Hold the Light (19 page)

Ready to burst into flames, I fled outside to cool down. Out in the open air, I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. My eyes cooled down quickly and I was relieved. Leaning against a support beam, I lit a cigarette. The damp, cool air tickled my pours as I puffed. Smoke in my eyes was better than tears. I was at peace for the moment. That tranquility collapsed when my sister burst out the doors. She swung the double doors open so hard they almost hit me. She was furious. I felt more heat secreting from her than there was inside. Just like her damned father.

"What're you doingm George?" she hissed, looking for a reason to explode.

"Um, what's it look like I'm doing?" I wanted to push her buttons. She never cared about Mother. The only good thing Mom did, according to Amber, was marry Dad.

"Get in there dammit, people are talking," she ordered.

"Tell them to fuck off."

"Dammit, George!" She blew up with a shocked look. "Don't embarrass me here you prick!

Show some respect."

"I am. I actually loved her."

Her cheeks ballooned into a violent crimson. Insults rushed to her conceited little head. She prepared to retaliate, but quickly kept them to herself out of fear of embarrassment.

"You know, sis," I posed, "What do you believe?"

"What? What the hell are you talking about?" All her anger drained into confusion. Her short temper pulsed behind her eyes.

"What do you believe, Amber? Do you think she's in Heaven?"

"Um, yeah, sure she's in Heaven," she guessed as I tapped away ashes.

"Why do you think she's there?" I had no idea where I was going with my questions, but I just wanted to press all her buttons. She reluctantly pondered my questions and I waited for her to respond venomously.

"I hope she is, I know she is," Amber said triumphantly.

"You know she's there?"

"I hope she's there," she amended, following my lead.

"And what do you think Mom hoped for, sis?"

"What ...why? Huh? Where are you going with this? Tell me if you're so smart."

I leaned right into her face with my cigarette hanging out the corner of my mouth. The smoke made a thin, translucent shield between our faces and she squinted from the sting of the smog. She deserved this. My actions weren't venial, but the way she treated Mother...

"She got just what she hoped for. She escaped."

My sister's face sunk and she covered her mouth. I strolled out from underneath the canopy into the light rain, satisfied with my affront. She followed, hair draping into her face.

"Are you saying she committed ..." She gasped.

"No you idiot, she waited for her time," I interrupted. "You would think that."

"What the fuck are you saying, George?"

"You wouldn't know, would you?" I took another drag of my cigarette. "It's in your eyes, Amber, but you can't see it. You never cared. You'd rather see what suits you and not what's in front of you."

"How dare you. Aaargh. Asshole!" She yelled through her tears, "She was my mother too, damn you."

"How about Dad? You hope for him, too?"

"Leave him alone, you deranged freak." She whimpered.

I blew my smoke at her.

"It's your damn eyes again. Man, what it must be like to be you," I dug in on her. "You never knew him, Amber. He was nowhere near the idol you make him out to be."

"You're the one who left. You ran. I stayed. I may have been young but I remember that he was a better man than you'll ever be ...and that's what drove you away. You were jealous. You were the bad one."

I quickly grew sick of her. She wouldn't swallow the truth even if I forced it down. The rain began to fall harder and I enjoyed it. Water ran down my forehead and I stared at my feet, and then lifted my eyes to hers.

"Believe what you want sis," I said plainly. "But people are like clouds. If you look at them hard enough, you can see anything."

I turned my back on her and she cried. I crushed out my cigarette. Randy came out and she pushed past him as she ran back inside.

"You sure are good at that, George," Randy said watching her run.

"You want one?" I offered him a cigarette as I lit another.

"Yes," he said looking at my feet.

Randy looked more ravaged by depression than I felt. Under the awning, he puffed on his cigarette and watched me stand in the rain. The smoke encased his head, circling like a crystalline ghost, until the smog whisked off into the breeze. He bent his head into the wind and it blew by like an elusive memory. Stepping out into the drizzle, he let the rain patter off his trench coat and avoided eye contact with me. Sulking like he would burst if our eyes met, our moods blended into the misty rainfall.

