Suit (44 Chapters #4) Page 14

  “And then you’ll be the most educated one in the family.” Mr. Easton smiled, completely unaware of his faux pas, but all the women in the room held their breath and looked at Ken.

  Especially me.

  Which, of course, made Ken stand up and leave the room.

  “…hates bein’ the center of attention. He’s shy, that one.”

  Ken’s parents stood as well, smoothing the wrinkles from their Sunday best as they escorted us to the front door.

  “It was nice to meet you, Brooke,” Mrs. Easton said with a polite smile.

  Like my mother, she was a schoolteacher, but unlike my mother—who taught art at an overcrowded, underfunded public school where they let her wear tie-dye and Birkenstocks to work—Mrs. Easton looked like she was probably employed by a pricey private school where they let teachers hit kids with rulers.

  “Nice to meet you, too.” I beamed, spreading my arms in preparation for a hug that was clearly not going to be reciprocated.

  Mrs. Easton’s eyes went wide in horror as she realized what I was doing, her arms glued to her sides. I dropped my hands as heat crept into my cheeks, turning to face Mr. Easton.

  Furrowing his brow as if he didn’t know what to do with me, Ken’s dad raised a hand and patted me on the shoulder. Twice. “Welp, y’all drive safe.”

  “Uh…thanks for having me,” I said, distracted by the sight of Ken in my periphery, turning and walking down the front steps without so much as a goodbye. “The cake was delicious,” I sputtered, stepping backward onto the Welcome mat. “Happy birthday, Chelsea!” I called into the house before turning to hustle after Ken.

  He had just opened his driver-side door when I dived into the passenger seat.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked as he cranked the engine and backed out of the driveway.

  “What was what?”

  “That!” I threw my hand out in the direction of his childhood home. “You just…left! You guys didn’t hug or say I love you or anything!”

  Ken shrugged, shifting into drive. “We don’t do that.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t do that?” I screeched.

  Ken glanced at me in annoyance.

  “You guys don’t hug?”

  “No.”

  “Never?”

  Ken gave me a warning look.

  “Oh my God.” I sat back in my seat, flabbergasted.

  All those armchairs.

  My heart hurt, thinking about Ken as a little boy in that house. No couch to cuddle on. No touching. No tickles.

  “Have they ever told you they loved you?”

  Ken kept his eyes on the road, his mouth set in a straight line. “Probably.”

  “Probably?” I gasped. “You can’t even remember?”

  Ken cut his hard eyes to mine, just for a second. “It’s not that big of a deal. They’re good parents, okay?”

  “I know; I know.” I held my hands up. “They’re lovely—”

  “Just because something’s different doesn’t make it wrong,” Ken cut me off. He’d never interrupted me before.

  I turned in my seat, facing him head-on. “I’m sorry. I know they’re your parents, and they seem like wonderful people, but you going your whole life without hearing the words I love you…that is absolutely fucking wrong.”

  Ken kept his eyes on the road and didn’t say another word. The conversation was obviously closed for discussion.

  I didn’t tell him I love you as I stared at the side of his beautiful, impassive face, but I thought it.

  I thought it as hard as I fucking could.

  July 2003

  I have no idea why I was home that day. I’d been avoiding my house as much as possible ever since I saw Knight outside my bedroom window, but for some reason, I was upstairs in my room, chain-smoking and sketching out a drawing of the Eiffel Tower that I wanted to paint for Ken’s wall of French art, when I heard the phone ring. And not my phone—not some cute little doodle-oodle-oodle-oo. No, this was my parents’ loud-ass home phone that made me feel the urge to duck and cover with every successive ring.

  “Mom!” I yelled from my bed. “Will you get that? I’m busy!”

  RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

  “Mom!”

  Goddamn it.

  I set my pencil down on the edge of my easel and waded through the piles of Hans’s bullshit strewed about on my tiny bedroom floor until I got to the plastic cordless phone anchored to the wall next to my bed.

  “Hello?” I huffed.

