By eight-thirty, it's standing room only at the Rusty Scuppers. After this morning's announcement about Quoddy Sea-Farms shutting down I guess we all need to get drunk enough to forget we got only two more weeks of paychecks and health insurance. Quoddy Sea says it's salmon anemia, but I think maybe they were looking to close anyway—too many legal hassles with summer people complaining that the cage sites wreck their expensive water views. 

It don't seem right, putting a couple hundred people out of work. I don't see most of us making it. The old-timers say that when the paper mill upcountry was running full-tilt, all you had to do was get a union card and your life was guaranteed, but those days are long gone. The work we've always done, fishing and clamming and logging, and more recently, fish-farming, is drying up bigtime. 

Health insurance is what's got me worried. I'm in great shape from shoveling feed out on the salmon cages, and Tina's healthy, too, but I don't know how I'd pay for it if one of the girls got appendicitis or something. As if I didn't have enough on my mind already, Nana dying of cancer and Tina and I not getting along so great. 

Judd Merrow says, "I bet they knew this was coming a couple of months ago." He chugs a longneck Bud in two gulps and waves his scrawny arm for Ella, the barmaid, to bring him another. "Ten years of being on those cages no matter how awful the weather is, and two week's notice. And the baby's due in a couple months."

"I'm keeping the cable TV even if I don't eat," says Moppet Wilson. Which is no surprise, because when he's not working or drinking at the Rusty Scuppers, he's got his big loose self parked on the couch in front of the boob tube. "A man's got to have something to take up his mind."

"That's if he had a mind." Judd winks at Ella, then sorts out some quarters for his beer. "Sorry I can't tip you tonight. You understand, right?"

"Right." Ella smoothes some loose hair back into her ponytail. "This place'll probably be the next to go under."

My head feels like a crew of tiny construction workers is hammering steel in my brain. It's been hurting since we got the news, and four beers ain't done one thing to slow it down. I've been thinking of going home and seeing if I can get laid, so when I feel fingers combing through the back of my mullet, I figure maybe I'm going to get lucky. 

I turn around, but it's not Tina standing there. It's Margo Burke, a backseat girl when we were in high school. Her bleached hair's wound up like a bird's nest, and she's so thin her shoulders look like they could poke holes in drywall. Before she got her workman's comp gig going, she was a spooner in the wet end, one of the shit jobs at Quoddy Sea, scraping the last bits of blood and guts out of the salmon. Not that she could do anything else. Her talents are strictly horizontal.

She leans her bony old hip on my shoulder. "Don't suppose you gentlemen could offer a girl a seat."

Moppet pushes back his chair. "Right here." Margo gives me a look like she's disappointed I didn't offer, then perches on his knee like a little bird. His hands on her waist, Moppet pulls her back. "Hey. Something's come up." 

Margo grinds into him for a few seconds, then stands up. "Sorry. That's all I got for you tonight. See you around, boys." 

Moppet watches her cross the crowded floor. "She's crazy about me. She just don't know it yet."

Judd waves his empty for a refill. "I think she's crazy about something else since she got on the workman's comp gravy train. Know what I mean?"

I don't know and I don't care. I had my chance with Margo the spring we graduated high school, but I didn't go for it because Tina was pregnant with Kady and our shotgun wedding was already in the works.

Judd shifts his butt and leans across the table. "Jan heard it at the nursing home. Margo's on the straw diet."

Moppet shakes out a no-brand cigarette. "What's that?" 

"Narcotic pills," Judd says. "It sounds like half the people we know are snorting them, or even shooting up. Margo got a scrip for her carpal tunnel, and she's been into it heavy."

I can't believe it. Big-city stuff like that wouldn't happen here on Moose Island, a million miles from everywhere.

Judd says, "There's gonna be more of it, too. You got two hundred out-of-work people needing to get numb, all the beer in the world ain't gonna do it."

* * *

The next day after work, I go to Nana's. She's alone on the Whitlaw home place—what's left of it. When I was a kid, Nana and Gramp had fifteen waterfront acres, but now it's down to a postage stamp lot. Once Gramp passed on and Nana got sick with the lung cancer, it didn't make much sense to try and pay the taxes on all that land when out-of-staters were willing to buy it for pretty good bucks. Acre by acre, it slipped away. Just like everything in life.

Judd and Moppet would be amazed if they saw me fixing the tea tray for Nana, but I've turned into a pretty good cook since she took sick. She's sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window at Lambert Cove and a couple of small spruce-covered islands and the town of Lubec on the mainland off in the distance. I have to shift a stack of magazines and catalogues to make room on the table, and I do that with one hand, balancing the tray in the other like some high-class waiter. Now there's a career I never considered.

Nana's house used to be so neat it made me nervous, but it's gotten cluttered since she got sick and neither one of us can keep ahead of it. I've hinted that maybe Tina could come help us swamp it out, but she ignores me, like she usually does. All she cares about these days is doing her scrapbook pages, making it look like the perfect life none of us will ever have. 

Nana pours milk into her tea, and I notice, not for the first time, how thin and shaky her hands are. Nobody in my life has been better to me than Nana, and it'll be a hard day when she goes to be with Gramp.

I unwrap a store-bought donut, and the extra powdered sugar sifts down all over the tablecloth. In the old days, she would've scolded me for making a mess, but now all she says is, "Just leave it be, dear. It's not worth worrying about." That sets me thinking again about how much we've lost.

