The Weight of Madness

by Randileigh Kennedy

  “Come here,” Olivia said, draping an arm around me as her own eyes started getting misty.

  “It’s the same way with him. I see so much joy and wonder and goodness and love in his eyes. It’s absolutely beautiful to me, the way he looks at me with such conviction, like the two of us together are the only things entangled in his mind. But then sometimes he awakes at night from a horrible dream and he’s not himself and it makes my entire body ache. It’s like he doesn’t even recognize me in those moments, just like when my Grandma Eve looks back at me with blank, empty eyes. Here I am, spending day after day dreaming – wishing – begging for their madness to let them go. But I’m so scared of that too – because for Grandma Eve, that means letting her go – and I can’t do it, even though I know that’s the only way she can find peace. And for Lance, wishing part of him away – it makes me feel like something is wrong with me for not being able to love him exactly as he is. How can I love someone I want to change? It’s absolutely breaking me. I don’t know how to do this.”

  I was completely sobbing by this point as all my truth poured out. Loving someone as they are while trying to fix them at the same time felt like a curse – like a weight around your ankles, leaving you completely unsure of which one to untie.

  Lexi and Olivia and I stood there. They held me, crying with me, my sadness becoming their own. That was love in its best form, and I hated the way I was crying for someone whose heart wasn’t capable of letting me love his brokenness. All I wanted was to put back all of his pieces, but yet I wondered if they were all there. It was as if he lost a part of himself and he would never truly be made whole. I knew with certainty I could love him as he was, but until he believed that, I didn’t know how else to get there.

  Chapter 19

  I tried Lance’s cell again for what felt like the twentieth time, but there was still no answer. I tried calling Logan as well, but it seemed his phone was shut off. I so badly wanted to talk to Lance, to tell him everything Nick said had no truth to me. I wanted him to know that nothing outside of the two of us could shake my feelings for him. I feared his silence.

  I sat awake in my bed all night, Olivia snoring right beside me. She wouldn’t let me go home alone, and I loved her for it, but she was doing very little to calm my nerves while sleeping peacefully next to me.

  I dialed again, just to hear Lance’s voicemail. I’d already left four messages. There seemed to be no point in leaving a fifth.

  The next morning, I headed straight to Lance’s apartment before work. I knocked on the door for at least ten minutes, but there was no answer. I went into the shop, but I felt like a shell – hollowed out from any bit of life I had just a day before.

  “Why don’t you take off?” Austin suggested sympathetically. “We accomplished quite a bit yesterday, do you remember that? I still can’t believe how well that meeting went,” he gushed with more enthusiasm than I could possibly muster today. “Seriously, just take a break. Go see your grandma, or walk along the beach.”

  “I may do that,” I replied dryly, unsure which of those things I wanted to do first. I decided to head over to see Grandma Eve.

  “Can I come in?” I said softly after knocking on her door for a couple minutes.

  “Go away, I’m not ready for company,” she said in a moody tone. “If you take any more of my blood, I’m going to shrivel up like a raisin.”

  “Grandma, it’s me, Sophia.” I entered her room, surprised to see her still in bed. “What’s going on? Did you miss breakfast this morning?”

  “They’re trying to poison me,” she said sternly, not bothering to sit up. “The breakfast is poisoned. I’m not leaving.”

  “Grandma, you need to eat,” I said reassuringly, sitting down in a chair I slid next to her bed. “Do you want me to have the food brought up here?”

  “No.”

  Silence followed.

  “Did you play cards last night?” I questioned, trying to change the subject.

  Instead of a response, I could only hear the sound of soft crying.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you sad?”

  “I’m just so tired,” she said in a raspy voice. “I want to see Maggie, but they said she’s not here.”

  “No she’s not,” I whispered back, slow tears welling up in my eyes. Today was not the day for this kind of conversation. “She’s been gone a long time, Grandma.”

  “Where did she go? Shopping?”

  I cracked a smile, unable to help it. “No, no shopping today. She’s with Grandpa Harold.” At least that was true in my mind. That thought about my mother was the single only warm feeling I had of her.

  “He’s always late,” she grumbled.

  “Yes he is,” I agreed. “But I’m glad he’s in no hurry to come pick you up.”

  Seconds later, there was snoring. Grandma Eve had fallen asleep.

  “Well, I guess this conversation is over for now,” I whispered, leaning down to kiss her on the forehead. “I’ll come back later this afternoon.” She felt clammy and looked uncomfortable, but didn’t seem bothered by it. I pulled the blanket up around her and headed out, notifying the nurse to do some extra rounds on her today until I could make it back in to see her.

  I headed back to Lance’s apartment, but there was still no answer. His phone also stopped ringing, which meant it was either shut off or dead.

  I made my way down to the beach to try and get my mind off everything. Why wasn’t Lance answering my calls? I made it as clear as I could that I didn’t believe Nick’s allegations. There was no reason for Lance to be ignoring me.

  Should I head to Carlstown to look for him? I could be there by lunchtime. I could probably locate his parents’ house, if they’d lived in the same place for awhile at least. Then again, if he was avoiding my calls on purpose, maybe that wouldn’t be the best idea.

