Don't Fail Me Now (23 page)

As I pull it out she starts to sing, “
Michelle, ma belle . . .”

“Shut up,” I laugh.

“Nah, but seriously, he's crushing hard.”

“Whatever.”

I'm putting everything back in the kit as Leah rounds the bend in the highway, my two-sizes-too-big jeans hanging low on her hips.

“Hey,” she calls, stepping gingerly over the guardrail. “Tim just wanted me to tell you that he found a bus we can take the rest of the way—oh, sorry!” Her face gets weird, and I realize I'm still holding the needle.

“It's over, don't worry,” I say. “We're just doing some sisterly bonding.”

“Well, just come back to the car when you're done then,” Leah says with an embarrassed wave.

“You can stay,” Cass mutters.

Leah freezes in place for a few seconds like she's not sure whether to call the bluff, if it even is one. But then she swallows a smile and sits down across from us, self-consciously tucking her hair behind her ears.

“So, the bus leaves tonight,” she says. “The station's just a mile from here, according to Google Maps, so we can hitch or even walk. We would get to LA first thing in the morning . . . if you want to keep going.”

If
we want to keep going. It's weird to hear it like that. So far it hasn't felt like a choice.

“I know you're only here because of me,” Leah continues. “I mean, because I got that call from Dad.” Cass and I exchange a look—
Dad
. It's such a foreign word to associate with him. A father is biological; a dad is something else entirely. “And even though part of me wants to see him before he's gone, I won't
do it if it'll hurt you,” Leah says. “
Either
of you.” I look over at Cass, asking her for permission this time.

“He told you we moved away, right?” she asks Leah, who nods, wincing slightly at the memory. “Then I know it's petty, but I kind of
want
him to see us together. To know he couldn't keep us apart.”

“Yeah,” Leah says, fixing us with a look so fierce I'd swear she had some Means blood in her, too. “That he couldn't break us.”

“Okay then,” I say. “I guess we better go catch that bus.”

I look into both of my sisters' eyes and realize we're all thinking the exact same thing right now:

We could take him
.

• • •

Back at the car, Denny is busy scratching the letters
R.I.P.
onto Goldie's hood with the four-color pen.

“I hope it's cool,” Tim says sheepishly. “He was pretty adamant.”

“Sure.” I run my finger along one of her more impressive dents. “She deserves an epitaph.”

“You know, we don't have to leave her,” Tim says. “We could call a tow. Maybe it's fixable.” Even he doesn't sound convinced, but it's sweet that he's trying.

“That'd cost a lot of money, plus, what are we gonna do, swing back through on the way home?” I shake my head. “She's gone.” Tim looks more upset than I would expect.

“I'm sorry I was mean to her,” Leah says, staring over Denny's shoulder like she's at an open-casket wake.

“It's okay, she'll just haunt your dreams,” Cass jokes. “You'll
be about to make out with Justin Bieber, and then you'll realize you're in the backseat sitting on a bag of Funyuns.”

“She did us proud, though,” I say. “We couldn't have made it without her.”

We pack as much as we can fit into our backpacks, and the stuff we can't take I arrange into a little shrine in the trunk: Mom's cassette tapes, the siphon pump and sock wrench, some rags made out of ripped-up T-shirts, two crushed packets of ramen noodles.

“Why don't I find a junkyard that can come and get her?” Tim asks.

“I just don't want to wait for them to come,” I say. “I don't want to see her get dragged off.”

“Max can wait,” Denny says.

“If we leave, though, that means Max gets left behind. For good.” I try to sound sad instead of hopeful, but it's hard when Cass and Leah are struggling not to laugh.

“I know,
duh
.” Denny rolls his eyes.

“So . . . you're okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Denny says. “Tim says when I get scared, I can talk to real people. Plus, I have a picture of him at home I can look at if I miss him.”

“A picture?” Cass asks skeptically.

