One Real Thing Read Free Page A

time.
    “Yep. And you’re going to tell him that since he fired me from my job, I’m sure as fuck not doing his for him.” Holly blew her a kiss as he closed the door. He pressed the lock button on the knob, flipped the dead bolt and slid the chain across as the flimsy door shook with every punch and kick from outside. Lorne was a lousy parent, but Holly was a hell of a lot worse. Maybe she’d figure that out someday.
    The tantrum only lasted until he heard, “Ow, my nail!” Then no more. For a moment longer, she snuffled and cursed, but it faded into nothing, and he was left in peace. As much peace as he could get, feeling this way about himself. He picked up her cigarette and took a drag.
    Holly wasn’t going to think about how it felt to have divested himself of the last vestige of the life he’d watched go up in flames. He was going to think of how stupid he was to have sent her off with what might have been the last of the booze. Fortunately, under the pillows, he found a bottle of cheap rum with a good bit left.
    Coming down in the world by leaps and bounds, his brain moaned. Holly took a drink to shut it up.
    There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world, though, to drink away everything he didn’t want to think about. Like how the only thing keeping him together was knowing it would kill his mother if he screwed up for real and got locked up or knocked off. Dad too, his brain murmured.
    Holly wasn’t sure about that. He jammed the cigarette out on the bedside table without regard for the lack of ashtray. His father had two other sons who were perfectly functional. Holly had no idea how his father lived with the embarrassment. He knew damn well that people always said: He took after his mother. It wasn’t you. Look at your other children. Holly had to agree.
    But his mother…Holly usually tried not to think about her, wherever she was. Mentally. Physically she was in Minnesota, he was pretty sure, at some pleasant “resort” where they locked her in at night and doped her up in the morning. When he couldn’t avoid thinking about her, he worried about her. About who was there to tell her it would be all right when she forgot who she was.
    That was the worst. Holly had always been able to handle it when she forgot him, but he couldn’t take the lost look on her face when she forgot herself. And that was why he wanted to keep something of himself around—because he wanted to think he might be able to bring her back someday.
    “It’s okay, Mom.” When he was a little boy, he would take her hand and lead her to the rose-printed chair in her room. “You’re fine. Look.” He would point at her dresser and the photograph of her wedding to his father. She’d take the picture and look at it, then at the woman in the mirror, back and forth, until recognition dawned in her hazy blue eyes.
    “My hair.” She would touch the soft fall with one trembling hand. “It’s such a mess.”
    “I’ll fix it for you.” Even when he had to stand on her sewing box to brush it, he always did his best.
    “I don’t want him to see me like this.” She would wear her bathrobe for days, until the blue velvet was stained with spilled tea and flecked with dried blood from where she’d dug at her skin with broken nails.
    “You look beautiful, Mom.” She had been luminous, like her pain had burned away anything imperfect and left behind only beauty.
    Holly missed her so much, but he couldn’t take her phone calls these days. The doctors, he’d talk to, but not her. He took a searing swallow of rum and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. They’d always had each other, and then he’d left her. He always meant to return her calls, but he couldn’t deal with the way they ripped him up inside.
    Not talking to her is worse. When he got drunk enough, his brain could convince him it was worse.
    By the time his vision cleared, he was fumbling with his phone.
    That went as well as everything else in his life had