I was just trying to be a good son, I swear

My name is Gabriel and I don’t sleep anymore, I tell you.

Not bad sleep. Not tossing around and waking up thirsty and all that. I mean I don’t sleep. My eyes close and I hear this spoon. Plastic spoon scraping the inside of a thermos. Scrape scrape scrape. Like somebody small trying to dig out.

We live in this place that was not even a town, mind you. It has a gas station, a church, Belluci’s Pizza, and fields that look dead even in summer. Roads with nobody on them. Houses so far apart it is like even they can’t stand each other.

My mom needed a heart. Her heart was garbage. I hope to God I got my heart genes from my shitty disappearing dad, wherever that useless bastard ran off to.

That sounds maybe basic, but it is not basic at all. People say it like it’s clean. Like she needed glasses or a ride somewhere. But a fucked-up heart means your mother (who is not that old, I swear) sleeping sitting up because if she lays flat she drowns in her own lungs or something. Her hands cold all the time, her saying sorry after she coughs, like it’s rude or something

She was the first one on a list. A transplant list. Doctors loved saying list, not that it meant much in our area. They said it like the list was a person that would save us or something.

One time at the clinic, I heard one of the doctors behind the curtain. He didn’t know I was there.

He said something like, “If she doesn’t get a heart soon, she dies. And out here? I don’t see that heart coming.”

The nurse said, “Does the boy know?”

The doctor didn’t answer, or maybe I didn’t want to listen.

So I knew.

I didn’t go to school anymore and no one cared, especially my mom. I totally get it. When you vomit all the shit you managed to stuff inside an hour before, you can’t be bothered by stupid useless schools and such.

But mind you, I’m not lazy or something, I got a good job that I went to almost every day, and not to make money to spend on drugs or shots or anything. I did it for my mom because she was single and all and with the lousy insurance and stuff… we couldn’t even buy pizza.

So, I worked in a pizza place and every night I brought back the leftovers that asshole Mark didn’t see me stuff into my backpack, and we had frozen pizzas in the freezer enough to last us weeks. Most were onions or eggplant or anchovies, obviously ‘cause that’s what was left at the end of the day. No one likes fucking onions… I was OK with that, mind you, not so much with eggplant though.

But no matter how much my mom slept or what she coughed on the floor (and I cleaned… not immediately, but I swear I eventually did) – every morning, my mom made me soup for work.

That killed me, I swear it did and not because I woke up a few times in the middle of the night because of something or other burning. She could barely stand, but she still did it. Carrots, potatoes, too much pepper because her hands shook. Sometimes noodles. Sometimes just hot water pretending to be soup. She put it in this old red thermos with scratches on it.

Sometimes she taped a note.

Eat slow.

Don’t let Mark push you.

Love you, my Gabey.

Those notes were awful. Not awful because they were bad, mind you. Awful because they made me feel useless stuff, little boys stuff that just makes things harder. I threw them away, but not in the house, so she wouldn’t see that and think I was being a bad son or something.

I worked at Belluci’s Pizza. Nobody named Belluci ever built it or owned it or anything. Everyone around our parts knew the boring truth. The owner was Mark the shithole. I don’t curse so much, except when someone deserves it. He does, really, ask the other people who work at the Pizza.

The crazy thing is that if you didn’t work at the pizza place, you loved Mark. Not just liked, loved.

When he wanted to, Mark was perfect. Fixed tires for old women, gave cops free slices, helped raise money at church for poor people and all (not me and my mom, obviously). Mark remembered names. He was one of those people who look you in the eye too much, like they are proving they have nothing to hide.

He was big too. Gym big. Tight shirts. Arms like he had extra arms under them.

I admit, and that’s what I also told my mom and Wren, he wasn’t movie evil. That’s the thing. He wasn’t rubbing his hands together or laughing in thunder or any stupid thing like that.

For me it was worse because maybe that meant he was close to normal or something.

With adults, he was gold. With us kids working there, he was something else. He talked soft so customers couldn’t hear. Took our tips when he said we had “nasty attitude.” Made Jamie cry in the walk-in, then told her, “Life doesn’t give gifts to weak people.”

He liked finding the place you hurt, then pressing it with one finger.

With me, it was my mom’s soup.

The first time he saw my thermos, he said, “What’s that smell?”

“My lunch.”

“Your mom make that?”

“Yeah.”

He opened it and sniffed. Then he made this face.

“Jesus. Smells like hospital sink.”

Then he poured half into a paper bowl.

I said, “Hey.”

He looked at me, real calm.

“You want hours this week or you want soup?”

So I shut up.

After that it was almost every day.

“Mommy Soup.”

“Needs salt.”

“Death Soup.”

“Your mom cook this or cough it up?”

Then he took half.

Always half.

Mind you, I don’t think he even liked it.

One time he said he was doing this for her, that if someone knows somebody is eating the food they made, that gives them satisfaction. “Your mother cooks because she loves you, that is actually why I bought this place, to feed people.”

Heck if that made sense, he never once prepared the pizzas himself, he once even spat in one guy’s pizza because he said something bad about the place or something. Also, half the time he made a face while eating the soup and always said that it needs salt and then added a bunch.

The soup was my mom. It was the last thing she could still give me, and he put his spoon in it. Every few days I was going to quit, but we needed those checks.

