by Richa Resa
“And what are you going to do? Let it all out over the phone, or tell him you are coming back to talk?” She kept an eye on Sarah.
“No.” I had thought a lot about it and came to the decision that the best idea was to be here. Here, where I was physically and mentally well. I wasn’t lost in worries or buried down in my fear of the past.
“I’m just going to ask him to come here. I can’t do it back there. Too many memories and judgment pull me down. It’s best to be here, because right here I’m free of everything that could bring me down. It feels like I am in control of myself, and it’s something that I had lost in the past few months. I feel free with no one to judge me. I also have the benefit of knocking next door when things get out of hand.” I laughed at my last statement. Turning to her, I saw approval in her eyes. She smiled at me and a feeling inside of me rose, one of happiness. It felt good and right too. It felt good to be normal. No depressing thoughts. I was happy after such a long time. I wasn’t scared to face the future. I was more confident and courageous than I ever was.
I was ready to face everything. My past, present, and future in any form it may come…
Chapter 30
Joshua
“Why don’t you just give it up, Joshua?” Nora pleaded. I had been here numerous times in the past two months but I hadn’t lost hope. She kept telling me the same answer every time I asked, but I couldn’t just give up. It felt like giving up on myself, taking away my shredded soul and giving up breathing. That’s how hard it was. Eunice had been gone for two months and there hadn’t been any contact from her side—that was what they told me. I just couldn’t believe that. I had knocked at the doors of her loved ones in the hopes of getting a minuscule bit of information about her whereabouts, but all I ended up with was nothing.
“God, her dad really did a number on you,” Clarisse reminded me. I went to her parents’ house and ended up with black and blue bruises near my eyes and a split lip and a cut near my chin. If it wasn’t for her mother, I would have been dead. The worst part was that I was ready to die. I wished he would have killed me, that her mother wouldn’t have intervened. I was dying every day without Eunice. Sometimes I wanted to do crazy shitty things in the hopes that Eunice would call me—that she would come back. Two months was a long enough time, and I was breaking up from the inside, the will to life had started to diminish, and soon enough it would extinguish.
“Yeah, and he still isn’t giving up,” Nora remarked.
“Joshua,” Clarisse called. She had pity in her eyes. “She ran away. She left all of us. I want to hit her, beat her, cage her only if I could find her. No one knows where she is. I don’t want to say this…but I guess I should. She left because of you. I didn’t want to support her choice of moving on, you know, but for her happiness I did. Now she’s missing and all we got a letter that she was going away. No explanations, no idea where she is. It hurts us too. I…I envied your love once. I wanted something like that but now I see it, I am scared of this love between you. This love of yours has become toxic for both of you. I think, without it, you can’t survive, and neither can she. If I had known anything, I would have told you, because I know the depth of love she had for you. It is really not easy for a love like that to just vanish. I think she’s scared, there are things eating her up, and there is nothing we can do about it. She never talked about you. Your name was a taboo around her, but alone, I saw her distant and lost in her own thoughts. I don’t know what went on there, but her walking out tells me that she is not ready for whatever she has with you. Just understand that, Joshua.” Nora and Clarisse gave me a sympathetic look—the first one I had ever got from them.
Without waiting anymore, I turned and left without a word. I felt shittier than before, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Was I the one to blame for her? But what about me? She walked out on me too. She ran away from me too, but everyone saw me as the devil. I knew I was, but couldn’t a monster like me get a chance to change? I wouldn’t mind her father’s fists nor his jabs if I could just know where she was. Even acid tongues wouldn’t be minded by me. I just wanted Eunice with the same intensity as I wanted air. Ever since she ran away, I had been inching towards death every day. There was only so much pain and misery a man could take. Her running away was like a dent on my soul and heart. Maybe I wasn’t worth anything to her or anyone. Loneliness was meant for me; maybe early death was too…
***
I stared at the ceiling like every other night. It was four in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. My nights had been restless, mostly filled with being awake and staring. There was nothing better to do than stare, stare into an empty space only to find myself empty on the inside. My days were filled with ways to find Eunice and nights with the promises from the past. I vowed to hold her every night, to be by her side always and what not. They were all trashed now, broken, torn down and it made me ashamed of myself.
