The Survivor Read online

  Janie had forgotten about the towel, which was dripping pink onto the floor tiles. She looked as though she were piecing herself back together internally, and he felt a darkening remorse for bringing this here, to her and Cielle. “As in…?” was all Janie could manage.

  Nate took a deep breath. Bit his lip. Here was that point before the world flew apart. The toughest death notification he’d have to serve.

  He said softly, “I’m not gonna be around much longer.”

  Janie shook her head. More fat drops tapping the floor tile. “What…?”

  “ALS,” he said. And then, for Cielle’s sake, “Lou Gehrig’s. That’s why I cut off from you guys nine months ago. We were already … And … I didn’t want to put you through it.”

  Though Janie’s face stayed still, there were tracks on her cheeks instantly, as if they’d sprung through the skin. He felt an overpowering urge to take her in his arms, but then Cielle said sharply, “That is so unfair,” and stomped away. They listened to her Doc Martens pound the stairs, and then a door slammed so hard that a magnet fell off the refrigerator.

  Pete cleared his throat, then said, “I remember when Sally died, I couldn’t find any sense in getting out of bed. But after a while…” His hand circled, trying to land on a thought. “Someone said once that whenever a door closes in your face, another opens farther down the hall.”

  “Which door is that?” Nate said. “To Valhalla?”

  A sharp silence. Janie looked unsteady on her feet, and Pete pulled her in and rubbed her shoulders from behind. His face was heavy with sadness, and Nate felt a rush of regret.

  He sucked in a breath. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.”

  “No.” Pete shook his head. “It was a dumb comment for me to make. I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry to hear about it, Nate.”

  Nate pointed upstairs. “Look, I’d better—”

  Janie nodded, a quick jerk of the chin.

  Upstairs, Cielle’s closed door waited, as imposing as a prison gate. The pencil lines on the door jamb marking her childhood heights were fading; a few more months and that piece of their shared past would be as lost and gone as Nate himself. He’d wasted so many chances. Countless nights he could’ve just walked down the hall to this room, pulled out a board game, read a story, picked her up, and breathed her in.

  Gathering himself, he tapped the wood with a knuckle. No response. He entered cautiously, expecting to draw fire. She sat at her desk, hunched over schoolwork, facing away. He hardly recognized the room beneath the magazine collages, the posters of boy-men actors, the scattering of teenager clothes. But there, half buried by a cast-off jacket, was the stepstool that Charles had sent as a baby gift, her name carved in wooden letters. It remained where Nate had positioned it a decade ago so she could step down from her big-girl bed and come wake him if she had a bad dream. He clung to the sight of it, let it moor him.

  He cleared his throat. Where to start? “Your boyfriend. Is he a nice guy?”

  “Of course not. He’s an asshole who treats me like shit. I grew up with no positive male role model in the house, so that’s what I get.”

  He watched her back, debated how to forge into a wave of sarcasm that thick. “Look, I get that you’re angry with me—”

  “No. I’m just sullen and withdrawn in general. Ironically self-aware, too, which insulates me further. I could do drugs or cut myself or get a shoulder tattoo of some Chinese symbol for vagina power. But instead I think I’ll just stay pissed off.”

  “Cielle.”

  She whirled. “What?” Her face was fighting to maintain the tough veneer, but he saw right through the cracks.

  “I’m sorry I’m not gonna be around.”

  “I’m not sure what the big diff will be. I mean, even before you split, our seasonal dinners were hardly a mainstay.”

  “You told me it was easier for you to see me less.”

  “I was twelve! I was a kid. You shouldn’t have listened. You shouldn’t have believed me. You should have fought me.” Her voice was wavering now, on the verge.

  “Well, honey, you were convincing.”

  “You left. I had no say. I had no say.” She noted the effect her words had on him, and her scowl lightened, if only for a moment. “You know what? Never mind. Fine. It’s all my fault.” She turned back around. “Buh-bye now.”

  He stared helplessly at the clothes littering the floor, a black polo shirt catching his eye. Car-wash decal on the breast pocket, Cielle’s name stitched above. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re working at a car wash? Why?”