“Mom has it in her room,” Denny says, “on the dresser.” Mom's clothes are usually strewn around like a tornado hit, pooled on the floor, hanging on chair arms and doorknobs, piled on the bed. I don't know if I can even remember what the dresser looks like under all of the crap she's got stacked on it. But I know the photo Denny's talking about. In it, a man is
sitting on a stoop, smoking a cigarette and giving the camera a mischievous grin, exposing his dimples. His dark hair is shaggy and hangs in his eyes. He's wearing a white undershirt, jeans, and Converse sneakers. In the picture he looks like he could be any bad-boy flirt at any high school, the kind you can't stop thinking about even though you know he'd hurt you if you ever let him in. He could be anyone, but he's not. He's my father. All this time Denny's been making imaginary friends with Buck. No wonder I never liked him.

“I think you're right,” I say, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I think it's time to let Max go.”

We take one last look and then file onto the shoulder, walking away from the car, one by one, in silence.

Tuesday Night/Wednesday Morning

Kingman, AZ
Los Angeles, CA

The bus ride goes by in a blur. It's pitch black outside by the time we leave, and the sun comes up just as we're entering the Los Angeles city limits, the downtown skyscrapers encased in a haze of majestic-looking smog. I sleep in fitful spurts, each time dreaming I'm walking into the hospice center for the first time. In one dream, Buck is sitting at the front desk, beaming, looking healthy but dressed in a paper gown.
I just wanted to see you
, he says.
Don't be mad at me, baby.
In another, he's suddenly wizened and elderly, unconscious in a bed with Dr. Chowdhury standing over him.
We've been able to pick up activity in most of the major areas of concern
, the doctor says and then turns on a shower that begins to flood the room. In the last
one, Bucks's gone missing.
He was just here
, a nurse says.
Would you like to wait?
And in the dream, even though I know he isn't coming back, I sit down on a plastic folding chair and put my hands over my eyes. I wake up from all of them relieved at first and then filled with empty dread.

Tim sits with Denny, who almost immediately passes out on him, but a few times he reaches over and grabs my hand from across the aisle. Once we both fall asleep that way, and a woman has to wake us up so she can get back to the bathroom. Cass and Leah sit behind me, but I hardly hear them exchange a single word, and when I look back I see them dozing, the ear buds from a shared set of headphones making a Y between their heads. The thought occurs to me somewhere in the midst of the Mojave Desert that maybe it's not the destination
or
the journey that matters in the end, but rather who's there to help you haul your baggage around. The five of us have gone from distrustful strangers to something approaching a family in less than a week. Tim and I have gone from fast-food nemeses to something approaching a couple.

There's a fear, too, of course, that goes beyond whatever we'll find when we really do get to the hospice. Tim's dad and Leah's mom are flying into LAX in the afternoon. We're supposed to meet them at the airport for a seven
P.M.
flight back to Baltimore. I'm worried about what they'll think of us—or what they think of us already. I don't know how they expect me to act with Tim. How much has he told them? And what's going to happen when we get back home? Will we really try to be together? Will I step beyond that white picket fence for family dinners? Will he climb our cracked front stoop for study
sessions? Or will he gradually recede back into the ether, like one of my tidal waves—only one I don't want to ever end?

These questions are still knocking around in my burned-out brain as we step off the bus into a perfect, dry 72-degree breeze that makes me briefly consider never going home at all.

“Look, a palm tree!” Denny says excitedly. We're standing in a back alley surrounded by squat little clusters of buildings the same color as Goldie's anemic paint job, but he's right—the palm trees overhead lend the bus-stop landscape an exotic, even glamorous feel.

“Finally,” Leah grins, stretching her arms over her head. “I love California weather!” She throws her arms around Tim's shoulders. “Can we move here?”

“You've been here?” I ask.

“Just for Disneyland,” she says, and I make a slashing motion across my neck. If Denny hears we're anywhere close to the Happiest Place on Earth, we will hear about nothing else for the rest of the day.

