EIGHTEEN
March 26, Five Days to Deadline
Edie, Ben, and Dawn took an exit off of 288 and pulled into the large parking lot of an H-E-B. Georgia pulled up alone in her own car next to Ben’s, her headlights blaring out into the night.
Edie trained her eyes on Dawn’s quickly moving hands unbuckling the seatbelt next to hers and pushing open Ben’s passenger door. The car shook Edie’s body as Dawn slammed the door and rushed into the store, followed by Georgia.
Edie looked into the rearview mirror and caught Ben’s eye as they turned the ignition so only the car lowlights and radio were on. She sat still in the backseat as the radio played a plush song from the eighties Ben hummed a few notes of.
“Ben, I’m really, really sorry.” Edie tried to still her thoughts and fill in the quiet with her now much more sober speech.
“I know,” they said, turning the radio down to a low hum.
Edie waited. Her mind was in overdrive.
“Do you think we could … get back together?” Edie felt the quiver in her voice, the shallowness of every breath scraping its way out.
“No. I can’t be with someone so hidden.” They turned off their headlights and stared out at the glowing H-E-B plus! sign, the letter H flickering so that it showed H-E-B plus! E-B plus! H-E-B plus! E-B plus!
“I can’t be hidden, E. I love you. A lot, obviously.” They stopped looking in the mirror at Edie, their eyes moving to the passenger’s side window. “I just want to be me all the time. Not just, like, when it’s good for everybody else. You don’t understand what it’s like to be me.” Their hands gripped the steering wheel tight.
“That’s not true at all. I know you. Of course, I understand—I—of course I—” Edie’s words had dissipated into a slumping whisper.
“Why do you always have to turn the conversation around to you? I’m talking about me and you think this is about you! You know what? I have to go. I’m supposed to pick up my brother.” Ben turned the key in the ignition and the car huffily rumbled to life again.
“Okay.” She got out of the car. “I love you.” Her words met their dirty driver’s side window as she stepped out of the backseat and closed the door behind her.
As Ben started to slowly pull off into the lot, Edie ran to stand in front of the car. Ben rolled down their window.
“What are you doing? I could have hit you.” Their eyes crazed and angry, they stared at Edie just inches from the hood.
“Your headlights aren’t on,” she said, her words deflated and heavy.
Ben flipped the car lights on and lit up Edie and her dress and her tears and her bare legs. They pulled around her and drove into the night’s traffic. As she turned to look, her stomach wretched and puke spewed from her throat and onto the pavement. She wiped the corner of her mouth and tasted the sting of alcohol on her tongue. There was no time to feel sorry for herself, she stumbled dizzily inside to help Dawn.
As soon as she entered the store, Dawn realized it was far too big and overwhelming for her to look down every single aisle, some sort of mega H-E-B for suburban families who never ventured into the city and needed to get all their shit in one place. She felt agitation creeping up her skin as she spoke to the only person on the registers, a kid who looked too young to be working there.
Dawn’s frustration mounted as he absentmindedly fidgeted with the name tag fixed to his bright red H-E-B smock while she tried to talk to him.
“Have you seen anything? Have you seen a man in here or heard from anybody else who works here?” Her words rushed out in panic but the boy seemed unmoved.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He spoke slowly like each word was a dollar out of his paycheck.
Dawn read the name tag he was toying with. “Vernon, I know you are very tired, but I just got a call from my dad. He’s here in this H-E-B, and it’s an emergency.” Dawn pleaded, her eyes never leaving his hooded ones. He looked one heavy blink away from falling asleep while standing up.
“I don’t know. I can call my manager though. I’m just gonna call my manager.” He began to reach for a machine near the register that looked like a huge walkie-talkie.
“You are fucking useless!” Dawn shrieked, slamming her hands on the register counter.
Georgia appeared beside her and gazed between Dawn and the boy who now stood with the intercom phone in hand looking startled. “I just checked the bathrooms. No luck.”
“Let’s just do every aisle,” Dawn sighed. “I’ll take the back.”
“I’ll start from the other side,” Georgia declared, turning away from Dawn. Rounding the last register, Georgia spotted Edie emerging through the sliding doors and grabbed her hand so they could look together.
Dawn ran as fast as her legs would take her. Her heart tried to burst out of her chest again and again as she looked left and right past each row of shelved food.
Head swiveling back and forth, legs burning hot, she remembered all the times she’d felt like this. Her mother’s funeral. Staying at Georgia’s house for days in the middle of one of those forever summers, leaving her dad at home alone. She remembered thinking about all the things that could go wrong for him every single day she wasn’t by his side, and leaving it anyway.
She heard shouting across the store. “Dawn! Dawn, I’m over here! I found him,” Georgia’s voice filled the aisles as Dawn turned on her heel and tried to locate her.
Dawn came to a row filled with pots and pans. She met the scene with a gasp. Her father was slumped among the remains of a knocked over shelf of wine glasses. He was bloody and cut up as Georgia and Edie leaned over him, picking up glass from around his hands.
“Oh, god.”
She rushed to his side and kneeled into the splattered glass surrounding him, pushing Georgia and Edie away. Her knees met the sharp edges and cold linoleum quickly, but her adrenaline didn’t let her feel it all the way.
Peter looked up at her and spoke softly, “You are so pretty. So beautiful like your mother.”
“Shhh. Quiet, Papa.” She began to reach for small shards of glass caught in his pants.
“I never tell you, Dawn. You are so, so grown up now. You used to be so small. My little Albert.”
Dawn breathed in deeply to keep from crying, the air in her lungs threatening to transform into a heaving sob. She held back her tears and concentrated on helping her dad.
“Okay, Papa. Be quiet,” she said, continuing to clean him up. She caught a glimpse of a few older women staring as they walked past the aisle on their way to check out.
Dawn suddenly felt embarrassed at the scene. Her father was a mess, and she was just like him, both of them spread out across the floor of the grocery store like crazy people, a perfect pair.
“Go away. I can take care of this,” she said to Georgia and Edie, who hovered awkwardly beside her. She didn’t look up at them.
“Dawn, please. We can help,” Georgia said. She and Edie started to bend down again, towards Dawn and her dad.
“I said go away.” As she spoke, she looked up at them and couldn’t help the tears from rolling thick down her cheeks at the sight of their pity. “Please go away. I’ll call for help, okay? Don’t worry.”
Dawn couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed when they listened to her.
Their footsteps retreated down the aisle, across the front of the store, into the parking lot, away from Dawn and her problems. Dawn felt their absence, her full aloneness. She cried for all the times she’d been alone like this with him and all the times she’d be alone in the future.
The grocery store lights flickered overhead, beating down on her and her dad. She dusted the shattered glass away from her father into a small pile by his side. She felt the pain of her bloodied knees as she tried to stand up. Two of the leftover wine glasses fell as she stumbled to her feet.
“Come on, Papa.” She grabbed both his hands and urged him to bend his legs and prop his back up against the shelf to stand.
Dawn called no one, so no one came.