Past Heaven

by Laura Ward

  I couldn’t lie. Her words stung because they carried some truth to them. I was old. Way too old for her. Quinn Douchebag Rogers would keep her more relevant. She was right. This was how Hollywood worked. Knowing all of that, however, didn’t make my ego hurt any less.

  I tossed my head back on my couch. Stubble had turned into a beard. I’d spent a week sitting in this same spot, staring out my plate glass wall, with my good friend, Johnny Walker.

  I poured myself another drink. Maria knew to just keep it coming and not ask any questions. No questions from her and none from the press. I was camped out in this white hellhole, waiting for this shit to blow over.

  We were on the cover of tabloids, featured on entertainment TV with interviews from so-called friends, and trending on social media. Hate sites had been created, massacring Kylie’s name. As much as she disgusted me, I wasn’t an asshole. No one should endure that—even though she deserved it. Some of the fans were psycho-crazy with their sentiment for me and for us as a couple. The fans thought they knew the real us, but no one knew the real us—not even me. Petitions circulated, begging me to take her back.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to be left alone.

  I picked up my phone to call a friend. I needed someone to talk me through all of this craziness. I tossed back the rest of my whiskey. I needed a drinking buddy, too. I pulled up my contacts list. Should I call my manager? Fuck no—he was out for himself and anything that filled his wallet. My publicist? My trainer? Cook? Driver? Where the hell had my friends gone? What happened to the guy who grew up in small town Pennsylvania and knew what was important? Apparently, I had lost him a long time ago.

  When I had reached my self-imposed limit of drinking to feel numb, I knew I needed help. Only two people in this world really understood me. I hopped a plane to Philly to spend some time with my parents. Somewhere along the line, I had fucked up my personal life, but no matter how horrible things were, I had awesome parents.

  At almost forty years of age, I headed back to the simple reality of my parents’ home.

  MOM POURED ME a piping-hot cup of coffee and set a plate of muffins on the table. “Reyn, you keep talking about how fake Hollywood is. How you’re jaded and upset by the lack of morality around you.” She sat down next to me, placing a hand on my arm. “Have you considered taking a step back from acting? How about trying something different? Directing? Producing? Writing? You could do any of these, and a change might help you gain perspective.”

  Time with my parents was the best and most intensive therapy session I could possibly get. Hugh and Grace Carter had both been well-respected psychologists back in the day. They wanted nothing more than to talk me through the break-up. They asked me, ‘What do you want?’ and ‘How do you feel?’ until I couldn’t help but unload on them. Then, they analyzed my issues until I was fucking sick of myself. I figured I could hang out with them for a month tops before my head would implode from over-examination. They had given me a lot of suggestions to take in and absorb, and everything was always said with the utmost love.

  Dad nodded as he set his coffee down. “You’ve been an aggressive saver over the years. I’m sure your team of financial planners must have you sitting on a nice nest egg.” He took another sip of his coffee and pondered for a moment. “When you were younger, you had talked about making a movie. I bet you could finance your own film.” His eyes lit up. Just hearing him say that got my mind working. “Find something that speaks to your heart and then make it happen. You can do it.”

  My path to the big screen had been a traditional one. I had worked my ass off to become successful. After studying theatre at NYU, I had taken any bit part I could find on Broadway. Eventually I headed to LA to star in a daytime soap opera. I had found my target audience, and my phone had never stopped ringing since then.

  Small movies had become big movies, and I didn’t look back once. My parents wanted me to do what? Quit all that and start over? That would be career suicide. My parents were special people, but this was an area of life they knew nothing about. I appreciated their faith in me, but I couldn’t walk away from Hollywood after I had worked so hard to make a name for myself. “Mom, Dad, I love you, but I can’t do that. I can’t just stop acting and start writing. It doesn’t work that way.” I shook my head as my Mom got up and rinsed our coffee cups at the kitchen sink.

