Mustard on Top (19 page)

“This isn’t the same.”

“It can’t be the same, that time is gone.” The corners of his mouth drooped. “This is what I can do now.”

Helen emotions were mixed. “What a mess. I’m sorry I got us into this. I thought I was helping Agatha and Jeremy. I was naive.”

“Things might still work out the way you and Agatha imagined. I’m going to buy a few supplies this morning once the drug store opens to help him through.”

Ben eased Helen’s burdens, and she appreciated having someone to rely on. “Thank you for your help.”

Ben nodded.

Helen gazed at the stairwell, she didn’t
want
to visit Jeremy. “He’s quiet right now, maybe I should let him be.”

“Good choice.”

“After I get back, I’ll talk to Agatha and find out how close she is to contacting the police,” Helen said. The doorbell buzzed. “I guess Seth’s here.” A new wave of dread came over her. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“You should grab something to eat. Have you taken your insulin?” Ben asked.

“I’ll take it when I get back.”

“Seth can wait a few minutes.”

“Ben, I’ve handled this for many years without your help,” Helen said as she fished a bagel out of a bag on the counter. Helen opened the front door to Seth, standing on her porch. His wide smile made him look like a blond Dennis Quaid. With shark’s teeth.

“Morning,” Seth said.

“Hey Seth,” Helen replied dully. Seth’s gaze traveled over her shoulder and his smile faltered. “I didn’t know you two had a thing going.”

A glance back confirmed Ben was in the living room. The two men seemed locked in a staring contest. Helen didn’t have the patience for a testosterone battle. “Let’s go.” She stepped passed Seth.

“Good luck,” Ben called.

Helen waved then climbed in Seth’s jeep. Seth followed. His demeanor was tense, and the drive to the airfield quiet, broken only by Helen’s questions about the upcoming jump. Seth explained they’d be jumping in tandem, fused together through a series of straps and harnesses.

As the primary jumper, Helen would have the honors of pulling the tab that opened the parachute for them both. In the event something went wrong, they had a second parachute Seth could access.

After arriving at the airfield, Helen scrawled her signature across a dozen waivers. The message was clear: skydiving is dangerous. Cursing her integrity and her stupidity for ending up skydiving to begin with, Helen worked to keep her fear under control. At least Seth’s mood had picked up when he saw his jumping buddies.

A two-hour crash course followed the waiver signing. Helen learned how to maintain a stable body position while in free fall, proper landing, how to activate her parachute, and more. The course, with its worst-case scenarios, only terrified her more, and sweat pooled in her armpits as she fitted into a jumpsuit.

With her stomach fluttering, Helen boarded the eight-person aircraft. She, along with four other jumpers, sat cross-legged on the floor of the small plane. The blue sky shone through the round, foot-wide windows.

The plane vibrated as the engine rumbled to life. Helen had never been in a plane so small and was surprised by its thunderous roar and how it shook in the wind. They lifted off the ground and her stomach tumbled like an unbalanced washing machine.

She looked up and found Seth smiling at her. Unable to fathom why anyone would willingly jump from a plane, Helen raised her eyebrows. His grin broadened. As they continued their assent, Helen grew more anxious.

“We’re approaching twelve-thousand feet. I’ll start circling in a few minutes,” the pilot’s voice blasted through speakers.

Helen’s pulse thrummed in her temples. Angry with herself for making the bet, she vowed to be more careful in the future. Inches away, Seth yelled over the noise of the engines, “Relax. Remember what I told you.”

Helen nodded. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly and deeply. She envisioned a sandy beach, sun, and palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze. Something touched her knee, and she opened her eyes.

Seth mouthed, “It’s time.”

Helen nodded, got to her knees, and turned her back to Seth. He scooted closer so his chest was pressed against her spine. A harness was fitted around her and Seth’s torsos leaving their heads, arms, and legs free. The belts were cinched so tight Helen could feel Seth’s every breath.

“Ready?” Seth spoke in her ear.

She nodded. Thirty-five seconds of free fall, followed by six minutes of floating with the parachute, they’d land, and the jump would be over. Seth gave the thumbs-up to another jumper, who wrenched up the door.

Wind barreled in on them. Bile rose in her throat, and Helen sucked in great gulps of air to keep from vomiting. Seth spun them toward the gaping hole, propelling them forward. Breathe in. Out. In. Out. Her view became more sky and less plane’s interior.

Instinct dictated she resist falling from thirteen thousand feet and when her foot came into contact with the doorframe, she pushed back. Seth scooted back, dislodged her foot with his own then, twisting their torsos, forced her legs over the side.

She dangled off him. Helen wanted to grab the doorframe and pull them back in, but during the training she’d been warned that failure to drop from the plane in proper position could send them into a deadly, downward spiral. She clamped her mouth shut and crossed her arms in front of her as she’d been taught.

The roar of air and engine was deafening.

