6. The Mess




• I never wanted Malerie Walters to die. I never wanted her heart to explode like fireworks on New Years. I would have made any provision that day to keep her alive instead of accidentally handing her the wrong prescription.
  
  If God somehow gave me a second chance I’d even be willing to play Bridge or Bingo with her, crochet snow flake patterns, quilt an afghan, bake cookies, or any other thing Grandmas do in their free time, in lieu of that pharmaceutical botch up. Hell, I would have even laid her if it meant I was going to be saving her life. But the facts of life are that you don’t always get a second chance. You can’t just un-murder someone; sometimes you just have to make the best of it.
  
  The specter of Malerie Walters still haunts me to this day. It’s like a small ball, growing rapidly inside me until it grows so large I feel like I could explode. A tight grip crushes my chest, and it feels like the world is stealing my last drop of oxygen. Then her voice echoes in part of my mind like a mantra: “You murderer!”
  
  The other part of my mind knows it was an accident. If I could only convince the other half I’d have some peace of mind. I’ve always felt like I have two brains, separated in one crisp dichotomy.
  
  I’ve always been exactly half of my mother and half of my father. It feels like limbo; New Hampshire upper echelon meets southern, Podunk, mountain boy. I wear my father’s gruff beard and southern draw. My mother bequeathed to me her social repartee, an intelligent, pointy nose, and her frail frame. I’ve never quite felt at ease with either of my parents or any of their genetic traits.
  
  Living with my dad and enduring all of his antics inspired me to leave. There wasn’t a solitary night in which he didn’t come stumbling in drunk after work. We probably had three conversations my entire life, and they only occurred when he realized I was heading off to college. At any given time of the week there would be a greasy transmission or engine block sitting in the middle of the living room floor. The whole little shack smelled like engine grease, gasoline, pinewood, and stale cigarette smoke. You couldn’t walk into the kitchen without stepping on one tool or another. Ball peen hammers, little boxes of nails, glue guns and fragments of dry wall littered the entire trailer. No one can blame my mother for leaving. But when she left it became even worse.
  
  As an excuse to get out of the house I went to work for a friend of father’s at Jared’s Construction. Mostly, I just handed them buckets of cement or tools and swept up after we were finished for the day.
  
  The first day they stood around laughing at everything I said. Chuck, the foreman, looked at me and said, “You ever hang drywall college boy? They teach you stuff like that there?”
  
  I shook my head.
  
  After two weeks I’d had enough. We were building a home for a rich family on Signal Mountain. Dark, lavender thunderclouds were sailing in from the west and we knew the storm would hit before lunch. Fortunately, we were working inside, hanging dry wall and preparing to lay carpet down on the bare wood floor. I was covered in drywall dust and looked like I’d just come out of a vat of flour. My eyes were stinging. I went to the corner to grab a bucket of water and a sponge to clean myself off when Chuck noticed my American History book from the community college. I often brought homework to do during lunch break.
  
  He picked up the book from the unfinished staircase and grinned. It looked so tiny in his hands. Most of the crew looked just like him, large, round heads buzzed short with bodies that looked as if they were hewn directly from the mountainside. Their cheeks were swollen with wads of chewing tobacco, which they indiscriminately spat on the wood floor. He held the book at arms length and peered at it, it was hard to tell if it were mocking him or he were mocking it. He snatched it open and started reading, trying to imitate the medley of my southern draw and Rhode Island accent.
  
  He read the famous line of Kennedy’s inauguration speech out loud, “Also my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.”
  
  He snapped the book closed with one hand and tossed it over his shoulder.
  
  “Why the fuck they have ta kill Kennedy for? He made a few mistakes, but he wudn’t a bad guy.”
  
  He shook his head and continued, “Why couldn’t they a killed somebody like John Ford instead. He was a nobody. What the hell he do for this country?’
  
  “It’s Gerald Ford, not John Ford,” I said.
  
  He ignored me and continued, “Sure he might have gut us out of the depression but maybe it was his fault to begin with.”
  
  He started pacing the room and bent down to pick a nail gun from the floor.
  
