Quiet Lies

by R. L. Griffin

  “Rebecca, are you okay?” Melinda asks me.

  “Oh, yes. I’m sorry I’m just so busy with things my mind is having a hard time focusing, I’m sorry. Jerry did what now?”

  Relief washes over her, she really doesn’t want to hear my problems. I’m sure I look like I have a perfect life, with my perfect husband and child. It appears that I have that impeccable life I always knew I would have and it’s all a big pile of shit that’s eating me alive.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Drowning in My Reality

  While my hair is being straightened, I’m summoned via text for dinner. These dinners have been rare lately and I’ve gotten used to eating with my sullen son before kissing him after he’s fallen asleep, he doesn’t want me to kiss him while he’s awake anymore. I take sleeping pills so that I don’t stay awake worrying about what my life’s become. I take antidepressants during the day so I can withstand the oblivion of my existence. It helps me put one foot in front of the other.

  Meet me at Bridgeport after you pick B up from practice

  So I’m driving Bash over to the brewpub in the neighborhood near our house. Bash is in practice attire, I do make him put tennis shoes on instead of his cleats. He’s a step ahead of me when we enter the restaurant and sees Sebastian immediately. Bash beelines toward a booth at the back and I wave motioning that I need to use the restroom. I stare at my flats as I make myself walk calmly toward the bathroom.

  I step into the restroom and examine myself in the mirror. I need to look like Mrs. Pryor, I just needed to do one more quick check. I pull a bottle out of my Chloe handbag and dry swallow a few pills, I don’t bother checking to see what they are. Here is what I know at this moment, I must make it through dinner and Bash will ride home with his father. Sebastian is so good at reading me, I need to push all thoughts of my escape out of my head so he can’t find them and crush them. The thought of escape has simmered in my gut for ten years and I can hold it down for a few more. I inhale and close my eyes letting the air sit in my belly then I exhale. Opening my eyes, I smile in the mirror. There she is, the person I’m supposed to be.

  When I slide in the booth across from my son and husband my lips part in a smile at the beer sitting on the table in front of my place. I love that he knows what beer I like.

  “I was just telling Dad about Jackson’s party.”

  I stare.

  “He’s going next weekend?” Sebastian asks me and I try to clear cobwebs from my head. I don’t know anything about Jackson’s party.

  I look to Bash who is nodding his head. I pull my phone out to check my calendar, but I don’t have anything scheduled for next weekend.

  “You don’t remember me telling you about it?” Bash asks, clearly frustrated.

  My brain is searching for this conversation.

  “Ugh, Mom you’re so annoying. You don’t even do anything.”

  Smirking, Sebastian pulls out his phone and is texting someone. My vision goes blurry as I gaze into the amber bubbles of my beer.

  “Are you ready to order?”

  Sebastian doesn’t look up from his phone.

  I clear my throat and smile at the server now standing in front of our table. “I’d like the brewpub salad and the roasted red pepper bisque,” I order.

  Sebastian looks up at me. “Don’t get that.”

  The server looks from him to me, confused.

  “I want the mac and cheese,” Bash orders.

  The server is still staring at me. I’m glaring at Sebastian.

  One, two, three, I count to keep my mask in place.

  “I want the Steel and she’ll have the St. Johns.” Sebastian says, his eyes never leaving mine. Challenge. He loves to challenge me and I have to cower away from him. Every time.

  “Sebastian, I just want the soup and salad.” My voice is already defeated. I’m not really up for the fight tonight.

  The server is looking from me to him and then back to me for the seconds we stare at each other.

  “Just get her the pizza, he always wins,” Bash says without looking up from his phone.

  I put my hand on my neck trying to hide the blush of embarrassment crawling up my neck. “He does know exactly what I want,” I say in a jovial nature that I in no way feel.

  Sebastian doesn’t even acknowledge my statement and the server smiles uncomfortably, then leaves. He goes back to his phone.