Seth wrapped his arms around her, and leaned forward. They curled into a forward summersault, spinning once in the air, before straightening out. Helen was suspended between heaven and earth. The air they sliced through pushed back as if trying to hold them up. With no chance of turning back, Helen’s nerves eased, and she delighted in her unobstructed views. Dark-green forests mingled with farms, green-and-brown crops were planted in giant, geometric shapes. To the left, the blue-black ocean tossed its marine-craft confetti on peaks of white.

Helen imagined they sliced through the air like fish through the water. She checked her altimeter. They were at 12,500 feet. She fingered the parachute pull before stretching her arms wide.

Trees grew larger as they accelerated. The bird’s-eye view, the weightlessness was something she’d never forget. She counted to ten before checking her altimeter: 8,000 feet. They were moving faster than she ever had in her life, yet time seemed to slow. They dropped 500 feet in the second she’d watched the altimeter.

Her broad view shrunk, as everything below her grew. The tops of individual trees in the forest came into focus, and she could discern the difference between a sailboat and a fishing boat in the ocean. She inhaled and exhaled twice before checking her altimeter again. They were at 6,300 feet. She watched the gauge move as they plummeted. At 5,500 feet, she snapped the altimeter into place, grasped the parachute pull with both hands, and yanked. The pull came free, detaching from her suit.

She had been instructed that one- to- two seconds would lapse before she’d feel as if she’d been yanked upward. When nothing happened, she probed the place where the parachute pull had come free feeling for the broken end of the pull. There was nothing.

Helen checked her altimeter: 4,500 dropped to 4,300 in the blink of an eye. She wanted to communicate with Seth, but if she opened her mouth, the air pressure could blow her cheeks out. Seth would never hear her anyway. If she twisted to face him, and after he’d activated the back-up parachute, she could throw the parachute out of position causing it to malfunction.

She had to trust he knew her parachute hadn’t opened and that he’d activate the backup. He’d done hundreds of jumps and was a certified instructor Helen reminded herself. She checked her altimeter—3,900 feet.

They had precious few seconds. Helen closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer. She refused to spend her last moments in terror, watching the ground speed toward her. Helen conjured her mother. She had clear, creamy skin, silky, dark hair, and straight, white teeth. She was smiling exactly the way Helen wanted to remember her.

She recalled Theo’s birth. The joy, the pain, the scary excitement was vivid. Theo’s fourth birthday entered her mind. He sat in a kid-sized, pedal-powered Corvette. His excitement and pure innocent smile made Helen’s chest swell. A memory of her with Ben. They were sitting in his car holding hands and gazing at the sunset. Her dad popped into her mental theater. He’d been gone so long, she didn’t think a vision of him existed in her mind, but there he was in a photo she’d found on her mother’s nightstand. She flitted back to an eight-year-old Theo laughing as she tickled him, then a sixteen-year-old Theo working with her at Hot Diggitys and flashing one of his goofy smiles. Then Ben at his current age, standing in her bedroom doorway watching her sleep. He had a look of abject sadness on his face. Sadness? She remembered her mother at the airport, when Theo was six weeks old, leaving. Then Theo: nine years old and laughing as she chased him down the boardwalk.

A sudden jerk jolted her from her reverie. She seemed to be floating. Had she died? She opened her eyes expecting to find herself levitating above the grisly scene of her and Seth’s deaths.

The ground was rushing at her. They were close, too close. Her altimeter read 500 feet. The wind was gone and Seth’s ragged breathing rushed across one ear.

“We almost died,” he said. “We almost fucking died.”

They hit the ground hard and ran several steps before the parachute flew over them, knocking them down. The impact knocked the breath out of Helen, and she gasped for air.

Seth tugged at the harnesses, unhooking himself from her with the speed only a practiced hand could conjure. He rolled off her and wrestled with the parachute. Helen, gasping for air, sat up.

Seth gathered great armfuls of the parachute and shouted, “We need to get out of the way. Other jumpers are coming down.” He grabbed her wrist and yanked Helen to her feet. Indeed, jumpers were raining down. Pulling free from his grasp, Helen helped gather the parachute. When they had it off the ground, they ran side-by-side toward a trailhead that led back to the parking lot.

The trail ran through a sparsely treed area. Once they were out of harm’s way, Helen tried to slow down and catch her breath, but Seth continued barreling ahead. “Seth, slow down!”

He turned on her, his eyes blazing.

Surprised by his rage, Helen’s jaw dropped. “Are you okay?”

“We almost fucking died.” Seth turned and began walking.

“But we didn’t,” Helen called out before tossing her side of the parachute toward him. “I’m not running a mile back because you want to throw a fit.”

Seth gathered the rest of the parachute and continued at a slower pace. He stayed silent the distance back to his Jeep and when they arrived, Seth opened the driver’s door, shoved the parachute into the back seat, then slammed the door.

“Seth, tell me what’s wrong.”

He stared at the ground.

“What happened to us up there?” Helen asked.

Seth bent over and unzipped a pocket on his suit that ran down his calf. He pulled out a small bottle of champagne. “For your first jump,” he announced, hurling the bottle into a stand of trees.

