought, surprised that his anxiety hadn’t really been stemming from his damaged car. He loved that thing.

“You could have tried a little harder to find out,” I said, bitterly. “You didn’t even try to call her.”

“Did she want me to call? Does she want to talk to me?” he asked as he dug in his pocket.

“No,” I said shortly, “she doesn’t want to talk to you, but you could have at least tried,” I scolded him.

              He pulled his hands out of his pocket, and stared forward. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here, Sara,” he said sadly.

“You made a mess,” I said less harshly than I wanted to, “More than you realize,” I said, thinking of Charley’s bakery.

“That’s what you think,” he muttered.

              By then, we’d arrived at back at our parents’ house. I shuffled out of the car and into the house quickly, wanting to make as little contact with the freezing cold air as possible. By the time Matt walked into the house a full 30 seconds behind me, I was already back in my place on the couch, and mom was sitting a cup of cocoa down on the table beside me.

              She greeted Matt with a hug and kiss. “Where have you been?” she asked him. This was her standard greeting any time it’d been more than a couple of days since she’d seen us.

Neither of my parents had seen Matt since before Charley’s accident. Both my parents had gone to the hospital immediately after, expressing their concern in their own ways. My mom cried, and muttered a lot of words that could not be deciphered. The only ones we could really make out were “poor,” and “Charley”. My father, known more for his stern approach to tough situations, did a lot of grumbling about how it was “inexcusable,” and “unacceptable”. He was also directing a lot of the same language toward my absent brother. Dad was pretty upset with Matt. He was a big believer in being a man of integrity. I had a feeling Matt disappointed him in that area on a pretty regular basis.

My brother interrupted my thoughts when he plopped down on the couch next to me. He looked like crap. Mom came into the living room and sat down some more mugs of cocoa. She called for my father to come join us as she went into the kitchen. I got up to help her, knowing that with my mom’s cooking, there would be plenty of stuff to bring to the table.

“We’re going to eat in the living room this year, honey,” she said as I helped her gather breakfast items. This was extremely unlike her. Mom always, every year, without exception, made us eat in the formal dining room.

“Why?” I asked, surprise showing in my tone.

“I just think we could use a relaxed atmosphere this year,” she said, busying herself with gathering napkins and forks. “I just don’t feel like there’s need for a lot of fuss this year…” she trailed off, and I looked over to find her wiping her cheeks under each eye.

“Mom, are you crying?”

“She just…” my mom started,  “…she made Christmas Day so fun these past few years,” she said with a steady stream of tears flowing now. I grabbed a tissue from the counter and handed it to her.

“I know, Mom,” I said, trying to soothe her. She was right. Charley loved the holidays. She was like our own little elf, running around and working her hardest to spread ‘Christmas Cheer’, as she always said. I remember the first Christmas she spent with us. We’d only known her a couple of months, but she managed to make it feel like Christmas with our family was the oldest tradition in the world.

It was sometime around that first Christmas that Matt had decided he was infatuated with Charley. She’d been hanging around a lot, and he kept asking me to put in a “good word” for him. I refused on the grounds that I knew how he treated girlfriends. I’d been pretty honest that first Christmas, and told him he didn’t deserve to date her. It was no use. By the next Christmas, they’d been dating close to a year, and things were already serious. Despite his promises to me to be different, from what I saw, he was still the same old Matt when it came to Charley.

By her second Christmas with us, she was coming over early to help with breakfast, and showed up with gifts for everyone, which none of us had expected. Matt had spent the weeks before warning us that Charley didn’t have much money, and telling us not to do anything to make her feel uncomfortable. It had always pissed me off that he felt the need to tell me something like that about my best friend. He was always quick to dismiss the fact that I had known her first. And that I knew her best.

As it turned out, Matt was the only one who’d done anything to make her uncomfortable. She’d brought each of us a thoughtful, sweet gift: something that showed that she’d really been listening and getting to know us.. She got a mom an adorable, personalized apron, and my dad had received some kind of coffee accessory—they had discovered they were both obsessed with coffee the Christmas before. She got me a beautiful, handmade necklace with a huge, chunky stone on a small leather strap. I had pointed it out on Black Friday when she and I had gone window shopping together. She’d probably purchased it that same day.

Then, there had been Matt’s gift. The gift she had spent the bulk of her money on, I was sure of it. It was two tickets to see his favorite band play on New Year’s Eve. He had taken a look at the tickets, thanked her, and then asked me if I wanted them right in front of her. Charley just smiled sweetly and insisted that she was just glad they would get good use. Matt hadn’t wanted the tickets because the seats weren’t good enough. And when New Year’s Eve had come, Charley and I had ended up going with the tickets she’d bought Matt, while he had weaseled his way into the front row with some friends.

“It’s OK, babe,” he’d told her that morning. “The front row stuff is really expensive. I appreciate the effort, but the show is no good all the way back there.”

I had really wanted to punch him then. I had actually been sure then that he was going to royally screw things up with her. She seemed to just let it roll off her back, though, so I didn’t scream at him in front of her. Both my mom and I had told him he was being a jerk when Charley had excused herself to go to the bathroom. As usual, he was so wrapped up in himself that he had no idea what we were talking about.

Even with Matt’s insensitivity in full force, though, that Christmas day had been one of the best our family had experienced in a long time. We all knew it had been because of Charley, and every Christmas she was there, had been even better than the one before. I could understand my mom’s sadness.