On the Television, an infomercial audience is clapping. That must
have been what woke you. No. There is knocking, so you walk to the
door. It’s Emily. She’s giving you a ride to the airport so you can visit
your parents for Christmas. There’s no telling how long she’s been
standing on the front step, but judging from the knocking it’s been a
while. She’s mad, furious, standing out in the frigid December
morning as the wind nips up her shirt and gives her flabby stomach
goose bumps. These are your last moments in Montana.
“Your cell phone’s turned off again,” she says as she brushes the
cold off and heads for the furnace. “Jesus, you’re twenty-three.”
“Oh?” you say. It’s probably for the best, you decide.
Theodore, the twenty-five-year-old with braces and a nine
millimeter, has been leaving threatening voicemails for a week.
“Are you packed yet?”
“No.”
“Shit, Gerard, you're going to miss your flight.” She rushes to
your bedroom, grabs your suitcase from the corner, and starts picking
up clothes that lay scattered on the floor. She stuffs them into the
bag without folding. This pisses you off, but you don’t say anything.
As she packs, you look at the room you’ve been living in for three
years. There is a leaning tower of boxes, a musty towel, and a nest of
blankets lying in the corner by your pillow. There is no bed, no chair,
no dresser, and no exercise bike.
When Emily is finished, you go to the bathroom and get on your
knees. You pray that you don’t drink or get high.
You walk with her to the car. It smells worse than usual. You
scoot over a heap of crumpled fast food fry cartons and sit. The cold,
cracked vinyl of the seat touches your skin between your jacket and
jeans. You shiver. Her heater doesn’t work. It’s going to be a cold
twenty minutes to the airport.
The sun rises in an orange blast on Emily’s side. Instead of
noticing the miracle of it all, or marveling at the horses prancing in the
field blowing clouds from their nostrils like dragons, you focus on how
you fat she looks. She’s gained twenty pounds since dumping you for
the eighteen-year-old bass player in the noise punk band. You hate
her face, the way her eyes scrunch up in defense from dawn. You love
what she used to be, and what you used to be. She lights a joint, hits
it, and you accept it.
“Have a good trip,” she says as she pulls up to the loading zone.
You take a step towards her, which makes her look away. When she
looks your way again, you kiss her on the lips. They are cold and still.
“I love you,” you say.
“Take care of yourself,” she says and without another look she
gets into the car and pulls out.
After you check in your bag, you look in your wallet. Two dollars.
In searching for more cash you find a baggie that once held half a
gram of cocaine. You head to the bathroom and, once there, lick it
until your teeth feel vaguely numb. Bags hang your eyes. A patchy
beard has sprouted on your chin. You still have a cut on your neck
from when the mill worker put your head through the pawn shop
window next to Al and Vic’s. You head to the bookstore and steal a
Rolling Stone. On the plane, you start to read an article about Iris
DeMent. She’s your mother’s favorite singer. Two lines in, you fall
asleep. You’re out until Little Rock.
You spot your father standing by the gift shop. He’s giving his
patented smile, not showing any teeth. With each step closer, his
smile fades. By the time you’re shaking his hand, his brow is knit in a
frown. He sticks a hundred dollar bill in your pocket.
“Good to see you, son.”
“You, too,” you say. You mean it. Walking to the baggage claim,
he puts his arm around you, and you put your head on his shoulder.
His arm stays on your shoulder as you go to the car. Stella is in it.
Her face seems gray, but she’s wagging her tail the way she did the
day Mom brought her home from the breeder’s ten years ago.
“Stella looks good,” you say.
“Her health’s not too hot,” he says, reaching over and scratching
her ears. “We’re not sure how much longer she has.” You both sit in
silence, and you can sense your father is working on the right way to
go about saying something. He clears his throat.
“You drinking again?” Dad asks.
“A little,” you say. He pats you on the knee and Stella licks your
face.
When you get to your parents' house, you walk to the guest
bedroom and lie down. It’s dark when you open your eyes again.
There is a note hanging on the microwave written in your mother’s
loving hand.
Went to a dinner party at the Finleys.
There’s salmon in the fridge.
Glad you’re home.
Love,
Mom
You ignore the salmon and look for wine, but there isn’t any. You
fish your phone out of your back pocket. When you turn it on, you
have twenty new voice mails. The first eighteen are from Theodore,
and you delete them without listening.
Then there is Jared:
“Dude, twelve assholes just came to the house lookin’ for you!
You stole money from them or something?” He sighs. “I don’t know,
man, Sarah is freaked. Call me when you get this.”
The last one is from Emily:
“So, I turned your phone on. This is the last time. Hope you’re
having fun. It was nice to see you.”
