69. Thulium (Lanthanoid; Primordial; Solid)
Take your sister out to dinner somewhere she will like, the Olive Garden or the Macaroni Grill. Sit across from her at your table for two and regard her oily face, her twitchy, thick hands, how they shake and jerk as she reaches to tear off another chunk of bread from the loaf.
Push yourself back from the table, force a smile, and say: “Be right back, bathroom.”
Sit in the stall and know that you failed her again. The feeling gums up your blood, slows your heart, its beefy beats slam hard in your hollow chest. Pray to a god you’ve never known to help you not to drink. Turn red in the face with the effort not to weep and with longing for everything that is to be another way.
After dinner, sit shifting on the couch next to her and think about her medication, her prescriptions in the kitchen. The television screen is a bright blur, the room a mess, reminding you on the whole of your life. Stand up from the couch without thinking or knowing where you are going to go. Probably, you will step on a magazine splayed open on the carpet. It will be a trashy tabloid magazine, the Enquirer or the Star. When she asks you where you are going, say you are getting a drink. You might ask her if she wants one too. If she says yes, you will have to make her hot tea. It is not likely that she will say yes.
In the kitchen, open the cabinet and scan the prescription labels. Select the one that reads: Lithium. Swallow six of them. This is important: be sure to have enough saliva in your mouth to lubricate the passage of all six of them down into your stomach. You might get one stuck at the back of your tongue if there is not enough saliva. If this occurs, take a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and wash the pills down with a burning gulp. You will see the rotten food, expired milk, and brown sticky matter within the refrigerator and you will instinctively want to fix it. To clean it would be too much. You would have to start over with a new one. This will remind you of your life. Stop thinking about it and close the refrigerator door.
Lay on the couch an hour later with the lights off, after your sister has gone to bed. Feel angry that you just blew three weeks of sobriety for a bunch of pills that had no effect. One worn-out indulgence will lead to the next and you will think about the time you never let yourself think about, when you were supposed to be watching her but you ran from the house instead. You found out later when you returned how she had tried to kill herself by taking a whole bottle of pills. You will remember that you were vomiting in the toilet while she was at the hospital having her stomach pumped. The damp, mildewed smell of the room combined with the thought will likely make you gag and cough.
Sit up, pull on your jeans, and force it all from your mind by thinking of the pierced, tattooed girl naked, the one you’ve been sleeping with. You will wonder whether or not to stay. Decide to leave. Grab the duffel bag you packed to spend the night and burst from the house how you do when you leave.
Before driving the three hours to the college town bar where you know the pierced, tattooed girl will be, stop at the store and buy a half-gallon of cheap vodka. Pour the bottle into the large, red thermos you keep in your car and be on your way. Drink from the thermos while you drive and do not stop for bathroom breaks. When you find you have to pee, reach for a big plastic cup that you might have gotten from a gas station soda fountain. You will find it rolling in the wheel well. Unbutton your jeans and shove them down to your knees along with your underwear. Try not to swerve while hurtling through the dark at eighty miles per hour. If you find that you can’t lift your hips high enough off the seat to get the cup completely vertical beneath you, just pee anyway. Cringe when the warm liquid spills over your hand and onto the seat. Curse while the cup tumbles to the floor between your feet. There will be a sweater in your duffel to sit on for the rest of the ride.
Meet the pierced, tattooed girl at the bar and continue drinking. Go with her back to her small dorm room and watch her undress to loud, angry, heavy metal music under the flickering, dizzying light of a disco ball. Take off your clothes too. Cast them haphazardly onto the beanbag chair or the inflatable couch. Begin climbing the ladder to her lofted bed as she stands beneath and watches. It is very important that you do this because having your bare ass so close to someone’s upturned face is the perfect symbol for your failures. The merciless, naked vulnerability of this position will be similar to the way you feel whenever you are near your sister. While you climb, the short distance will seem very long and you will feel the pierced, tattooed girl’s eyes on every part of you. This is fine and appropriate to the process. It will help you to climb faster, but be careful not to fall backward onto her as you scramble up and fling yourself onto the mattress.
When you wake up the next morning with a clamoring headache, you will feel angry that you blacked out for the best part. Try to piece together what happened during pillow talk. When she asks if you meant what you said last night, stutter for a while before responding: “What do you think?” If she scowls and says: “Sounded like it to me,” then begin with a blanket apology to cover all bases. If she smiles and says: “Sounded like it to me,” then respond with something like: “You know I did,” and then quickly turn to face the wall because it will be easier to lie to than her face. You will feel so disgusted with yourself that you can barely stand it. Try not to be too hard on yourself. You will not always be so bad.
A day or two later when you’re among a group of her college friends playing truth or dare, an activity you are just too old for, having graduated three years prior, say no without any hesitation when asked by the girl with the pink hair: “Have you ever sixty-nined with anybody?” When the pierced, tattooed girl points at you with an amused expression and says: “Um, yes, you did, liar,” stare at her dumbfounded while everyone laughs, including her, then stand up and walk out, wanting to die.
Weeks later, though, you will laugh out loud to think of it. You will be with your sister at a chain Italian restaurant again and she will ask what’s so funny. You will tell her nothing, knowing that nothing truly is funny. It’s possible your laughter will threaten to dissolve into tears then because before you can stop it, the memory of her before the accident and how you used to tell her everything (believing that you always would, because there was no reason any of that would ever change between two sisters as close as you were) seeps in from the cracks in the wall you have erected in your brain to block out the unthinkable. Restrain the urge to cry in front of her. If you have to, excuse yourself and go to the bathroom. If not, smile at her and try to think of something to say. Failing that, fill your mouth with something other than words, a piece of bread or a cracker, and concentrate on the taste of this, how it isn’t really as bland as it always seems.
Preorder A Map of Everything from Jaded Ibis Productions. Now! What are you waiting for? Author royalties from book sales will go to help people with brain injuries. You can learn more about that here.
Elizabeth Earley holds a BA in Creative Writing and an MFA in Fiction from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her stories and essays have appeared in Time Out Magazine, The Chicago Reader, Geek Magazine, Outside Magazine, Gnome Magazine, Hypertext Magazine, The Windy City Times, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The First Line Magazine, Fugue, Hair Trigger, Role/Reboot, Ms. Fit Magazine, and Hoot. The Hair Trigger piece won the David Friedman Memorial Prize for the best story in that anthology. Elizabeth has twice been a finalist for the AWP New Journals Award, has received two pushcart nominations, and was a finalist for the 2011 Able Muse Write Prize for Fiction and for the Bakeless Literary Prize for Fiction. A new novel excerpt, “Backbone”, won an Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train March 2013 Fiction Open contest. She serves as editor and curator of Bleed, a literary blog from Jaded Ibis Press. Her debut novel, A Map of Everything, will be available in March 2014 from Jaded Ibis Press.