Infinity: Based on a True Story (14 page)

Even if I were as healthy as a horse he wouldn’t allow me to go without him. He’d tell me to wait for him… for us to go together.

Unfortunately time is not on my side. Which is why I haven’t called him. I stand, staring out the window and watching the setting sun. The splashes of pink and orange light up the sky in a calming manner.

What if I could see the sun setting behind the Eiffel tower? Up close and personal?
What if…

I walk to my nightstand, taking out the necklace Max gave to me and carrying it to the window. I squint one eye as I hold out the tiny tower before me.

The metal shimmers from a small streak of sunlight. It’s appealing… but it’s not the real thing.

I gradually lower my arm, staring ahead. Contemplation circulates like oxygen through the blood stream, each scenario running through my head over and over again.

What are my options?

Stay or go?

Leave or settle?

Live or
die
?

The last question settles it.

I walk to my closet, tossing my cellphone on the bed along the way. I pull down a suitcase because I’ve come to my conclusion.

I’m tired of holding back. I’m tired of holding my loved ones back, leaving them responsible for me. I’m tired of this dull life. I will be careful. I have no choice. I have to live.

And I’ll start by fulfilling a dream.

I’ll start by going to Paris.

A
fter Sonny whips
up some breakfast and packs her belongings unenthusiastically, I’m standing with her outside her car as she tosses her bags in the trunk.

When she goes for the driver’s door, she pulls it open, stopping and looking at me before she dares getting inside.

Her entire demeanor changes from reluctant to completely sad as she runs back and throws her arms over my shoulders, pulling me in for a tight hug.

“Please, Shanny, be safe,” she begs me once more. She plants her chin on my shoulder, proof that she won’t be letting me go for a while. “I’m glad you’ve decided to tell John about this.”

I return a tender, loving hug, sighing over her shoulder. “I know. I just wish he would answer. I’m running out of time.”

“Well, if he doesn’t answer, just go. Don’t let that stop you. Just be safe over there, you know?”

“Sonny, I’ll be fine. Stop it.”

She pulls back, capping my shoulders and shaking me a little. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what can happen when you get over there. I wish I could go with you.”

“I wish you could too but you have a soon-to-be husband to get to. Plus, you know he can’t stay home for too long by himself. Might burn the house down trying to cook.”

I try keeping the situation light. Danny doesn’t want Sonny to go to Paris because it’ll be where they spend their honeymoon. She doesn’t know that, but I’m helping him keep it a secret. I’d hate to be the one to ruin the element of surprise because she decided to come early for my sake.

She chokes on a laugh, head shaking as she releases me. “I can’t believe you still remember that.”

“How can I forget? I’ve never met a man that doesn’t know how to grill hamburgers.” I grab her hands, smiling. “I promise if I don’t feel well you will be the first person I call. If I can’t, I’ll tell Max to call you.”

“Okay.” She releases a breath, blowing upward and causing her bangs to swing. “Tell that fucker not to do anything stupid.” She lifts a fist. “If he does and I find out, he’ll be getting a mouth full of this.” She waves her fist in the air, demonstrating the consequence.

I bust out in a laugh. “Trust me. He won’t. We’ve already talked about that and came to an agreement.”

“Good.” She lowers her hand. She tugs me in again, hugging me hard. Then she pulls away, jumping in the car and blowing a quick air kiss. “Have fun,” she says through the passenger window.

I step back. “I will.”

“Call me when you get there!”

“You got it!” I blow her a quick air kiss and she drives off. Just like that she’s gone and I’m watching her go, yard by yard, stuck in a trance, wondering just how she’ll go on without me when the time comes.

I can’t help but think of Mom and how much better off we are without her…

T
wo months
ago

“
I
got you some oatmeal
.” My mother walked through the door, her skinny limbs bending as she sat beside me. I scowled at her, watching as she placed the oatmeal on the table next to me. “There’s raisins and brown sugar, just the way you used to eat it.”

“I hate raisins now.”

“Oh really?” She raised a brow, looking at me but not into my eyes. She quickly focused on the center of her lap, her dingy, ripped jeans. Her skin was chalky and wrinkled, her lips chapped. She looked horrible. “I didn’t know that. I guess things change after ten years, huh?”

She tried laughing, making it a joke but I sat forward, causing John to stand from the sofa, most likely to tame me.