“So I guess we just . . . go now?” Cass asks, slinging her backpack onto one shoulder. Except for Denny, who's busy tossing a stick at a stop sign, we all look at each other, waiting for someone to find a reason to stall. But there is none. We made it. This is what we came for. My stomach lurches in the same way it did the time my seventh-grade class took a field trip to a Six Flags knockoff called Adventure Park and I got on the roller coaster only to change my mind at the last second—that
nevermind!
nervous system double-back that's probably a Darwinian adaptation designed to save us from our own dumb decisions.

“You ready?” Tim asks and reaches out for my hand, weaving his fingers through mine. I squeeze, hard.

“No comment.”

“You'll feel better in the cab,” he says.

But I don't feel better in the cab. In addition to my churning insides, there's a bad feeling I just can't shake. It's not panic or fear, exactly, it's just the sensation that something is wrong, something I can't pinpoint. I tell myself that maybe it's riding in a car that's not Goldie, a compact Prius taxi with smooth, clean seats and no food smells. Or being so far from home now that Mom is out of jail, on her own with no one to keep her in check. I take deep breaths and try to calm my nerves. I want to be clear-headed when I see Buck. I need to be able to tell him what I have to say, exactly the way I've been practicing all these years.

When we pull up to the Golden Palms just after eight, the feeling in my gut is justified: Something is very wrong. In fact, I'm so convinced the driver has the wrong address I make him circle the block twice. In my mind, and in the dreams, it was a sprawling, free-standing complex that was set back from the road like Tim and Leah's school and surrounded by meaningfully manicured trees to look like swans or something. There might even have been a fountain or a koi pond. Palm trees, definitely. It would have an air of serenity and almost unbearable gravitas. What I did not picture was a crappy plastic sign in one of eight slots on a two-story medical plaza sandwiched between a liquor store and a car wash. It's a strip mall. My father is dying in a strip mall. And as much ill as I've wished on Buck over the years, I would never wish for that.

“This is more depressing than I pictured,” Leah says, taking
in the colorless stucco, the neon sign for the nail salon (with only the
N
unlit, turning into the cruelly accurate ail salon), the family dental practice, and the two homeless men slumped against opposite sides of one of the concrete columns separating the parking lot from the stores.

“Damn,” Cass whispers.

“Can we get doughnuts first?” Denny asks.

“After,” I say. And I intend to keep that promise. After whatever awaits us, I am going to face-plant into a plateful of simple carbohydrates like it's my job.

I lead the way across the parking lot, into the shady, faintly urine-scented stairwell, and up to the second level, my adrenaline pumping so hard I feel a little woozy. This is not a dream. I'm about to walk in and face the reality of Buck. He won't be a scapegoat specter I can design in my head to my desired specifications; he'll be right there, in front of me, an absolute truth of bones and flesh who will say things and do things I can't control. Twenty feet now. Fifteen. Ten. There are double doors covered with screens from the inside, glowing an opaque yellow, golden on one door, palms on the other.
Palliative care . . . from people who care!
in smaller script below. Taped above the doorknob is a hand-lettered sign that reads
Please ring bell
. Without looking back at the others, I put my finger on the button and push.

A few seconds later, there's a sharp buzzing sound, and I pull the door open, misjudging its weight so I end up stumbling back into Cass. Inside, it looks like a normal doctor's office waiting room, with chairs and wall-mounted racks of magazines and a conspicuous restroom right next to the main desk where people get sent to pee in cups. The only things
that make it weird are the strong odor of dying flowers and the prominently displayed funeral brochures. I walk up to the desk with Tim and my siblings trailing behind me. The woman sitting behind it looks a lot like Aunt Sam. She looks up at us with a tight smile, and I get that bad feeling again.

“Quite a crew for first thing in the morning,” she says. “Are you on the list?”

“The list?” My heart drops.

“Yes, each patient has a list of visitors. You have to have been requested. We can't be too careful, especially in this neighborhood. Hence the buzzer.” She gestures to a small monitor on her desk, a black-and-white video feed of the balcony we came in from.

“We're here to see our father, so . . . I think we should be on it,” I say.

“And your father is?” She blinks up at me.

“Buck Devereaux.” I'm expecting her to flip through papers, so I'm taken aback when she stays frozen in place, her mouth falling open slightly, confusion in her eyes. “Or Allen,” I say quickly. “It could be under Allen, that's his first name.”

