April - The Flood 21 страница

I cried on my mother's shoulder, and I felt like an infant. I didn't care. She was there for me, when I needed her to be. She didn't say a word until I was done expressing every last fear, and when I was done, all she did was rub my back.

"Oh, Frank," she said, using my old nickname. "That's normal. Everyone is scared. It's going to be okay."

She had tried to comfort me, but she had articulated my worse fear. I didn't want to be normal. I wanted to be different, because I was different. He and I had been different, and so determined in our life together. But all of that was disappearing. I saw the shirt out of the corner of my eye, and though I still cried and burst into tears, I held onto some hope.

When my mom left my room, doing all she could, I was surprised to find my dad step in next. I instantly got to my feet and held my arms stiffly at my side, but his stance was relaxed. He was open and not confrontational. He even looked sad. I expected that he had heard a lot of what I had told my mother, and though I was afraid of his reaction to the Gerard parts, I didn't care anymore. I was drained.

"Frank, please sit down," he said calmly. I did, and he had pulled in a chair from the other room. He sat across from me, instead of beside. He took a long time formulating his thoughts. He rubbed his hands through his hair and sighed. He was going gray too, I realized. Gerard's hair was much more progressed than his, though. Even this fact didn't seem fair.

"You need help," he finally said.

I choked out an offended look of disgust. "Thanks."

"No, Frank, I'm not trying to insult you. I'm not saying you need help because you're fucking up. I'm saying you're fucking up because you need help. You can't do this on your own," he clarified.

"I have help. Jasmine is around."

"You need more than that. Something that Jasmine can't give you. You have a lot on your plate. Anyone would snap. I'm just saying that.... it's hard to watch you drink." He paused, waiting to see if I would respond. I didn't, and part of me wondered if he even knew I was aware of his problem, I had been so young when it happened. We rarely talked about it, especially in a personal manner like this. Eventually, after some shifting in his chair, my dad reached into his pocket and pulled out some of the stuff he got from AA. "I have not been in years, but maybe you should try it."

"You certainly don't need it anymore. But why should I go?"

"I don't need it because I found out how to help myself. I went to a few to calm myself down, then I figured it out on my own. I don't like AA, though. Bunch of sheep."

He smiled at me, and in spite of myself, I smiled too. My dad was trying to be understanding and considerate. It came out hard and flat, but I was getting through to him. My bawl-fest from before must have made him realize that shit was wrong, and that I was serious in spite of my display. Hearing my breakdown let him be more willing to look at the small cracks in his own past.

"Look, I've never been able to tell you what to do with your life. I've always tried, but you never listened," he shrugged his shoulders, to show that there was no hard feelings. "I always thought you had made a mistake with that guy. Even though you said he changed your life and you were so much better. Just didn't believe it. I just didn't know how to believe it. I wouldn't think about it. Well, tonight, I believe it."

I looked at him wearily. Was he joking with me? My father sensed my skepticism and kept going. "You walked in here like a bat out of hell. You were in high school again, only more angry. All I could think was 'this is how he was in high school, see, that boy never learns.' Then I heard you and your mom. I... I understand why you were drinking. It's hard to lose someone, especially in pieces." He took a ragged breath. "Your mom lost me that way, when I was drinking a lot. When I wasn't responding or acting like myself. I know it's not the same as Alzheimer's, but any personality change is the loss of the person you thought you knew before. Your mother lost me, and you're losing Gerard. But through your own drinking now - though I get why, Frank believe me, I understand why you're doing this - you're making other people lose you in the same way Gerard is going."

I took a deep breath, and for the first time in a long time, my thoughts seemed to change their direction. Jasmine, I gasped to myself. Oh god, what was I doing to her? I knew she hated me doing it in the past, and I always felt bad when I did it anyway, but I always thought her resistance towards drinking was because of her brother and her own father. Not because it was making me disappear too. I suddenly felt very aware of the fact that I was here now, it was definitely past six, and she had no idea where I was. She was probably going out of her mind.

I stood up and told my dad I had to leave. I had to make sure that she as all right.

"Good," he told me. "Good. That's a good sign. I want you to go and try and fix this. But. Frank, please be careful. And...." My father was stumbling over his words, and it caught me in my tracks. I looked at him, and over his shoulder, I realized I had forgotten to grab the guitar and the shirt. As went towards the bed, he grabbed my shoulder lightly and said, "I want you to come back soon. You know, for a visit? I want to hear about your daughter."

