Читать книгу The Sadness - Benjamin Rybeck - Страница 12

Mom was young when she fell in love with Miles Bennett, a member of one of Portland’s oldest and wealthiest families, owners and founders of Oakhurst Dairy. Mom was nineteen when she met him, twenty when Miles bought for her a two-bedroom apartment in a decent part of town, twenty-one when Max and Kelly were born. For three years, Miles hung around, never moving in but coming over a couple times a week for fun with Mom and paternal indifference elsewhere, but then, when Mom was twenty-four, Miles left her for another woman, someone a little richer (a grad student at Boston College) and someone the Bennetts approved of (more than they approved of dingy, wild Mom, anyway); every week an envelope of cash arrived in Mom’s mailbox, the return address a lawyer’s office in Hartford. It was hush money, stay-out-of-my-life-and-I’ll-make-it-worth-your-while money, that sort of thing—just enough so Mom never worked anything more than the occasional part-time job, but not so much that they could ever live in a better house, or take trips, or own more than a couple pairs of shoes. And what did Mom care? She was barely around, preferring to spend money on herself than on her children. But didn’t she have a duty as a mother? Please. That hardly stopped her from leaving town for several weekends each year. She would knock on a neighbor’s door—or call a coworker, during her rare periods of employment—and, eyes leaking, Mom would lie about a sick family member or close friend, and then once this almost-stranger had agreed to watch her children, she would drive to wherever: some friend’s apartment in Burlington, or a music festival near UMass. When Kelly turned ten, babysitters became unnecessary. “You’re old enough to look after your brother,” Mom told her daughter. Mom lived a throwback fantasy, pining for a lifestyle, to belong to something that no longer existed. She fancied herself some kind of wild child—an artist, although she never considered working at it. As a result of this immaturity, the house wound up resembling a bohemian college girl’s dorm room, decorated with bead curtains, posters for esoteric films from the ’60s and ’70s, record covers pinned to the walls, hookahs—pretty much the same way it looks now, under Max’s care. Most nights, Mom fed her children Thai takeout served on paper plates. Mom acted like a friend or, at best, a rebellious older sister, which made Kelly feel like she was always waiting for her real mom to show up, instead of this child playing dress-up. But Max? Hell, Max loved it. Why wouldn’t he have? When he started writing scripts, Mom encouraged him as any good parent would: follow your dreams, be true to yourself, that kind of shit. When teachers tried to make Max do schoolwork, he became combative, but whenever a counselor called home to voice concern, Mom acted polite on the phone only to later tell her son, “Don’t listen to those idiots. They don’t know genius when they see it.” By senior year, it had become so much worse. Sometimes Mom became so high on the idea of artistic expression that she would write notes excusing Max from school whenever he preferred to stay home and work on his “art.” His grades suffered, but what did he care? He got to watch movies all day and write his screenplays. Kelly could tell that something had changed for Mom too.

Then, with the March sunlight starting to melt the snow and thaw the ground, Mom left for one of her trips, telling Kelly, “Look after your brother. I’ll be gone for the weekend.” Because Mom always said to look after Max, Kelly barely took it seriously, going about her usual business of watching bad television and hanging out with the increasingly dramatic Penelope Hayward, whose early acceptance into Columbia—about which she wouldn’t shut the fuck up—had not slowed her acquisition of an insane number of extracurricular activities, including dull stuff like editor in chief of the video yearbook. Kelly, on the other hand, had been accepted into the considerably less impressive University of Arizona, but whatever: she couldn’t wait to get out of Maine and into the sun, so she bided her time doing the minimum of what was expected of her.

The first indication that something had gone awry—that Mom’s latest trip wasn’t just another trip—came when one of Mom’s friends knocked on the door Sunday afternoon, claiming to have lost contact with Mom, who had recently been rambling on about some guy she met—Rafael, maybe? “You never met him?” the friend asked. Then, frowning, the friend—was her name Melanie?—added, “Neither have I.” Kelly tried calling, but Mom never answered, and Kelly refused to leave dumb, desperate messages. Monday morning arrived, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, and finally, on Thursday, Max asked what was going on, whether Kelly had heard from Mom or anything, and Kelly said, “She, uh, had to go on a job interview in Mass. Apparently it’s going well and they need her to stick around.” Was this what Mom always meant when she told Kelly to look after her brother? Maybe Mom really meant for Kelly to just lie.

