Caustic (2 page)

THREE

I didn’t get a chance to see Sloan on my way out, so I couldn’t tell her the bad news. But I expected her to call me by the time I got back to my apartment. However, when I arrived, all that was waiting for me was my fifty something-year-old super, standing there with my keys, and looking for his check.

“Funny story, but I actually found them.” Nothing was funny about it, I knew that.

His large caterpillar-like eyebrows came together, and his hand shot out. “I make keys, you pay me,” he said in broken English.

“I’ll give it to you tomorrow, okay? It’s just been a really long day.”

He shrugged his mountainous shoulders, “I add to your rent. You feel better.”

At least, he was genuine. Just as I entered my apartment, and dropped my keys into the bowl where they should have been this morning, my phone started to ring. I didn’t even look at the screen before I swiped to answer the call. But it wasn’t Sloan, it was Deidre. And she was not exactly the person I wanted to chat with right now.

“Oh my God! Did you really get fired? I mean can they do that? It’s not like sexual harassment or something?”

I flopped down on my sofa with the phone next to my ear. I grabbed a blanket from off the top and wrapped myself up, trying not to cry.

“No. Apparently, there was something in the contract that said that we can’t sleep with clients, or potential clients, or something. I don’t know, but, anyway, I’m in the unemployment line looking for a job now. And you want to know what the worst part is? Julian Porter is your new client! What kind of total shit is that?”

She lowered her voice to a whisper, “I’m in the bathroom. Everyone is talking about it. As soon as you left, the Dragon Lady was like, “Oh my God, she practically begged for her job. It was so sad.” It was such bullshit. I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“Beg for my job? No. I had hardly a chance to say anything. She didn’t even let me defend myself! Wait, why are you in the bathroom?”

She sighed. “Obviously, I can’t talk to you out on the floor. One, you know the no cell phone policy. And two, you’ve been excommunicated, sweetheart. You’re lucky I’m calling you at all. I could get shunned for this and you know I can’t afford that. These are my people.”

I shook my head. I should’ve known better. Of course they were
her
people, the same ones that would shun her for speaking to me, classy. I had only met Deidre a couple months ago when I started working at the firm. She wasn’t a true friend, just a coworker I hung out with on occasion. “You know what? Don’t worry about it. You may pee in peace. I gotta go. Bye.” I hung up and turned so that my face was pushed up against the side of the couch. Maybe I could suffocate myself, right here, right now. End it all. At least, then, I wouldn’t have to worry about my rent, or anything else in this apartment. My phone started buzzing again, and, as much as I didn’t want to hear Deidre go on and on anymore about my absence at work, I decided to answer it. What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment.

“Listen, I said that you could just go to the bathroom on your own. You don’t need to talk to me anymore.”

“Skye?”

I sat straight up, panic written all over my face. It wasn’t Deidre at the other end of the line, it was my mother. Someone who I spoke to maybe only once a month, not someone who called me out of the blue. If she was calling, something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Mom?”

I could hear stifled tears on the other end of the line. “Skye, is there anyway you can get away from work? Your grandfather, he’s not well. And he’s asking for you.”

Not well. That was Connecticut speak for dying. The people are so prim and proper up there that they just didn’t say it. “What’s going on, Mom? What’s wrong with Grandpa?”

She sighed heavily. “I’d rather tell you in person.”

I tore the blanket off of me, and walked into my bedroom, opening up drawers, and starting to grab clothes. “Tell me now. How bad is it?”

I was terribly close to my grandfather as a child. There were summers at the cabin that he owned up near Bear Lake. I could remember sitting on the tire swing and going out over the water. Carefree summers like nothing could ever go wrong. Suddenly, they seemed so long ago, so far away. I hadn’t been that carefree since.

“He’s asking for you,” she sighed again, this time I wondered if she would be able to find the words. “He wants you and Leia to come see him.”

I dropped the shirt that I had just pulled out of my dresser, and fell down onto the edge of my bed. Slowly, I melted down into a crumpled pile on the floor. Leia. No one said her name, not anymore.

My twin sister and I had been absolutely inseparable since birth. We had done everything together. We joined cheerleading, and then ballet, and then we took art lessons, but that didn’t last long because I wasn’t very good at it. And, by the time that we were in high school, we were spitting images of one another, all the way down to matching tattoos. But, then things started to change.

