NaNoWriMo Draft: 2010
Christopher Malo

They say that the good die young. That may be true. It’s wonderful to think that some may make it to old age, but others are lucky to make it to middle-age. They also say there are difference between houses and homes. But one thing they have in common are walls. The walls may not be the same but they are what holds up the roof and connects it to the foundation.
On the outside all houses look essentially the same. But what happens inside differs. It’s where babies are conceived, it’s where secrets are made, it’s where hearts are broken, its where we come together and fall apart. Sometimes in the same house. Sometimes all at the same time.

Fall was always one of Travis’ favorite seasons. More than any other time of year autumn had a distinct smell to it, bordering on a taste. He could inhale deeply and all five senses became engaged in the acute awareness that he now existed in the lull between the blaze of summer and the chill of winter. Nothing compared to throwing on an old hoodie, jeans that had been thoroughly broken in, and clutching a coffee in his hands that gave the sensation of being burnt, yet wasn’t painful enough to quite let go.
Lifting the garage door he stood looking down their driveway. They had lived in this house for nearly four years, but Travis still had not sucuumbed to the fact he was no longer in a major urban city. It wasn’t as much as he disliked living in a small town, he simply wasn’t used to it yet. And wasn’t entirely convinced he ever would get used to it.
“Fuck,” he mumbled to himself. He had quit smoking a almost a year and a half ago but days like this were made for a relaxing cigarette to go with his coffee and morning. Funny how he could go so long without the thought of sneaking one, and suddenly he became consumed by it. He was never able to make it to far in the justification process though. Abbey was, supposedly depending on the day/hour/month/mood in recovery, but she he found himself never quite believing her. It seemed like she relapsed more often then she ceebrated and got one of those keyrings. He had never minded until the kids were born.
When they started dating he was into the trainwreck natureof their relationship. Aways drama. And Travis liked playing the good samaritan or superhero role. It was his job to come in, clean them off, save them and have the best version to show off. It never quite worked like this, but it was the guiding theory that he adhered to. Apparently.
When they started dating she liked to party. Shit, they both did. It was no big thing. Smoke some weed, gobble some pills, get drunk, blow lines, fuck like animals. Eventually Abbey began talking like she thought she wasn’t going to be able to stop. Travis paid half attention to her, dismissing her recovery attempts as a phase, just the way partying was. Something they would grow out of. And when Travis got his shit together and began to take on responsibilities and show p for life, it became clearer and clearer that Abey wasn’t going to have the same ease of sliding from one stage of life to the next. And it became obvious.
Like the good boyfriend Travis was though, he hung in there. Mistaking codependance for love, instead of loving her but walking away, he married her. And when that didn’t work, they decided to have their first child eight years ago, Samantha. Samantha was beautiful, but it may not of been the right thing or at least at the right time. When Lucinda came along four years later, it was totally unexpected.
Maybe he would make an excuse to run to the store and buy a pack of smokes. Abbey was inside with the girls making some breakfast. He weighed the likelihood that some gum and the coffee would cover up the smell of tobacco on his breath, but in the end he decided against it. Not for any moral reason, he just didn’t feel like going to the store.
Making amental note to buy a pack and stash it for times liek this, Travis turned around and looked over the inside of their garage. It had been one of the selling points when they purchased the house. Not the kitchen, not the master bedroom, the fucking garage. He and Abbey were both artists and they wanted space set aside for them. The inside of the house would be geared for the kids but the three car garage would be theirs to turn into a studio, which is exactly what they did. One of the advantages of home-schooling was that all four of their lives were not dictated by any schedule other than the one they set for themselves. Each member had come to find their own niche in their own family and one of Abbey’s was to tutor Sam and Lucy.
One of Travis’ responsabilities had been to transform the garage space and he had done so. Not that it was terribly organized, what artist space ever is, but there was some semblance of order within the chaos. The walls had all been painted a grey-blue. There were various work tables pushed against the walls, each with a project, painting, drawing or sculpture in some stage of completion. The only rule had been to not allow anything dangerous beow waist level so that the kids would be able to roam in the studio with relatively little fear that they might find something dangerous. All exacto knives were up high and all the paints and chemicals were stored at adult levels as well.
“Want some pancakes Trav?” The door between the garage and house had swung open nd what looked like a blonde-haired levetating head appeared, begging th question.
“No thanks Ab. Want to try and get some stuff done. There’s a painting I had started a few weeks ago and I had an idea of what I might want to do wih it.
“K…” she said, as her head disappeared. Judging by the clarity in her eyes and her voice, Trav was fairly sure she hadn’t used. By this point he was fairly used to all the signs. She also knew this and would occasionally try and twist him up or keep him off balance by doing something different, but if you know anything about addicts, at the end of the day they are creatures of habit, and those habits tend to die hard. It had been a while since the last time he caught her doing dope, but she had also become fairly good at hiding it. The admissions were something he hated to admit and preferred to deny, but his ability to do so had become difficult when he became a father.
Walking over to the tble he set his coffee down and looked at the canvas. He picked up the brush and begn to add onto what had already been there, with a new sense of direction and purpose. His hands seemed to work independantly of his mind. The brush smeared acrylic over acrylics and over the canvas. His mind began to wander to places that he tried vehemently to ward off, and while sometimes he was successful in doing this, this wasn’t going to be one of those times. He felt himself slipping slowly and painfully into a hole and a place that he would of preferred not to go, stirring up unresolved feelings and emotions.
He just couldn’t fucking stop thinking about her. Anything about her. Everything about her. The way she moved, the way she talked, the way she felt, the way she fucked, the way she thought. If there was anything not to like about her he had yet to find it. It was the best feeling in the world and it was the most painful feeling in the world.
When he heard the scream, he was sure if he had been on the other side of the state it would of still been as loud and piercing. It was not an ordinary scream, but the one that instantly transimits the sense of urgency, one that trancends a typical yell from a child. Surely it was the substance of a program somewhere on the Discovery channel about the ways that young are able to communicate with their birth parents without using actual words. The noise sent Travis racing inside the house. 
“What’s wrong Samantha?” Travis yelled as he broke the plane of the doorway, passing from the creative world to the world of immediacy and family.
“She out her hand on the stove Trav. She’s burnt pretty bad.”
“What the fuck Ab? You are supposed to be watching her.”
“Is now really the time for a lecture? We need to get  her to the hospital. Grab Luc, I will drive.”
Staring at her in a direct and firm way, Travis replied a solemn, “I will drive.” Part of living with an addict, recovering or not, is that everything is immediately suspect. Including the idea that “This wouldn’t of happened if you were clean. You say you are clean, but…” These were things that would have to be dealt with later though. Travis hit his knees to survey the burn. Tears were streamig down the face of Samantha. Recently she had bee displaying traits that no mother or father would be proud of, including compulsively lieing and stealing, but the blistering on her little hand was did not lie. Abbey had gone to the freezer and gotten ice cubes and a facecloth to put on the burn. While Abbey attended to Samantha, Travis scooped Lucy from the floor. Before the commotion she had been sitting on the floor with her crayons and markers and drawing on the wall. In most houses this would get someone in trouble, but in the Dwyer household, it was actualy encouraged. By everyone. In fact, it wasn’t just the children that took to the walls as a form of expression. All four of them did and they repainted the walls every six months or so to start over and refresh. They found that was about the amount of time that it took to fill the walls of the house from waist level down for the kids and waist level up for the parents.  Lucy was just beginging to scribble on the walls, and hers was less of a way of communicating and just being creative, as opposed to using it as an outlet as both Travis and Abbey did and were teaching Samntha to. At least when her hands weren’t swollen and blistered.
Little Lucy didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she could surely sense that things were off balance and not right. She had begun to cry too.
“You should of fucking been watching the stove Ab. There’s only one thing you have to do when cooking, absolutely have to do and that’s make sure the fucking kids don;t get burnt.”
“But…” Abbey started.
“No. Really. It’s actually that simple. Wrap a blanket around Sam, putting a jacket on will hurt her hand. I will grab a coat for Lucy and we will go.

