by Mima
They sat in silence and suddenly overwhelmed with nausea, Chase jumped up from the bed and tore out of the room, just making it to the bathroom in time. Slamming the door behind him, he vomited into the toilet until there was nothing left in his stomach, his body went through dry heaves and tear dripped from his face, hitting the rim. He flushed and felt like he couldn’t move. He didn’t want to move.
A knock at the door was gentle and he immediately recognized it as Audrey’s.
“Chase, are you okay?” Her voice was soft, caring, in a way it hadn’t been when they were together. “Do you need me to come in?”
“No,” He replied, his voice was weak, as he slowly pulled his body back up again and went to the sink. His eyes were bloodshot, his face, red, blotchy and he leaned against the sink and closed his eyes. What now? How did he get through the rest of the day? How were you supposed to live after such devastating news? How did you put one foot in front of the other, how did you eat, sleep, function, after learning your child was dead? It seemed impossible.
He threw water on his face but it gave him no relief. Finding mouthwash under the sink, he rinsed his mouth before slowly walking toward the door, feeling dead inside.
Returning to the bedroom, he gently closed the door behind him. Audrey stood at the window, looking toward the wooded area where their son had died. Downstairs, the roar of voices could be heard, some of which were comforting his mother, who unlike him and Audrey, wanted everyone to surround her. He couldn’t look her in the eye. Audrey would eventually come around with Louise Jacobs but Chase would not.
“They think someone was hunting and accidentally shot him,” She calmly said as Chase approached her. She had stopped crying and was looking in the distance. “I don’t even know if it is hunting season or not, I don’t even care, how could they not know? Did that person check and then run away? Did they not realize? I don’t understand.”
Feeling calmer, if even just slightly, Chase cleared his throat. “Was he far from the house?”
“A bit,” Audrey replied, her fingers gently touching the window pane a serenity surrounded them. “He’s so small that it was hard to see him. It took a little time but then again, every minute seemed to stretch for me. Everything was so slow. It was almost as if they had to spend more time asking questions and not just getting out there and looking. I was so frustrated, I wanted to scream because they weren’t doing anything. Asking stupid questions. I wanted to walk out of the room and look myself but they said to stay here.”
“I don’t blame you. I would feel the same way,” Chase admitted, he oddly felt strong beside her, in a way he never had before. Something had changed inside of him since walking out of that bathroom. He felt different. He felt almost as if his son’s death was somehow making him feel more alive.
“But I guess it wouldn’t have mattered,” Audrey continued as she leaned closer to the window. “He was already gone.”
“I think…” Chase started slowly and she turned as if his words beckoned her. “I think I should see his body.”
“No!” Audrey said with panic in her voice and she grasped his arm. “Don’t do it Chase! Trust me, don’t do it,” Tears began to fill her eyes again. “I wish I hadn’t. Please, don’t do it.” She begged while grasping his arm tightly and she shook her head. The look in her eyes said it all and he felt the strength from moments before drain from his body, replaced by more nausea.
“I think I’m going to be sick again,” His voice was barely a whisper and she let him go and watched as he left the room, heading toward the bathroom. He closed the door and leaned against it as the volume downstairs continued to increase. Why was his mother making this into a fucking circus? He didn’t want the entire neighborhood in the house.
Moving toward the toilet, he slowly sat on the floor beside it, expecting to be sick again but nothing happened. A cold sweat grasped his body, he suddenly was so hot that Chase felt like he was suffocating and couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes and attempted to calm himself. He wanted to die in that very spot, sitting on the bathroom floor so he didn’t have to feel the pain for another second.
An echoed, hollow-sounding knock came from the door and he wanted to tell whoever it was to go away but he instead said nothing. Forgetting it wasn’t locked, he was slightly alarmed when it opened and everything was blurry as the room seemed to spin, his heart raced erratically and an echoed voice spoke to him. It was Diego.