You call her back and it rings once and goes to voicemail. You don’
t leave a message. You turn on the TV and turn it off immediately.
You check your pants for another baggie. There isn’t one. You check
the pants Emily packed. Nada. You check the bookshelf, where two
summers before you stashed your weed. There is nothing to smoke
and nothing to drink. You decide to take your father’s station wagon
for a drive.
There are no stores in the gated village your parents retired early
to. You drive ten miles to get out the gates. A man in a brown
uniform gives you a salute as you pass. You suppress the urge to
give him the finger. You pass two supermarkets and a few gas
stations. Then you spot a liquor store. Your stomach feels queasy as
you lay eyes on the endless ocean of bottles. You get Jack Daniels
and smile at the clerk.
At your parents house you crack the bottle and get ready to
chug. When you smell it, though, you get sick. Your hands shake.
Your gorge rises. You cannot take a drink. You pour a shot, but
cannot drink this either. You take the shot glass to the back door and
throw it as hard as you can into the woods, and go back to TV.
When your parents get home you are still sober. You’ve hidden
the liquor, but can’t stop thinking about it. Your mother rubs your
beard and kisses the top of your head like she’s done since you can
remember, then heads to the kitchen to heat the salmon. Her
eyebrows are thinner, but her rosy cheeks are the same as when she
used to pick you up from soccer practice. Her graying brown hair is
cut the same way, too.
“Are you still working at the independent paper?” she asks.
“No.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. Why not?”
“I missed an interview with Iris DeMent,” you say. The real reason
was a woman accused you of being drunk during Family Day at the
Clark Fork Park.
You’re sure Mom knows that’s a lie, but she doesn’t say so.
“Have you looked for another one yet?” she asks.
“No.”
Since the paper fired you two months ago, you worked as a sushi
roller for three weeks and at Burlington Coat Factory for two. Without
thinking about it, you go to the grandfather clock and pull out the
whiskey bottle. You bring it to the sink, open the bottle, and pour it
down the drain. Your mother silently watches.
“Have you been drinking again?” she asks.
“A little,” you reply.
The next night you allow your mother to drive you to a church. In
the basement there is a cluster of smiling faces. The people shake
your hand and tell you they’re glad you could make it. For an hour
they drink coffee and talk about how they haven’t drunk booze in a
while. You’ve been to places like this before, once when you were
eighteen and once three years ago when you were twenty. After the
hour you help stack chairs. A woman with white hair and yellow teeth
rubs your back.
“Hope to see you again,” she says.
“I think you will,” you say.
A week later you still haven’t taken a drink. You’ve been going to
those gatherings every day, back at that church a few times and in a
trailer outside the village gates. You went to a gathering in an
abandoned school house behind the horse track in a town twenty
minutes away, too. You had Christmas with your family. Stella had to
be put to sleep the day after. You dug a hole in the garden like your
father asked and you held Mom’s hand as she cried. It was the first
time since before high school you felt like a part of the family.
Jared continues to call, as does Theodore. You only pick up calls
from Emily, and she’s called just twice.
On Sunday, you go for a walk with your father. It’s brisk outside,
but it seems tropical compared to the cruel mornings of Montana. You
walk by the golf course.
“Have you been looking for a new reporting job?” Dad asks.
“Not since I’ve been here, no,” you say.
“You can look for jobs online, you know, and you better be
aggressive. The newspaper industry is dying, so it’ll be hard to get
another gig.”
“I know.”
In your head, you try to count the reasons for going back to
Montana. Emily is the only one you can think of.
“I may not go back, if that’s all right with you,” you say while
walking up the driveway.
“Your mother and I would love that.”
Jared is rude when you tell him you’re not coming back.
“Rent is due in five days!” he shouts over the phone.
“I’m sorry. I’ll send you next month's rent ASAP.”
“You still owe for this month.”
You hang up the phone. You write your dad an email, asking if
you can borrow the money for rent. In the morning, there is a blank
check sitting on top of your wallet on the night stand.
Ten days into your new life, you get a job at a café. It’s in the golf
course, and pays six dollars an hour, plus a cut of the tip jar. One
woman works with you. She is a big, dark-haired woman named Cleo.
“Where you from, boo?” she asks on your first day. When you tell
her, she makes a high pitched sound and pretends to shiver. “Way
too cold up there for me.”
“And you?” you ask.
“I’m from the mud of Louisiana, where it don’t dip below seventy
in the middle of winter and races past a hundred in August,” she says.
The day after your first shift is New Year’s Eve. You talk to Dan, a
friend from Montana.
“You’re missing the big bash at Al’s and Vic’s. It’s an eighties
party. Should be pretty sweet,” he says.