He smiled, though it was awkward; so blatantly awkward for him. I felt as if he was trying to put on a show, to maybe lure me into this a little more, but when he said he hoped that Gerard was okay after that, I began to trust him. He began to trust me more. I had walked in here like my high school self, like the self before Gerard. Not only was his image in my mind fracturing, but so was my own personality. I was drinking to forget the pain I was in, but I was disappearing. My dad saw what I had been like before Gerard again, and realized what a change he had finally made in my life. It took seven years to see a difference in me. But finally he had. Finally.

I was overwhelmed again, but I let my thoughts come this time. My father and I had lost too much time between us, and it had taken us so long to get where we were. I bit my lip as I looked up at him, and I touched his shoulder too.

"Thank you, I'll try to come," I said, not knowing when it would even be feasible to come over again with all the things I was already enlisted to do. I looked back towards the guitar and the shirt. I was about the grab them again, when I stopped. I would need a reason to come back if I wanted to. If the emptiness gripped me again and I wanted to fill myself with something, I would come here. I would play music and hold that shirt and maybe my parents and I could have a conversation. It would be awkward, and we would not agree on everything, and it would still probably be really. But it wouldn't be drinking. It wouldn't be forgetting myself just because Gerard was forgetting, too. It would be trying to fill in those years that we had lost, before there was nothing else to lose.

Chapter Six

I was on watch again. I didn't mind; I was almost glad of it. Though I had explained the entire situation to Jasmine and she had called my parents to verify, she was still worried. Though I knew that I didn't want to go down that path anymore and I had told her my new plan to combat the urge, I also knew that this was what had happened the last time. I'd be good for a couple of days and then I'd want to drink again. Even my dad, who hated AA, didn't do it alone at first. I wasn't thinking of going to AA, but I knew that I needed to be watched after. I had already experienced an eclectic array of emotions since coming home that first night. It was as if all the feelings I had been repressing before were coming back, but taking their turns. My mood swings and self-doubt were even worse than Jasmine on pregnancy hormones, and even she felt comfortable making that comparison. But she loved me, she told me that over and over again. "I should have never made you promise," she confessed as we sat together in bed that night. "I'm sorry. I know you've always done what you can."

I held her close to me, still feeling woozy, but also feeling a tremendous burden lifted. She was giving me permission that night to not be strong anymore. We had cried in front of one another before, but that had been different. We always had a reason; it seemed like I had always needed a reason to be upset before. Crying because I felt empty, that was crying without just cause, and I just thought it was impossible. Jasmine told me it was okay and I was surprised when it actually was. Nothing had changed but my own perception, but that seemed to be all I needed.

"No man is an island," she told me, holding me close. When I said Gerard had said that once, she told me that they were reading The Tempest together. My heart ached then, even more than before. We fell asleep in one another's arms, utterly exhausted, but together. I had assured her that even when I was trying to escape, I would never leave her, or him, or Paloma.

"I just needed a break," I said, but she shushed me. She understood, more than I could have fathomed, just how loud minds can be sometimes. And we needed a rest from them, so we slept.

In the morning, I knew I was not alone. I didn't have to fight so hard to keep it together, because there would be no one left in my life if I did. The recovery period after an episode like this was still going to be difficult. Although I had by-passed a hangover, there was still that fuzzy in-between feeling when I was no longer drunk, but not distanced enough from the event to feel sober. I had to keep shaking off the feeling of failure, too. I was at a loss at what to do with my time now that I knew what I couldn't do, and I struggled to make up the difference that negation left. Prohibition always produced desire, Gerard had once told me, but I knew that so long as I desired something else in its wake I would be okay. I made love to Jasmine a lot on that Sunday after, trying to define my time through her. I knew that if I ever wanted to get past this, that I couldn't do it alone. Other than my time spent with Jasmine and Gerard, I had been trying to work through what my father had been telling me the rest of that weekend. Then on Monday, I walked right over to Mikey.

"Hi," I said on our first break. "I need your help."

The words sounded funny in my mouth, but as soon as they were out in the air, I did not regret them. Jasmine had told this to me using metaphors and stories, her language, and then through her body and her hands on me. I did not have to be solid and strong, and she let me be weak in her arms. But I needed to be more tactile with Mikey. I actually needed to ask for that help I desperately needed and he had offered, but I had been too ashamed to take before. This didn't mean I was a fuck up; it just meant I was human. Mikey had nodded, uttered an emphasized " Finally," and we discussed what we could in our quick break period. He told me more about their parents ‘ illnesses and subsequent death (father had heart disease, which eventually lead to heart attack, and the mother had a series of strokes; they were sudden and quick illnesses along with deaths, but that did not mean that it didn't seem to last for decades). Mikey had tried to help them both, and then when his father died, assist his mother without putting her in a home. He had too many kids, an important job, and it became too much too fast. I wanted to ask if he did end up putting her in a home, but our break time ended. He had merely been telling me his story not to make a cohesive narrative, but to show me his human side too. When we had to depart, the emails began. In between conversations with Jasmine and clients on the phone, Mikey and I worked through what I needed.

