Five Brothers
: Chapter 21

The next morning, I don’t think Macon has gotten any sleep. “Macon!” Dallas yells. “I need a shower! Come on!”

I stop, hearing the commotion inside Macon’s bedroom. Dallas stands to the right, dressed only in a gray towel as he bangs on his brother’s closed bathroom door. Army slips in around me, heading toward him. “Macon!” he calls out.

“What the hell is he doing?” Dallas gripes.

Army pounds his fist on the door three times. “Macon! Answer me!”

But there’s no reply.

I drop my work apron on the floor and enter the room, hearing the shower inside. “How long’s he been in there?” I ask.

“The shower’s been running since I got up.” Dallas pounds on the door again. “At least an hour.”

“Macon!” Army joins him, knocking hard.

My stomach coils. I jet over to his closet, rip a shirt off a wire hanger, and straighten the hook at the end, pushing the guys aside.

If everything was fine, Macon would’ve answered. Goddammit. I knew he didn’t sound right last night. When’s the last time I saw him eat?

“Use the other bathroom,” I tell Dallas.

“Trace and some girl are in there.”

“Then use the downstairs one!”

“But it doesn’t have a shower …”

“Just …” I bite out, giving him a look.

And I don’t need to say more. He twists his lips to the side and spins around, pouting his way out of the bedroom.

“Macon!” Army shouts again.

I fit the end of the wire hanger in the little hole, feeling for the pin, and I push. The handle twists, giving way, and I open the door, immediately seeing him.

“Get out!” he yells.

Army stands behind me, but he doesn’t try to push past to see.

Macon sits in the claw-foot tub, his back against the wall and his legs bent up with his arms hanging over his knees. His head is down as the spray pours over his body, a stream gliding down his nose.

I close the door, Army stumbling back a few steps.

I look at him. “Go to work.”

“But—”

“I’ll be here,” I tell him. “I’ll call if something’s wrong.”

“Krisjen—”

“He won’t want you here.”

He won’t want me, either, but I’m not family. It’s different. He cares what they think.

Army’s next words are lost as he stares at me, his eyes filled with pain. I can’t tell if I hurt his feelings, or if he’s just worried, but he’s smart enough to know Macon won’t want anyone to see him like this. Especially another man.

Army struggles for a minute, trying to decide what’s right. He was twenty when his mother took her life. He knows something is wrong.

He takes my face, kissing my forehead. “I’ll get the kids to school.”

“Thanks.”

He leaves, and I slip inside the bathroom, closing the door and locking it before heading over to the tub.

Water spills off Macon’s forehead and mouth as he bows his head, and I lean close to his lips, trying to smell if there’s alcohol.

But he jerks away as if suddenly realizing I’m there. “Don’t.”

I press a hand to the back of his neck and then to his forehead, both burning under the hot water.

“Stop,” he growls, pulling away from me and leaning back against the tile. “Just leave. Get out.”

I turn the faucet, making it a little cooler.

“I said get out!” he shouts up at me.

I startle.

He clutches his head in his hands. “Please. Get the fuck out.”

My eyes pool with tears, and I clench my teeth to keep them from falling. I don’t know how to help him.

I look up at the blinds drawn over what little light streams in through the small window near the ceiling.

And the lights are off.

The same way his room is always dark now, and how he only ever wants to be alone.

I don’t think it’s to shield him from the world, because if it were, then it would be helping. It’s to pretend that he doesn’t exist.

If no one sees him, he’s not really here. Not alive.

It’s how he’s fantasizing death.

I reach out, touching the side of his head, my fingers on his hair.

But he shoves my hand away, and I gasp as he bites his words at me. “Get out!”

And then he slams the back of his head into the wall, and I cry out, grabbing him before he can do it again. I climb into the tub, crouch over his lap, and wrap my arms around him, my hand at the back of his head.

He wrestles, trying to shake me off, but I just hold him, burying my face in his neck.

“I don’t want anybody!” he snaps. “I just want … Please, I just want to be gone. I just want to be gone.”

He tries to push me off, but I hold tight, trembling.

“Don’t see me,” he says. “Please don’t see me. You have to go.”

He pushes a few more times, but every time gets weaker before he finally gives up. His hands fall away, and he just shakes in my arms.

“Please … don’t …” He bows his head, turning it left and right, shielding me from seeing him, but I take him and come up close to his ear, so he can hear me over the shower. I whisper, “You can let one person see you like this. Just one.”

