Theaella

9

Vincent’s heartbeat had slowed at last, but he still sensed the afterwash of adrenaline in his veins. His skin felt dead; it felt like the color gray. He wondered if he’d ever sleep again.

Matthew finally broke the silence. “What did you mean?” he said. “That Violet made you want to be more than you were?”

The cool wind buffeted Vincent’s arm, whipped his hair around his eyes. He realized he was using it to jar himself out of numbness.

He thought for a beat, cleared his throat. “I was from the wrong side of the tracks,” he said. “I mean, only by comparison, but still. Her parents basically disowned her. I was trying to support her on a construction worker’s salary, going to night school to finish my degree. You know the kind of pressure that puts on you?”

Matthew said, “No.”

Vincent laughed. “Well, if you ever have a shot with someone who’s worth it, try not to f**k it up.” He looked at Matthew ruefully. “Man, did I try not to f**k it up. Me, in night school.” His chuckle, even to his own ears, held no amusement. “Pulling double shifts. And then when she got—” His breath snagged. “When she got pregnant.” He shook his head. “But I wasn’t. More. I was still just me.”

They coasted along the blacktop, sliding between cars, the city flowing by indifferently.

Vincent said, “When I first saw her, I knew, right? I know that sounds lame, but right away, she just … She hit me in the spinal cord. She was gambling. Slots. And the seat next to her was empty.”

The scene played in his head now, polished to jewel-like clarity by a million viewings. Sensation started to prickle his skin again, warmth spreading beneath the surface.

“I sat down and hit a jackpot with my first pull.” Vincent smiled. “And you feel like a hero, right? Like you’re in the movie and someone’s writing your lines for you?” He paused. “You ever have that?”

Matthew said, “No.”

“Well, I guess you don’t need it. I mean, with what you do, you’re already there. But for me? In that moment? All of a sudden, it was like the whole world was open to me. If you could’ve seen how she looked just sitting there, doing nothing. And I remember thinking, If I can get this right, this one thing, all the other pieces will fall into place. And I got it. But they didn’t.” Vincent felt the loss now—a pressure at the backs of the eyes, his throat pressing upward. “Because I’m a fuckup. Who was I kidding that one thing could make everything fall into place?”

He stared at the passing cars, the work-casual folks on the sidewalk clustered around gourmet-food trucks. The oily taste of car exhaust left a bitterness at the back of his throat.

“Everything’s a story,” Matthew said. “You want that to be the story of you, it can be.”

Vincent shifted to look over at him. “What’s the story of you?”

“That’s not what this is,” Matthew said.

“What what is?”

“This isn’t a therapy session.”

“Well,” Vincent said, “given what you do, it sure as hell seems like you’re working something out.”

The Nowhere Man didn’t appear to like that answer. “So what happened?” he asked. “To you and Violet?”

Vincent closed his eyes, breathed the pollution. The wind poured through the window, cooling the sweat on his face. Matthew had refused to answer any of his questions about personal s**t. So he figured he was entitled to do the same. Especially about this. But he was already back in it now.

Awakened by screaming.

Violet in the bathroom.

Red drops on white tile. Thin rivulets down the insides of her thighs. She was crying in a way that he’d never seen, sobbing and hyperventilating at once, bent over, one bloodstained hand gripping the lip of the sink. She didn’t seem to register him there at her side, but when he touched her, she crumpled into him, a dead leaf collapsing into a thousand brittle pieces.

The only thing harder than postpartum depression, they were informed by the well-intentioned ob-gyn, was postpartum depression after a failed pregnancy. And the only thing harder than that was simultaneously grappling with the knowledge that their hope for future children had been excised as surgically as her ruptured fallopian tube.

Violet was wrecked, relentlessly battered by a confusion of hormones. And he was barely functioning, hollowed out with grief. They started fighting daily. By being born, he’d lost a mother. By losing a child, he feared he’d lose his marriage. He buried himself in work and overtime and night school. Violet grew sluggish, her broken heart a millstone at her core. She said she wanted to die. That she didn’t see the point of going on. How could she go back to work and spend her days surrounded by throngs of adorable kindergartners?

It was just talk, of course. The kinds of things you say when you’re trying to give shape to god-awful emotions roiling inside you, when you’re trying to process and vent and purge. He thought they’d figure it out. He thought they’d move on. He thought they would be fine right up until he came home from an evening class to find her in the bathtub, the cooling water the color of merlot, her floating arms etched from the razor.

Matthew parked several blocks away and scouted Vincent’s apartment to make sure no one was watching it. Then he went back and retrieved Vincent, the two of them making a quick approach through the parking lot, skirting the building manager’s trusty Buick in the front spot. On the second floor, they ducked the manager’s window and eased into Vincent’s place, closing the door silently behind them.

Standing in the apartment, Matthew noted how bare it was. It was a mess now, certainly, after the Terror had taken a tour through all of Vincent’s belongings and the drywall, but there hadn’t been much to begin with. Sawed-open couch, shattered TV on the floor, toppled coffee table. A few plates—now shattered—and some silverware dashed on the chipped linoleum in what passed for a kitchen nook. A bureau’s worth of clothes hurled around the bedroom. A few empty packing boxes piled in the corner.