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For our one-month anniversary, Alyssa had bought me this stupid little ceramic bear. He fit in the palm of your hand, nothing big, nothing fancy. He was a cutesy little affectation, not like a real bear, but more like a ceramic version of a teddy bear. He was sitting on his butt, an ice cream cone in his little hand, or paw, whatever you wanted to call it. He had a little dopy smile on his face, little yellow bow tie, tied around his neck. We had been out at a carnival, and she had seen it at this little booth as we walked past and just bought it for me on the spur of the moment.

She handed it to me with a little shy smile on her face, “Happy anniversary.” She mumbled as she handed it to me, like she was self-conscious about it, like maybe I’d look at it and say, ‘this is stupid’, or I’d tell her it wasn’t enough…

It was one of those cutesy little moments all couples seem to have. One little innocuous moment that either meant nothing, or everything depending on the couple.

I was a little disappointed to see him sail across the room at my head…

I was even more disappointed to see him shatter into a million pieces as I ducked him. I felt the hundreds of sharp little pieces of him bounce around the room, trying desperately to shred my flesh. I held my arm up over my face, deciding to sacrifice the arm to save my face. It’s not much of a face, but it’s all I have…

The bitch of it all was it was Alyssa that had thrown him at me…

Guess she hadn’t liked that bear as much as I had.

“I know you’re fucking around on me!” She screamed.

Sad thing was, I wasn’t fucking around on her…

I’m stupid. I’m selfish. I’m really not much of a provider. I don’t even like myself all that much…

One thing I am however, is loyal.

My cell phone, nestled into the front pocket of my jeans, started ringing again. The shrill air raid siren that I had made my ring tone belting out into the room. I was really starting to regret that ringtone, though, right now, with a furious, and semi-crazy woman shredding my belongings as she screamed at me like a banshee, an emergency air raid siren might be a little more appropriate than I was willing to admit to myself…

Alyssa was short, maybe five-five to my full six feet. She was a spark plug, however, and she knew how to make the most of what god had given her. What she lacked in intimidation factor, she more than made up for in sheer voluminous energy. At the sound of my phone going off, the third time in as many minutes she got right up in my face.

“Why don’t you want to answer your phone? Is it your whore calling?” She sneered into my face.

Part of me wanted to tell her I didn’t answer the phone because I didn’t want to throw any more gasoline on the fire of her insanity… there were plenty more breakable items in my house and her flinging them around willy-nilly probably wasn’t doing me any favors both with the neighbors, and in terms of my security deposit…

Considering she had lost so much control that she was hurling ceramic bears around the room… I decided it was better, and more than likely quite a bit smarter, to keep my mouth shut.

She blew up like this about once every two weeks. One time it would be her insistence I was cheating on her. The next that I was cheating on her because I had watched some porn. The time after that, I wasn’t working enough. The time after that, I worked too much.

One time she had blown up like this because there were no steaks in the freezer…

I was beginning to think she might be a little crazy.

Of course, I had to blame myself at least a little, after all, what does that say about me? I’m dating a chick that flips out and throws ceramic bears around the room.

Maybe my mental state wasn’t one to be casting aspersions…

She held her arms out wide, “What, are you not man enough to tell me? You can’t just admit, you’re not heading off to class, or off to work? I know you’ve got some little bitch on the side. What does she have that I don’t? She sucks dick a little better?” Her voice grew taunting, cruel, “Come on, be a man, tell me!”

I considered for a moment the mental picture that flashed through my head, had I had a side piece and how the conversation with Alyssa would go if I told her that girl gave better head…

She pushed me hard in the chest, shoving me back into the wall.

A detached part of my mind screamed to smack her one. To let her know that she could yell, and scream, and accuse me of whatever she wanted to, because I really didn’t care about any of that bullshit. She could throw tantrums, and even little ceramic bears at my head, but she needed to keep her hands off of me.

I pushed that part down. Pushed it down way deep.

I wasn’t much of a man, but I wasn’t a man that had ever laid a hand on a woman in anger, and I wasn’t about to start because Alyssa went through a fit of jealous rage.

Course, for that matter, I wasn’t much of a man of anger. Most things that pissed other people off, just made me sad for them. I just didn’t seem to have that gene that made people go crazy and start throwing things. I had never had that fit where I just needed to break something to make myself feel better. Some people however, seemed to have that gene in spades…

Take Alyssa here…

We had started dating about six months ago. At first, it had been wonderful. We got along great. She had a terrific sense of humor, was fun loving and had a body to die for. She seemed really into me. She had serious commitment issues, but that was okay. She wanted our relationship to run like a sprint. In her mind at six months we should be living together. Inside a year, married. By year two, a kid on the way. Six months had come and gone, and there was no invitation to move in. Part of that was my desire to take things slowly… part of it was a desire to have a moments peace where I didn’t have to worry about something getting thrown at my head… hell, if I’m being completely honest, part of it was that I still didn’t really know how I felt about Alyssa…

A part of me loved how dedicated she was to mapping her life out. How dedicated she was to making that life materialize for her. Another part of me was absolutely disgusted how upset she got when things didn’t work out for her exactly the way she wanted them to. The largest part of me however, was simply tired of having to constantly be on the defensive about her insane insecurity issues…

Problem was, I was not into the whirlwind marriage. I didn’t want to just slip a ring on the first girl that I liked, hell, even one that I loved. I wasn’t that guy that just threw myself into something. I took my time with things. I wanted to make sure that the girl I married was the one I was going to be with for the rest of my life. It was a big commitment, and not just financially, but in time as well. I had promised myself that I would get married once, and only once. If I couldn’t make it work out, that was my one shot at it.

Seemed like the more time passed, the more Alyssa and I weren’t going to see eye to eye…

She was screaming something incoherent at me. Truth was, she was suddenly so small and boring. In my mind, I decided this was the last time she was going to scream at me. The last time she was going to throw something at me. The very last time she was going to lay her hands on me.

I felt my eyes darken, my breath shallow, the heavy muscles in my shoulder and neck bunch.

