I have marked you.
In my head, I remember the man with the yellow teeth tracing my mother’s blood into the cut. My mother’s blood is literally on my hands. It’s engrained in my skin forever. I have marked you.
I swallow. “I killed my mother. There’s nothing else to say. In my dreams, I kept thinking that she was begging me to do something. But she wasn’t. She was begging for me. For my life.”
Everything seems like it is closing in on me and I suddenly feel incredibly hot. I breathe deeply, sucking in air. The white of the snow and the sky seem to be swirling around me and I can’t see straight. I pull over and crack my window, and then I stare into the distance as I try to get things under control; my heart beat, my breathing, my thoughts.
Mila is silent.
I can tell she doesn’t know what to do.
“Pax,” she tries. “There’s everything to say. You know it wasn’t your fault. He was the one with the gun, the one who was forcing a violent act upon your mother. It wasn’t you. I love you. I’ll do anything you need me to do. Just name it. We can get through this.”
Her words fade away and I stare into the silent winter day.
I can’t believe the world is going on just the same as it was this morning, like nothing happened. Crows are perched in a nearby tree and I can hear them cawing. I briefly wonder why they haven’t flown south, but I really don’t give a f**k. The snow drifts across the road; and down the way, I see a snowplow coming slowly, it’s yellow lights blinking in the slush. People are bundled up on the sidewalk, leaning into the cold winter. Everything is cold. The day, the wind, the lump in my throat.
I swallow hard, but it won’t go down.
I shake my head and start the car again, driving to my house. The road passes behind us in a gray blur.
After my tires crunch on the snow in my driveway, I turn to Mila.
“I’m not going to be good company today. I think I should probably just be alone.”
She’s already shaking her head.
“Not on your life. I won’t bother you, Pax. But the doctor said you shouldn’t be alone. So you do whatever you’d like. You think about things, you process it however you’d like, but I’m staying. I’m just going to run into town and get your prescription filled and I’ll be right back.”
I nod curtly, and go into the house. I don’t look back, even though I can feel Mila staring at me.
I stand in the middle of my living room, limply. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to process this. How would anyone process this?
And then, all of a sudden, I think about my father and a white-hot rage passes through me, overcoming the numbness.
He knew about this. He’s known all of these years and he didn’t tell me. He allowed me to suppress the memories. He had to know what it would do to me.
But everything makes sense now. No wonder he had stayed at work for such long hours after mom died. He didn’t want to see me. How in the world could he have looked into my face knowing that I had killed his wife? Or even if he didn’t realize the part I played, at the very least he knows that I didn’t save her.
But even still. I was a kid. My logical thought tells me that Mila is right. It wasn’t my fault. But I was the one who was there. It was my hand that bumped the man’s gun. And it was my father who allowed me to hide it all of these years.
I punch his number into my house phone, but of course, he doesn’t pick up. I leave him a voice mail.
“I know what happened to mom,” I say icily. “Call me.”
I hang up and throw my phone against the wall. It shatters into pieces. I guess if he wants to call, he’ll have to call my cell.
Self-loathe floods through me, swirling with the anger that I feel toward my father. All of a sudden, I am consumed with so much emotion that I don’t know what to do with it all. It’s overwhelming. And it f**king hurts.
I head to the kitchen and grab a bottle of whiskey. I glance into the cabinet and see that I have two more. Thank god I re-stocked the other day. I gulp a few drinks, then a few more. Thankfully, the familiar haze soon descends upon me, the quiet numbness that I enjoy so much. But it’s not enough.
The ache is still there.
Fuck. This.
I take the stairs two at a time and change into sweats, a sweatshirt and running shoes. Without another thought, I dart out the back of the house, jogging down the path to the beach. The sand is packed and frozen into hard ripples that hurt the bottom of my feet.
I don’t care. I deserve it.
I jog at a fast clip, sucking in the cold air that burns my lungs.
I don’t care. I deserve it.
The lake swirls and crashes against the shore on my right as my feet beat angrily on the rigid beach. The wind blowing from the water is frigid and wet and I suck it in, inhaling it into numb body. Flecks of the icy water hit my face and drip onto my shirt, freezing there.
I stare into the distance, not noticing as the beach falls away under my feet. I don’t even know how far I go, until at last I can no longer breathe. My f**king lungs hurt so much and there is still a f**king lump in my throat, lodged so tightly that no amount of swallowing or running or heavy breathing will move it.
“Fuuuuccckkkkk!”
I turn and shout at the lake, screaming as loud as I can. The vibration of it rips against my vocal chords, bruising them in the cold.
But I don’t care. I f**king deserve it. I shout again and again, until my voice grows hoarse. And then I drop onto the beach, leaning against a big piece of driftwood. I am limp and spent. My forehead is somehow sweaty, even though it is cold outside. The cold wind blows against it, giving me chills.
But I don’t care.
I f**king deserve it.
I deserve to get pneumonia and die out here in the cold.
I stare blankly at the lake now, trying to tune out rational thought or logic or memories or emotion. I don’t even know how long I’ve been here or how much time passes before I see someone making their way down the beach. I see a flash of red and a long coat.
Mila.
I can just barely see the neck of her red turtleneck sweater poking out of her heavy coat. She trudges along the beach, her slim form bent against the wind. I can tell when she sees me because her pace quickens and it only takes her a minute more to reach me.