How did I live such a life? A life where I had hurt her.
The shrilling sound of my phone disturbed me, making me frown.
Who could be calling? It was too early to be from office, and no one else called me because I had no one left. I stared at the phone, gazing at the number flashing like it would magically tell me who it is. I wanted to silence it and just forget about it and I did. Soon the call ended and the flash of the phone died, but I stared at it. Once again the light lit up with the same number. With a sigh, I decided to just hear who it was. It looked like they would keep on calling until I picked it up.
Sliding the green icon, I turned the speaker on.
“Hello,” I said, waiting for the other person to say something. No one spoke and it irritated me. I could hear someone breathing. I concentrated more and could hear the sound of splashing like…
“I’m in Lanai.” Her voice boomed in the empty room. My eyes grew into saucers and I looked at the phone with a rush of emotions. Relief, happiness, calmness, love, guilt, shock, and what not. It was her. I sat upright and put the phone to my ear.
“Eunice.” There was happiness in my voice.
“I’m in Lanai and I’m going to be here for a while,” she said. Every word she spoke brought me back to life, it grew hope in me.
“Are you all right? Are you fine? I’m sorry…I’m really sorry and I really love you,” I said, the words choking in my throat. My lips trembled.
“I hope you know what to do,” she said.
“I will be on the first flight,” I hastily said.
“You have to be on the first flight or else I’ll leave. Send me the details of your flight before you leave at this number.” Saying that, she hung up. The line grew silent and my heart, soul, mind, and ears begged for more. My breathing became ragged. She was in Lanai, she told me. Fucking god!
She called! She fucking called me! God! Thank you, God!
Tears of happiness rolled down my cheeks. It felt like a moment of infinite happiness for me. She herself had told me where she was—something I had been dying to know. She called, I heard her. Damn, I wanted to reach to her. All I wanted was to go there and see her. I wanted to touch her, see her, and feel her. I just didn’t want this to be my dream. It had to be her. She had told me to come as fast as I could or she would leave. I wanted to be there for her, didn’t want to miss her. Without wasting a second, I reached for my laptop and booked the shortest flight from New York to Lanai. It would still take me around fifteen hours to reach there with one stop in between. Damn. Couldn’t direct flights to Lanai exist? I quickly sent her the details of my flight in a message. I tried to call but she didn’t pick up. I just wanted to hear her voice once again. I craved to hear her. I rushed all around the house packing up my duffel bags with the essentials. I didn’t need much. All I wanted was to be with her. I wanted to just see her, beg her. God, do everything humanly possible just to get her to listen to me, to be back in her mind and heart.
The thought of letting her parents and friends know hovered in my mind, but I just pushed it in the b
ack. She had called me and that meant something. It was supposed to. I kept on telling myself the same thing all the way until I was seated on my flight. I was weighed down by keeping the news of her whereabouts to myself but once the plane took off, I shut out those thoughts, letting my mind wander to the sweet memories of the past.
***
Lanai Island…
Fifteen hours later…
The fresh air of Lanai and the bright sun greeted me as I exited the airport. I was holding on to my phone for my dear life. It had Eunice’s number, and all I wanted to do was call her. My heart thudded faster with every step I took. All I wanted was to see her, to reach to her quickly. I was just going to walk out, then I saw my name on a white sheet being held by a brunette with green eyes. She looked nice, but nothing compared to Eunice. Her eyes, however, said something else. She looked through the sea of people and her eyes seemed calculating. Eunice’s name was written there just below mine. It was her writing. I knew it well. Her way of writing H was different. It was more like calligraphy. It stood out differently whenever she wrote. I reached for the paper and touched the letters. For me, the person holding it was lost. The girl let the paper go and I was the one holding it. I looked at it as if it was the answer to all my questions. It felt like she was there, and if I looked up, she would be there. However, when I looked up I saw the observant eyes of someone else. With a slight tilt of her head, she stared at me, and it felt creepy.