I am not an angry man. In fact, I can only think of a couple of times in my entire life that I was ever truly angry. I am not a violent man. What I am, however, is big, and when roused I think I come across as an angry grizzly bear. It makes me intimidating, and that got me pretty far in the world when it came to making a crazy person calm right the fuck down…

In fact, I had observed, most angry people were like angry dogs. They made a lot of very big sound, but when faced with a threat that seemed like it was going to bite back, they started to have some serious doubts… and they got a whole lot more reasonable very quickly.

Channeling all of that intimidation and energy into my body I growled at her, “Step back.”

Her eyes widened, a glint of fear smashing across them as, in her mind, she finally pissed me off enough to get angry with her.

What was really crazy was the manic glee that shoved its way into her eyes…

Fucking crazy bitch is getting off on the fact she finally pissed me off… I thought to myself wildly.

She started to open her mouth and say something new, some other, terrible, terrible thing.

My mind flashed back to the second month Alyssa and I had been together…

We were sitting on the couch and she was talking about her last boyfriend. She went on and on about how often he abused her. How he had smacked her around. All the terrible and nasty things he had said to her. She told me about a particularly brutal fight they had where he had punched her in the face and knocked two of her teeth out. From the sounds of it he was a real winner…

That crazy look in her eye made me wonder…

Was this something she got off on? Was she one of those women that needed to make themselves a victim? One that needed to just keep pushing a man’s buttons until he finally lashed out at her? I’m not saying it was right for a man to finally lose his temper, I’m just saying that everyone has a threshold for abuse. Smacking a woman around to get her to shut up was a really stupid and selfish way to address that when it was so easy to just walk out and stop caring…

She was still screaming something. I really wasn’t paying attention anymore…

The more I thought about it, that train of thought didn’t make sense on Alyssa. Thinking on it, it didn’t track, and then I realized, she wasn’t the type of woman that enjoyed being abused. Her constant worrying, the accusations, the wild insinuations, hell, even the violence and temper tantrums she displayed pointed towards someone that had been victimized. Someone that decided that they were going to be the aggressor from now on. Someone that had zero true self confidence but who desperately wanted to be seen as a confident person. Someone who perhaps had learned that the best way to avoid being a victim was to victimize…

Everything she was doing right now, this entire display, was a show.

That look in her eyes… it wasn’t that she got off on pissing me off. Hell, I had to admit to myself, it was just her feeling victorious for getting some kind of reaction out of me. Me showing some sign of life…

I realized then, Alyssa wasn’t a bad person. She just bored the ever-loving shit out of me. She was petty, shrill and about as annoying as you could get. The truth was, I wanted her gone. I wanted her out of my life, and rather than be a man and show her the door I had simply driven her away in the hopes that she would get tired of my shit and leave.

Right now, though, right now, she was just pissing me off…

My phone rang again.

She gave me a smug smile. “Why don’t you answer it? I’m sure your little bitch is worried about you.” She sneered.

I frowned, shrugged and pulled my phone out.

I saw her eyes fill with rage as I glanced from them to the screen on the phone. Caller ID said it was Casey…

Instantly I filled with worry. Casey was my oldest friend. She lived four hours away in my home town with her little girl, in fact, she lived right behind my parent’s place. She helped out babysitting my little sister… she was a family friend, and a personal one.

She would not call four times back to back if it weren’t an emergency.

My eyes popped up to Alyssa’s. “Hold on a second, this is important.”

Her mouth dropped open and I could see her rage boil up…

I hit the answer button and held the phone up to my ear. “Casey, sorry, I was in the middle of something, what’s up?”

Casey’s voice was filled with panic. Something was definitely wrong…

Of course, I couldn’t hear what was causing her panic, because as soon as Alyssa heard a female’s voice on the phone she started screaming, “You motherfucker! Why don’t you say hi to your cunt for me!”

Alyssa rushed me, and I had to lean back, turning the phone away from her, holding it with one hand as I tried, mostly unsuccessfully to hold a crazed woman on the warpath back, and away from me.

I could feel the frustration in me rising, “Please, Alyssa, chill out for a second…”

That, apparently, was the wrong thing to say to her at that particular moment…

Alyssa is a lefty…

A southpaw.

She reminded me of that with her left fist as it came rocketing in, smashing me in the face.

She was small, but she was a spark plug. She hit me right. Good swing, tilt of the hips, putting her little legs into it just the way I had shown her…

It was a hook, perfectly timed to saw across my face and into my nose.

She’s not big, but a well-timed smack to the schnoz is going to get anyone’s attention.

It sure got mine when my nose broke.

I’m not too proud to admit my knees went watery for a second. I felt a surge of pride at knowing I was the one that had shown her how to throw that punch. I had worked many a night showing her exactly how to hold her hand, how to swing her hips into the punch, how to use her legs to get the absolute most out of throwing her weight behind it. My hands on her hips, my arms guiding hers… maybe a dirty thought or two sliding through the dark waters of my mind as I moved my body with hers…

Hey, I’m a man, sue me.

Now, however, I felt a rush of disappointment in her at her using that knowledge against me…

Pain lancing through my face, I put the phone back up to my ear as I walked away from Alyssa. “Casey, please hold on a sec.”

I walked over to the front door, threw the lock and opened it. Alyssa screamed behind me, “Yeah motherfucker! Run away like a little bitch!”

Shock registered across her face when I turned back from the door. I guess after punching me in the face she thought that I was going to throw her a beating. She probably assumed that her parting shot had put me over the edge, like I was opening the door to leave and she had finally said the wrong thing and now I was going to turn back around and cave her ferret like face in…

Her mouth opened in shock as I grabbed her by the elbow and firmly walked her to the door. She screamed and fought. She called me names. She frothed at the mouth like a rabid beaver…

Turns out, I won’t hit a woman…

I will however, firmly put my foot on her ass and sail her right the fuck out my front door…

I guess it’s good for us all to know our limits…

Slamming the door behind her, I flipped the lock.

