The Diary’s End

She bought him that black silk tie and silk jacket. He just rolled them into a ball and tossed them into the back seat of her Corolla. As soon as they had her coffin in the ground, he headed for Joe’s Bar on 6th Street.

She called him “Huston” but as far as he was concerned, her “Huston” was buried right there beside his too-loving sister. Hugh was alive and didn't want to be by himself. He'd rather a drink. Maybe six would numb the gnawing loneliness creeping up his spine and the clawing fear that his too-loving sister was no longer there to be the responsible one.

Elizabeth had always been there. Always! He half expected to find her standing at the sink in their kitchenette wearing the same, tired frown. He could see it even when her back was turned. It was like she frowned through the back of her head. Or maybe that was just the set of her slumped shoulders. He didn't know what he'd do without her, or maybe he did. Yes, he would do whatever he damned well wanted.

He made it to Joe’s. There was no one sitting at the bar. Hugh took his usual seat alone, at the far end where he could watch the action at the pool table. There usually was someone playing. Hugh didn’t play. He just watched. Maybe now that she was gone and with the money stuffed in her little black book, he could afford the stakes. She called it her diary but was it? He sat and read lists of things she had wanted in life that she gave up to care for her Huston.

By the fourth shot of bourbon, senses and memory heightened. He starred at the smoke hanging below the yellow glow over the pool table and thought of the first family funeral he’d attended. Hugh never saw his mother actually buried. Elizabeth said he was too young but she did take him to that ancient church. He was too young to understand, and so watched the gloomy dust filtered beams of sunlight from the stained glass dancing their way to the floor. At the end of the church ceremony, Huston hid at the back of the church, burying his face and tears in the depths of someone else’s fur coat. It looked and smelled like his mother. It wasn’t’ his mother. And then Elizabeth, not more than 15 years old at that time, pulled him from that matronly refuge, into her thin arms and whispered, "...we'll always be together". There should have been tenderness and warmth in her voice when she said that: a promise of security but as he sipped at another shot of bourbon, all he recalled was a cloying soprano, “I’ll never leave you alone”.

Maybe she had been too young for the burden that their father had left her. After their mother died, he was on the road all the time, until one day, he just never came home, leaving the house and the bills. No one came to the house to say why or where he was gone. Elizabeth started waiting tables at a snack bar and never finished high school. She was angry all of the time but she didn’t lose the house and she didn’t stop trying to raise Huston who was 6 years her junior and insisted he was not about to take orders from his sister.

At first, he refused to do anything, even for himself. She cooked and picked up after him and barked orders that were ignored as the television volume increased. She didn’t go out on dates and didn’t seem to have any friends but she walked with a purpose after work each night in that faded, worn blue parka. She would never quit. The job? Her responsibility? Him!

If she wasn’t working, he recalled she was always at home, just waiting to pounce. She fed him and dressed him and nagged him to do his homework but he stopped going to school. And Hugh never got into trouble with the law. He never actually did anything. He watched. She worked and paid. And he didn’t leave Elizabeth. He didn’t have to do anything as long as Elizabeth was around, but in his mind, the attraction to do nothing was that it was the opposite of what she wanted from him. She nagged and he did less.

When the system gave up on him, Elizabeth didn’t. If he wouldn’t go to school, she nagged him to get a job and maybe think about night school. She bought him his first suit, found him his first sales job, which lasted four days because he just couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. She found him another sales job, this time with the flexibility of “commission”. That lasted longer. They didn’t care if he slept in every morning, so long as they weren’t paying him to lie in bed, but he didn’t make any money either. She supplied pocket money and he took what more he needed directly from her purse.

And then suddenly, the Police came to the door to tell him it was over. They showed him the security camera footage of the top of a black toque and green army jacket but the only face was Elizabeth’s. Her shaking hands were in the cash drawer, trying to draw out the bills as quickly as possible when suddenly her body was blasted back against the wall of cigarette cartons.

Hugh recognized that black toque and army jacket. His share: $20,000 were now folded into Elizabeth’s diary. He said nothing and as he watched the tape, he thought: that’s it... I’m free.

“One more, in memory of my dear sister”, he cried down the length of the empty bar.

It wasn’t long before Joe had his car keys and hauled him out the front door, handing him the little black book and giving him a last little shove, with orders to find a cab and go home. He realized Elizabeth should have been there to pick him up and save him the cab fare or to walk him in the direction of the house. But Joe can’t call her anymore.

Hugh turned and left without calling a cab, sensing home and her presence to the right. “I can go wherever I want”, he mumbled to himself.

The street was dark and deathly quiet with a musty smell from a veil of wood smoke and mist, all the way up the hill from the docks. Hugh staggered downhill, focusing on the lone street lamp, where he’d left her car... now his car and the remnants of his silk suit jacket. He stopped and weaved slightly backward, pawing at his pockets for the keys that had never left Joe's, when he heard the screech of tires and rumble of an oversized motor or a broken muffler.

Hugh looked up to what he thought was the source of the sound but instead saw that plain, faded, and worn blue parka, hanging loosely off her shoulders just as she'd always worn it, as she stood under the street light. “Hell with you…I’m not going home...we buried you” he yelled into the night.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off that parka as fear gripped tighter in the pit of his stomach.

“Leave me alone” he cried as he tried to turn to run back and across the street as the arms of her parka reached out in his direction.

Hugh didn’t see the Mustang barrelling towards him through the fog. The weight behind the impact was like being hit by a Mac truck. It didn’t hurt immediately. He flew in slow motion, at least 20 feet, pages and money fluttering all around, before scraping across the asphalt and coming to a dead stop at her feet.

The pain was excruciating and as intense as the fear he felt when Elizabeth spoke one last time as his eyes closed: “I told you we’d always be together”.