“Joshua,” she called, and her voice was not what I had thought to be. It was motherly and caring. I thought it would be either sarcastic or something wicked.
“Let’s go.” She turned around and walked forward while I stood glued to the spot with my name in Eunice’s handwriting. I was still admiring every letter of it.
“Chop, Joshua, or you won’t see her,” she said with narrowed eyes and a light smile to her lips. She looked dangerous, and at the same time her voice sounded friendly and concerned. God, who was this woman? I followed her because all I wanted was to get to Eunice, and this woman was the only way through which I could get to her. We sat in her SUV, and soon we were out of the airport. There was no conversation, only silence, which I was too eager to break with my questions about Eunice. How was she? What was she doing? Was she all right? And who the hell was this woman driving the car? I was a fucking dog, a puppy for Eunice. I just wanted to be with her because I fucking missed her a lot and loved her with all I had. Living without her was a life filled with nothing. It felt better to die than survive without her. Was that what I would do after leaving this island? The worry crept inside of me. What was going to be my fate? Death or a new beginning?
“She’s going to meet you in a while. We’re going to my house, and from there I will take you to meet her,” she said, and my heart dropped into my stomach. When could we? What the fuck! How much of a wait? Why the fucking wait? I wanted to shout out, throw a tantrum. Run all over the place and just find Eunice, but I didn’t know where to start. I was scared of what was to come. I could feel myself sweating even with the blasting air conditioner.
“It won’t be a long wait,” she said, making me snap out of my misery. I looked at her like she was a wicked witch. Long wait, weren’t fifteen fucking hours enough?
“I’m Clara, Eunice’s neighbor.” I just nodded and stared out. My heart was beating fast enough that it felt like it would just burst out. W A I T, four letters that were trying to kill me through a slow, tortured death. Two months of wait and it was so hard to even think to wait for even one more minute. I loved her. I knew it from the depths of my bones, from every part of me. Every pore on my skin screamed out to me of my love to her. What I had been through…I don’t ever want that again. The misery, pain, hatred for myself, guilt, remorse, the pent-up frustration of not being able to do anything and the never-ending pain of knowing that I had hurt the one person I had left in the world for me. It ripped me apart to the point where I couldn’t glue myself back together on my own, not without the presence of love, without her.
“We’re here, lover boy,” she said, and it was hard for me to notice that the car had come to a halt. Everything was hard without Eunice. I sat there in the car staring at the house in front of me. It was the perfect home, white and serene, surrounded by the lush beauty of nature. There were many similar houses lined up there. Clara knocked on the window, gaining my attention. She signed of going inside, and only when she disappeared inside the house did I reach for the door to get out. My hands were trembling. With each step I took I felt the blood drain out of me. I would see her soon.
Would she be here? Or somewhere nearby? The thoughts kept bombarding my mind. I was this close and yet even this distance seemed so far, so long. Clara stood in the doorway of the house while staring at me, more like squinting her eyes at me.
“Ever gonna come inside, or do you want to stay glued there for the rest of the day?” she said, and it seemed much like a taunt. She was observant, calculating, and why in the hell had Eunice become her friend? I walked inside her house to the living room with my heart beating a million time faster than it normally did.
“Have a seat,” Clara told me, and with too much uncertainty, I sat down, keeping my hands and feet pulled in close. I don’t know why, but I was nervous as hell, and her observant eyes weren’t helping me stay calm. She smiled too much. Her phone rang, and I couldn’t have been any happier than to have her not stare at me anymore.
“Hey, how are you doing?” she answered after looking.
“I’m fine. Do you mind if I call you later? I’m a bit busy right now.” I wanted to yell that she wasn’t.