This was my apartment, and as much as I liked Alyssa, I liked my personal space a whole lot more. She did not have a key, so I was not all that worried she’d get back in. She’d probably throw a holy living bitch fit and beat on the door…

Well, I knew she’d throw a bitch fit as she started pounding on the door almost immediately…

She had an amazing repartee of curse words… as evidenced by the door, and her screaming through it.

I held my hand up to my face, just now registering that I was bleeding from the nose profusely. I tried to stem the bleeding, lamenting the fact that I had probably just ruined a perfectly good shirt.

Fuck! I got blood on the carpet! I noted in dismay as I saw the little drops of red on the beige carpet.

Blood dripped from between my fingers, as I held my hand over my nose and raised the phone back up to my ear.

“Casey?” I said, my voice nasally from speaking through my hand.

“What the fuck was that?” She demanded.

I tilted my head back as I walked toward the bathroom. “Sorry about that. My crazy girlfriend just broke my fucking nose. Well, I guess my crazy ex-girlfriend just broke my nose.”

“What?!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the panic and anger in her voice. “Not a big deal. I walked her out the door. Sorry about that.”

She went dead silent for a few seconds. “That’s it? You just walked her out?”

Just about then I made it to the bathroom and surveyed my face in the mirror. As I tilted my head down the blood starting pouring again. “Just a second, my nose is bleeding. I have to put the phone down for a second.”

I could dimly hear Casey’s voice as I set the phone down on the counter and pulled a few sheets of toilet paper off the roll. Wadding up a couple of sheets for each nostril, I stuck them up there in the hopes I could get the bleeding to stop…

Leaning in close to the mirror I surveyed the damage. There was a new lump on my already ugly nose… she definitely broke my nose…

That was a damn fine left hook… I allowed myself. Nothing wrong with being proud of work done well…

I picked the phone back up. “I’m back. Sorry. What’s wrong?”

She was silent so long I was worried she might have hung up on me. When her voice came back on the line I could tell she was on the verge of crying…

“Your mom is in the hospital.”

I felt a little of the air rush out of the world…

“What?” I asked in desperation. My mind jumped around, wondering why Casey was calling me instead of my dad, or my little sister. “What happened?”

Her voice was rushed, filled with pain, “I don’t know. Your dad and sister came home and I guess they found her on the kitchen floor. Your dad rushed her to the hospital and he sent Adrianna here… I only talked with your dad really quick on the phone. He asked me to watch Adrianna. He’s freaking out.”

I was freaking out a little bit myself…

“How bad is it? Do you know?” My voice was quick, desperate…

I could hear her stifle back a sob, “I don’t know Jakey… I’m sorry, I don’t know. Adrianna said she was limp on the floor when they found her.”

I looked at my watch. It was four in the afternoon. It was a four-hour drive. Most of it through back country where cell reception was going to be spotty at best…

“I’m on the road in five minutes. I’ll be there by eight. If you talk to my dad, let him know I’m on the way.”

“Hurry Jake. Please.” Her voice was raw, full of desperation, she was looking for a little hope, and I was in a terrible place to provide it for her.

My heart bled for her…

She was stuck there, taking care of her three-year-old daughter and my fourteen-year-old sister. Her friend heading to the hospital. She was probably going out of her mind worrying and there she was stuck needing to be tough and not fall apart in the face of two children that needed to depend on her… and here I was on the other side of the state, a four-hour drive away…

That little nagging voice in my head snickered at me for being the piece of shit that I was. For not being there when my family needed me…

“Do you want to talk to Adrianna?” She asked.

I thought about it. “No. I want to grab some clothes and get on the road. Tell Adrianna I’m on my way.”

“Okay, Jakey…”

I started walking quickly to the bedroom, forgetting about the bloody, broken nose. Forgetting about the pain. Forgetting about Alyssa, who, incidentally, was still beating on the front door and screaming at the top of her lungs for me to let her back in, I noted as I stopped in the hallway for a quick second.

“Casey…” I tried to think about what to say… how does one thank a friend for stepping in and taking care of your family because you were too big a piece of shit to be there when you were needed? I settled for, “thank you.”

“Please just hurry…”

“Okay.”

With that, I hung up the phone. I grabbed my black backpack, the one I used for school, and dumped my books out on the bed. A book on Environmental Law flipped face up, reminding me of that failure…

I forced the thought out of my mind as I grabbed underwear, pants, socks and a couple of shirts and stuffed them in the bag. I ran back to the bathroom and grabbed my shaving kit, throwing in my toothbrush, toothpaste and razor. I shoved that into my bag too.

I nearly ran back to the bedroom, giving one final panicked glance around the room, trying desperately to figure out if there was anything else I needed to get on the road.

Fuck it. If I need anything else I can get it at a store when I get there… I thought wildly to myself, just desperately wanting to get on the road…

In all the excitement, I had forgotten that Alyssa was still outside. Still smashing on the door like a goddamn crazed gremlin, a gremlin that was also high on PCP.

I grabbed the handle and took a deep breath. I really didn’t want to open that door. Like, really, really didn’t want to open that door.

Briefly, I considered going back into the bathroom, opening the window and jumping from the second floor… the thought of doing so made me laugh a little.

Stop being a coward and just face this… I warned myself. Putting it off won’t make it any easier…

I wrenched the door open and Alyssa recoiled back. She again, must have thought I had finally lost my temper and that I was going to hit her…

She really doesn’t think much of me… The thought smashed home as I realized how little we truly understood each other.

Even after six months… she thought I was going to beat on her and I thought she was a reasonable, uncrazy person. For a split-second I felt regret smash through the corridors of my mind at the time I had wasted with her. Thinking on it, I realized that I had allowed myself to be paralyzed by fear and a deep-seated sense of sympathy. I had not broken things off with her because I knew she would take it hard, and somehow, it was just easier in my mind to suffer and let her go on her merry little way. I hadn’t loved her, not really. I don’t think she loved me either, we were both just too terrified to be alone and so we had clung to each other like two survivors at sea, feeling like it was better to be alone together than to face it, and be alone, alone.