  “That Ford,” he said, “I would a killed that cock sucker with a nail gun!”
  
  He pivoted and swung the gun at my face holding it with both hands. He said, “That little cunt. I’d a shot him just like this, POW!”
  
  I was expecting a nail to pierce my face but instead it was just an empty click. My knees were shaking a little bit as he began walking toward me, the gun still pointed at my face.
  
  “What did you say to me boy? Ford wasn’t president?”
  
  “G-Gerald Ford wuz a president. There wuz no John Ford.” I tried to stretch my words in a twang thinking it would put him more at ease.
  
  “You come down here thinkin’ you’re some kind a’ hotshot. I know about your mother. Your daddy’s an all right feller, but you don’t take after ’em. You sound like that damn high-falootin’, tea-drinking-bitch mother a yours!”
  
  He jabbed the nail gun at my throat and held it there.
  
  “You tellin’ me there ain’t no Ford? I say there is a goddamn Ford!”
  
  He pressed the gun tighter into my neck.
  
  “Y-Y-Yes…you’re right, I must be mistakin’.”
  
  He looked over at the others. They all busied themselves looking down at the floor.
  
  “You hear that boys, he says there is a Ford.”
  
  “Leave him alone Chuck,” someone said.
  
  But he continued, “I think today is gonna be a commerashion. Today will be known here on out as Ford’s Day. You like that boy?”
  
  He prodded me with the nail gun a few more times until I said, “Yes sir.”
  
  It wasn’t any better at mothers. I once overheard a remark my grandmother Nancy made during my monthly custody visit. We were having dinner and I politely excused myself to the restroom. On my way back through the marble foyer I caught a glimpse of her peering down her long nose at my mother.
  
  She said, “You’re never going to be able to hide that little twang of his. His southern roots are going to betray him every time.”
  
  “Mother, can we refrain from being petty, just this once. He doesn’t get to visit very often.”
  
  I stood there listening from the corner of the foyer, peeking in just enough to see one half of Nancy. She took a sip of tea and tossed the cup on the saucer as if it were a rodent. She dabbed her lips with a cloth napkin and looked up at mother through her blush-wine colored bifocals.
  
  She shook her head at mother and said, “What in heaven’s name were you thinking Margaret? I taught you better than that. You didn’t have to go sniffing around the mountain down there in Tennessee for a husband. Thomas had everything you could ever want. I want you to explain something to me, how a two-bit, redneck drunk like him who claims he’s both mechanic and construction worker wins over a handsome accountant with a Yacht and a two summer homes.”
  
  “I don’t have to explain-”
  
  Nancy shoved both palms down flat on the table and said, “You’ve sure got a mess on your hands now don’t you?”
  
  As I walked into the room they froze. Nancy didn’t look up; instead she pretended to be cleaning a stain on the checkered tablecloth. Mother turned to me, hiding behind a feigned smile and pulled out my chair. I took my plate to the kitchen and asked to be excused.
  
  Through trying desperately to be a part of both worlds I inadvertently became the scorn of both. I’m not refined enough to become the socialite my mother’s side of the family expects me to be, but I’m considered too aloof and snooty to be a part of my father’s country culture. Both sides of my family detest me for the same reason; I remind them both of what they hate about each other, and possibly themselves.
  
  After the “John Ford” incident I decided to transfer from the community college to a regular state college. The university helped serve as a refugee camp and a means by which I could forge my own little world where I could finally be whole and complete.
  
  The pre-pharmacy certificate looked appealing because Dalton State College was offering a paid practicum at a private pharmacy upon completion of the first semester. After the first semester I applied at Greg’s Pharmacy and was accepted.
  
  Working there enabled me to pay for most of the college expense. It also served as the milieu where I could meet other people with similar interests and immerse myself in the type of environment where I would eventually be employed.
  
  I finished the semester with honors and began working for Greg’s full time. His wife helped him run the little pharmacy, which was only a ten-minute walk from Dalton College and my apartment.
  