At the hospital, Samantha was quickly admitted and treated. The burns weren’t as bad as they originally looked. Not that any kind of burn on an 8 year old is a good thing or fun or ok, but in the end it could of been much worse. A point that Travis was going to make sure to drive home to Abbey. It wasn’t the only point to make or question to raise however. He had a sinking suspicion that Abbey was using. After a stop at McDonalds to treat everyone to sundaes, they were back at home trying to restore a sense of normalcy in a day that’s natural equilibrium and balance had been shot, and would remain so, no matter was was done to try and battle or overcome it. It was an effort that was done for the kids, not for themselves. Abbey knew she would find herself in Travis’ crosshairs. She was right.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t using,” he asked her, barely audible as they stood on the kitchen, both kids on the ground and drawing on the wall.
“I swear. Trav, I swear.” She looked him dead in the eyes, but she had done that and lied plenty of times before. It was as if she wanted him to look in her eyes, but she only wanted to convey what she wanted to convey. Sometimes that meant the truth, but not always. He could never be quite sure which of those times this was.
“I would love to believe you. I looked at you this morning and was sure. But I’m not anymore.” 
Spinning on her heels she marched upstairs. The kids sat either not paying attention or pretending not to pay attention as Travis surveyed the kitchen and decided what to do next. Returning a few minutes later, Abbey marched through the kitchen, grabbed the keys to their car and walked out the door without saying a word. Travis just stared at the door for a good minute after she left, considering the myriad of possibilities of what that could mean.
He walked over to Samantha and Lucy.
“Scootch over,” he said as he extended his hand as if shaking someone’s hand, but moving it side to side. “Make room for daddy.” He sat between both his daughters and looked at the wall and tried to make out what was going on. As usual Lucy had been using purple and green markers, her current favorites, to draw different shapes and squiggles. She had gotten much better over the past few months. For a good 18 months it has simply looked like she had thrown the crayons and markers at the wall, but recently they had been taking some shape, showing an increase in the development of her brain. What she drew now had almost a cloudlike result It became an excercise in something he and Abbey used to do all the time when they were younger. Some some weed, and lie on the grass at her parents house and stare at the clouds in the sky and try to decipher what they were and come up with a story to go along with them. It was something cliche but it was also something sweet. The clud really wasn’t a helicopter landing on Jesus or a plane about to fly into a dog’s head. But it kinda looked that way. Lucys drawings kind of happned the same way. Unless she really was drawing a bell falling through a lake or a boat sitting in grass. He kissed her on her head and knowing that she was ok for the moment turned his attention to Samantha.