Anger and sorrow fought each other for control of her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

I pushed my way past her, just wanting to be rid of her, to get on the road and start off, to take the chance to be with my mom… who might very well be dying as I had this pointless conversation hundreds of miles away…

She grabbed my arm, as I closed the door, screaming at me, “Goddamn it! Talk to me!”

I whirled on her, “Enough. We’re done.” I told her, my hand slashing the air in front of me. “I’m sick of this bullshit. I’ve had enough. Go find whatever the fuck it is that’s going to make you happy, but leave me the fuck out of it.”

I watched as her sorrow turned to anger, as the worm turned in her mind, poisoning her thoughts.

I walked away from her before her rage could erupt again.

Three doors down the corridor a door opened and my landlady, Mrs. Epstein stepped out. I could see the disappointment painted on her face, plain as day.

She was a little old lady, sweet as could be. I really liked her and I was embarrassed at the fact that this had to play out in front of her…

She looked at me and the disapproval in her eyes sent a shiver of shame through my spine…

“Kids, enough is enough here… if you two have to fight constantly at least do your neighbors the courtesy of not letting it spill out into the hallway.” She admonished me like a stern schoolteacher…

My eyes found the floor and I shook my head ruefully.

Leaving Alyssa standing there, her mouth flopping open and closed like a beached fish I walked up to my landlady. “Mrs. Epstein, I apologize. I’m sorry for the scene.”

She shook her head at me, “Don’t be sorry Jake… do something about it. Be better.”

Sighing, I tried to explain to her. “I just got a call. My mom’s in the hospital. I have to go home for a few days.”

Her face instantly filled with concern, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry…”

I shook my head at her, trying to let her know not to make a scene about it. Things like this always embarrassed me.

“Can you keep an eye on my place for me while I’m gone?” I asked. “I don’t know how long it will be.”

Alyssa’s voice echoed from behind me, “What do you mean your mom’s in the hospital?”

I sighed again, tilting my head back towards Alyssa. “This one is not welcome here anymore, but she’s most likely going to have a hard time getting that into her skull.”

Again, Alyssa’s voice piped back up, “What the fuck does that mean?”

I closed my eyes and instinctively reached up to press on the bridge of my nose, only to be reminded of the broken nose…

I winced touching it, the pain rocketing through my face.

Mrs. Epstein’s eyes narrowed in anger, her eyes flashing towards Alyssa. “Missy. Do I need to call the police to get you to leave?”

Fortunately, that shut her the fuck up…

Of course, if the cops showed up I most likely would be in a shitload of trouble too… I’m sure it would get twisted around. At the very least I’d end up tied up forever answering questions and it would put me on the road all that much later. I wanted very much to get moving…

I shook my head at her, “We’re okay, she’s leaving, and I’m fine, and I need to get on the road.”

She clenched her jaw at me. “Okay, honey.” Patting me on the arm she added, “If you need anything just call okay?”

I nodded weakly at her. “Thanks.”

Alyssa followed me all the way to my truck. She would not shut the fuck up, and somehow, she got it into her head that I wanted her there…

I just ignored her, walked fast and tried to get her to finally fucking understand I had no desire for her to be there anymore. I just wanted her to walk away… how could she not get that? What did I need to do to be more clear?

See, that’s the problem with being a doormat. People didn’t understand what you are doing when you finally get up and shake the dirt off…

I had just thrown my bag into the bed of the pickup when she finally said “Just give me a couple days and I’ll drive down and join you.”

I spun around. “Are you fucking stupid?”

The venom in my voice surprised me.

Her face went wide in shock. “How dare you talk to me like that?”

I jabbed a finger towards my broken nose. “How dare I? Listen here, you crazy bitch. You broke my fucking nose. I’ve pretty clearly told you,” I emphasized each word with a chop of my hands, “I. Don’t. Want. You. Around. Me. Anymore. What do I have to do? Take out fucking billboard that says, ‘Fuck off crazy bitch, I don’t have time for any more insanity in my life!’?”

My jaw clenched and I could finally feel the anger rising up from within me. “We are done. Not with this conversation, not for right now. Forever. I don’t want to see you ever again. How much clearer can I make that for you?”

Sadness welled up in her eyes as tears started to gather.

And now she’s crying… Fuck! I thought to myself in exasperation.

“How can you be so mean to me?” She sobbed. “Just let me help, I just want to be there for you.”

I held my hands up. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Enough. I have to go.”

Spinning away from her I opened the door to the cab of my truck…

“I know you’re just upset Jakey,” Alyssa said, “I’ll call you tomorrow and you’ll see, things will be all better.”

I slammed the door. Hard. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Starting the truck, I slammed it into gear and pulled out of the parking spot aggressively…

 

Chapter 2
I made it to the first stop light before I realized I was going to need gas…

My truck was nearly on empty and as I drove further and further towards home gas was going to do nothing but get harder to find and more and markedly more expensive.

Home. I thought as I drove. I hadn’t thought of that place as home in four years… it was just a place that I had grown up. A place I had run from just as fast as I possibly could…

Now my mom was sick, and suddenly it was home? The thought didn’t make sense to me.

Why is that place suddenly home? I thought to myself as I pulled into the gas station.

As I pumped my gas the people at the other pumps gave me strange looks, making me wonder why I suddenly felt like an absolute weirdo…

Getting back on the road, I realized that I still had blood stained toilet paper sticking out of both nostrils… I felt like an absolute weirdo, because I looked like an absolute weirdo…

I pulled them both out and threw them out the window, laughing at my own stupidity…

The thought occurred to me then, I was due at work in the morning…

I pulled my phone out and called my boss…

I worked as a legal clerk at a small law firm. It was low level work. Running down leads, looking up cases. Interviewing clients, and potential clients while I took notes. The pay was shit. The work was shit. My boss was a dick. It was still a paycheck though and as much as I hated it, I decide that it was probably not a good idea to dump gas over my entire life and set fire to it before I left town.