"Are you alright, George?" He asked as the gray rain pierced the smoke hovering around his head.

"I've been better. Can't look me in the eyes, eh?"

"I just felt I should ..." he attempted, "I just don't know how to act ...I cannot do this."

"Don't worry, old bud, I don't know either. Just no acting, okay."

"I am sorry," Randy said after a moment's deliberation, "No acting."

"Was it painless?" I asked Randy, clearing the air. "Do think my mother suffered?"

Randy looked at me carefully, eyes glistening, staring past my eyes and right into my head. Everything on his face was rough. His heavy stubble and deep lines around every one of his features told me he was drained.

"George, I do not want ..."

"Tell me what she said to you when I was in the kitchen when we were here a couple days ago."

"I do not think I ..."

"Tell me!" I demanded.

"She was scared for you." A long, clear vein of tears streaked down his cheek, "Worrying about you and Amber. She did not say it, but I saw it."

"What did she say?" I almost yelled, pressing hard on him.

"Alright!" he almost screamed as well, "This is against my better judgment."

Randy grimaced and choked out a cough.

"'Do not let George run away anymore, Randy,' she said."

"Run - RUN! Dammit ..." I exploded, "She was the one that married that asshole."

Randy stood sulking in front of me, hating himself for having to tell me as I barked at him for my mother's words. It took me a few minutes to calm down. My eyes burned again. I walked in circles in the rain trying to cool off.

"George I am sorry, I ..."

"She's right, you know," I spoke up into the rain, "I ran from them. I ran from my problems. I run from it all."

"Do not worry about it George ..."

"I have to worry," I interrupted, "I'm the only one left to care."

"Come in George," he elbowed me, still keeping from eye contact like he knew something I didn't.

We slowly lumbered back inside and I stood before my mother. She looked cradled in her coffin all wrong. Her hair was done wrong. There was too much make-up on her cheeks. She was free, though. Finally she would able to be whom she wanted. Strangely enough, she looked more comfortable and relaxed I had ever seen her. I wondered if she really was that peaceful she must not be anywhere near my father. No, he shouldn't be anywhere near her where she is now.

The small seating area of relatives erupted into a hymn and it startled me. The room spun into a jumble of monotone lyrics. The flowers burned my eyes again but this time I stared at them without blinking. The fiery yellows and bright greens eddied together as my eyes blinked out of focus. The stems and blossoms melded into an inferno as I broke down and cried.

Chapter 34

After the funeral my family fell apart. Amber ran off to Boston, hoping to get lost in the crowd at age eighteen. I got the family affairs in order in her absence. She didn't disappear for long, though. She reappeared when I moved to the city after college. We crossed paths mere days after I arrived. I ran into her at a restaurant and we nervously exchanged numbers after awkwardly attempting to catch up on each other's lives.

"With the money willed to me," she said, "I'm set for college and an apartment. It's pretty damn cool."

"That's good," I took a swig from my beer. I wasn't about to tell her I was executor and gave her that money, but I think she knew and that was why she spoke to me. "Well, for me, well ...I haven't really found any work yet."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll find something," she uttered, trying to be civil.

"Yeah," I replied unenthusiastically, "Um, Randy's doin' good."

"That's good," she said.

Amber took a swig of the mixed drink I bought her. Though she was underage, I figured alcohol would be a good gesture for us to build a concord from. Her pinky finger was in the air. The drink drooled down her chin. The drops beaded atop her chin and shot down to the bottom of her jaw. She moved the glass away and wiped away the liquid. That's when I saw something new.

"Hey Amber, what's with that scar below your lip? When did you get that?"

"Oh, um well," she stumbled, taking her time to answer, "In school ... I uh, was kinda drunk and met the corner of a counter. Bled like a stuck pig."

It was a labored and strange response. She chuckled a bit.

"It looks like a divot, more round than straight. Not like a counter's edge."

"Hey, I was drunk, alright," she snapped.

"Okay whatever," I said, writing it off.