  “That’s not really your concern either.”

  “Cielle,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  She turned again. “Pete lost most of his money in the recession. Some real-estate thing crashed. Which means we can’t afford my stupid private school. So I got a job. But it’s still not enough.”

  He sank to sit on her bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She picked up her iPhone in its pink rubber case and poked at the screen disinterestedly. “Because you’ve been so available?”

  “So you guys are…?”

  “We’re fine. Or so Mom and Pete say. It’s not like we’ll be on the street or anything. There’s just no money for extras. Which would be—oh, that’s right—my education.”

  “How much is Brentwood Prep?” Since she’d started last year at Pete’s urging, Nate was unacquainted with the price tag.

  “Twenty.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars?”

  “No. Twenty thousand glass beads. They’re having a special.”

  “Do you … do you like it?”

  “No.” She tossed the iPhone aside. “The girls are all named Chelsea or Sloane, and if I have to hear from one more assclown that he’s sooo brilliant he has to smoke pot to slow his brain down, I’m gonna puke on his worn-out Vans.”

  Nate was struggling to keep up with all this. “So you don’t want to go there anyway.”

  “The thing is, I do want to go there. Annoying, sure, but hello? It’s high school. At least the teachers are smart and there’s honors classes and the students aren’t as lame as they could be. Plus, it’ll get me into a good college, too, not that I’ll be able to afford that now either. So I’d better enjoy this semester, since it’s my last hurrah before I move on to stitching wallets in some sweatshop.”

  Given his own experience joining the Guard to pay for college, Nate had always sworn he’d work until Cielle’s education was squared away. Pete’s arrival had seemed to take care of all that. Until now.

  She glared at him. “Oh, c’mon. This isn’t your concern. Any more than anything else has been these past nine months. Or three years, for that matter. You just … what? Moved on? Got over it?”

  “No. I never got over it.”

  A cynical snicker couldn’t quite hide the hopefulness. “What then?”

  He studied his hands. “I always thought there would be time.”

  “There’s never time. There’s only right now. And you suck at right now.”

  He was running numbers in his head, but there weren’t many to run given the anemic state of his bank account. “Maybe I can help with the tuition—”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “What can I do, then?”

  Once again she showed him her back. “Die somewhere else.”

  The words left a clean hole through him where his stomach used to be. He sat for a while and watched her shoulders, the back of her head. She was ostensibly reimmersed in homework.

  His joints ached as he stood. “I wish I could’ve done better by you.” He heard the faintest sniffle, but nothing more. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m proud of everything you are and everything you’ll be.”

  He took care to ease her door shut silently behind him. Janie and Pete were where he’d left them downstairs by the sink, the salad plates sitting unmoved. Janie asked, “You wanna stay for dinner?”

  He though
t of his date with a handful of pills in the quiet dark of his apartment. Those inked fingers curling through the Town Car’s window. “Nah. I have to get back.”

  The look of relief in Janie’s eyes about killed him.

  “I’m sorry to hear about the investments,” Nate said.

  Pete tensed a bit. “We’ll figure it out. You have enough to worry about. Don’t worry about this, too.”

  Janie added quickly, “She’ll be fine in public school. We were.”

  “Okay.” Nate wanted so badly to raise a hand to her cheek, to feel those lips one last time, but instead he tipped his head. “I just wanted … I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  Pete said, “If there’s anything we can do…”

  “You know what I like about you, Pete? You’re a decent guy. And you’ve never let the fact that we don’t get along mess anything up.” Nate lifted his eyes, indicating the thunderous silence emanating through the ceiling. “Take care of her. When … you know, I can’t.”

  They shook hands, and Pete pulled him into a hug. Janie said, “Honey, I’ll just see him out,” and Pete said, “Of course.”

  Janie walked Nate to the porch, and they stood there. Nate crouched and fussed with the loose goddamned brick. “There’s a mortar bag in the garage with a little left over.” When he stood, he saw that she had tears in her eyes again, and he said, “Janie.”

