Page 21 of I Never Knew You At All

Alex knows he’s been distracted for the past few weeks, but he also knows damn well that Simone had made zero mention that her ex-boyfriend would be joining her on the panel in Chicago. He strains to remember all the details she’d told him about going to Northwestern that day, as well as remember what she’d said when he got home from work that night and asked her about it. He’s sure he did, and that her response was something vague, like “great.” That was no surprise, it was a good opportunity for her to be in front of people, talk shop, hold her own, and he bets she misses that. Now, though, Alex is wondering if the highlight wasn’t the chance to be in the spotlight but to see the dude who’s been hung up on her for years, liking her every freakin’ post, Alex can see now. The whisky is not doing its job in chasing away this feeling he has that he’s constantly out of the loop on his own life.

He’s got enough on his plate without this, without having to debate with himself whether he’s going to confront his wife about this photo and about seeing Kwame. Alex is eager, for many different reasons (like hating conflict, for example, or not wanting to come off like some sort of jealous stalker), to give Simone the benefit of the doubt. She’s never given him any reason not to. Sure, he hated it when Kwame seemed to come up in conversations a little too often in their early days together. And there was a moment that first year when Alex was secretly convinced she might get back together with Kwame, and so he ramped up his efforts to woo her in a way that was competitive and maybe even a little pathetic. In another era, Alex might have challenged Kwame to a duel or arm-wrestling match. In the end, he didn’t have to do any of that to cement his victory, to make Simone his—he won by being the better man for her. Period. So who cares if she ran into her ex at a work event?

As if Simone can tell that he’s stalking her social media, her name lights up on his phone. He lets it ring five times before he picks up, and when he does he can barely understand what she’s saying. It isn’t the whisky that’s at fault. Simone is stumbling over her words, breathless and hysterical. “It’s Poppy. He collapsed. They’re taking him to Mercy.”

It doesn’t make any sense to his booze-addled brain. “What?”

“He’s in an ambulance right now. I’m driving behind it. Meet me there.”

Alex throws a fistful of bills on the bar and stumbles out into the blaring sun.

He definitely shouldn’t drive. That’s obvious. But what’s the alternative? If he takes an Uber, Simone will ask why he didn’t just drive his car to the hospital. His hands shake on the wheel as he considers going back into the bar for one last shot to calm his nerves. He makes the wiser choice to slap himself three times, hard, across the face. It does the trick and gives him the confidence that he can safely make the few miles to the hospital. He cranks up the radio too. God doesn’t watch over all drunks. Alex knows that all too well, but he’s watching over Alex today, because he makes it to the ER unscathed and in record time. The sliding doors open and the hospital smell assaults him—antiseptic mixed with burnt coffee and piss. What room did Simone say? She didn’t. Maybe she texted while he was driving. He wasn’t that reckless, to push his luck looking at his phone while driving, but he does so as he jogs down the hall, loafers squeaking against the shiny floor tiles. We’re still in triage in the ER, last bed at the end.

A nurse looks up when Alex pushes past the yellowed curtain. Poppy lies in the bed, skin gray, eyes closed, and mouth half-open, letting out a soft snore.

“Is he… is he…” Alex grabs his grandfather’s mottled hand.

“He’s okay,” the nurse reassures him as she hangs a large bag of fluid on a metal rack. “He fainted. Dehydration, low blood pressure. He’s stable. No stroke. No heart issues.”

Somehow Alex is unaware of Simone until he feels her hand on his back. “He was having a decent morning. And then he got confused. He didn’t recognize me,” Simone, who looks utterly wrecked in a way that Alex finds disorienting, explains. “He called me Reba. Right before he went down.”

The name cleaves through Alex. He hasn’t thought of their live-in housekeeper in years, not since she returned to Trinidad when Alex went off to Tate at twelve and she was no longer needed. Reba, who smelled like vanilla all the time, was the closest thing Alex had to a mother, even if that comparison itself pained him. He doesn’t know why he’s never mentioned her to Simone, except for some dull, lurking shame at being raised by a Black woman, and how would Simone feel about that? He didn’t know and he didn’t want to risk it. And he’s sure not going to tell her now.