  “Why not?” Dad asked. “Why can’t you start over, son? You’ve realized that life in L.A. isn’t as authentic as you had hoped. You’ve been hurt by Kylie, and maybe you realize you need a relationship with more depth. Chalk it up to a bad experience and move forward.”

  Frustration surged through me, and I scrubbed a hand down my face. He made it all sound so damn easy to fix. “What do you two know about making mistakes? About starting over? Seriously, I've never met anyone more perfect than you two.” I kept my voice low, but jumped to my feet. The chair scraped loudly against the tile floor as I moved away from the table and walked over to the sliding glass door. The backyard had always been empty. My parents weren’t the “swing set” kind. They were more the “tutored in cello” type, but still, plenty of good childhood memories filled my mind. “It’s damn hard having you as parents when I mess up. Have you even had a traffic ticket?”

  Mom turned off the faucet and let out a heavy sigh. “I think it’s time, Hugh.” Her voice was shaky and soft. I turned around to see her clutching the edge of the kitchen counter. She spoke while staring straight out the window. “It’s time we told him.”

  The gravity of her words made my throat dry. What the hell? I whipped around to see my father, still sitting at the kitchen table, staring at his folded hands.

  “Yes, you’re right, dear. Do you want to start?” Dad didn’t look at Mom as he spoke; he just focused on his hands.

  “What are you talking about?” Tension filled the room. Did they know something else about Kylie? Was this about me or them?

  “Reyn, it’s time you know just how not perfect your parents are. I never knew if we would tell you this or even if we should. It’s about us. It doesn’t concern you, but if you can learn from our mistakes, then it’s worth the pain.” Mom turned from the sink and met my eyes. She looked very old and fragile to me. Whatever she had to say was sucking the life out of her, right before my eyes.

  Dad pulled out the chairs on each side of him, and we joined him again at the round table. “Have a seat, dear. Let’s all talk. Please son, sit.”

  They were quiet for a few long minutes. I watched them as they held hands and stared at one another. It was intimate, and I had to look away. I focused on the outdated brown cabinets in the kitchen. The same ones from when we first moved in thirty years ago. The yellow flowered wallpaper was starting to fray. I had offered countless times to have their kitchen, their whole house in fact, renovated, but they liked it the way it was. Instead, Mom had asked me to donate the money that I would have spent to their favorite charity, an agency in Philly that helped people with disabilities.

  “Before we adopted you, we had a baby girl.” Mom’s voice cracked, and she clutched a tissue in her hand. My jaw dropped open, but I remained silent, urging her to continue with a nod.

  “I got pregnant right after we were married. We were ecstatic.” Mom looked down and placed her hand over her belly. She had a sad smile on her face. “But when I went into labor early, she was born with severe health problems. We were told she would never sit up, walk, talk, or feed herself.” Dad rubbed Mom’s back as she spoke. “This was Pennsylvania in the 1960’s. They told us she needed to be put into a state-run institution right away.” I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded again and kept listening.

  “We agreed. Within a few hours, administrators from the closest facility were in my hospital room. They handed us the documents we needed to sign. It was almost too much to process. She was born sick. In order to provide for her, we had to turn her over to the state, and we would no longer be her parents. She wouldn’t be my baby anymore and I
wouldn’t see her ever again. I didn’t know how to care for her. What was I supposed to do? So they took her straight from my hospital room. It happened so fast.” Mom looked at Dad for a moment, and pain emanated from both of them.

  “We named her before she left. Joy. Because she was my joy. The joy of my life.” Mom’s voice cracked as tears slipped down her cheeks. I leapt up, hugging her from behind. “I know it sounds crazy, naming her Joy and then giving her up.” Mom turned back to look at me. “But I knew all along if I had a baby girl that’s what I’d name her. Even after she was born so sick and tiny, she was still my Joy. Giving her away was the most agonizing decision I have ever had to make, but I thought it was the best thing to do for her.”

  I nodded and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, giving her a gentle squeeze. I could barely process what I was hearing. I couldn’t imagine being in that position or having to make a decision like that one.

