Living Backwards

by Tracy Sweeney

  “They started dating when they were in high school. Young and stupid. It wasn’t long before she got knocked up, and they were forced to get married. It’s not easy being told at eighteen that any chance you had of getting out of your small, nothing town was gone. They had a baby to think about now….responsibility. They had to make sacrifices that neither one of them wanted to make.

  “In the beginning, I think they held it together for me. They hid a lot of things or maybe when you’re a kid, you just don’t see it.” The memories flashed like snapshots in my head—the broken glass, my mother crying, a knock at the door.

  “I think they always fought, but were able to hide it when they weren’t so screwed up. By the time I was ten or eleven, there was a pattern to their fights. During the week, they seemed to stay out of each other’s way. He was a carpenter and he worked long hours. For as long as I can remember, he’d come home, sit down in his recliner, turn on the news and watch TV with a cold beer. Every night except for Friday because on Friday, he’d trade in the beer for something a little stronger, usually vodka tonic,” I recalled, remembering what became his weekend staple.

  “By eleven, the yelling would have woken me up. They’d fight over the stupidest things. ‘You left your socks on the floor’, ‘You forgot to pick up the dry cleaning’, ‘You didn’t say Bless You when I sneezed’. It’s the same ridiculous shit other people deal with, but at that point, I don’t even think they liked each other anymore so the same ridiculous shit became this continuous epic battle.

  “And my mother…God, my mother. She loved throwing things. I got pretty good at figuring out what she was throwing,” I added, looking over at her. “If I could hear the pieces scatter for a long period of time, it was a platter or maybe a serving bowl. If the crash was sharp and quick, it was probably just a saucer or a mug. She was all about equality,” I mused darkly. “As long as it was breakable and could possibly hit my dad, she’d throw it.

  “Then on Monday, like we were in the Twilight Zone, everything would go back to normal like nothing ever happened. He’d go off to work, come home, watch TV and have his beer. But on Friday, the cycle would begin again.

  “I started to find bottles stashed around the house. The first time it happened, something had rolled under the couch. I don’t remember what…but I reached under and felt glass. When I pulled it out, I saw that it was an empty bottle of whiskey. And it’s funny. I assumed that it was my dad’s,” I laughed sadly. “It didn’t occur to me at the time that my dad was pretty open about his vodka.

  “I found a few more over the next few months, stuffed into the garbage cans out back and in the recycle bin. Then one day I came home from school early, and my mom was sitting in the kitchen. She was crying and nursing a glass of the whiskey I’d been finding hidden around the house. When she saw me, she scrambled to hide it, but it was too late. I don’t know if she started drinking because of the fighting, or if she was just better at hiding it than he was. Either way, they were both pretty messed up and the fighting just kept getting worse.”

  I watched as she absently pulled at the blades of grass in front of her, taking in everything I said.

  “Have you ever had to go around the house and make sure all the windows were closed because you didn’t want your parents to broadcast your shitty life to the whole neighborhood?” I asked. “It was a nightly ritual in my house.

  “So I was almost thirteen, I think, when I decided that I had enough. Every weekend we’d go through the same cycle of vodka and whiskey, fighting and screaming, broken platters and broken saucers. You’d think they’d run out of the shit. Then one night after I was pretty sure I heard a whole set of glasses shatter against the wall, I stormed down the stairs just ready to end this shit. And for the rest of my life, I’ll remember the look on their faces while they listened to their twelve-year-old kid tell them to cut the shit and get their act together,” I winced, remembering their pained expressions. “Just humiliated.

  “After that, they were on their best behavior. At least that’s how it appeared. Even weekends weren’t that bad. There were fights here and there, but dishes were staying in the cabinet and I figured that was a decent start.

  “So one night a month or so later, my mom told me that they were going to a party at her co-worker’s house. She asked her friend Trina to stay with me while they were going to be out. She was nice enough not to say that she was babysitting me,” I laughed softly. “God, I was so pissed, too.