  “Hey, Scooter,” my dad replied. “Is your mom there?”

  “Yeah, hang on,” I said, stepping over a guitar amp and hitting my head on a brass pot hanging from the ceiling. Stomping out into the hallway, I cupped my hand over the receiver and yelled, “Mom!” as loud as I could.

  All I heard in response was a tiny cough from somewhere downstairs.

  Then, a grunt.

  “Dad, hold on a second.”

  I flew down the stairs, phone in one hand, railing in the other.

  “Mom?”

  Turning the corner in the foyer, I swung my head left and right until I spotted a pair of feet lying sideways on the linoleum kitchen floor.

  One Birkenstock on. One off.

  “Mom!” I rushed in and found my mother splayed out across the kitchen floor.

  A barstool had been turned over during her fall, and her head had landed in Ringo’s bowl of dog food.

  I dived for her, picking her head up and moving the plastic bowl away, as she swallowed and coughed and stared at me with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Mom? What happened? Are you okay?”

  Her mouth opened and closed in labored movements, but nothing came out other than frustrated gurgles and coughs.

  “Can you move? Squeeze my hand.” I grabbed her cold fingers and felt a gentle squeeze. “What about this hand?” I reached for the arm pinned under her side and extracted her hand.

  Nothing.

  “Mom, squeeze my hand!”

  Nothing.

  Shit!

  I laid her head back on the floor and leaped up to call 911.

  “Scooter?” my dad said from the cordless phone I’d abandoned on the kitchen floor. I had already forgotten that he was on hold.

  I grabbed the phone. “Dad! I think Mom had a stroke!”

  “Call 911, and I’ll meet you at the hospital.” I’d never heard him sound so authoritative. “And, Scooter, don’t you dare cry. Do you hear me? You’ll scare your mother.”

  “Okay.” I nodded and felt my chin buckle as I glanced back at my favorite person on earth, paralyzed and struggling to speak on the kitchen floor. “I won’t.”

  The paramedics arrived so fast; I was still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher when they knocked on the door.

  I don’t remember them loading her into the ambulance. I don’t remember following it to the hospital. I don’t remember how long it had taken my dad to get there.

  All I remember is that the only word my mother could say as she lay, waiting for the doctors, was Brooke.

  And shit. She could also say shit.

  Thanks to my neuropsychology coursework, I knew that my mother was exhibiting Broca’s aphasia. It’s when a person has a blood clot—a stroke—in the part of the brain that’s responsible for turning thoughts and feelings into words and sentences. The reason people with Broca’s aphasia are still able to curse is because those words are stored in a different, more primitive part of the brain.

  I found it fitting that my mom had stored my name in the same place as the words cunt and asshole.

  The doctors told us that my mother was extremely lucky that I’d gotten her to the hospital as quickly as I had. From what they could tell, it had only been an hour or two since the stroke occurred, which meant that she could possibly make a full recovery with treatment. I should have been happy, but the revelation made me feel like the world’s shittiest daughter. If it hadn’t been for my dad’s random lunch-break phone call, my mom
would have been lying on the floor for hours, suffering irreversible brain damage, while I sat, self-absorbed, up in my room, smoking and drawing and obsessing over a boy.

  My mother believed in guardian angels, so I begged hers to help her get better.

  Please, I pleaded as the doctors wheeled her away to administer the treatment that would hopefully bring her back to us. If she recovers, I’ll do better. I’ll spend more time with her, I promise. We’ll go to the museum, we’ll take yoga classes, we’ll finally learn how to play beer pong—whatever she wants. Please. Just give me another chance.

  After the treatment, there was nothing left to do but wait. My dad said I should take the first shift because he had to go home and let the dog out. I knew what that was code for. My dad had to go home and get wasted because he had no coping skills, he hated hospitals, and his anxiety was through the roof.

  I stayed by her side all night, semi-reclined in that godforsaken chair, watching one of the four channels on the hospital TV and staring at my mom for signs of life during every commercial break. Nurses came, and nurses went. Things were written on the whiteboard and then erased. Trays of food were brought and taken away, untouched. And, all the while, my mother slept.

