“That may not be the good idea it sounds like. Phil has been through a lot, and he’s worked through it. I know you want to fix this, but sometimes you have to let people fix things for themselves.”
She scooted to lean against the back of the bench and pulled Lee along beside her. “Do you know what the trigger was?”
Lee shivered. “I think it was the dog. A couple of guys were messing around under the highway. They broke a bottle or something, but I think it was the dog.” He hugged himself, but that wasn’t going to cut it. He’d never been good at giving comfort, maybe he never would be. “Did Jerry tell you… everything?”
He looked up to find the answer in her eyes and couldn’t hold it together any longer. She enveloped him in her strong embrace, and for a few short moments, he let her. When he tried to move away, she held him where he was.
“Why can’t I just get angry like a normal person?” He tried again to move away and she let him. He hated the way he felt, helpless to stop the flood of emotions, the fear and despair over the things he couldn’t fix with wrenches, cutting tools, or a smartly wielded blowtorch.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Lee. Do you hear me?” Her voice held a sternness that reminded him of his childhood, when he would come home overwhelmed by a bad day at school, feeling like everything he’d done had been wrong. “Anger isn’t any more normal than feeling sad and overwhelmed when something bad happens. Just because you’re a man doesn’t mean you can’t cry, or that you shouldn’t. Right now Phil needs some space and some time. I’ll keep in touch with Jerry and we’ll all get through it together.”
That didn’t help Lee gain the upper hand against his emotions, so he gave up trying and let his momma hold him for a good long while. Sometime later Becca came and sat on the bench with them, her hip against his. When they went inside to eat she tucked her phone into the pocket of her dress, but not before he saw Chris’s message telling her he loved her. It surprised him to feel a little better, a little stronger, to feel the tiniest spark of hope that they would all get through this together. He really had no choice but to believe it would happen because he could live without a lot of things, but if he could live without Phil, he didn’t want to know.
LEE SPENT a quiet afternoon and evening with Mom and Becca, just the three of them. He’d been comforted, but nothing was fixed, and that didn’t feel right. He ended the evening early, when the weight of his broken heart got to be too much. His bedroom didn’t turn out to be a great place to escape to. During the weeks he and Phil shared it, the room had filled up with good memories, with real love, not desperate wishes and made-up happy endings. He couldn’t bring himself to even sit on the bed. He considered the porch swing—he’d slept there before he met Phil—but didn’t want Mom or Becca to worry he had any stupid plans for the near future. The only place left was the couch. It was too old and too short to be comfortable, but as far as he knew, Phil had never sat on it. He lay there, staring at the dark ceiling, when Becca came down in her red robe and sat in the chair beside his head.
“Do you want some chocolate?”
He held out his hand, palm up, and she gave him a few squares of a Hershey’s bar.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
They ate chocolate in the dark for a little while.
“Did you hear what Mom and I talked about?”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
“I just had to see if you were okay.” The chair creaked as she criss-cross-applesauced her legs underneath her.
“I know. It’s okay. Sorry if I scared you.”
She caught his hand, turned it palm up, and filled it with foil-wrapped kisses.
“Is this your stash?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks, Beck.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, squishing the foil wrappers into tight little balls and tossing them into the large pottery ashtray on the coffee table. It was older than Lee, and as far as he knew, had only been used for walnut shells and the occasional chocolate wrapper.
Becca broke the silence, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s not your fault.”
“Beck—”
“I’m talking about Dad. I know you think it is, but it’s not. I’m sorry he left you.”
Lee sat up and put his feet on the floor. Becca pulled her hand away when he reached for it. “It’s not your fault either.”
She shrugged and popped a kiss into her mouth. “I know. Uncle Lenny says he always was sad, even when he was a kid. He always had a hard time with everything.”
“I know you heard the rumors, but—”
“I know the difference between truth and a rumor, Lee. I also know that he didn’t ever say why. It was worse for you because you knew him. That’s why you don’t get angry when you think you should. Because of what he did, leaving you.”
