Jagged: A Glimpse
I was sitting across from him when his eyes suddenly filled with tears. His hands quickly clenching and releasing to match the rhythmic beating of his overly impatient heart. His aunt had just phoned to tell him she had tried again, tried but not succeeded. I don’t remember when his mother’s issues began since they have been such a present and constant weight in our world. So much so that life without her attempted suicides seems almost laughably easy.
I remember the day I first met Lorelei Pratt. I was nine and had come knocking on her door to see if her only son could join me in the park for some rock naming and bird chasing; even then I was obsessed with this somewhat unattainable but irresistible boy: as us girls do at some point I suppose. She was in a long, baggy night gown with fuzzy slippers and wild red hair that always seemed to exaggerate the dullness in her eyes. They were the kind of eyes that would grab your attention due to the shock of their lifelessness juxtaposed against the wildness of her surroundings. She was a nice woman, polite and courteous and agreeable, but no one could argue the sadness that clouded around her like a poisonous fog: deadly to the touch.
Her son however, is quite the opposite. Jude is lively and outgoing, beloved by everyone. He shares his mother’s messy red locks and ocean blue eyes, only his are bright with life and potential. I first noticed him for his legs however; long and lanky, just like mine. It was a nearly impossible task to find a boy who shared my genetic- some say gift, I say inconvenience, to tower over everyone else in the boot room. But hell could that boy tower! He was my everything then and my everything now.
His family was broken before it even began. His father, a raging alcoholic who failed to commit to anything that wasn’t poisoning him from the inside out, was a ghost for the first few years of Jude’s life only to become completely non-existent for the rest. His mother never wanted kids, a fact she admits to Jude on her rougher days where the only peace of mind she gets comes from seeing her own pain mirrored in another. He was a mistake to her, brought about by late night drinking and low-as-they-get inhibitions. Well her mistake is my godsend.
My family situation is not comparable to his but it’s still not great. I have a pair of parents who refuse to divorce despite their incessant fighting and their mutual hatred and disgust of another’s once charming habits. My two older siblings moved out as soon as the chance became itself and check in only when pressured to by the arrival of the high holidays or when they are in desperate need for some quick cash. I don’t blame them for this of course. I know I would and probably will do the same when I escape this hell hole, whenever that glorious time arrives that is. The point however, is that it’s good to have someone to escape to when every moment of being at home is comparable to being trapped inside a suffocating box of bickering and blaming.
He finds that in me too, a comfort I mean. A sort of home away from home, even if his home is a little more damaged than mine, we’ve managed to find an understanding in one another’s brokenness. Without really meaning to we’ve built our own home, our own sanctuaries if you will, where we can foresee a future and believe in its’ dependency.
We all took a hit the first time he found his mother lying on the ground with an empty bottle nestled in her hands and a few pills scattered around her heavy head. He was eleven and I was ten. It was too much to comprehend then and too heartbreaking to relive now. A very bitter and dark piece of me wishes she could just do it. Man up and do it right so the rest of the world doesn’t have to keep holding their breath in anticipation for the day our world is shattered so that together we can put it back together. Like puzzle pieces, the remnants would scatter but we could put back the pieces, one by one, until we have our own little perfect puzzle that encapsulates our life. I never say this aloud of course because that would make me a monster and quite frankly, a selfish bitch. I once asked Jude what he thinks of the whole mess that is his mother and all he could do was breathe out the words, “I’ve done all I can but it’s still not enough,” and then continued on as if none of it existed.
But it does exist. It completely and truly exists. Sitting in my dull, outdated kitchen I watch as his world spins out of control once again. I can see it in his eyes now as his body hunches into itself and disappears behind a veil of hopelessness and never ending frustration. His hand is clutching onto the phone and pushing it so hard against the side of his face that his cheekbone is getting red beneath its buttons. His eyes are focused and tired and then all at once he’s just a blur of movement. He’s throwing back his chair and kicking the table and punching the fridge and the calm has morphed into a rage and everything in his path has become a whirlwind of destruction.
I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, what can I say?: “I’m sorry your mom is a wreck and bringing everything down with her. I’m sorry you were given this shitty life. I’m sorry I can’t fix it for you even though all I want to do is fix it for you and make everything alright and numb the pain I know you’re feeling.”
Sure I could say all that but it wouldn’t fix anything. It would only give him moments of distraction while he tried to listen and absorb the words I was spewing at him. It’s comparable to putting a few words into Google translate then getting a mess of stuff you don’t understand in return. I try to mold my feelings into words yet despite my best efforts, they never manage to come out right. I don’t know how to deal with this again. You’d think after the fourth time I would know how to do this but this time is different. This time he isn’t sitting down crying, or rushing to his mother’s rescue, no this time he is angry. Outwardly lashing out for all the wrongs that have been committed against him, for the life he deserved being dangled in front of him on her better days then stripped away on the normal ones. He isn’t heartbroken, he’s exhausted. We all are.
I try to speak to him once the throwing and kicking turns into heavy breathing and pulling at the locks of hair so hard I was worried he’d be bald if I didn’t intervene soon. I try to comfort him like I always do; telling him it will be alright and maybe this time she’ll finally get better. I can hear the empty words I’m spouting to him about this being the wakeup call she needed. Empty, translucent, bullshit words.
After a few minutes of my psycho babble he finally looks up and see’s me. Really see’s me. There is a look of determination I’ve never seen before gleaming in his eyes. I can almost hear the clicks in his head as his brain runs faster and faster, taking the broken rubble and piecing them together one by one. And then, he speaks: “Let’s go.”
Leave? Run? I stare at him blankly. I try to stop my heart from beating out of control and keep my lips from speaking the words I so desperately want to say. We can’t leave. Not now, not like this. Not when he is just trying to run away from something he doesn’t want to deal with. I understand, God do I understand but I can’t take advantage of his vulnerability like this. I can’t agree to a plan that is made up of all the broken fragments that encapsulate his present traumas. I won’t let that be apart of my future. No, I want to go but I want to go when he isn’t ripping himself apart and desperately looking for the quickest escape route, the most effective numbing agent. This wasn’t the plan.
But what if it could be? What if this was the push we needed to escape the hell hole that is this town, this life? We could be happy; we could forget the people we left behind and look only at what’s ahead. We could do this. I could do this. I can hear my heart beating in my brain, my fingers shake and my eyes jump around to find all the pieces of this house that made it a home. I peek into the living room, I see the empty couches and pristinely white rug. I see the frames that are placed strategically around the house to portray a life that doesn’t exist. I see the kitchen all in a mess and then I look up and there it is. That one piece that makes my days bearable, my moments exciting. The one memento that holds my memories and possesses my dreams. I’m looking at him; everything around him drowned out by his light. He is it and I’ve known it all along. Maybe this will be a travesty but it’ll be a hell of a good one. If we go down, we’ll go down in crashing, burning, all encompassing flames. If we fail, we’ll know it was because of our decisions, our mistakes. We now have control over our own destiny; no longer will we live for those short moments far and in between that make life worth living. No longer will our hearts stop every time his aunt’s name pops up on the phone. This is our chance to turn our lives into the dreams we’ve only ever thought about in our heads. This is us, and here’s where our story truly begins.
I look around the house one more time as I answer him in one simple and all encompassing word: “Okay.”