did I say?” Harlan asks Michael.
“It’s been nearly five years since her brother’s death.” Michael picks up Lauren’s half-eaten plate and moves it to the counter.
Harlan closes his eyes, muttering.
“It’s alright, you didn’t remember.” Michael coughs.
“Didn’t he …” Harlan starts. Michael’s nod finishes the exchange as his hacking finally subsides.
“Yeah, carbon monoxide. She doesn’t talk about it at all, but it has to be weighing on her.”
Alex peers down at Roxy. The corgi never has any problems. She just needs a walk, a hug, and love, and then she’ll put the family’s well being ahead of her own. He pats the dog’s head. The glow of the day is gone.
Lauren cries in the master bedroom. Cynthia follows her carefully. While Lauren is not her blood, her movements look to apologize for Harlan’s words. She pushes through the door. Lauren sits on the bed, its maroon bedspread ruffled. Tears slowly leak down her face from her usually soft eyes, turning red as they bleed emotion. Lauren notices Cynthia as she enters, five years of her past triggered by a sentence.
“I’m sorry,” Lauren manages.
Cynthia offers a compassionate smile, and then joins her on the bed.
“No,” Cynthia says. “I’m sorry. Harlan should know better.”
Lauren shakes her head. “It’s just, as soon as he started mentioning missing people … my brother’s five year anniversary is three days away.”
“I know.” Cynthia takes hold of one of Lauren’s hands. The older woman’s wrinkled skin radiates a sense of love. Lauren holds her hand, tears starting to fall again. Her brother’s face is now free from its compartment.
“I can tell you miss him a lot.” Cynthia whispers.
“I do.” Lauren confirms. She wipes her eyes.
“Do you ever talk to anybody about this stuff?”
“No. It’s too painful.”
“Well, if you ever feel the need, I’m always here.”
“I know, Cynthia. I just find it so hard to believe. He was so young! He had his entire life ahead of him.” Lauren starts to break again.
Cynthia pulls her close. One of Cynthia’s closest friends had passed in a terrible car accident caused by a drunk driver when she had been 18, and every day, Cynthia thinks about years of opportunity lost in a few minutes of time. She’s seen those older, younger, and similarly aged pass before her. Lauren needs to learn not to try and capture a container of compressed air fit to explode; if the vessel isn’t strong enough, it may start to crack.
“Listen to me,” Cynthia says, whispering into Lauren’s ear. Lauren’s breath steadies.
“He’s still with you. He’s always with you.”
“He didn’t want to be here, Cynthia.” Lauren’s words come out shakily, creaking like a weather vane.
“He was in so much pain. All he ever talked about was how he would be scared. He’d be sitting up late at night in the old armchair our father left him, watching something on television. He was a massive fan of baseball, and those Indians. He’d be sitting there in the middle of his house, with nobody. He never married, he never had kids. The closest he came to a son was Alex, and we saw him maybe once a year. I didn’t even really call him too much. But he’d sometimes call me, saying how he was sitting in the middle of his house one minute, and the next he’d be seeing flashes, or explosions. He would always be so ashamed, Cynthia. He would be ashamed to tell his own sister about his problems, but he’d do it anyway. And then by talking to me he felt both guilt, and remorse, and he told me that there was nothing we could do for him because he was beyond all help. I’ll never forget him sounding like a child, whispering to me through that receiver about how they were coming for him, with the bombs and their guns and the face of his companions blown to shreds in the back of his mind.
“And then one day I got a phone call, one I knew was coming but never wanted to answer, knowing that when I picked up the receiver I would hear those few words that nobody should ever have to hear in their entire lives: we did all we could, but it wasn’t enough. My mom and dad were destroyed, Cynthia. My mom can’t walk past a picture of him without crying, without seeing all the things her perfect little boy could’ve been, all that potential, all those memories, gone. And I think to myself, there had to be something I could’ve done to stop this.”
Cynthia doesn’t speak. She squeezes Lauren a little tighter.
Lauren sighs painfully. Shame replaces her sorrow, the frostbite after standing outside in the cold. Her curse is that she disrupts all the benefits of her life. Her family doesn’t deserve such a spastic. Her brother’s face floats in her mind, accompanied by a wave of guilt for her father-in-law sitting in the kitchen.
Alex peaks around the side of the door. He sees his mother embracing his grandmother, her soul a whirlpool slowing to a stop, a lulling break in the middle of a thundercloud. Alex keeps his distance, watching, close enough to help but outside the proximity of hurt. The wall shelters him from his mother’s storm.
Michael views the panorama of his yard from the kitchen window: the patio holding the picnic furniture, the shed that houses unfinished jobs, the cars containing gasoline and machinery—all extensions of a Palace, which houses pain. Lauren and Michael had placed the stones of the patio amidst talk of hosting many outdoor events with family and friends, turning the home from a place on a side street to a possible nexus of celebration. Lauren had gone along with the idea. Michael never wants to be the center of attention, but he’s never content being outside of the loop. He tries so hard to fit in, and always seems to be searching for something.
Michael coughs, a two breathed effort, one following the other in succession. Michael glances over to the table, and sees Harlan has moved, either to the living room or to follow Cynthia. Michael turns to the window. His coughing continues.
Michael has been hacking like an engine without enough fuel for the past four days, with the force of a probable cold or some other odd infection, such as bronchitis or maybe pneumonia. He stands at the kitchen window, the portal to the patio, and casts the residue from his cigarettes through the window fan. He always inhales the harmful part of the cigarette, no matter how much smoke he throws outside.
He coughs once more, and Michael feels the mucus eject from his throat and into his mouth, a whitewash of plasma filling his taste buds with disgust. Jarringly, he grabs for the roll of paper towels hanging on the holder next to the sink. Michael squints a tad, the horrible taste leaving a tangy sensation, mixing with a hint of metal. The taste is familiar. As he wipes the mucus with the paper towel, he spits, and then examines the contents of the item in his hands.
The mucus has its usual white color, but with a very noticeable hue of pink, exactly like the paint of the walls in the living room. The paper towel looks as though someone’s been shot over a snowy embankment, petals of their livelihood left behind on a ground of sheer white.
Harlan returns to the kitchen, his boots transitioning from carpet to floor.
“I apologized.” Harlan says, looking at Michael’s back. “I think everything is being sorted out. Are you alright?”