  Dad cleared his throat before speaking. “We were called about a month after Joy’s birth and told she had died.” Dad closed his eyes as he spoke, his body rigid and hands clasped in front of him. Mom watched him speak, her face contorted with pain and hands clutched on his forearm. “At first, I felt… please forgive me… relieved. Less guilty. Like a burden had been lifted.” He spoke so quietly, so weakly, that I almost didn’t recognize him. “But Grace—she’s a Mom through and through—she wanted to know what had happened.” Dad looked down again and swallowed hard, breathing deeply through his nose. I ran to the sink, poured glasses of water, and gave them a few minutes to recoup.

  They both smiled gratefully and sipped the cold drink. Mom set her glass down and shrugged. “The reports were vague. At first, they claimed she had died in her sleep. That it was a result of her birth deformities. But I needed to know more, so I poked around. I asked questions. I made phone calls. Finally, it was a neighbor who was able to help me. Sue McIntyre’s sister, Dorothy, worked as a nurse at Ravenwood where Joy had gone. She called me one evening and told me she would tell me what had happened, but I couldn’t report it or she would get fired.”

  Mom looked at Dad, and they each turned to me. The look of horror in their eyes, the sadness drawn across their faces, ripped at my heart. I came here and stayed in their home for weeks, sleeping late, drinking too much, and complaining about my life. What did I know of real suffering? What did I know of actual loss?

  “Dorothy told me it was a blessing that she had passed. She said I didn’t want to hear the details, but that kids at Ravenwood were often abused and neglected. She tried her hardest to offset the cruelty by her working there. She didn’t want to abandon the kids she loved even though the conditions were horrible. Classified records showed trauma to Joy’s head had caused her death. Dorothy speculated that she had either been shaken or had been hit on the head most likely because she was crying.” Mom took a deep breath. “Babies cry.” Her voice broke and she took another drink of water.

  “She told me it was more common than one could possibly imagine. I wanted to file charges and have someone pay for their crime, but Dorothy told me nothing could be done. Ravenwood had their own police force who had investigated and had ruled Joy’s cause of death resulted from natural causes. She was buried right on the site in their private cemetery.” Grace shuddered. “I visited the graveyard once, and I don’t think I stopped shaking for days.

  “So you see, my Reyn, Joy died because of an ignorant choice your father and I made. We never researched what could be done for her special needs. We trusted the wrong people, and our baby was killed. It was our fault.” She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out.

  “You didn’t cause her death. You did what you thought was right. You can’t blame yourselves.” I clasped each of their hands in my own and squeezed, hoping to ease even an ounce of their pain. I couldn’t believe I never knew about this. How did they keep this from me all these years?

  “We decided we would never bring another helpless baby into the world again. The doctors felt certain that Joy had genetic issues we could pass on to other children, so we decided we would adopt instead.” She got up and pulled me to my feet.

  “Maybe we were meant for each other. Your birth mother picked us. Out of all the families you could have gone to, she knew in her very young heart to let us be your parents. Adopting you saved our lives.” She squeezed my hands tightly in hers. “You healed our broken hearts. You gave us a family. We never wanted to burden you with our pain. We just tried to give you as normal a life as possible. But when you called us perfect, I couldn’t stay quiet. We’re so far from it. The best thing we have done is to raise a man like you.”

  Tears fell down my mom’s face, and I wrapped my arms around her. “You’ve been incredible parents to me. I love you both so much, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Dad stood up and placed his hand on my shoulder. “The point of this conversation is simple. We’re human. We make mistakes. The key is to not make the same ones over and over again. If something goes wrong, you change course. Why don’t you think about changing your course? What could it hurt?”

  Any time I’d ever followed their advice in the past, I had been happy. Why not? I had always imagined writing my own screenplay. I didn’t want to write some stupid love story or a ridiculous comedy about adult men acting like jackasses. No, I wanted my movie to make a difference. The type of film that challenged people to be better and do something. I wanted to change people’s lives. Now I just had to find that story.