  The training provided by Dalton was good and I already had a penchant for working large calculations in my head. I could convert liters to milliliters and grams of solution to milligrams with just blink of an eye, faster than any other pharmacy tech could, according to Greg. They were enthusiastic about hiring me and did so immediately. But despite my aptitude in math I was sloppy in work.
  
  Sometimes they would have to double or triple-check the prescriptions.
  
  Greg stood over my shoulder; his bushy gray eyebrows seemed to crease as he let out a soft sigh. He shook his head and whispered, “Jacob, I know you can do better than this. We don’t want to kill anyone son. You just filled this prescription with Tylenol instead of Hydrocodone. You need to look at the prescription more carefully. Hydrocodone 7.5/750 means there’s 750 milligrams of Tylenol in it, so you need to concentrate on reading the full prescription. You can’t just read part of it. I can’t let this slide any longer. You’ll have to leave if I catch one more mistake. You should know this by now...”
  
  The problem was I really just using the place. I was just biding my time away from my parents, not taking anything seriously so as long as I wasn’t at home. This was the cause of Malerie Walter’s death.
  
  We were swarmed that day; it was the beginning of the month. This was the time when many customers came in for refills. Greg and his wife didn’t have time to evaluate my work that day.
  
  I was supposed to fill a prescription for Ativan. It’s a medicine for treating anxiety. I read the prescription wrong and filled it with another drug, Aderol.
  
  There's a big difference. Aderol is a reasonably potent amphetamine that is sometimes even sold on the streets. Another problem was that Malerie also had a heart condition and because of that such a medicine would never be prescribed to her.
  
  Around two o' clock I took my break and went to watch the TV in the break room. My mouth dropped down to my ankles.
  
  The reporter said: "Malerie Walters, age 72 dies after fainting at the wheel for unknown reasons."
  
  That was a real nice way to put it. Malerie died all right. She drove right through her living room with that big boat of a Buick and killed her husband. Later that week, when the autopsy report came back, they'd found a lethal amount of the drug Aderol in her system. And that's when it hit me what I had accidentally done.
  
  Apparently, our cute old friend Malerie, granny glasses and all, liked popping pills, lots of them. Ativan and most drugs like it are very addicting, so it's not surprising to see even old, cookie-baking grandmas unknowingly abusing them.
  
  To put it simply, Ativan, like all other drugs in it’s family, turn on that warm Jacuzzi in the back of your mind. And that’s exactly what she expected. But what she got instead of warm tranquility were sirens, acrobats, and airplanes crashing.
  
  I’m assuming she thought they were Ativan or something similar, even though they look different. But she didn’t have a tolerance to Aderol. There's no telling how many she took, but apparently it was enough to make her heart pop like a big, red balloon while at the wheel of the car. She crashed straight through the brick wall of her living room and killed her husband.
  
  When the autopsy report came back Greg knew it had been me. And he knew someone would start asking questions soon. He asked me to leave without so much as looking at me. He handed me the check and that was the last time I ever saw him.
  
  All of my life I’ve tried to distinguish myself from my parents. I yearned to be a separate entity and not some morbid amalgamation, being part of both worlds but neither of them at the same time. Somewhere along the way I became so obsessed with this idea of being different that I forgot to be me. I’ve come to learn that my life isn’t just an excuse to differentiate myself from my roots. The idea of being separate from these worlds has caused more harm than simply being a part of them.
  
  I stayed in a hotel room and camped out for a few months, mourning Malerie. I looked out of the hotel window one morning, and I saw an image. It was a hillbilly and a scholar, wealthy, yet poor.
  
  Then I looked in the mirror, at my face which seemed to show plebian hardship, creased with age. And, strangely, it had a clean, refined look.
  
  Today, I’m a pharmacist living in Maryland with Malerie, halfway between my mother and father.
  

5. Serial Dater Outslicked-Eric (inspired by Adam Buck)




• Gina and I were under the Walking Bridge in downtown Chattanooga sitting next to our homemade Irish coffees, which were a lot more Irish than coffee.
  
