The Other Side(63)
Returning to Toby is heartbreaking. He’s a flesh and bone shell filled with so much raw emotion it’s leeching out of every pore. “What happened, Toby?”
He fixes me with blurry, familiar green eyes and echoes Marilyn’s words. “She’s right, I killed her. I killed my sister.” His words are soft, but there’s conviction in them. He’s staring at me, but he’s looking through me like his eyes are fixed on a horrific memory only he can see. “Ken was a monster. He was beating her, keeping her away from us…she was using again…” He pauses and I wait. And when he finally blinks it’s as if I come into focus for the first time and his features twist, anguish wringing them out while a guttural cry claws up his throat. “I gave her a gun. But instead of using it to protect herself and leave him—”
I finish the sentence to spare him having to say it. “She used it on herself.”
He nods as the tears stream steadily down his cheeks. I’ve never seen someone cry this hard in all my life, and I’ve seen some messed up stuff. His soul is bleeding out. I want to wrap my arm around him. I want to offer comfort. But I can’t, so I don’t. Broken people like me just can’t, we aren’t capable of it. Instead, I clear my throat and say, “Do you have a backpack or a bag you take to school?”
A puzzled look drifts across his features and then he nods once.
“Go get it. And grab a change of clothes, too.”
With little hesitation, he walks to his bedroom to follow my instruction. While he’s gone my mind goes to his sister, Nina. In the years I’d known her, her demons were plenty and unrelenting—drugs and depression—a pairing that waxed and waned, one spurring on the other. I give myself a moment to grieve and say a silent prayer. Please welcome her to heaven and relieve her of her suffering. I’m not a religious man (Seeing Hell on Earth has all but stripped away any faith I was raised with, because what kind of God would allow that kind of suffering to exist?), but it’s something I unconsciously thought the first time I watched a young man die in a village in Vietnam in 1970. He was fighting for the other side, and my buddy shot him a second before he shot us. For some reason, the prayer entered my head then, and I’ve said it every time someone has died since, whether it was during the war or afterward, because suffering is an unspoken, unfortunate truth of life. I’m not sure why I do it—it doesn’t help anyone or anything—but I do it anyway.
Toby returns with his backpack slung over his shoulder and hopelessness corrupting every fiber of his being.
I open the door and he follows me up two flights of stairs and into my apartment on the third floor. His steps are eerily quiet behind me, he’s like a ghost. My apartment is small: a kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms. I point at the empty bedroom on the left. “You can sleep in there tonight. There’s no bed, but—” I stall the thought while I walk to the pantry closet and pull out my old sleeping bag, “you can use this.”
He nods as he takes it from me, his gaze glued to the floor. I can see his mind racing, the worst day of his life is refusing to give him up, as he shuffles into the room and closes the door behind him.
“Bathroom is yours if you need it,” I offer to the peeling yellow paint on the door.
He doesn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to.
I’m beat and need to sleep, but I need some fresh air and a cigarette more, so I walk to the door next to the refrigerator that leads to the fire escape, step out on it, and light up. The cool air chills my skin, but I take my time, willing some peace out of the unfiltered Pall Mall slotted between my fingers.
It doesn’t come.
It never does.
So I snub it out and go to bed.
And for the next six hours, I listen to the boy on the other side of the wall cry out with night terrors as his sleeping mind torments him after it traitorously allowed him to cry himself into oblivion.
When the sun begins to light up the room like a flame flickering to life outside, I grab the pad of paper and pen on the nightstand next to my bed, and write the following:
Notice of Eviction
I, Johnny Stockton, hereby declare tenant, Marilyn Page, has until noon, June 6, 1985, to vacate the premises of 1261 N. Clarkson, Apt. 1A, Denver, Colorado, or the authorities will be called and legal action will be pursued to collect six months of unpaid rent.
Signature of landlord: Johnny Stockton
Date: June 6, 1985
Is this legal? No, definitely not. There are steps that must be followed in the process of eviction, and it takes months to jump through the hoops. You can’t just tell someone they have a few hours to leave. Does she know that? Probably. Can I find it in me to be persuasive when I want to be? Yes, I sure as hell can. And she owes way more than six months’ rent.
I hope this works.
I peek in on Toby. His entire body is inside the sleeping bag and it’s pulled up over his head so he’s hidden away. The steady motion of the quilted fabric’s rise and fall tells me he’s finally settled into a restful sleep. Good.
I leave the apartment quietly and walk down to face Marilyn and her wrath. Three rounds of knocking forces her to the door. Her squinting lids tell me her hangover doesn’t agree with wakefulness. “What do ya want?” she snaps.
I hand her my handwritten ultimatum and wait for her to digest it and regurgitate fury.