the boozed-up fights he’d gotten into over nothing, the jobs he’d lost because of coke, the insults he’d thrown at people he loved. That was why he got tweaked all the time, he said, because it allowed him to forget his own mistakes and believe that everybody else was fucked up, not him. Isa loved that kind of honesty. She flirted and put him off, and he treated her like she was the world. He handled me like a kid brother, bringing me in on his secrets; he didn’t compete with me like he did with everybody else.
Isa and I graduated about six weeks before Patrick did. We got a place together, the two of us, a rental I called a deficiency because it was so small. Ever since I’d graduated from college, Mom and Dad had been badgering me to get a caregiver, someone to at least read my mail and help me pay my bills. I had a settlement from my accident—my blinding when I was a child—that my parents had managed when I was growing up. They got control of it again after my freefall in San Francisco, where I lived for just over two years—long enough to lose my job and my apartment. During the last six months, I lived on Casey’s couch and in the back of TBone’s van. They watched my back, and we all used my money. After Casey died, Dad had to fly out, bail me out of jail, and drive me down to Channel House in Burbank. When I graduated from the recovery home and still refused to move back to Greeley, Colorado, they got this advice from everyone: don’t give a crackhead any money. They insisted on paying my bills directly.
So I set up Isa to be my caregiver, and we invented a clean history for her. She had to interview with my parents by phone, but they took to her like everybody else did. They started sending her my monthly checks for room and board, plus a hundred dollars for helping me—as if I needed her help. The payments roughly equaled the interest from my account; I had to find my own income to purchase anything else. Mom flew from Colorado once to check on things, which I resented because it was obvious that she didn’t trust me. Or Dad didn’t. We had to hide Isa’s stuff and pretend she lived elsewhere. It made me feel like a kid.
Isa got a job waiting tables right away, but I couldn’t find work. I’d majored in journalism in college, and I’d written pieces of my life story at Channel House—as part of my moral inventory. I’d always liked writing, so I started doing street interviews along Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards, drawing from my experiences in San Francisco. I wrote several profiles of street characters, and the editor of the community paper printed one. When I came home and put that money on the table—it wasn’t much, but it was something—it was like we were together, Isa and I. I would change in the bathroom and sleep on the couch, but she could get dressed anywhere. She’d say, “It’s too hot for clothes,” or “All my panties are in the wash, so I’m getting some air.” We went to N.A. meetings every day, and that was when she started trying out churches and born-again revivals. She needed something, she said. Something to believe in. I’d hear her pull on a dress and take it back off, and I’d catch a drift of her hair just shampooed as she walked to the mirror. I love the swish of clothing against skin.
“How’s this look?” she’d say.
“It makes you look thin,” I’d say, or “I like the green one.”
“There isn’t a green one,” she’d say. “Look at you cultivating your trousers. You better go in the bathroom and elongate.”
On days when I was glum, she’d sing, “What can you see, Kevin? What can you see?” and I’d tell her things to lighten our mood: “I see a rose blossom opening its folds. I see a fog bank shrouding the moonlight. I see a butterfly unable to land.” They were visions, mostly, things I’d listened to in books and couldn’t quite picture.
Sometimes she’d let me massage her, unless I got fresh with my hands, which she’d slap away. “You’re my temptation,” she’d say. “But you know I’m waiting for Patrick. We need to get you a girl.” I had girl-friends in college, I told her, and a few one-nighters when I lived in San Francisco. But she knew I hadn’t been with anyone since.
During those nights at the kitchen table—with Isa obsessing about her dad and me feeling weak after losing my job—my affection for her began to simmer again. I’d succeeded in pulling away from her about the same time Ray and Devon had come to live with us, but now I felt myself sliding back. I told myself I didn’t love her even as I hungered for her verve and lack of restraint. I knew she was married and it was hopeless, but I was a fool. When Isa quivered and leaned against me, I tried not to feel the wisp of her hair on my neck or the prick of her fingernails on my skin. I tried not to sip the scent of bath soap mixed with perspiration on her arms. I did press my fingers against the silver cross on her breastbone, letting my hand touch the swell of her breasts. I massaged the tense spots along her shoulders and neck. I rubbed her forehead and temples. All to calm her, I told myself, not to caress her skin. She needed me.
As she worried and fussed, I excused her childish tone and her dips into born-again language. “With God’s grace,” she whispered, “I’m going to bring Daddy the mercy of Jesus to heal his judgmental nature. When people are tired of being broken and sick, Kevin, they’re ready for the spirit of God.” I knew lots of people who’d come out of recovery clinging to faith—even Patrick had his version. If God could dampen her bipolar swings, I thought, so be it.
It never occurred to me, in the midst of my compassion, that I was the one wracked with self-deception. I was always on the verge of letting her know about my job, but the moment never seemed right. I told myself I could live with Isa without loving her, even while pretending I could love her without showing it.
From those frustrating nights, I felt hungover during the days, and I grew more anxious about being left in the empty house as the day neared for them to drive to Florida. I could cook and care for myself; it wasn’t that. I was worried about keeping myself from relapse, particularly since I didn’t have a job. Each day my freelance work took me to avenues where people were using all the time. The more I spoke with street performers and the homeless, gaining their confidence for the interviews I would need for my articles, the more difficult it became to refuse their offers of nips and tokes. I felt my resolve slipping, so I attended daily N.A. meetings again.
I drafted two articles within ten days of being laid off: one about a sax player who’d lost everything in a fire and another about a seventeen-year-old girl from Indiana who’d run away to Hollywood and couldn’t go back home. I didn’t like either story; they offered only darkness. But I called the editor during that second week and left a message every day for three days, telling him I had the stories he wanted. He never returned my calls. On the fourth day, the afternoon of my twenty-eighth birthday, I called Cameron, the city reporter, who told me the editor wasn’t taking any freelance.
I heard myself thanking him. When I hung up, I threw my cell phone across my room into the wall.
The front doorbell rang. After a moment, it rang again.
“Get the damn door!” Patrick yelled from the kitchen.
“You get it!” Devon called from somewhere else.
Tossing on my bed, I convinced myself I was glad everybody was leaving for Florida the next day. Think of the quiet; I’d have two weeks to decompress from their stupid dramas. I should have moved out months ago, I told myself. What the hell had I been thinking, letting myself get sucked in by Isa’s needs again?
When the noises and smells from the kitchen could no longer be ignored, I resented in advance the cheap birthday card that Isa and the others would give me. The cake. The stupid song. If they remembered my birthday at all.
After a while, the kitchen quieted abruptly; feet shuffled outside my room. Then they banged at my door, laughing. I turned away on the bed, facing the wall, gripping my hands into fists. They came in uninvited, singing “Happy Birthday” out of tune, all except Isa, whose melodic voice I resented all the more. Devon poked my ribs, trying to make me laugh. I gritted my teeth. Ray scampered onto the bed.
“Get up!” Isa said.
I put on my dark glasses and faced them.
Ray hung around my neck, hugging me, bringing out a quick smile despite myself. They laid boxes all over my bed, startling me. I let myself