  I sat on the gritty sand, usually finding peace in it, but not now. I ended up heading back home, slumping down in a hot bath for an hour, and then took a three hour nap.

  I headed back to Grandma Eve’s place, hoping she was in a better mood this time around. I so badly missed the conversations we used to have about boys and love and life back when I was younger. She always had such good advice for me then, and I longed for one of those meaningful conversations now.

  I made my way into her room, sliding open the heavy curtains to let in the sunshine. I sat down in the same floral chair I occupied throughout most of our visits. She was staring at a blank TV screen, but she looked peaceful nonetheless.

  “You look a lot better than you did this morning,” I commented, relieved to see her fully dressed with her hair done. She was eating some crackers off a tray resting beside her on an end table. “I’m glad to see you eating.”

  “You were here earlier?”

  “Yes, around breakfast time,” I stated, knowing my explanation wouldn’t really matter. “Did you go to the movie viewing this afternoon in the lounge?”

  “It was one of those old black and white love movies,” she gushed back with a smile. “I just love those. Harold should take me to the theater more often.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” I replied with a smile, loving the warmth in her eyes as she said it.

  “What’s wrong with you? You got boy trouble or something?” she questioned, picking up on my tone.

  “Not really, I don’t have the boy.”

  “Even when you have the boy, love ain’t sunshine,” she commented, staring at me from her recliner.

  “You’ve told me,” I replied with a nod. “I believe you every time you say it. How do you make someone realize how great they are?”

  “It’s impossible for someone to realize their full potential on their own, dear girl,” she said confidently. “It’s what others see in us that brings us to that point. Sometimes, though, people just need a little extra push to get there.”

  “This person needs a cliff,” I said sarcastically. “Maybe we all do at some point, I don’t know. It’s just
that it’s so obvious to me. I think he’s amazing. He gives so much of himself to other people and he radiates when he does. When he talks about his charity projects I hear the softness of his heart in his words and it’s magnificent to me. He’s thoughtful and genuinely kind and he makes my face smile until it hurts. I know he has so much else to offer the world. I just don’t know how to make him see those things the way I do.”

  “I went through something similar with your grandfather,” she said nostalgically.

  “Really? You guys were in love forever. When did that happen?”

  “A couple years after we were married.”

  “I’ve never heard such a story from you, Grandma. You guys experienced a rough patch?”

  “He went through a thing,” she began, trying to find the right words. “He was working down at the mines. Crazy hours, sometimes putting in sixteen hour days, but he had to do it so we could get caught up on the bills. We wanted to buy a nice house before starting our family, and we just couldn’t get it all together. We’d make some money and then the engine went out on the car, or we’d have some medical bills or taxes to pay and we struggled. He worked a lot. Then that mine collapse happened, back in the fifties. It killed thirty-four of the men he worked with at the mine. That was it, they just never returned home to see their families.”

  “Grandpa Harold wasn’t down there when it collapsed?”

  “Oh he was,” she said shaking her head. “Only he and three others were pulled out alive.”

  “Why have I never heard this story?” I questioned, still somewhat in disbelief.

  “Because it broke him a little,” she continued, staring back at me. “He didn’t like talking about it. It changed him. I swear he wasn’t the same after that. I loved that man, don’t get me wrong, but it messed him up good. He couldn’t handle it. He blamed himself for it, feeling guilty that he was still alive and the others weren’t. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the thought that he was spared while so many others weren’t so lucky. He was drowning in this immense guilt that he could’ve done something differently to save them all.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I sent him packing,” she answered with an awkward shrug.

  “What?”

  “I told you, love ain’t sunshine,” she stated again, though I felt like it still didn’t answer my question. “You don’t get to mope around with your head in a bucket, wondering why you, why them… We don’t get those answers, dear, so worrying about them ain’t going to help anybody. He started drinking too much, staying out at the local bar, trying to drown his guilt in beer. Not on my watch. You get one life to live, that’s it. Yeah, we all have questions, why us, why them – but you can’t worry away the one life you’ve got. I packed a bag and told him I’d leave the porch light on ‘til he came to his senses.”

  “Really? But you loved him, wasn’t that hard to do? You were able to just walk away from him?”

  “It was my last resort, trust me. But I had to do it. Maybe that wasn’t the right decision by other people’s standards, but those other people weren’t living my life. I felt like it was the only way to get his mind back to what it was. Tough love, they call it. Some people say time heals all wounds. Other people say love heals all. Roberta down the hall thinks gin is the answer to all life’s problems. The best solution is anybody’s guess.”

  “That doesn’t help,” I replied with a smirk.

  “All I’ve come to learn in my life is that you can’t change other people,” she continued with a shrug, “the same way you can’t convince them of their worth. All you can do is change yourself, and show their value to them by the way it changes you.”

  I mulled over her words. She was right. Lance had changed me already in the short amount of time I’d known him. He made me want to give more of myself – my resources and talents – to other people who could use them. He made me want to fight for things I never realized I’d wanted before. He made me want to enjoy every starry night sky, and every cool crisp morning.

