“How can you say that—”
“Because I have to believe it or it’s all my fault.” When she looked up at him sharply, he looked away from her just as fast. “I was not expected, okay? My birth was not a happy event because I was not … what she wanted. Frankly, I don’t blame her. Didn’t blame her. Whatever.”
“Oh, Daniel—”
“No, don’t be all sorry for me. It is what it is.”
Rubbing his tired eyes, he wondered how long they had to stay in his cesspool—
“What happened that night?” she asked softly.
Daniel frowned. “How did you know it was night?”
“You said so. You said you couldn’t see anything.”
“Yeah.” Sensations of drowning, of cold water in his face, in his mouth, down in his lungs, threatened to drag him back into the past. And he kept talking just to try to pull himself out of the memories. “She, ah, she was drunk and behind the wheel. She stopped in the middle of the four-laner bridge. When she got out … I thought it was just to run. You know, leave me and the car, just get the fuck out. But she, ah, she headed for the railing. She didn’t hesitate. I mean, she just grabbed on and swung her legs out to the side. I remember she got one of them caught—so she kind of fell sideways? She must have hit the water on her side. I don’t know.”
“Oh, Daniel. I’m so sorry. To see that—”
“I was an idiot, of course. I ran to where she’d jumped. But like I could do anything up on the bridge? And then there was the fact that the current was going under where I was—she was already being swept away. When I finally figured that out, I hustled across the highway and looked into the water. The moon was out, and there were lights all over the bridge. I saw her surface right below me so I jumped in.” He shook his head again. “Man, that water was freezing and hard. I got the wind knocked out of me—but not because I hit bad. I went in feet first. It was just a stun because it was so cold.”
He wrapped his arms around himself. “As soon as I got my breath back, I tried to find her. I couldn’t see shit. Water was splashing into my face and the waves made it impossible to look around and I was being carried away from the bridge lights. But there were these docks up ahead. Piers. They had lots of gas lanterns—and somehow, I saw her head bob. I swam like a motherfucker. I swam as hard as I could. And then I got to her …”
The physical sensations came back in a fresh wave of agony, the cold, the coughing, the weakness in his body. His mind had been screaming and he would have let it out, but he hadn’t been able to spare the oxygen.
Every time he blinked, he saw the wet hair fanned around his mother’s head and her back bobbing up and down.
“I rolled her over so she could breathe. But it had taken me a long time to get to her. A lifetime.” He coughed a little. “And then I started swimming. I thought if I could get her to shore …”
“Someone would help you.”
“Yeah.” He pictured those piers, the big lantern lights, the parking lot that had been empty. “But I lost hold of her body. I was going down myself … swimming with one arm—and it was so cold.”
Snapping out of it, he shrugged. “In the end, I saved myself. They found her the next day after she’d gone over the Falls of the Ohio. Fifteen miles down the river.”
As he fell silent, Lydia brushed the tears from her eyes. “I am so sorry.”
“It just is.” He glanced at her. “I can’t go back and change anything. She made her choice and I couldn’t save her and that’s where I need to leave it. Enough with the emotion, you know? Feelings don’t change shit.”
“How old were you?” she said softly.
“Fourteen.”
When Lydia closed her eyes and cursed, he shrugged. “Look, the honest truth is that no matter how old I was, I wasn’t going to save her. It didn’t matter how tall I was, how strong I was, what I weighed, you know? A fall into cold water from that height, when the person was already drunk, and maybe high? Add in a bad landing and there you have it.”
“You were a child.”
He laughed harshly. “Children are five. I was two years away from a learner’s permit.”
Lydia put her head in her hands. “What happened to you afterward? Where did you go?”
“I was put into the foster system, but I didn’t stick around for long. I dropped out of high school when I was sixteen and went off on my own. Eventually, I found a few people like me, so I wasn’t totally alone. It is what it is.”