I held my hand up, shaking my head. Yes, I was just coming off some medicine that heavily sedated me, I was tired and cranky and had been vomiting all morning, but I wasn’t letting her get by.

“Why exactly did you come here?” My voice was dark and raspy. “What in the hell gives you the right to just show up like this?”

I had no clue how she even found out where I was. I guess she’d done some digging, asked old friends or maybe she saw an article about John in the newspaper. She read the newspaper a lot when I was younger, checking which one of her friends had been pinned or busted for some illegal shit.

My mother looked at me, shocked, pain deep in her bright gray eyes. I hated that they were so similar to mine. “I—I found out my daughter was dying.”

“No, you found out I married a wealthy man. You knew I was dying and didn’t give a shit about that. I didn’t tell you anything about John, now all of a sudden I get a call about how you’d love to meet him?” I slouched back, crossing my arms tightly. “Bullshit.”

She looked out the corner of her eye at John. John folded his arms, walking to the door. “I’ll give you two a minute.”

“No.” I stopped him before he could make it to the door, keeping watch of her. She was no longer looking at me. Her focus had flown out of the window a long time ago. She scratched at her neck, her arms, her mangled, disgusting brown hair. She was a filthy addict. Scum. I couldn’t stand it. “Don’t even bother. She was just leaving.”

She finally met my eyes. “Shannon—”

“Get out, Allie. Now.” I sat back, feeling a pain in my chest but for the first time it wasn’t from the meds or the OPX. My mother stood, reaching for her knockoff purse beside her chair, eyes glistening.

“Okay. I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe you’ll feel a little better. I heard that X stuff they have you on gives you bad side effects, makes you feel bad or something like that.”

I scoffed and sat forward again as she grabbed the door handle. “No, I don’t think you get it.”

She blinked.

“You left me and Sonny to look out for ourselves. We got sent to a group home—we would’ve been split apart if I hadn’t stepped up and gotten countless fucking jobs just to survive. Grandma took us in but she was sick. She couldn’t do much and you knew that. You were too much of a bitch to give custody to Aunt Jessie. I mean, yeah, she was sick too, but she would’ve been a better fit for us. At least she had retirement money. She would’ve taken care of us. Shit, if it weren’t for her we wouldn’t have made it past grandma.” I shook my head. “I was sixteen when she died, Mom. Sixteen with three fucking jobs. Behind on school because I was taking care of my baby sister and myself. I’m lucky I even graduated.”

She looked me over. “W-what are you saying, Shannon?”

“I’m saying I never want to see you again. I don’t need you in my life. You weren’t there before, when we needed you most, so I definitely don’t need you now. Sonny is finally gaining stability—finally living her life the way she should. She doesn’t even know you’re here. I think it’d be best to keep you out of the picture. If she wants to see you on her own, she can. But I won’t allow you to just barge back in, acting like everything is just fine. I won’t, Allie. You lost that right the day you decided selling drugs was more important than taking care of your daughters. And you wanna know the worst part of all this?”

She looked at me, waiting for me to finish.

“The worst part is you haven’t asked about her once since entering this room. You’re still the same. You only care about yourself. You’ll never change.”

Allie’s face was tear-stained by the time I was done talking. I wasn’t sure if she was hurt by my words, or just upset that she didn’t get any money to book a hotel for the night, so I told John to give her the money I had in my overnight bag and then I told her never to come back—that I’d die without her, just like I lived.

I
can’t lie
.

I kind of regret it, but deep down I’m angry with my mother.

I’m angry with her because I wanted to grow up with her like a normal teenage girl. Because there was a time when I looked up to her and respected her—before all of the drugs and near-death experiences over deals.

My mother meant the world to me, but then I realized her faults and even more so, I realized that she loved drugs and money more than her own two daughters. She chose Dad over us, but when Dad overdosed on cheap heroin, she cared even less about our stability.

Dad was great. He loved us with all his heart, but lost his job as a mall security guard, leaving him to depend on his wife to take care of the family while he job-hunted.

She resorted to the easiest moneymaking tactic when she was fired from her job—becoming a drug dealer.

Dad wasn’t pleased with what Mom was doing, but he saw no other way to keep a roof over our heads during that time. He hunted for jobs but no one would hire him.

Mom went missing more and more, and Dad withered away. He barely smiled for us anymore. He just… sat in the same spot on the sofa every day, staring at the blank wall across from him.