"I'm at the crossroads of my life." It came to me just like that while I was lying awake in the middle of the night last night, listening to the house creaking and settling in the September wind. A dozen years out of high school, and everything's coming unraveled. With Nana to look after, I couldn't leave Moose Island if I wanted to, but I don't want to anyway. This is Whitlaw ground, and the roots run deep. I say it again: "I am at the crossroads of my life."

"Could be an opportunity. You thought of it like that?" Nana dunks a piece of donut in her tea. "Maybe going to the technical college?" 

She's talked about that a lot, and backalong I should've listened. Might come a day when there's no more salmon to feed, she'd say. You could learn to drive an eighteen-wheeler. Or take up a trade. There's never enough carpenters and plumbers. I can't see myself getting into reading and studying, though. The only thing I liked about Quoddy High was baseball season.

"Promise me you'll look into it," Nana says, and I nod. I'll look into it, but that's all I'm promising. 

Nana's cup rattles against the saucer as she sets it down, and I see her close her eyes and press her lips together in a thin line. I jump to help her as she pushes herself up from her chair, but she waves me off and shuffles to the sideboard, her slippers making a soft whick-whick sound on the linoleum. 

Next to the canisters are her amber pill bottles. She picks up one and then another, until she finds the one she's looking for. She's usually too proud to talk about the cancer, but now she says, "Feels like someone's driving a clam fork in my damn lungs." She puts a pill on her tongue and takes a sip from her teacup. Then she says, "Tina's probably wondering where you are." That's my cue to leave her alone to deal with her pain.

I kiss her goodbye. Between Nana and my job, I'm losing so much that can't be replaced. All I have now are Tina and the kids, and I've got to hang onto them as tight as I can. 

* * *

I open the front door, but this ain't "Leave It to Beaver," and June Cleaver ain't there to greet Ward and make a fuss.  Tina and our three girls are sitting around the kitchen table, all of them cutting and gluing and whatever else it is they do in their paper world. Maura and Mandy, our nine-year-old twins, are making pages about a quarter the size of the big square ones Tina puts together, but theirs are just as happy and fancy as hers, if a bit sloppy. Kady, who's eleven, is sobbing and hiccupping as she works, big tears rolling down her cheeks. Tina's trimming a photo with wavy-edge scissors.

"Frankenstein in overalls," I say, because she gets pissed if I take the Lord's name in vain in front of the girls. "You just gonna sit there? Kady's crying  like the world's ending." Which now that I think about it, maybe it is.

Tina slams down her scissors. "I have to finish this page for my meeting tonight. We've got new members coming, and I'm making the presentation." 

"As if you don't have hundreds of pages already."

She flips her long dark hair behind her shoulder and glares up at me, but I give it right back. Her nail-bitten fingers drum on the table. "Kady just found out her best friend's moving away. Do you even know who that is?"

A comment like that is pure Tina. If I guess wrong, I end up looking like the idiot who doesn't know who his daughter's friends are. I decide to go for it anyway. "Brittany.  Right?"

Tina pats Kady's hand. "I got to hand it to Brittany's father. He's already got another job.  Instead of sitting around drinking and feeling sorry for himself." 

Freddy Witham runs the box room at Quoddy Sea. He and his wife come from New Hampshire, so moving off Moose Island is nothing for him. It ain't like his whole life's here, his family, his friends, his history. It ain't like he can't survive anywhere else.

"I already told you, I ain't moving. I don't know how to start over someplace else. This is home, damn it. This is home. And what about Nana?"

"We don't need to talk about this now," Tina says, which means there'll be a big go-round when she gets back from her meeting. As soon as supper's over, I head to the Rusty Scuppers, where everyone feels the same way I do. Tina wants to go out, she can find a sitter. It ain't gonna be me staying home tonight while she plays cut-out with her friends.

* * *

Just like last night, most of the boys from Quoddy Sea are drinking their way to layoff.  Margo Burke's sitting with Judd, so I get my beer and head on over. "Where's Moppet?"

"Watching some wrestling thing on the pay-per-view. He'll be along later."

Thom Estey, who runs the feed barge, joins us, and then Dunc Waycott, who drives a forklift. There are only four chairs, so Margo gets up and lets Dunc sit down—and then perches on my thigh. I don't want to be rude, so I pretend she isn't there until her bony butt starts digging into my leg and I have to ask her to change sides.

I don't know how long we sit, drinking and shooting the shit, but I'm pretty drunk when all of a sudden someone grabs the long back of my hair and the voice I least want to hear says, "So. I should've known."

"Busted," says Judd.

I stand up, almost knocking Margo to the floor. She stumbles into Thom and sits on his knee. I tell Tina, "We'll talk outside."

I follow her out, and the door to the street has barely swung shut when she says, loud enough for the teenagers hanging out in front of the pizza place next door to hear, "How could you do this to me? That bitch is a total slut."

"Stop yelling.  I was just—"

"Don't say a word. Are you sleeping with her? I know you're sleeping with her." Tina smacks the hood of the nearest car, and I hear sheet metal buckle.

I realize it's her best friend Shelly's car when Shelly sticks her head out the window and yells, "Hey, watch it."

"Sorry." Tina runs her hand over the dent, then slits her eyes at me. "You bastard. I felt bad about our argument, so I come down here thinking we can have a couple of drinks together and then go home and, you know, have one of those romantic moments you keep saying we don't have enough of any more. But what do I find? You with some slut on your lap." 

"Margo don't mean nothing."

"It looked like nothing." Tina opens the car door. "I'm leaving now. You go back to your drunk friends and your scrawny whore."

