River, II

[Trigger warning: mentions of suicide]

IV.

He fit earphones into his head and went off for a run. The legs of his sweatpants were soon filled with heat. He kept going, feet pounding, the music so loud it could be heard by passersby as a tinny squeak from the earbuds.

His dark hair came lose from the ponytail holder and he did not stop to fix it, so that he resembled an escaped convict. Clearly he had things to resolve, and no one stopped to trouble him.

He circled the neighborhood, and then went onto the trail behind Mariana’s apartments. When he pounded up the walk and through Willow’s front door, breath heavy, he took the earbuds out and glanced around the kitchen to see his sister sitting at the table with Lexi.

With his teeth he pulled a cigarette from the carton on the island. “Mornin’,” he said around the filter.

“Hey,” she said. “Lexi and I just got here.” She jerked her head at the back door. “C’mon out with me, share a cigarette.”

He followed her with a look at the teenaged girl, stubble on her chin, but her head was down in her music player and she was ignoring them with purpose. River shut the back door gently, cursed and went back in for the carton of cigarettes, and then handed it to Mariana. Her face wrinkled.

“Menthol?” she demanded, and he shrugged. He tossed her the lighter as Mari plucked one out with her acrylic nails. He used to hold the lighter up to Willow’s cigarettes, and he missed it.

She flicked it twice and inhaled deep. He said, “I almost killed myself.”

Mari’s eyes slid to him. River shifted, chin in his hand. “I know she wasn’t my whole life,” he said. “I just….”

“Maybe you should see a psychiatrist. Just for a little while. It helps.”

“I’m not crazy, Mariana. I lost someone, I’m dealing with it. That’s all.”

“I just don’t want to lose you, too.”

“You almost did it to me.”

“Yeah, and I regretted it, and I’m glad I lived.” She huffed a sigh and put out the cigarette on the bottom of her shoe. “Look, I know you’re mad at Willow. I’m pissed at you for considering it. All I’m saying is get some depression meds, at the least. It runs in the family.”

“Those only work for a year or so.”

“Well, use that year to get on your feet.” Her eyes pierced through him. “I’m worried about you, bubba. You drinking?”

“No.”

“You’d tell me, right?”

His eyes rolled over to her. “I’m sober, Mari. Please don’t make something out of it.”

“Fine.” Her voice was low. “Lexi doing okay?”

He shrugged. “She doesn’t talk to me much lately. She was really quiet after the funeral.”

The back door opened, and Lexi came out. They glanced askance at her, and she said, “Window’s open. Heard y’all gossiping.” River twisted around, seeing the screen behind his head. The girl sat down on the stoop and Mariana handed her River’s carton of tobacco.

“Want my chair?” he asked, and she shook her head. She lit the cigarette with the intense focus of someone new to smoking. River and Mariana were lapsing into warm silence, until Lexi asked, “How were you gonna do it?”

He opened his eyes. “Do what?”

“Off yourself.”

“I wasn’t gonna off myself.”

“So when you went on that spontaneous drive, is that what you were gonna do? In Wichita Falls?”

“Well, I didn’t. Obviously.”

“Did you decide to come back before or after you called me?”

“Before.”

“And that’s why you didn’t pick up the phone.” She drew a quick breath. “Fuck. You were just gonna leave me.”

“Aw, baby,” Mariana said, reaching out for her shoulder and giving it a squeeze, holding the girl close and rubbing her back. “He wouldn’t do that.” Her eyes prodded her brother to speak and he razed a hand over his face.

“I was just thinking about it, Lex. There’s a big difference between thinking and doing. I promise.”

None of this was helping. Lexi pulled away from Mariana breathing quickly, holding herself and rocking, her face a mask of grief. River’s eyes were vacant as he slid out of his chair and sat beside her, but he had floated upwards out of his body and all he could do was sit there.

V.

The black hand inched its way toward six. Every time River walked out the glass-paneled door, he looked up at the clock and then compulsively at his watch–as if he was pretty sure he knew what time it was, but he checked the digital numbers just to make sure it was honest.

“Afternoon, River,” said his manager as the glass door whispered closed behind her. He nodded to the woman, who slid behind the counter.

“Hey, India,” he said. “Got a minute?”

“Sure do. This about the week you requested off?”

“Uh-huh.” He wondered if she smelled the beer on him. He kept a few inches away and didn’t breathe on her papers. She was nodding.

“Sure thing. You haven’t taken much time off since everything happened.” She signed the paper, slid it into the binder, and said, “You’ve got the last week of the month off. That’s spring break for your kid, isn’t it?”

“Yup,” he said. “We’re road-tripping to Georgia.”

“Where at?”

“Dalton or so.”

“Two day drive?”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “One and a half.” His manager whistled low, hands on her hips, and said, “You be careful, speed racer.”

He nodded and turned to leave, glancing at the clock and resisting the urge to lift his wrist while his manager could see. Grabbing his keys, phone, and a bottle of water from the cooler, River nodded goodbye to the man in the lane beside him. He tossed everything onto the passenger seat and pulled away from the repair garage, exhaling. He was glad to be alive.

Lexi sat on the front porch with a sketchpad. She had one knee drawn up, and with the other foot she nudged the swing back and forth. He closed the door and leapt onto the porch, and she saw his renewed energy and asked, “Did you hear ‘bout spring break?”

“We’re going to Georgia.” She smiled and put the pencil behind her ear, and he sat down on the cement porch and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

“About time,” she said.

“Just make sure you don’t have to worry about your schoolwork while you’re there, because I know you won’t do it.”

“Yes, sir, father, sir.”

River rolled his eyes. “All right.”

“Am I gonna meet your parents?”

“Sort of. And my oldest sister. You’ll love her.”

