Chapter 17 Laz #2
"I didn't," I tell her, my voice rising. The anger inside me is taking me by surprise. "I didn't want that at all. I wanted to be at home with you...mum I just wanted to...I just wanted to be loved. Why couldn't you just love me?"
My words have the same impact as a bomb. It's blasted away whatever pretenses we had around each other and the silence falls like ash.
My mother leans against the counter, her shoulders rise and fall, and that's when I notice how skinny she has gotten. The vertebrae on her back is practically sticking out of her back. "Please..." she says softly. "I said I had a rough day."
"Well I'm sorry there isn't a good fucking time to talk about this! I have waited my whole entire life to talk about this, about what you guys did to me!”
Her head snaps around and she glares at me over her shoulder.
"You watch your mouth around me, young man.
Do you want to know why we sent you to boarding school?
Because we didn't know what to do with you.
Better yet, I didn't. I was your only parent, your father never showed up.
He was just furniture. Horrible, ugly furniture. "
I'm having a hard time swallowing. "You didn't know what to do with me?" I repeat. "Why...I was just a kid."
"You were trouble Lazarus. If you ask me, you haven't grown out of it either."
I honestly don't know what she's talking about.
"I wasn't trouble..."
"You stole candy from the store down the street when you were eight years old. At eleven I caught you drinking your father's gin. At thirteen you were taking my razors and making marks up and down your arm."
Fuck. Jesus. She remembers that. "Every...a lot of kids do that. It’s not right but it’s common. It’s a cry for help. Maybe it's what I did in order to deal with the pain."
"What pain?"
'The pain of having a father like mine. He hit you. He hit me. He abused us. Inside and outside. You know he did."
"He never did such a thing."
"I didn't imagine it!" I yell, getting off my stool. "He did it and you know it."
"Your father was a drunk."
"I know. That was another thing. There were so many things, how could you not understand that as a young kid I didn't know how to deal with it. I still don't. Not even in the slightest. I can’t deal with people, with relationships, with love. I’m fucked up because of what you put me through.”
She waves me away with her hand. "You're trying to make me feel guilty for something he did."
"I am not. I'm just telling you why these things happened. You can't pretend he didn't leave us, mum."
"He left you, Laz," she says stiffly, her jaw firm as she looks at me. "You were the reason your father left."
Cold. Inside me there is nothing but cold. A wasteland. Frozen tundra.
My heart died the day when I learned it wasn't enough.
My heart died the day when love ceased to save me.
I don't know why the words are coming in my head right now, but they are. They are and they're real.
I can't believe this is happening.
"Mum," I manage to say, my stomach churning with the poison in her words. "Why did he…why would he leave because of me?"
She looks away, walks over to the kettle which is now boiling over. "He was afraid of you."
Afraid of me? ”Why?"
"He was afraid that you would love him. I was afraid of it too. You never should have done such a thing."
I am dumbfounded by this. None of it makes any sense, it sounds like the rantings of a loon.
And yet, at the same time, they reach deep inside me. They check all the boxes.
I was always there for my father. He would be a piece of shit and I was there, playing with the Magic 8 Ball, I was there giving him fake gin, I was there cleaning up after him. I did all the things my mother didn't want to do. Good cop, bad cop. I was the good cop.
And my father didn't like that. Didn't think he deserved it. Or maybe just didn't want what I was giving. It made him uncomfortable. Angry.
My love was unwarranted. It was wrong.
It chased him away.
Everything inside me sinks, like the very fabric of my soul, what I knew about myself, is plummeting to its death.
My mother just told me my father left us because I loved him when I shouldn't have.
What the actual fuck?
"Lazarus," she says to me, pouring the hot water in the delicate china with so much ease it's like we're not even having this discussion at all.
"You wanted the truth and there you have it.
It was easier to send you away than deal with you.
Of course I missed you. Any mother would.
But with the way you were acting, the way you made your father feel, it was for the best that you stay far away from us. "
"Then why did he leave in the end," I say quietly. "Why go when I was never even there?"
She shrugs and her expression, for once, is pained. "I honestly don't know Laz. I guess he just didn't love you like a good father should. But you know it was for the best, didn't you? It was the best for the both of us."
I don't know what to believe anymore. This has thrown me for a loop.
I feel like everything I know about myself is being rewritten, all my history, and I don't know what kind of person I'll become once it's all been processed.
I’m broken.
Utterly. Fucking. Broken.
"Hey," Noah says, his voice cautious.
I look up to see him hanging awkwardly by the entrance to the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his purple backpack slung over his shoulder, hair wet from the shower and now a bright purple to match the bag.