Then, one day Sonny and I came home from school and Dad wasn’t sitting in his usual spot on the couch. I told Sonny to start her homework and then I went to their bedroom, and there he was. Lying on the bed, ensnared by the very thing Mom was so happy to sell.

A needle stuck out of his arms. He kept saying he wanted to “try it and see if it would make him feel better.” Turns out that wasn’t his first time trying it. He went overboard with it, which resulted in one thing.

Death.

Dad wasn’t weak, but he loved Mom… only she didn’t love him the same way anymore. She treated him like less of a man—like he wasn’t a great father for keeping an eye on us while she scampered off and was soon tossed in jail.

We were on our own since then, spending some of our days with Aunt Jessie until Mom got jealous about it and told her never to come around us again.

When Mom was sentenced to ten years in prison, somehow she won the right to have us sent to live with our grandmother or in a group home instead of living with Aunt Jessie.

Aunt Jessie treated Sonny and me like princesses—like we were her own girls. She couldn’t have kids of her own, so she took us in with open arms and did a terrific job helping us when our parents were too stoned to do anything.

She was better than my mother was, and I think Mom knew it. What she did was more of a statement to Aunt Jessie. She wasn’t doing it because she felt it was the right thing to do. She was just being a bitch.

Unfortunately Aunt Jessie died six months after Mom was sentenced. I heard it was peaceful. She died in her sleep. She’d developed a really bad case of pneumonia and didn’t know it. I didn’t even know until I broke Sonny and me out of the group home and went straight to her house.

Grandma Lane had passed weeks ago, which was the reason we were sent to the home.

I hated the group home, because, after only a month of being there, they tried to split my sister and me apart. I couldn’t have that, so I made a vow that I would take care of Sonny for the rest of my life as soon as I turned eighteen—do whatever it took to keep her head on straight and never let her down like our parents did.

From what I remember, Dad was a great father, but I don’t think Sonny remembers much about him. I know he was a great one because I can remember the times he took us out for flavored, shaved ice and then to the park every Sunday.

He hardly had two pennies to rub together, but he always saved up enough for us to do that. As we got older, it turned into getting ice cream and going to the movies.

Mom never wanted to come.

Back then I don’t think I cared much. Dad felt like more than enough.

So far, I think I’ve kept my word. Sonny is a great girl with a good head on her shoulders. She respects herself, a little tough in the core, but that’s a good thing. No one admires a pushover.

I know I can be tough, and it may have been rude to tell the woman that bore me to stay out of my life when she came to see me in the hospital, but I had no tolerance for her bullshit or ignorance. Enough was enough.

She had the idea in her head that she’d start selling drugs again. She had no life. She had already started heroin and crack and she hadn’t even been out of prison for six months.

She swore she’d get clean in the letters she sent me. The sad part about it is, deep down, some part of me believed her. That was my mistake, though.

She broke that promise.

I couldn’t trust her.

Trusting her would have been putting my heart on the line. I was tired of being betrayed by her. The only way I would be able to keep my feelings and my heart safe was if she was no longer in the picture.

After that day in the hospital, I never heard from her or saw her again.

She was gone. Just like that. Within the blink of an eye. A snap of the fingers. Like fucking magic.

Sonny thinks she’ll show up, but I know she won’t. My mother knows she fucked up with us—that she doesn’t deserve us. She doesn’t want the burden of my death on her shoulders.

She doesn’t want to have to deal with Sonny’s tears when she comes to the realization that she was never there, that the only person that was ever there for her baby daughter was me.

She doesn’t want to face the blame.

She fucking sucks.

I despise her… but I really do wish things had gone differently back then.

Then, maybe, everything wouldn’t have turned out so bad.

S
ixteen hours
later I’m grabbing the handle of my suitcase and dragging it on its wheels as I walk to my front door. I take one final look around my home, cherishing every small fixture, every family photo—everything I may not get to see again.

Something familiar catches my eyes and my body straightens as I walk towards it. Staring down, my heart catches.

The picture frame on the table below contains a black and white photo. The photo is of John and me. I pick up the frame, examining the photograph.

He’s looking down at me lovingly, his eyes peaceful. I have on the perfect wedding gown, my hair neatly pinned up. It was a wonderful day. I was laughing as he said something to me, my hand clasped in his, our eyes connected.

My eyes burn from unshed tears. In that moment, two years ago, I was the happiest I’d ever been. I had just married the man I was excited to share the rest of my life with. A gracious, protective man that always put
me
first.