by C.P. Kemabia
Antwone didn’t know how and when he had landed inside a ramshackle dance club. But it didn’t matter. He ordered whisky and began to drink without keeping track of the time or the number of drinks he was consuming, rather carelessly and without any awareness of slowly sliding into a state of total intoxication. His mind was hazy; his brain was cloudy. But he kept drinking away because his body could take it. There was no sense in drinking with moderation here when the old misery and the old grievance were both coming back with a vengeance. But he had expected that would happen. He was ready for them. They hadn’t wasted any time. And it was with a mixed feeling of sadness and anger that he reckoned that no amount of fiery potion in his body could anaesthetize the pain to come. And the root of his pain was Mary.
Indeed… All his life… The pain bore her name all over… The pain and the pining… But what was it with him? Why had he felt so twisted up inside over Liv’s blunder? It was clearly not her fault, but he couldn’t help it. He suddenly wished Ava was there with him… Just now, he wished to kill the old familiar grief with love and sex… But Ava wasn’t there and he could not go back to Liv because of how he had left and because it would have been a mistake to sleep with her. Why? He just knew it would have been a mistake. Plus, in reality, there was only one person he really wanted to hold in his hands. And it had always been her all along, since she had reappeared in his life. It was something that was never going to change…
You’re an idiot, Mary! he thought with spite. Either that or you’re blind as a tick if you think we can just live on and forget how good things used to be between us. But you haven’t forgotten. You could’ve kept walking that day. It was the logical move to make if you really wanted to forget and keep your distance, just like you had so relentlessly done all these years. But you stopped to reconnect because, deep down, you haven’t forgotten.
He slammed back another shot of whisky and asked for a refill. The more he drank, the more he thought about Mary. And the more he thought about her, the more he detested the failings of his heart. Without warning, the fixed lines of the zinc bar where his arms rested began to jumble up while this seamy place he was floundering in, a place of scantily clad waitresses and lecherous patrons, seemed to wheel . He had finally gotten himself drunk. And he still felt miserable, even more so than ever.
He soundlessly cried, inside and outside. Even that didn’t help. Nothing helped… And the world around him kept wheeling.
The cabbie who drove him around to Mary’s home tilted his hat after Antwone handed him the money for the fare.
Antwone looked a mess, but the cabbie managed to avoid looking at him questioningly. In a vague way, that pleased Antwone, because then he didn’t have to worry about his outward presentation.
The windows of the house were lighted. And there were many cars parked along the curb right next to it. Inside he could hear the merry sound of a sort of party going on.
Antwone teetered up to the front door and rang. A few seconds passed and then Mary opened the door. She was clad in pullover and dress pants and was smiling at someone who was inside. Her smile faded when she saw Antwone looking not his usual self.
“Antwone?” she said. “Are you alright?”
“You’re having a party?”
“Hum––not really. You want to come in?”
He went in. There were maybe nine people kicking back in the living room, all chatting with one another. They stopped to either lift their beer can or nod at Antwone as he came up.
“It was football night and we got a few friends over,” Mary explained.
Marc materialized from what seemed to be the kitchen.
“Oh, what a good surprise,” he said, thrusting his hand forward. Antwone shook it. “Did you watch the game?”
“I didn’t even know there was a game.”
“What? Man… I figured you for a sports fan?” Before Antwone could answer that he wasn’t, Marc went on. He was excited as hell. “Damn, we thrashed the Huskies of L.A. in their freaking home, gave them a good run for their money. They had a good running game but if they want to make the playoffs they’ll have to stop acting like groundskeepers and amp up their defense, raise their level of play or something. But we’re good; three more wins and we’ll have a chance at the league.”
“Who’s we?”
“The Atlanta Rockets… Sorry, I get all hyped up when it comes to the Rockets. You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
Marc went off to fetch him a drink. Mary looked at Antwone with concern.
“You’re sure you need another drink?” she said.
“Why not? I’m thirsty.”
“You look like you just closed a bar.”
“Look,” Antwone said, “can we talk? I want to talk to you.”
“Okay.” She waited for Antwone to start talking.
“In private…”
Mary told Marc that she was going outside for a minute to chat with Antwone. When Marc inquired whether something was the matter, she said nothing was but that she just needed to go outside.
They both went out through the living room to the dimly lit street. It was warm and a little windy and, besides the party noise from Mary’s house, the street was quiet.
They stood face to face next to a utility pole and again Mary waited for Antwone to start talking. He could feel that she was worried. Things were fuzzy in his mind. Confusion began to seize him.
“I don’t even know what’s going on anymore,” Antwone said in a low voice.
“What is it, Antwone? It worries me seeing you like that.”
“Seeing me how?”
“You know, drunk.”
Antwone passed his hand over his face to give it a less distressing expression. His hand started trembling. He folded it into a fist. Mary saw it and touched his arm.
“You shouldn’t let yourself go like that,” she said. “The bottle was Dad’s weakness. Don’t make it yours.”
“Tell me something,” Antwone said. “Are you happy?”
“Why are you asking?” Antwone didn’t answer. “Yes I am happy. You’re not?”
“You know, I look at that picture of the two of us in that grass field and I terribly miss that, what we had.”
Mary looked at Antwone, emotion slowly building up in her eyes.
“What are you doing?” she managed to ask.
“We had something, remember. And it was this beautiful thing.”
“No,” Mary said. “It wasn’t.”
“Don’t say that,” Antwone said. “You know it was.”
“No.”