It sucked last year,” you reply.
next page
have been what woke you. No. There is knocking, so you walk to the
door. It’s Emily. She’s giving you a ride to the airport so you can visit
your parents for Christmas. There’s no telling how long she’s been
standing on the front step, but judging from the knocking it’s been a
while. She’s mad, furious, standing out in the frigid December
morning as the wind nips up her shirt and gives her flabby stomach
goose bumps. These are your last moments in Montana.
“Your cell phone’s turned off again,” she says as she brushes the
cold off and heads for the furnace. “Jesus, you’re twenty-three.”
“Oh?” you say. It’s probably for the best, you decide.
Theodore, the twenty-five-year-old with braces and a nine
millimeter, has been leaving threatening voicemails for a week.
“Are you packed yet?”
“No.”
“Shit, Gerard, you're going to miss your flight.” She rushes to
your bedroom, grabs your suitcase from the corner, and starts picking
up clothes that lay scattered on the floor. She stuffs them into the
bag without folding. This pisses you off, but you don’t say anything.
As she packs, you look at the room you’ve been living in for three
years. There is a leaning tower of boxes, a musty towel, and a nest of
blankets lying in the corner by your pillow. There is no bed, no chair,
no dresser, and no exercise bike.
When Emily is finished, you go to the bathroom and get on your
knees. You pray that you don’t drink or get high.
You walk with her to the car. It smells worse than usual. You
scoot over a heap of crumpled fast food fry cartons and sit. The cold,
cracked vinyl of the seat touches your skin between your jacket and
jeans. You shiver. Her heater doesn’t work. It’s going to be a cold
twenty minutes to the airport.
The sun rises in an orange blast on Emily’s side. Instead of
noticing the miracle of it all, or marveling at the horses prancing in the
field blowing clouds from their nostrils like dragons, you focus on how
you fat she looks. She’s gained twenty pounds since dumping you for
the eighteen-year-old bass player in the noise punk band. You hate
her face, the way her eyes scrunch up in defense from dawn. You love
what she used to be, and what you used to be. She lights a joint, hits
it, and you accept it.
“Have a good trip,” she says as she pulls up to the loading zone.
You take a step towards her, which makes her look away. When she
looks your way again, you kiss her on the lips. They are cold and still.
“I love you,” you say.
“Take care of yourself,” she says and without another look she
gets into the car and pulls out.
After you check in your bag, you look in your wallet. Two dollars.
In searching for more cash you find a baggie that once held half a
gram of cocaine. You head to the bathroom and, once there, lick it
until your teeth feel vaguely numb. Bags hang your eyes. A patchy
beard has sprouted on your chin. You still have a cut on your neck
from when the mill worker put your head through the pawn shop
window next to Al and Vic’s. You head to the bookstore and steal a
Rolling Stone. On the plane, you start to read an article about Iris
DeMent. She’s your mother’s favorite singer. Two lines in, you fall
asleep. You’re out until Little Rock.
You spot your father standing by the gift shop. He’s giving his
patented smile, not showing any teeth. With each step closer, his
smile fades. By the time you’re shaking his hand, his brow is knit in a
frown. He sticks a hundred dollar bill in your pocket.
“Good to see you, son.”
“You, too,” you say. You mean it. Walking to the baggage claim,
he puts his arm around you, and you put your head on his shoulder.
His arm stays on your shoulder as you go to the car. Stella is in it.
Her face seems gray, but she’s wagging her tail the way she did the
day Mom brought her home from the breeder’s ten years ago.
“Stella looks good,” you say.
“Her health’s not too hot,” he says, reaching over and scratching
her ears. “We’re not sure how much longer she has.” You both sit in
silence, and you can sense your father is working on the right way to
go about saying something. He clears his throat.
“You drinking again?” Dad asks.
“A little,” you say. He pats you on the knee and Stella licks your
face.
When you get to your parents' house, you walk to the guest
bedroom and lie down. It’s dark when you open your eyes again.
There is a note hanging on the microwave written in your mother’s
loving hand.
Went to a dinner party at the Finleys.
There’s salmon in the fridge.
Glad you’re home.
Love,
Mom
You ignore the salmon and look for wine, but there isn’t any. You
fish your phone out of your back pocket. When you turn it on, you
have twenty new voice mails. The first eighteen are from Theodore,
and you delete them without listening.
Then there is Jared:
“Dude, twelve assholes just came to the house lookin’ for you!
You stole money from them or something?” He sighs. “I don’t know,
man, Sarah is freaked. Call me when you get this.”
The last one is from Emily:
“So, I turned your phone on. This is the last time. Hope you’re
having fun. It was nice to see you.”
