Echoes

Part 32

Within seconds of saying those words, I found myself in the kitchen of my childhood home. I wasn't sure what year it was, but I could tell by Zoe's haircut and how much older she looked that 2007 had long since passed. She was sitting on the couch watching a television show I didn't recognize. Her hair was a mess, her eyes were full of burst blood vessels, and she looked as if she'd slept under an underpass the previous night. She scratched the skin of her arms in jerky, impulsive movements and continually clutched her head.

"I feel like shit," she groaned to herself. She channel surfed for a few moments before settling on a trashy talk show that we always used to watch together. The woman on the television screen was complaining about her boyfriend who had apparently slept with her sister and may very well have been the father of her sister's toddler. She went on and on about how betrayed she felt, how her sister was dead to her, and how she could forgive her boyfriend because they hadn't known each other as long but her sister had hurt her in ways there was no coming back from.

"Stupid bitch," Zoe muttered. "Do you even know what those words mean? She's not dead to you till she's dead. I'd fucking kill to have my sister back. She could fuck every boyfriend I ever get for all I care."

I cringed. She reminded me so much of our father, so hung-over that you wondered if he was still drunk, having angry, slurred conversations with himself, the radio, the television, or any combination of the two. She clutched her stomach before bolting upright and running to the sink. She retched for several minutes before rinsing her mouth out.

"Knew I shouldn't have skipped breakfast," she mumbled to herself. With that, she opened up the liquor cabinet. What had once been chock full of dozens of never opened bottles of liquor was now down to one single container of vodka. It was three-fourths of the way empty.

"Shit, did she drink all of this?" I asked Sam, knowing he had to be somewhere nearby.

"She's been nursing it for the past two or three weeks," he answered evenly.

"You're going to blow out your liver you idiot!" I yelled at her, not giving a damn about the fact that she couldn't hear me.

"Fuck," Zoe snapped as she eyed the contents of the liquor cabinet. "I'll be lucky if this gets me through the morning."

Despite her displeasure she grabbed the bottle of vodka and chugged it as if it were water. I scrunched my face up in disgust. She sighed deeply as she finished it. She turned towards the fridge and cast a wary glance at something I couldn't place. Within a few moments I realized she was glaring at a picture of me. It was from my freshman year of high school. I was standing in front of a roller coaster at an amusement park and grinning about who knew what.

"You shut, up," Zoe said. "I already know what you would say." She laughed ruefully before continuing in a high-pitched mocking voice. "You'd go 'This has to stop. I love you, okay? Talk to me. You can't do this to yourself anymore or to Giselle. You're drinking too much, Zoe, you're acting like Dad'." My eyes widened. These were the exact words I had said to her when I thought she'd raided the liquor cabinet. Something had been real about that interaction after all, my delusion just hadn't allowed me to see it for what it really was.

"Well fuck you, Shira," Zoe shouted, before yanking the picture off of the fridge. "You bailed; you don't get to tell me anything." She shook her head as she looked at the now empty bottle. "This is fucking useless now," she said before throwing it across the room. She didn't seem to notice or care as it shattered into a myriad of pieces. I watched helplessly as Zoe went to the fridge in what seemed to be a rage. She grabbed a carton of juice and... Rubbing alcohol? Who kept rubbing alcohol in their fridge?

 I watched in horror as she poured juice into a large glass, stopping when it was three-quarters full. I already knew what she was going to do. She filled the rest of the glass with rubbing alcohol, mixed it lazily, and then gulped it down as if it was the nectar of the gods. Relief seemed to flood her, and her pupils dilated. The grin on her face told me she was more physically dependent on alcohol than our father had ever been.