“Okay, talk to you later.” With that, my hopes of not having her stare at me and interact with me died down. She sat on a seat opposite mine, while I looked all around her house. She was a family woman. I could see photos of her family hanging proudly on her wall. I openly stared at the photo. Longing for something that I had terribly lost.
“That’s my daughter, Sarah, and my husband, Nathan. Isn’t it a beautiful family?” she asked and I nodded without looking at her.
“I know you had one too,” she said, snapping my attention towards her. I turned to her abruptly, our eyes looking at each other.
“Eunice told me everything, more like I had to force things out of her. Not an easy thing to do when a person wants to forget one’s problems and vanish.” I listened eagerly and carefully to every word she said.
“She has told me about the ways you treated her, your sick revenge upon her, and much more.” Her words hit me like a punch. It was the bitter truth that I had accepted, but bringing it up always hit home.
“You know I won’t lie, Joshua, and say you were the devil and the monster that mothers warn about. I see you more as a victim of your own thoughts. The thoughts that were sown in your mind long ago, like the fact that stepmothers are always devious. I swear Snow White and Cinderella stories would have reached in your mind even when you wouldn’t have given heed to them. As you grew up, those thoughts were lost, but somewhere deep in your mind, they slept. When Ella’s grandmother first bought them up, they were awakened. After the trauma of Elle’s death, those thoughts, they were present but neutral. When her grandmother accused Eunice, those thoughts were standing tall and gaining your attention. Those thoughts plagued your mind deeply. You couldn’t have gotten out of it. Those sick thoughts pushed you far away on a path of revenge. You lived on the fuel of your passion, of hurting Eunice and killing the devil she was.” I had been told things but never like this before. The way she shone light on the dark days of my life, I understood the depth of how deep my mind was plagued before.
“Joshua, after what I just told you, I’m going to ask you something. Do you think that you could have done anything in the past to prevent reaching the same results as you did now?” I looked at her, thinking over the analysis she made of me. Could any different choice I would have made make any difference to what had happened?
“No, I don’t think any other choice wo
uld have prevented me from ending up here. Nothing could have changed the way that I acted,” I told her, staring at the ground. It was the bitter truth; I had accepted it and was ashamed of it.
“It’s good to know that you accept that nothing could have changed what you were. You know, Joshua, everyone learns from their mistakes, but it’s necessary to first accept that a mistake has been made and nothing could have been done in any way to prevent it from happening. You accepted your mistake, and the best part is that you have learned from it. So be a bit proud of yourself.” I looked up at her smiling face and for the first time, I felt like a better man.
“One more question, Joshua, and I want you to answer with a clear mind and a lot of thought. Okay?” I nodded.
“Did you ever in your fucked up mind love Anne? Ever?” Her question took me back and I stared at her wide-eyed.
“Think and tell, remember,” she said, making me take a walk down memory lane. I closed my eyes and went through each and every memory I had of Anne. I tried to find any essence of love for her and came back with the same answer again and again. Never. I had never loved her and never would.
“No, I never did and never could.” She observed me. Minutes of silence passed between us.
“So then how did she become the one closest to you? Why was she the one whom you were more involved with in getting your revenge upon Eunice?” Her questions were just kicking me to the curb. They were out of my mind, all about something I never thought before. So much was going through my mind. Why was Anne so important in my passion for revenge? Why? I thought and thought until the memory of the church hit me, like a ball of flames it hit me.
“Because she was like family. She might have hated Eunice, but her parents and Eunice’s treated both of them as their own daughters. Going on to have an affair with her would have hit home to Eunice because to the world, the perception of Anne and Eunice was more like sisters. Taking someone from the family would have hurt Eunice the most, and that’s why I chose Anne. I didn’t see her as a person, but someone I could control and use to hurt Eunice. It was funny to know in the end that Anne was already being used by her mother for the sake of love she had never found. Isn’t this world fucked up? I, on the other hand, was the most fucked up.” I chuckled at myself.
