Save My Soul

Just Once [15]

15.

In a sleepy, nervous stupor, I shrug into my coat and slip on my thickest socks and boots.

"Cathy... Cathy..." my father's drunk, bleary voice echoes in the wind howling outside the dark, silent house as I hurry downstairs and grab my car keys from the table. "Cathy, c-come get me..."

I was asleep when the phone rang, pulling me from a clouded, confused dream. In it, Lillian held me in her arms, crooning softly as she stroked my hair.

"Lizzie... baby Lizzie... my baby..."

I cried in the dream: "But I'm not, I'm not."

"My baby, my sweet baby..."

"But I'm not," I sobbed. It was as if she couldn't hear me. I didn't know what hurt most: her not being able to hear me, or the grief in the dream that I wasn't hers, that she wasn't mine. The grief was like a black hole inside of me, except there was no bottom – it went on and on and on and I was sinking into it, drowning.

Then she was gone and Jamie was there, and we were both crying except that instead of sobs, the sounds of ringing came from his mouth.

"Jamie," I tried to ask him why he was crying like that but I had no voice. His crying got louder. I turned to him to put my arms around him but then he was gone and I was blinking through a film of tears.

I must have woken up then and gone downstairs. The next thing I knew I was on the phone and my father was telling me – or my mother, really – to come get him. I thought I was still dreaming. There was a scuffle, the phone clattered, and another man picked it up. He barked the address and told me that I'd better bring the money my father owed. Before I could ask how much, the phone clicked and the tone was beeping in my ear.

In the garage, I start up the car and get the heater running. It is after midnight. It almost seems like a storm is brewing – the temperature has plunged to the twenties. I am freezing despite my coat, despite the scarf that I wound around my neck. While I wait for the car to heat up, I count the little bit of cash that I have. Sixty-three dollars. I have no idea if it will be enough.

I pull out of the garage with a loud screech, puncturing the sure silence of the sleeping neighborhood. I cringe. The car needs steering fluid, but with my last bit of money going to pay off Dad's drinking bill, I don't imagine that I'll be getting that fixed anytime soon.

-

I see him as I pull up on the corner of the street, slumped over the back step of the grungy building, his body half-in the open doorway. There is the silhouette of a tall man standing over him, cast in shadow from the sharp light of the bar behind him, his arms crossed over his chest. He looks up as I get out of my car, pressing the door shut as quietly as I can. The wind bites into my cheeks as I walk towards them, gauging the strength evident in the barman's thick arms, the scowl sketched in his toughened features, his height and the frailty of my own father in comparison.

"You here for him?" the man asks in a low rumble and I nod. He looks me up and down, his expression unreadable in the shadows of the night. "You his kid?"

I nod again. My father moans and I try to ascertain whether or not he's been injured. I can't see any blood and he isn't unconscious. Not yet, at least.

"How much does he owe you?"

The barman tilts his head back a little. "Aren't you a little young to be handlin' your Daddy's affairs?"

I slide my hands into my pockets. "I have sixty-three dollars, is that enough?"

He studies me for another moment and I pull back my shoulders a little, consciously aware of my aloneness, of my diminutive height and the thinness of my figure. The barman sighs.