"You need a new plan. Something to focus on that has an end goal and ideally something you can view as a final product. Have you and Jasmine gotten the baby's room together? That's something to make you feel useful and it's a fun task if you make a mobile or something like that (forgive me; I'm not always terribly creative or up to date. Do cribs still have mobiles?). You could get Jasmine to give you a photo assignment, too. That could be more up your alley," he wrote to me. My eyes lit up, my brain already going into a million different directions.

I agreed with his first point about having a focus. My desire needed to be fueled and channeled into something else, because I was realizing that it would ever really go away. The thought disappointed me at first; I wanted to be free of this alcoholic affinity. But I would always want something, and instead of feeling empty that I couldn't have this perfect thing, I needed to either make the perfect thing or find something less malign and more productive to substitute it with. I kicked myself realizing that all those hours that I had spent drinking I could have spent taking photos. Art needed an initial period of learning, of growth, and an inspirational streak, though. I felt so overwhelmed with facts and the dreary bits of life that I thought it was going to be hard to get back to photography anytime soon. As much as I wanted to do it, the idea of holding a camera still seemed volatile, as if I would break it.

I stared at my hands at my desk for a while, before decided to write Mikey back. I thanked him for the suggestions, and explained as best I could my hesitancy to photography just then. "But I'll keep it in mind. Remind me later, okay?" I sent him. We continued to go on back and forth about dealing with stress and he brainstormed other options with me. "I'm used to this type of back and forth. I have to do this in meetings all the time, only I feel less like I'm bullshitting here," he quipped, making me smile. It was weird, but I was beginning to see people's faces as I read their emails, sometimes I would hear their voice, too. It seemed so utterly foreign to smile at an inanimate object, but I embraced it for the time being. I embraced Mikey too, as much as that screen and typed sentiments would let me. I had begun to trust Mikey's opinion and authority. Not only was he successful, had five kids, but he was also dealing with Gerard's illness the best out of all of us. Everyone had known long enough now to have their own separate grieving and acceptance rituals, and while Vivian would still cry on and off on the phone and refuse to see Gerard, Mikey would come over like clockwork every few days. He never went more than three days now without seeing his brother, or at least hanging out with one of us if Gerard was not up to visitors. He usually brought food and sometimes one of his kids. It was usually Jonah that would come and I knew he was doing this so Gerard would get the impression of having a baby around as normal. He was preparing him just in case he had lost too much by the time our daughter was here.

"What do you do when you just can't stand things anymore?" I asked him in an email. I had no idea what to expect in return. So far as I knew, Mikey had no other outside hobbies but his family and his wife. I nearly fell over laughing when his reply came.

"I don't tell many people this, but mine and Alexa’s sex life is incredible. Sex is a good stress reliever. Even if it's sex by yourself," he had insisted. And then in the PS section of the email he promised to bring me one of Alexa's books. The next day, when he showed up with a large hardcover The Guide To Tantric Sex, I couldn't believe it. My face turned bright red as I stashed it in my first drawer of my desk, and I thanked him profusely. He smirked a bit, but he remained stoic as we continued some of our discussion out loud while everyone else on my floor was on break. He talked about sex just as if he was talking about balancing a check book. It was normal, casual, both of the topics just as enthralling and serious of an issue.

"There are lots of poses that can be done while pregnant. It's good to stay sexually active then. Most people are afraid of hurting the baby, but you'll be fine. She'll be fine. It's good to relieve anxiety for her as well. Trust me."

I did trust him, and soon, our emails were daily events. He couldn't always leave his office on my break to talk with me, and since I was pretty much chained there by a strict schedule, we developed our relationship over this screen and carpooling rides to and from the office. My questions about handling stress were a common occurrence between us, though his answers did become milder than his first suggestion. Once he sent me a quotation from Virginia Woolf, a writer that I knew Jasmine liked, and one that the two of them had probably discussed at some point. It read: “When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?” He had added to the script, "I thought of this last night when Isaac wanted to go outside to find the North Star for a project at school. I agree with Woolf, though I do like to omit the part where she ended up killing herself anyway. Maybe she did anyway because she tried to remove herself completely, and realized it didn't work. Just focus on the stars, Frank, but also try to find the constellations. Like Isaac and I. Once we found the North Star, we found the Big Dipper. Take a step back and things seem very small, but look at who you're with. That is what matters."