On Friday afternoon, the weekly envelope arrived, stuffed with $400, and Kelly put it in her pocket and slid on a cardigan to walk the few blocks to TD Banknorth. While outside the bank, finishing her cigarette in the cold sunlight of early spring, perched on the edge of the curb, her cell phone vibrated: Mom, wondering whether the money had arrived like usual. “Where are you?” Kelly asked. “I’m fine,” Mom said, “but, uh”—Kelly could hear laughter in the background, and Mom’s voice sounded more musical than usual—“but, uh, things are pretty crazy here. I just want to make sure you remember to deposit the money.” “Why?” Kelly asked, lighting another cigarette. “Because,” Mom said, “it’s important that you don’t leave cash lying around. That’s all. That’s all,” clipped, rhythmic. Kelly’s hand shook. “When are you coming home?” “I’ll be home soon,” Mom said, “things just got crazy. It’s just a thing with a friend. But you’ll remember to deposit the money before the bank closes today?” “Yes,” Kelly said, “I will.” “Okay, I love you,” Mom said. Kelly swallowed and said, “Okay.” Inside the bank, she asked the teller for the account balance: $1.34, the last transaction being a withdrawal of $240 from an ATM in Bedford, New Hampshire. Kelly thanked the teller and walked home with the cash still in her pocket.

The bank closed at 6 P.M., and twenty minutes later, Kelly’s phone shrieked again. “I’m just wondering,” Mom said, “if you, uh, deposited the cash and everything, like we talked about.” “Mom,” Kelly said, locked in the darkness of her bedroom, sitting on the floor in the corner, “I need to know when you’re coming home.” “Listen,” Mom said, her voice even stranger than before, like she was an actor playing Mom, “listen, I’ll be honest with you: Remember my friend Melanie? Well, Melanie’s having some trouble, so I’m here trying to help. I just need—” “Melanie came to the house,” Kelly said, “and she’s worried too. She doesn’t know where you are.” There was a pause. “If I give you an address,” Mom said, “can you mail me that money overnight?” “If you don’t come home,” Kelly said, “I’m calling the police.” “Okay, I’ll, um, I’ll come home tomorrow.” Mom cleared her throat. “But, uh, can you put Max on the phone real quick?” “No, I can’t. I won’t put Max on the phone.” “Kelly Jennifer Enright, put Max on the phone right now.” “No,” Kelly repeated. “Now,” Mom said. But Kelly stayed strong: “You want me to let Max talk to you when you sound like this? No, I won’t do it. And I’ll take his phone away too so you can’t call him.” Kelly was trying not to cry; Mom was silent. “You need to come home,” Kelly said. “Please. Max won’t go to school. Not for the last week. He won’t go.” “He doesn’t need to go.” “Yes, he needs to go.” “He’s smarter than that.” “Yeah? You want him to be a fuckup like you?”

The silence on the other end of the phone made it clear to Kelly that she shouldn’t have said this. But she felt unable to control herself anymore. And Kelly, in that moment, didn’t care. She knew she should apologize, but she didn’t apologize. Maybe, compared with all the other things ever said by teenagers to their parents, this wasn’t too bad—no different, really, from I hate you, Mom, followed by the slamming of a bedroom door. “Kelly…” Mom said finally, her voice weak. Kelly snapped her phone shut and threw it across the room. Now, she wishes that Mom were the one who hung up in anger. But it wasn’t like that; it was Kelly who couldn’t take another second, so she threw her mother across the room—snapped her mother’s head off against the wall.

Kelly never called the police; instead, a week later, they called her. There had been an accident. It was April by then. When Max found out that Kelly had lied to him about the circumstances surrounding Mom’s death—that there was no job interview, that Kelly had spent time on the phone with her, that all Mom wanted was money—he took it surprisingly well, nodding and shuffling to his bedroom, whose door he didn’t even bother to slam. Kelly had felt too stunned to cry or get angry about the death, and perhaps Max felt the same way. Or maybe the funeral and the reality of being orphaned adults who happened to still linger in high school fused the siblings together. Maybe Max accepted Kelly’s dishonesty simply because he had nobody else.

In May, Max asked her to be in his movie, The Glazen Shelves. A few days passed, and she heard nothing further about the movie or her part. She asked him when she was going to become a movie star and flipped her hair back, affecting a glamorous pose—the sort of silliness that usually would have amused him, but all humor had drained from her brother. Soon, Kelly discovered what the part was; she’d been playing it for a week. She woke in the middle of the night and saw Max at the end of her bed, a video camera glued to his hand. Kelly told him to get the fuck out of her room, then locked the door. She slept with the covers over her head and the blinds drawn. It wasn’t anger, really. It was fear. He terrified her, and she avoided him, instead spending her time with all the willing kids around town, drinking and doing drugs and other stupid things teenagers do, but doing them with the desperation of somebody who understood genuine pain. She gained a reputation as the person who never wanted to stop, begging people not to leave her, to stay up with her all night. Maybe Kelly could have helped Max, but she was scared, drained; she had nothing to say to him, no way left to look after him. And now, some nights as sleep washes up around her body, Kelly hates herself for hiding and running from Max, instead of trying to help. So, should she have stayed here in Portland? Should she have tried to look after her brother, the way that Mom asked? Then again, who the hell ever tried to help her?

The answers to these questions, and to all her other questions, lurk somewhere in the darkness. Sometimes she brushes her fingertips against an answer as she reaches out, but she never grabs it, because sleep always comes and pulls her into blackness, and then the morning sun blares, evaporating what came before.