Tears stream down my face, and I reach behind me, pulling the shower curtain, closing us in, away from the world. Hard breaths rack his body, but he doesn’t fight me. Molding my chest to his, I touch his face and bow my head next to his, inhaling and exhaling. Over and over until I feel his chest rise with mine and both of ours fall in sync.

“One person,” I breathe out.

His body slowly calms, and I run my thumb over his face as I hold it, feeling the difference between hot water and warm tears.

His stares at his stomach. “Don’t make me leave here.”

Water spills down my face. He can stay here forever if he wants.

“Keep me with you” is my own only request.

I sit on him, one leg bent up and my foot planted on the bottom of the tub as I press my mouth to his temple.

He’s too warm. “I need to cool you down,” I tell him. Reaching over, I twist the faucet right, adding cold water. He jerks a little but doesn’t say anything.

I feel his jaw flex under my hand, and I don’t know how long we sit there, but long enough for doors to slam shut downstairs. The house empties as his brothers leave for work, and the kids go to the sitter and school, and then I hear engines fade down the street.

I add more cold water and then some more.

When he speaks again, his voice is soft and quiet.

“I just want to stop sometimes, Krisjen,” he tells me, still not meeting my eyes. “It wasn’t always this bad, but when it is, I can’t remember when it was good. I don’t like it here.”

I stroke his cheek with my thumb. Here as in Sanoa Bay? Or here as in life?

I don’t ask. I wouldn’t know what to say.

All I know is that I feel it, too, sometimes. People make life hard. Even the ones who love us bring pressure and obligation, and I’m no exception. We’re all culprits of making someone else’s life difficult.

But he’s felt it for too long. And he feels it more than other people. Some do.

A distant knock hits a door. “Krisjen?” I hear someone call in a muffled voice. “You home?”

Aracely. I think she’s knocking on Liv’s bedroom door.

Macon startles. “Don’t …” he says. “Don’t let her see me.”

“I locked it,” I assure him.

I raise my voice. “I’m here,” I tell Aracely. “I’ll be out in a bit.”

She’s quiet, and I don’t waste my time imagining what she’s thinking about why my voice is coming from Macon’s shower.

“No rush,” she finally says, closer. “I dropped off your paycheck.”

“Thanks.”

After a moment, I hear the door downstairs close, and I probably should’ve told her to tell Mariette I was going to be late.

“Can you make it colder, please?” he asks me.

I do. I feel him draw in a big breath as I close my eyes. It’s like a waterfall in my hair. “That feels better,” he says.

His shoulders relax. I climb off, sitting down next to him in the tub.

Finally, he opens his eyes again. “Don’t tell them.”

I want to promise him that I won’t, but I’m not sure what’s right. He’s falling fast. What if he ends it and I regret not trying everything?

“I don’t want you to leave,” I say.

It’s all I know for sure.

Licking the water off his lips, he looks like he’s about to talk, but it takes a few seconds to say the words. “I …” He takes a breath. “I don’t know why I feel like this. I never did.” His tone grows a little stronger. “And that’s what shakes you, because you don’t know how to fix it.”

I know there are no magic words.

“It’s just this black cloud that hangs over you and follows,” he tells me, and I see more tears pool in his eyes. “If you’re hungry, you eat. If you’re injured, you go to a doctor. If you’re running late, you drive faster. I have a house, a healthy family, a little money in the bank, my own business, a means of supporting myself and those around me, so why do I feel like this? How do I stop it?”

Tired of fighting. Tired of problems. Tired of nothing ever changing … Tired of money. People. Themselves. He was talking about himself that day.

“And in those moments,” he continues, “I know exactly why she couldn’t hold on until Monday when she could see another doctor. She couldn’t feel like that for one more second. She just wanted it to stop. She was done.

“I want a woman. I want kids,” he tells me. “I see her in my head, Krisjen. My baby inside of her that will look just like her, and I know it as I look down into her eyes in the shower. I want it. I want it all.”

He swallows, his head bobbing a little.

“But that’s why she did it,” he says. “I know now why my mother did it. She loved us too much to let us see her weak for one more minute. She stopped being there for us long before her body died, and she just couldn’t stand being aware of that anymore. My woman is out there somewhere, and I’m going to let her find another man, because it will kill me when I fail her. I don’t want her to see this. I don’t want any of them to see this.” Tears fall, and he squeezes his eyes shut, turning away. “Just go. Please just go.”

