Rising From the Dust Read online

  Rising

  from the

  Dust

  Written by

  Adrianna M. Scovill

  Rising from the Dust

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places,

  and incidents are a product of the author's imagination,

  or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real

  people or events is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Adrianna M. Scovill

  All rights reserved

  First printing December 2018

  savageimagination.com

  Facebook.com/AdriannaMScovill

  Twitter: @anni_scovill

  ISBN-13: 978-1729618806

  ISBN-10: 1729618804

  Sometimes there are moments when we’re standing in the warmth of the sun—with the flowers tickling our ankles and the birds singing in the trees, while we’re surrounded by all the people who are important to us—and we can still feel a heavy darkness pushing down on us like the suffocating pressure of an all-encompassing lead blanket. We can’t see it, but we can feel it. It’s inescapable, relentless, impervious to begging or cajoling or negotiation.

  As the dark weight settles over us, it seeps into our skin and burrows down into our bones, absorbing the sunlight and the beauty as it goes, feeding off our energy until the very idea of anything more than apathy is exhausting. The thought of happiness is exhausting. The thought of forcing a smile is exhausting. Thought is exhausting.

  Sometimes the darkness fades gradually on its own; sometimes we sweep it away with brooms that were painstakingly woven together in therapy; sometimes we blast it out with an act of chemical warfare.

  Sometimes we can do nothing but ride the wave and wait it out, repeating the mantra it gets better. But waiting is exhausting. The ups and downs of the wave are exhausting. Hope is exhausting.

  In those moments, the idea of ever being happy again seems like an unattainable fantasy, and we might begin to wonder…what’s the point? Why are we riding this wave again? Why bother?

  When we are incapable of feeling real happiness, the only thing to which we can cling is the memory of happiness. When we see or hear something that once gave us joy, we can sense the ghost of that joy reaching out an inviting hand; if we try to take it, our fingers will slip right through, but its presence is what matters.

  I wouldn’t be here today without Raúl Esparza and the happiness he’s given me—a happiness that’s powerful enough to reach a spectral hand through the darkness when I need it the most—and even though I’ve never met him, I will always be grateful. I’ve encountered a lot of people who feel the same, and I hope that, wherever he is, he has some idea of the lives he’s touched, changed, saved, the joy he’s brought to the world.

  “And I think that’s what growing up is all about, where you go, okay, this is it, this is about love—relationships are a disaster, everything is really screwed up, things don’t work out, people get divorces, I may not even like everything there is to like about myself—love anyway. Live anyway. Choose to be a part of this anyway.” –Raúl Esparza

  Chapter One

  Gabriel stood and put his hands against his lower back, stretching with a wince. He’d been sitting in the hard kitchen chair for too long, and his head was thudding dully. His eyes were unfocused and scratchy, but he’d finally gotten the last paper graded.

  He knew it didn’t really matter, not now—not tonight. But he’d needed something to do, something to distract himself.

  He walked into the living room. Natalie was on the sofa, watching Sleepless in Seattle. She had one foot on the floor, the other on the couch, and she was hugging a pillow to her chest. She looked up at his approach.

  “Finished?” she asked, bending her knee to pull her leg back.

  He sank onto the couch with a grimace and reached for her ankle, drawing it onto his lap. He massaged her foot absently, staring toward the television. “Yeah. Did Ben call?”

  “He finally got a train,” she said. “He feels awful for not making it to the service.”

  Gabriel sighed, his hands stilling on her foot. “I’ll talk to him when he gets here,” he said.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  He blinked his burning eyes and gave himself a mental shake, pulling himself back to reality. He rubbed his thumbs gently beneath her toes and looked over at her. “I’m alright,” he said. Of course, she knew that wasn’t true. After twenty-five years of marriage, she often knew him better than he knew himself. They looked at each other, and a million unspoken words hung in the air between them. “She never forgave me,” he said quietly.

  “She loved you, Gabe,” his wife answered, pulling her foot from his grasp. She shifted toward him, setting the pillow aside and putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “I tried so hard to be what she wanted me to be,” he murmured through lips that felt numb. What everyone wanted me to be, he thought. He didn’t need to finish; she could hear his silent words, as always, and through the haze of his grief he could see her expression shift. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d hurt her. Again. He’d gladly give his own life to take back all the pain he’d caused her.

  “I know,” she said. He reached up to cover her hand on his shoulder, but she drew away and pushed to her feet. He touched the hem of her shirt, briefly, looking up at her. She met his eyes and sighed. She put her hand on his head. “I’m going to bed,” she said quietly. “Will you wait up for Ben?”

  “Of course,” he answered, letting his hand fall away from her shirt as she brushed his hair from his forehead.

  “You can come in, if you don’t want to be alone,” she said.

  He bit his lip, nodding as the tears burned his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but she turned away and walked toward the bedroom. He still thought of it as their bedroom, even though he’d been sleeping in the guest room for three months.