  “You’re so annoying, Mom.”

  I’m scared.

  I’m helpless.

  I’m trapped.

  I’m annoying.

  Bash and I lie in bed and I flip through the Magic Treehouse book I’m reading him. It’s the first one about dinosaurs and he’s mesmerized.

  “I was at P.E. today,” Bash starts, looking at me expectantly.

  “Oh yeah, you had P.E.?”

  “Yeah, and Nathan pushed me down. So I punched him in the face and I had to sit on the do-better-bench.”

  “What’s the do-better-bench?”

  “It’s where you have to go and sit if you get in trouble,” his voice cracks and tears drop from his eyes. I wipe away his tears, concern covering my features.

  “Did you tell your teacher what happened?”

  He nods his whiskey tinged eyes, sad with disappointment.

  “Well, I’ll talk to your teacher tomorrow.” I don’t know what to think or how to act. It’s the first time my momma bear instincts have emerged, claws out. I kiss him on his cheek and I close the door behind me as I leave him curled up with his stuffed dog and blanket with all different balls on it. “I love you more than anything,” I say to him as I close the door.

  “I love you the most,” he calls from his bed.

  I pad down the stairs and walk over to the overstuffed chair that I use as a life raft in this world that consumes me. I stare at the burgundy liquid in my glass and know the answer is there, to disappear into the glass and come out the other side in the morning. I raise the glass to my lips and gulp the warm wine that singes as it falls down my throat.

  I don’t know how long I sit there before a chime makes me look toward the front of the house with a deep rumble in my gut. I teeter on the edge of insanity now, I have hesitantly gotten used to the feeling of free falling through my life. I wish it was different. I wish that I could go back. I wish he could love me.

  The door from the garage opens and Sebastian waltzes through with a smirk on his face.

  “Hey,” he says to me and his eyes lock on my empty wine glass.

  “Hey,” I answer.

  “He asleep?”

  “Of course,” I respond. Of course he’s fucking asleep asshole, it’s after nine at night. Where do you think my baby is? You wouldn’t know, you do nothing? I vacillate between being pissed off he does nothing and wanting him so far away from Bash I’m glad he has no interest in his own son.

  He walks over to the bar and pours himself Glenlivet. I’ve found that men are a very different species than women, everything revolves around their wants and needs, no matter what. Happy Mother’s Day, I bought you the blender we need. Happy Birthday, let’s go on the vacation we’ve been planning. That sort of shit doesn’t even bother me anymore, it’s the utter lack of feeling Sebastian has for me or Bash. He tries sometimes, but that’s rare.

  “How was your day?” he asks.

  I try not to laugh at the absurd question. It’s like every other fucking day. I take care of our son.

  “Bash told me he got in trouble today at school because he punched a kid in the face for pushing him,” I answer. I walk over to where the bottle of wine sits on the counter, calling me. I fill my glass.

  “Good, he should teach that little fucker a lesson.”

  “They’re five,” I comment.

  “He can’t let people push him around or they will always push him around.”

  His back is still to me. The ice in the glass clinks as he drains it. This is not a good sign. Standing up, I hurriedly empty my glass then put it in the sink.
Rex, our black Labrador Retriever, follows me and I run into him as I turn quickly.

  I kiss Sebastian on the cheek. “I have a migraine,” I comment as I hustle to the stairs before he gets his second glass of scotch. He knows this is a lie I made up years ago.

  “Rex,” Sebastian calls. Rex, the dog I rescued two years ago, doesn’t even turn around, but follows me up the stairs and into our room. He settles onto the pallet I made for him on my side of the bed. I pet him and try to clear my mind of all thoughts.

  The next day, I’m standing in line to pick Bash up from kindergarten. I called his teacher this morning to find out about the behavior incident that occurred the day before and she told me he didn’t get in trouble yesterday. He didn’t have to sit on any bench. He’d made it all up. I was baffled.