Leia became distant and withdrawn. She started seeing a therapist regularly, and they prescribed all sorts of medications for depression and anxiety. The pills made her crazy. She spent hours scribbling down her thoughts and feelings inside these leather bound journals that my parents would buy her. It was terrifying when I would read them. Suddenly, I was also going to a therapist, and my family was doing family therapy twice a week. We were barely keeping our heads above water. My parents were happy in their marriage, but their twin prides and joy were falling apart at the seams. And, then, there was the night of our sixteenth birthday. I remember every second of it, no matter how many times I tried to block it out. But I couldn’t. Not her screams, not the men in the white coats taking her away.

I’d barely spoken to my sister after she was put into the Connecticut Psychiatric Institute. I went to visit her a couple times, but she refused to see me. And, then, when she was nineteen, she checked herself out, and didn’t give a forwarding address. My parents and I hadn’t heard from her in a little over three years. I had no idea where she was, or who she was. Not anymore.

“Skye? Skye are you still there?” I realized I’d had gotten lost in my own head, and I hadn’t responded. “Honey, I think I lost her,” I heard her tell my father.

“Hello? Skye? Are you there?” My father’s voice rattled me back into the present.

“I’m here. Sorry. Dad? Is Grandpa really that bad?”

“Yeah, baby, he is.”

Shit.

I clutched onto the bed for support, and pulled myself back up onto it. My legs were still shaking too much to stand on. “Are we really going to look for Leia? I mean it’s been so long since we’ve tried.”

My parents had hired a private investigator right after she checked herself out. They looked for over six months, but they found nothing. Eventually, they came to my parents, told them that she had probably legally changed her name, and they weren’t going to find anything about her. She was gone. It devastated my parents. They fought for a while, and I stayed away at school, getting closer and closer with my sorority sisters and blocking my family out. The girls never asked about Leia; they didn’t even know that she existed. Sloan didn’t even know I had a sister, and she was practically one of my best friends. I had hidden it for so long, so well. But, now that it was back at the forefront of my mind, it was crushing me from the inside out. I had lost a sister. I was that missing girl from Connecticut’s twin. And, when people would see me sometimes, they would recognize her from the flyers. That was the worst. The look of joy on their faces that they had helped find this missing girl only to learn that she had an identical twin sister. It was awful. And it was why, after college, I had decided to stay down here, and not move back home. Besides, we had friends and other family that still missed her. It wasn’t fair for me to be floating around with her face, living my normal life. I wouldn’t do that to them.

But returning home for Grandpa? I would do that in a heartbeat. Finding Leia? That was another story.

FOUR

I looked out my car window at the stark white building in front of me. I hated hospitals. They made me so uncomfortable. Every time I walked into one, I wondered if this is how Leia felt. Like she was trapped in some white-walled prison, with squeaky clean smiling nurses, and doctors who couldn’t remember your name. At least, that’s how I felt about the Connecticut Psychiatric. Every time I was there, people would smile at me, and tell me how well she was doing, but then she refused to see me. And, then, I would see the doctors with shifty eyes, holding a chart and talking about how she was refusing to take her meds in hushed whispers when they thought I was out of earshot. They had no idea whether she was doing well or not, not in those first six months at least. But by the time I graduated high school, I had stopped visiting her. It was my fault that our relationship had fallen apart. Not hers.

But maybe this place would be better. Bayside Hospital was where people got better, babies were born, good things happened to people. Maybe this was where Grandpa would walk out of. A girl could dream.

I walked through the glass sliding doors, and asked the receptionist where Room 203 was. Another thing I hated about hospitals, they were so damn confusing. Follow the blue line until it turns into the red line, and then when it hits the green line, you’ve gone too far. So, somewhere on the red line was my grandfather’s room. Luckily for me, my dad was sitting outside of it, in one of those uncomfortable chairs that they made you wait in. I sat down next to him without saying a word.

“Hey, kid. Grandpa’s inside. He’ll be happy to see you. So will your mother.”

I didn’t come home very often, but they didn’t push the issue. I think it was hard enough to see my face, and not think of Leia, without me being around them 24/7. “How is he?”

He shrugged his shoulders. He looked like he had just come from work. The tie around his neck, and a button up collared shirt, with black pants were his regular work attire. He was a manager at a local car dealership, and was very successful. We had grown up living a completely comfortable life. I still wondered sometimes what had set Leia off, because it couldn’t have been our family. We’d been so normal, until we weren’t.

“He’s not good. The doctors only give him a few weeks, if that. He’s talking about your grandmother a lot, how he misses her. And, when he’s not talking about her, he’s talking about you and Leia. He really wanted to see you, kid. I’m really glad you came.” He wrapped his arms around me in a hug, and I smiled as I breathed in the scent of the cologne that he’s worn since I was a baby. He felt safe, like home had once felt.

As I pulled away, I started questioning him. “Why didn’t anyone call me sooner? I thought he was in remission.”