“No, sweetheart,” she says, and the sudden change in tone of her voice and manner tells me immediately what's really wrong, what I knew was wrong since I stepped off the bus. The blood rushes to my head so fast I can hardly hear the words as she says them out loud. “I know who your father is, honey. It's just—I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Buck Devereaux passed away last night.”

• • •

The first feeling is shock, plain and simple, like getting body-checked from a blind spot. Buck is already dead. We're too
late. This realization knocks the wind out of me. But once its meaning sinks in, there's a wave of relief that dovetails with a swell of anger and then something else, a kind of bitter, throbbing sadness—is that grief? It all happens in the span of a few seconds, as the nurse looks up at me with naked pity.
What kind of daughter doesn't know her father is dead
, she must be thinking. I want to explain, but I can't form the words. So I just say, “Oh.” I look back at the others. Cass is stone-faced, but Leah's face is threatening to crumple, the muscles around her mouth trembling as she tries to control them. Tim, who just looks worried, puts his arms around both of the girls. Denny takes my hand and looks up at me.

“Dad is dead?” he asks. “But I really wanted to meet him.”

Me too, kid
, I think.

“We didn't have any next of kin,” the nurse says apologetically, “or we would have called. The only person who's been to see him is his girlfriend. She's coming in to pick up his personal effects.”

Personal effects. That's a good name for what we are. The effects of his miserable existence. I suddenly have a strong urge to see his body. I always look away when they show dead people on the crime shows Cass loves, but I'm afraid if I don't see Buck I'll always wonder if this wasn't just one last way to avoid us.

“Is he—” I try to keep my voice steady. “Is he still here?”

“No, the funeral home came and got him,” she says apologetically. “I can give you the number.”

I nod, and she pulls a business card from a drawer. All Faith's Funeral Home. Next to the address there's a cheesy picture of an orchid lit by a celestial beam. I'm sliding it into my back pocket when the doorbell rings, a loud, almost cartoonish
ding-dong!
I can see a woman standing outside on the monitor screen, with messy black hair and big sunglasses.

“That's Carly, his girlfriend,” the nurse says, pressing the buzzer, and we all turn to brace ourselves as the last guest to our sad little party arrives.

Carly is small and skinny, swimming in cutoff shorts and a tank top with a big pair of red lips silk-screened on the front. She's wearing flip-flops, and her toenails have chipped green polish. From her body I'd guess she was in her twenties, but when she pushes up her sunglasses, her face is sun-damaged and kind of puckered, probably more like forty-five. She's got watery blue eyes and eyebrows drawn in with pencil. If she's not a junkie now, then she's definitely had a past—you can tell just by looking at her.

“So you made it,” she says, giving us the once-over, looking totally unfazed by our color spectrum and various stages of dishevelment. Her voice has a pack-a-day smoker's rasp. “You missed him, but he wasn't awake much for the past week anyway. Probably just as well.” She walks past us to the front desk and leans her elbows on the counter. “You got a box for me, Gina?”

I didn't even know Carly existed two minutes ago, so maybe it's unfair to have any expectations, but I'm instantly thrown by how casual she is, as if she picks up the effects of newly deceased boyfriends in front of their bands of estranged children every other week or something.

“We made it,” I say. “Barely.” But Carly either doesn't hear or chooses not to respond. Cass makes a
WTF?
face at me, while Leah shoots daggers into Carly's back.

The nurse—Gina, I guess—bends down, reemerging with a shoebox a minute later, marked on one side with
Devereaux
in
black Sharpie. It's not even a large shoebox, either. It looks like the kind sandals might come in.

“Thanks,” Carly says and then turns back to us. “You guys want any of it?”

“What's in it?” Denny asks.

“Probably just a bunch of crap, little man.” She puts her hand on Denny's head, and I jerk him back, but she doesn't seem to notice. “He promised me a ring, but he didn't get to that. Bought himself a used car, though. Typical.” She sounds more pissed off than sad.