“Yes, you know it was.”
“You’re drunk,” Mary said. “You better go home.”
“Stop saying that,” Antwone said with a temper. “I’m not drunk. I just had a few drinks.”
“You had too many few drinks.”
“But I’m not drunk.”
“Alright, you’re not drunk.” Mary quickly raised both arms to keep this conversation from heating into an argument. “What did you come here for?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Antwone said. “I came here to talk to you.”
“Alright. What about?”
After a short moment of hesitation, Antwone leaned on the utility pole, and then said, “I never stopped thinking about you. I tried … but I just never could.”
“Jesus… Antwone, please go home. I can’t do this now.”
Mary took a step back, toward her house.
“You want to know something?” Antwone quickly said. “I didn’t hate Dad for taking you away. I hated you for letting him.”
Stopping dead in her tracks, Mary shot a dismayed look at Antwone.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she snapped back.
“Maybe not then, but afterward.” Antwone looked sharply at her. “Twenty years, Mary… Twenty years is a lifetime for keeping your distance, for ignoring my letters, for trying so desperately to erase me and everything that happened from your memory. It wasn’t all Dad. I figured it out
. It was you too. You were too afraid of other people’s reactions, of their judgments, of what they might think or say. And to be in line with what’s acceptable to their high fucking morals, you ran away from the real you as soon as you started seeing all those idyllic moments we shared as something to be ashamed of.”
“And you don’t see them as such?” Mary asked with difficulty.
Antwone’s words had made an impact. And it had taken a few seconds for her to get a grip of herself.
“The only shame I see here is that we lost twenty years.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s a shame; a pity, even. But we must get over it. We must get over us.”
“How? By getting married to someone we’re not blood-related with.”
Mary flustered. But it only lasted the time it took a windswept tree leaf to travel across the space that separated her from Antwone.
“I had no idea you were so unhappy,” she finally said. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But don’t you drag Marc into that lunacy of yours, for Christ’s sake. He’s good to me in all the ways and for all reasons that you were not.”
Antwone laughed a very sardonic laugh. “If I didn’t know you,” he said, “then I could actually buy those words.”
“I mean it.”
“We’ve never been good liars, have we? Otherwise Dad would’ve never found us out.”
Extremely wound up by this dour declaration which was similar to a nasty hit on the head, Mary said, “You need to go now….”
Antwone came on to her and grabbed her by the chin.
“Is that what you really want?”
“Things change,” she said in a fit of pique. “I’ve changed.”
“The hell you have. But there are things that don’t change.”
Mary jerked herself out of the grip of his hand.
“I don’t want to talk to you if you’re like this,” she said.
“You think you can just reprogram your feelings and make them work for you as you would a piece of microchip? We don’t choose who we love, Mary. It’s the sad truth. But it is the way it is.”
Starting back to the house, Mary said, very shaken up, “We can talk about it all after you sober up.”
“Mitzi––” Antwone called after her and she stopped.
Her back was to him. Her shoulders were shuddering. He could see that she was on the verge of an emotional breakdown.
“I saw the tattoo on your neck the other day when I came here,” he continued. “Does your Marc know what it even means?”
Her back was still to him and, understandably so, she was still unresponsive. Antwone hadn’t wanted to use that card on her. He felt rotten to have brought it up now, after so many years, the name of their unborn dead baby.
In their loving passion, they had been reckless and had been forced to terminate her early pregnancy. And to cope with the post-abortion stress, Mary had tattooed her neck with the name she would have given the baby if it had been a girl. Imagining that it was a girl, and not a boy, seemed to satisfy her soul at the time. And things had returned to normal following that. Antwone remembered how he was grateful the incident hadn’t broken their bond. However, it was the finding out by their father which had.
Mary swivelled on her heels and quickly came at Antwone. She seemed furious, tearful and confused.
“What do you want?” she cried out, pushing him away. “What do you want from me?”
Antwone trapped her inside the crook of his arms.
“Don’t you remember?” he said. “We had something; our thing.”
“And it was wrong!”
“But it was our thing.”
“We can’t repeat the mistakes of the past, Antwone,” she said. “We just can’t.”
“I don’t care about the past,” he said. “I only care about now.”
And with that much said, Antwone promptly pulled her to him and he kissed her. He firmly held his lips to hers because she was fighting him. When, momentarily, she wrested her face from his, she said.
“No, Antwone. No.”
“It’s all right…”
“No, please––Stop!”
He kissed her again, this time exercising much force to keep her from slipping away from his drunken embrace.
“There’s so much I miss about you.”
“Stop … stop … stop it!”
Mary slapped him hard across the face and watched him as he unsteadily backed away a few steps before losing his balance and tumbling down against a parked car and hitting his head on the car door.
“I don’t love you like that anymore,” Mary said, just as Marc was coming out of the house seeing Antwone trying to scramble back on his feet. He rushed to Mary’s side.
“Is everything alright?” he asked her. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Nothing,” Mary said. “He just tripped. He’s a little loaded. He’s fine. Come on.”
“What about him?”
“He’s fine. Come on.” To Antwone, Mary said, “Go home.”
Now standing up on his rubber-felt legs, Antwone quietly looked at Mary and Marc going up the entranceway to the front door. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again. They were already inside the house and he heard the sound of the door as it slammed shut.
Afterwards, Antwone stood there looking at the house for what seemed like an eternity before bringing himself to walk away from it. He fought the urge to look back. And he didn’t look back. Not even once.
20
