Purple Hearts Page 3

  Nora plucked, almost inaudibly, and the crowd whooped like it was over, but at the bottom of the quiet we shot again: “Give me too much, give me too much, give me too much.”

  I stepped back from the mic and banged out the bridge. The lights felt brighter, splitting my vision. I looked sideways at Nora. Whoa, I mouthed. I was smiling bigger than I had in months.

  Then the good got too good. My gut jumped, warning me. I felt my skin crawl with shivers. But if anything, the lights felt too hot. There shouldn’t have been shivers.

  “You give me too much,” I sang back for the chorus, “I didn’t ask for it, / You’re heavy enough, / I didn’t ask for it, / I got big bones, / I’ll play you for it.”

  I hit the D chord, waited for Toby’s triplet. Nora switched keys and I was right there with her on a slight delay, like an echo, with the words I had written on the back of a receipt during a slow night.

  While the last notes faded, I drooped with exhaustion. I could barely press the keys.

  Shit. I hadn’t had anything but a sandwich since lunch. Maybe that was it. I had meant to get something on the way over, but I’d gotten caught up trying to fit the amp and keys in the backseat of the Subaru.

  “Thank you,” I called, chest heaving. I stepped back from the mic, grabbed Nora’s wrist. “Be right back.”

  Nora swallowed, stepped up to the mic next to me. “We’ve got EPs for sale back at merch, and thank you to Les RAV for having us . . .”

  Panic struck. Darkness rimmed my eyes as I left the stage, holding on to whatever I could to stay steady as I found the door to the greenroom.

  “Are you okay?” Toby’s voice sounded behind me.

  I didn’t answer. My legs started to give out, so I knelt, too hard, bruising.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I heard him step closer, and he held my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not feeling good, T,” I tried to say, the words slurring together. I crawled toward the wall.

  “Should I get your mom?” He was next to me again, kneeling, too, soft blue jeans. I was covered in cold sweat.

  “No, no.” I flopped my hand, dismissing, embarrassed. “It’ll pass. Go back out there.”

  I opened my eyes—when had I closed my eyes?—to Toby’s face in front of mine, in a haze. He looks like white Jesus, I thought. How had I never noticed this before? Brown hair, reddish beard, blue eyes. Not Cat Stevens.

  He felt my forehead. He had taken out his phone. “Should I call 911?”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” I said. The room tipped again. No money for the ambulance. “Just stay here for a second.”

  Toby scooted next to me.

  Through the wall, I heard Nora tell the audience to have a good night. What was happening? This seemed like more than skipping lunch. This was serious. I fought the urge to cry.

  “I’m calling 911,” I heard Toby say. I saw black rain, felt my neck go slack. I couldn’t answer.

  • • •

  Mom had ridden with me in the ambulance. I’d blinked in and out until I was awake enough to drink some orange juice. The paramedic had said it was likely a blood sugar issue. Now we were at Seton Northwest, waiting for the doctors to release me.

  “You used to be such a good eater.” Mom sat next to me between blue curtains in the ER. She took her thumb and scraped under my eyes, frowning.

  “I’m still a good eater.” I was grateful she wasn’t there to see the worst of it.

  She clicked her tongue. “Your makeup makes you look like a streetwalker.”

  “That’s not nice.”

  Considering my mother dropped out of college to live in Austin with my father out of wedlock, she was three thousand times less Catholic than most Puerto Rican mothers, but she still had a mean streak.

  She tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear. “You’re making yourself sick. You need a stable job.”

  “I want music to be my job. That’s why I invited you.”

  “Oh, boy. Cass. Come on. You should have been in bed,” she said, shaking her head. “Not out in the middle of the night. It’s ten thirty.”

  “That’s all you have to say?” Any good feeling I had gotten from the crowd, from Toby’s surprising attentiveness, had faded. “I poured my heart out onstage and that’s all you have to say.”

  “Ch, ch, ch. Don’t get riled.”

  A nurse walked by. We both looked up. She passed. Not for us.

  “Your drummer was nice to call,” Mom said, a tone in her voice.

