Lithium, Chptr. 7 – Xperience Fiction

Lithium, Chptr. 7 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

Mel shouldn’t have grabbed the paintings. They didn’t have room for them, and even if all he wanted to do was burn them, where could he even do that? Was he going to take Andy to the old party spot by the tracks and split a six-pack with him as they set all that oil paint to bonfire? Of course not. They would end up in a parking lot somewhere, looking over their shoulders, hoping everything burned quickly before someone called the fire department. It wouldn’t be ritualistic; it wouldn’t be memorable, just junking his work with extra steps. And they could’ve left in time to avoid the yellow and black Jeep that was surely carrying Debra and her boyfriend, Sam.

“Andy, get in the car,” Mel said. “Hurry up, before they get out. I don’t want you to have to talk to her.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Andy squared his shoulders.

Debra slammed open the door, stepping on the footrail, rocking her heeled foot before finding the curb. Sam opened his door more cautiously to avoid it getting ripped off by traffic. The Jeep had weather-scuffed plastic for windows and the paint was full of dings from the many hours Sam spent off-roading. He had an American flag attached to the antenna, though he probably didn’t have a patriotic bone in his body.

“Did you break in with my kid?” She said.

“I have another day to get my stuff-,”

“Our stuff,” she said.

“No, my stuff. Nothing in there is yours.”

“I got a couch and your bed is mine,” she said. “We could use an extra one. Not like you can use it.”

Mel pointed to the dumpster. “Go ahead. He threw all that out.”

Debra walked over to the dumpster, but she was too short to look in. She waved Sam over to give her a boost.

“He got no right throwing our stuff out,” she said, emphasizing our. “You need to call him up.”

“I’m not calling,” Mel said. “I got everything I need out. You want to break in there and dig around in papers and shitty silverware, be my guest.”

Debra walked over and looked up at him, then down at Andy.

“How would you like to come live in a home?” She said.

“Not with you.”

“Listen you little shit-,”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Mel said. “You had your chance to be a mom.”

“I’ll have any chance I want,” she said. “Just call my lawyer.”

Mel was getting hot and cold at the same time. His head buzzed. He knew what it was. He thought of the throw up in the toilet, how his day’s calm floated in the bile.

“You don’t have a lawyer,” Mel said. “And if you weren’t swinging on Sam’s dick, you’d be doing it for dope money on the corner.”

“Oh, you can go fuck yourself off right now,” she said. “Sam, you gonna let him talk to me like this?”

Sam walked up. He was close to three hundred pounds of gutter scum. Mel wished that less of that weight was muscle. But he was on a tear.

“I’m not scared of you,” he told Sam. “I’m not your little girl and this isn’t her bedroom.”

“What the fuck are you saying to me?”

“You think Debra kept that shit quiet?” Mel took a step toward him. “I was her first call, three in the morning.”

Sam looked back at Debra, who folded her arms and looked down the street. He turned to face Mel and shook his head.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “And you need to chill before you get hurt.”

“You can’t control me with threats any more than you can control her with your fists, and I know you try hard enough.”

Mel knew that Andy was behind him. He also realized, somewhere, that he was putting Andy in danger. But he had to stand up to them. Debra would smell weakness and she’d push any insane plan to hurt him that she could dream up, and most of those dreams would involve Andy.

“You can eat shit, asshole.” Sam lifted his shirt, revealing the handle of a gun. Mel was scared when he saw it, but not as scared as he should’ve been.

“If you need that gun, you’re more a coward than I thought you were.”

“I don’t need it, but you need to watch your back.”

Mel heard the front door open. He quickly turned his head to see Bernie in his bathrobe leaning out.

“You okay, Mel?”

“This don’t concern you, old man.”

“I’m fine, Bernie.”

“Well, I called the cops anyway.” He pitched his voice over Mel, aiming for Sam. “And you’re right,” he said. “Ain’t my business. It’s theirs.”

“Baby, c’mon,” Debra said. “He isn’t worth a parking ticket. He’ll get his.”

Sam walked backward toward the car, shirt back down, but his hand over where the butt was. They got in the Jeep and peeled out. Debra leaned out the window and gave them all the bird. Andy gave it back and Mel rubbed his shoulder.

“You should’ve gone in the car,” Mel said.

“I’m not afraid of her. Or him.”

“I know. You are one brave little soldier, who’s not so little anymore.” He turned to Bernie. “Did you really call the cops?”

“Nah,” he said. “I figured they might take everybody to the station if I did that, friend or foe.”

“Thanks.” Mel walked back to the minivan and pulled one of the paintings out of the back seat.

“Here,” he said as he handed it over. “I know you liked this one, and I may end up junking all these, so if one survives, that’s good.”

Bernie took it. “Let me give you something for it.”

“Aw, I can’t. You’ve been good to me.”

“It’s art. I’ve seen stuff a tenth as good as this going for five hundred bucks online. I can’t give you what it’s worth, but I can give you something.” He went inside and returned with a small handful of bills. Mel took it and put it in his pocket without counting it.