  “I’m glad Grandpa Harold came back for you,” I said sincerely, more grateful for that thought than she could possibly realize.

  “Sometimes people need to feel like they’re falling so they can realize they already know how to fly,” she said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes it takes tough love to get them there.”

  “That just seems like a hard thing to do.”

  “It will be plenty hard on you dear, I promise you that. But let me tell you, if that’s what it takes to make him realize he’s already enough for you, then it will be worth it.”

  “So I just wait for him to realize he’s already the person I’ve fallen for? That sounds agonizing. What do I do in the meantime?”

  “All you can do is carry on, being the girl worth coming back for,” she replied nonchalantly. “Anyone who doesn’t see your worth isn’t worth your time anyway. There’s no questioning that.”

  Her words resonated with me on a bigger level. I’d tried everything with Lance, yet I was again in the same place, forever trying to convince him what I truly saw inside of him. It was as if he was incapable of believing me. He was this amazing, funny, giving, selfless person to me, yet he couldn’t see past his own brokenness to recognize that. It was as if he was perpetually falling. Is that what he needed? Some distance to realize he was already everything I needed?

  I wondered why I’d never heard this story before about the mine. I hated to question whether or not the story was even true – sometimes she would make things up that were truly make-believe. I couldn’t decipher this one. I wanted to check with the activity aid to see what movie they watched this afternoon. It could’ve been related to that plot in some way. Perhaps this never really happened to her, but she was quite convincing nonetheless.

  “He did come back,” she reiterated with a nod. “A man with wings can accomplish many things. Is that a proverb or something, or did I just make that up?”

  “I’m not sure,” I replied with a giggle. I’d definitely never heard that expression before, but at this point I couldn’t make sense of what entered and exited her mind. All I knew is that I was so grateful for these talks, and so very thankful that we continued to have them despite her worsening condition. I feared the day she would lose her spark. I was terrified to lose a bit of my own whenever that happened.

  “Go turn the porch light on for him dear,” she continued. “He’ll come back to you if he’s anything near as magnificent as my Harold.”

  I squeezed her hand and said goodbye, then headed back to my apartment. I still wasn’t exactly sure what to do about Lance at this point, but Grandma Eve calmed my soul nonetheless.

  As I slumped down on the couch, my phone rang.

  “Hello?” I answered urgently.

  “Still no call?” Olivia was on the other end.

  “Nope,” I said in a frustrated tone. “What do I do? Just let it go? Wait until he comes to me, ready to talk about it? Pretend like it never happened? Leave him out on the porch until he comes to his senses like my grandma suggested? This would be so much easier if he would just pick up his damn phone.”

  “Maybe he just needs a little time to himself right now,” she suggested. “I’m picking you up.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere,” I replied, exhausted by this perpetual loop of indecisiveness in my head.

  “Then we’ll just hang out at your place. Either way, I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “Don’t you have to work tonight at the pub?”

  “Yeah, but not until nine,” she answered dismissively. “We have a couple hours to hang out. I’ll be at your place in ten.”

  She actually took fifteen minutes to arrive, but she showed up with an arm full of takeout, so she was very easily forgiven. We sat in my living room, eating too much food, trying to talk about anything other than my current situation. Finally around eight forty-five, she had to head out for work.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to call in?” she o
ffered for the third time.

  “No, of course not,” I urged, pushing her out the door. “I’m fine.”

  “What are you going to do tonight? Go to sleep?”

  Honestly that long nap earlier meant I probably wouldn’t be ready for bed for quite some time. I needed to do something else.

  “I don’t know, maybe I’ll go by his apartment again? He should be back from his parents’ place by now. He has to be back in town.”

  “If he’s not at his apartment, where else would he go?”

  I thought about that for a minute, wondering where that place would be for him. I certainly had my own favorite spots to disappear off to when I wanted to be alone. Surely he had his own too, but I wasn’t sure if they were in Grand Harbor. Maybe he had someplace he preferred closer to home.

  The Rivers Residence. He said he often drove there late at night when he couldn’t sleep. He’d made it sound as if he went there often, particularly late at night when he had nowhere else to go. Was it possible? Would he even want to see me?

  I hugged Olivia goodbye, then paced my living room for a solid half hour. I tried turning on a movie, but that proved to be a worthless distraction. I shut it off before it ended. What was the right thing to do? Call him incessantly until he finally gave in and called me back? Give him some space? Call the local hospitals to make sure he was okay? A thousand thoughts raced through my mind. I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit around sulking.

  I called Logan and Lance one more time, but still didn’t connect with either one. I researched Carlstown, looking up his father’s construction company. Their website appeared to be outdated, I imagined from the company shutting down, but I still found a local number. I wondered if that went straight to his father, or to some disconnected office phone. It seemed too late to try it either way. Perhaps I should try his apartment one more time tomorrow, and then head to Carlstown in the morning if I still couldn’t get in touch with anyone? I started feeling crazy, but I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t one to give up on someone. No one gave up on my mom when she needed them so badly. I would never give up on my Grandma Eve until she took her last breath. And Olivia, my goodness, I would fight any battle she ever encountered – that was just my nature. I had to fight for Lance too. He deserved that from me.