The next thing he knew, he was being pulled up and led back to the bedroom. Audrey’s face was full of anguish as she looked into his eyes. Chase felt his cold sweats end and suddenly, he was freezing. Diego saw him shake and grabbed a throw from the chair to wrap about him. He looked anxious, as if unsure of what to say.
“Audrey said you were in the bathroom for some time and she was worried,” His accent was strong when he spoke, indicating that Diego was quite upset. Clearly, he had introduced himself to Chase’s ex-wife. “I didn’t want to intrude but we were both concerned.” He gestured toward Audrey who nodded.
Chase hadn’t been aware of how long he was in the bathroom but it felt as though time continued to either accelerate or slow to a crawl. It was unbelievable that his morning had started off so normal; that he had stood in the kitchen at Diego’s, discussing a potential road trip. Little did he know how that same day would end.
“I hadn’t realized,” Chase replied and cleared his throat. “Diego, would you mind getting me some water?”
“Of course!” Diego appeared relieved to have something to do, as he anxiously bounced toward the door before turning toward Audrey. “Can I get you something? Anything?”
“I will have some water too,” She replied and gave him a compassionate smile. “Thank you.”
Diego nodded and slid out of the room, gently closing the door behind him.
“I don’t want to go down there,” Chase finally commented and turned toward Audrey. “I can’t deal with all those people.”
“I know, me neither,” Audrey replied. “That’s why I came up here and said I didn’t want to see anyone except you or family. My mother is at my house with the twins now,” She hesitated for a moment. “I can’t even look at your mother. I know it’s not her fault but…”
“I blame her,” Chase spoke honestly and turned toward his ex-wife as she moved awkwardly beside the bed. “I blame her for not watching him. You have three kids all the time and you managed to keep an eye on them. She had one child. Only one to look after. There’s no excuse.”
“Accidents happen, Chase,” Audrey replied calmly and sat on the other side of the bed. “I know she didn’t mean to do this and she’s as upset as us now, but..”
“No one, no one, is as upset as us now,” Chase calmly corrected her and saw tears fill her eyes but she quickly looked away and nodded, grabbing another tissue. “I don’t even know how to….do this, I don’t know how we get through this, Aud. I don’t even know where to start or how to process this. Nothing makes sense. I woke up this morning and everything was fine.”
Audrey sniffed and wiped her eyes as Diego returned with two bottles of water in hand. He didn’t say anything but gave Chase a sympathetic look as he passed them each a bottle.
“I ah…I know it’s not my place,” Diego slowly started. “But, I suggested to Albert? Your boyfriend,” He gestured toward Audrey who nodded. “I thought maybe we needed to have some of the people downstairs leave. There are a couple of reporters floating around asking questions and I…I don’t think that’s right.”
“Thank you,” Audrey said and nodded. “All I want right now is to go home and I don’t even want to go downstairs and face those people. I can’t.”
Chase nodded as he opened his bottle and took a long drink. The water felt as if it were floating throughout his entire chest, a cool sensation filled his upper body and he felt at peace; if even for that moment, as if everything would be fine.
“Albert is taking care of it,” Diego anxiously stood beside the bed, his eyes carefully checking Chase and immediately looking away. “If there’s anything else I can do?”
“Make this all stop,” Audrey whispered as she started to cry again. Opening her mouth to continue, she quickly pressed her lips together and looked away.
Chase watched as Diego’s eyes jumped from Audrey’s to his own. He didn’t say a thing. He didn’t have to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Their eyes probed him for his entire stay in Hennessey. Everywhere he went, they looked at him as if he were an alien, a freak who wandered into town by error and couldn’t find his way out again. They didn’t want his kind in their small town and he could see it in their eyes: but he didn’t care. He wasn’t there for them. He was there for Chase.