“Why haven’t I ever met them before?” This was a question he wasn’t prepared for. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and glanced at the white filter, sighing out a hazy cloud.

“Well,” he said, “They’re kinda far away. And…I dunno, your mom didn’t think it’d be good for you. I agreed with her while you were young. But after you got older, I just…never thought it was that important that you meet them. I always thought you’d have Willow and Jack’s families, and I didn’t want to give you any more grandparents to think about.” He flashed her a wry smile. “Know what I mean?”

“I think that’s bullshit,” she said. “I want to meet your family.”

“Well, you will.”

“What do you mean, about them not being good for me?”

River smiled around the cigarette. “So you know how you say I’m a little dramatic?”

“Ugh, all the time.”

“Well, they’re like that too.”

“So everyone on your side is a mess?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Geez, poor Mariana,” she said. River snorted, and Lexi went back to drawing. He put the cigarette out and was about to go back inside, but the girl said, “Hey, River?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you gonna stick around?”

His brow creased. “What do you mean?”

“I just mean…you know, my mom’s not around anymore. I always figured you stuck around because you loved her. And now…”

He went back to the swing and crouched in front of it, holding it still with one hand. “Look,” he said, “I wanna be here. I know I don’t always…make it obvious. But it’s hard. I’m not…a steady kind of person. But I’m trying.”

“I know.” She sighed at her sketchbook. “I guess I thought…maybe you didn’t want to be here anymore because of me.”

“No, sister. I love you. I’m just not very good at this whole…guardianship thing. I don’t know how to help you transition.”

“You don’t have to. I’ve got it. Just take me to the doctor when I need it.”

He smiled and messed up her hair, standing. “You’re a good kid. I’m gonna start on dinner.”

VI.

River tried not to smoke with the girl in the car. This was a Herculean task, since on every road trip since he was fifteen years old, he had smoked like a chimney. His resolve was rapidly fading.

“Lexi,” he said to the open highway, “why do you always ask for a cigarette?”

“Why, you want one?”

“I’m just saying–you don’t seem to like tobacco very much.”

She frowned, her feet up on the dashboard. “I just like the way it looks. Makes me look older. ‘Cause I don’t feel like a kid, but I look like a kid.”

His lips pressed together. “I get that. That’s part of why I started.”

She twisted to look at him. “Yeah?”

“Everyone was always saying to me, ‘You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.’” He laughed to himself, one hand on the steering wheel. “But I felt old. I didn’t feel like the person they saw.”

“Yeah.”

River fished the pack out of the driver side door and tossed one to her with a sigh. Steering with his knee, he cupped his hand around the flame and then handed her the lighter. “Well,” he said, “Cheers to that.”

The silence stretched. He turned the radio up. Lexi curled up on the seat, knees to chest. She fell asleep, and the cigarette dropped out of her hand and burned a hole in the upholstery. It was peppered with burns that her mother had made before her.

She lifted her head now and then to check on him. Every time she did he had one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand out the window, his black hair whipping around his forehead. At one point, driving with his knee and cigarette between his teeth, he put his hair back into a stubby ponytail at the nape of his neck and replaced the sunglasses on his head. Lexi wished for a second that she had his genes–he and Mariana were so beautiful.

“When are you gonna teach me to drive?” she asked, half-asleep, sounding like her childhood self. He smiled at the road.

“Whenever. You need paperwork or something, right?”

“I have to log hours driving with a parent,” she mumbled. River nodded. When Lexi opened her eyes again, they were in Louisiana. “How fast we been going?” she asked.

“Faster’n I oughta,” was his answer. She watched the pines zip by, the sun low, and let her eyes drift closed. He kept driving right into the night, kept awake by the power of nicotine.

She dozed, cheek on her shoulder, and he glanced over now and then. She still looked like a kid to him, a kid who shaved her face and wore lipstick. When they pulled into the gravel driveway, he cut the lights and engine and twisted to face her, his hand on the back of her seat. She rubbed her face, blinking, taking in the house with its porch sheathed in sheets of screen.

“Sister,” he said, his gaze wandering to the front yard. His voice was low in the thick darkness. “Gotta tell you something.” Lexi met his gaze, pulling up her knees. River’s dark eyes flicked toward the house. “Pops and I aren’t gonna get along.”

Her brow creased. “What’s he like?” she asked.

“He’s a good guy. He just drinks a lot.” He laughed to himself. “I used to give him a hard time about it, before I started to…well, I just can’t seem to get on the same page with him.”

Lexi nodded, her brow creased. She picked at the flaking dashboard and asked, “Why did you decide to leave?”

He lit a cigarette, one of the last ones, and the underside of his face turned orange. He dropped the lighter in the cup holder and she grabbed a cigarette too. “One day,” he said, “I just had enough of Georgia, the whole family, except Mariana. Mariana and I watch out for each other.”

“And then you met Mom?”

“Lord, no.” He smiled, rubbing his chin. “It took me a few years after I moved to Texas to meet her. I was spiraling. Then I went to rehab–you know I went to rehab, right?” She nodded. “Well, after that was when she and I started dating. You were like…five?”

“I remember.”

“Really?”

“Mom would go out on date nights and I’d be with the babysitter.”

“Yeah, she didn’t want you to meet me at first. Not ‘til she knew I was there for good.”

“River.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lexi wiped her nose on her pants, her knees tucked into her chest, and asked, “Do you think it was because of me?”

“No–god, no. I think it was because of me.”

They sat together in the car, windows down, and the cicada song drifted into the windows. She wiped her face.

“I don’t care about you and your dad,” she said. “Families have issues.”

“This one does.” He reached out and clasped her shoulder, gave it a reassuring little shake, and then opened his door. She stayed a moment, watching him climb the porch, then wiped her tears on her sleeve with a sigh and lurched out after him.