Rock N Soul (42 page)

Allison did jump in then. “He called to say he was staying at Darren’s house tonight, remember?”

Mrs. Raiden’s gaze clouded for a moment, then her face smoothed out. “Oh, that’s right.” She peered at me again. “Darren is Christopher’s friend from school,” she explained. “Do you know Darren too?”

I glanced over at Chris, and he shrugged. “No, I don’t think I do.”

“So tell me, Tyler, have you met my husband?” she continued. “He’s at the church right now, but he should be home soon.”

Chris sighed heavily and looked at Allison, who was picking at a loose thread on the hem of her shirt. I wondered how often she came here, how often she had to deal with talking about her father as though he were still alive. That had to suck. And judging by her total nonreaction to the question, it happened a lot.

“I haven’t met him, no,” I said.

“That’s his picture, over there.” She pointed to a framed family portrait on the wall. “Chris looks so much like his father, you know. I’ve always said so.”

I glanced at Chris for permission and he nodded, and I had no doubt in my mind that he knew what I was asking with my eyes. Funny how we’d gotten close enough since we met to communicate through glances, and I hadn’t realized it was even happening before we were all the way there. I stood and walked over to the picture.

It was a staged professional portrait. Allison looked like she was about fifteen or so, and she had her hair braided in an elaborate French braid and was wearing a blue dress that matched her mother’s dress. Mrs. Raiden was much younger, much happier, and it was hard to reconcile the portrait with the woman in the room with us now. She’d aged a lot more than the fifteen or so years that had passed since the portrait.

Chris and his father didn’t resemble each other at all at first glance, and I couldn’t imagine why in the world Mrs. Raiden—or anybody else, for that matter—could possibly think they were identical. But then I noticed the slight shading on Mr. Raiden’s cheeks that indicated dimples, and I smiled. And as I kept surveying the picture, I saw more similarities: the same nose, the same cheekbones, the same eyebrows. Nothing that contributed to an overall twinliness, but there was enough there that yes, I could totally tell that Chris was this man’s son.

And young Chris was just adorable. Standing there with his junior-high haircut and his generic blue tie, his hands in fists at his sides, frowning but with just the slightest upward curve at the corners of his mouth. How much of his life was summed up by that: wanting things as much as he didn’t want them and not being able to reconcile that with everything else?

“Don’t they look alike?” Mrs. Raiden asked, and it wasn’t until she said something that I realized I’d been staring at the portrait for longer than was really socially acceptable.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, they do. I can see the resemblance.”

“I loved my father,” Chris murmured from behind me. “I did. And I wish he was here.”

We were far enough away from the women that I could whisper back. “Really?”

“Yes.” He slipped his arms around my waist. “I miss him.”

“It took dying to make you miss him?” I asked softly, carefully modulating my voice so it wouldn’t sound bitchy.

There was a long pause. “It took dying to make me realize I did.”

He was holding on to me really tightly. I brushed my fingers against his and asked, “Do you want to go outside for a minute?”

“Yeah,” he said, his mouth close to my ear, but not in a sexy way for once. “Yeah, I think I need a minute.”

I turned around and headed for the door, speaking to Allison before Chris and I left the room. “I’ll be back in just a minute. Promise.”

She tightened her mouth but nodded. Mrs. Raiden kept her eyes on me until I got outside and closed the door behind me.

Chris was already pacing, clenching his left hand into a fist over and over while he walked. I waited a few seconds before I spoke, letting him get settled. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he snapped. “No, I am not okay.” He ran a hand through his hair, tugging on it and working his jaw back and forth.

“What can I do?” I asked him. “I want to help.”

He kept pacing, spinning around so quickly at the end of each circuit that I was worried he was going to fall over. “There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

“What’s wrong? Is it just the situation or is it something else?” I crossed my arms loosely and watched him pace.

“How do you
stand
it, Tyler?” he demanded, stopping in front of me with his brow knitted and his teeth clenched around the words. “How can anybody deal with all this without breaking the fuck down all the time?”

My first instinct was to snap back at him, but down underneath the anger I could see a much younger Chris, one that was scared and broken and mad at the universe in general instead of me specifically. So instead of letting myself get defensive, I shrugged and said, “We don’t, not really.”

He blinked and then wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean, you don’t?”

“We break the fuck down all the time,” I said, keeping my eyes on his. “It’s okay to not be okay, you know?”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never seen
you
break down.”

I rolled my eyes, then regretted it because this was serious, then decided it was okay because this was us. “That’s totally untrue,” I said. “You saw me curled up in the fetal position screaming my head off the night we met.”

He gave me a dirty glare but didn’t actually seem offended. “Not the same thing.”

“I know.” I reached out and touched his cheek. “Look, you didn’t know me when Grandma was sick. I was a sobbing mess for weeks—I just didn’t do it in public. And that’s what most people do, you know? We hold it together until we’re at home, and then we let it go.”

“It’s too much,” he said. “It’s always been too much. Especially with Dad. God, he would hate me so much if he was alive.”

“He wouldn’t,” I told him. “You’re his son, and he would love you.”

Chris scoffed. “I’m a screwup.”

“You’re a work in progress,” I corrected. “And nobody expects you to get there all at once. They just want to see that you’re making an effort, you know?”

He didn’t say anything to that, but he let his eyes drift downward to the floor.

“Chris,” I said, quietly, “you don’t have to do this alone anymore.”

Chris’s throat twitched, and he drew a long, ragged breath. I managed to grab him and pull him close before he fell apart, burying his face in my neck and clutching at my back like he physically needed me to be there. I rubbed his back and held him tight against me while he let the tension flow out of his eyes, and I wondered if he’d ever really cried like this before. From what he’d told me, it didn’t seem like he had.