I wipe the water from my eyes. I won’t say anything to Army or the others. Yet. He’s talking, and that’s more than he was doing fifteen minutes ago.

“My maternal grandmother killed herself, too,” I tell him. “Pills. Around the same time your mom did, now that I think of it.”

That’s when things started going downhill with my mom and my parents’ marriage.

“I was only ten, so I don’t remember much,” I say, “but what I do remember is that the family was close before she did it. My mother and her siblings saw each other all the time, spent holidays together, their children—my cousins—were all best friends. We were a family.”

He breathes normally now, the cool water hopefully helping.

“We’ve rarely seen each other since,” I tell him. “As heartbroken as she was, and desperate to be at peace from what she was going through, she was the glue. Maybe she thought the same thing you did—what your mom did—that she was saving all of us the pain. Saving us from dealing with her. Saving us the heartache of her heartache, but … her life was more important than she knew.” I don’t cry about it anymore, but it’s hard not to imagine what life would be like—what my mom would be like—if my grandmother knew how much she was loved. “Our family fell apart after she was gone. She wasn’t a burden or weak. She was so important to us.”

I look over at him. “No one can tell you that you have to stay.” I can’t help the tears that fall. “No one knows how it feels, and you’re not alive just to save everyone else from themselves.”

It takes a minute to calm myself, because I want to tell him that he has to stay. What will we do without you? You have to take care of them.

That’s all that’s kept him here this far, and it’s not working anymore.

All I can say is what I know for sure. “There will be hard days, Macon. There will be more days like this. When it really hurts to stand up. To face people.”

I want to touch him—his hand, something—but I hold back.

“But there will be days that no one can touch,” I whisper. “There will be days when you’ll be the strongest one in the room, and they wouldn’t have made it through without you. There will be kids and road trips and hunkering down for hurricanes with our beer and movies and food fights and babies and ice cream in coffee cups.”

His head turns just a little, and I can see his eyes.

“And early mornings in warm beds,” I say, “when the rain and wind chimes are going and you’re holding her, and these feelings right now are so far away and you can’t stop kissing her. You’ll love being alive.”

His eyes close, like it’s a memory and she’s real and he wants her.

I hold the inside of his elbow, and finally, he looks down at me. His brown eyes shimmer, the whites now red, but God, he looks younger than Trace in this moment.

“I hate you seeing me like this,” he says barely above a whisper.

I give him a half smile and tell him again, “You can let one person see you like this.” And I rest my cheek against his shoulder. “I have a steel stomach.”

Time passes, the tiny bit of sunlight in the room moves across the floor, and I get him out of the shower and into some jeans. I block out light, turn on a fan to drown out noise, and change into one of his T-shirts and a pair of his sweatpants before lying on the bed with him. Hugging the pillow to my body, I face him and he faces me, and I watch him long after he falls asleep. The guys come home, kids’ laughter drifts up the stairs and through the door along with the smell of pizza, and I want him to eat, but I’m not going to wake him up. He needs to sleep for a week.

Water runs, bath time, kids in bed, no one disturbs Macon’s room, and I wake again, turning over to see that it’s after eleven at night. The house is quiet. I lean in close, the warmth of his body lighting a buzz under my skin. He sleeps, and I climb out of bed as gently as possible, leaving the room.

Downstairs, I find the rooms empty, and when I step into the kitchen I see only Army sitting at the table in the dark. He nurses a glass of whiskey.

I pull out a chair and sit down, looking at him even though he won’t look at me.

“That story you told me,” I ask, “about the man who wanted to pay you and Macon to have sex with his wife …”

He doesn’t move.

“Macon did it, didn’t he?”

Army turns the glass on the table, his jaw flexing as he stares at it.

“You couldn’t. You left,” I say. “He stayed.”

The fact that he’s not saying anything is enough of an answer.

So much makes sense now.

“That’s why he barely steps foot in the Bay.” My mind whirls.

“Why he never attended Liv’s games.”

I knew she tried to act like she understood, but she didn’t. How could she? She had no idea the shit he was carrying around.

Army takes a sip of his drink. “Doing what you have to in order to survive isn’t noble if your soul can’t survive you,” he states. “Macon knows that now.”

I stand up. “He had no choice but to be capable of everything, Army.” I gaze down at him. “And you banked on that with every step you took away from that house when you left him behind.”