“Reba?” Alex says the name because the syllables feel good in his mouth. Then he can’t help but remember Reba pulling him to her warm, sweet-smelling chest, and whispering, “Not a scratch on you, praise God,” when she found him sitting alone in a small, pink-colored room a nurse had brought him to before handing him a coloring book and some tattered crayons and leaving. A room somewhere in this very building where his father died on an operating table, where they brought his mother’s body to the basement morgue. Alex had insisted that Langston be born in a hospital across town, precisely so he could avoid these halls, so the backdrop wouldn’t tarnish such a happy occasion.

Alex has managed to avoid setting foot in here since the ambulance brought him that wretched day, shaking in the back of the vehicle, confused by what was happening as the paramedics worked on his father. The situation was obviously very bad, so bad that his little mind basically shut down, yet somehow Alex, who loved trucks as much as the next four-year-old boy, was strangely excited by the sirens. The guilt of that has stuck with him too, knowing he shouldn’t have found the ambulance ride a thrill, but he couldn’t help seeing it as an adventure. A terrible, exciting, devastating adventure he couldn’t quite understand.

Now that the memories are on a roll, there’s no stopping them, which is exactly why he’d avoided this place. He’s transported to the surreal hours after the accident, sitting at the kitchen counter hours later, with Reba fussing over him, desperately hoping his parents would walk through the front door. Poppy’s voice, gruff and broken, carried down the hallway from his study, where he was on the phone with someone: “That sonofabitch was drunk. I warned him… but he was drunk again, wasn’t he?” The answer, as Alex would later piece together through hushed whispers, was yes. Leland Hartwell was very drunk at three in the afternoon, driving his family home from Alex’s T-ball game.

That accusation of Leland being three sheets to the wind when the accident happened was the only time Alex heard his grandfather admit the truth, before or since. His resolute facade was rebuilt immediately, in time to marshal the authorities—Poppy’s buddies on the police force—to squash all records of Leland’s blood alcohol content. For good measure, Poppy proactively shifted the blame elsewhere, filing an aggressive lawsuit against the county for wrongful death. It was a dangerous intersection; a traffic light should have replaced that stop sign years ago; everyone knew it. The overgrown bush that nearly obscured the sign became the perfect scapegoat. Leland had no chance to stop before the tractor trailer blindsided them.

The million-dollar settlement went straight into a trust for Alex, and the whispers about Leland’s drinking died, or more accurately, were crushed by the sheer force of his grandfather’s will and influence. Leland’s legacy remained untarnished, and it grew mythic with time. Brilliant thinker. Doting father. The man who would have led Hartwell Inc. to new heights had he lived. Alex never challenged this version; he couldn’t prove otherwise and never wanted to. Let his parents die with their idolized images intact, frozen in golden amber, the same hue as the stunning sunlight reflecting off the shards of broken glass at the crash site.

Over the years, when his grandfather felt like being mean, he would glorify his perfect dead son and accuse Alex of “falling so far from the tree he was in a different field.” Some days the jabs hurt, but in some cases (like today, after driving here from a bar), Alex would hope it was true.

There’s a loud sound in front of him. Simone’s long fingers snapping sharply, inches from his nose. “Alex?” She extends the same fingers to grab his chin and pull him closer, sniffing the air around him. “Have you been drinking?”

Her tone has the same effect as his slapping himself earlier—it’s sobering. Alex rubs at his bloodshot eyes as if that’s going to make them any clearer. “I had a drink at lunch.”

“One?”

“Maybe two. It was a work lunch. You know how those things go.”

“Yeah, back in 1950, maybe. So you had a couple of drinks and then you drove here like that?” Another accusation disguised as a question.

“What was I supposed to do, walk?”

“Take an Uber. Come on, Alex.”

And now this absolutely seems like the more reasonable option, but what’s done is done, and he made it here, didn’t he? Her tone is so judgmental that anger swells inside him.

“You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him, Simone. How could you have let this happen?”

Her mouth falls open. “Did you just say that?”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault.”

“That is exactly what you just said.”