“I could use a hug.”
She squinted sideways at him for a few seconds, then stood and slowly walked around the coffee table to sit beside him. She looked at him for a long moment before pulling him into a hug. Not gently, either. Becca spent a lot of time lugging buckets around—buckets of paint or soil, buckets holding three-foot-tall plants—and when she didn’t want to be gentle, a hug could get into the ballpark with painful, but quick.
“What?”
“I’m mad at him too, Lee.”
Phil
Day three.
AS SOON as the thought formed, he knew he had to walk backward in his mind to be sure it was true. Worse things could happen to a guy than losing a few hours, or even a day, but you had to draw the line somewhere if you didn’t want to get lost inside your own head.
“Phil?”
Jerry had pulled the orange chair into the corner under the casement window. Even without opening his eyes, he knew Jerry had been sitting there reading but would look as though he’d just woken up. The weight of being back in this state—after so long and doing so much and finally daring to think he’d reached the other side for good—made it hard to breathe.
“I hope you’ll feel like getting up today. I won’t crowd you, but two things are worth mentioning.”
Jerry waited.
He didn’t know what he would’ve said if he could’ve spoken. It was a minor victory when he could open his eyes and focus, even if it was on the bathroom door.
Jerry got up from the chair and stood beside the bed for a moment.
He curled into a ball, and then Jerry sat beside—but not touching—his knees.
“I know you’ve heard this before, from doctors and… others, but they didn’t know you.” Jerry rested a comforting hand on his knee. “I do know you, and I can say without a doubt that you’ll get past this. You deserve to, and you will. And Tina would like to speak with you. I sent her number to your phone.”
After another long while, Jerry squeezed his knee and then stood to leave. He wanted to reach out and stop Jerry, but his hand, his arm, wouldn’t move. In that moment, he couldn’t think of anything that scared him more than being alone, but he couldn’t say so. The past eight years had taught Jerry to expect the opposite.
He listened to the doors closing and then spent a long time staring at his phone. It just sat there, dark and quiet. Waiting. He went to the bathroom—because some things cannot be deferred without consequences—and on his way back to bed, he palmed the phone. He drank half of the quart of OJ that Jerry had left beside it and then sent a text.
Hello. As soon as he hit send, he thought, Shit, what a stupid text.
I’m alone in the greenhouse. May I call?
Yes.
He wanted to call her—or at least to say yes, please—but his hands shook so much, it would probably end up misspelled. He still didn’t think he could speak. In fact, when she called shortly thereafter, he could barely get the first syllable of hello out.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
Hearing her voice seemed to help. Not with the shaking, it only made that worse, but on the second
try, he was able to say hello.
“It’s good to hear your voice.” She sighed, and it sounded like relief. “I only have a few things to say, and then I’ll let you get some rest.”
He wanted to tell her she could say anything she wanted, narrate her whole day for him even, but all he managed was “Okay.” At least it came out as a single word and on the first try.
“Be kind to yourself. I don’t want you sitting there alone and being hard on yourself. You’ll be all right. And when you’re feeling up to it, we’ll all be here waiting for you.”
A strange sensation enveloped Phil, almost like his mind was clearing out to prepare for something bad to happen—but not. A familiar sensation, once upon a time, but it hadn’t happened in many years. He’d discussed it with more than one therapist and knew it for what it was—dissociation. Dissociation sounded scary to some people—his therapists included—but having one’s attention and emotions detached from their environment only scared someone who trusted their environment, not a guy who needed a defense mechanism against the violence he’d witnessed and endured since before he could remember. To that kind of a guy, taking a step back from reality could be comforting.
Still, it took him by surprise. He wasn’t in any danger, nor was anyone else as far as he knew, so it made less than no sense. He held the phone to his ear and listened to soft rustling sounds on the other end, trying to figure out what was happening to him and if he should be afraid. For all he knew, he could be losing his grip permanently.
