David Bell - Never Come Back

“What?” I asked, struggling to keep my own emotions in check. I wiped my tears away with the backs of my hands, making a smeared mess across my face.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to Ronnie,” he said. He swallowed and coughed. A siren sounded and then wound down on the far side of the hospital. A new tragedy arriving. Some disturbed soul who had had enough of the world and flipped out. He said, “I’ll be here. Nothing bad’s going to happen to him.”

“I know you’ll look out for him,” I said. “We both will.”

He brought out a handkerchief and wiped his cheeks and eyes some more. “We’re all on the ropes here, I guess.”

“Yes,” I said. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want to go get something to eat?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I’m tired. I’m a tired old man. I need to go home and take a nap. The next couple of days could get kind of crazy.”

“Are you sure?”

He put the handkerchief away and nodded, regaining his usual certainty. “I should be worried about you,” he said. “Are you taking care of yourself?”

“I’m trying to.”

“You should take a nap.”

“Maybe I will. I have to get back to campus tomorrow. I was going to deal with the will, but it doesn’t seem that important now.”

“That’s good.”

“Unless you think the lawyer can help with Ronnie,” I said. “Are we being idiots here, Paul? Are we just going to let them put him in there and examine him?”

“Who drew up the will? Frank Allison?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know how much criminal law he does in a town like this,” Paul said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. Beyond that, I guess we’re all in over our heads. Look, he’s more in the care of the doctors than the police now. That might change if the police get more serious, but I take some comfort in thinking about the doctors more.”

“Sure,” I said, not wholly convinced. “But if more trouble comes down, I’m calling a lawyer. I might do it anyway.”

“That’s fine,” Paul said. “Do what you think is best.”

He held out his arms, and we hugged. We held each other a long time. I didn’t want to let go. When we finally did, I stepped back and looked up at him.

“Tell me this is all going to be okay,” I said.

He didn’t hesitate. “Sorry, kiddo, but I just can’t do that.”

I didn’t call Dan before I went to his apartment. I knew that if I called, he’d offer to come meet me wherever I was, and I wasn’t sure yet that I wanted to see him. I wanted to still have an out. My escape plan amounted to showing up unannounced, allowing myself the option of turning around and leaving if I wanted.

But when I arrived outside the dingy brick apartment building Dan lived in, I realized I did want to stay. Dan lived on the second floor, alone. Half the lightbulbs were burned out, and with evening coming on, the stairwell was uncomfortably dark, especially for someone whose mother had just been murdered. Music twanged behind one of the apartment doors, and I heard the unmistakable drunken whoop of a college boy. For the first time in my life, that sound brought me comfort. There were people around. And life. I wasn’t alone.

Dan opened the door to my knock, his eyes widening in surprise.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

For a brief, terrible moment, I worried that someone was in the apartment with him. “I didn’t call,” I said.

“It’s okay.” He stepped back, opening the door all the way. “Come in.”

I knew the place well. He had lived there in the cramped, run-down space for just over a year, ever since we both entered the graduate program in history as members of the same class. For six months of that year, he and I had been a couple. Intensely. Crazily. We burned for each other like two hormonal teenagers, but we also possessed enough brains between the two of us to examine every flaw with our pairing, which meant we fought a lot. We broke up a lot. We got back together a lot.

I followed him into the living room. Ever since we’d broken up—and in the wake of two very temporary reunions and their accompanying breakups—we hadn’t known how to act around each other. Do we hug? Do we shake hands? Do we nod at each other like strangers passing on a narrow sidewalk? I bypassed the dilemma by moving quickly to the couch and sitting down. He stopped in the center of the room.

“Do you want something?” he asked. “Coffee? Wine?”

“You know me well enough,” I said.

“Beer?”

“Amen.”

He left and came back with two opened bottles. He sat on the far end of the couch from me, respectfully giving me my physical space. He’d finally learned to do that on the day I needed him not to.

“Are you doing okay?” he asked. He quickly added, “I know, that’s a silly question.”

“I don’t mind you asking,” I said. “And thanks for coming to the cemetery today. It was really sweet.”

I took two long drinks from my bottle. It tasted good. Really good.

Dan drank from his too. A flush spread on his cheeks, but I knew it wasn’t from the beer. Even when we dated, when we were in our most intense periods of romance, an uncertainty, a nervousness hovered around Dan. No matter how much time we spent together, it still seemed as though he didn’t know what to say to me or exactly how to take me. He said, “I know you well enough to know that you don’t want to discuss what happened, but I feel obligated to say out loud that I’m willing to listen to whatever you need to say.”

“That’s what I want to talk about,” I said. I jabbed my finger into the space between us, trying to emphasize my point.

Dan jumped a little. “What?”

“That. That quality of mine you just mentioned.”

“Are you saying it’s not true?” he asked.

“It is true,” I said. “And I need to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he said. “But I’m not a licensed therapist.”

“You know, I really appreciate the sarcasm today.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” he asked.

“No.” I drank more of the beer, almost finishing it. Too fast. I suppressed a burp and patted my chest. “Well, get ready for an awkward transition. My mother was murdered,” I said.

It felt like the first confession of a long recovery. Something had pivoted in my life. I had gone from being a person who read about families affected by violent crime in the newspaper to being a member of such a family. I no longer needed to understand such things from the outside. I needed to process it from the inside.

“Jesus,” Dan said.

“But wait—there’s more.”

I told him everything, finishing the first beer while I revealed the details about my mom’s death. The fact that there had been no sign of forced entry. The violent encounter with Ronnie over the fishing trip. The inability of the police to account for Ronnie’s whereabouts. Ronnie’s trip to what I could only think of as the mental ward. The fight I had had with my mother and our six weeks of silence.

Dan didn’t interrupt. He let me get it all out, and even rose once when I paused to take a breath in order to walk out to the kitchen and get two more beers. I happily started the second while I finished my tale of woe.

When it was all out, Dan said simply, “I’m sorry, E. I’m really sorry.”

“I know. And I appreciate it.”

“But I get the feeling that’s not really what you wanted to talk about,” he said. “You said something about some quality you possess…”

“I didn’t know any of these things were happening,” I said. “My family—my mother and my brother—were deep in a crisis, and I didn’t know anything about it. I was cut off from it.”