  “Yeah,” I said, and stopped myself before saying more. It wasn’t worth the hassle. She was already on my case about the band. Might as well save what “friends with benefits” meant for another time. Toby and I had a history of landing in all sorts of situations, many of them involving a bed, but fainting was a first. He was probably freaking out. Nora, too.

  “You’ve got to take it easy.” She took my hand, stroking my forearm. “You’ve got a brain. This is a good hobby. You haven’t signed up for the LSAT course, you haven’t dropped by to pick up the prep books that I bought for you. Instead you’re doing this, passing out all over the place. I can’t help but wonder why, Cass.”

  I pulled away and bit my thumbnail, because if I didn’t, I’d start yelling at her. Finally, I muttered, “I’m trying to show you why.”

  “Sorry.” She sighed. “I just don’t see why you can’t do a good job singing and go to law school at the same time.”

  I was forming a retort, but a doctor in a white coat entered.

  Mom took a breath and pursed her lips. I took her hand again. We weren’t stay mad people, Mom and I, we were just get mad people. We learned this as we grew up together—it’s hard to stay angry at the person who is also your only entertainment.

  “Cassandra?” the doctor asked, adjusting her glasses as she looked at a clipboard.

  “Cassie,” I corrected.

  “I’m Dr. Mangigian. So we’re here today because you lost consciousness?”

  “Yeah. I got all shivery and blacked out.”

  “Mm. Yeah. I’m looking at your chart here . . .” She paused and looked at me. “Do you find yourself having to frequently urinate?”

  I thought of moments in traffic, or at band practice, when I would have to leave in the middle of a conversation, practically sprinting up Nora’s stairs. “Yes. I’ve always had a small bladder.”

  “Do you experience thirst and hunger at a high degree?” I recalled chugging two Gatorades the other night, craving a third.

  “Sometimes.” What was she getting at?

  “Do you have a history of diabetes in your family?”

  Mom and I looked at each other. I didn’t know. She rubbed my back. Her father had it, she told the doctor. And his sister.

  “Well, we’re still waiting for the full workup to come back.” The doctor looked at both of us from behind her glasses. “But I believe we’re looking at a diagnosis of type two diabetes.”

  Diabetes. The messages from my gut. I looked at the ceiling. “Okay. What does that mean?” I asked, trying to keep back whatever was snaking up my chest, the tears burning at the back of my eyes.

  “Well, basically your pancreas doesn’t know how to break down sugar in your blood, so you might need to take insulin to help you do that. But insulin can also work too well. So you watch what you eat so you don’t get hypoglycemic. Or, like you might have done tonight, pass out from low blood sugar.”

  “Is this—?” I blew out breath, trying to slow my speeding pulse. “Is this what it’s going to be like all the time now?” I thought of smiling at Nora, banging on the keys with everything I had. How I finally thought I’d had it, and it was being taken away.

  “It will be a couple of days until the test results come in,” Dr. Mangigian continued. “And if that is the case, we’ll start you on treatments. With diet, exercise, and proper insulin intake, diabetes is totally manageable.”

  I didn’t really do “managing” when it came to my body. As long as i
t let me fit into my jeans and have orgasms and sleep every once in a while, I let it do its thing. But hypoglycemic? Pancreas? I couldn’t even point to my pancreas. All this time, I thought my gut was my friend, and instead it was trying to kill me. “Any needles?”

  The doctor laughed. Mom and I didn’t. “Occasionally. You may just have to monitor. And as I said, we still don’t know.”

  “But it’s diabetes. That’s likely what it is?” Mom asked, her voice faint.

  The doctor nodded. Mom squeezed my hand.

  “The nurse will be back in to check on you and get your insurance information, and we’ll go from there.”

  My throat seized. I didn’t have insurance. My true form. I was so stupid. “I might have to pay out of pocket.”

  Mom sighed. “Just have the nurse give me the paperwork. I’ll cover this.”

  I sat up in the bed, still dizzy. “No, Mom.”

