Bottled Up (16 page)

“Not really my choice either.”

“If I wasn't doing the urine checks you'd be getting high?”

“Got that right.”

“What has it been like for you to be clean?”

“Like I live in a foreign country, can't speak the language, hate the food, and everybody looks funny. It sucks.”

“It won't always feel that way.”

“I know,” I said, figuring that someday I was going to find a way around her urine tests.

Claire wasn't letting anything go. “So you said the other night that you were hanging out with some friends that use.”

“Yeah.”

“Was it hard for you to stay clean?”

“No, I had a couple of beers. That helped.”

“Well, thanks for your honesty.”

“Why shouldn't I tell you I had a couple of beers?”

“You should be abstaining from all mood-altering substances—drugs
and
alcohol.”

“Being here alters my mood. Maybe I shouldn't come.”

“How has it altered your mood? What are you feeling?”

“I'm pissed. I want to get out of here.”

“What are you pissed about?”

“This whole thing. I have to come here. I have to go to all my classes. I can't get high. You don't think I should hang out with my friends. And now you're telling me I can't have a couple of beers. Why don't you just cut my friggin' arms off while you're at it?”

“Things are changing pretty fast. It can get easier, though, once you let go.”

“Let go of what? What the hell are you talking about now?”

She stopped moving around in the chair and leaned in. “You keep a lot inside you, Pip. I don't think anybody knows who you really are. The guys in group keep asking, but all you do is come back at them with smart remarks. When you stop feeling the need to go through life all on your own, you'll see that things are going to get a lot easier for you.”

She was starting to sound like a bumper sticker.

“I'm not on my own. I have my friends.”

“Do they know you? The ones who use—do you tell them about you?”

I was going to say yes because I always figured nobody knew me like Johnny and Slayer. But then I thought about how I'd never told those guys about the counseling. So what? We didn't have to tell each other about every little fart to know we were still tight.

“Trust me. You'll feel a lot better when you stop keeping everything bottled up inside of you.”

Bottled up.

There you go.

“Let's go, Bugs,” I said to him. My session was over. I'd pissed in the cup and I could finally get out of there.

He shoved his book in his backpack and wiped some potato chip crumbs off his face.

“We going home?” he asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I want to go to the store.”

“What for?”

“M&M's.”

“No way.”

I opened the door and walked outside. He was right behind me.

“Pip? Know what?”

“What?”

“I'm going to the zoo tomorrow. My teacher said we're going to see monkeys and dolphins and elephants and leopards and bats.”

“Bats?”

“That's what she told us.”

“Dad still going with you?”

“He said to stop asking him but he's coming.”

We kept walking. I lit a cigarette. Bugs popped a wad of bubble gum in his mouth.

“Pip?”

“What now?”

“Who was that lady you had to see?”

“Doesn't matter. Just somebody I'm supposed to talk to.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. Now shut up.”

He couldn't do it. “Pip?”

“What?”

“Is she going to fix you?”

Great. My brother thought I was broken.

Mom was home when we got there.

“What's she doing on the couch?” I said out loud, not thinking Mikey was going to answer me.

“She always is. Soon as she gets home, she closes her eyes.”

I didn't know about that. I stayed out of the house as much as I could, but Mikey had to be there. He couldn't just run to the store. He didn't have a place like the Site to go to. It was as if he was always grounded, I guess.

“Mom?” I went over to her. She had her head on a couch pillow and was curled up with her legs to her chest and her arms over her face.

“She's not going to answer you,” Mikey said. “She has to rest.”

Mikey was real used to this. I could tell. He was used to a mother who slept, a father who screamed, and a brother who liked to disappear and was always telling him to shut up.

I looked in my pockets to see how much cash I had on me. I found five dollars and that stupid old bottle cap. I just kept carrying it around, and I didn't know why.

“Mikey, watch some TV or something. I'll order a pizza.”

Mom didn't budge when he turned the TV on.

Five dollars wasn't going to cover the pie. I went into the kitchen to grab a ten from Mom's pocketbook. I zipped it open, took out the wallet, and pulled out a ten. When I shoved the wallet back in, something rattled.

It was a bottle.

A pill bottle.

I opened it. She had seven left and the label said there'd been thirty in there to start with.

Valium.

No wonder she was sleeping so much. From the date on the bottle, she had to be taking one or two of them a day.

My father had his bottles lined up on the fridge. I never would have guessed my mother had her own stuffed in her purse.

I had even caught Mikey hanging on to one like it was a friggin' teddy bear.

Maybe Claire was onto something.

Maybe my whole family was bottled up.