Wren was this girl who came behind the pizza shop sometimes after close. She was one of the nicer customers, that’s how we met, although she didn’t come often before we knew each other. Her hair was black and cut badly, like she did it with kitchen scissors in the dark, or something. Her family lived past the quarry. People said weird stuff about them. Witch stuff. Death stuff. Baby teeth in jars and whatever. But people can be stupid and primitive.

I liked her.

She never said, “It’ll be okay,” like everyone else did. I liked that most.

One night I was sitting by the dumpster and leaking out of my face, not crying exactly. She sat near me.

I told her my mom was dying. Not only dying, that she was suffering and that I can’t take the suffering no more. I told her the doctors say it wouldn’t be gentle. I told her my mom asked me if people feel it when their heart stops. I told her I said no, like I knew.

Then I asked if her family had something for hearts. I felt bad about implying that they were witches or something, but I was too bummed to care.

She looked at me a long time.

“We don’t fix hearts,” she said.

I laughed because, of course. Mind you, nobody did except doctors and maybe God or something.

“But we got something for suffering,” she said.

Next night, she gave me a tiny glass vial.

It had clear stuff in it. Just a little. It moved slow when I turned it. Like honey slow.

“What is it?” I said.

“Mercy.”

I told her don’t talk like a haunted book.

She said, “It lets them stop fighting. No pain. No fear. Just quiet.”

I almost threw it at her.

But I didn’t. I took it.

That is the part I keep thinking about. My hand closed around it. Mine. Nobody made me.

For three days I carried it in my coat pocket.

Then my mom got worse. She did that once in a while, but this time it was bad.

One night she woke up making this wet choking noise. I helped her sit up and she grabbed my wrist so hard I had marks after.

“Don’t call an ambulance,” she said.

“Mom.”

“No more bills.”

“I don’t care. That’s why I work in the Pizza place, mom.”

“I do.”

Later she slept in the chair, and I sat beside her with that vial in my hand. I unscrewed it a tiny bit.

Then she opened her eyes.

“Water?” she said.

I screwed it closed so fast I nearly dropped it.

“Yeah,” I said. “Water.”

“Looks special though,” she said, “who gave you that? That girl you talk about with the weird hair?”

I panicked a bit.

“No, mom. I don’t want to talk about this.”

She made that half smile. I went to bed.

Next morning, she made soup. Extra crappy this time.

I told her stop. I told her I could eat at work. I told her I wasn’t hungry. I told her please, please, just sit down.

She stood there in her robe, shaking, holding the spoon.

“Let me do what I am supposed to do, Gabey,” she said.

So I let her.

On my way to work I threw the vial into a large dumpster. I heard it shatter. I am so stupid I thought I could ever give something like that to her. Maybe Wren and her family were a family of witches, manipulative evil witches making me try to off my own mother.

I hope not. I liked Wren.

At work, Mark was in a fantastic mood, which usually meant somebody else was about to pay for it. He had fixed Mrs. Alvarez’s car that morning, and three people had already called him an angel right in front of him. He did his fake embarrassed laugh.

I couldn’t give a shit about him, too depressed to care about his rotten behavior. I wasn’t even hungry as usual. I just wanted to be done with the day. I was thinking of coming clean with mom about the vial and everything. That’s what a good son would do, I think. Maybe she would tell me if she wanted to do something about the suffering and all, something legit.

I took off early that night. I arranged it with Johnny Bomark. I knew I would pay a price for this. Johnny was the kind of person that collects debts fully, mind you, but I didn’t care. Mark went home early, like he did every Wednesday, so it all worked out.

My mom was sleeping in the chair with TV light on her face. I covered her with the brown blanket. I sat on the floor for a while. I remember the carpet smelled like dust as usual. I remember thinking God, if there is one, must be very far away from places like ours. It felt like the end of something was coming. It felt like my stomach was sinking and sinking, and there was a hole there now, a real one, sucking all of me in slow.

I woke up in my bed.

Morning.

My mom was in the doorway.

Crying.

For one second, I thought she found out about the vial. I did. Mothers know things. They smell lies. They smell smoke. They smell when you are sick before you are sick. Or maybe Wren the black mini-witch told her.

“Gabriel,” she said.

I sat up.

“They called.”

I didn’t move.

“The hospital,” she said. “There is a donor.”

Her face was wet and scared and happy and broken.

“A local man,” she said. “Young. Healthy. Sudden death. He was registered for organ donation.”

I could hear my blood in my ears.

She wiped her nose with her sleeve, like a little kid.

“They will come get me at noon, Gabey, for the procedure,” she said.

I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t feel anything.

“Let me make you another soup before I go,” she said. I didn’t even try to protest.

I got up to help her pack.

She started slowly and clumsily gathering up all the ingredients and the pot and all.

“Oh, Gabriel,” she said, “do you have more of that special water thingie that weird-hair girl gave you? I tried it yesterday with the soup, I saw you brought back the thermos empty, probably liked it that much, huh?”

It felt like my mouth was shut with nails. I couldn’t even speak.

At the hospital they said the donor was from nearby, healthy, registered, and that was all they could tell us, except the heart was a very good match.

After the surgery, when Mom was allowed to drink fluids, she asked for soup, so I went home and made her some.

When I got back, she took one sip.

Then she smiled and said, “Let’s go half?”

I just shook my head no. She gulped it all down.

Scraped the inside of the thermos with the plastic spoon.

Scrape scrape scrape.

And before I could breathe, she added, “Needed salt.”

I just sat there trying to stop my fucking useless eyes from leaking in front of my mom, trying to understand whether I was a good son or a rotten witch-loving monster.