  “I want to say something comforting, but I don’t know if it’s for me or you. So I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  Afraid of what his face might show, he looked at his waiting car. “C’mon. It’s not that bad. You still get to go to the opera next week with Pete the Fun Vacuum.”

  “You’re a menace.”

  “I want you to know,” he said, “there was never anyone else for me, Janie.”

  Her lips trembled, and then she nodded once, turned, and hurried inside. He walked to his car. He had the keys in the lock when he heard from behind, “Fuck you.”

  He turned, and Cielle was standing there, her sweater sleeves pulled down over her fists, her face flushed. “I loved you so much.” She spit it, like a curse. “I lit candles when you were away at war, and then, when you left us, I lit candles that you’d come back. ‘Dear God, please bring my daddy back to me safe.’ And even when you were with us, you were busy with your stupid job taking care of everyone else except for the people you were supposed to be taking care of.”

  “Cielle—”

  “You can’t have my sympathy. You can’t have it. You don’t. I don’t care if you’re dying.” Despite her best efforts, tears were leaking.

  He stood there, still, his heart coming apart for her. More than anything he wanted to go to her, but he knew if he took so much as a step, she’d bolt like a deer.

  “You can’t die yet,” she said. “You didn’t earn it. You left us, and now you get to die before I can get even.”

  When he trusted his voice, he asked, “How were you gonna get even?”

  “I was gonna have a great life and get married and be successful and keep your grandkids from you. But you’re dying and trying to make me feel … make me feel…” Her face wobbled all around. “Why’d you come tell us anyway?”

  “I wanted to say good-bye to you. I wanted to have a chance to set things straight.”

  “Why now, Nate?” His proper name, like a projectile. “I mean, you found out months ago. And you’re not sick yet. I mean, you still have months left at least, right?”

  The weight of his bones pulled at him. “It might be sooner than that, Cielle.”

  She staggered a bit. Encased in her sleeves, her fists tightened. “Does Mom know that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then why are you laying it on me?”

  “It’s too late for me and your mother.”

  She swiped at her cheeks angrily with her sleeve. “It’s too late for me and you, too.”

  He watched her all the way up the walk, hoping for a final glimpse of her face, praying she’d turn around one last time.

  She didn’t.

  Chapter 11

  A scattering of envelopes waited on the doormat outside Nate’s second-floor Westwood apartment. His mind flew to that dark sedan; were these written threats from the man attached to the tattooed hand? Not to worry—Nate was a handful of pills from being safely out of anyone’s reach. Crouching, he saw the network logos brightening up the flaps and let out a thin breath of relief. Letters from a bunch of local news affiliates, requesting interviews about his “heroic” role in the bank robbery. Kicking them aside, he scooped up the morning paper.

  Standing in the hall, he folded the Los Angeles Times back to the obituaries, as was his recent habit. There was Mary Montauk, a professor of linguistics who had helped design the first spell-check program. Gwendolyn Dawson, born crocheter and special-ed teacher. Arthur Fiske, heir to a textile fortune, World War II airman, and benefactor to the Getty. Nate pictured the man in a canary yellow sweater, reclining on a puffy down bed bleached with ethereal light as he drifted off, a faint grin touching his lips. He’d had plenty of time to adjust to the temperature, Arthur had, to ease his way into a place of nostalgic contemplation, a prince’s view back over a life well lived. As always, Nate’s eye snagged on the last line:

  Arthur is survived by Pamela, his loving wife of sixty-three years, four sons, and eleven grandchildren.

  Good on you, Arthur, he thought.

  Entering his apartment, Nate dumped the paper and letters in the trash. Three years later IKEA labels remained stuck on the furniture, arrows and letters to aid assembly. He sank onto the foldout couch he’d bought in optimistic hope that Cielle would spend the occasional night. Two thumbtacked photos livened up the opposing wall. A candid, blurred shot of Janie and him from the wedding, dancing and laughing into the embrace of a private joke. And Cielle at six, all broad smile and crooked teeth, crouching with a soccer ball at her knee. On the coffee table before him sat the signed divorce papers and his suicide note. He lifted the note to the light.