The last time he opened his eyes, he’d been ready to beg Jerry to take him in for a large dose of whatever the doctors wanted to shoot him up with, so he wouldn’t have to feel anything. He’d started to think the horrible reactions and side effects he’d endured with every drug the doctors had tried would be better than letting the sucking emptiness continue to consume him. Only he wasn’t completely empty, not in the terrifying way he’d expected after an episode like the one he’d just had. No, empty would be a welcome change from the all-encompassing pain wracking him down to his soul.
A few minutes ago, he didn’t think he could stand to feel at all, not for one more day or maybe even one more hour, and there he was, maybe feeling hopeful.
We’ll all be here waiting for you.
He didn’t dare consider not believing her. How could he? Tina Redding was the most sincere and motherly woman he’d ever met. Lee had called her “plain” and explained what he meant by that was what you see is what you get with her. “She doesn’t hide her feelings with anything fancy like tact” is what Lee said.
He was just about to try and answer when he heard an echo of the chopping sound he’d gotten used to while he stayed there. He let it transport him back to her little farm out in the peaceful country, and entertained the thought that his mind was beginning to clear out so something good could happen. Maybe he was dissociating from the pain and emptiness so he could go back to living.
“You don’t have to say anything, sweetheart. Just remember we love you. Take good care of yourself for us.”
Phil managed to say “okay,” but couldn’t be sure she’d heard him before ending the call. The next thing he knew he was waking up, and not in a cold sweat or with a scream in his throat. His stomach rumbled as he stepped out of the bathroom and smelled bacon.
HE’D EATEN, and then spent most of the next two days in bed, living on orange juice Jerry left on his bedside table. He’d suffered bouts of severe depression before; some had lasted months and maybe even years, forcing him to struggle to accomplish the basic necessities of life. Some had been triggered and others had crept up behind him, tapped one shoulder and then sucker-punched him on the opposite cheek.
It felt different this time, as though he should have been able to push the darkness away or fight through it faster. His support system was much larger than it had been before. He wished he could do that, push it aside with the flick of his wrist, because he had something—someone—important to get back to.
He showered so Jerry wouldn’t worry he was becoming a danger to himself and then sat on the edge of his bed for a long time, staring at the orange chair.
What if he did let the doctors medicate him again? He was older than he’d been the last time—almost five years. Maybe that would be enough. But that was a big maybe. Phil shuddered at the memory of standing in the kitchen for a good hour, cutting up two zucchini squashes trying to figure out which knife was sharpest. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal either—just something to do on a rainy spring morning, something that had to be accomplished before he could get to the important work that would resolve everything.
Knife; bridge; …?
Jerry had barely started leaving him alone and found him that afternoon standing at the end of the block, in the rain, staring at the Vista Bridge—otherwise known as the Suicide Bridge. Phil hadn’t ventured out into the neighborhood much—at all—so had no idea how to get to it. He’d slept in the suicide watch room in the psych ward for the next week.
Five years ago solitary confinement hadn’t seemed like such a bad thing, but now….
Lee had left frantic messages that night, but he hadn’t called or texted since. Who could blame him? Instead of the night of sex and romance he had planned, he’d had to clean up the kitchen floor, and—
No. Stop. This is what Tina said not to do.
Phil gripped his thighs and pushed until his arms straightened, uncurling his back, and after another few minutes, made his bed. He went into his workroom and opened the folding chair he kept propped in the corner. While the computer started, he sat and tried to remember what it felt like to wake up and go through a day without craving a nap every ten minutes. He tried to recapture the confidence that he knew what he was doing. He was determined to push through, even if he couldn’t find the energy and even if every action felt pointless and wrong. The job hadn’t come with a deadline, but Mr. Fowler did expect it to get done eventually.
He crawled through the next two days that way—one step at a time, not letting the darkness and lethargy overwhelm him—and then he couldn’t continue. Two days and he hadn’t even emptied one box.
Pathetic.