  As he watched her walking away from him, he felt himself sinking—into the couch cushions, into the despair that had been clawing at him, and he was too tired to fight anymore. He closed his eyes. The pulse of his headache was a steady drumbeat behind his eyeballs. He tipped his head back against the sofa and thought of his mother.

  She’d been far from perfect, but he’d loved her. He’d wanted so badly to make her proud, and he’d never mustered the courage to ask her if he had. And now, either way, it was too late. She was gone. Just a few hours ago, he’d watched them lower her casket into the ground; a few hours, and already it felt like a lifetime.

  He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He was tired, but he couldn’t let himself sit on the sofa wallowing in self-pity. His son would be home soon, and Gabriel wasn’t going to let Ben find him sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

  He pushed to his feet and headed toward the bathroom to get something for his headache. He knew he should eat, but he wasn’t hungry. Natalie had made him a sandwich earlier, and he’d choked down half of it to appease her, but the very thought of food made his stomach churn.

  He flipped on the bathroom light and stood at the sink, looking at himself in the mirror. His mother would say he needed a haircut, though it was still far from what he’d consider shaggy. He kept it pretty short in general. The spatters of gray at his temples had begun to spread, trailing dashes of salt through his otherwise dark hair.

  His stubble was littered with gray, as well. He ran a finger over his rough jaw. He’d shaved that morning, for his mother’s funeral, but he no longer shaved every day. He rarely went more than two or three days—he despised beards on himself, and Natalie had never cared for them—but lately he’d gone as long as a week. He didn’t want to think about what it mi
ght mean.

  The lines at the corners of his eyes seemed deeper than the last time he’d looked, and so did the brackets around his mouth. It had been a long and difficult couple of days, though. He tried to see himself objectively. He didn’t look old, not really. But he certainly wasn’t young anymore.

  I’m too old to start over, he thought. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

  The voice of his wife rose up in his head: I think we should consider getting a divorce. The words had hit him like a frying pan to the face even though he’d always expected them to come eventually. He’d opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish out of water, but in the end he hadn’t had a chance to muster an answer. They’d been interrupted by the phone.

  His mother was dead.

  As awful as that was, it had also given him a reprieve from talks of divorce, at least for a few days.

  He couldn’t help wondering what his mother would think if she’d heard the slightest suggestion of her son breaking the solemn vows of marriage, of disgracing his family name with a divorce. His mind shied away from the words she would likely use. No one had a sharper tongue than his mother, and no one else had ever been able to cut him to the quick with just a few words.

  He felt guilty thinking such uncharitable things of the woman who’d gently cleaned his scraped knees and read him bedtime stories in Spanish and made him homemade soup when he was sick. She’d loved him, her only son, and now was not the time to think of the darker memories.

  He opened the cabinet and grabbed a bottle from the shelves. He popped two pills onto his tongue, replaced the bottle in the cabinet, and used his hand, cupped beneath the faucet, for a quick mouthful of water to swallow the medicine.

  Then he ran his hands under the faucet and scrubbed water onto his face. His mind was trying to pull him in a dozen dark directions, and he needed something to distract himself now that he had no more papers to grade. Returning to the living room, he grabbed the nearest book and sank onto the sofa, flipping the paperback open.

  He’d barely made any progress—reading and rereading the same passages as he tried to make sense of the words—when he heard a key in the lock of the front door. He set the book aside—tossed it aside, really—and got to his feet as his son walked through the door with a backpack flung over one shoulder and a tired sigh of relief.

  Ben saw his father headed toward him and offered a small smile as he dropped his pack into a chair. “Hey, Dad,” he said. “Sorry I’m so late, is Mom in bed?”

  Gabriel nodded. He stopped in front of his son, taking a few moments to look him over. He missed him so much that it was sometimes difficult to breathe when he thought of the miles between them. But, for now, Ben was home; they were standing face to face, and the sight of his son’s face was exactly the balm that Gabriel needed after such an emotionally-trying day.

  Ben stepped forward and hugged him. “How ya doing, Papi?” he asked softly as Gabriel wrapped his arms around him.

  Gabriel blinked back his tears. “Better with you here,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t make it back in time,” Ben said.

  Gabriel drew back and patted his son’s cheek, smiling. “You know your abuelita wouldn’t have wanted you to miss classes. School is important, mijo, you did the right thing.”

  Ben shook his head, frowning. “I should’ve been here with you,” he said.

  “You’re here now, and I’m glad.”

  “I missed the—”

  “Benny,” Gabriel cut in. “No more of that.” Ben swallowed and nodded. Gabriel hesitated, then reached out and settled his hands onto his son’s shoulders. “Ben. Mi cielito,” he said. Ben smiled at the nickname, unused since his childhood. “You know I’m proud of you, right?”

  Ben rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

  Gabriel squeezed his shoulders. “I mean it,” he said, and Ben grew serious when he saw his father’s sincerity. “Your mother and I are proud of you, and we love you, and nothing will ever—could ever change that.”

  “Even if I dropped out of law school?” Ben asked.