  When my dad showed up, long after sunrise, he was wearing dark sunglasses and nursing a black coffee.

  Good, I thought. You look the way I feel.

  I left him with his unconscious wife, unsure if she would ever be able to say his name again, and took off. There was only one place I wanted to be, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.

  I’d called Ken the night before from the hospital waiting room and told him what had happened. He was at work at the time, so he couldn’t really talk, but he did say that he was sorry and offered to help if I needed anything.

  Well, I did need something. I needed him to fucking hold me while I fell apart.

  I parked in Ken’s driveway and took my foot off the clutch without thinking, causing my car to shudder violently and stall out with a hiss. That was when I knew I was in bad shape. I hadn’t stalled out since I was sixteen. I needed sleep. I needed food. I needed alcohol. I needed to cry. I needed Ken. And I needed them all at once.

  It took my exhausted, emotional, brain-dead ass at least three tries to get the right key in the lock before I was finally able to open Ken’s red front door. When I did, I stopped in my tracks, horrified to see him sitting to the left of the couch, watching the morning news, in a brand-new motherfucking recliner.

  Bile rose in my throat.

  Armchairs.

  Armchairs.

  A room full of armchairs.

  This is how it begins.

  Ken doesn’t want me to touch him anymore.

  Look at the couch. That’s my spot.

  Ken has a new spot. By himself in his MOTHERFUCKING ARMCHAIR.

  “Where the fuck did that come from?” I threw a hand toward his newest acquisition.

  “Uh…” Ken tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at me. “La-Z-Boy was having a Fourth of July sale, so—”

  “Didn’t you hear me trying to get in?” I snapped, swinging my hand in the direction of the door. “You just sat there!”

  Ken gave me that look. That condescending fucking look that said, I’m going to speak to you in small words now because you’re clearly emotional and beyond all reason. “You have a key. I didn’t think you—”

  “Whatever!” I cut him off as I made my way into the kitchen to drop my purse on the counter. Leaning over Ken’s stainless-steel sink, I alternated between drinking the water straight from the tap and splashing it on my face. When I shut off the faucet and dried myself off, I turned around to find the kitchen empty.

  Stomping back into the living room, I glared at the motherfucker in the brown leather armchair. He looked fresh-faced and well rested in a Peachtree Road Race T-shirt and a pair of running shorts. He looked like a bastard who didn’t give two shits that his girlfriend had been up all night, pacing hospital floors and worrying that her mother might not ever speak or walk again.

  “So, this is it? We’re doing this again?” I fumed, clamping my hands down onto my jutting hip bones.

  “Doing what?” Ken furrowed his angular brows at me as if he had absolutely no idea what I could possibly be upset about.

  “We’re playing the game where I feel really fucking sad about something”—my face crumpled—“and you stay as far away from me as you can get until it goes away.” My voice broke. The levees broke. The dam that had been holding back my emotions for my mother’s sake broke, and there was no one there to help me put it back together.

  I stood in the middle of Ken’s living room and cried while he tried to figure out what the fuck to do about it.

  “Brooke…”

  “Shut up!” I yelled, burying my face in my hands.

  Not only did Ken shut up, he stood up and walked right out of the fucking room.

  My cries morphed from a silent sob to a keening wail as soon as he was gone. I curled up on the couch, pulling my knees to my chest, and hugged myself until I fell asleep.

  I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. It was still light outside, but Ken was nowhere to be seen.

  Stumbling into the kitchen, I answered on what had to be the hundredth chime.

  “Scooter! Your mom’s awake, and she’s talking up a storm. She sounds like a drunken pirate though.” My dad chuckled as my mom slurred something inappropriate in the background. “But the doctors say she’ll be back to normal in a few days.”

  “That’s great, Dad.” I meant it, but I sure as fuck didn’t sound like it.

  “You okay, Scooter?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. You woke me up, so I’m a little out of it.”