She and Shelly drive away. I don't know if I should go home now and do some serious butt-kissing, or wait until later when she might've calmed down. The teenagers outside the pizza place are laughing. I go back in the Rusty Scuppers and drain my beer and have two more to give Tina a chance to calm down before I tell Judd I have to go.

"Tell her she looks like she's lost ten pounds," he says. "That always works with Jan."

I climb into my pickup and drive the four blocks towards home, trying out opening lines. I think I've got something figured out, but when I cut the wheels into the driveway, I realize it's too late. Even crawling in on my hands and knees and kissing Tina's little pink toes won't work this time.

I don't know how she and Shelly got my stuff out on the sidewalk so fast, but they did. All my stuff, my clothes and rifles and tool chest and Guns'N'Roses albums, thrown in a heap and spilling into the street. This has never happened before, no matter how bad our fights have been. I start to hyperventilate, I can't help it, and my chest gets to hurting like I'm having a heart attack. I go up the walk, but the front door is secured inside with the chain lock I put on myself, never dreaming I'd be the only person it ever kept out.

"Go away," Tina says through the narrow opening. "Go away and don't ever come back. Go stay with your little slut."

"I ain't done nothing wrong. I ain't." But I'm talking to a closed door. I stand there and look at my stuff. Is this all I have to show for my whole life, this pathetic pile of shit?

I lug most of it to the back of the truck, which has a cap on it, then put the rifles on the window rack in the cab. What's worst is that Kady and Maura and Mandy are standing in the window watching me. Kady and Maura are crying, but Mandy's dry-eyed, leaning against Kady's shoulder, and I know it's just a matter of time before Tina has them all turned against me.

I don't know what to do. Nana's been in bed for hours, and I'm not going to disturb her. Maybe Judd will let me crash on his couch, and tomorrow Tina and I can start putting things right. I drive back to the Rusty Scuppers.

It's still crowded, and Margo's back at the table with Judd and Thom and Dunc. Judd says, "Didn't know if we'd ever see you again, 'cept at your funeral."

Margo stands up. "I better go. Tina might come back and bitch-slap me."

I sit down. "Tina ain't coming back. And I got to find someplace to stay."

I don't mean that for her, but she says, "I got room," and sits on my lap, and after a couple more beers I figure I might as well spend the night.

* * *

Margo lives in the low-income housing project some people in this town call "Slut Central." We sit on the couch and she flips through the TV channels.

"Tina ain't never gonna let me see my girls." The end of my nose prickles like it used to when I was a little kid trying to keep from crying. "My life's so fucked up, nothing can make it better."

"Something can." Margo cuffs me on the shoulder. "And 'cause I'm feeling sorry for you, it's gonna be my treat."

She goes upstairs, and I wonder if she's planning to put on something sexy and then expect me to fuck her, and whether I'll really do it. But instead, she comes back still in her jeans and sparkly "Hot babe" tee shirt, carrying a hand mirror holding some lines of white powder and a straw cut in short pieces. She puts it on the banged-up coffee table and sits down and looks at me. "Here you go. Try a line of this."

"What is it?" I think, though, I already know.

"Forgetting powder. Oxy. If this doesn't take your troubles away, nothing will." She sticks a straw up one side of her nose and hoovers up a line, then switches sides and does another. She hands me a fresh piece of straw. "Go ahead."

So this is what Judd was talking about. I hesitate, but only for a second, then snort it up.  It feels weird, burning its way into my sinuses and tasting bitter in the back of my throat. "Other side," Margo tells me, so I do the last line and then lean back against the couch pillows. She flops down with her head in my lap and stares at the ceiling. I close my eyes and wait. In a few minutes this feeling washes over me I've never felt before, calm and excited both at once. 

When I was a kid, we used to hitchhike to Little Falls on hot summer days. There was a long rope tied way up high in the pine branches, and you could swing clear out to the middle of Pennamaquan River and drop into the warm, lazy current. I was scared of it for a long time, but one day, instead of swinging out and then back to the riverbank like the little wuss I was, I made myself let go, and as I fell through the hot stillness to the water below, I felt exactly this feeling, finally free of everything that held me back.

I start to float, beyond the reach of gravity, no worries, no useless thoughts. Life feels more complete than it has in a long time, and I let it all go, my lost job, my lost family, my lost life.

"Feeling okay?" Margo sounds like she's a long way off.

"Great." It might be a while since she asked me. I can't tell, because time seems to have stopped. "I wouldn't mind doing this regular."

"All it takes is money." She turns onto her side, her cheek against my fly, and I wonder if she's going to make a move on me, but she doesn't. I spin further down the spiral, not even wondering where it'll end.

* * *

Daylight's shining around the edges of the window shades when I wake up on a strange couch. At first, I'm not sure where I am, but then I see the mirror on the coffee table and I remember. I'm at Margo's, and we snorted some crushed-up narcotic pills, and it was the best feeling in the world. Now it's the worst. I feel like my head's stuffed with dirty socks.

The TV clock says 8:37—and that means I'm two hours late for work already. What are they gonna do, though—fire me? That's so funny I laugh out loud, which makes my skull feel like someone's sunk a hatchet in it just above my eyebrows.

Margo comes down the stairs in a fuzzy old bathrobe, her hair standing up like haystacks all over her head. "What's so funny?" 

"Nothing much. I got to go to work, I guess."

"Are you coming back?"