  “Hi,” Bash’s teacher chirped as she saw me and she shoves Bash toward me.

  “Hey, bud,” I greet as he walks out to me.

  “Hey Mom,” he smiles sweetly.

  “You ready?”

  “Yep,” he answers.

  “So how was your day?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did you get in trouble today?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Well, I spoke with your teacher about what you told me…”

  “Oh,” he looks at me with vacant eyes. “I forgot to tell you I was joking.”

  We’d reached my car and I open the back door for him. “What?”

  He puts his bag on the floor of the SUV. “Yeah, I forgot to tell you I was joking.”

  “But you cried.” I stand there not knowing what to do. He ignores me and looks in the opposite direction. “You lied.” My voice is softer.

  He finally looks at me.

  “You don’t lie to me Bash. I want there to be no secrets between us.”

  “I…” He starts, his lip trembling with emotion.

  “You’re not in trouble, but there are no lies between us, good?”

  “No lies,” he says, unsure.

  “There are different stories, Bash. You can tell stories. I like to call those funny lies. Like you know you told me that your best friend was Steve Rogers? That’s funny, it doesn’t hurt anyone. Funny lies. Flies. You can tell those.”

  His eyes light up.

  “Yep, I always know when you tell those, your whole face lights up with this mischievous grin. You can’t help but show your flies.”

  He giggles.

  “I love you,” I tell him. I do love him. His lies are curious, but not uncommon for boys his age.

  “I love you too,” he says as I shut the door.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Crawl

  I’ve always read to keep my mind occupied, it’s a good coping mechanism. I’ve read all sorts of books to make myself feel better about my own situation. People are crazy. I read a book about a kid who jacks off underwater in a pool and gets his ass stuck in the suction of the pool filter. He almost died. I peruse stories about women who kill their husbands for cheating on them, they get caught. The most outlandish books I read are love stories where the girl meets the guy, they fall in love and have a happy ending. That concept is so foreign to me I simply don’t believe it can happen. My reality is so skewed that there is no happy ending, there is only day after day in a purgatory that I can’t end. Any ending would be the best kind.

  I pray sometimes when I’m stuck in a depressive state, which is most of the time. I pray that I can get out of this situation without harming my son. I take Sebastian’s threats seriously. Every time I’ve left before things become tense with him knowing he’ll have to go farther than the last time to scare me into staying. Taking my sanity, that worked for a while. Ruining my credit, that’s kept me locked here for years. Losing one of the two things that has ever loved me, well, that’s why I’m still here now.

  I have approximately one thousand five hundred and eighty days left of the hell of my own making, unless I break out early. I think about this countdown every day when I see Bash off to school. Every time I allow myself the pleasure of sex. Sex is my escape. It’s like my brain knows how bad things are for me and gives me this little numbness. Due to my medications, I haven’t had a true emotion other than fear in about five years. My love for Bash is still somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, but it rarely surfaces. I can’t love something purely. That was ripped from me with such fervor it made me want to hurt myself. I gave up on hurting him, I can’t hurt him. You have to love someone to be hurt by them. Love is impossible for him, but the game…oh he loves the game.

  I glance to the right of the deck where I sit, fog hanging over the trees and incline behind our house. Putting down the book I’m reading to really look, I swear I saw something move quickly down the side of the deck and off into the distance of our yard. I shove my feet back into my Uggs and pad down the back stairs to the grass. The deep greens of the foliage that fill the expansive area is a mix of hunter and brown. It’s spring and has been raining for three days, so the ground is a damp puddle. Mud smatters my suede boots, ruining them. I trudge through the trees and skirt around a pile of branches, I haven’t been back here since Rex, but lately it’s like I’m begging for the breakdown I know will come if I come back here. Ivy has crept through this part of the yard. My breath tickles my nose as it floats from my lips. It’s all I can do not to look to the part of the property where I found Rex. That was when I finally acknowledged what a tenuous situation I was in. Sebastian had always made it clear he would ruin me, but it was at that exact moment that I knew without a doubt what he was actually capable of doing. I knew that Sebastian had no qualms in hurting Bash, the only person who meant anything to me. The threat of him hurting me hung in the air, but now I knew that was just the tip of the iceberg of what he was willing to do. That threat ever present, I never forget. My hand covers my eyes as the trees break and the sun bores down on me, I blink at the brightness and scan the area in front of me. There’s nothing.