He picked up just as I started to hope that I was going to get lucky and the call was going to go to voicemail…

“Jake, I’m glad you called. We’ve got a problem. I need you to meet with Carey Larson in the morning-“

I cut him off, “I can’t. I just got a call. My mom’s in the hospital. I have to go back home for a few days.”

The line went silent…

I started to wonder…

“Look. Jake, I can’t give you any time off right now, we’re in the middle of a big case here, I mean this could be a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of lawsuit here. I mean I’d love to give you a couple of days off, and I’m sympathetic to your situation, but I’m in Tahoe and my wife would kill me if I broke away from this vacation…”

Are you fucking kidding me?

I sat for a minute, hoping against hope he would finally come to his senses and realize exactly what he had just said to me…

The line sat quiet…

Finally, I cleared my throat, “Maybe you don’t understand what I’m saying… My mom is in the hospital. I don’t know how serious it is. I’m not asking for time off. I’m telling you, I won’t be there in the morning.”

“Maybe you’re not understanding what I’m saying…” He growled, “If you’re not at work in the morning, you don’t have a job anymore.”

I frowned. Well, that sucks. Hey, at least I didn’t like the job all that much…

“I understand.”

“So, you’ll be there in the morning?”

“Nope.” I said, hanging up the phone and throwing it on the seat next to me…

Well, there was nothing like burning a few bridges on the way out of town…

 

Chapter 3

I spent the first hour of the trip working through the details of how I was going to get home and find my mom had died… I thought of all the ways that could go down. All the ways that I could lose her. She was young, only sixteen years older than me, forty to my twenty-two… wait, no, thirty-eight to my twenty-two… god, was she really that young?

I spent the second hour wishing my phone would ring. That someone would call me. That they would tell me what the hell was going on… that she was fine. That this was all a big misunderstanding…

I spent the third hour hoping my phone wouldn’t ring… I was sure if it did ring it would be someone on the other end telling me that she had died. Telling me that I had been too late. Telling me that she had left without me being able to at least tell her goodbye. That she had died without me being able to tell her how much she had meant to me. That I had missed my opportunity to thank her for all that she had taught me, all she had done for me…

The last hour, I spent thinking about the people who were waiting for me at home…

People that I loved…

I thought about my mom, Deb. She wasn’t really my mom. She was my step mom, but to me, she was my mom. Family was about a hell of a lot more than blood, it was about the people who had bled for you, it was about the people that had been there for you. The people that stood beside you when the best thing for them was to walk away and let you flounder on your own. It was about the people that put aside their own needs and wants for you. People that had made sacrifices for you. People that took care of you when you were sick. People that looked out forrea you when you were in trouble. People that gave you advice when you couldn’t figure things out on your own. That spent their time and energy teaching you to be a better person…

Deb definitely fit that bill in every way. She was my mom, she had earned that name in every way that really mattered.

I let my mind drift back to how she and my dad had met…

It wasn’t a love story for the ages, but it was a love story nonetheless…

My mom died when I was nine. My dad dutifully shouldered the responsibility of taking care of me. It didn’t really seem like something he wanted to do, it was just another task that he put his shoulder to, another boulder that he pushed up the hill.

At the time, he worked at a mill, graveyard shift. By the time I was eleven I had gone through several babysitters. I went over to their house and I slept there. Apparently, that was too much trouble for most people.

We lived in a shitty little trailer in a shitty little trailer park. A couple moved in next door. Husband, wife, little girl. Deb, her husband, and their daughter. My dad and I were always pretty standoffish with our neighbors, we were the type of people that kept to ourselves, and made it apparent we expected everyone else around us to do the same, but for some reason my dad hit it off with Deb. She played piano, and he would sit there on the couch with the window open and listen to her play. She would play Moonlight Sonata, by Beethoven, and he would just sit there with this enraptured look on his face…

It was about then that I realized that what the really noticed, was Deb.

He would find an excuse to walk outside when he heard her mowing the lawn…

And Deb started to really notice my dad.

She would come over every few days and borrow some little food item or another, an egg here, or a little sugar, and then she’d show back up an hour later with a plate full of cookies…

After a couple of weeks, he asked her to start sitting for me. He made the excuse that it would just be easier to have the neighbor watch me. They were a poor family, and they could use the extra money. I would go over there at night, sometimes in the evening if he took on extra shifts, and I’d sleep there, or sit and watch Disney movies with little Adrianna as Deb played the piano, or cooked for us, or did one of the million other things that seemed to be her responsibility as a housewife...

It made me a little sad to see her. She was an awesome lady, one of the sweetest I had ever known. Her husband, Mike, was a student, and a real piece of shit. He was twenty years her senior, and apparently had met her in the small town she had grown up in. Being the fucking slimeball I knew him to be, he had, at better than thirty years of age, started hitting on a fifteen-year-old girl. By the time she was sixteen he had knocked her up, and I guess that was all the excuse her parents needed to marry her off to him…

I never saw him be mean to her, never saw him abuse her, but I rarely saw him interact with her at all… He just sat in the front bedroom of the trailer, which he had converted into an office and played on his computer, or sat at his desk fascinated by some electronic doodad that he had pulled apart.

I got the sense he had just knocked her up and he treated her like she was a dog he owned…

It made me really sad for her.

It made me really angry at him…

She started hanging out at our place when I wasn’t over at hers. She would bring her daughter, Adrianna, and my dad and her would just interact. It wasn’t dating per se… but it wasn’t that far off either. They’d sit and drink beers, talking and laughing for hours…

Even at eleven, I knew that it wasn’t completely kosher. I knew, on some level that she was a married woman, and what my dad was doing was wrong. Honestly, I guess in my mind I just made myself not care.

I guess she just wanted someone to pay attention to her. Maybe to feel like someone finally loved her.

I guess my dad just wanted someone to share his life with…

My dad and Deb fell in love. The fallout from her marriage imploding was… impressive.

Her husband showed up at our place one night drunk and full of accusations, and he decided to take a swing at my dad. My dad is many things…

Patient is not one of them.

Mike was a forty-year-old, overweight nerd.