“Thanks, Bernie. And if someone ever wants it, you can sell it.”

“I know,” Bernie said. “I paid for it.” He smiled.

When they got in the car, Mel did count the money on the sly. Two hundred dollars.

“We’re going to get pizza tonight,” he said. “From Jimmy’s.”

***

A rectangular pizza box emblazoned with the Jimmy’s logo sat half open on the desk nearest the door, depleted of all but the corner pieces, which Andy claimed for the next day because he didn’t have room for one more bite. Mel reminded himself to take them out and put them in the minifridge and hope it worked well enough to keep them.

He sat in front of a long plastic pill container, all day covers bent open, and the full collection of his meds. The pill box was how he remembered to take them, not to mention much easier than having to pull his daily and nightly meds from the bottles each time. He used to laugh at pill boxes, calling them the domain of the old. Which now made him either wrong or old.

As he filled out each week, he counted the remaining pills. He usually eyeballed it, but he also usually made regular trips to the pharmacy. Out in the wild, he needed to know how many meds he had in the bottles the same way he needed to know how many dollars were in his wallet.

He was about halfway down in his supply. It put him in a tough spot. It was too early to get the ninety-day refills Dr. Lattimer gave him, but he didn’t have unlimited money. If they ran out in a week or two, would they even have enough money for him to get them refilled?

He finished filling up the pillbox and set them aside. In the pantheon of issues to deal with, it was Hermes; it wasn’t Zeus, not yet. Zeus was sitting right next to him. A stuffed folder with a card paperclipped to them. They got to Social Services with about an hour to spare, and they weren’t out until five-thirty, to the dismay of everyone who worked there. He took comfort in the fact that it wasn’t just them holding up quitting time. In fact, with the proof documents he brought, including the eviction notice, he expected a hard time, probing questions, a polygraph or the like, but the social worker just wanted to speed things up, which, oddly, meant giving him something rather than turning him away. All in all, they had six-hundred dollars for clothes, bedding, and essentials, and a week’s worth of motel vouchers for the Starlight. The folder was filled with referrals to county agencies.

Mel glanced over at the Hades on the desk. The child support agreement, complete with Debra’s signature. He had to bring it. It was a record of income, income that he wasn’t getting. And after the stunt she pulled at the apartment, she deserved no less than to pay out. But as he handed it over, he knew he was putting a target on Andy’s back, and his mind had been on removing it ever since.

The phone went off, and he hopped up to grab it off the bed. It was Roger.

“Hey Mel, how’s it going?”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? I heard you’re on the street.”

Debra. “We’re in a motel,” he said. “It’s just temporary, until I can find work.”

“That sucks, man, I didn’t realize…”

“I’ll get there.”

“Well look, man,” Roger said. “The reason I’m calling. I don’t have anything. If I did, you’d have it. And you need more than some pick-up work.”

“I’ll do pick-up work.”

“How do you feel about Western New York?”

“I don’t really have any feelings about it one way or the other.”

“I’m asking because my buddy lives out there. He has a big farm, and he takes people in. He gives them a place to stay and work to do, paying work. It could be something to help you save up for a place. And he allows kids too.”

“That sounds good, but I’m worried about it being so far away. Western New York, like, Buffalo?”

“More west,” Roger said. “Frewsburg. Almost the tip of New York.”

Mel glanced down at the folder. “I don’t think I can do it now,” he said. “I have a bunch of people I gotta’ see about getting on my feet here. I appreciate it, though.”

“Well okay. If you change your mind, call me back and I’ll give you his contact number.”

“Thanks, Roger. Really.” Mel said before they hung up.

Mel didn’t even realize the cops were in the parking lot until Andy opened the curtain, letting the full emergency lights in. The ambulance was there with its lights off. The cops and EMTs were congregating around a late model Corolla. A stretcher was parked by the driver’s side door with a lump on it, unmistakably human. Mel couldn’t tell if the sheet over it was covering the head or not. He walked outside to get a better look.

A scruffy man with thick, course hair and a ripped bomber jacket stood on the walkway within earshot of Mel, and he took advantage of that.

“You know what happened?”

‘OD.”

“Are they-,”

“She.”

“Is she…”

“Probably,” he said. “She don’t even stay here. She does tricks and gets high in her car. She’s a regular at the rehab. A shame.”

“But you don’t know she’s dead.”

“The ambulance been out here for a half hour, and they haven’t been over to her to do anything. They’re probably waiting for the coroner.”

“Damn.”

“Shit, she ain’t even the first one this week here,” he said. “They just pulled a guy outta Thirteen on Tuesday. Slit hisself. They can’t rent the room out yet ‘cause they’re waiting on the clean-up crew.”

“They’re waiting this long to clean it up.”

“Sure. And bet they’ll cheap out. They don’t care about any of us. We’re just room fillers here. Vouchers, that’s it. A new batch every week.”

Mel and the man continued to watch the cops and the ambulance, and Andy came out, discouraged from doing so but undeterred.