It would be sweet, snorting forgetting powder every night, but that would guarantee I'd never see Kady and Maura and Mandy again. "I got to see Tina today. Try and patch things up. For the girls, you know?"

"Yeah." Margo licks her finger, blots up the few leftover grains from the mirror, and licks her finger again. Her tongue's very pink, pierced with a silver stud. "Well, you know you're welcome here if it don't work out."

Judd and Moppet already took our skiff to the cage site, so I have to catch a ride with Thom on the feed barge. 

"Get lucky last night, you old dog?" Judd asks after Thom leaves.

"No.  It wasn't about that." I don't intend to tell them what it was about.

"Course not," says Moppet.

He and Judd both smirk, but then Judd gets this serious look. "The only reason Margo Burke would take a guy home and not lay him is because of other—entertainments. You doing other entertainments now, Hank?"

"I don't know what you mean." I'm careful to keep my face turned away as I shovel up some salmon feed.

"I think you do." Judd takes hold of my shoulder. "I think you know exactly what I mean. Don't mess with that shit. It's bad news."

"That's right," says Moppet.

"I ain't gonna do it again." I swing my shovel in an arc, so the pellets scatter all across the surface where the few remaining salmon can snap them up. "I was drunk, and curious, and—it was just a one-time thing." 

* * *

I'm coming through the Quoddy Sea parking lot after my shift when I see Tina's friend Shelly leaning on the front bumper of my truck. She doesn't say hello, just starts reeling off what sounds like a prepared speech. Tina's getting a divorce lawyer. I'm gonna be on the hook for max child support, so I better find another job real quick. And I shouldn't even think about trying to see the kids. She doesn't wait for me to say anything, just dashes back to her car and drives away, leaving me standing there like someone just hit me with the stupid-stick.

We've had our share of hassles, Tina and me, more than our share, really. But we've always gotten through it somehow—until now. I'd figured on going by and trying to start working things out, but all of a sudden that doesn't sound like such a good idea. And I can't go to Nana's, because she'll see it in my face and I don't want to talk about it. It looks like there's nowhere for me to go but Margo's. Maybe she'll give me another Oxy. One more wouldn't hurt, after this bad news. Just one more, and that'll be the end of it.

"Sure," Margo says when I ask for one. "The only thing is, it's wicked expensive, and I can't afford to give them away. From now on, you got to pay."

"How much?" It's only fair, I guess. After all, I wouldn't expect her to buy my beer.

"I'll let you have one for half price, but just this once. Twenty dollars."

"Twenty dollars?" Half price is twenty dollars? How do people afford this? At forty dollars a pop, even one a day would come to almost three hundred dollars a week.

"They go for a dollar a milligram," Margo says. "Forty milligrams, forty dollars.  Everyone sells for that. I'm giving you a great deal here."

"You sell these?"

"Everyone that uses, sells. No one could afford them otherwise." She shrugs. "You got to do what you got to do. I guess you haven't used enough to understand that yet. But you will."

No, I tell myself. I won't, because this is the last time. I dig two tens out of my wallet, then pick up my straw and snort the pill she crushed for me. I can't do this anymore, I tell myself. It ain't right. But why does it have to feel so fucking good?

* * *

"I'm sorry I didn't come by yesterday," I tell Nana. It's early, way too early, but despite the Oxy hangover, I'm standing at the stove cooking a poached egg for her breakfast, just like back in normal times. That's what I'm trying to do. Make everything seem like normal.

Nana wrings out her teabag, then starts rubbing one side of her head just above her ear. "Tina called me, Hank. Not last night, but the night before. She wanted to know if you were staying here."

Feeling as though all my blood's left my brain and I'm about to keel over, I grab the edge of the counter. "What did you tell her?" 

"I said she woke me up and you weren't here at the moment. I don't like this, Hank. I won't lie, not even for you."

I butter the toast and flop the poached egg on it. What I ought to do is bring my stuff in from the truck right now, and tell her I'm staying. That way, I'd have to do it instead of going to Margo's. I don't know why I don't, when going back to Slut Central could mean I'll never see my girls again. But I'm caught in a bad dream and there's only one door out of it, and Margo holds the key.

Nana looks at me, and I feel like she sees all my dirty little secrets. When I was a kid, she always knew when I was lying, or in trouble. Right was right, and that was it. "The truth always comes out, Hank," she tells me, just like back then. "Better now than later."

I'm moving her pill bottles to wipe the counter when I see the label—oxycodone. I stand there looking at it for a long time, wanting to take a few but not wanting to leave Nana short. When she gets up and hobbles to the bathroom, though, it's too easy. I slip five pills into the pocket of my jeans.

* * *

We're down to our last day of work. By then, I've been served with divorce papers at the Rusty Scuppers in front of all my friends. I'm still on Margo's couch, and even though I feel guilty as hell, I've had to help myself to five more of Nana's Oxys. 

The last task is cleaning up the infected cage sites, and as soon as we load the barges with the nets, the job I've had for my entire adult life will be over. I don't know what's going to become of me, and I'm too scared to think about it.

We're about three-quarters done when it happens. Moppet's feet go out from under him on the wooden walkway, which is wet and slimy from hauling nets across it, and he falls, striking the small of his back on the rail of the barge.

I have to admit, I'm a little slow and fuzzy from my Oxy hangover, so by the time I realize what's happened, Moppet's sprawled on the walkway, crying like a little kid while Judd pats his shoulder. Thom calls the office on his cell phone.