  We were sitting on the wooden planks of an empty, outdoor amphitheater, smoking cigarettes. She finally stubbed out her cigarette with her puffy, truck-driver fingers and popped the question.
  
  It wasn’t exactly the question, I would have died right there. Still, for me it was close enough. It was a derivative of that question. The same way a wolf sniffs the air for the scent of blood to find prey, people will hint around to the question of marriage to feel out a potential mate, without actually asking the question directly.
  
  “Ruben, what’s the longest relationship you’ve had,” she said.
  
  “Almost four years."
  
  She took a sip of her Irish coffee.
  
  “Hmm, what was her name?"
  
  I took a sip of my own whiskey-laden coffee to make it a little easier to discuss.
  
  “Netflix.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “I joined Netflix almost four years ago.”
  
  She spit up her coffee.
  
  “Don’t spit up your whiskey, that’s alcohol abuse,” I said.
  
  She smiled at me. Half of her front teeth were missing. If there were a missing link this hairy Neanderthal would have to be it.
  
  “That’s why I always take you with me, you can turn any boring road trip into a feature film,” she said.
  
  She was referring to me traveling along with her in the eighteen-wheeler across the country.
  
  And she thought I was joking about my longest relationship, the poor thing. But my Netflix subscription was really the longest commitment I had ever made, and I didn’t even use my own credit card to subscribe. I used my mother’s check card and home address.
  
  It’s not that I’m afraid of commitment. I’m just in complete awe of why people still actually believe in it.
  
  Given enough time, eventually everything expires or collapses. Even the Universe will eventually collapse some day according to Hawking. It’s the Law of Entropy.
  
  It works the same way on a microcosmic level. Everything has to eventually be replenished, replaced, reapplied for or simply forgotten. It seems pointless to get involved with anything when it never reciprocates and stays committed back. It’s even hard for me to be a good alcoholic because it requires a regular drinking schedule.
  
  People get old and die, flowers wilt, groceries spoil, memberships expire and relationships end. Even a driver’s license doesn’t stay valid for more than six years in most states.
  
  Speaking of a driver license, that’s my main criterion for dating. I won’t date a girl unless she has a valid driver license and a car. If she starts racking up too many points on her license then it’s over. I also won’t date a girl that has more than three front teeth. She has to be ugly enough to stop time because if she’s not, there’s a chance that she’ll eventually get the courage to look for someone else. Then I’d be out of transportation and my life would be over.
  
  Finding Gina was like finding the Holy Grail of girls with no self-esteem because she also has a CDL license. That means we never have to stay in the same state for more than three weeks at a time.
  
  “Seriously, what’s the longest you’ve been with someone,” she said.
  
  I swished the coffee at the bottom of the cup and gulped it down.
  
  “Do Fruit flies count?”
  
  She rolled her eyes.
  
  “Well, we need to get some sleep. LA is a long way,” she said.
  
  We stumbled our way up the winding sidewalk that gradually ascends to the embankment of the Walking Bridge. She started up her big, red Dodge and dropped me off at the closest thing I have to a home, my mother’s house.
  
  My mom gave me a duffel bag and pulled some clothes out of a closet. She handed me some socks, underwear, jeans, and a few T-shirts. I walked to the closet and looked through it.
  
  “How’s your book doing,” she said, her left eye fluttering in spasms like a Hummingbird’s wings. She had a facial tick as long as I can remember.
  
  She was referring to a self-published book I supposedly wrote, which was nothing more than a coil-bound notebook chalk full of sad details I ripped off from my own life.
  
  Everything seems to be a rip-off of a rip-off somewhere down the line but this little journal was the only way for me to still pretend that I had some kind of connection. It was my last-ditch effort to pretend that I still had something solid and tangible to hold on to.
  
  Even I needed to lie to myself every once in a while. And after she reminded me of the journal I scoured that entire closet for it and came up with nothing. I was pissed and tempted to stay until I found it.
  
  “It’s doing good, mom. I just won the Pulitzer prize for fiction last week.”
  
  Her eye fluttered faster, she walked over and gave me a hug.
  