I could see Alexa's influence over him, with his analogy, but I also the love and devotion he had for his son, his children. He didn't find The Big Dipper and then show Isaac; they found it together. When I had sent my reply to him, I forwarded it to Jasmine so she could see the quotation. Moments later, another message appeared in my inbox, and Jasmine told me that she was growing to like Mikey even more. We had already started using the book he had given us. It felt odd at first, using patterns and instructions in order to be together, but it ended up giving us something to talk about that wasn't Gerard or money or the banalities of life. It made us have fun together again and get our minds on other things.

The next morning, when I told Mikey that I appreciated his book, he gave me a page number as a response. "It's been a good friend. So good I still have its contents memorized." I forwarded that to Jasmine as well, and that night we picked up where we had left off. My work was becoming easier and easier to get to, and taking Mikey's suggestions into my mind helped. Just having him around, and knowing more about him and his perceived weaknesses ("I should have taken out their trash more, visited more, and basically done more before it got that bad"), and his desires ("Alexa does yoga. She can put both feet behind her head. That is all I will say, that, and page 34") and passions in life ("Isaac impresses me more and more each day,"), made me not want to put on the tough facade anymore. I spent less time hiding in the bathroom and more time typing out a plan that would work.

Jasmine had suggested that we go to another one of her classes, and I jumped at the idea. Since it meant Gerard being alone in the house, we forwarded the message to Mikey, and within minutes he had agreed to go over. He was taking Alexa and the kids, so he wouldn't be lonely and we would have people to greet us when we got back. With it all set in place, I waited for the day to end. Not a thought of drinking or dread occurred. I envisioned tantric sex positions and the pages we had tried, and then thought of the stars. It was hard, living in the city, especially where we were now. It made it more difficult to take Woolf's and Mikey's advice. But it was there, and that was what mattered.

Lydia was wearing a yellow head-band this class, and had somehow managed to wrap her long hair up around it and coiled it inside. She had stuck a flower in her hair, too, and welcomed us all to class with a smile on her face. This was her favorite time of year, she informed us. "It is when the flowers come out and the animal babies are born."

From this energetic greeting, we spent the first fifteen minutes of the class hearing about the different types of families that were formed in nature, and the different gestation rates of animals. She showed pictures of baby ducks, cats, dogs, rabbits, and then bigger species like rhinos, giraffes, and lions. When she got to the impalas, my face lit up and I felt good that I had already read all about the structure of their family, and how even in spite of the illness, their ways still mirrored our own. She was easing into this class, I could tell. She smiled a lot more and was showing the stereotypical fuzzy animal photos. I wondered if she really was in a good mood, and the tempo would stay this way, or if she was bracing us for an overwhelming conclusion. Jasmine had warned me that both were very possible outcomes.

When we all went around to introduce ourselves, we talked about what type of family that we were planning on forming (though we could pass if we wanted to) and then what types of animals we thought it all represented. There was another family there - the quadruple that I had seen before - who were going to have more than two parents and who all had different names for one another. Though I liked to believe that ours were more creative than just Daddy John and Mommy Kiriana, I was still thrilled that we were not the only family with more than two parents. They had decided they were a group of elephants, and claimed they would "never forget" their roots. I had been watching Jasmine out of the corner of my eye, and we both flinched under their choice of words. Hilda went next, but said pass because she was not making a family, but insisted on claiming that Brian and Ryan were "definitely a certain cinematic warthog and lemur who were gay for one another."

" Jasmine and Frank? How are you two going to be raising your daughter?" Lydia asked us next, interrupting the murmured laughter in the room. She locked eyes with me, in what felt like a challenge. I had forgotten that the last time I had spoken to her, she had asked me to bring Gerard along. Her prompting us with this question meant that she knew we were missing parts of the family we had planned on forming. And suddenly, the playful spirit now lifted, and I began to wonder if Lydia had tailored the lecture completely for us. She had loaned Jasmine those animal books ages ago; I was sure she did not have many to give out. She had invested in us, in some way, and it was clear from her look with me, that we had let her down.

Jasmine said, "pass," but hearing her defeated tone made me not want to let go yet. I added that I "related to the way impalas raised their young in herds and had only small differences in genders," but it didn't come out with as much excitement as I had possessed before. Lydia nodded with furrowed brows, but it wasn't disapproval this time around. She went on with her class, but would occasionally send a glance over our way to make sure we were doing all right. It took me until halfway through the class to realize she was not looking at us, but at Jasmine only.