It takes me a few moments to snap back to this reality, the reason I'm here to begin with.
Right. Noah. Gay pride. Marina.
Marina.
She sure picked the wrong fucking guy to fall in love with.
I clear my throat. "Hey. Ready to go?"
"I just made you tea," my mother protests.
"I lost my appetite," I tell her with barely a glance in her direction and I stride past Noah, heading for the door.
Once outside I have this urge to run. Just start running and don't stop until I'm on the ground, panting, wheezing, completely spent.
But I don't. Noah holds me back.
"What did I just interrupt?" he asks, trailing after me as we head to the car. "Or do I want to know?"
"You don't want to know," I tell him. And now, more than ever, I'm acutely sorry for Noah. Not only does he have to have Daryl as a father, he has to have my mother as his stepmother. If she's like that with me, her own flesh and blood, I can't imagine what it feels like to not be related.
“Are we going to your girlfriend’s first? I need to get ready,” he says.
“Yeah.” My voice sounds distant, even in my own head.
“Are you sure you’re okay, dude?” Noah asks. “You’re vampire pale right now.”
I manage to swallow. I need to snap out of it. I’m doing this to support Noah. It’s supposed to be a fun day as well as an important one. It means something to him.
But I’m not sure this is something I can sweep under the rug. The scars are too deep now. It’s a feeling, a sharp pain, that I can’t quite escape.
My father didn’t love me.
My father was afraid of my love.
My love scared him.
My love wasn’t good enough.
I’m not good enough.
I’ll never be good enough for anyone.
When I pull up outside of Marina’s, I barely even remember driving. One minute I was at Noah’s, the next I’m parking outside of Havisham’s.
Speaking of, she’s peering through her blinds at me. You’d think after all this time with Marina, nearly every day, she would be used to me.
Does it matter? The thought comes into my head. You won’t be here long.
And then the thought leaves, leaving me rattled.
“Hey guys,” Marina’s clear, beautiful voice comes ringing out and I look to see her on the other side of the gate, poking her head over and grinning. “Come on in. Hey Noah,” she says to him. “Love your hair.”
“Thanks!” he says brightly.
We walk through the gate and instinctively I bend over and kiss Marina on the cheek.
“You okay?” she asks me, hand on my chest, peering at me intently. “You look ill.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, not meeting her eyes. This is not the time for the discussion. Perhaps there will never be a good time for it. Probably for the best. She doesn’t have to know that I am, deep down, inherently unlovable. I’m sure she’ll figure that out for herself soon enough.
“He’s being a weirdo,” Noah says.
“Well he’s my weirdo,” Marina tells him with a proud smile. “That’s why we work so well together. If I have a bit of advice for you Noah, it’s you need to find your weirdo. Once you do, everything else falls into place.”
“I’m not actually on the market for a weirdo,” Noah says smartly. “But I do want to find my own brand of weird.”
“Find your weirdo, embrace your weird,” Marina says. “It’s all good. Now let’s get you inside and have a little fashion show. How many outfits did you pack?”
Noah rolls his eyes. “Only one. I’m not interested in wearing feather boas. I just want to feel a part of something bigger than me.”
“You have a smart brother, Laz,” Marina says to me but her smile is starting to falter, just a bit. I know it’s because she’s picking up on what I’m putting out there. It takes a lot of strength to return the smile and pretend that everything’s fine.
But I try. I try for her sake, I try for Noah’s. I tell myself that the conversation I just had with my mother didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t anything that I didn’t know deep down. It was just out in the open and I should be glad, happy even, that the elephant in the room was finally dealt with.
It was dealt with by a shotgun blast to the heart.
Noah was right when he said he wasn’t wearing feather boas. He’s wearing a shirt that says “Be Queer, Punch a Nazi” and has tried to fix his purple hair into a Mohawk. Without Knox gelatin though, it’s more like floppy spikes. But hey, it’s cool.
Marina has made rainbow streaks in her hair by dusting different colored eyeshadows in sections and is wearing a shirt with Rosie the Riveter on it and jeans.
“Let’s go show some love,” she says excitedly but there’s something off about her tone. Noah wouldn’t pick up on it, but I do.
I know her so well.
My sweet girl.
Far too good and sweet for the likes of me.
She needs someone who can match her heart, can give back what she gives. Who can love without limits, love without conditions. Someone who loves her the very way she deserves to be loved.
Because Marina, of all people, is deserving of the biggest love possible. She’s deserving of someone who deserves her mind, body, heart and soul.
What I’m realizing today, with horrible clarity, is that someone is probably not me.