Mel sat at the phone. He wanted to talk to Andy about what was on his mind, but as mature as Andy was, as much a partner as he was, he was an eleven-year-old kid. Mel had to make an executive decision that he hoped would be right.

He called Roger.

***

Mel drank coffee out in his minivan with the radio on, tuned into a Vermont station that miraculously traveled to the Capital Region to be picked up. Jimi Hendrix sang “The Wind Cries Mary.” And the heat was on to kill the March chill, though Mel would turn it off soon to save gas. It was the closest he’d had to bliss since he finished his last painting. The day the eviction order made his heart, and brush, pump just a bit faster.

Andy was sleeping, he hoped. He was amazed at how his boy was handling everything. The strongest kids were the ones who had business being strong. The kid had been through a lot in his life, and in the six months that Debra and Sam had him, he was subject to a lifetime of abuse, emotional and physical, which was the leading reason Mel got sole custody. It wasn’t the evidence of what Andy had gone through. That didn’t get into Family Court because talking about it would’ve traumatized the kid more. It was the unspoken thing that everyone knew, including the judge.

But all that never made it on the public record. Debra could put on her Sunday best, dust off her associate’s degree vocabulary and paint herself better than he could paint an interdimensional portal. And if Mel was beset by any unfavorable lucks of draw, she could take him. And that terrified him more than a conflagration.

So he had to leave. They had to leave. They had to get far enough away that even the repo man couldn’t find them. They needed to set up somewhere and start a new life with new friends, a new school; he would get them new names if he had to.

The sun was just starting to crack across the skyline. He pulled out a map and unfurled it. He could’ve done it on his phone, but there was something definitive about an Atlas. The only thing he couldn’t do was figure out how long it would take.

I-90 would be a straight shot, but there would be tolls, which would be expensive for such a long distance. He spotted Route Twenty, which was a slightly less straight shot. But there were no tolls. Mel tried to guess whether or not the extra gas needed to Twenty would cancel out any savings, but the prospect of a scenic route enticed him.

He turned off the car, put the map away and hopped out, enjoying a stretch before he walked back to the room. When he got in, Andy was on the bed, playing with his cards.

“How would you like to go get breakfast?”

“Egg sandwiches or yoghurt?”

“Neither,” Mel said. “Pancakes, bacon, sausage… whatever you want. We’ll go to Zaney’s across the street.”

“Aren’t we pinching our pennies?” Andy asked.

“We are. Every day except today. Think of it as a last hurrah.”

“Okay,” he said. “Can I bring my cards?”

“Actually, leave them in the car. I miss talking to my kid.”

Andy got dressed. Mel shepherded him to the car and the took off for Zaney’s, which was only across the street, but the street was a main thoroughfare and Mel didn’t feel like playing chicken with the morning traffic.

They seated themselves, and when the waitress came by Mel ordered for both of them. He probably ordered more for Andy than he’d be able to eat, but he could always get a doggy bag. It also struck him that he made another executive decision for his son. He’d have to pace himself. They talked about Andy’s school mates until the food arrived.

“Andy, I wanted to talk to you, which is why I asked you to leave the cards in the minivan.”

“What’s up, doc?” Andy said.

“I told you I’ll never let you get into Debra’s hands, and I mean that,” Mel said. “But there are a lot of ways it can happen. I had to tell Social Services that she isn’t paying child support because she’s not. And if I lied to them and they found out, she’d be able to get you then too, because I’d probably be in jail,”

“She’s going to come after you, point is, what I’m saying here. And I had to make a move last night, and I didn’t feel like I could afford to ask you before I did it.”

“What did you do, dad?”

Mel told him about the call from Roger, the farm, and the distance. Andy listened without any discernable expression, Damn, the kid had a poker face.

“So we’re leaving?”

“Yeah, looks like,” Mel said.

“When?”

“After we eat. I figure we’ll go down to the gas station, gas up. We could go to the supermarket and load up on stuff that’ll keep. That might be a good idea.”

“Can I say goodbye to any of my friends?”

Mel tensed up. “Who are you thinking?”

“Timmy down the block.”

“I think if Debra’s lurking around, that could be trouble.”

“I can’t think of anyone else I want to say goodbye to, Andy said.

“We will eventually be back. When we’re on our feet. With a hell of a story to tell.”

Andy nodded, then dug into his sausage links. Andy’s passivity was a learned behavior that Mel wished he could unteach.

The smell of gasoline at the pump always invigorated Mel. It was the smell of a journey, the spice of travel, plus enough of it gave him a buzz. He’d huffed gas twice when he was a teenager, and fun though it was, he’d just assume partake of only passing fumes.

Andy was in the passenger’s seat reading a magazine that Mel bought him, since they were splurging. They had two bags of stable groceries in the back row, and Mel counted every penny when he left. Eight-hundred and twenty-seven dollars, ninety-one cents. He knew it only sounded like a lot, since he was already putting fifty of that into the gas tank.

He finished up and hopped in. He adjusted the mirrors and his seat for optimal comfort.

“Well, kid,” he said. “Off we go.” They pulled out of the gas station and began putting the Capital District in their rearview.

 

 

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