A skiff with two EMT's and a backboard takes Moppet away. "Bastards probably won't give him Workman's Comp this close to shutdown," Judd says, and I figure he's probably right. We've all seen how that system screws you over, a measly wage that no one could live on and company-paid doctors who say there's nothing wrong with you anyway. 

An hour later, we punch the clock for the last time. Everyone's quiet as we go through the line. In the parking lot, I stare at the newly empty cove that was my world for twelve years. Fall's in the air, leaves shining red and yellow against the dark spruces, and this moment feels like the end of everything.

Someone yells that there's going to be an unemployment party at the Rusty Scuppers. I figure everyone's thinking what I'm thinking, might as well drink up the last paycheck and the hell with tomorrow. If we're going over the cliff anyway, we might as well go right now.

For the first time, the Rusty Scuppers runs out of our favorite brands of beer. Some of the guys start doing shooters, but I've never had a taste for whiskey. Judd's pounding them down hard, until without any warning, he does a face-plant on the table. His body-building brother, Stence, slings scrawny Judd over his shoulder and goes out the door.

I figure I might as well go, too. I'm threading my way to the door when I hear my name. Coming toward me is the only guy in the place who doesn't work at Quoddy Sea—Talbot Jones, son of the owner of the boatyard where the summer people store their yachts for the winter. He went to some pricey college and had a fancy-schmancy job in Boston, but now he' s back, and the gossip is that he's got a heavy drug problem.

"You know where Margo is?" 

I do, she's off somewhere scoring some Oxy, but I don't tell him that. 

"I need some shit," this fool tells me, and I think, Man, if I had your advantages, I wouldn't be living my life like that. But I don't, I don't have any hope at all, and that's why all I want to do is go back to the apartment and snort up another Oxy. It'll be the first time I've broken my one-a-day rule, but with my whole career ending, I think I'm entitled.

Talbot Jones wants to tag along, but I tell him Margo will be in touch. I stagger out to my truck and head for the closest thing I have to home.

* * *

The next afternoon, Judd and I go to visit Moppet in the hospital up in Calais. "This is the first day in our adult life that any of us is unemployed," Judd says as he pulls the curtain between Moppet and his roommate.

Moppet wiggles his toes, which are sticking out the bottom of the covers. "This sucks. My back's broken, and I don't even get to miss work. And I got stuff I want to be doing."

"Besides playing video games and watching TV?" Judd winks at me.

"That too. But I got a plan, and I'm gonna get left behind if I ain't pretty much back to normal by the first of October."

"You got a plan," I say. "You got a plan. The rest of us ain't got plans yet, but you got one?" 

"I'm gonna take that heavy-equipment course. Learn to drive a D-9. Always wanted to run one of them puppies." Moppet on a bulldozer. That's a picture. "I hope I can read good enough to keep up."

My mind's blown. Big, dumb Moppet's got it figured out, but I don't have a fucking clue which way to go.

* * *

This can't be happening, Margo in my face like she's my wife or girlfriend, hands on her skinny hips, demanding that I get my shit together right now, and pay off my Oxy tab. 

Everything is screaming at me to move to Nana's, but that would mean either giving up the only escape I have or feeling like shit for stealing her pills. I ain't yet sunk so low as to make it a habit to steal from my own grandmother, so I better stay put. I tell Margo, "I'll pay my tab as soon as my unemployment kicks in. It ain't like I can just go out and find another job."

"Oxys are just as good as money. Get a supply going, I could overlook you laying around here." She lights a cigarette, then scales her lighter at me. It bounces off my shoulder onto the floor, and I let it lie there. She shoots me a dagger look and picks it up. "I got to go meet someone. You think about things, Hank. The free ride's over. I want Oxys or I want money. You decide."

What a bitch. I do all the cleaning, I cook for her, and this is the thanks I get. There's only one thing that'll make this right, so I take down the cracked sugar bowl from the top shelf of the cupboard and help myself to one of the oxys she's got stashed there. She owes me that for making me feel so small and useless. Just for today, I'll do three instead of two, because I have to forget everything, even if it's only for a little while.

* * *

Another week goes by, and even though I keep telling myself moving to Nana's is the only thing that will save me, I don't. Margo's at me about money every waking moment, she's too whacked out to have sex, and to be honest, so am I. At full price, my oxy habit's one hundred and twenty dollars a day, which I don't have a fart in a gale's chance of paying. So I'm shut off just when I need them most.

Finally, I can't take it any more, and while I'm cooking Nana's supper, I take ten Oxys out of her bottle. I'm thinking Margo will be happy, those ten are worth four hundred dollars on the street, but when I get back to the apartment, she's gone again. Business, always business.

It's a warm evening, probably the last warm evening before fall sets in for good, so I leave the front door open and let the breeze drift in. In the old days on an evening like this, Tina and the kids and I would walk downtown and get hotdogs and fries at Elly's. Life seemed so simple then, a job, a house, someone to love me, and only a few beers to alter reality. Things are going out of control fast now, but I can't stop. I can't, even though I know it's all wrong. I didn't mean to become an asshole that steals from his own grandmother.

I tell myself the doctors will understand, she's old, and she has cancer, and it's easy to lose track. They can increase her prescription. She won't go without. It's not the end of the world. But I feel crappy about it, and a little afraid, like God's about to send a lightning bolt to end my sorry existence.

The phone rings. I listen for the message, but it's a hang-up. It sets me thinking, though, so I check out Margo's messages. There's only one, and it's from Judd, around noon. Moppet's home from the hospital. The bitch must've heard it. She could've left me a note.

