Nathan was fifteen when his father had his first heart attack.
Many thanks to DkPhoenix and Raucous Raven for beta.
AN UNDONE WAR STILL WAGES
By Cherry Ice
The air on the Strip hits him in a full-body blow, hot and dry, heavy with exhaust and the smell of tarmac. The door of the Corinthian slides shut behind him, a last gasp of cool air escaping into the desert. He stands there, for a minute or an hour, as mid-day heat curls up from the cement and tourists break in waves around him; a steady tide of Bermuda shorts and wilted shirts and heads turned up towards the glitter of neon. Shirt clinging to the small of his back, gun tucked heavy into his waistband, Nathan tries to remember how to breathe.
A step forward, and the crowd swallows him whole. The sun is bright. It hurts his eyes.
*
The rental place has no Audis so he takes the keys to a Mustang convertible, manual transmission, forest green paint dark enough to be black, colour flashing only in reflected light. He trails his fingers across the hood as he rounds the car, heat of it pulling an involuntary hiss from between his lips. His return ticket is still tucked into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, but Nathan feels an almost physical desire to have his hands on the wheel.
"No, nothing's wrong," he tells Heidi, cell phone pressed between shoulder and ear as he drives. He's alive, and his family is relatively safe. "Really." Monty and Simon will be playing in the den, bright blocks of Lego or a scattered mishmash of puzzle pieces strewn across the carpet. "I'm just going to be a day or two longer in Vegas than I thought," he says, voice carefully distracted, hands white-knuckled on the wheel and gun in the glove box.
"Tell them I send my love," he says, Boulder Highway unwinding below him, watching the replica 'Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas' sign as it disappears in the rearview mirror. The phone lands on the passenger seat in the charcoal pool of fabric that is his jacket. Shirtsleeves rolled up and radio off, top down, he drives, foot heavy on the pedal so that the wind rushes faster and faster past his face.
The Mojave, when it opens before him, comes as a relief.
*
Nathan was fifteen when his father had his first heart attack. "He'll be right as rain before you know it," their mother had told Peter, ruffling his hair and laying his napkin across his lap. Peter (eight years old and all skinned knees) was too young to question the bandages on their father's wrists, or how he took to wearing long-sleeved shirts even in the humid depths of summer.
Nathan, sitting across the heavy oak table, pushed his peas around on his plate and asked to be excused.
"Eat your supper," their mother said, sharp, exhausted.
"And how did that make you feel?" the shrink asked him, later.
"It didn't," Nathan told her, plucking at the loose threads at the bottom of his jeans. "I don't need anyone to coddle me."
"I can't help you if you won't let me know what's going on," the shrink said, eyes sharp over half-moon glasses.
He had two blisters on his left foot ? his shoes were new, still in the process of being broken in. His father's blood had crusted into the canvas of Nathan's well-worn Pumas, later hurled with fury into a dumpster.
"My foot hurts," Nathan said, after some thought.
*
It's easy to forget how quickly night falls in the desert. Nathan is sitting on the engine-warmed hood of the car, cold air pressing against his bare arms, neck. The headlights, on low, spill a fan of light across the sand, and on his left there is a last orange glow across the horizon.
The engine beneath him ticks, cooling, as Nathan stares blankly at his phone. It's a low-res camera phone picture, but he thinks he only needs the outlines to see the girl (woman) his baby has become.
He remembers: tiny fingers wrapping around his. A green and pink baby blanket, soft-brushed cotton, one corner frayed. The first time her eyes met his, bright blue and piercing.
Remembers the shock of love that went through him the first time he saw her, a feeling so intense it almost knocked him flat.
There's a letter in his desk at home, started and abandoned five times. There's a history of depression in your family, it reads.
Inadequate, on all levels.
(The second time, his father was on vacation, Boston. The housekeeper found him.
Angela thought he was in D.C. at a conference.
Nathan, head pounding and mouth stale, reached over the sleeping form a girl he didn't recognize for the ringing phone. "Well, you know," he told Peter, padding barefoot across his tiny apartment. There was a singed picture on his fridge, Meredith sitting beneath an oak with Claire nestled in her arms. Meredith was caught mid-laugh, Claire's wide eyes turned brightly towards the camera. The sky was blue, and Nathan's shadow fell from behind the camera and across the right side of the frame.
Nathan closed his eyes. "Dad's always had a bad heart," he told Peter.)
The picture on his phone is all outlines, blonde curls and face half-turned from the camera, and for some reason the line of her back makes him think of Isaac's paintings, and ?
(She's a cheerleader, Meredith told him.
And even your daughter, Linderman said.)
The phone falls from Nathan's nerveless fingers. There is a puff of dust upon impact. The shadows coat his hands like tar paint.
The radio is on low, classical drifting softly through the night, notes sliding across each other like shifting grains of sand, falling away below him as, face turned the night, he lets loose of gravity.
*
On ground, Nathan feels heavy and awkward. Slow.
He doesn't dream of flying. He dreams of a cold weight at his ankle, of a short liftoff brought to an abrupt halt, the heft and rattle of chain. Nathan dreams of a house he has never seen, burning, an apartment building on fire he has ? only this time, it's Simon's cries he hears, Monty's hand pressed to the glass as flames lick in around him. He dreams of driving through Texas with Meredith, Claire strapped into her child seat in the back, yucca flashing by outside. Meredith dangling her feet out the window and singing along with Bruce Springsteen. He dreams he is trying to hold Heidi's hand as he is ripped backwards away from the car, that he is fifteen and Peter is bleeding out on the floor.
(I'm going to save the world, his father said to him, eyes too sharp, manic. Nathan, full of rock music and the particular ennui only teenagers seem capable, smiled blandly and turned back to his book. Great Expectations, pulled from the library, paper yellowed and leather cover smooth against his fingers.
The next night, Nathan, home early from basketball practice, home alone, is the one who finds him.)
*
Nathan is hollow-eyed and dusty when he rolls into New York. The radio is playing classic rock, announcer loud and boisterous, accent dripping Bronx. He turns it off and listens to the peal of horns, the rev of engines, the sound of eight million people occupying 320 square miles.
His mother is standing in the foyer when he gets there, arms crossed and lines tight at the corner of her eyes and mouth.
"I couldn't do it," he tells her. The words should feel like ash in his mouth but they don't, should taste bitter, taste like failure, but he is nothing but tired. Sunburned, windburned, grit in his teeth, he wants nothing more than a shower and the crisp, clean sheets of his bed.
He knows exactly what pulling that trigger would have meant. Nathan's lived in the fallout before.
(He found his father the last time, too: the study cut with midday light, weak coals smoking in the fire place, leather couch overturned and papers stacked precisely on the desk. Three pills were still scattered across the hardwood floor, and his father's face was so horribly at peace
He knew what we were about to do, was Nathan's only thought).
He hates his father sometimes. It's a uncharitable thought that slides greasy through his brain, tightens things behind his eyes and he thinks of a cold Texas morning, leaves turning and breeze raising the hair on the back of his neck. (He didn't bring flowers to the gravesite. Stood still and controlled. There are scars on his right knuckles from after, when he drove his fist through the hotel room window, glass falling two stories with a satisfying crash.)
Nathan knows exactly what pulling that trigger would have meant.
"He wasn't worth it," Nathan tells Angela, bone-weary, and hopes she understands.
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