Diego Silva was a clown that people didn’t take seriously. He was the joker that had an unsettling combination of erratic energy while other times, an unexpected calamity that was disturbing to those who never seen him off his usual high energy state. His light side could brighten an entire room but his dark side could bring it to a crashing halt. These extremes in his personality made some people uncomfortable and for that reason, he decided at a young age that staying in people’s lives for a short period was the most rational answer. It was a lot better than being rejected. He rejected them first.
Chase was different. He seemed to accept, if not understand his brand of insanity that perplexed almost everyone else. It was the same impulsive nature that once caused Diego to kiss him even though the two had just met and Chase clearly had no idea of his homosexual urges. He hadn’t berated, humiliated or punched him, as other men had done in the past. When Diego suddenly decided to uproot his entire company and start fresh, legally, in another city, Chase did not protest or question him. There was an assumption that it was a well-thought out decision and that Diego had his reasons. Even when he purchased an expensive sports car only to return it the next day, Chase merely shrugged and laughed, while Jolene flipped out.
“That’s just Diego,” he later overheard him tell Jolene. “It’s his lizard brain.”
Of course, Jolene hadn’t understood the term, her English was still absolutely terrible and she stubbornly wouldn’t do anything to improve it but was content to just get by; but at any rate, Chase attempted to explain her own brother’s impulsive nature, something that she still didn’t seem to understand. True, the two hadn’t always been close or in regular communication over the years, but shouldn’t your family know you like no one else?
Chase knew him like no one else. It was the small, inconsequential details that were just matter-of-fact with him, while others treated Diego like a circus freak and the people of Hennessey were no exception. They looked at him strangely. As if there were something wrong with him. He didn’t think it was blatantly obvious that he was gay. He dressed like most other businessmen and in fact, he hated gay men who were ‘faggoty’ and wouldn’t even associate with them. He liked men who were men, not those who tried to display the actions and features of a woman. You would never catch Diego Silva wearing makeup, nail polish or talking in a feminine way, flipping his hand around like a careless moron. Fuck that. He wasn’t that kind of gay.
No, there was no way the people in this hick town knew he was a homosexual; which meant they were a bunch of racist pricks who recognized that he was Colombian. His dark eyes that were almost black, as was his hair, his skin a ‘warm white’ as he liked to refer to it since he was hardly brown nor was he really white either. He was something in between and it was that in between that they didn’t like in these predominantly white towns.
Chase insisted that it was because he wasn’t familiar. Small towns, he explained, were full of people who recognized everyone and when someone wasn’t familiar, they stared at him in an attempt to figure out ‘who’ he was; to which, Diego said, it was none of their fucking business.
That made Chase smile. It was one of the few times he did for the 5 days they were in Hennessey. Diego stayed with him; throughout the entire funeral proceedings, which ended up being a closed casket, something that seemed to create more of emotional reaction from the mother than had they allowed everyone see the child’s now, distorted face after the bullet hit it. The bullet, they eventually realized, was from some redneck hunter, out on an early morning excursion near the Jacobs’ home. He claimed to have had no idea that he hit ‘anything’ that morning, in completely disbelief when the police questioned him the day after the accident occurred.
It was the word anything that haunted Diego. It was a word that appeared to not have relevance to the mother, who appeared frozen in time, unable to process that her child was referred to in the same content as an animal, a tree, a piece of dog shit in the woods. Anything. Not a 4-year-old child, a little boy, who was out on an adventure, perhaps lost and scared, but an anything. Chase, however, flinched when he heard that word but he said nothing. Diego knew it hit him hard, he could see his face tighten up, the same youthful boy of yesterday was now a disgruntled man who would never see the world the same way again. Diego knew. He knew all too well.
All the while, Diego remained silent, drinking a cup of coffee - some terrible slop made by the local, popular coffee chain that should’ve been burnt to the ground for passing this mierda off as coffee. What the fuck? He had been to some of the poorest places in Colombia and they had better coffee than this shit, so Chase’s explanation that it was because it was a poor community wasn’t going to fly with Diego.