Moppet. Broken back. Pills? It could be. He wouldn't know what they were worth, so I could offer him ten dollars per and he'd think he was making out like a bandit. And he would be, really. He would be.

When I get to his mother's house, there's a black Lexus in the driveway, looking out of place next to the dented blue vinyl siding. I'm on the porch reaching for the doorknob when I hear voices through an open window. Talbot Jones says, "That's too bad. I would've given you a couple grand. You think a fuck from Margo Burke is worth a couple grand?"

My heart trip-hammers. It's not true. Of course it's true. I sneak back to my truck and drive around the block, waiting for Jones to leave.

When the driveway's empty, I park and let myself into the house. In the cluttered living room, I move a pile of video game cases from the recliner to the coffee table, and sit down. I can imagine knocking Moppet upside the head with a feed shovel, but this isn't Moppet's fault, it's Margo's. It dawns on me that that's why we never have sex—she's too busy trading her twat for drugs.

"I just found out you're home. Margo didn't tell me Judd called." I look at Moppet real close to see if he reacts. He picks at fuzz on his blanket and doesn't meet my eyes. I push my baseball cap up my forehead. "What was Talbot Jones doing here? You got something he wants?"

"No.  I don't. Sorry."

"But you did." I try to keep the edge out of my voice, but Moppet must catch it, because he looks up at me, wary as a deer.

"I may only be about as sharp as a marble, Hank. But I'm guessing before you came in, you were listening to things that are none of your business. Is that right?"

"You fucked my—you fucked Margo. Is that right?"

Moppet turns carefully on the couch and puts his back to me. "Don't you be coming in here fighting me on the day I get out of the hospital. I didn't fuck Margo. She fucked me. All I could do was lie here and let her ride me."

"Spare me the details. I don't want to know."

"You need to know all it takes to get in that girl's pants is drugs. She's an old whore, bro, and you got to get away from her before she drags you down and you start stealing from your grandmother or something."

I don't know what to say. It's been four weeks since Tina gave me the boot, and all this time I thought I wasn't getting laid because Margo was whacked out on Oxy. How could I have been so stupid? I crack my knuckles and stare at the peeling linoleum, and wonder how Moppet figured it out so fast, right down to knowing I wouldn't be above stealing from Nana. That's the worst.

Moppet thumps me on the knee. "I'm sorry, Hank. I really am. Look, you can move in here with me and Ma if you need a place to stay. You take that heavy equipment course with me, help me with the bookwork, that'd be good for both of us. But no drugs."

"I'll think about it." Then I hear myself say, "I want my life back. I want my wife back." There it is. The truest thing I've said in a long, long time.

* * *

I go to Abbott's and buy a thirty-pack of Budweiser. I'm going to drink every drop of it before I say one word to Margo. Fucking people for drugs, that's just like being a hooker.

She's not back yet, so I sit in the recliner and chug four longnecks as fast as I can. By the time I pop the top on the fifth one, I've got a plan. Why mention any of this? Why not just think of it like Workman's Comp? The bitch hurt me, and now it's time to pay.

There has to be a stash of pills somewhere, a bigger stash than the few in the sugar bowl. I pull everything out of the cupboards, look in pots and pans and covered dishes, drive my hand into the flour canister and the sugar and the coffee, but there's nothing. It's a mess, but I'll worry about that later. 

There's nothing in the TV cabinet, nothing under the couch or chairs, nothing in the bathroom. In the bedroom, I go through all the pockets in what's hanging in the closet, tumble around all the stuff in the dresser drawers, and look in all the shoes and boots. Then I sit on the floor and chug another beer. Nothing anywhere, but there has to be a stash. There has to be. She's not dumb enough to carry pills with her.

I flop over and lie on the floor. The cheap carpeting's rough against my face, and I'm about to get up when I remember where I used to stash my "Penthouse" magazines back when I was a kid. I shove the mattress off the box spring, but again nothing. I'm so frustrated I pick up the big ceramic cat on Margo's nightstand and heave it across the room. It smacks the wall and shatters. Out falls a ziptop baggie holding more pills than I've ever seen.

I dump them out on the rug and count them into groups of ten. Seventy-three of them. Over twenty-eight hundred dollars on the street.

I stick the baggie in my jeans pocket, pick up my beer suitcase, and go out to the truck.  Jones and his spooky girlfriend are staying at his parents' place, which was built on land that used to be part of Nana and Gramp's farm. It's screened from the road, so no one will see my truck there and kick the local gossip mill into high gear.

Jones peers out over the chain lock on the front door. "Well. What have we here?"

"Something that might interest you."

"What'd you do, get a couple of Oxy from your friend Moppet?" He shakes his head, as though I'm a worthless piece of shit, which I am, but not for the reasons he thinks.

"No.  I got a nice stash." I'm feeling pretty good now, buzzed from the beer and about to make some serious money.

Jones runs his hand over his blonde hair and looks at me like I'm a bug squashed on the sole of his shoe. "Okay. Let's see."

He lets me in, and calls to his girlfriend, Wynter. She wanders in, a skinny girl in a straight black dress, her long black hair hanging lank over her shoulders, and he tells her to get the bank bag.

She says, "Can I do one now?"

Jones shakes his head. She goes to get the money, and I look around the living room while he counts the pills. The leather couch is draped with cast-off clothing, the ashtrays overflow on the glass-and-brass coffee table, and there's an empty pizza box on the floor by the plasma TV. If I had a place this nice, I'd sure as hell take way better care of it than these fools do.