  “It’s okay, Cass. You’re not insured. What other option do we have?”

  “No!” She still cut coupons. She was still paying off her leased Corolla on janitorial wages. She couldn’t afford an ambulance and an emergency room visit any more than I could. “No,” I repeated.

  The doctor cleared her throat. “I’ll give you a minute.” She left.

  “I’ve got the money,” I said to the ceiling. I wondered if Mom could tell I was lying. There was my final paycheck from the firm, and the money from tonight’s gig, but my share wouldn’t be nearly enough. It was supposed to go toward a studio session anyway. I lay back and closed my eyes. My insides were boiling. My body ran me now. As the tears rolled down, I could feel Mom reach over and wipe them away.

  Luke

  I kept the Lexus I borrowed from Frankie at forty miles an hour, even on the freeway. No music, no air-conditioning. I wanted it to be like I had never been there. The sooner Jake and I could talk, the longer we had to get to know each other again before I deployed.

  I entered on Old North Loop 4, down to Main Street, pulling past Bolero Pharmacy. I was surprised Tim wasn’t smoking Newports in the back, his red vest uniform hanging over his shoulder. He was the one who scraped OxyContin off the stock at Bolero, sold it to Johnno at a fixed rate. An AT&T had replaced the video store, and they had put up a new sign, but everything else in Buda was the same. The grass was brownish green from drought or the remains of a drought. Minus the cement and parking meters, the curlicue roofs and red brick could have been a film set for a Western.

  I rolled down the window and smelled the dust.

  Jake and Hailey’s house was just down the block from where we grew up on Arikara Street, a cobalt-blue single-story behind a patch of woolly butterfly and Gulf Coast penstemon, native plants we’d learned about working landscaping for a summer in high school. A swing set made of fresh lumber peeked from the backyard. It was Sunday, and I knew the garage would be closed. Unless Jake and Hailey had started going to church more than just on Christmas and Easter, they’d be home. Still, I should have called.

  I parked and walked across the street, up the sidewalk, toward the door. I’d shaved my face raw and bought clothes. Nothing special, just stiff, generic denim and a checkered button-up that still smelled like the factory. In my hand, daisies for Hailey. Under my arm, a LEGO Star Wars set for JJ. In my pocket, the letter for Jake.

  Neighboring kids screeched as they ran through a sprinkler. A dog barked. I ran my hand down my face, then knocked.

  Nothing.

  I knocked again. No one stirred in the house. I stepped back from the door, considering tucking the letter under the mat, which was shaped like a Dallas Cowboys logo. Then I heard laughter—JJ’s, high-pitched and raucous. I held the gifts tighter, and followed the sound around to the back. When I got to the edge of the yard, I stood, unable to go farther, as if I’d hit a force field. An electric-blue shape darted into the sunlight, making loops. Jacob Junior. He’d shot up like a weed.

  Hailey followed him, wearing a pink sundress and sporting a sweaty blond ponytail. She’d filled out a little since they married, and her face was wide and sun soaked. When she saw me, she stopped.

  I lifted the flowers. “Hey, Hailey.”

  She looked toward the house, and then back at me with a small smile. “JJ, come give Uncle Luke a hug,” she called to him.

  He wrapped his arms around my legs. I put my hand on Jacob Junior’s platinum head. For a minute, my muscles relaxed.

  “How old are you now, thirty-five?” I teased.

  He giggled, running away. “I’m four and a half!”

  Hailey smiled at me. “Hi, hon. Come here.”

  Her body against mine was medicine, warmth and softness I had forgotten existed.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked into my shoulder.

  “I’ve been around,” I started, but the sound of their back door opening and shutting made me pause.

  Hailey let go, giving my arm a squeeze.

  We turned toward Jake. His expression shifted to anger. “What’s going on, Luke?”

  His dark hair was pulled back into a Cowboys cap, his sunburned shoulders bare under a clean white tank. A little chubby, hair a little curly. More of our mom in him, where I got my dad’s hard features.

  “I came to talk—talk a few things over. Apologize. I’d love to sit down with you and Hailey, if you have a minute.”