  “I was half asleep when the phone rang and Trina was still downstairs watching Melrose Place or one of those stupid shows. She was always loud so I could hear what she was saying to the person on the phone. ‘How long ago did they leave?’, ‘Was it bad?’, ‘Who started yelling first?’ I knew right away that they had gotten into it at the party…”

  I trailed off thinking of how defeated I felt, knowing that I’d have to listen to the sounds of breaking glass all night. I thought about packing up and leaving. I even started planning where I’d go.

  “And then Trina said to the person on the other end that my parents should have already been home and all I could imagine was that they pulled over on the side of the road and started beating the shit out of each other because to me, that was the next step.”

  I remembered the panic on her face when I walked into the living room. They had left over an hour and a half earlier, and her co-worker lived only fifteen minutes away.

  “When the doorbell rang, I knew. I didn’t need to listen to what the police said. I didn’t need to hear where the car went off the road, or how they thought it happened. I knew. They held their shit together for me, but you can only hold back the inevitable for just so long. You can’t stop it. The only saving grace was that I didn’t need to witness their last blow up.”

  “So, what happened?” she asked softly. I hadn’t realized I had stopped talking.

  “They drove off the embankment and the car flipped over. She died instantly. He died at the hospital the next day. Never woke up.”

  Jillian’s eyes were glassy and her lips were drawn down. I don’t know what I expected, telling her the story. Great job, Chambers. Such a people person. Now I wished I could just take it all back. All of it.

  “God, Luke,” she said sadly.

  “I turned out just fine,” I added, not needing any pity.

  “I know,” she replied. “Them, I mean. They wanted to do what was best for you, but the best thing would have been to split up. They seem so…misguided.”

  “They were alcoholic, Jillian,” I corrected her solemnly. “Let’s not romanticize it.”

  “I’m not. I’m just looking at it from their point of view. Sometimes the very best intentions have disastrous results.”

  As much as I would have liked to have agreed with her, I couldn’t. They were selfish and destructive. They ruined each other and almost took me down in the process. I wasn’t going to argue with her though. She didn’t need to know how bitter I was.

  “Carter and Grace flew out that night and took care of all of the arrangements. I spent all day in my room, not wanting to walk around the house. It was too quiet. When they asked me to move to Washington, I actually wanted to leave so much I didn’t fight it.

  “At the airport, Carter tried telling me about my new room and what the schools were like. I wasn’t the most talkative kid at the time, though. They tried so goddamn hard,” I recounted painfully. “I wasn’t trying to be a dick, but I’d spent the last three years watching my parents slowly commit suicide. I had a hard time having a normal conversation after everything that had gone on.

  “My first night here, Carter told me he wanted to go for a drive, and I just wanted to shut the door to my room and drown everything out. Carter’s persuasive, though, and he managed to talk me into going. He grabbed a long, thin black bag and hauled it into the car before we took off. He didn’t force conversation or try to say anything life-altering or profound. We drove in silence, but it didn’t feel awkward either.


  “And he brought me here. When he got out of his car, he grabbed the bag and told me to follow him through the path. The whole time I was thinking why the hell are we hiking in the middle of the night.”

  I laughed remembering how pissed I’d been. “When we got to the clearing, he opened up the bag and started assembling a telescope and I didn’t know what to say. My parents had been dead for less than a week, and he wanted to show me the moon? I probably looked at him like he was an asshole. He obviously could tell how irritated I was so he didn’t ask me if I wanted to use it; he just started looking into it himself.

  “He had been staring up at the sky for a while before he mentioned that he and my dad would go to the park with my grandfather to look at the stars when they were kids. My grandfather taught them all about the location of the constellations and the mythology behind each of them. I just wanted him to get to the point, but he was going on and on about how he and my dad would pretend they were Perseus, sent off to kill Medusa. I had no clue at the time what he was trying to tell me, how he wanted me to see who my dad was before he broke.