At the hospital, Samantha was quickly admitted and treated. The burns weren’t as bad as they originally looked. Not that any kind of burn on an 8 year old is a good thing or fun or ok, but in the end it could of been much worse. A point that Travis was going to make sure to drive home to Abbey. It wasn’t the only point to make or question to raise however. He had a sinking suspicion that Abbey was using. After a stop at McDonalds to treat everyone to sundaes, they were back at home trying to restore a sense of normalcy in a day that’s natural equilibrium and balance had been shot, and would remain so, no matter was was done to try and battle or overcome it. It was an effort that was done for the kids, not for themselves. Abbey knew she would find herself in Travis’ crosshairs. She was right.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t using,” he asked her, barely audible as they stood on the kitchen, both kids on the ground and drawing on the wall.
“I swear. Trav, I swear.” She looked him dead in the eyes, but she had done that and lied plenty of times before. It was as if she wanted him to look in her eyes, but she only wanted to convey what she wanted to convey. Sometimes that meant the truth, but not always. He could never be quite sure which of those times this was.
“I would love to believe you. I looked at you this morning and was sure. But I’m not anymore.” 
Spinning on her heels she marched upstairs. The kids sat either not paying attention or pretending not to pay attention as Travis surveyed the kitchen and decided what to do next. Returning a few minutes later, Abbey marched through the kitchen, grabbed the keys to their car and walked out the door without saying a word. Travis just stared at the door for a good minute after she left, considering the myriad of possibilities of what that could mean. He hoped she was upset and going to call her sponsor or make a meeting. But he doubted it.
He walked over to Samantha and Lucy.
“Scootch over,” he said as he extended his hand as if shaking someone’s hand, but moving it side to side. “Make room for daddy.” He sat between both his daughters and looked at the wall and tried to make out what was going on. As usual Lucy had been using purple and green markers, her current favorites, to draw different shapes and squiggles. She had gotten much better over the past few months. For a good 18 months it has simply looked like she had thrown the crayons and markers at the wall, but recently they had been taking some shape, showing an increase in the development of her brain. What she drew now had almost a cloudlike result It became an excercise in something he and Abbey used to do all the time when they were younger. Some some weed, and lie on the grass at her parents house and stare at the clouds in the sky and try to decipher what they were and come up with a story to go along with them. It was something cliche but it was also something sweet. The clud really wasn’t a helicopter landing on Jesus or a plane about to fly into a dog’s head. But it kinda looked that way. Lucys drawings kind of happned the same way. Unless she really was drawing a bell falling through a lake or a boat sitting in grass. He kissed her on her head and knowing that she was ok for the moment turned his attention to Samantha.
“How you doing baby girl?” Travis asked, watching as she used her left hand to try and draw something.
“I can’t draw Daddy,” she replied, frustrated with having to use the hand she was not accustomed to drawing with. Travis noted that she didn’t respond to him addressing the status of the hand she had burnt and he took that as a good thing. “I have to use my bad hand.”
“It’s ok, it’s not really a bad hand. It’s a hand that you don’t use as much. Maybe this is a good chance to practice with it. I bet you come up with some things that you couldn’t of with your other hand,” he replied. “Here, I will make a deal with you. I will use my other hand too.” While usually pretty good at executing with his hand what his mind saw, even Samantha could notice the sharp difference in what and how Travis drew with his other hand. “That looks funny Daddy,” she giggled. He tried to draw a cloud raining flowers down on girl’s head, but even with all his years of expereince, it came out more like a pink turd with oddly shaped ballons dropping out of the bottom.
“Samantha, I want to tell you a story.”

(Insert story)

Looking up, Travis knew without even having to look. Abbey walked in the door. When Abbey walked in the door, she was high as a kite. Trav jumped up from between the girls to confront her.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked her, grabbing her by the arm and leading her to the hallway, out of earshot and out of view.
“Well if you fucking think I am high, I might as well be high Trav, right? I mean, what’s the point of staying clean if I still fuck up and let Sam burn herself and don;t have he support of my family who think I am high?” Travis stared incredulously at her eyes, both noting the size of her pupils and his own disbelief.
“I am taking the kids and leaving. We will be back later. Oh, and out of curiosity, how much time did you just throw away?”
“Why the fuck should I tell you Travis? It’s not like you would believe me.”
She had a good point.
He wanted to get away but he knew he couldn’t leave the kids with her. This was not the first time they had been down this road and chances are they would be here again. The routine was the same. Abbey relapses, the kids get dropped off at one of the parents house and either Travis or Abbey would be at the house, wondering where the other was, waiting for them to return and neither being in a position to demand or ask or expect any answers. It was a play that had been going on for many seasons. And like any roadway run, at the begining you work out the kinks, then you get in the routine and by the end everyone is fucking up out of boredom and lack of attention.
“Sam. Lucinda. Let’s go.” Both the girls got up. There were a good amount of fresh drawings before them. It had been a rather eventful day so far so he wasn’t that surprised. Travis made a mental note where on the wall the kids had been drawing and to take a look at it later. Sometimes it provided clues or insight into what the kid were thinking, how they were coping, or what was really going on with them when words failed or escaped them.

The three of them went upstairs, leaving Abbey downstairs to try and find an outlet for her nervous energy. There was a chance she would be trying to organize something with her boundless and nervous drug induced energy, but most likely she would head for the studio space and try and get some work done. And there was a part of Travis that didn’t mind. While he had been the one who garnered all the art related attention when they were younger, she had always been the one whose work brought in money. Neither one of them had ever had any formal jobs, but had always been able to support themselves, and the kids and buy the house with money they made from their artwork. Abbey came from an affluent background that offered her all the connections and opportunity that money could buy. She took advantage of this and had had a string of successful gallery shows. The problem was that, in her mond, her ability to be creative and produce had always been linked to her chemical consumption. Whether or not that was true did not matter. It was what she believed and how she acted. Since she had all the drugs in her system Travis suspected she would channel them towards producing.
Even though in their household Abbey may be the breadwinner, thy all pitched in. Travis artwork sold, although not as regularly and he wasn’t abl to bring in the same mount dollar for ddollar as his wife, he was a talented and capable artist. What he lacked in execution, he made up for having an ear to the streets and being able to successfully bridge what was happening there, with hs work and with buyers. The girls were involved as well. The household produced so much artwork that they began to seel the things Samantha and Lucy did on Ebay and Etsy, and after getting some media attention as a household that lives off the artwork they create, the buzz seemed to fuel the interest and demend in the girls work as well. Any money the girls brought in however went into special savings accounts for thwne they got older. But essentially all four of them pitched in.