He’d been perched at the edge of a deep pit for almost a decade. For most of that time, he stood right at the rim—but over the past few months, he’d felt as though he’d moved back, far enough away so he didn’t have to worry about a stiff breeze toppling him in or the long, slow climb back into the light that always followed the plunge.
Maybe that was where he went wrong, taking his eye off the edge, getting overconfident that he could live like a normal guy. Maybe he’d only be safe if he stayed close—close enough to know exactly where the dark pit began and where it ended. Sometimes it felt like a sneeze was enough to push him over and sometimes Phil was certain the abyss reached out and dragged him in. Or shifted, the solid ground he stood on one day disappearing as he watched, horrified and helpless to keep from tumbling into the pit.
On an intellectual level, Phil knew his depression and panic attacks weren’t caused by a living being separate from himself, but on the emotional—the physical—it sure felt that way sometimes.
Maybe the trick was to not try to be normal, but just try to be. To be Phil. Maybe that would somehow, someday, be enough.
He should be looking at one more empty box and feeling a sense of accomplishment; he knew that. He’d pulled himself out of bed and managed to stay upright for hours, two days in a row, but he still hadn’t been able to call Lee or even send a text. He missed Lee, like he’d miss his arms or legs if he were forced to try and live without them, so he couldn’t understand why it seemed impossible to just say hello. He probably wouldn’t have to do that much, sending a one-word text or hitting “call,” instead of staring at Lee’s name and number until the screen went dark… just that might be enough.
LATE ON day seven—or maybe it was very early on day eight—Phil couldn’t face his empty bed, let alone get into it, so he wrapped himself
in a blanket and slept on the living room couch. He’d been awake for a little while, trying to talk himself into getting up, when Jerry came downstairs. Jerry had always been a morning person and he looked as put-together as always in khakis and a plaid short-sleeved button shirt. He didn’t look even semiretired with a newspaper in one hand and a steamy, fragrant mug of coffee in the other. Jerry did a double take and slowly entered the living room.
“Phil? Is every—” His eyes bulged and his body tensed. “The basement didn’t flood again?”
Phil shook his head. His first reflex was to pull the blanket tighter around himself, but he’d done a lot of thinking since his conversation with Tina and developed the theory that maybe his first reflex wasn’t serving him well. He pulled himself almost into a sitting position.
Jerry regarded him carefully for a moment and then pushed the flowered ottoman against the end of the coffee table and sat. He faced his body away at a right angle, but he looked at Phil.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Y-yes.”
“That couch is pretty old and lumpy. If you want to sleep up in your old room, you should.” Jerry sipped his coffee. “Hell, you can sleep anywhere you want to, Phil. You know that, right?”
Phil nodded. Having a cup of coffee sounded like a good idea, but only if he could stir a packet of hot chocolate into it. The caffeine-withdrawal headaches he’d been living with for the past week didn’t seem to be easing at all and weren’t helping. Jerry shifted on his seat and a thin finger of panic tingled up Phil’s back when he thought Jerry might get up and leave soon.
“C-can I talk to you? For a little while?”
“Of course.” Jerry nodded, and some of the worry lines on his forehead smoothed away.
Phil opened his mouth to ask about the hot chocolate, but what came out was “Do you know anything about my parents? Where they are?”
Jerry’s expression said he hadn’t expected that any more than Phil had. Phil hadn’t thought about his mother in a long time—his father even longer. Not as actual people who may still exist and could be contacted. He’d spent a lot of time blaming his mother for everything bad that had ever happened to him, including being born. When he finally let it sink in that she wasn’t coming back for him, his hatred for her morphed into a live thing trying to eat its way out from inside him. Different shrinks told him different things, like that it wasn’t really her fault, and that he needed to let go of that anger to heal, and a few other things that made about as little sense, but it was hard to take them seriously sitting so near their happy family pictures. After a while, once the pain beneath the anger revealed its true face, it was just easier not to think about her. Them.
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