  “Then he told me about a smaller constellation called the Phoenix. You can’t even see it from where we are. It’s only really visible during the winter in the southern hemisphere. The Phoenix builds a nest, lights it on fire and throws itself into the flames. Then, it’s reborn from the ashes. When Carter was done telling the story, he looked at me with the saddest expression on his face, and I couldn’t believe how much older he looked. He said, ‘I’m not going to ask you to forgive him, and I’m not going to ask you to understand. But you don’t have to let this break you. You can rise above this’.

  “I felt like the biggest dick. Here he is mourning his older brother, taking in his kid, and I was acting like a spoiled brat,” I explained, feeling guilty and embarrassed.

  “You were a kid, Luke,” she added. “A kid who had to deal with a lot of adult problems.”

  “Maybe. I don’t think I fully appreciated Carter until then, though. His message was loud and clear. I didn’t need to go up in flames. I could survive this.

  “So it became a regular thing for us. If one of us had a tough day, we’d grab the black bag with the telescope in it and just catch the other’s eye. We usually didn’t need to say much. He’d grab the keys to the car and I’d follow. If we were in the mood to talk about what was going on, we would, but more often than not, we’d just look through the telescope or look out at the water.

  “Right after my eighteenth birthday in April, I told Carter that I was getting a tattoo. He wasn’t thrilled, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it either. When I was leaving to go to Seth’s, Carter grabbed his keys and started walking towards the door. He told me that if I was going to get a tattoo, he was coming with me.”

  “He went with you?” she gasped.

  “I couldn’t talk him out of it! I just stood there for a minute, trying to picture Carter in his Brooks Brothers button down and corduroys hanging out in a tattoo parlor. But he wouldn’t back down.

  “So when we got to Seth’s, I showed Carter the picture of the phoenix, and I was actually kind of glad that he was there. Until I heard him asking your buddy Dice about some drawing on the wall. Before I knew it, Carter is sitting at Dice’s station getting a tattoo on his shoulder blade.”

  “What!” she exclaimed. “Uncle Carter has a tattoo! Of what?”

  “The Chinese symbol for family,” I replied.

  “Luke,” she sighed. “That’s really beautiful. You’re very lucky to have them.”

  “I know…That’s one of the reasons why I’m going to Seattle.”

  “I don’t get it,” she replied, furrowing her brow, looking cute as hell.

  “One day about a year ago, I snuck out to buy some cigarettes. I’m sure they thought I was asleep. I overheard Carter on the phone with the bank talking about some kind of college account for me. I heard him asking the person when I’d get access to the money.”

  “Then why aren’t you going?” she asked, confused.

  “Jillian, come on. Just how much more am I expected to take from them? If they wanted kids, they would have had them. Now they’ve been saddled down with a kid for the last five years. They both put a lot on hold because of me; Grace’s cookbook and Carter’s career. I’m sure he would have worked more if I wasn’t around. I’ve been a huge interruption in their lives. There’s no way I’d let them pay for college.”

  “Luke, that’s a horrible reason not to go to college. Please tell me that’s not why,” she demanded. “If you felt that college wasn’t right for you, well, that’s different. I know lots of people…” She trailed off, suddenly looking frustrated, but I wasn’t going to let her complete her thought.

  “I can’t take the money from them, and they wouldn’t let me turn it down,” I explained. “Anyway, I have the bar now.”

  Even as I said the words, they sounded hollow to me. I had been so focused on Seattle for so long, but hadn’t managed to get myself packed or ready. The move really hadn’t been a priority lately—because of her. Now I just didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to wonder what was going to happen if I left, or what would have happened if I stayed. I needed to stop obsessing and just change the subject.

  Jillian was staring blankly up at the sky when I turned to face her.

  “You know, your cross is up there, too,” I began, pleased that I had found an escape from the current direction of our talk. “The Northern Cross.”