Upstairs he went to the room the girls shared. Both girls flopped on their beds. Travis went to their closet and took out a backpack.
“Each of you pick out an outfit. We are going to go to Grammie and Grampies.” Well, he wasn’t sure that was completely true yet. He knew for a fact they were both going to his parents, but he wasn’t certain where he was headed.
“Why Dad?” asked Lucy. This was also a familiar crossroads that Travis found himself at frequently. He had made a vow to himself that he would never lie to his children. He didn;t even like shaving the truth. He felt in the end it only served to fuel kids distrust towards adults and in the end amongst people in general. But telling an 8 year old and a 4 year old that they were headed to their grandparents, again, because mom had found a flimsy excuse to go cop some coke, again, just seemed painfully hollow and unfair.
“They have been asking about you and want to see you. Plus you haven’t seen them in a while.
“Yes we did,” Samantha chimed in. “We were there last weekend.”
Fuck. She was right.
“Just pick out an outfit he told them.”

As the girls got busy doing that Travis slipped his cellphone out of his pocket. With a dash of his thumb he unlocked it, opened the address book, and searched the J’s. He saw the number he was looking for, Jeremy Carter, and just stared at the number. Of course it wasn’t Jeremy Carter’s number. In fact, he didn’t even know a Jeremy Carter, but it provided a layer of safety for protecting the identity of whose number it really was. He stared at the number for a minute, not even knowing why. He knew whose number it was, he knew what she looked like, what she smelled like, what she offered. He wasn’t even weighing any pros and cons. He was simply staring at wat the number implied for him. He locked the phone and put it back in his pocket.

After Sam and Lucy finished the same backpack stuffing of clothes routine happened in Travis’ room. Travis packed enough for two days.

The door closed and Abbey bounded for the front window. She was careful not to disturb the curtains and she kept a low profile so that she wouldn’t be seen. But she wanted to make sure they were gone and she had the house to herself.
“I love you,” she whispered out loud to all three of them. She knew they couldn’t hear but she hoped they could feel it. But deep down, and right on the surface, she knew they couldn’t. She knelt below the window defeated. Waves of guilt that weren’t unfamiliar overwhelmed her. She always seemed to open Oandora’s box once she thought she had sealed it forever, and it was hard to get her demons back into place. Her hand slipped down into the pocket of her jeans and she felt for the small corner of a baggie that had been sealed by a lighter. What looked like a white nugget was actually a powder. She held it up and became instantly hypnotized by it. Heroin addicts often talked about the allure and romance of the needle, but that had never appealed to her. What had always been her downfall was the rows and lines and bumps and rails of cocaine, laid out uniformly -the longer the bette- along a smooth, nonpourus surface. While the coke spoon may of had it’s heyday in the 70’s or 80’s, and paper cuurency was typically used, Abbey had indulged in a gold plated silver cocaine straw with the words “Like an addict I always want more” engraved on the side. It was 500 bucks spent on a purely frivolous and self indulgent gift to herself. In all the rehabs she had gone to and sworn she had gotten rid of all her drugs and paraphenalia, she was never able to part with this. Sure, some would of called it a reservation, but it was a 500 dollar coke straw for christssake. 
Baggie in one hand she made the rounds to the doors and made sure they were all locked. Sure, Trav had keys but at least it would slow him down and give her warning. Everyone else it just kept out. Feeling braver and more secure with each door locked and checked Abbey made her way upstairs to their bedroom. First she stopped in the hall to take the framed needlepoint of the Serenity Prayer her mother had given her off the way. Her mother had given it to her as a young child, unaware of the irony that the future held for both the prayer and the gift. Since it was framed with a glass cover, it provided the perfect surface to blow lines off of. The irony wasn’t lost on her, but it beat the options of the mirrors which Travis occasionally checked for residue and framed family photos which would just be too sacriligeous. Cocaine, purse and frame in tow she finally made it to her room. Inside she closed and locked the door. She headed for their bathroom, closed and locked the door. 
She sat on the toilet with her purse at her feet and the glass frame across her lap. She took the straw out and set it on top of the glass. She ripped the corner off the corner of the bag and the back of her throat began to water. Dumping the contents of the small glasine bag on the glass created a mini-mountain of powder. It seemed to expand once freed from the constraints of the baggie. Something Abbey did not mind. Next she took her maxed out American Express card from her purse and began to breakdown any chunks in the blow. Chop chop chop. Chop chop chop. She folded the coke over in itself to maek sure that she went through it all with the edge of her credit card, slicing from several different angles. Her brain knew that she was under a minute from getting that devil powder inside her. Chop chop chop. Chop chop chop.
Once satisfied she licked her finger, running it over the edge of the credit card she had used to pulvarize the cocaine, then ran it over her gums on the top front of her mouth numbing them. It wasn’t something that gave a really good high, but it was all aprt of the process. She repeated the same action with the other side of the card and the bottom front gums. Without a second missed she grabbed her gold plated silver coccaine straw, briefly looked skywards, muttered “I’m sorry,”plugged her one nostril putting the straw up the other and ripped the first line of coke. If there had been any doubt that cocaine was the perfect drug, that thoought disappeared and was replaced with “cocaine is the most perfect thing ever.” It wasn’t a concious thought but a more subtle recognition.
The next few minutes became something of a mundane repitition of this ceremony, accompanied by an escalating heartbeat. Abbey wondered how much her heart could take or if it might explode. She doubted it, but was willing to risk it regardless. And suddenly it was gone. All the cocaine was gone. And suddenly all the anticipation and chemical lust was replaced with a crippling sensation of fear and lonliness. It was still not something she regretted. But now she wanted more.
Knowing with no money and no car the chances of being able to score more coke were probably pretty limited. She rocked back and forth on the toilet.
“I know I am a good mother. I fucking no it. So what if I like to party, everyone likes to party. What happened this morning was not my fault. It could happen to anybody. God I love you Samantha, Mommy never meant to hurt you. Those burns look like they hurt. God I am an aweful mommy. I mean who would let something like that happen to their daughter? Maybe Travis is right. Maybe I failed because I should of been watching the stove, I should of been paying closer attention. Why. Why? I hate mysef. I hate myself. I just wish that it would all end. I just wish that I was gone, that I was just gone and it was all over. Sam and Lucy don;t deserve a mother like me and Travis deserves to be happy. He stays because of the kids I just know it. I know it. Why, oh why, oh why me?”
As She began to trail off and her monolouge turned intomore and more incoherant rumblings she began to get up. Avoiding looking at herself in the mirror, Abbey emerged, first from the bathroom, then from her bedroom. Instead of heading to the garage to try and work, she instead went to the girls room and laid down in Samantha’s bed. She reached over the side of the bed and grabbed a handful of markers and began drawing on the wall. The one rule was that words were not allowed. Abbey couldn’t write the word sorry, but instead had to try and figure out how to represent that pictorial. High on cocaine. 
Abbey gazed at the walls and there wasn’t much space left on the walls. The girls usually covered these walls first, spending a good amount of time in their room, whether it was supposed to be sleeping or supposed to be doing schoolwork, they naturally ended up there often and by default filled their own wals first. But Abbey got a bright idea, bright at least to her, and decided to move the dresser out of the way. The girls were not strong enough to do something like this on their own and Abbey knew she would find some blank canvas there to work on. High on the drugs she didn’t even take one drawer out, but managed through several tugs and pulls and grunts to slide one of the corners of the long dresser out. She didn’t move both ends, but only one side, essentially creating a V and a nook for her to sit in behind the back of the dresser and between the wall. Sitting there indian style she licked her lips and pressed the tip of the sharpie against the virginal paint.
She wasn’t sure what was going to come out of her, but she rarely did. She started at the baseboard by eeking out what looked like bricks. One on top of another, one next to each other. Stack stack stack. Lost in her high she continued the repetative motion until she had hundreds of bricks stacked about three rows wide and maybe 100 bricks high. They were small bricks, and while she had started by bending down as she sat to draw at the base of the wall, she now needed to extend her torso and look up to continue stacking. When eventualy she could no longer sit and do this, she stood, continuing to draw her brick wall. Stack stack stack. She did the same thing that she had done sitting, continuing to draw until her arms were stretched above her head. When she couldn’t do that anymore successfully, she climbed on top of the dresser and continued the wall. She was almost at the very top, the point where the wall meets the ceiling when she stopped. The space between the top of the bricks and the ceilings was only a few inches. And in that space Abbey drew what looked like herself scaling the wall, going from one side to the other. When she was done she leaned back to survey her work. Even as the artist she wasn’t completely sure if she was running toward one thing or escaping another, but it was clear she was trying to go from one side to another, in the smallest of spaces and things were getting rather tight.