The heavy part of the crying session didn’t last long, but I’d be damned if I was going to let go of him before he was ready, so I held on, running my hands over his back and murmuring some disgustingly sappy things into his ear until the sobs faded into sniffles and finally stopped. He left his head on my shoulder for a few seconds after he was done crying and then slowly pulled away.

“My eyeliner probably looks like shit,” he said, shooting me a weak smile.

I smirked at him. “It’s cool. I’m sure it will reset soon. And it’s not like anybody but me will know how crappy it looks, so you’re good.”

“You’re going to rag me so hard about this, aren’t you?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes and smearing the eyeliner even more.

I dropped the smirk and looked him in the eye. “Fuck no,” I said. “I only give you shit when you’re being a bitch. This was you letting me in and I’m good with that. No judgment.”

“And no Cool Points deduction?”

“Nope,” I said. “I promise.”

He didn’t say anything for several seconds, but it didn’t seem like a silence that needed to be filled, so I let him process things a bit more. Finally, he whispered, “I love them.”

“I know.” I pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “So go in there and show them that.”

“How?” he asked. “I don’t know what to say to them.”

“Let me do the talking, then,” I offered. “You just show them.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Allison frowned at us when we came back in the room. I ignored the expression and walked over to sit beside Mrs. Raiden. “Sorry about that,” I said.

“Did Chris want to say anything else?” Allison said, a bitter edge to her voice.

Chris walked over to the love seat where Allison was sitting and sat beside her, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her cheek. She jumped about ten feet in the air and then carefully reached out and smoothed his hair.

“He loves you,” I told her.

Mrs. Raiden gave me a strange look. “What’s going on?”

I considered telling her the truth, and if she’d known that Chris was dead I probably would have. But I didn’t want to slam her with that much information at once, and I didn’t want her to freak out and disrupt the brother-sister bonding time, so I just smiled. “Tell me about your kids,” I said, mostly to distract her but also because it was a sacred tradition to find out embarrassing stories about one’s boyfriend. “Tell me a story about them. Chris and Allison, when they were kids.”

“They’re still kids,” she said wistfully. “They’re growing up so fast but they’re still kids to me.”

Allison and Chris had broken their hug and were just sitting beside each other, but Allison had a shell-shocked look on her face indicating that she probably wasn’t ready to talk about anything heavy just yet, so I smiled at Mrs. Raiden again. “When they were younger, then.”

Mrs. Raiden appeared lost in thought for a few seconds, then she nodded. “When Allison was in second grade, I sent her out to get on the school bus. I walked outside on the porch to watch her and make sure she got on board safely. And then just as the doors went to close, little Chris ran out from behind an azalea bush and tried to sneak on to the bus after her,” she said, smiling really big. “He was in so much trouble, but it was hard because I was trying to discipline him at the same time that I was laughing like crazy.”

Chris flushed and scratched his head. “She talked like school was so awesome. I was jealous. I wanted to go too.”

Allison laughed. “I remember that,” she said. “He was so mad when Momma dragged him down off the bus steps. He was wearing a Ninja Turtles T-shirt, and she had it all twisted up in her fist.” She moved her hand in the air beside her for a moment, clearly feeling around for Chris, and then once she’d located Chris’s arm, she patted it.

Mrs. Raiden frowned at her. “How do you remember that? You weren’t there. I don’t know you.”

Allison bit her lip, then said slowly, “I’m your daughter, Momma. Allison. That’s me.”

Mrs. Raiden stared for a few seconds. “That’s not funny.”

“Oh, I know it’s not,” Allison said. “But it’s true.”

“You’re not Allison,” Mrs. Raiden insisted. “Allison is fifteen and she’s at school right now.”

“What happened yesterday, Momma?” Allison asked. “Tell me what happened yesterday.”

Mrs. Raiden opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t seem to find the words. “I don’t remember.”

“Because you never remember,” Allison said softly. “Never.” She looked at me. “She used to remember sometimes. Every once in a while, she’d have a few minutes of memory. I could tell her who I was and she’d know I was telling the truth because she’d remember things.”

I just sort of stared at her. I mean, what the fuck was I supposed to say to that? Family drama, man. I can barely handle my own family, much less one I don’t know. So I said nothing.

“Chris never saw it,” she continued. “He was only here a few times after she got sick and she never remembered while he was here.”

Chris bristled at that and inched away from her on the love seat, so subtly that I wasn’t even sure he realized he was doing it. “I didn’t know she
ever
remembered,” he said, a note of bitterness in his voice. “You didn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t know,” I relayed to her. “You should have told him. He would have tried harder if he’d known.”

“He should have come anyway,” she said, raising her voice slightly. “He should have come for me, even if Momma didn’t remember him.”

“Look, I don’t know what happened in the past other than what little bit you and Chris have told me, but maybe you should have been nicer to him. Treated him like you wanted him around,” I said, then kept talking when it looked like she was going to interrupt. “I know he was a jerk to you, and there’s no excuse for how he acted and that’s part of why he wanted me to come tell you that he loves you and that he’s sorry. But he wasn’t the only one at fault in this thing.”

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Raiden said, loudly. “What is going on here?”

Allison turned to her with a softer expression. “You don’t remember things, Momma. It’s okay. I’m your daughter.”

Mrs. Raiden squinted at her. “I guess you do look like Allie,” she said. “But you’re crazy. My daughter is a teenager and my son is just a boy.”

“Your daughter is a wife and a mom,” Allison said, “and your son is dead.”

Chris jumped up off of the love seat and glared daggers down at Allison. I hissed and then muttered, “Damn” under my breath. Mrs. Raiden just stared at her.