A faint smile twitches my lips upward at the corners as I drain the dregs of my whiskey.
It’s a balmy night, the skies clear and quiet in the aftermath of this afternoon’s storm. I walk quickly, consumed by my own thoughts. It doesn’t take me long to get back to my apartment. Tommy’s neighborhood — a stretch of unpretentious houses tucked between a golf course fairway and a chunk of conservation land — is a ten minute walk from the inner harbor.
The weatherbeaten three-story walkup awaiting me at the edge of the docks isn’t much to look at, with its sagging front porch and peeling paint, but the price was right and the landlord asked blessedly few questions when I found myself in need of an apartment last fall.
The bedroom is small; the bathroom even smaller. The tiles are mildewed, the grout yellowed with age. I peel off my damp clothes, step into the stall shower, and flip on the overhead faucet. I spend far too long beneath the spray, lingering long after the water has run cold. Pressing my forehead against the tiled wall, I wish I could wash every thought in my head straight down the drain, along with every emotion clanging inside the echo-chamber of my chest cavity.
If only.
My mind is as jumbled as my heart. Over and over, my thoughts return to Jo. I keep seeing her face. The look on it when she was loaded into that ambulance — such stark vulnerability, such sharp sadness. I was glad the door shut between us, if only so she wouldn’t see my heart being physically ripped from my chest in that moment.
One of the paramedics, assuming I was her boyfriend, asked if I wanted to ride with her to the hospital. And I did. Of course I did. But instead, I just stood there like an idiot, throat clogged with emotions I couldn’t begin to untangle, and watched her ride out of my life.
Somehow, it was even more painful this time around.
She’s better off without you, I remind myself. She deserves more than this life you’re living, in a shitty apartment with no future ahead of you.
The sudden buzz of my cellphone startles me out of my unpleasant thoughts. I grab it off my nightstand and examine the words blaring across the screen. A bolt of alarm shoots through me when I see my mother’s name in insistent capital letters.
“Ma? What’s going on? Are you okay? It’s late.”
“What’s going on? What’s going on? How can you so calmly ask me what is going on?” She gives me no time to answer these questions — merely bursts into a breathless tirade of Spanish that’s difficult to follow. I catch a few key words — Josephine, hospital, emergency contact — before she switches back to our universal tongue. “Mijo, I’m the one who should be asking what is going on! I’m the one who answered the phone twenty minutes ago and learned what happened to you and Josephine in the storm today from a doctor at Beverly Hospital!”
Shit.
“Oh,” I mutter.
“Oh?” She looses another stream of angry Spanish. “They say the Coast Guard was called in to rescue you both! They say she nearly died out there! And you didn’t think to call me?”
I blow out a sharp breath and sit up on my bed. “I’m sorry. You must still be listed as Jo’s most recent guardian. I had no idea the hospital would contact you.”
“And if they hadn’t? Would you have even told me what happened? Or do you think, just because you are no longer living under my roof, you do not owe your mother any explanation when terrible things go on in your life?”
“Of course I would’ve called you, Ma. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“You haven’t even seen dramatic yet, mijo. This is me being calm. Why do you think it took me twenty minutes to call after speaking to the doctors? Your father has been leading me through deep breathing exercises so I don’t scream your ear off through the phone!”
I wince. “I’m sorry, okay? I should’ve called. It’s been a very long day. I’m tired. I didn’t think.”
“You scared me,” she says. Her voice is marginally calmer, but remains thick with emotion. “For a moment, when I picked up the phone and heard it was the hospital, I was worried you’d been in another accident…” Her words press low beneath the weight of painful memories. “We almost lost you last summer, Archer. You have no idea how hard that was on your father and me.”
Guilt sluices through me. Because I do know. I saw exactly how difficult my injuries were for them to come to terms with. In a way, the death of my baseball dreams hit them just as hard as it hit me. And on top of that loss, they also found themselves forced out of their occupations, along with the only home they’d known since arriving in New England twenty years ago.
They stayed for a few months, after everything fell apart. They were right by my side as I moved through the phases of recovery — the surgeries, the hospital stays, the discharges, the physical therapy, the lingering pain. But even caught up in my own suffering, I was not immune to theirs. I could see the strain on their faces as they navigated their new reality — one son a broken mess, the other on the run from the authorities.
For months, they floundered to find new purpose in our too-small town. They moved around Manchester like ghosts, unmoored and unsure, living out of suitcases in a string of month-to-month sublet apartments with so little room, Gull Cottage looked palatial in comparison.
Eventually, when I felt enough time had passed, when I was ruled whole and healed by every medical professional in the Greater Boston area, I sat them down and told them it was time.
Time to go.
Time to begin again.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere far from here.
And where better than their home country? With the hefty severance payoff provided by Blair and Vincent, they were more than capable of purchasing a tract of land on the northern shore of Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico. In a small town abutting a sea of sparkling cerulean, Flora and Miguel Reyes did not have to be the raisers of a drug-addict, the banished staff of billionaires, the parents of a failed baseball star. They could simply be themselves.
Sure, they were resistant — at first to the idea of leaving in general, later to the idea of leaving me here without them.
Mijo, come with us.
There is nothing left for you here.
We can make a fresh start.
Together.
It took time, but I wore them down. Helped them pack up and drove them to the airport on a crisp October morning when the leaves were the color of fire. Stood on the other side of the TSA checkpoint and watched them disappear — Ma, crying her eyes out, Pa consoling her with soothing words I could not hear.
Some days, I wonder why I didn’t get on that plane with them. Why I didn’t cut my ties with this place as cleanly as I’d cut my ties to Josephine Valentine. But something deep inside — some stubborn-as-hell part of me — was unwilling to leave. Maybe because leaving felt like running away. Like letting Blair and Vincent and their piles of blood money win at some game I was never qualified to be playing in the first place.
Hell, I don’t know.
“I’m sorry for yelling, mijo. It’s just…”
“I know, Ma. How about this? I promise, the next time I’m caught in a freak squall and have to be rescued by the Coast Guard, I’ll call you from the boat. Okay?”