He kissed both the girls on their heads.
“I love you Samantha.
“I love you Dad.”
“I love you Lucy.”
“I wuv you dada.”
Travis looked up at his parents who simply and wordlessly started back at him. He gave a virtually inperceptible nod of his head and lwft.

He didn’t need to explain to them. They had never liked Abbey and had been pretty vocal in the begining. At first Travis chalked it up to being that they were poor and from the city and Abbey was affluent and from the burbs. In reality it had nothing to do with that. They just knew that Abbey would bleed Travis dry, in ways that had nothing to do with money. And they were right. But being young and thinking you know the world, you don;t tend to listen or realize that your parents were usually right, until you are older, it’s too late, and you are bumping your head for yourself. Those youthful years have to be full of bruises and arrogance to alloww for the sweet and trender surrender that comes later in life.
Travis got in his car, drove a few blocks and pulled over in front of a supermarket. Taking the phone from his pocket, he opened it up and thumbed to Jeremy Carter. After staring at it and weighing things in his brain, he told his brain to stop thinking and he pressed the call button to let whatever was going to happen, happen.
“Travis?”
“Hey. I wasn’t sure you would answer.”
“Of course I would. I don’t know what to say. It’s been a while.”
The kick in Travis’ stomach made him want to vomit. The contradictions and forces pulling him in different directions was palpable. He wanted to cry, he wanted to smile, he wanted to fight, he wanted to fuck. He wanted her.
“Will you meet me?” It was a question he had heard himself asking her in his dreams. On more than one occasion Abbey has roused him from a state in between sleep and awake, asking who I wanted to meet.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea Trav. I just don’t know.” But he gave her the rope and time to hang herself, like he knew she would.
“Where.” It was a statement more than a question.
He wanted to fuck her. Bad. He needed to get it out of his system to be allow room to make love to her like he wanted to too. With some people meeting somewhere in public would insure that things would be kept platonic and lines wouldn’t be crossed, but they had fucked in more than a few bathrooms and alleys to know that being around her in general was dangerous. He had always been up front with her about his situation, but it mattered little what they told each other. They lied to themselves well enough to believe that it could possibly go well and wouldn’t have a tragic ending. In fact before they met in person for the first time, they confessed that they secretly hoped it all went badly and that the sex was horrible. Neither scenario happened and it left them with a predicament that they thought they were willing and able to deal with. Until they had to deal with it. That had been almost a year ago, and a good eight months since the last time they had seen each other. 
It would appear that Travis was able to compartamentalize different parts of his life, but he had always thought that people who did that were conveniently selective for the purpose of orchestrating an outcome to their liking. Which on one hand he was probably just as guilty of. Except that when it came down to it he compartamentalized because he was deeply and truely conflicted. And unsure of how to navigate his feelinggs. So putting each thing in their place where they didn’t overlap seemed like the most efficient way of dealing or not dealing with this.
“Meet me at the Low Bar in the city in an hour. Can you make it?”
“I will be there.”
“Thanks.”
Click.