  “Bite your tongue,” Gabriel said quickly, and Ben laughed. Gabriel grinned, but said, “Not even that. I’m in your corner for life, amigo. Promise me that, no matter what, you won’t ever worry about what I think of you.”

  “Dad, do…you want to talk about Grandma?”

  Gabriel sighed and lowered his hands. “Not tonight. Are you hungry? I’ll fix you something.”

  “No, I ate on the train,” Ben said. He saw the disappointment that Gabriel tried to hide. “But hey, do you want to go out or something? We haven’t had a chance to get wasted together.”

  Gabriel cocked an eyebrow at his grinning son. “First of all, my days of cleaning piss off you are long past,” he said, and Ben threw his head back to laugh; the sound did wonders for Gabriel’s battered heart. “Secondly, twenty-one or not, you’ll always be my sweet and innocent little boy, so try not to disillusion me, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ben laughed. “Is there a third?”

  “Is there a third? Yeah, there’s a third. Do I strike you as a guy who gets wasted?”

  “First time for everything, Papá,” Ben said, putting an arm around his father’s shoulders for a few seconds.

  “Actually, I’d love to go out with you for drinks,” Gabriel said. “But not tonight. Get some sleep, mijo, okay? We’ve got the weekend to catch up.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  Gabriel sighed. “Actually, I…think I’m going to take a drive. Clear my head a bit.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “You’ve been traveling for hours. Really. Go to bed, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “You’re okay?”

  Gabriel smiled. He didn’t really know the answer to that, but he said, “I’m fine. Goodnight, Benjamin.”

  “Te amo, Papi,” Ben said. Then, on impulse, he reached out and pulled his father into another embrace. He let Gabriel cling to him for long moments, knowing that his father needed this hug more than he would admit.

  Gabriel again blinked away his tears and turned his head to kiss Ben’s cheek, finally drawing back. “I love you to the moon,” he answered.

  “And back again?” Ben asked with a smile. This had been a nightly routine when he was a little boy.

  “And a trip around the sun,” Gabriel responded, also smiling at the memory.

  “See you in the morning, Dad,” Ben said, and Gabriel watched as his son—an adult, now, but still his sweet little boy—grabbed his backpack and headed toward his old room.

  Chapter Two

  The blackness of the night seemed to be seeping into him; he could feel himself sucking it up like a sponge.

  But that wasn’t quite right. It had always been inside him, just waiting for him to drop his guard, just waiting to rise up and overtake everything he’d worked so hard to cultivate. All the lies he’d told himself were no match for that swelling darkness. They could no longer shield him. His mother was dead, and while he knew that she’d loved him, he also knew that she’d always hated a part of him. He’d done his best to bury that part of himself—unable to truly kill it, he’d hoped he could bury it so far down in the depths of himself that it would wither away like a flower without sunlight.

  It wasn’t a flower, though. It was a weed. He couldn’t pull it out; the roots were too deeply tangled. He couldn’t suffocate it. So he’d done everything he could to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t there. He’d tried to be what his mother wanted, he’d tried to be the husband his wife deserved and the father his son believed him to be, the teacher his students needed him to be. He’d tried to be everything for everyone but he no longer had any idea who he was. He wasn’t sure he’d ever known. He loved his family, he knew that. He loved his job and his students.

  But he’d failed all of them, some in ways they didn’t yet realize. He told his son and his students to be true to themselves, and what did that make him? A
hypocrite, at best.

  He could feel the darkness spreading through him; it was cold, and it was eating away at all of his happy memories—how could they be real, after all, if they were based on a foundation of lies?

  His gaze drifted toward the overpass coming up. Soon, he would pass beneath it. But if his wheels slipped? If he lost control and hit that concrete embankment? He would go up the ramp at an angle, hit the pillar and most likely spin around. With enough speed, he might hit the underside of the overpass.

  It probably wouldn’t be quick or painless, but why should it be? An accident—

  She’ll know, he thought. She’ll tell Benny it was an accident. She’ll do everything she can to make him believe it, to make everyone believe it. But she’ll know. She’ll carry it inside of her like a parasite, letting it eat away at her.

  He felt this truth as a sharp and physical pain, like a spear through his chest. He let off the gas, suddenly realizing he’d drifted halfway across the center line. He jerked the wheel to the right, blinking several times to clear the fog from his eyes as he passed beneath the overpass.

  There was a flash of red and blue, and a brief wail of a siren, and he looked up at his mirror. His stomach clenched at the sight of the swirl of lights. “Shit,” he muttered. He pulled over on the shoulder on the other side of the bridge, put the car in park, rolled down his window, and killed the engine. Then he tipped his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, letting out a breath. His hands were shaking. He felt queasy.

  He tried to convince himself that he’d never had any intention of doing it, and certainly not with a cop behind him to bear witness. His heart was thudding irregularly, though, and his palms were clammy.

  “You fucking asshole,” he muttered, curling his hands into fists on his thighs. “You selfish son of a—”