  “That’s my boy. I knew you were going to do something good. How is Jenny?”
  
  “Gina you mean?”
  
  “I’m sorry, they change every week though. I can’t keep up with them in my old age.”
  
  “She’s doing good, we’re heading to LA in a few hours.”
  
  “Bring me back a souvenir?”
  
  I nodded and filled the duffel bag with a few more pairs of socks. When she wasn’t looking I stuffed a hundred dollar bill inside one of her shirt pockets in the closet.
  
  I kissed her and left the house and finally managed to hitch a ride to a random dive bar.
  
  I waded through the blue, smoky room and called Gina to let her know where to pick me up. When I sat back down next to my mangy duffel bag I felt eyes on me. I hadn’t shaved or showered in a while and I was walking around with a duffel bag, so who knows what they thought.
  
  After several shots someone started singing Cat Power’s The Greatest in the karaoke booth. I continued drinking shots for some time, trying to soak up the music.
  
  My stomach was growling. I should have eaten at my mother’s house and got some sleep for the trip instead of drinking here. These thoughts went through my head as the room spun and I crashed down on someone’s table.
  
  The two guys said something and hoisted me up. They carried me out arm in arm and threw me out into an alleyway. The world was blurry around the edges and my throat felt like sandpaper. I leaned on a car to keep my balance and I heaved all over the hood. A few minutes later someone came out.
  
  “Hey, get the fuck off my car you bum,” someone said.
  
  I turned around. It was one of the guys who threw me out, only this time there were three more behind him. They took turns wearing a bulky Class ring, and punching me in the face.
  
  I had never been in a fistfight before, so I underestimated how awkward it would be for four guys trying to keep their balance while they took turns beating the shit out of me. They stumbled over each other, tripped and grunted, trying to land that perfect punch on my face. I contemplated walking into a blow to make it easier on them when someone hit me so hard the bloody ring flew off of his hand. It rolled down the street, clinking down a gutter.
  
  Everything went black for a few seconds and the back of my head hit the pavement. Tires were squealing somewhere nearby. It was all over. As if beating me to a bloody mess wasn’t enough. I braced for the tires that would be rolling over me but instead I heard people yelling and then a crashing sound.
  
  I looked up and there was Gina in her Dodge with that big, toothless grin. Behind her were three men lying around like toppled bowling pins. She jumped out of the truck and scooped me up with her big, grizzly arms. She hoisted me into her truck with ease. We heard sirens. She peeled out, pelting the back of the bar with gravel. We pulled onto the road and drove as far away as we could.
  
  It’s times like these that make you feel bad for using someone. Here I was, hopeless and on the verge of extinction when she appears out of nowhere like some kind of sasquatch angel and saves me.
  
  She handed me an old shirt and I wiped my forehead with it. Blood continued dripping down my face so I grabbed a bottle of Vodka from the floor and doused the shirt with it. I pressed it hard against my face. On the floorboard next to the Vodka bottle I saw my journal. I prayed she hadn’t read it.
  
  She turned to me and smiled.
  
  “Open the glove box,” she said.
  
  With my free hand I twisted the notch and out popped another journal. My handwriting was inside. Funny, I don’t remember having two journals, I thought. Wait a minute.
  
  She smiled at me again.
  
  How could she?
  
  As if she read my mind she said, ”Come on, did you think you were the only one?”
  
  A Neanderthal had just outslicked me.
  
  “What are you talking about,” I said, trying to play it off.
  
  She laughed. She pulled a prescription bottle from her pocket. Percocets, good. I popped a few.
  
  She said, “Who were you trying to kid, Ruben? You’re thirty-two, you smell horrible, you don’t have a job, and you live with your mother. You’re a bum.”
  
  My head throbbed. Shut up. Just shut up, I thought.
  
  “And you're always broke,” she said.
  
  I turned to her, still holding the shirt over half of my face.
  
  She said, “Hey, we all have our criteria, right?”
  
  She put her hand on my shoulder, and at that moment I fell in love for the first time in my life. I tossed our journals out of the window. We kept on driving.