Travis got there early knowing she would be late.
He ordered a Heiniken and nursed it slowly. After 15 minutes he began to consider she might of bailed. He pushed that thought out of his mind, but it wouldn’t completely disappear. She got there about 20 minutes late. Even in the dimly lit dive bar she looked stunning. She looked radiant. She was short, dark haired, eyes that both smiled and hid the pain, a smile that betrayed her and a body to kill for. She called herself a meatball, but he liked them that way. Se had great tits and an even better ass. Unlike most girls these days she didn’t completely shave her pussy or whittle the pubic hair down to a landing strip. She kept it natural but trimmed. Something he never would of guessed he would go for, but with her, it was better than just acceptible for some unexplainable reason.
“Hi,” she said coyly, sliding onto the barstool next to him. Once they were in each other’s company they couldn’t take their eyes off one another. Neither wanted 8 months to go by again. They wanted to soak in every second.
“So let me guess. Did she relapse again?”
Travis hated his own predicability.
“You know you don’t need to make an excuse to see me. Unless you just need a reason to ease your concience.”
Damn. She was coming out strong right out of the box. The last time he disapeared must of really stung. He didn;t want to go in and out of her life. It seemed life just dictated it. And he continued to both fight it and surrender to it.
“I’m sorry. I end things because I have to. Or think I have to. But I can’t stop… You know. Shit sounds so cliche I don’t even want to say it.”
“Then don’t.”
The waiter came over. She ordered a red wine. In a dive bar.
“So why are we here Travis?”
“I don’t even know. I wish I had a better reason, a better explanation.”
He meant it.
“How have you been?” he asked, trying to change the subject, get to some lighter middle ground.
“I have been ok. My dad’s still in the hospital. Still at the same job. Still seeing that guy.”
His baseless jealousy flared. She was seeing someone, he had a wife. She wanted to be with him and would be, but he rejected her for a relationship he didn’t want to be in. Did he stay for the kids? He wished he could bump into girls he could fuck and not fall in love with. Apparently this wasn’t his strong suit.
The continued to drink, they continued to talk. Both danced around the heavy subjects and waited until they were drunk enough to abandon the niceties and start the flirting and sexual innuendos. It didn’t take long before Travis went to go piss and texted her from the bathroom, telling her which stall to come find him in.
At this point there was no talk and no reason to talk. He got her in the stall, locked the door and pinned her to the wall wwall y her neck. He heard her gasp a little and the sound made his cock start to grow. He pressed his mouth up against hers and their tongues began to snake around one anothers. With one hand on her throat, the other worked its way over her body, never quite sure of what it wanted to grab next. It started with grabbing her tits, pinching her nipples before sliding down over her stomach and between her legs. She let out another gasp as he grabbed her by the pussy. Rubbing her box he began to feel her hips start to thrust and gyrate, pressing up against his hand. He undid her button and unzipped her fly, pulled her panties out and slid his fingers through her pubic hair until he reachered her clit. It was already warm and damp and after a few seconds it was wet.
“Take my cock out,” he instructed her. She did as she was told, freeing his hard dick from his jeans. He was already hard, but feeling her warm hands, her warm hands, on the shaft almost put him over the edge.
Grabbing her by the hair and forcing her to her knees there was no mistaking what he wanted and he wasted no time at all guiding his swollen member to her warm mouth. Without regard to what she wanted (because he knew it was what she wanted) he started fucking her face. She knew exactly what to do with him and the wetness and sound of her gagging on it had him pull out before lost it. He pulled her back to her feet, slapped her face for almost making him cum from sucking him off and then pushed her face first against the stall wall. With her pants already undone, a few tugs and he slid her jeans over her ass and pushed them down far enough to let her spead her legs enough to allow him to enter her from behind. Which he did. With much force and little consideration for her. Thrust after thrust he drove his cock deep inside her, all the while in her ear telling her he didn’t want to hear a word from her. Thrust thrust thrust. You like that you dirty bitch? Thrust thrust thrust. Another area of compartimentalization. He didn’t really think she was a dirty slut. Or whore, or nasty bitch. The truth was he loved her. And one of the reasons he loved her is because he got to fuck her like this. And he knew she loved it almost as much as him. Thrust thrust thrust. The build up of the day didn’t deaden the expereince but only served to heighten it and within a few minutes he had her on her knees again, catching every last drop of his ejaculation.
That out of the way, they were back at the bar, in a booth a little more sober, a little less sexual tension, the awkwardness and small talk out of the way.
They sat confessing feelings, ignoring realities and pretending that it could and was going to work out. Every time Travis tried to and almost had the door to this part of his life closed, he always managed to not only open it back up again, but blow it off he hinges.
Why was that?

