Page 73 of Off Court Fix

“No one put a gun to my brother’s head and got him addicted to painkillers after he hadshouldersurgery when he was a teenager. No one put a gun to his head and made him shoot upheroin.Some things aren’t a choice, Crosby. I’d like to think my mother would’ve chosen me and my brother instead of booze before she wrapped her car around a telephone pole when I was threeifshe was capable.”

If I didn’t care about Maxine the way I do, I’d make my case—alladdiction is a choice. It’s the wrong choice that leads only toworsechoices. But I do care about Maxine—more than maybe I want to admit, more than I ever planned on.

“If I were as hardened as you, as unsympathetic I would never have left this house. I would drive my brother’s amazing Bronco that’s been out in the garage since he died. I can’t evenlookat it. Out on the patio, when my grandmother had this house, there was this unbelievably ugly duck statue. Like, heinous. But she loved it, and you know, it just kind of reminded me of her.” Maxine takes a deep breath. “If what happened didn’t happen here, I would’ve kept it.”

Confused, I shake my head. “If what didn’t happen?”

There’s a hollowness in Maxine’s eyes when she looks at me. “If my brother didn’t shoot himself up so much and roll off that couch and hit his head on it and bleed out all over the stone.”

There’s no hesitation. I reach out to hold her, but she backs away.

“You’re taking advantage of sick people.”

“Sick?” Now I’ve gone to another level because I didwhatI did to take care of a truly sick person—my mother.

“Addiction is a disease.”

“Canceris a disease.Parkinson’sis a disease.” I ball my fist. “Alzheimer’s...those are diseases, Maxine. I’m sorry about your brother. But poor choices aren’t a symptom of sickness. They’re the result of selfishness and stupidity.”

Maxine looks down at her lap, her dark hair hiding her face. “If you think that... you should leave. I don’t want you here tonight.”

I give her a moment, but when Maxine raises her head, her eyes are dark, hurt. I don’t even want to be here because it’s gutting me that I’m the reason she’s staring at me that way.

Turning on my heel, I head back to the mudroom. I slip on my Top-Siders and reach for the side door. Once I open it and pass through, I pause to remind her to lock it behind me, but I don’t need to do that. By the time I face the door, she already has.

I’ve been sittingon the couch with my knees to my chest for the past two hours, staring into the kitchen at the barely eaten food, at our glasses filled with now flat club soda. But I’m imagining the kitchen when it looked different—granite countertops, darker cabinetry, an outdated fridge.

My grandmother’s mixer is on the counter where I now keep my espresso machine. It’s filled with cookie dough, and I’ve gotten playfully scolded over sticking my finger in one too many times. Grandma is at the oven, trying to preheat it without her glasses, and asks me to adjust it to 350. And then there’s Mason. He’s flipping through one of Grandma’s cookbooks, a favorite, one with stained corners and crumbs littering the pages. He scratches his head covered in short dark hair. His arms are clear, clean from needle marks. But he’s still young. It must be before he moved away from pills and onto heroin.

It’s summer but storming outside, so to pass the time until the thunder and rain end, we’ve taken to using up everything in the pantry. I’m eleven maybe, and the happiest I’ve ever been, with no care in the world except who will get the cookie with the most chocolate chips. I don’t care Dad dropped me here for the whole summer and only calls once a week.

I wipe my damp cheeks at the thought. I miss the innocence, the ignorance, the not knowing. Back then, I didn’t understand the disease that stole our mom. I didn’t care we didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day. I didn’t know that in the time between cracking eggs into the mixing bowl and taking the cookies out of the oven, Mason had slipped upstairs into his room to take some pills.

I cared that he laughed, and laughed big, that he looked at me, joked with me. And now memories like this bring tears to my eyes. Because I’m so sad for Mason, that he was suffering, that more likely than not, he wouldn’t remember that day we forgot to add baking soda to the cookies, and that he cracked a joke that made Grandma snort water out her nose.

I’m so sad we never knew how truly broken Mason was, even at that moment when he looked normal, until it was too late.

I rub my arms, taken with a chill, shaken with anger and frustration and with a desire for Crosby to understand. Mason was more than the disease that killed him. He was more than the demons he battled, the way I’m more than my face and body.

Addicts are people, and people make mistakes. That doesn’t mean they deserve to be taken advantage of, ridiculed. I once shared the views Crosby has. I looked at my brother like he was subhuman, unworthy of love and attention. I had those views because he hurt me, and at the time, I didn’t understand it was his disease talking, not his heart. And in my own heart now, sitting on the couch, I wonder if Crosby must’ve known that kind of pain too, and curiosity strikes me. I wonder if whatever Crosby had going on with Hunter had more to do with something besides money.

Standing, I shut the pizza box and grab the garlic knots and my keys. In a few minutes, I’m pulling into Crosby’s driveway, where I see the light on from the living room. By the time I park, he’s on the side steps waiting for me, still in the same clothes, hair tussled, I know, from him running his hands through it.

“I want to understand. You’re smart. You live aquietlife. That stuff with Hunter, it’s notyou.”

Crosby sighs. “Come in.”

I hand him the food, which he dumps on the kitchen counter, and reaches for my hand, then repetitively sweeps his thumb over my skin. We sit in the living room on the couch, and I pull my hand from Crosby’s grasp.

“Tell mewhy, Crosby. You...” I look around the house. “I’m not going to act like I understand what it’s like not to want or need money, but you... what is it about the money?”

Crosby folds one leg over his other knee, bouncing his foot. “That piano? It belonged to my mother. She still plays.”

I wrinkle my face, confused, and then realize maybe I wrongly assumed Crosby’s mother had either passed or moved away. Wherever she is, I don’t believe she plays the piano in his house.

“On her good days,” Crosby adds.

“What do you mean good days?”

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