The rest of the night went just as well, but we managed to maintain civility, even with so much animosity lingering.

After that night at the bar, we only talked when one of us needed a favor.

Chapter 35

Several weeks passed and she asked one of those favors of me. She asked me to watch her place while she was going on a trip. After ignoring her long list of rules for apartment etiquette, I waved goodbye as she slammed the apartment door, scampering to the car waiting in the street.

"I need a drink," I said.

I called Randy and we decided to go out to a bar. We hadn't been out drinking much since college ended.

Randy rarely drank heavily these days. I did. He always stayed sober. But this night turned out to be very different. He decided not to only drink, but to get drunk.

Even stranger was the fact that he never shivered. He had been doing that for as long as I knew him. He was always cold to the touch, especially during his strange convulsions, shivering from being cold I guessed. But he was flushed this night, drinking fast and playing with his cell phone. It worried me some, but I never asked about it.

"I'm sick of living like this," Randy stated after slamming down his sixth beer. A static hung in the air immediately followed his words. A heavy and foreboding sensation that I tried to shake off my shoulders.

"Like what?" I responded.

"Like prey."

"What? Oh, it's not another one of those beautiful poor, poor girls, chasing you down to judge more wet T-shirt contests."

"No, that was a once in a life-time event," he said half seriously and half joking, recalling that exact event from college.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I asked, realizing he was actually worried.

"You are one of the best friends I have had in all these years. You know that," he stated coldly, staring at me with trembling eyes.

I was scared. He was different; he seemed scared. I had never seen him like that. Something was definitely wrong.

He snapped his head up from his beer, raised his eyebrow, touched his finger to his nose, and then shook his head. Sniffing the air like a dog, it looked like he caught an aroma. He looked about the bar and stopped abruptly. Dire emergency spelled out across his face as if he had been spotted on a hunt. He turned to me.

"Let's go," he whispered.

Before I could think, he grabbed my hand and whisked me out of my seat. Money fluttered down onto the table. With a clank of the door we were outside, standing in the dispelled dusk with the moon at our backs.

Before I could take a breath, he cut left down the street, jerking us into a full sprint. The city lights blurred by. He ran with such speed that I quickly fell behind. I dragged my feet along the cement trying to keep pace. A hidden hole in the sidewalk caught my shoe and I tripped. Randy's hold was steady and my knuckles popped in his hand as my face plummeted towards the cement. I tried to brace for impact with my free hand, but I was trapped in Randy's grasp. He heaved with a massive jolt and ripped me away from hitting the ground and swung me into an alley.

Randy pressed his back up against the brick wall. He was still for a moment then slowly slid back towards the corner to watch the street. His leather jacket quietly hissed along the red brick as he inched along. The moonlight beat down through the gritty city air and perched on his head and shoulders gently. Randy peered around the corner and scanned for something or someone. I, on the other hand, was bent over in a heap, tired and panting.

"What ...what the hell...was that for?" I wheezed.

"Listen, I have to tell you something ..." he looked at my trembling body and continued, "I spent some time in prison years ago, before I met you. Times were rough then and I was actually somewhat glad to be away from the world."

Randy slowed his speech and caught his breath. I tried to catch mine.

He settled for the time being, apparently feeling safe enough to burst into a story.

"You were in jail?" I asked. "What for? What does this have to do..."

"I had a cellmate," Randy continued, ignoring my question. "He gave me something and wants it back. I never thought I would have to deal with him again. He was put to death for Christ's sake."

"He's dead?" I rattled off, trying to absorb the tale.

"Yes and after me. Oh God. I lulled myself into false confidence after all this time. I have been foolish."

"How? Foolish? If he's dead, he can't just run around after you, idiot," I snapped feeling like he was pulling a prank.

"He is. He must have made a deal with that damn demon to come after me. Raised from the dead to kill me to get the gift back," he said.

"Oh yeah, that's good and all," I said, walking away from him, "But what about the fact that, um ...you're fucking nuts."

"I do not expect you to understand. I just ask you to believe me right now."