My dad was a thirty year old millworker that was not in the business of taking shit from forty-year-old nerds…

So… uh… Dad beat the holy living fuck out of Deb’s husband. I don’t mean he popped him one. I mean he went full on, crazy badger protecting his den on Mike. To this day, I wonder what would have happened if Deb had not finally arrived…

I think my dad may have killed that man…

Not sure which stung Mike worse, the beating my dad threw him, or when his wife moved out the next day, taking their daughter with her.

On some level, I felt bad for him.

On pretty much every other level, I despised the man. It made me feel better about the whole situation when I reminded myself how he had treated her. How loyal she had been to him for years and years… How if he had just had two brain cells that weren’t locked in mortal combat he could have turned it around.

I finally decided it was his loss.

From the moment they moved in, Deb treated me like her very own. She watched out for me. She held me when I was down. She gave me advice on how to talk to girls, and helped me with my homework. She stepped between me and my dad as we argued, the ever-present voice of reason, sanity and patience. She always watched out for me. Even with her daughter there, she always made time for me. She always made energy for me. She always made me a priority.

She made me love her.

Tears filled my eyes as I remembered how happy she had always made me. How safe I had always felt in her calming presence…

At first, it was weird suddenly having a little sister. Adrianna was only three and we were forced into pretty close quarters. My dad’s trailer only had two bedrooms, and as a married couple… well you can guess who’s bedroom Adrianna ended up in…

At first, I hated her. I hated that I had to share everything with her, that she was constantly around…

Always under my feet. Always itching to hang out with me…

Then, one day, it finally hit me. I had a little sister…

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t alone. I found myself starting to love her and Adrianna and I grew closer and closer. It wasn’t easy, not with eight years’ difference in age, but just being there with her. Being a part of her life. Helping to raise her. Teaching her things. Watching her grow, and learn, and take on some of my mannerism, some of my dad’s mannerisms made me start to really like her.

I was patient as she followed me around like a puppy dog. Unlike most kids, I just one day stopped minding. It always filled me with wonder to see how happy she was, how filled with curiosity.

Leaving Adrianna was one of the toughest parts of leaving home. She was my little sister… and I loved her and missed her every day.

I thought of my dad.

That made me think of the disapproval on his face each time he looked at me.

I thought back to how it wasn’t always that way. I felt like he loved me, or at least like he had loved me once. Like he at least liked me at some point. Growing up I felt like he cared about me, but he desperately didn’t want to have to take care of me. I think in his mind he was just terrified of the responsibility of being completely responsible of this little moldable human being, and how much damage he could to by fucking up…

I never really held it against him. Hell, the more I thought about it, the more terrified I was of having my own children and having to worry about how badly I would fuck them up…

Most of my dad’s attitude got better once Deb came around. She took care of most of my needs and my dad only really stepped in when he absolutely had to. He never really actively ignored me, he was always involved in my life, and it was obvious with the interest he had in me that he cared, and that he loved me, but the day to day responsibilities he faced were greatly reduced… Deb took care of Jakey issues, or at least she did for the most part. It was an arrangement that everyone seemed happy with. Dad got to worry less about messing up his kid, Jake got to have a mom in his life that was constantly hovering nearby when he needed her, and Deb got to be the thing she was always best in the world at, being a mother.

Things got worse between me and my dad as I got more and more rebellious as I got older. We threw sparks off of each other continuously. As I got closer and closer to graduating high school things got better, and we finally started to see eye to eye more often, even, I felt, finally started to get along. Really finally started to see eye to eye. He was thrilled when I told him I wanted to be a lawyer…

He was even happier when I got into a good school…

I thought we were in a good place. I thought we understood each other…

About a year after I left things turned really sour.

That old disapproval came back, stronger than ever. Now, well now, he barely spoke to me…

He never really told me why. I had wondered, but the truth was, I was just so used to being a disappointment I could never work up the energy or caring that would be needed to ask him. I’m sure he had his reasons, and I had decided, I didn’t really care to hear them. Didn’t really care to learn what there was about me that he saw that had led him to cut me out of his life…

I had about half an hour left on the drive when my phone rang, interrupting my musings.

Dread poured through me as I looked at it on the seat next to me…

Casey’s picture was lit up on the display…

At least it isn’t dad… I reminded myself. If she had died… I think dad would have at least called me then…

I picked up the phone. My heart turning cold. “Jake here.”

Casey’s voice was somber, “It’s okay Jake. She woke up. She’s still in the hospital, still in the ICU, but she woke up. The doctor’s think she’s going to be okay. At least for now.”

I tried to slow my breathing. “What does that mean? For now?”

She stayed quiet for too long…

“They think she has a tumor, or at least some kind of growth in her throat. Something cut off her breathing, but just for a little while. She’s going to be okay for right now. They’ll know more in the morning.”

Tumor. Cancer. Mom…

The thoughts wouldn’t untangle themselves in my mind.

I thought back to my birth mother, Vanessa… her light had been cut off by breast cancer… and now Deb…

Back to your responsibilities. Your family needs you right now. Focus on that. Dad is going to be a mess, Mom’s in the hospital. Adrianna needs you right now. Focus on that. The thought smashed into me.

“Where’s my sister?” I asked, my voice a little too harsh…

“She’s here with me. She’s worried out of her mind.” Casey answered.

Anger flashed through my mind at that. Dad should have come and got her, or manned up and asked for help in bringing her to him and mom, from Casey. Adrianna should be with her mother right now. She was just a kid. She needed her mom. It wasn’t right for dad to have kept her away… if Deb had died he would have robbed her of the right to say goodbye to her mother…

I decided then and there he and I were going to have a talk about that. A rather terse one…

Stop. Getting angry isn’t going to help anyone. Stay focused on what is important. I reminded myself

I sighed…

Casey’s voice was subdued, “Are you going straight to the hospital when you get to town?”

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see it. “No. If you don’t mind, I’m going to come get Adrianna. She needs to be with her mom right now, or at least be able to see her. Would that be alright?”