Time sometimes passes and whatever seems like unsurmountable drama at the time inevitably comes to pass. As did Abbey’s coke binge and Travis’ daliances with his former/current flame. Neither one came to a head tat night, or on the same night, but before long Abbey was back in meetings and Travis had called things off with her. There was no way to tell the long term effects, but in a world of such immediacy and instant gratification, neither could guarantee they would be around for the long haul. In whatever form that might take.
In addition, Abbey had somehow managed to find a way to remain productive, while not needing the crutch of a chemical inspiration or fuel. Their family life almost seemed to return to normal, or whatever definition of normal one might conjure. The kids seemed to pick up on this and were excelling in both their schoolwork and their artwork. In addition to paintings, Samantha was finding inspiration at the clay throwing wheel and twice had her creations featured on Etsy. And Lucy was transitioning from those things that looked like clouds to really being able to draw clouds. Travis had returned to his commitment to his wife and had had no contact with the other one for some time now. As good as things were going, everyone in the house seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. All while pretending not to be.
There was little need in their family yo even know what day it was. Noone had traditional jobs or school schedules that demanded and sictated and awareness for such details. There was barely a need for clocks or watches. They ate when hungry, slept when tired. Not that it was a life completely without structure. Travis and Abbey knew that while the kids were young and in their house there wasn’t a demand for such conventions, but they realzied Samantha and Lucinda would not be in their house forber. Nor would they want them to be. So to intriduce them to the idea of time management and responsibility they did have school time every day from around 8am to 3pm. This was understood but also not set in stone. If one of the girls found themselves enthralled or wrapped up in some creative activity, that lalways took presedence over learning what the capitol of Iowa is. Expression trumped convention.
On one of such day, Travis was in the garage preparing some of the family’s latest artwork for pictures. One of Travis resposibilities was to photograph all their artwork and to put them up on eBay, Etsy and the familt website and blog. While they may not go down in any art history books, they were internet savvy and had managed to marry their expertise in this area with the talents they had with pens, pencils and brushes. It worked providing them with the modest yet comfortable lifestyle they were used to.
They drove a Honda Accord, although not the newest model and an Audi station wagon, although not the latest model. They may not of been able to take trips to Paris for week, but they did get away to Maine once a year and South Carolina once a year. The kids dressed stylish, yet comfortable. They shopped at thrift stores and boutiques. They found they could spend roughly the same amount of money and not support companies that churned out cookie-cutter clothes for the season that all the other kids would also be wearing. Travis and Abbey stressed individuality with the girls. They were free to dress themselves however they saw fit. Tran and Abbey realized this was sure to cause problems at some point, all kids were taught to fit in and not be seen as different for fear of getting picked on and ostracized, but the parents felt this way of life and thinking would serve their children better in the long run. It was possible they were right and it was possible they were wrong. They acknowledged this themselves but felt the love and support they offered th girls trumped anything that might be dumped on them. Plus, they happended to both be beautiful and adorable and socirty did dictate that the girls would nt be held to the same stdards as others. Theu would be afforded more leeway. Inevitable the boys would want to kiss or sleep with them and girls would want to keep their enemues close. They certainly would face some ridicule, but not nearly the amount they would if they were ugly. Hey, it’s not right, but it does happen to work that way.
“Trav, you want pancakes honey?” Abbey asked, head flotaing in the door jam.
“Yes please,” responded Travis, eye affixed to the camera viewfinder, trying to keep Samantha’s latest colorful creation of markers and paint mixed media canvas in focus. 
Before Abbey could close the door, Lucy snuck through and waddled over to her dad. She reached her little hand up and Travis put a green marker in it.
“Bwoo,” she said. Travis’ hand rummaged though a cigarbox of markers until he found a blue one and silently handed that one to her as well.
“Tank you,” she said with a smile. Travis pretended to go back to taking pictues, assuming the position of bet over with his camera, pretending to fuss with the lend, when in eality he was completely focused on Lucy and what she was working on. Lucy stood, not sat, and went back to work on something she had started the previous night. Mostly it was various shapes, boxes and circles, filled on haphazardly with greens and blues. Two of the shapes almost looked like small globes, with landmasses and oceans. They were repeated over and over maybe a half dozen times. They seemed to move closer and closer and them drift farther and farther apart. It looked as if she was going to picke up tday right where she left off the previous night.
Feeling like he wanted to join hos daughter Travis set down the camer and went back to the cigar box until he found a black marker. He didn’t look for an empty space on the wall, a blank canvas, but instead looked for previous drawings that he might be able to draw and add something, linking things together. He didn’t have a pan, he didn;t have things mapped out, he didn;t know where to begin or end, but he felt driven to link two seperate creations.
There was a place on the wall where Abbey had painted on one of her coke binges. These outburts were always easy to pick out. At least to Travis, they were frentic and unbridaled and lacked the necessary control that someone with true talent posseses. They were sad and a sad reminder of the dark days in the house. But he refused to paint over them until the time came to paint over all the walls. It was important that the portrait painted to the kids was one of the real world. And in the real world there were ups and downs, good and bad, darkness and light, love and lust, addiction and recovery. The duality existed. Ther was no point in denying it or sugesting that it was all one way and not the other.
Next to the barely organized chaos of a draawing Abbey did of a bug of some sort, trying to climb it’s way out of a very, very deep jar, a drawing she had dome with markers and poils paints, was a painting Samantha had done. It was one of animals holding ballons and floating away. It was rudimentary, somewhat crude, and it had helped when she explained it, but it was one of those things when pointed out suddenly seemed so overwhelmingly obvious. It became Travis’ job to connect these two. Both had the idea of flying away on them, tryong to  float on, escape, get away. An insect should have no problem, but it was trapped. A bear should be too heavy but it became weighltees when it held the end of the strng attacjed to the balloon.

Sometimes there is a reason and a cause for why things happen. And sometimes they just happen. After almost a year of normalcy, Travis just could tell something was in the air. In the studio working his back was turned when Abbey came in and the mood seemingly changed instantaneously.
“Trav?”
“Yes Ab?”
“Uhm, can I borrow twenty dollars?”
It wasn’t that she asked, it was how she asked that sent his alarm bells off.
“What do you need 20 for? You have money in your account, don;t you? Isn’t there money in your account?”
This seemed to quickly be shifting from a neutral inquiry to an unpleasant inquisition, one that Abbey didn;t want to face scrutiny over or rouse any further susicion. So  she retreated.
“Nevermind, it’s no big deal. I jjst wanted to buy Samantha some new boots for school.”
Clever. Deflection through trying to switch focus to same with a hint of benevolence. Travis smelled this one all the way down the road. But he also played the game and didn’t let on he was now suspicious and Abbey would find herself under a close watch. He didn’t want to tip his hand and if she was up to know good, force her to become even craftie and more secretive. His spidey senses were tingling and he made a mental note to keep track of any valuables he had started leaving out in the open again. A run or normalcy always made him complacent.
Travis didn’t have to wait long however. A few days later he took a call from an unknown number.
“Travis Henderson please.”
“This is he.”
“This is Dr. Bowing down at the hospital. I wanted to inform you that your wife has had an accident and is in our care.”
“What? Is she ok? Can I talk to her?
“I’m sorry Mr. Henderson, but not at this time. We found your information in her purse and wanted to inform you. You should make your way to the hospital as soon as possible.”
The words richocheted off his insides, blowing holes in everything, causing damage, ripping his insides apart. Sam and Lucy were at his parents house, so Travis jumped in the car and took off for the hospital, calling Abbey’s phone repeatedly. There was no answer.

