Chapter 15
YOU’RE LYING
Holden
I’m back in this stale room with Jerry, like I promised.
He’s kept his end of the deal and has not missed a session, according to his doctors, so here I am.
I don’t know if it’s talking about Mom and Liz and Natalie sharing about her husband that has me wanting to believe in second chances, but I’m here, watching him sleep.
He hasn’t opened his eyes since I arrived thirty minutes ago, so I’m working on the annual fundraiser Healing Pals hosts.
The preparations are in full force for our largest fundraising of the year, keeping me busy.
Jerry coughs, stirring in his seat, shaking himself awake. “Holden,” he whispers when his eyes meet mine. Eyes that mirror mine. I hated that I didn’t have Mom’s blue eyes most of my life. Nobody wants to see their eyes and remember the man who failed them over and over again.
“Hi.” If I’m going to give him a second chance, I have to try. My therapist and I decided I don’t have to forgive and forget, but it might be beneficial to both our healing hearts to try to forgive, even if we don’t develop a relationship.
“You came back.”
“I told you I would.” I shut my laptop and slide it in my bag, giving him my full attention, just like I wished I would've gotten from him all my life. “I’m ready to listen, but I don’t know if I want to harp on all the ways you went wrong. I think we both know how.”
He nods in agreement.
“I want to know what happened when we thought you died.”
“I don’t know you’ll get what you want from knowing my side of the story.”
“How do you know what I want? You don’t know me,” I bite back. He flinches, and I clear my throat, reminding myself it takes two to tango. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I understand it will take time to heal almost three decades of harm.”
“Over three decades. Do you know I don’t have one memory of you sober? I don’t remember a day you were happy without a drink in your hand?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Go ahead. Tell me what it is you think I want.”
“You want understanding, right? Why your life was uprooted and you had to leave and start over? To know why you were told I died.”
He actually knows what I want, so I gesture in agreement.
“I can give you my side of the story, son, but I can’t give you hers.”
“I know.”
“As long as that’s alright with you. I’ll tell you what I know.”
Finally, I might get some answers. Finally, I’ll be able to fill in all the blanks. Finally, I’ll be able to understand. As I wait unhurriedly for him to continue, I practice breathing.
“I don’t know exactly what day it was or when I noticed it, since some years are a blur, that one included, but I remember vividly walking into the house to a foul smell and throwing up in an instant. It smelled like a dead animal.
Turns out, it was my own filth….
Jerry, Twenty Four Years Ago
“Brenda!” I shout, heaving over the dirty toilet. Splatters of shit are everywhere, pee stains, and it smells worse than Grandpa Al’s halitosis when he didn’t wash his dentures.
Goddammit, where is she, and why is this bathroom so disgusting? Was Holden sick or some shit? This is foul.
“Brenda!” I flush the toilet, heading to the kitchen, blinking several times before realizing what I’m seeing. Piles of dirty dishes, empty beer cans on the floor, leftover food on the counter, all of it making me gag again. Damn, I need a beer.
I open the fridge to find spoiled vegetables and fruit. Spoiled milk. And no goddamn beer. It’s dinner time, so why the hell is she not here?
“Brenda?”
I search every room, every corner of the house. Damn, my head is spinning. I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin, and there’s a hammer pounding in my head. Loud as shit. So loud.
The knock on the door startles me. Oh, Brenda.
“Where were you?” It’s not Brenda on the other side of the door. It’s Louise from next door.
“Hey, Jerry. I was coming over to check on you and Brenda. I haven’t seen her or Holden in a few days.” She scrunches her nose, looking around the house. So the stench isn’t only in my head.
I narrow my eyes, shielding them from the bright sun. It’s so bright, too bright for it to be early morning.
What time is it?
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes, I’m sure it is. I don’t know where she’s at, but she was just here.”
She looks around, inspecting the house as if not believing me, and simultaneously trying to figure out what died for it to smell like this.
“I haven’t seen her in at least a week. I thought she might be on vacation or something. Holden hasn’t taken the bus, either.”
“What are you talking about? Excuse—” I don’t finish the words before I’m puking all over her.
“Oh my God!” Louise shouts, walking backwards, getting away from me. She looks disoriented.
I shake my head,
No, I feel disoriented. She looks disgusted.