  “Really? Where?” she asked, craning her neck up. I leaned back on my elbows and she followed me as we both stared up at the lights in the sky.

  “See the group of stars right over there in the shape of a cross?” I asked, pointing above our heads. “We can see it in the summer and fall.”

  “The phoenix and the cross are both constellations?” she asked, looking amused.

  “Yeah, just never in the same sky at the same time.” The smile quickly left her face.

  “I guess the timing is off, huh?” she added softly. I got the impression that we weren’t talking about stars anymore. I just couldn’t understand why. She was so hard to read. Before I had a chance to question her, though, she pushed herself up off her elbows and glanced at her watch.

  “My parents are going to kill me if I don’t get home soon.”

  When I looked at my own watch, I felt guilty for keeping her out so late the night before finals. I knew she was right and we needed to get back, but I still didn’t want to go. Something was off, though. There was a sadness in her voice that wasn’t there a minute ago, and I just wished she’d talk to me.

  The walk back to my bike was quiet, as I wondered what had gotten into her so suddenly. I climbed on and offered her my hand, bracing myself for the warmth of her body as she settled in behind me. For the fifteen minute ride back to my house, I could enjoy the feeling of Jillian wrapped around me and not worry about the frustration that it would inevitably bring.

  Pulling up to the house, I told her to hold onto my shoulders as she stepped off the bike. As soon as she was gone, I started thinking of reasons to call her back. I decided then and there that I’d do whatever it took to get her back on my bike again soon. I needed to feel her like that again…all the time.

  I took off my helmet and hung it from the handlebar. I turned around as Jillian unclasped hers and slowly shook her hair out. It was a mess of curls and snarls, twisted and knotted from the blowing wind. She leaned against the bike with her hair flowing wild and something in me snapped. Without over-thinking it, I walked to her, ignoring the way she eyed me suspiciously and took her face in my hands.

  Don’t tell me to stop, Jillian. I don’t want to play this game anymore.

  My breath was shaky and my mind was reeling, but I could only see her lips. As soon as I leaned in and pressed against them, I breathed her in and parted mine. She didn’t pull away, but she wasn’t responding either.

  “Let me kiss you,” I pleaded softly, grazing her lip
s again while my forehead rested against hers. She released a breath and slowly nudged my mouth with hers. Her lips were soft and warm and everything I wanted and not enough.

  “Jillian,” I breathed out softly. It doesn’t have to be this difficult.

  It only took the slightest move from her for me to respond. When her defenses crumbled, I lost all sense of reason. I didn’t worry about scaring her away. I didn’t give her the opportunity to run. I didn’t even give her a chance to tell me she wanted me, too. I just didn’t think at all because kissing Jillian felt better than anything I had ever felt before.

  I threaded my fingers into the tangle of snarls and curls in her hair, drawing her as close to me as I could get. All of the pent up frustration from the past two weeks came crashing down, and I couldn’t control myself anymore. When I felt her hands settle on my forearms, grasping tightly, I wound my fingers deeper in her hair, tilting her head to the side. And when the kiss deepened, I fought back every impulse in my body that screamed for me to lay her down on the seat of my bike and show her how she had ruined me.

  It was when she let out an inadvertent groan that I felt her stiffen before pulling away completely. Her eyes were wild, her skin was flushed and she was beautiful and dangerous, panting in front of me. I couldn’t understand why she was making this so goddamn difficult.

  “Jillian,” I began, attempting a pre-emptive strike on any excuse she was going to give me. Why couldn’t she see how right this was? “We need to—”

  “Luke…” she interrupted, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head. “I just…It’s not that I don’t…I wish you knew how hard this is for me.”

  “You’re making it hard,” I replied, reaching out for her.

  “I have to go,” she choked out, hurrying over to her car. This was all new to me. I had never had a girl run away from me—nevermind one that did it every time I came close to touching her. I assumed that Jillian wasn’t the most experienced girl in the world, but it was getting ridiculous. How many times did she expect me to chase her?