Once there, Travis learned more. But it wasn’t detailed and it wasn’t enough.
“Your wife has suffered cardiac arrest.”
“From what?”
“It’s too early to say conclusively what brought this on. We have some indicators, but nothing we cn say without running more tests.”
Travis had ghis own suspicions as well.
It was hours before they let him in the room and when they did, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw. It was Abbey, but with no life, no soul. It was the saddest shell Travis had ever seen. Every hole in her body had a tube going in or out of it and attached to some beeping machine. It controled or monitored everything from her brain activity to her breathing to her heart rate. It was the last thing that caught the most attention. It was was the sound of the monitor. The steady, rhythmatic noise. The same one he heard in countless TV shows and dozens if not hundreds of movies. Except none of those was keepig his wife alive. But this one was.
He shuffled over to her bedside, somehow numb yet feeling everything.
Running the back of his index finger againsy the back of her hand, in between the small space between her knuckles and where the tape holding the IV inplace stopped.
“Hi baby…” he mumbled, almost trying to sound normal. As if anyone could confuse this scenario as any old day. He repeated the action and the words. Each time, getting more and more faint. His voice begining to give out, and as it did so, the tears began. He did not sob, but the stream of tears falling across the front of his face were seemingly endless.
“I… love… you… I’m so sorry.” He turned to survey the room, but his vision was blurry from the tears and everything was out of focus. Somewhere he knew if he ran his hand across his eyes he would be able to see better, but another part of him knew that whatever he might see was not going to change the reality of what was going on. The doctors had told him that the cardiac arrest was a result of her cocaine use. Her intravenous cocaine use. Travis had no idea that she had been booting the coke. He had no idea how long it had been going on. He knew he should call her parents, he had to, but he had no idea what to tell them. They were certainly aware of her struggles, but they did not know the extent of them. And certainly they had n idea that she must of started using again recently. There had always been an uneasy vibe between him and them, in general and her drug use was the root of it, erroneous as it was. They had always blamed him for Abbey’s getting high, but only because they needed a target. The truth was she had been partying long before they got together, her parents just didn’t know it.
He took a long look at Abbey, ppeaceful because she wasn’t battling any demons fr the moment, and walked into the hallway.
“Jim, it’s Trav. You need to come down to the hospital. It’s Abbey. Yes, but you and Cynthia need to get here. No, no you can’t talk to her. I know. Bye.”
He hung up the phone and his thoughts turned to the girls. He had no idea how to tell them, what to tell them. He called his parents to let them know what was going on.
His mother answered the phone and he broke down to her. He didn;t want to get into all the details, but he let her know what was going on and asked how she thought he should handle it with the girls. They both agreed that seeing their mother in that condition was far too traumatic, no matter how much they tried not to shield Samantha and Lucinda from the truth, this was a situation that called for discretion. They agreed to tell the girls that their mommy was sick and daddy was taking care of her. His father would watch the girls while his mother came to the hospital. She knew  that not only would she have to be there for her son, but that she would have to act as the buffer between him and Abbey’s parents.
“Thank you,” Travis said to his mother, hanging up the phone and heading back into the room.
The initial shock out of the way, he now took a minute to survey the room. It was like most hospital rooms. Dimly lit, save for the flourecent lightbulb running horizontal over the bed, casting off a light that close to the bulb illuminated brightly, but then quickly lost it’s strength and offered barely more than a suggestion of illumination. The floors were the typical square tiles, off-white, with dashes of some brownish color. This was to hide any scuff marks from the moving of beds or wheelshairs and it worked in successfully confusing and covering up any marks. Various machines were attached to the wall with what looked like an infinite amount of information available at the touch of one of the infinite number of buttons and dials. There was another bed that was empty and waiting for someone to suffer from some misfortune. The bed consisted some measure of good luck and bad luck, all in the same place. Bad luck because they ended up in the hospital. Good luck because they weren’t any longer there. Whether it was a result of healing or death, they weren’t any longer confined to the cold, sterile environment of the room. All of any personal touches that had possibly once occupied the space had also been removed. Except for a small card whoever cleaned the rooms must of missed. It was taped to the wall and it had a heart colored in crayon on the outside. He opned the card and inside was scribbled “Get well soon.” Travis wondered if she had.
Pulling up a chair, he sat down and reached over the tube and wiring keeping Abbey alive and softly stroked her hair. He realized that in all those moments of love where anything seems possible, this was one of those moments. No one ever imagines in the moments where it just after making love, looking at the ceiling, trying to catch your breath, not having a care or problem in the world, not wanting to change place with any other human being, feeling confident in the love and the ability to overcome any obstacle life throws at you both, that one of the moments would come in the shape of a hospital room. The most you think you might face is getting behind in bills, or some drunken argument, or the loss of a parent. No one ever imagines love needing to elevate oneself to face impossible odds, impossible realities, impossible powerlessness. The pain bordered on more than he could comprehend. He hated it.
Travis’ mother was first to arrive. She lived on the outskirts of town, and drove like a madwoman. She was invariably very early to wherever she needed to be. Early because she hadn’t been stopped by the police, late because she had.
“How are you Travis? How is she?”
“OD. They said she was shooting up.” Must mothers her age would of balked at information like that about her son’s wife and the parent of her grandchildren. But she was a tough woman who had grown up in the inner city and been around the block. Sadly, things like this were not unknown in her world. She knew that Abey had struggled, but she also thought she had been clean for  a few months.
“I’m sorry Trav. But what about you? You never admit or let anyone in on how you are doing, how this is affecting you.” “I’m fine mom. I swear.” She knew this was bullshit but also knew she wasn’t likely to get any further, at least now.
“Thy think she is going to be braindead, if she ever… recovers,” Travis told his mother while his eyes were affixed to Abbey’s quiet face.
“She will be ok,” his mother replied. Travis knew it was bullshit and resented her for even suggesting it. They sat in silence for the next twenty minutes until Abbey’s parents arrived.