  Jake folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Hailey crossed the yard, lowering her voice. “Babe, I think—”

  “He should not be here,” Jake argued. “That’s what the counselor said. Hard lines.”

  They were probably referring to the clinic volunteer who came to meet with them shortly after I missed their wedding a few years ago, when they realized how serious my dependence was. I was supposed to be at that meeting, too.

  “Hard lines when he’s—” She cut off and looked at me. “She said if you’re using, we don’t contact you.” She turned back to Jake. “You’re not even giving him a chance.”

  Jake looked at JJ, who was now still, listening to the volley. “JJ, inside, please.”

  “But I want—” He had spotted the LEGOs, and was pointing at them.

  Jake said louder, “JJ, one, two—”

  JJ snapped his hand down with an angry little grunt, and ran inside, pulling the door shut.

  I stepped closer to them. “I’m in the army now. I’ve been clean for almost a year.”

  Jake folded his arms. “Then why do I see that fuckhead on our street once a month?”

  I tried not to show the rage that rose up. He had to be talking about Johnno. I let up my grip on the flowers, took a deep breath. “He’s crazy. I don’t know why he’s around because I’m not buying from him. I’m not buying from anyone.”

  Jake shook his head. “But you’re still in the shit, Luke. You may be off pills, and if that’s the case, congratulations, but wherever you are, that asshole will follow, with my wife and kid around. I can’t have that.”

  “Well . . . ,” I started, then trailed off. I thought of the calls, the voice mails, but I wasn’t here to talk about Johnno. That was another problem. “All I can say is I’m clean, and I can’t control where he goes. That part’s not my fault.”

  Jake exploded. “It’s never your fault. That’s the problem.”

  My insides twisted, but I stood my ground. My hand moved to my pocket. The letter could say it better than I could. “Can I read you something?”

  Jake’s face looked pained, like I had punched him. “Jesus, Luke—I don’t know, man.”

  “It’ll take one second. You don’t have to say anything or forgive me or—whatever.”

  Before he could object again, I pulled it out. The paper was stiff with wrinkles from being folded and unfolded so many times over the past year. The ink had almost faded. My hands shook.

  “I’m sorry I stole money from the garage, and from you.” I glanced at Jake. His eyes were on the ground.

  After I had flunked out a
nd the government student loans had stopped coming, I had started scraping twenties off the safe in the Morrow Garage office, Johnno idling in the Bronco outside.

  “I’m sorry I missed the birth of your son.”

  Hailey had gotten pregnant when they were twenty-one, after Jake had completed the mechanics certification at Austin Technical College—the one I was supposed to have done, too.

  My voice was shaking now. I held back tears. “I’m sorry I was intoxicated on what should have been one of the happiest days of your life, your wedding.”

  I remembered my phone vibrating on the bedside table while a girl named Jen and I had snorted Oxy off the bathroom counter in her studio apartment. I had barely made it for the photos after the ceremony, wearing the only clean shirt I had, my long, stupid hair piss yellow and unwashed. The photographer had asked me to hold JJ, then just a toddler, in the family photo, so Jake and Hailey could wrap their arms around each other.

  My dad had stepped in.

  No, he’d said. I don’t want him touching my grandson.

  When I finished reading, I swallowed, composing myself. I looked Jake in the eye, then Hailey, and back to Jake. “I take full responsibility for all of this. And I don’t want to disappoint you again.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Jake said.

  I took another step in their direction, gesturing toward the house. “Can we just sit down and—talk or something? Hang out? I’m only on leave for another week.”

  “I’m not ready,” Jake said, immediate.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing!” Jake raised his voice. “I covered for you when you went out and got messed up. I didn’t report you. I make you best man at my fucking wedding, you don’t show. We try to help you, you don’t show. I’m done giving you chances.”

  Hailey put her hand on Jake’s back, rubbing it, calming him. In an even voice, she said, “I have to say I agree, Luke.”

  “I promise, Johnno is out of my life. I can prove it to you. Dad, too.”