  Off in the distance I see a tree that forces memories to bubble up to the surface of my brain. The limbs of the tree are so plentiful they reach to the heavens, out to me, and crawl on the ground. There is not enough room on the trunk for all the offshoots and a sadness pervades the tree showing a bleakness in its plight. I’m not sure trees can be sad, I read a book as a child about a tree that was sad. The child had taken everything from the tree and never gave it anything. I sigh and walk under the canopy of limbs. I examine the curved branch that has grown along the ground, almost as if it’s crawling on its belly to escape the suffocation of his brothers. Moss and vegetation cover the bark, but it’s alive crawling on the ground to get where it seeks to go.

  I turn and look back the way I came, the fog so thick I can’t even see the porch. I wonder how long I’ll have to crawl on my knees, on my belly in order to tumble over the edge of safety. Will it be years? What will those years do to me, to Bash? Can I live through it? All of these questions circle my mind then fly to all other parts of my body. Survival sinks into my toes and seeps into the ground. The thought of safety buries itself in my intestines and I feel an urgent need to vomit. Grief shoots through my eyes and falls freely down my face. I wipe it away with the palms of my hands.

  These thoughts are not welcome, nor are they productive. I break into a run back to the house to get my medicine that I forgot to take that bars my mind from having feelings. I don’t want these feelings.

  Is it your mind that controls your emotions or your heart?

  My heart.

  Don’t get me started on how stupid my heart has always been. Even my love for Bash has been tossed around in a way that chips off part of myself.

  My heart.

  Bash and I stand in the shallow water of the lake. We’d driven a few hours today to have fun. Bash’s “graduation” from kindergarten was yesterday and it was the start of the summer. At the ceremony there were couples and grandparents and me. It was just me. I always feel like it’s just me.

  I can’t remember
the last time I had fun and it’s starting to wear on me, so we made our own fun. I needed a break from the constant tension that traps me in that house. It’s like someone took my skin and has strung it up on all the doorways and I bounce against it when I try to get out.

  “Mom, push me,” my son demands, his curls already wet and plastered to his face.

  “Push you?”

  “Yeah, push me….” he gestures into the water, “into the water.”

  I shove him playfully. He falls into the water, even though I didn’t use enough force. He pops back up giggling. “Push me.”

  This time I use both hands and he falls laughing into the water. This sound, my son’s laugh, is my favorite sound in the entire world. It gets me through every single day. It helps me focus when I feel like I may perish due to disappointment.

  “Push me this far,” Bash yells, his voice full of such joy. I hope he never loses that.

  I pick him up by his arms and throw him far in the water. When he comes up he readjusts his green goggles and swims toward me. Reaching me, his tiny hands wrap around my ankles. He stands up and hugs my waist. “I love you so much mommy, you’re the best mommy ever.”

  Is something a lie if that person believes it’s true? I try to be a good mom, I have glimpses of times like this, but I know there are times that I need to be better for him, do better for him. My goal everyday is to be a good mom. I blink back a tear and smile down at this beacon of happiness.

  “I love you more than anything in this world.”

  “Even Daddy?”

  I put my playful mask on. “Even Daddy,” I raise my index finger to my lips, “shh don’t tell daddy.”

  His eyes widen at the secret I told him. “I won’t tell.”

  I pick him up and throw him in the water.

  Bursting out of the water, he walks toward me. “You want to know one of my secrets?”

  I nod, looking around noticing the little beach area we’d settled in is getting more crowded.