I stared at my father for a second as he sat on his high stool. My life crashed down around me. Fear gripped me by the chest, crushing the air out of my lungs. While he just sat there with his stupid tweezers, staring at me over those tiny glasses.
“It’s Mom!” I finally said.
My father, his eyes devoid of any emotion, stared back at me. Slowly, he put the tweezers down beside whatever model he was working on. Maybe that same battleship. Maybe something else. I can’t remember. But I can still see the way he turned on the seat and took his glasses off. He cleaned them carefully with the same black cloth he always used.
“She fell. She needs help.”
He said nothing. He just kept making a lazy circle around the lens, over and over again. Sparks crackled inside my skull. I wanted to rush him, shake him until he woke up. But I also wanted to turn and run away, back to Mom, before it was too late. Instead, my feet pattered on the cold cement, as if dancing to my frantic uncertainty.
“She’s bleeding. She’s not moving. I don’t think she’s breathing.”
He stopped cleaning his glasses but he didn’t get up.
“I told you that she’s fine,” he said.
Then my dad went back to working on his model. I stood there for a second, but all he did was move the lamp down even closer and lean over his work. At first, I thought he didn’t believe me. Then, as he continued to work on his model, I started to not believe myself. Maybe she was fine. Maybe I’d made the whole thing up. Maybe he was right about both of us, my mother and me.
I BARRELED BACK into the kitchen, my heart threatening to burst through my ribs. I might have been crying, even. I saw my mother first. She was there, on the floor. Real. So was the blood. I hadn’t made it up. She wasn’t fine. But then I saw Drew. He was kneeling next to her, his fingers gently touching her head. While I was gone, the blood had escaped the netting of her hair and was pooling on the white tile. It looked so red, like it might suddenly catch fire. I stared at it while Drew watched me.
“Get me the phone,” he said.
It took me a second, but I broke out of the daze. I lurched over and grabbed Mom’s cordless off the wall mount. I rushed back, my arm outstretched. Drew shook his head.
“No, call 9-1-1. Tell them we need an ambulance.”
“You should,” I blurted out.
I saw his eyes dart toward the basement door before he said, “Do it, Liam. Do you want her to die?”
Shaking, I dialed the number. When someone answered, the words ran out of my mouth like a flash flood.
“My mom’s hurt. She fell and she’s bleeding.” I looked to Drew. He turned and walked out of the kitchen. “My dad won’t come. We need help. Please.”
The woman on the line asked me questions. I tried to answer them, but I kept interrupting.
“Are you sending an ambulance?”
“Yes, son. Is there an adult there that I could speak to?”
“No, my dad—”
I never heard him coming. I didn’t see him until the phone tore from my hand. I flinched, grabbing for it, and saw my father’s eyes. They bore into me, cutting me from the inside outward. One of his large, dry hands struck me on the chest. I pinwheeled away from him, slamming into a chair. It fell to the floor and I followed, landing on my hip.
I lay there, afraid to move. Afraid to breathe, as my father spoke calmly to the woman. He took control. Drew reappeared and my father motioned for him to go to the front door. Then he stood over Mom. He didn’t look at her. Instead, he kept staring directly at me. He spoke clearly but quietly.
“I’m going to hang up,” he said. “I need to be sure she’s okay.”
I could hear the woman still speaking as my father turned and walked over to the wall mount, replacing the receiver. Then he stepped up to me, standing over me but not coming any closer. I knew I should keep looking at him, keep eye contact, but I couldn’t. So I looked away, right at Mom, at her exposed legs, and . . . everything else. I flinched again and jerked my head. My father laughed, a sound at once shockingly wrong and horribly cutting.
He reached down and grabbed my shirt just below the collar. He lifted me up to my feet. I stumbled, unable to totally regain my balance. This upset him. He sneered and pushed me into the table. I hit the edge hard but was able to put my hands down and keep from falling.
“Get those bottles out of here. Take them to your mother’s room. Put them under the bed,” he said, his tone flat but his eyes burning with anger, or maybe hatred.
I didn’t move. I remember being so totally confused. I couldn’t figure out what he’d said. Or why he’d said it. In that moment, I didn’t know who he was. What he was supposed to be. It was like I couldn’t be sure of anything. Maybe it was all my fault. Maybe this was the way it was supposed to be. Maybe I was being a weak little baby. Being stupid.
Whatever the truth was, my pause simply angered him more. He grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me to the counter. He pointed at the wine bottles but wouldn’t touch them.
“Do it!”
I did. When I walked into her room, the smell was an assault. I recoiled, shaking as I put the bottles under the bed one by one. Then I rushed out of the room. I needed to know if Mom was okay. If she was alive. So I inched out into the hallway, reaching the stairs just as two men in black uniforms carried my mother out of the kitchen. She was strapped down to a bright yellow backboard. A clear mask clung to the bottom part of her face. Thankfully, someone had covered her legs up with a thin white blanket.
