All We Leave Behind

All We Leave Behind - Chapter Nine

Nine

There was a rather fast knock at my door.

“John wake up.” Opening my eyes was far more challenging than it usually was. I felt exhausted. All I could do was respond with a noise that sounded similar to the word ‘what’ but I knew it was missing the ‘T’ noise.

“Look I’m coming in.”

“Yeah, sure.” My attempt at speaking was actually audible that time as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I felt like I’d only slept three hours and when I looked at the clock I realized it was because I’d only slept three hours. Adam entered the room and handed me the phone.

“It’s your psycho bitch sister.”

“My sister?”

“Yeah she kept screaming at me to speak to you.” I could hear her yelling John into the phone. I put the phone closer to my ear making sure to keep a little distance for the safety of my ear drums.

“Jen?”

“Jesus fucking Christ John I could fucking kill you!” I held the phone a little further away from my ear. “I was going to fucking call in a missing person’s report John. I fucking thought, I fucking thought…” She was choking up. “Fuck you!” The final fuck you was screamed with such a guttural force of anguish and anger. The scream was followed by the jarring sound made by a phone being slammed onto the receiver. I was certain she’d smashed her phone into pieces on her end.

“I take it she’s mad?”

“I’ve gotta go home.”

“You’re thirty-six and you’re going to let your lesbo sister drag you home just like that.”

“First off I’m thirty-seven and secondly stop calling her a lesbo she’s my sister for fucks sakes.” I was still tired. I was cranky at being woken up and after talking to Jen I felt guilty. I was under no obligation to tell her where I was going but I could understand, so soon after our brother’s death why she was so upset. “Look sorry, I snapped. She’s my sister and I’d really appreciate if you’d stop calling her lesbo, or rug muncher, or any other derogatory name you can think up. She’s all the family I’ve got.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll try, honestly I will, I just...” He paused as if catching himself from digging a deeper hole. After awhile of just staring at the floor he looked back up at me. “Fuck it you’re right, I was just being a dick.” He turned and started to leave but stopped in the door way to spin around. “Look, stay one more night, go back tomorrow. I wanted to have some people over, people you should meet.”

“I really should get going.”

“Look we had some rough times. Let’s leave it on a good note, besides, she sounds like she could use a day or two to cool down anyway. She’ll go all psycho crazy bitch on you if you go back now.” I winced. “Hey I didn’t call her a lesbo now did I?” Adam’s grin made you forgive whatever it was he had just said. It was working as usual. He turned once again to leave the room. “Try to get some sleep, you look like shit.”

“Thanks.” I muttered laying back down on the bed. It’s amazing how hard it can be to fall back to sleep when your mind is racing. I kept envisioning my sister fuming over me, bitching to Rachel about how inconsiderate I’d been. She was overreacting of course, but there would be no communicating that to her. When she was upset she was incapable of rational thought and with the way she was screaming at me on the phone, I knew she was well beyond upset. Adam was right though. There was no point in rushing back to see her. She needed some time to simmer down. Give Rachel time to talk her down. Rachel was so calm, the two of them a perfect Ying and Yang.