You call her back and it rings once and goes to voicemail. You don’
t leave a message. You turn on the TV and turn it off immediately.
You check your pants for another baggie. There isn’t one. You check
the pants Emily packed. Nada. You check the bookshelf, where two
summers before you stashed your weed. There is nothing to smoke
and nothing to drink. You decide to take your father’s station wagon
for a drive.
There are no stores in the gated village your parents retired early
to. You drive ten miles to get out the gates. A man in a brown
uniform gives you a salute as you pass. You suppress the urge to
give him the finger. You pass two supermarkets and a few gas
stations. Then you spot a liquor store. Your stomach feels queasy as
you lay eyes on the endless ocean of bottles. You get Jack Daniels
and smile at the clerk.
At your parents house you crack the bottle and get ready to
chug. When you smell it, though, you get sick. Your hands shake.
Your gorge rises. You cannot take a drink. You pour a shot, but
cannot drink this either. You take the shot glass to the back door and
throw it as hard as you can into the woods, and go back to TV.
When your parents get home you are still sober. You’ve hidden
the liquor, but can’t stop thinking about it. Your mother rubs your
beard and kisses the top of your head like she’s done since you can
remember, then heads to the kitchen to heat the salmon. Her
eyebrows are thinner, but her rosy cheeks are the same as when she
used to pick you up from soccer practice. Her graying brown hair is
cut the same way, too.
“Are you still working at the independent paper?” she asks.
“No.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. Why not?”
“I missed an interview with Iris DeMent,” you say. The real reason
was a woman accused you of being drunk during Family Day at the
Clark Fork Park.
You’re sure Mom knows that’s a lie, but she doesn’t say so.
“Have you looked for another one yet?” she asks.
“No.”
Since the paper fired you two months ago, you worked as a sushi
roller for three weeks and at Burlington Coat Factory for two. Without
thinking about it, you go to the grandfather clock and pull out the
whiskey bottle. You bring it to the sink, open the bottle, and pour it
down the drain. Your mother silently watches.
“Have you been drinking again?” she asks.
“A little,” you reply.
The next night you allow your mother to drive you to a church. In
the basement there is a cluster of smiling faces. The people shake
your hand and tell you they’re glad you could make it. For an hour
they drink coffee and talk about how they haven’t drunk booze in a
while. You’ve been to places like this before, once when you were
eighteen and once three years ago when you were twenty. After the
hour you help stack chairs. A woman with white hair and yellow teeth
rubs your back.
“Hope to see you again,” she says.
“I think you will,” you say.
A week later you still haven’t taken a drink. You’ve been going to
those gatherings every day, back at that church a few times and in a
trailer outside the village gates. You went to a gathering in an
abandoned school house behind the horse track in a town twenty
minutes away, too. You had Christmas with your family. Stella had to
be put to sleep the day after. You dug a hole in the garden like your
father asked and you held Mom’s hand as she cried. It was the first
time since before high school you felt like a part of the family.
Jared continues to call, as does Theodore. You only pick up calls
from Emily, and she’s called just twice.
On Sunday, you go for a walk with your father. It’s brisk outside,
but it seems tropical compared to the cruel mornings of Montana. You
walk by the golf course.
“Have you been looking for a new reporting job?” Dad asks.
“Not since I’ve been here, no,” you say.
“You can look for jobs online, you know, and you better be
aggressive. The newspaper industry is dying, so it’ll be hard to get
another gig.”
“I know.”
In your head, you try to count the reasons for going back to
Montana. Emily is the only one you can think of.
“I may not go back, if that’s all right with you,” you say while
walking up the driveway.
“Your mother and I would love that.”
Jared is rude when you tell him you’re not coming back.
“Rent is due in five days!” he shouts over the phone.
“I’m sorry. I’ll send you next month's rent ASAP.”
“You still owe for this month.”
You hang up the phone. You write your dad an email, asking if
you can borrow the money for rent. In the morning, there is a blank
check sitting on top of your wallet on the night stand.
Ten days into your new life, you get a job at a café. It’s in the golf
course, and pays six dollars an hour, plus a cut of the tip jar. One
woman works with you. She is a big, dark-haired woman named Cleo.
“Where you from, boo?” she asks on your first day. When you tell
her, she makes a high pitched sound and pretends to shiver. “Way
too cold up there for me.”
“And you?” you ask.
“I’m from the mud of Louisiana, where it don’t dip below seventy
in the middle of winter and races past a hundred in August,” she says.
The day after your first shift is New Year’s Eve. You talk to Dan, a
friend from Montana.
“You’re missing the big bash at Al’s and Vic’s. It’s an eighties
party. Should be pretty sweet,” he says.
It sucked last year,” you reply.
next page