My grandfather had lost my grandmother only five years ago, when he was dealing with horrible depression after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. But, somehow, she was the one to go first, heart attack. So, he moved in with my parents while he was going to chemo, and, as far as I knew, he’d never moved back out. They’d sold his house almost two years ago when they announced that he was in remission. But, he still couldn’t really live alone anymore. My parents had a huge home, perfect for him to move in to, and they could still feel like they had their own private life apart from him. I know my mom didn’t want him to be alone, and I didn’t blame her. A part of me felt like, after I left for school, this gave them another person in the house, someone to take care of. Especially after they had lost Leia.

“He was. And then, all of a sudden, maybe three weeks ago, he started feeling really low again. We took him in for some blood work, and suddenly this was it.”

“But that was a couple weeks ago, Dad. Why did I just get a phone call today?” I had driven directly here after packing my bag as fast as I possibly could.

“We didn’t want to worry you, well your mother didn’t.” He shook his head, he was looking older. He had gray hairs I hadn’t noticed last time I was home. But that was months ago, probably Christmas.

“Skye,” I heard my mother’s voice, and looked up. She was just emerging from the hospital room. She looked tired, and her eyes had dark circles lying beneath them. I felt sorry for her. I stood up and I wrapped my arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Mom. But you should’ve called me, I could’ve been here sooner.”

She pulled away, and put her hands on either side of my face, her forehead against mine. When I looked into her eyes, I saw my own. Both Leia and I looked just like my dad, except for eyes, dark green just like my mother’s. Same eyes as my grandfather, too. Her side of the family must have some pretty strong genes. “No, we didn’t want to bother you. You’re living your life! We’re so proud of you.”

I guess this wasn’t a good time to mention that I just lost my job and the only reason I was here was because I wasn’t allowed to be there. No, that could wait for another day. “How is he?”

She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “He’ll be happy to see you, sweetheart. He’s been asking about you.”

It took a deep breath, my shoulders heaved with the weight of what I felt like was the world on them. I broke away from my mother, and walked into the room, expecting to see my grandfather hooked up to machines and tubes, but the expectation and the sight were two very different things. He lay motionless in the bed, and I hoped he was only sleeping. His skin was wrinkled and leathered from years of working outside in his garden. I remembered that garden fondly. We spent summers making it beautiful, something we could all enjoy together. He taught me about soil and weeds, and all the prettiest flowers names. He made me feel special, like that was our secret. I hadn’t grown anything in years, we still talked once a week on the phone, and I would send him pictures online of flowers we used to grow but I didn’t inherit his green thumb. Without his help I was useless in my garden, which was mostly a window box I attempted keep alive. Every week he would ask how it was doing, and I would lie and tell him it was great. He had been lying too, I realized. I was angry with him about that. Someone should have told me, I would have come sooner. It was probably my fault though, I racked my brain for a moment that one of them let slip he was sick, or even just not feeling well. But I came up empty. They had specifically hidden this from me. Probably thought I couldn’t handle the stress.

I studied the rest of him, hopeful to find some shred of wellness. His short cut hair was stark white against his dark tan skin. He had a blanket pulled up underneath his arms, and tubes attached to practically every part of him from the chest up. I watched as medicine pumped into him through an IV. Probably something to keep the cancer at bay, or maybe he was far enough that it was morphine just to keep him comfortable. I didn’t want to know. I sat down in a plastic chair next to his bed, and I reached out for his hand. When I held it between my own, he squeezed.

“You’re here,” he said in a gravelly voice that I didn’t recognize.

“Of course I am. How are you?”

He coughed and it sounded raspy, like he was struggling to breathe. “I’ve been better. I don’t have a lot of time, Skye.”

I shook my head. “Don’t talk like that.”

He sucked in another deep breath. “I will talk how I want to. An old man deserves that. But I need something else.”

I knew what he was going ask before he did, but it was still hard to hear. “What do you need, Grandpa?”

“I need you to find your sister.” Another cough, and wheezing breath.

“What?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“I need you to find her.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start. You know that we have no idea where she is.”

He nodded. “You go back to where it ended.”

I thought about it for a moment. Where was the last place she’d been? “Connecticut Psychiatric? You want me to go to the hospital? She hasn’t been there in three years.”

“I don’t care. You start there. You have to.”

I paused, not sure what to say. I didn’t want to go back to that place, it scared me.

“Promise me you’ll try.”

I couldn’t say no to a dying man, and he knew it. “I promise. But you have to promise me something.”

He nodded. I guessed he was unable to speak.

“You don’t die until I get back.”

He squeezed my hand tightly and a small smile played on his calloused lips. “Promise.”