  To Janie and Cielle, my collective heart.

  Janie, I wish you every happiness with Pete. (Pete, please stop reading over her shoulder. This is a suicide note—a little damn privacy, please.) And Cielle. I’ve thought long and hard about what I want to pass on to you. And I guess it’s that there are no guarantees, so don’t waste your time here like I did too much of mine. If you hold on to stuff too hard, you’ll sink with it.

  He paused and smirked a bit at himself. Nate Overbay, Armchair Philosopher.

  I resent only one thing, sweetheart, and that’s every minute I spent away from you and your mom. I had so many chances to do better, and I couldn’t. But it was never for lack of love. You and your mother were the best part of me.

  Were they ever.

  To the cop reading this— First, sorry to the guy who had to scrape me out of the Dumpster. Or off the corner of Ninth and Wilshire if I missed. Second, when you serve the death notice to my wife and kid, please be patient and kind. Don’t check your watch. Make eye contact and hug them if they need it. —Nate

  P.S. There’s half a ham sandwich in the fridge. Have at it.

  Tapping the note to his lips, he sat awhile, thinking about his ill-fated visit to Cielle’s room and running figures in his head. Three more years of high school at twenty grand a pop. Then college at twice that amount. A familiar pressure mounted inside him until he sprang forward, grabbed a pad and pencil from the drawer, and tallied up estimates, weighing his checking-account balance (not much), benefits from Uncle Sam (minimal), and projected income for the few months he’d still be able to work (meager) against upcoming medical costs to sustain him through his decline (colossal). A very large negative number stared up at him from the pad. How dismal to see his worth laid out like this, his life reduced to this sad figure. He was not much use at all to Cielle, but he was more use to her dead now than dead later.

  He tossed down the pad, went to the kitchen, came back with ham sandwich in hand,
chewing. He clicked on the radio, Lady Gaga still caught in that bad romance. Just because it was a suicide didn’t mean it had to be depressing.

  Taking another bite, he paused in the middle of the living room for a final survey. Everything was death. The unread books on the shelf, Moby-Dick staring out, unvanquished. The browning fern in the corner that would outlive him. That pillar candle that would be removed, half burned, from the shelf by a cleanup crew hired by his landlord. There was such a horrible self-centeredness to dying. Every detail, filtered through a gray lens. He’d been unable to break out of his own head. Until this morning in the bank when he’d floated past the bullets in a perfect suspended state of who-gives-a-fuck.

  Grabbing a bottle of Knob Creek from the cupboard, he sat at the kitchen table, lined up his pill bottles, and took roll. Vicodin and antibiotics from the ER this morning. Xanax for sleep. Gold pearls of vitamin E. And his nemesis, riluzole—oblong tablets that left him alternately weak, fatigued, dizzy, or nauseous. Eleven Xanax, eighteen Vicodin—more than enough to do the trick. He arranged them in a vast smiley face, poured himself a tall shot of bourbon.

  The thought of his dead body bloating here sickened him. The stench would seep into the walls, and then some poor person would stumble onto him, maybe the landlord’s wife— No, he couldn’t have that. He thumbed open his cell phone and called the number on the back of Agent Abara’s card. Voice mail. “Hi, it’s Nate. You said to call if … Well, I remembered something that might help in the investigation. I’m out right now, won’t be home for a few hours at least, so if you could come by my place late…?” He hung up. Walked across. Unlocked the front door for Abara. Now. Now he was ready.

  Sitting again at the kitchen table, he reached for the bottle of bourbon, but another hand gripped it suddenly from the other side, the fingers caked with blood and sand. Charles sat in the opposite chair, his torso a gruesome scramble. “They say suicide is a coward’s way out.”

  Nate pulled the bottle irritably from Charles’s grasp. “I’d like to see them stand eleven stories up and look down at the spot their body’s gonna mark with a Rorschach.”