The pizza box was empty, and Mom was putting dishes in the sink and wiping off the table. She looked as if she was moving in slow motion. She'd probably been acting like this for months, but I'd never seen it before. I wasn't used to walking around my house without something between me and the rest of the world. Seeing that my mother had the same problem made it even harder.

Mikey was in the hall with my old bottle cap collection, playing some game like marbles. He was flicking the caps into the wall and bouncing them off each other. The Grinch was sitting in front of the TV, watching the news with a glass in one hand and the remote in the other.

I couldn't leave the house, so I figured I'd go up to my room and finish that Jekyll and Hyde book. Kirkland was giving a quiz, and what the hell—if I was going to have to be there I may as well know some of the answers. Jenna might think that was cool.

I read for a while—not something anybody'd ever catch me doing. But the book wasn't that bad.

There was a crash downstairs. I waited a sec, then heard my father screaming his head off. It sounded as if he was going after Mikey.

I ran downstairs. Everybody was in the kitchen. Mom was trying to hold Dad back, and Mikey was on his knees on top of the refrigerator.

The kitchen floor was covered with scotch and broken glass.

Mikey was crying and shaking on top of the fridge. “I'm sorry,” he said with snot dripping off his nose.

“I'm going to bust
you
now,” Hyde yelled at him. “Get down from there.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“It was an accident,” my mother said.

“Accident?” Hyde pushed past her and crunched his shoes right into the mess to get closer to Mikey. “What the hell were you doing up there?”

“I said I'm sorry.”

Mikey was crying so hard, you couldn't even see his eyes, and his nose was dripping into his mouth. He was looking real scared but he wasn't stupid. When Hyde put his hand up to pull Mikey down, the kid leaned back against the wall.

I pushed in front of my father. “Leave him alone,” I said. I figured if he came after me it would give Mikey a chance to get away.

“Back off,” he yelled. He pushed me so hard, I fell on the floor, slamming my hands into the mess. I pulled a slice of glass out of my left palm. Both hands were stinging.

Hyde grabbed Mikey down off the fridge and smacked him in the head. He screamed at him, then smacked him again across the cheek. I jumped up and, with everything I had in me, smashed my body into his. He swung at me and I ducked, then pushed Mikey over to where Mom was standing. She threw her arms around his chest and held him tight.

Hyde took another poke at me and got me right on the chin.

I wanted to hit him back. I wanted to have it all out with him right there. I could have probably done some damage too, because he was sauced and I was clean. I had the energy, the clear head, and the anger all on my side.

But Mikey needed me. The longer he stayed in Hyde's sight, the more chance there was that he'd get creamed. He was the one who'd knocked over the bottles.

I shoved my father back, giving myself just enough of a head start to pick Mikey up and carry him out the door. Hyde wasn't going to chase us outside the house—not in front of the neighbors.

My father was yelling something, but all I could hear was the same old growl. I didn't care. I just ran.

I ran and I ran. Like Mikey's book that he tried reading to me—ran, ran, ran.

Then when we got about a block away, I tripped on my shoelaces and we fell on the concrete. Mikey scraped his cheek and I landed on my hands and elbows. I could feel the dirt go right up into the cuts in my palms.

Mikey was crying real hard.

Cry, cry, cry. I fall and cry.

Some part of me felt like doing it too.

I just couldn't remember how.

We went back about an hour later. The Grinch wasn't there.

Mom said he'd gone to the store. Of course he had—he probably couldn't wait to replace the bottles that broke.

“Are you all right?” she asked Mikey.

I figured he was going to run over to her, let her hug him and give him cookies or something.

But he just said he was okay, and then went right upstairs.

I was thinking he was going to his room to play with his action figures or to practice his reading. But when I went up to check on him, he was sitting on my bed with his pillow.

“Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“I don't know, Bugs, I—”

“Please,” he said. “I'm afraid of the beasties.”

“Beasties, huh?”

He nodded.

There was no such thing as beasties, but there
was
such a thing as Dad, so I let him stay.

“Hey, Bugs. What were you doing up there anyway—on top of the fridge?”

“I was trying to get a bottle but it fell.”

“Why'd you want one of the bottles?”

“I just wanted to see.”

“See what?”

“I just wanted to see, that's all.”

I watched him for a second, then I asked, “So, did you? Did you see?”

He didn't answer me.

I let it go.

Things stayed quiet all night. Nobody ever came upstairs. I guess Mom crashed early, and Dad probably had some drinking to catch up on.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, Mikey was standing next to the bed by my head. He had his Superman cape on and Bugs Bunny under his arm.

“Knock-knock,” he said.

“Get lost,” I told him, and put my pillow over my head.

He picked up one end of my pillow and talked under it. “Knock-knock.”

“Whoever's there, go away.”

“It's Barbie.”

“Barbie who?” I figured I'd better play along or he'd never leave.