At any rate, Diego quietly drank his coffee and said nothing. It was better that he kept his thoughts to himself. It wasn’t necessary that either Audrey or Chase be privy to what was roaming through his brain, the emotions exploding in his chest, raging through his veins; they did not have to know. He was there to support them as best he could. Although he didn’t know Audrey well, he immediately sensed that she thought as he did; he could see it in her eyes. She was a grieving mother first. She was a vengeful mother second: but no one would ever see that side of her. No one would ever suspect because she was clever and clever people, knew when to keep their mouth shut.
Chase went through a series of panic attacks while in Hennessey, the most prevalent took place shortly after learning of his son’s death. Diego was startled to find him on the bathroom floor, curled up like a wounded animal, his eyes glazed over in shock. It was incredibly difficult to watch and made him feel helpless, unsure on how to comfort someone going through such intense pain.
Audrey understood and explained to Diego that Chase wasn’t good at dealing with his emotions because he grew up in a home where it hadn’t felt safe to express himself. She shared this information in a gentle manner, her therapist’s voice, going on to say that Chase’s mother had changed a lot since that time, otherwise she never would’ve allowed her own children to be alone with her. Diego wasn’t so sure. The woman he saw on his first day in Hennessey, as well as at the funeral, was anything but sane. True, she had just lost her grandson but at the same time, her reaction was over the top, borderline lunacy as she loudly sobbed throughout the proceedings, screaming in fits of tears, it was about halfway through when Chase jumped up and stormed out of the church.
Diego felt his heart pounding in his ears as he rushed out behind him, fearful of what he would do in such a state of fury. Instead he found Chase slumped over on church step, wearing the suit that he had instinctively brought along on their trip, shaking. It took Diego a minute to realize that he was crying. Sobbing, almost in the same intense way as his mother but somehow it seemed more heartbreaking to see a man who was usually strong, both physically and emotionally, falling apart before his eyes. Feeling helpless, Diego sat beside him, unsure of what to say or do; he wanted to touch him, put his arm around him, somehow show him comfort but feared that Chase would take it the wrong way as if some pathetic attempt to take advantage of his weak state.
The worst part was that he did feel something for Chase as he watched him fall apart that morning, as Diego gingerly placed his hand on Chase’s arm to show his support. There was a surge of emotion that flowed through him, as he watched a man he had longed for many times show more vulnerability than anyone else had ever shown him in his life. He felt an unwelcomed desire flow through him as he slowly slid his arm over his back, as he attempted to silently show Chase that he was there for him. It was a beautiful moment that he somehow knew would define their friendship: then it was interrupted.
One of the local women, some little puta from Chase’s past came flying out the doors, with tears in her eyes, her large breasts almost flying out of her dress as she leaned down to wrap her arms around Chase from behind, she proceeded to bawl like a lunatic only making the entire situation worse with her dramatics. Diego felt all but pushed away as he pulled back and rose from the step. He wanted to tell her to fuck off and stop trying to make a play for Chase during his moment of weakness but quickly wondered if he was actually doing the same thing.
Suddenly depressed for so many reasons, Diego started to walk away but turned in time to see Chase’s reaction to the whorish woman who clung to him. Abruptly standing up, he pushed her, almost a little too hard and told her to go away. Stunned as he watched the scene play out, Diego remained frozen on the spot as the young woman continued to howl and insist she was ‘only trying to help’ while it was clear Chase had rejected her, walking away with a hand up in the air, as if telling her to stop.
Glaring at Diego, as if he had any part in any of this, she ran back into the church, almost knocking over Maggie Telips on her way out. Jolene’s former employee was appropriately dressed in a simple, black dress, as she wiped a tear from her eye and attempted to smile at Chase while ignoring Diego. He watched as she timidly moved forward and embraced Chase in a loving way, while Diego slowly eased away, feeling that neither of them even noticed.