Casey chuckled and for just a moment, I thought of her… her shock of red hair. Her pixie nose. Her quick laugh, and quicker smile.

Hell, it made me smile just thinking about it.

“I’d love to see you Jakey… you are always welcome here.”

I sighed, my eyes drifting half closed, dangerous on the road, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. I had finally found some hope. It was like I had found I was holding my breath and not even realizing it… like I finally got a breath of air after being trapped under water…

“I’ll see you soon.” She continued.

I knew she was going to hang up, so I talked fast… “Casey… hold up.” Again, my mind spun, looking for the right thing to say, the right thing to do. Casey had always done that to me… she had always confused me, like I couldn’t even think when I was with her, when I was talking to her…

“Look, kiddo.” I shook my head, amazed at how lucky I was to have a friend like her. “Thank you for today. I don’t know what we’d have done without you. Thank you for that.”

She chuckled, and in my mind I could see her beautiful face. Could see her easy smile…

“Come home soon Jakey…”

Again, I nodded, feeling better, “I’ll see you soon. I’m about half an hour out. Okay?”

“Yeah…”

We broke off the conversation.

I put the phone back on the seat and thought about my friend…

I had met Casey when I was eleven years old, right before Deb and her husband had moved in next door. My dad and I had just moved from a tiny one bedroom house and into the trailer he had bought. My mom’s death was expensive, and the weight of all of that had fallen squarely on my dad’s shoulders. Instantly, we had to downgrade from a proper family home to some shitty little hovel in the shittiest part of town. Looking back, and knowing the kind of proud man my dad was, I realized that must have been an amazingly difficult choice for him to have had to make…

Being eleven, I wasn’t thrilled about the move. I had to change schools, had to move away from my friends, and at the time I was pissed about it. Adding the benefit of hindsight, I could see now my dad had made the right choice. We both needed some space, we both needed our own bedroom, our own private places. Our old place didn’t allow that. The new one did.

I was an awkward kid. I had very few friends and the type of personality that made it very difficult for me to make new ones. Moving into a rundown trailer park in the better part of town didn’t make things easier…

I was instantly a pariah. My awkward personality made it even more difficult. Add to that the fact that I was still, most likely, and quietly, trying to get over the loss of my mom…

And then I met Casey. Beautiful, amazing, funny, lovely Casey…

I knew that normally hanging out with a girl a year younger than me would be considered weird, but at the time I was so lonely and so in need of a friend that I didn’t care, or at least, at the time, I made myself not care.

I thought back to the day I had met her…

Our trailer park had a little playground on it. One day I was sitting there on one of the swings and feeling sorry for myself when Casey came up to me. She was smaller than me, and painfully shy. She just walked in through the gate and came over and sat down on the swing furthest from me. She didn’t say anything to me, I didn’t say anything to her. I caught her looking at me occasionally, wary of me as a bigger kid, obviously worried that I might chase her off just for the sin of being smaller and more vulnerable. For having the audacity of daring to use one of my swings!

The truth of the matter was, I was just as intimidated of her as she was of me…

She was an instant mystery to me. Other kids in general confused me, but girls in particular really confused the shit of me. They were so soft. So delicate. So full of this weird energy that I never could define…

So, I kept my distance.

Each day, we would meet there after school and we would give each other space and we would both play quietly.

I guess, after about a week Casey decided that I was trustable, that I was no longer a danger.

I guess that was a good thing, because I would have never worked up the courage to ever walk up to her, would have never introduced myself to her, would have never found the best friend I had ever found in my entire life…

She walked up to me, smiling at me shyly, “Hello. I’m Casey.” She said, holding her hand out to me.

I can still remember staring at her pale, freckled hand, looking at it like it was a snake, out to bite me…

I took her hand, “Jake.”

She smiled again, this time happier, prouder that she had made the first move. “Do you want to be friends? There aren’t a lot of other kids around here… and the ones that are around are mean.”

I felt myself begin to light up… I needed a friend, girl or not, weird or not…

“Sure.” I had told her.

“I like you. You’re nice to me.” She told me, a quiet confidence in her voice.

I wasn’t sure how nice to her I had been. Really, all I had ever done was simply not try to bully her… I guess sometimes the only thing you need to do to be nice, was to not be an asshole.

From that day on we were inseparable. I picked her up from her house every morning and we walked to school together. We met up and walked home together. We hung out after school at her place, and at my place on the weekends. It was a little weird to have a friend that was a girl, and even weirder to have one that was a year younger than me, but we made it work.

We both loved video games, and we’d spend hours sitting in front of the television, or at least every minute we could until one of our parents chased us outside to play…

We grew up together. We both made other friends as we got older, but we never lost sight of the fact that there was a time in our life when all we had was each other. We never walked away and we always found a way to make our friendship work, no matter how awkward it got for either of us…

I graduated a year ahead of her. I went off to college, and she stayed behind. There was a part of me that knew separating from her was inevitable. Knowing that didn’t make it any less hard…

There was a part of me that missed her so much those first few months of school, I considered quitting and going home. Giving up the dream of becoming a lawyer and heading back to our small-town college, just so I could be close to her. So, I could see her smiling face when we talked…

Then she got pregnant, and things changed…

It happened the summer between her Junior and Senior years of high school, not too long after I had left. She kept it from me for the first four months she was pregnant. I could tell, talking to her she was ashamed of herself…

That year was hell for her. There was a girl my Senior year of high school that got pregnant. She had a steady boyfriend and he was in school with her and still it was a brutal experience for her. I could only imagine what it had been like for Casey. She got pregnant from some random guy at some random party, which surprised the fuck out of me, as it was completely out of her character to just have a random one night stand…

It was something she didn’t like to talk about and the more I pressed her for the details the more evasive she got.

I left it be, and just tried to support her the best I knew how. She pulled away from me. We talked less and less. I watched as she isolated herself. I felt so helpless then. I blamed myself for not being around. I knew that had I been there, that random hook up would have never happened.