This was the first time since the news that we had been out together without Gerard, and I wondered if she felt bad for leaving him at home. I whispered in her ear at one point, "Don't worry. Mikey is there," but she only vaguely nodded. Hilda was around with just Brian this time (Ryan was working late in preparation for the baby), but she even looked lacklustre and sad too. She had been joking, but resorting to Disney references must have been a low point for her. As someone who was almost always causing problems, the smallest duration of quietness was huge. It left an echo chamber between us and I began to feel this cloud hang above us. The soucouyant, I realized, had followed us to class. It didn't just have to stay with Gerard, in that house. I began to get worried again, the kind of worried that I did not like.

I rubbed Jasmine's back and tried to focus on Lydia's lecture. After the warm up about animals and all things warm and fuzzy, she began to take back her serious tone and moved on with her work.

"Now, it's that time of year where people are also breaking out the beers as much as they’re breaking out with babies," she began. She revealed another slide on her projector, informing us that this week's lecture was called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Origins of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Oppression. I bit my lip as soon as I saw the first Alcohol, and then did it again when I saw it appear twice within the same title. Really, that title was far too long. It was getting redundant. She kept it up as she began to go through some of the fundamentals, but I was still fixated on my disappointment. I thought this was going to be another one of those high school-like lectures where there was a cop who was clearly on his way out of the business and therefore forced to lecture a bunch of kids who already knew he was full of shit. Yeah, yeah, don't do drugs and whatnot. I get it, I droned on to myself. I knew that I was somewhat resistant to this lecture idea because I had been used to the really pathetic attempts at preaching sobriety before. Like my dad had said, AA were a bunch of sheep and I didn't want to be involved in that either. But I also knew better, from the week or so that I had been able to manage myself, that I was uncomfortable because this was too close to me. Lydia had told Jasmine that you couldn't learn anything if you didn't look at your life, and in an eerie moment, she was calling that up before me right then. I had to learn, too. I squeezed Jasmine's hand as I took a breath, and we both tried to go into this together.

I should have expected more from Lydia at this point; she was not going to give a high school lecture. She gave the brief rundown of the effects of fetal alcohol, but the bulk of her time was spent talking about how the state has been using alcohol for years as a way to oppress people and make safe spaces unsafe. "Ever wonder why certain groups of people are targeted more than others? Look at sponsors for the parties that you go to and the events that you watch. For most gay pride events, alcohol is a chief supporter. Not only do more gay youths drink because of pure social alienation, but in order to bring large groups of people together alcohol is also used. They can never escape it." She began to flash a list of statistics to display how alcohol affected gay youth, how this corresponded to suicide rates, and then how this seem to extrapolate even further when people of color were taken into consideration. She discussed some conspiracy and actually proven theories that some drugs, such as crack cocaine, had been introduced to oppressed populations as a way to get them stuck in a perpetual loop, like a hamster in a wheel, constantly craving, consuming, and then becoming broke and dependent on the state that enable them in the first place. The point was that alcohol, and other drugs, were placed close to people who straddled the edge of the margins. "You drink to feel not so alone because there is no one you can relate to, then when you find those people that you can relate to and even possibly love, the government puts alcohol between you so you all don't get too strong. It's the strength in number for people who are different that matters. In high school, when they send those lazy cops to lecture, they are really worried about the individuals who drink. People who drink by themselves think too much. They know how wrong the world is and they drink to forget about it. Even if they can't articulate why they are sad, they know that something is wrong. The cops are afraid of people like that. The cops don't want you to think about that, especially if you find others who agree and you start to do something about it."

She began to go through a list of activists who were vehemently sober on purpose, because they recognised it as a control of the state apparatus. She read us excerpts from the Black panthers work, from women's circles in the 1970s, from The Biography of Malcolm X and then began to give more contemporary examples of people and small groups who withheld from alcohol, along with the consumption of meat and animal products, in order to try and resist on an economic, spiritual, and productive levels.

"I showed you those photos at the beginning of this to make you happy about the babies that you are bringing into the world. Those babies are no different from your babies. You wouldn't drink to harm your kids, but why would you eat theirs? Why would you continue to consume alcohol knowing the affects that it has on everyone around you? Even if you are not pregnant, there are still people within your life that it harms. Even if you do not know them, what you do affects them. What I saw affects the people around the corner from me, even if they are only disturbed a little in their sleep from the murmuring of my voice. Proximity matters. We are all very close. What we do matters."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14