The Blue

5. Strangers

Place is a mess. Place is always a mess; takeout boxes and beer cans, bags of trash I meant to take out. Cramped, small. Two rooms, and I haven't entered one of them in months.

I twist open the burgundy cap and take two burning swallows from the bottle of Jameson. Probably shouldn't be drinking so soon after a concussion. Still, I killed a family. That merits some self-destruction.

Killed some people. I stagger back onto my couch, and my stomach seems to keep falling.

Murderer. An innocent family. Children.

Like the earth split in half right in front of me and I'm staring down eight-thousand miles of steep cliff. Did I kill a family? Two people, probably better people than me—almost certainly, statistically—and I erased them? Three people, if the little girl goes too.

Admitting that is like jumping down the eight-thousand mile cliff, so I don't. Instead I drink some more. And more.

I grab the thin pillow and blanket and toss them aside, sit on the worn fabric of the couch and inhale the musty scent. The sneeze it brings is like knives in my stomach, but at least it smells like home. 

Drink some more. And more. And then, more drinking. Enough to ignore what I've done; another long pull at the bottle of Jameson. Half empty. And more. 

What a pessimist. Half full, I mean.

I lean back. Painkillers and the rush of the incoming drunkness suck my brain away from my eyes, and darkness tugs at the edge of my vision until I'm pulled so far back I'm disconnected from myself. Finally, I'm not a murderer and things are peaceful and I'm not a murderer.

It hurts to hear it, but someone is knocking at my door. Steady. Weak, but persistent. Just rat-a-tat-tat, then they pause for a few seconds, then rat-a-tat-tat.

Can tell a lot by the way someone knocks. They've given the rat-a-tat about ten times now. That's persistence. They're not going away.

I lift my hand up from the couch, hold it between myself and the dim glow coming through the curtains. My hand feels heavy, smooth. I'm still drunk. It hasn't been very long since I passed out. Good—I won't be hungover for a while.

I jerk forward and let out a guttural groan that grows into a moaning song as I stumble up, put my hand on the knob and twist.

There's a man and woman, mid-fifties, standing in the hallway, right sides of their faces lit up by a dirty yellow light bulb. 

"Yes?" I ask. "Can I help you?"

"Derek?" the man asks, eyes wet.

"I'm Derek Weaver, yeah." I wait; they stare at me. "Can I help you with something?"

"Derek, are you okay?" the woman asks, voice torn with fear. She looks at me like no one ever has before: with an expression of total horror. Like there is a knife jutting out of my skull.

"What? Who are you?" I ask.

Shock wraps my chest in its bug-leg grip. I stand, stunned by the expressions on these stranger's faces. Please, God, don't be related to the family who died. I bet that's it.

"Derek, it's me. Your mom," my would-be mother says. "Natalie called us, she said there was an accident. We just got back from the hospital, they said you'd been released. What happened to you?"

Blink, blink.

"...Mom?" I squint at her. Shoulder-length hair cut neat, just above her shoulders, silver strands curled at the tips. All the drama and tension of fifty hard years etched into her face. Fat hangs in low rings under her eyes and jaw, a lost war with gravity. She looks tired, like she's been up for days.

Could this be Mom?

All the data is correct. She's the right size and shape.

And, the man at her side looks an awful lot like Dad. Vicious 'V' in his hairline, black and silver hair combed straight back. Hard eyes. Tough guy, six five, hairy.

All the characteristics. Why don't I recognize them? Who would dress up like my parents just to fool me?

"I had a concussion," I mumble. The woman who insists she's my mother rushes in, pushes the door open, wraps an arm around me. She floats me across the living room on a stream of worried murmurs. I lay back on the couch.

"Can you remember us at all?" Dad asks, towering over me, tall form blocking the light. I swear he sounds disappointed, like I did this on purpose.

I try and summon a memory of Dad. It's easy—the first time he hated one of my paintings. Resentment: still functioning. Can picture the hand on his chin, the sagging shoulders. What about his face, though? I try hard to imagine the eyes, nose, and mouth...but they won't come. Infuriating.

"I remember having a Dad, sure. But you don't look like him."

"Your birthday is July 1st, 1977. Your name is Derek Weaver, you were a twelve-pound baby and you smoked too much pot when you were in high school. You didn't have a full-time job until you were twenty-five and you—"

"Okay, I get it. You must be my Dad. I'm just...confused." My voice cracks; it hurts when I breathe. I try to lean forward but Mom gently pushes me back down.

"You look pale, lie down," Mom says. "Let me call the ambulance."

"Please, no ambulance. You can drive me faster. He said...the doctor said there might be some brain damage. Great." I realize what this means the moment I say it. Brain damage. Fuck. "Fine, yeah. Let's go, take me."

My parents hover over me, looking down. I stand and begin walking toward the door. Feeling trapped; need to move.

"Have you been drinking?" the woman asks, looking at the Jameson. "After a head injury, is that smart?"

I stop pacing the living room and lift a hand to my hair, running it through the short, straight strands.

"In the accident, there were two cars." Voice cracks. The need to cry is an eerie fire inside me. I swallow, set my jaw. After a deep breath, those flames quiet and I speak again. "Two of the three passengers died. The other one is brain-dead, in a coma."

And two of them were kids. Can't even say that part, the fire is too hot.

"Well, it wasn't your fault, right? They hit you?" Dad asks.

"It wasn't my fault. I just...my tire blew up, I lost control. I turned the wheel, nothing happened. I used the brakes, I did everything right, but my car wouldn't turn. I hit them, but it wasn't my fault." My voice catches again, and I stop talking. The fire in my chest climbs up to my cheeks and my eyes are wet from it.

"Then you shouldn't feel bad," Dad says. His voice sounds good, much stronger than I feel. "It's not your fault. You're a victim. Could have been an earthquake, what's the difference? It was just a freak accident, something out of the blue."

"You are just slightly less unlucky than they are," Mom adds, forcing a smile.

This quenches the burning in my chest until it only smolders below the surface, below the drunkenness that numbs me. "Yeah," I say. "I know. I know, I know. Let's just go to the hospital. I want to know what's wrong with my brain, if this is permanent or temporary or why the hell I can't recognize you."