I needed to know. I needed to see her. The men stepped through the front door. I took a step toward the landing before my father appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He glanced up at me and then looked away like I no longer existed.
“Drew, let’s go,” he said.
Drew hurried out of the kitchen. My father put his hand on my brother’s shoulder and they rushed out of the house.
I WAS ALONE for hours. The sun set and the streetlights turned on. I paced the living room, going to the window every time I heard a car passing by outside, hoping it was them. After a dozen or so, I stopped, but I couldn’t ignore the passing headlights. They tortured me.
At one point, I ended up moving toward the kitchen. I wasn’t thinking at all. I just walked until my foot landed on the white porcelain tile. And I saw the dark red stain on the floor, the edges turning a horrid, thick black.
I froze, my stomach turning. I wanted to run, get the hell out of there, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I stared at my mother’s blood and everything else simply vanished. The gore drew me closer, deeper, until I could hardly breathe. I wanted to disappear into it, melt into my mother’s blood like some vampire in reverse.
At that instant, I heard a car passing by outside. I turned my head. And when I looked back, it was just a bloodstain on the floor, one that scared me and made me feel sick. Swallowing down the tightness in my throat, I went to the sink and pulled free a handful of paper towels. Kneeling down, I wiped at the stain. It felt surprisingly solid under the towels, and when I moved them away, I realized I’d only been able to mop up the very center. The rest remained dark and thick, dried onto the tiles.
I returned to the sink, this time more frantic than the last. I took a huge wad of paper towels and wet them. Sliding on my knees, I bent over and scrubbed at the floor. Pink water pooled around my effort, some seeping through the fabric of my jeans.
“Shit,” I said, trying harder.
The more I worked, the worse it seemed to get. So I got up again and grabbed one of my mom’s white dish towels. I sopped up the tinted water and continued to scrub at the floor. I was working so hard that I failed to notice my father’s car pull into the garage. And I never heard him walk into the house until I looked up and found him standing in the kitchen with me, looking at me through his small round glasses.
I froze again. He said nothing. He just looked me up and down, lingering on the damp knee of my pants, and then shook his head slowly.
I wanted to scream out to him, beg him to tell me how my mother was. It had been so long. I needed to know if she was okay. If she was home. But the words wouldn’t come out. Not a letter of them. Instead, I just stared back as all the muscles in my face seemed to go slack.
My father said nothing. He turned and walked out of the kitchen. I heard him head down the stairs to the basement, his basement. God, I wanted to follow him, but I couldn’t. He didn’t have to yell at me, or even tell me to leave him alone. The space between us simply pushed back at me, buffeting me like two magnets in reverse.
I looked down at the floor. Surprisingly, the stain was almost gone. I took one last swipe with the towel and stood up. I was going to put it in the sink, I think, but I heard footsteps passing through the living room. So I broke into a sprint, rounding the corner in time to see Drew starting up the stairs.
“Hey!” I said.
Drew took two more steps up without even a look over his shoulder. I rushed closer.
“Drew! Where’s Mom?”
He stopped. Slowly, he turned. His dark eyes cut straight through mine and I took a step back.
“She’s dead, Liam.”
AFTER MY BROTHER told me that, I ran. I never looked back. I bolted from the house, through the yard, and didn’t stop until I made it to the rock ledge in the woods. I skidded to a stop, my entire body quaking. My foot touched a large stick amid the leaves. I grabbed it and lashed out, slamming it into anything I could, tree, rock, whatever. And I screamed with each strike.
“It’s his fault!” Crack. “He wouldn’t help her!” Crack. “He did this!” Crack. “I hate him!”
The stick splintered in my hands. I dropped it, and the tears started. I cried as I tried to find another club. I grabbed one fallen branch but it was wet and full of fungus. It snapped in half as I lifted it off the ground. I threw it away, over the rock ledge, letting out a primal yell as I did.
Shaking, crying, coughing out air like I was drowning, I dropped down to my knees. The dampness wicked through my pants. It felt like ice against my skin. But I didn’t care. I just cried and hacked.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I stammered.
And I punched myself in the chest, so hard that the coughing got way worse. I sobbed, although I would never tell anyone that. But it happened, and it kept happening until the last bit of energy in my body seeped through my wet legs, down into the cold, dead earth.
Still kneeling, I quieted down. But I didn’t move. The soft sound of the woods at night replaced my agony. It calmed my breathing. Stopped my tears. Not in a comforting way, though. Instead, the emptiness pressed in on me, reminding me with each second that she was gone. That I’d lost her. And that she had left me behind. Left me with them.