The sound of breaking glass annoyed her. A temper tantrum, Seth style.

“What were you thinking up there?” He jutted his chin skyward. “When your parachute didn’t open?”

“Not to be cliché, but I guess my life passed before my eyes.”

“Yeah, and what did you see?”

“People I loved when they were happy. Theo mostly. Why? What happened to you?”

Seth clenched his hands into fists. “And you were okay with that?”

“With what?” Helen asked, confused.

“Dying. You didn’t seem the slightest bit rattled when we landed.”

“I was plenty rattled, believe me.” She tilted her head to the side. “I didn’t want to spend my last seconds panicking. What happened to you?” she repeated the question.

Seth rotated to face the Jeep. His tall frame slumped over the hood as he stared off into the distance. Helen stepped closer and touched his back. Seth, with tears in his eyes, turned and enveloped her in a tight hug.

Chapter 11

Ben likened Seth to an oily rattlesnake, slippery, stupid, and lethal. That Helen trusted him enough to go skydiving with him put Ben in a sour mood. He decided not to analyze his frenzied worry too much as he plodded around town shopping for medicines and food to help Jeremy through the worst.

Upon returning to Helen’s home, Ben was relieved to find Jeremy sleeping. Instead of waking him, Ben triaged his email and voice messages, read a disposition, prepared a response, and shot off an email to a colleague before delving into a spreadsheet from another client. He’d had no success in his bid to get help with his caseload, and had fallen dangerously behind.

Even so, he couldn’t muster the energy to care. He hoped his apathy was simply exhaustion, but he’d grown cynical since arriving in Nalley. His corporate clients sometimes dealt with true justice, but more often than not, he was the mouthpiece for wealthy bullies.

Ben forced himself to comprehend the figures on the spreadsheet until he heard Jeremy’s wailing. Ben snapped his laptop shut, grabbed the groceries he’d bought, and started down the stairwell. He’d gone a few steps when Jeremy vomited. The retching sound and the stench made him gag. He backed up and went into the backyard.

In the fresh air, he drew in long, deep gasps until he was lightheaded. He sat in one of two green, plastic, lawn chairs on the patio. The idea of cleaning up Jeremy again filled him with disgust.
What am I doing?
he wondered. He’d come to Nalley to nurture a relationship with Theo, not worry over a diabetic woman, repair a home, eat aphrodisiac hot dogs, and care for a drug addict.

When Ben realized he was smiling, he chuckled.
What I’m doing is having the time of his life.

The wailing from the basement had subsided and Ben got to his feet, collected several towels, a pair of rubber gloves, and Jeremy’s medicine. Mentally bracing himself, he went down the stairs.

Jeremy was lying on his side on the beanbag. A tattered, fleece blanket, decorated with race cars, lay over his shoulders and covered his back and half of his head. His hips, abdomen, and legs were bare except for the makeshift diaper Ben had fashioned from a towel. A fuzzy, blue blanket lay in a heap at Jeremy’s back.

The bucket was balanced at an angle on a bookshelf that Ben had turned sideways. Jeremy’s knee jutted out with his leg suspended in air between his hip and the bucket. His pasty-white skin was decorated with bumpy blue veins.

Glistening orange Gatorade vomit fanned out in front of Jeremy’s face. Nausea would be a mainstay for Jeremy through his withdrawals. Ben hated the situation, but supposed the humility of going through withdrawals was nothing compared to the humility of being dependent on heroin in the first place.

The tray of food he’d delivered to Jeremy that morning, sat untouched. Ben snapped on rubber gloves, went to the sink, and turned on the hot water. From where he stood, he had a clear view of Jeremy’s face. His vacant, open eyes were dark holes in pasty skin.

An hour later, Ben laid a clean blanket over Jeremy’s prone body. While Ben had washed him, Jeremy stayed quiet, seemingly trapped in his own private hell. Ben crushed several magnesium-caltrate pills and mixed them with Immodium, Gatorade, and water. He poured the concoction into a child’s sippy cup with a lid and a two-inch straw.

Ben wedged the straw between Jeremy’s cracked lips and instructed, “Drink.” Jeremy’s cheeks went concave as he sucked down the contents.

“Can you eat something?” Ben asked.

For the first time in two days, Jeremy looked Ben in the face. The grief in his eyes, stabbed at Ben’s conscience. The shake of Jeremy’s head was barely perceptible.

“Okay.” Not wanting to leave Jeremy in solitary confinement again, Ben scooted to the wall opposite and sat. Listening to Jeremy’s ragged breathing and watching the blanket shake from his tremors, Ben wished he could do more to help.

As the minutes ticked away, Ben’s nose acclimated to the smell and his mind wandered. He had clients to contact and a roof to finish, yet he couldn’t leave Jeremy alone. Not yet.

Ben leaned his head against the wall behind him and closed his eyes. He drifted into a light sleep, ready to awaken at the first sign of distress.

“Thanks,” Jeremy said, sounding as if his vocal cords were covered with gravel.