  “Well, go let Ringo out, then get your ass up here with some pizza. Your mom told a nurse that their food tastes like dog shit.” He chuckled again.

  “Okay.” I yawned. “See you soon.”

  Dropping my phone into my purse, I noticed a note scrawled on a pad of paper next to it on the counter.

  Brooke,

  I have to go to work. Sorry about your mom. I hope she’s okay.

  Ken

  Picking up the pen lying perfectly parallel to the pad of paper, I flipped the page and wrote a note of my own.

  Dear Ken,

  Go fuck yourself.

  And your little chair, too.

  BB

  Then, I ripped both pages out of the notebook, wadded them up, and threw them in the recycle bin out in the garage.

  I didn’t spend the night at Ken’s that night. Or the next night. Or the night after that. We’d spoken on the phone a few times, but our conversations had been clipped. Ken hadn’t apologized for being completely emotionally unavailable, and I hadn’t apologized for yelling at him. He’d asked if I wanted to come over, maybe meet for dinner, but I’d lied and said I needed to take care of my mom. The truth was, my mom was doing fine. She wasn’t back to one hundred percent yet, but she was getting there.

  I, on the other hand, was not.

  After Jason’s funeral, I’d thought Ken had made some kind of breakthrough. He’d seemed to be opening up, letting me in. He’d seemed to be trying. But, after my mom’s stroke, it felt like we were right back where we’d started.

  Ken was proving that he could be there for me in every way but one. I’d thought I could fix that one flaw, but there we were, months later, and I still hadn’t even isolated the cause.

  So, not only was my relationship doomed, but I was shaping up to be a pretty shitty psychologist too.

  Awesome.

  My days reverted to the work-study-sleep-school-study-sleep cycle they’d been on back when Ken was just Pajama Guy. My hair reverted back to the same wavy/poofy/disheveled state it had been in as well, only now it was down to my shoulders. I realized that I could pull the top half into a messy bun, so I said, Fuck it, busted out my old clippers, and shaved the bottom half completely off.

  I’d promised my mom I wouldn’t shav
e it again if I could keep it looking sleek and straight. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t keep anything good for long, evidently.

  On this particular night, I’d been trying to study for my Behavioral Psychology final for hours, but my brain simply wouldn’t cooperate. Over and over, my eyes would scan the symbols on the page, but they were simply admiring the shapes of the letters while my mind spiraled in a million different directions.

  Is this my life now?

  Should I just sell all the stuff from my old apartment and accept that I’m going to live here forever?

  Should I break up with Ken?

  Does he even miss me?

  I’m never getting married.

  I should just go ahead and freeze my eggs.

  How much does it cost to freeze your eggs?

  A familiar, throaty rumble reached into my head and yanked me back into the present. I realized, as my eyes darted over to my window, that night had fallen while I was busy obsessing, and my blinds were still wide open. As the distinct sound of my own personal nightmare approached, I tossed my books aside, threw the covers off my bare legs, leaped out of bed, and dived for the little plastic rod hanging from the nicotine-stained blinds.

  Yanking it off completely.

  I stood there, in a tank top and panties, clutching a rod that went to nothing, as Knight’s chopper pulled to a stop beneath the streetlight outside.

  Shit!

  I dropped the worthless pole and darted over to my nightstand, turning off my lamp and grabbing my purse off the floor. The strap got caught on the corner of Hans’s VCR, causing me to stumble into the wall next to the window. Sliding down so that Knight couldn’t see me, I dumped out the contents of my purse, looking for my phone. I wanted to shut it off so that his inevitable call would go straight to voicemail, but he was too quick. The phone lit up and vibrated against my foot.

  “Ahh!” I squealed, smacking it like a cockroach.

  Doodle-oodle-oodle—

  I jerked my finger toward it, aiming for the End button, but it wiggled as it vibrated, causing me to hit the Talk button instead.

  “Punk!” I could hear Knight’s commanding voice, both through the speaker and through the glass.