  The next day, I was channel surfing when a local news story caught my attention about the closing of institutions in Pennsylvania. I turned up the volume and paid close attention. These places still existed? My mind couldn’t keep up with the facts reported. Fifty years later, and no one had stopped this before now?

  The crash of a dish made me jump. “Mom?” I turned and saw her staring at the television.

  “That’s it. That’s Ravenwood.” She pointed at a brick building on the television screen. “I don’t believe it. After all these years, they’re finally closing that place. Thank God!” She sat down on the sofa and listened to the rest of the story.

  “New Pennsylvania legislation was passed to protect those individuals with disabilities housed in these institutions. This comes on the heels of a Maryland reform generated by local advocate, Jack Atwater, who was murdered last November, just days before the closure of the last state-run facility.”

  “What? He was murdered?” Mom stormed up to the television set, her hands balled into fists. “This is appalling. All he did was try to help a group of people with no voice of their own.” Her outrage resonated within me. Jack Atwater’s face appeared on the screen, followed by an undated photograph of him outside of a building. He was kneeling beside a young woman in a wheelchair with his hands wrapped in hers as they smiled for the camera. He appeared confident, at ease, and optimistic. This man was an advocate for people like Joy. How the hell did he end up murdered?

  I needed to know more about this story. I felt something important here. Something about this man was different. I could feel it.

  I stayed up all night, researching everything I could on institutions and then this Jack Atwater. I couldn’t find much on him other than some basic stuff. He was married and had three kids. From the looks of it, he was a good guy. A husband and a father who tried to do the right thing.

  I rubbed my tired eyes, staring at a picture of him with his wife. My heart sank. He was just helping people with disabilities. Why didn’t I know about this?

  I was hooked and needed to find out more. Jack Atwater. This was it.

  I had my story.

  I TIED MY shoes and bent over, touching my toes and stretching my calf muscles. My neighbor waved from across the street just like she did every day as she got into her car. I was a creature of habit. As soon as the boys left for school, I’d take off running.

  I started jogging down my street. Never having been a runner, I was surprised I had fallen in love w
ith running, but the morning after Jack’s funeral, I took off.

  Looking around my kitchen, all I saw were casseroles. Chicken divan, Chicago chicken, chicken with rice. The smell of chicken overwhelmed me. The generosity of my family and friends was heartwarming, but also overwhelming. Today the boys were back at school, and I only wanted to be left alone.

  I fingered the soft petal of an orchid that was delivered to the house. Yesterday was a blur. The one crystal clear memory that I had from the funeral was walking up the aisle of the church, holding Hayden and Grayson’s hands. Griffin had followed with a hand on my back, trying to assume the role of the man of our family. Time had stood still, and I felt like I had been on the outside looking in. I could see the petrified young widow. Blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun, face pale, eyes bloodshot and sunken, grasping her children as onlookers broke down in sobs. I had ached to shield my boys from their cries.

  I moved away from the orchid, staring at it with a sad smile. I walked over to the window and watched the autumn leaves blow across the grass. I silently prayed for Jack to once again be my hero. Protect me, watch over me, and guide me. To save our family. To bring them some happiness again. Questions consumed me. What would I do when our life insurance policy was gone? What career would I go back to? How would I take care of the boys by myself?

  Thinking through these momentous issues, a pressure built inside my chest until I was about to explode. My heart and my brain raced. I had to get it out. I needed a release. The phone rang and I peeked at the caller ID. My mom. Again. If I stayed here, inside this house of memories, they would keep calling me. I wanted to pull my hair out. I wanted to scream. I wanted…to run.

  I threw on a pair of shorts, a sports bra, and a t-shirt of Jack’s. I dug my ratty gym shoes out from the back of the closet and blew off the dust. Opening my front door, I bolted outside, running as fast as my legs would carry me.