Wynter comes back with the bank bag. Jones counts out the money while I watch, and before I have time for second thoughts, the deal's done.

* * *

Two thousand, eight hundred dollars in nice crispy hundreds. Glad I'm wearing my old Chuck Taylor hightops, I divide the stack and put half under the insole in each sneaker. It's a nice chunk of change, a very nice chunk of change. It crosses my mind that I could have my own little Oxy business, but I know my nerves wouldn't take it.

I'm just getting out of my truck at Nana's when the local cruiser pulls in behind me and Bobby Steiner, a new police academy graduate, gets out. My throat closes up so tight I can barely say, "Hey. What's up?"

"Your grandmother reported a theft." This is so far from what I expect to hear that I stand there with my chin hanging down around my knees in stupid disbelief as he goes up the walk. There's only one theft Nana could be reporting.

I head for the back of the house, running hard after I turn the corner out of Steiner's sight, and let myself in the kitchen and dump those ten Oxys in my pocket into Nana's bottle as quick as I can.  Then I go outdoors and time it so I come in the back door just as Nana and Steiner reach the kitchen.

"It had to be the Dowley boy," Nana's saying. "He was here to fix the faucet, and my pills were right beside the sink."

"I don't think Ronnie Dowley would do that." I'm feeling pretty safe now, and I can't see some innocent kid getting his ass hauled.

Steiner gives me a sharp look, like he sees straight through me. "How about you, Hank? You got a straw habit these days? You boosting your Grandmother's narcotics?"

Nana raps her knuckles on the table. "I won't listen to this. Hank's a good boy. He's had some tough times, but he's honest."

That cuts me worse than any of the nasty stuff that's gone down today.

"Search me." I hold my arms out so Steiner can frisk me like they do on TV, but he shakes his head. "Go ahead. Search my truck, too, if you want to. I ain't got nothing to hide." Except, of course, for almost three thousand dollars in my sneakers. 

He asks Nana, "How many pills do you reckon were taken?"

"Ten. There should be eighty-seven, but I think I counted seventy-seven."

I figure the best thing I can do is keep my damn mouth shut. 

Steiner picks up the bottle and looks at it. "You think you counted seventy-seven? You're not sure?"

"Pretty sure."

I lean against the refrigerator and wait while Steiner counts her pills. "I make it eighty-six, ma'am. They're all here. Okay?"

"I – " Nana looks confused. She sighs. "Sorry to have bothered you, Bobby. I shouldn't have accused that boy."

"I won't file a report. Glad it all worked out." Steiner flicks his eyes over me and says, "Watch yourself, Hank," before letting himself out the back door. I feel as though my legs are about to collapse, but I hang on and make Nana supper, sober now, sober and scared.

* * *

Margo's car is parked in front of the apartment when I get back, and I sit in my truck for a few minutes, wondering if I can face one more scene without cracking open and spilling my guts. I should've put the place back together before going out, but it's too late now.

When I open the door, Margo runs to me, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks, and starts pounding her fists on my chest. "Some bastard broke in and robbed me. They trashed the place and found the Oxys. Almost three thousand dollars' worth. I need one so bad, and there aren't any. Have you got any, Hank? Please." 

I know I've got another stupid, surprised look on my face. "No. None."

She picks up a big glass ashtray from the coffee table and scales it across the living room. Cigarette butts rain down across the rug. The ashtray leaves a dent in the wall, but doesn't break. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. You are such a waste. I thought I could count on you, but you don't even have one little pill for your best girl."

I want to tell her she's not my best girl, no way in hell, but I don't. 

"You got to do something about this."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Find out who did this and kill them or something." She's pulling her hair now, so hard it must hurt. "At least get me a pill. Go out and find someone. I want an Oxy. Now."

I want one, too, in the worst way, but those days are over. They have to be over. I've escaped twice in the last few hours, and I can't take the chance again, no matter what. My nerves are starting to jump, I itch all over, and I feel as though my eyeballs are jerking around in my skull, but I'm just going to have to ride it out. There's no other choice. "I don't know anyone with any pills," I tell her. I want to confront her about fucking Moppet, but I don't. Best to let it all just fade away.

"I have to go lie down," she says, and flops on the couch. I stand there a moment, while her teeth chatter and her arms and legs twitch, and I know that's where I'm headed, too. Then I cover her with the ratty old afghan and go upstairs and throw my clothes and toothbrush in a grocery bag and put the apartment key on the table and walk out the door, glad this phase of my fucked-up life is over.

* * *

"I am at the crossroads of my life, and I want to go home," I say out loud as I drive towards town. I can't do it, though. I can't just walk up and knock on the door of the house that used to be my home and have my kids see Tina send me away again. 

Instead, I park on the breakwater and watch the streetlights along the sea wall blink on as the sky turns black. Judd pulls up beside me, "Hank, you okay? You ain't looking so good, buddy. Why don't you go back to Margo's and call it a night?"

"I'm done with that."

Judd gives me the kind of look he might if I told him I just got back from Mars. "Well, good. Then why don't you come stay the night? Jan won't mind. You can figure things out tomorrow."

It beats sitting here. The cops have been on the breakwater twice already, turning around right beside my truck so their high-beams put me in the spotlight. Steiner probably guessed what happened at Nana's. Even though there's no way to pin anything on me, he's the kind of prick that loves to bring a guy down. 

"Okay," I tell Judd. "Let me finish this beer and get my shit together."