Had I been a good friend and watched out for her she would have never gotten pregnant in the first place, and now, I couldn’t even be there to support her while she went through the hell of having everyone look down on her because she got pregnant at seventeen…

For a while, I gave her space. A part of me hoped she’d find a way to make things work with whoever got her pregnant. I had hoped she was lying to me about it being a random hook up and that she was really involved with someone and just hiding the fact from me. I figured it was someone she was ashamed about. I figured me being around constantly would be a distraction. Maybe the guy felt threatened. Maybe she was too focused on our friendship to make her relationship work…

She said little, and I gave her space to try to put her life straight.

That ended with a call from my mom…

Deb called me up one day and asked how long it had been since I had talked with Casey.

I told her it had been a few weeks, and desperately hoped that Deb had news about her. Casey, even pregnant, supposedly irresponsible Casey, watched my sister Adrianna, and I knew that Deb got to talk to her even when I didn’t…

I dared to ask how she was doing…

I still remember that conversation….

“Not good…” Deb told me, her voice filled with anguish.

I sat, the line filled with silence between us. “Mom, I don’t know what to do…” I finally confessed.

“What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. “I just feel so helpless. I see her spiraling down and feel like I’m losing my friend. I want to be there for her, I want her to know I’m there for her, but every time I reach out to her, she pulls away… I try to talk to her about what she’s doing, what she’s experiencing, how she’s dealing with the dad, how she’s managing school, and every time I do… she pulls a little further away…”

Deb sighed… “Jakey. Is Casey your friend?”

With conviction, “She’s the best friend I have ever had.”

I felt tears in my eyes… I missed her so much… so I confessed, “I just don’t know what to do. I want to help her fix this… but she won’t let me.”

My mom was quiet for a really long time… to this day, I still don’t know why…

Finally, she started talking, “Jakey, she’s embarrassed. Everyone in her life is looking down on her. She’s having a really tough time with her mom right now. She’s having trouble at school. Her whole life is coming apart at the seams. Every plan she has ever made in her entire life just got flushed and went swirling, and she’s completely alone…”

I took a deep breath… “I know mom, but she won’t let me in… she won’t let me help her fix this.”

“Jakey… she doesn’t need to fix this. She doesn’t need you to help her fix this. She needs to know you are there for her. She needs to know that you are only a phone call away. You need to stop trying to put things back together for her and you need to start letting her know that you’re not judging her. That you’re going to cheer her on as she figures out how to put things back together for herself. Right now, everyone in her life is looking down on her and you’re her best friend. She can take it from everyone else, but from you… from you that is heart breaking… when you start trying to jump in and offer her solutions it feels like you’re not only telling her she’s not smart enough to fix it on her own, but that you’re also telling her she’s stupid for being there in the first place...”

I sat and thought about that for a long time. That was the last night I let her isolate herself from me.

I called her every night. I stopped trying to solve her problems. I stopped judging her. I just sat there with her. It was one of the weirdest and most awkward times in my entire life. Some nights we talked for hours. Some nights we just sat there on the phone. Some nights she begged me to stop, to just leave her alone…

I always refused her.

I never left her alone.

I never missed a call.

After a few months, she started calling me with her problems. I spent a lot of time listening. It took me a long time, but finally I realized how right Deb was. I learned the value of just showing up, just one of the many invaluable lessons my friend Casey had taught me...

Our calls kept up even after she had her little girl. Casey named her Aubrey, a fact that Adrianna, my little sister, was immensely proud of. Casey and Deb grew closer, became friends. After a while, Casey became like a member of my little family…

My ruminations came to an end as I pulled up in front of Casey’s little trailer. I thought of how alone she must have felt there… to end up just a few hundred yards from where she had grown up…

Her mom was a drinker and she passed away about a year after Aubrey was born, leaving Casey really and truly alone…

I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered yet another challenge my friend had needed to face without me…

I sat in my truck for a minute, staring at her home… feeling like a really bad friend…

 

Chapter 4
Casey opened the door and I was struck with the deepest sense of wonder I had felt in a very long time… the highest sense of happiness that I had managed to find in such a long time…

It had been almost a year since I had been home… so long since I had seen her smiling face.

My face, bad day or no, split open on seeing her. I couldn’t help but smile in her presence.

She wrapped her arms tightly about her body and leaned against the door frame, her brown eyes reaching into my soul, the same way they always did. I stepped forward as she stepped back, letting me into her home, no invitation extended and none needed…

My left hand reached out and took the back of her neck as I pulled her head to mine.

I almost kissed her…

The desire to do it was stronger than I had ever felt, and considering that I had undergone the entirety of my teenage years with her as the closest friend I had ever known… I had thought about kissing her pretty fucking often.

I would never do that though… I had no right. I had to admit to myself… I really wanted to. I had wanted to since as long as I could remember.

I contented myself with laying my forehead to hers, my nose against hers, little sparks of pain shooting through it as our noses brushed. I didn’t care about the pain. Just her presence against me was enough to drive all of my concerns away.

Her hand came up into the crook of my elbow and pulled me closer to her. We both closed our eyes and savored the moment.

Kiss her you fool! My brain screamed at me.

I shook my head and sighed, feeling the familiar rush of emotions she always brought out in me. Loyalty, friendship, a sense of family and protectiveness I felt with no other human on earth… and yes, more than a little love.

I was not however, going to mess up that friendship.

“I missed you Case.” I whispered.

She finally wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a big hug. I hugged her back just as hard.

She whispered in my ear, “I missed you Jakey.” She added as she pulled back from me, taking my face in her hands, “Your poor little nose…”

I smiled at her, “It was never very little…”

She smiled back at me, and I added, “Don’t sweat it, it just has a little more character now.”

“You two need to get a room?”

I laughed at Adrianna, interrupting our moment.

Turning to her, I was struck by how much she had grown up in the year since I had seen her. She was taller, and at fourteen, she was starting to transition from kid to woman. She was fuller, stronger. She had mid length blonde hair, and her father’s features. That same blonde hair and striking, otherworldly, Nordic blue eyes. She had her mother’s athletic body, which was way better for her