“I’m sorry.”
“Jerry, where is Brenda?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she, Jerry? So help me God, I will call the police.”
“I don't know, woman. I don’t know!” I shout, scaring her in the process. “I’m sorry,” I mutter again.
She attempts to step inside the house, but she considers it and doesn’t.
Goddammit, why is it so loud in my head, and why do I feel like I’m going to throw up again?
She runs away.
Away where?
Somewhere, but I can’t step outside to see.
Everything’s too bright. My insides hurt. My eyes hurt.
I want another fucking drink.
Holden, Present Day
The lump in my throat grows as he tells me the nightmare of whatever that day was. I don’t interrupt, and I sure as hell don’t make him hold himself back. It’s almost as if he’s reliving it.
“Time was made up. The concept of time was in my head and without your mother—the keeper of not only you and the house, but my schedule too—it disappeared. She woke me up before work, made my breakfast, packed my lunch, and, looking back, I don’t know how the hell she put up with my shit for so long. ”
It’s infuriating to hear a grown ass man admit how my mother pretty much mothered him too and then was also there to fuck him?
The picket fence American dream is not really one if it’s at the expense of the dignity and happiness of the women behind it.
“So I can’t tell you if it took ten minutes or ten hours for them to show up.”
“Who?”
“The police.”
“This is where it gets blurry,” he says, rubbing his jaw as if the memory itself makes his skin itch.
“I remember the knocks, the voices—too many of them to count and all different. Maybe it was two cops, maybe it was ten. I don’t know.
My head was pounding so loud, I was sure the knocks were coming from inside me. ”
I swallow hard, forcing down the dread crawling up my throat. “What did they say?”
He laughs, a pathetic, humorless thing. “They didn’t say much at first. They covered their noses, though.
You should’ve seen them. Like stepping inside my house was the worst thing that had ever happened to them.
And maybe it was; hell if I know. One of them walked around, calling out her name too.
‘Brenda?’ Like she was gonna pop out from behind the couch magically. ”
My stomach twists.
“I kept telling them she wasn’t there. That she’d stepped out. That she was fine. That she was always fine. And I believed it too. I really did.” His voice cracks on the last word. “But they looked at me like I was lying. Like I’d done something or like I was dangerous.”
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“They kept asking when I last saw her. My answers didn’t make sense, even to me.
Every time I tried to think, I got that same stabbing light in my eyes.
I felt it in my skull. I told them to shut it off, told them the damn lights were too bright, but they still stared at me like I was losing my mind. ”
We let out a sigh simultaneously.
“And then…then, they made me sit down. One of them kept talking into his radio, looking around the house with this—” he coughs “—this expression. Like he’d already figured out the ending, and he was waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Except I had no clue, Holden. I had no clue.”
He pauses, breathing slowly and a little shaky. I don’t understand where we fall into this story. Did Mom think he was dead and couldn’t deal with it, so we left? Where were we when all of this was going on?
“The last thing I remember before everything went black was one of them saying something about needing to call it in.” His jaw locks, tight enough to crack his teeth.
I lean forward despite the sudden ice in my veins. Years spent in an ice rink don’t compare to how I feel right now.
“I don’t know. Everything else is a blur until I was in rehab. But I do know she left a note the police eventually found—she asked me not to find you.”
“And for once in your life, you decided to respect her and never call again?”
He shakes his head. “No, I found her eventually, but she had a kid, so I always assumed she had a new husband and a new life. It was still eating me alive, though. When I was doing my twelve steps, I reached out to her, and she told me she had told you I died and to respect that. She said it was easier. She said it was the only way.”
“What do you mean?” The only way? She told me what?
“She knew I was alive, Holden, but she chose to tell you otherwise.”
No. No. “No.”
“Yes, son.”
“Stop calling me that.” I get up, grabbing my bag, and putting space between us. “You’re lying.”
“I knew this would come as a shock, so I don’t blame you if you want to leave, but no.
I’m not lying. I was so fucked up, I didn’t even realize my wife and child left me, but ultimately, it was her decision to tell you I died.
It was mine, out of the respect I never had before for her, to respect that. ”
“I—I’ve gotta go.”
“That’s okay. You know where to find me.”
I leave him behind and drive to the one place where I know I’ll find happiness even after this shitshow.