I mean to go, I really do, but getting my shit together isn't remotely possible. I can't let Jan see me like this unless I want it all over town, courtesy of the cafeteria ladies. I can't let anyone see me like this. I feel like I'm in a world of hurts such as I've never experienced before, my heart bouncing around in my chest and my head pounding. I feel like I'm going to die and I wish I would. As I leave the breakwater behind, I try to figure out someplace to go where I can lie low and drink my beer in peace.

* * *

When I come to, I'm in bed, and the room is bright, so bright it hurts. I close my eyes and try to roll over, and realize I'm tied to the bed with IV's in both my arms. Hospital or mental institution? I don't know.

The nurse comes in and checks on me, and tells me that I'm at the hospital in Calais. They think I passed out in the truck after drinking an entire suitcase of beer, and then threw up and sucked it into my lungs. Judd found me and called the ambulance, and it's a good thing he did, or I might be dead now, instead of just having a bad case of what they call "aspiration pneumonia." I figure they probably gave me a drug test, but the nurse doesn't mention it, so I don't, either. The shakes and itching have just about stopped, so maybe the worst of that part's over.

The doctor makes his rounds later that morning. After ordering the ties removed, he tells me that I've been out of it for three days, three days of thrashing around so bad they thought I was going to hurt myself. The pneumonia's clearing up now, and yes, I tested positive for narcotics, but that's pretty much out of my system and the hard work of kicking the mental habit begins. I tell him I can do it, I can do anything if I put my mind to it, and he pats me on the shoulder and says as long as I don't cave, everything will be all right. Yeah, right, doc, I'm homeless and jobless, but everything will be all right.

Judd comes to visit, with apologies from Moppet, who says he'd like to see me, but the hospital would give him bad flashbacks about his broken back. I can understand that, and I'm glad we can put the Margo shit behind us and still be friends.

After Judd leaves, I fall asleep. I dream I hear Tina saying my name. Then I realize it isn't a dream. Tina's standing there beside my bed, she really is.

"Hello, Hank," she says, a little cool, but that's all right. At least she's here, and looking as beautiful as I've imagined her. Sure, there's that twenty pounds she didn't lose after the twins were born, but her complexion's perfect and her long dark hair shines like a crow's wing in the sun. 

"I missed you, Tina."

She shakes her head, not saying anything, but I know that look in her eyes, and I know it means the door's not completely closed. She still cares, at least a little bit.

"How's it going? Are you getting by okay?"

She shrugs. "I'm back to working in the deli at the IGA. It's okay. I don't mind it." She digs into her bag and pulls out a stack of cash. "I don't know where you got this, Hank, and I don't want to know. Judd said it was all over the truck cab when he found you down at the Inlet. It's a good thing you weren't where other people could see it and take it from you."

The Inlet was where Judd and Moppet and I used to go drink when we were in high school, down a dirt road to a piece of shore property that would never sell to the flatlanders because of its scenic industrial view of Maine Pearl Processors. I have no memory at all of going there, no memory of taking the money out of my sneakers. No memory of anything after leaving the breakwater.

"You want me to keep it for you?"

"For us. Keep it for us." I look right at her, wanting more than anything for her to agree that there's still an "us." 

She stares at the floor, then drops the money back into her bag and pulls out a scrapbook. "Kady put this together for you. She missed you so much, Hank. I can't tell you how much."

"I miss her. I miss all of you. I miss you, Tina, more than anything." 

She hands me the book and I take it, look through the pages with pictures of us fancied up with stickers and colored paper and Kady's careful handwriting. The first picture of the three of us, the day we brought her home from the hospital. Picnics and fishing trips and birthday parties. I can't help it, I break down and start bawling.

"Don't." Tina turns her head, and a dark curtain of hair comes down between us. "Please don't."

I wipe my nose on my hospital gown and swallow hard. "Take me back. I fucked it up so bad, but please take me back."

"There'd be conditions. If I did decide to take you back. Like no more drugs, and no more bars. Like go to the technical college and learn a trade and get a decent job afterwards."

"I can do that. I can, all of it. I'll take that heavy equipment course with Moppet. I'll make things right, Tina. I swear to God I will."

"Nana says you can stay with her until you get back on track. Maybe we can see each other if things work out. And sign up for that course. Will you do that?"

"Hand me the phone," I say, and she does, and gives me the number. Always prepared, that's my girl. I make the call. They tell me the course starts next week and there are still three openings. They'll mail me the paperwork so I can sign up. I give them Tina's address, so I'll have an excuse to see her again. 

The big bump in the road now is staying with Nana without touching her Oxys. I know I'll have to come clean to her about what I did. And get her a lockbox to keep her prescriptions in. I can't mess this up, my one-and-only chance. I got to get back to being honest.

Tina pats my shoulder before she leaves, and kisses my forehead like I'm one of the kids. It's a first step, I guess, so I decide I'm happy with it. But I'll live for the day I've earned my way back and she kisses me for real.

Alone again, I go through Kady's scrapbook, studying every picture, every word. So this is how my oldest daughter sees the story of our family. It isn't exactly accurate, but it does start me thinking. Maybe we'll remember it this way instead of the way it was. Maybe it's okay for our memories to be happy ones, as long as we don't forget the lessons we learned along the way. 

Catherine J.S. Lee's stories have been published in Cezanne's Carrot, juked, The Rose & Thorn, SNReview, Amarillo Bay, and ShatterColors Literary Review, among others, and are forthcoming in Six Sentences and Slow Trains.

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